Posts made by GreenFlashlight

@Ganymede Love that song. It's on my playlist of songs to listen to at work, and I don't know why because why do I want my coworkers or residents to see me cry?

@mietze I know how you feel. This is a very trying week and it's only Monday. Take all the time you need to get your spoons back.

@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

I don't think I'm spoiling anything since the movie isn't happening, but the information about the script is here: https://www.indiewire.com/2020/08/quentin-tarantino-star-trek-idea-1930s-gangster-movie-1234578751/

Basically it'd have been set in an Earth-in-the-1930s-like gangster setting, presumably while trying to not break the Prime Directive. I dunno, that's certainly different!

I'd give it a shot, but I dunno if I want to deal with the scene where the camera inevitably zooms in on Uhura's toes.

@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

I think I'm entitled to have preferences while aware they don't constitute rights, no?

I agree. That's the second half of the sentence, the part following the word 'or.' I said and will repeat I'm not judging you for disliking current Trek. My only objection is the suggestion that it's a function of age rather than attitude.

@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

Should I be yelling at the damn kids to get off my lawn?

Not precisely. The contention here isn't age, it's either that you think you have a greater right to dictate what Star Trek is than the people who own it have, or that you think Star Trek can only be one limited thing.

I'm not judging, though. I haven't liked a Star Trek movie since First Contact.

Okay, the super short to the point of being misleading because the water just started boiling and I need to watch the oven version is, we're so comfortable with lying because we want to be seen as the heroes we pretend we are without putting in the work to be great, so our culture has developed around a grade school "I won't call you on your lies because then you won't call me on mine" mentality. Once you start down that path, you justify lying about everything because hey, it works for the big stuff like national identity, why wouldn't it work for little stuff too?

@surreality said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I honestly don't know why people are so comfortable lying.

Are you American/dealing with Americans?

In the last three week, 22 out of the 24 residents on my unit of the nursing home I work for have caught COVID. We were on isolation precautions all last week, but today they ended despite one resident having been identified and quarantined just yesterday.

6 of those 22 residents have died. But yes, sure, the crisis is over, let's end isolation so we can start taking in more residents.

@Roz Sorry but also ha ha!

I can't praise She-Ra enough. I'm going to get a tattoo of the failsafe because I'm that basic bitch but I don't care, I stan She-Ra.

Wait, really?

@ZombieGenesis said in Good TV:

They announced Aisha wasn't coming back for season 3.

Boooooooooooooooooooooo

I really like Aisha's character and I want to see more of her. I have this cynical suspicion the show isn't focusing on her as much because she's overweight and god knows we can't have that when there are girls with tight butts and deep cleavage to focus on. I probably should have included that in my grievances in my original review.

My feelings on Hawk are complex. I think he's a great character with a well-done arc, and I understand and believe what he's going through, but I also have no sympathy for him because he knows he's terrible and he actively chooses to continue being terrible every day.

@cyberdemon You may wish to consider that the problem may not be the subject but rather your sales pitch. I mean this as helpfully as possible when I say your first post in this thread annoyed me because instead of getting to the point, you spent your first three sentences talking about how long you've been playing these games. You continued better than you began, but that first impression is of someone who wants to use the topic at hand as an excuse to discuss his favorite subject: himself.

I don't know you, so this could be a totally unfair impression. Just something you might think about.

@Lotherio Nothing to apologize for! I should have remembered it because I remember now getting distracted by that introduction and wondering, "So does that mean her name is or isn't short for Victoria? If it is, that's one of the more subtle naming choices the show has made (looking at you, Robby)."

@Lotherio said in Good TV:

Tory ... with a Y

Right, thank you.

I want more of the interaction between dojo's and students, like Hawk and Dmitry's stuff

Their scene at the party was so good! I want more of that in the show.

I just finished Cobra Kai a couple of days ago, and I have... feelings about it.

I love the Karate Kid. It's garbage in a lot of ways, but I love this bizarre movie where a scrawny teenager catches the attention of and then continues to provoke a gang of would-be murderers (seriously, that scene on the bikes is attempted murder) until a wise old man from the far east teaches him how to kickpunch better than the murderers can and he beats them up one by one, thereby teaching them to respect him. That's the attitude I came to the show with.

The first and second seasons of the show feel almost like different beasts. The first season seems more concerned with the source material than the second, and also more self-aware about its silliness, like the scene where Johnny is trying to get Cobra Kai Dojo reinstated in the tournament and he all but looks at the camera to say, "I never heard of the villain from the third movie!"* The persistent mockery made me feel a little uncomfortable, though. The first season is about two fifty-year-olds who are arrested in nostalgia for their high school days, so the show making fun of them while marketing itself to people whose main draw to watch it would be nostalgia for that same period feels a little mean to me.

That's not to say the season is bad. I like and believe Johnny, Miguel, Robby, Daniel, Amanda, Aisha, and Hawk. There are a lot of very honest moments about failure and humiliation and self-realization that make the show extremely worth watching. It's just that the writing is also pretty ham-fisted at times, going into really tiresome Boomer pandering, complaining about safe spaces and participation awards with a complete lack of self-awareness while painting people who think it's bad for children to punch one another as flighty airheads who can't handle the real world.

I kind of like the second season more, but it's still a mixed bag. The stakes feel more personal and real, being mostly about the relationships between the students of the competing dojos and the adults running or peripherally connected to them. The fight choreography becomes amazing, especially in the final episode, where my jaw literally dropped when I realized how long the camera had gone without a cut during the final brawl. The villains generally become more relatable in their villainy as their motivation becomes clearer and the acting is more capable of portraying the kinds of damage driving them, which the good guys feel less saintly and more human.

My big complaint is the sexual politics.

The second season is all about the shipping. Daniel and Amanda's marriage suffering because he's focusing too much on the past and leaving her alone? That's good stuff! Johnny trying to date and not being able to because he thinks dating apps are for nerds and you're supposed to just alpha dominate a woman? That's... less good, it's pretty over the top but it's also mostly in character, I guess. Miguel, Sam, Robby, and Bad Girl Whose Name I Already Forget having a weird love quadrangle? I don't totally hate it because Miguel's actor sells the hell out of it, but it's not very good, and the camera really likes to perv up Samantha; Samantha, whose age is unclear but who due to the rules of the tournament cannot possibly be older than seventeen. There's this scene where she's kissing her boyfriend and the camera pans slowly down her back to focus on her ass, her child's ass, in a way that still makes me uncomfortable to think about. (It also inspired me to check my suspicions, and yes, the actor playing Daniel's wife Amanda is twenty years younger than Ralph Macchio is, so that's pretty gross too.)

Despite my negative tone, I do like this series. I watched it all the way through, didn't I? I just wish the writing was a little sharper and there were fewer creeps directing the camera.

*As an aside, when the character of Robby first appeared, he had that villain's hairstyle and I was sure the show was going to tie him to Terry Silver's character somehow. It never happened, though, so I'm guessing it was just a visual in-joke.

You are an RN, god damn it. You have been one for thirty years. You know that you do not text me gossip about our patients with their names and conditions! Now I'm a fucking accessory to your HIPAA violations!