RL Anger

WTFE

@Ganymede Do Paranormal Activity!

Auspice

Here is my full review for Insidious, which is spoiler-y, but I mean this movie is 7 years old so deal:

Insidious is a horror film suitable for non-horror fans. The thrills are cheap and easy to spot. The 'jump scare' is used liberally and without impunity, so even the most easily startled can brace themselves for the moment it comes. Even so, those moments are tame by horror film standards. As the movie features around a family and specifically the strained relationship between Renai and Josh, it comes across more like the plot of a romance film (a couple reconnecting) at times than a horror film. Renai is a mother struggling to hold her family together while her husband grows distant... plus her comatose son just so happens to be haunted.

The greatest injustice in this film is how underrepresented the second son is. He is utilized to inform us that Dalton is "walking around" at night and then we never see him again. Josh's storyline, while understandable once the context is provided, is forced before Lorraine appears to give us the context. He is just cold and distant; almost two-dimensional in nature. When he does come around to Elise's methods, it takes him mere moments to do so. A photo falling off of the wall. Instead of the logical response ("Renai, you got these ideas from seeing his drawings."), he decides to go all in. He was not the voice of reason for long.

While there's a certain suspension of disbelief required for movies (and often horror movies in particular), Insidious seemed to require a lot of it to make the pieces fit. Overall, the film felt like a children's tale (astral travel into the further) that had been twisted into a horror story for adults. As a result, the various aspects of the movie did not always felt like they fit quite right. Specs and Tucker were fun, but almost too light-hearted for the movie (they brought too much levity rather than just enough). The various creatures (were they demons? spirits? the dead? it is never fully clarified at any point) seem almost lifted from fairy-tales and children's novels without actually being such.

Ultimately, Insidious comes across as a film that began life as something meant for a much younger audience and not enough elements were changed for the audience it was given. While it only received a PG-13 rating, I feel it could have been given more of a mythology to support the background of the 'Further' rather than the family and romance story (especially given that sequels focus more on Elise than on Renai). In the end, the movie suffers being disjointed and becomes a series of obvious jump scares and vignettes rather than a solid story that hits the appropriate beats.

Pondscum

On the bitching thread, @Arkandel said

@Arkandel said in Random Bitching:

@saosmash said in Random Bitching:

The name of the thread does indeed have the word bitch in it. Is that symptomatic of the sexist culture in which our language developed? Yep.

It's probably unrelated but I dislike the name of the "RL anger" thread.

There are many, many things that peeve, annoy or disappoint me about real life that I don't feel anger towards. Anger is a strong word.

Sunday night/Monday morning some thieving scumbags forced an entry to my garden and stole patio furniture that we got for an anniversary present. Also took as many garden tools as they could carry (some of which belonged to my mother who died 3 years ago and thus were of great sentimental value), and our barbecue. We reported it to the police, but they said we'd probably never see it again, and gave us an incident number.

So I went out and around where I live today, asking people I met if anyone had been trying to flog some wicker patio furniture, and amazingly one girl I know from walking our dogs said, oh huh, is it white and so big by so big, and are you missing a barbecue too? If so, it's in this lock up shed over where I live.

I ran all the way there, and yup... was all my stuff. So snapped some pics through the shed slats on my phone, rang police and sat on the ground in front of the door for three solid hours until police came. I was so ANGRY that some fucking nasty shitbags had done this that I was fully ready to stop them moving it someplace else. It was so satisfying when they busted the place open and got my stuff out.

RL ANGER!!

Arkandel

@Pondscum But what a justice boner at the end!

surreality

@Pondscum I hope they throw the book at them. No, fuck a book. I hope they throw every volume of the encyclopedia at them.

Ganymede

@WTFE

My short review of Paranormal Activity:

If your idea of a good time is having loud noises and sudden movement startle you, then you are either a house cat or someone who liked Paranormal Activity. The fact that this series got several sequels/installments serves to reinforce my belief that ill-educated people will always confuse pornography for sex.

I sort of understand why this is the case. This movie came out around the same time that YouTube got kind of popular, and porn tubes started to proliferate. People like to have what they want immediately, and to have it be as gratifying as possible. I shouldn't say "people", though; rather, this is the common perception of what we are entitled to, as this is as horrifyingly incorrect as labeling Paranormal Activity as entertaining.

The only thing paranormal about the movie is its popularity. It's spooky. Whereas horror fans could have enjoyed gems like The Orphanage (Il Orphanato) or [REC], they instead found themselves adulating this awful cinematic abortion that's about as fun as voyeur porn at a convenience store: something exciting might happen if you lower your standards enough, but you're probably better off buying a subscription to BangBros., which produced more films that are more entertaining, humorous, and tongue-in-cheek than Paranormal Activity.

It'd probably make more sense too.

Cupcake

Dear Bitch Co-Worker,

Next time you require special handling and re-addressing of an item for mail out, don't bury your request in a bunch of text where it won't stand out for me and the receptionist to notice. Flag your notes to my attention the way all of the other people who have your role do to insure things are processed properly. I don't have time to read novels.

Next time this happens and we confirm it didn't go where you wanted it to go in the manner your want it to go in, standing at my desk and whining about not knowing what to do is not your best course of action. But if you insist, and I actually know what to do, don't stand there and whine at me about how it's not going to work. I've been here for three years longer than you, and I know how mail out works and how to handle emergency re-ships.

And next time, don't you fucking dare go around me to have other people do MY job. I do my job, and I do it very well.

FUCK. YOU.

(I have a lot of rage right now, guys.)

Auspice

@Cupcake

Just remember: receptionist and other people in the incompetent coworker's role know how to do their thang and they probably noticed who the weak in the chain was, too.

Meg

i hate, hate apple store. i also hate that i can't go a single day on my period without leaking, so i spend a whole day smelling like blood. i can't even go work from home because of apple and needing to do things on a little mac in the office.

Sparks

@Meg I hate when tools for work are platform specific, and there's no really viable/compatible alternative on another. And half of them don't work right under virtualization!

Microsoft Project or Cypress PSoC tools meaning I have to use Windows. Xcode or certain other tools requiring Mac. Etc.

I mean, IDEA might be a bloated warthog of a development environment, but at least I can use it literally everywhere, whether I'm on Windows or Mac or Linux at that moment.

WTFE

@Ganymede You are the wind beneath my misanthropic wings.

Ganymede

@WTFE

Then keep 'em coming. But try to skip movies this year. I've seen a lot of good movies this year.

WTFE

Do The Matrix.

I dare you to dis it in geek circles like this!

Thenomain

@WTFE said in RL Anger:

Do The Matrix.

I dare you to dis it in geek circles like this!

Yeah, you guys. People like WTFE are above you lot, and don't you forget it!

I mean, besides posting on Soapbox. Some people just can't masturbate without an audience.

WTFE

If you, at any point, @Thenomain, see me disavowing membership in geek circles, please point it out to me. (Hint: this is not possible.)

Translation for the hard of thinking: go fuck yourself.

Ganymede

@WTFE

My short review of The Matrix:

For the sake of brevity, I'm going to stick with the first movie, which is, for me, the only movie I care to recognize when asked about my thoughts on the trilogy. "There were three movies? Pretty sure there was one movie and two pointless, boring, overwrought wankfests that make the Twilight series seem watchable." Which it isn't, by the way.

I liked the movie. I liked the premise, and I like the execution. To say that the entire concept of existence within a machine is novel or ground-breaking is akin to saying that you only heard that there could be more than two genders in the past couple of years thanks to Caitlyn Jenner. That is, if you so believe, then you probably haven't been paying attention to the very genre that The Matrix attempts to rise from: science-fiction.

The idea of being trapped in a contrived universe is a trope used in various genres and settings, from ST:TNG (Ep. 82 -- Future Imperfect) to The Truman Show. References to Plato's Allegory of the Cave and other sources makes The Matrix about as new as dirt. The difference, however, is that The Matrix is able to take those ideas and present them in a wholly ground-breaking way. It's not the ideas or the message, but how it is shown.

I'll admit I was entertained, but I was also entertained by Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which also broke ground in how it presented its poorly-written plot. Still, it would be wrong to hate hard on something presented with such glitz and glamour that so many others would attempt and fail to replicate. This is a movie to be watched for what it is, not what it says. And for that, we thank you, Wachowski Brothers.

surreality

@Ganymede An even more poignant one for us geeks: Equilibrium. As in, we are totally those people who, like the director, probably made up gun katas in the back yard as little kids, or would have if we'd thought of it first, or likely as not totally did this shit on games in the 90s, because it was the 90s, and the time in which everybody did ridiculous shit like this on games. (I actually really like this movie despite recognizing it as completely ridiculous at the same time for the gun fu.)

WTFE

Sisters.

But aside from that, yeah, you about nailed it.

Uh ... Vanilla Sky. For bonus points compare and contrast in the review with Abre los ojos.

WTFE

@surreality said in RL Anger:

@Ganymede An even more poignant one for us geeks: Equilibrium. As in, we are totally those people who, like the director, probably made up gun katas in the back yard as little kids, or would have if we'd thought of it first, or likely as not totally did this shit on games in the 90s, because it was the 90s, and the time in which everybody did ridiculous shit like this on games. (I actually really like this movie despite recognizing it as completely ridiculous at the same time for the gun fu.)

Equilibrium is one of my guilty pleasures. You know, the geeky pleasures that that fucking moron @Thenomain seems to think I seem to consider myself above. Because he's a fucking moron.

Auspice

I love Equilibrium.
GUNFU IS AWESOME SHUTIT.