DBinfosource

Re: The best medicine (cassandra)

posted by cassandra on 3/9/2010 9:47:01 PM EST
me, too.

Re: The best medicine (messybear)

posted by messybear on 3/9/2010 9:10:03 PM EST
shut up, Ed!

Re: The best medicine (edlorah)

posted by edlorah on 3/9/2010 8:16:04 PM EST
Too funny ... I'm stealing it.

The best medicine (Herring405)

posted by Herring405 on 3/9/2010 8:01:28 PM EST
Best laugh I've had in a while.

Wonder who they've got doing the soundtrack?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFicqklGuB0

H4.5

Re: A Couple of Quotes For Your Consideration (D/VM)

posted by D/VM on 3/9/2010 7:29:56 PM EST
That's blue tonqued.

Re: Oscar Pick (edlorah)

posted by edlorah on 3/9/2010 6:14:10 PM EST
Did he do that 'quotes' thing with his fingers when he asked you?

Re: A Feel Good (Peter T.)

posted by Peter T. on 3/9/2010 5:16:16 PM EST
Where's the Kleenex?

Peter T.

Re: On the status of Poetry in America (DavidM)

posted by DavidM on 3/9/2010 3:55:46 PM EST
who f**cked men after kicking the bucket,

Re: On the status of Poetry in America (DavidM)

posted by DavidM on 3/9/2010 3:51:33 PM EST
Ohh Baerwald, I wish I had your subtle touch with the ladies :)

i might try and fit necrophilia into a general conversation this week and see how it goes . . . i see sexy, dead people!

Re: Oscar Pick (cassandra)

posted by cassandra on 3/9/2010 3:31:40 PM EST
T-Bone once suggested I come back to his hotel "to talk about art." He was "happily married" at the time.

Re: A Feel Good (Reg)

posted by Reg on 3/9/2010 11:28:36 AM EST
Yup, I felt it...

Re: On the status of Poetry in America (Eugene)

posted by Eugene on 3/9/2010 11:08:30 AM EST
No, Reg,

There once was a hermit named Dave, (not our Dave,it's just an old limerick) Who kept a dead.........in a cave,

etc..etc.. You probably know it anyways.

Re: On the status of Poetry in America (Reg)

posted by Reg on 3/9/2010 11:03:50 AM EST
Well, at least Jewel can now work necrophilia into her poetry, I mean now that she knows what it is.

I'm sure she went right home and began to compose (decompose?):

There once was a necrophiliac from Nantucket...

Explanaiton for Randy Pat (mick)

posted by mick on 3/9/2010 11:02:13 AM EST
necrophiliac = someone who loves necks Pat.

Re: Oscar Pick (Reg)

posted by Reg on 3/9/2010 10:57:20 AM EST
Funny, first I was going to say I never saw Terminator 2 but I went and looked it up and turns out I have but the truth is I don't remember a damn thing about it. I think that indicates I probably did not like it. I tried to watch Titanic twice. The first time I just turned it off because I found the writing so terrible and the second time I fell asleep 20 minutes or so into it. The thing is I guess I can't take the cheese and soap that his films contain. This is what annoys me about him, he seems to demand bad writing so that his visuals are not interfered with by a compelling story. I think it's great that he can create these amazing visuals and obviously that is a huge part of what can make a film fun and interesting. I don't knock anybody for enjoying them but why not combine that skill with some good writing? I really think he demands the worst possible script so it does not compete with his visuals. CGI is his domain because like Lucas I don't think these guys actually want to work with people.

In the end I really can't say if one film is better than the other because obviously the reasons for seeing Avatar and The Hurt Locker are different. I think Avatar probably would be a fun night at the movies due to the spectacle of being surrounded by this giant 3D world in an Imax theater. No question, everybody I know that saw it raved about it.

The thing about The Hurt Locker was it used a movie cliche over and over, the ticking bomb, and in a way also portrayed the main character as a ticking bomb as you waited for him to "go off" and do something crazy. Yeah, I would not have picked The Hurt Locker as best picture either because as you said it would probably not even make it into a list of the 20 best films about war but wow, what a weak list of films it was up against, at least based on the ones I saw.

For what it's worth my favorite sci-fi film, and I would probably say it was a better film than all of the best picture nominees I saw, was Moon. Sam Rockwell was great in it, it was a movie with a twist but the twist was not central to what the film was about and the effects were old fashioned but very effective and only served to help tell the story and help you feel the sense of isolation the main character is experiencing. It was also an open homage to lots of old sci-fi films because David Bowie and his son Duncan Jones (the filmmaker) loved these films. So not only did he give the characters a lot of heart but there seemed to be a lot of heart behind how the film was made. Cameron's films always feel cold to me.

Re: Roman citizens for Nero (messybear)

posted by messybear on 3/9/2010 10:43:24 AM EST

[Okay..I�ll try again, Heathcliffe, since the body-dbis is buoying like a bobber on the pool.]

Considering the past year of senate committee constipation�

I find myself pummeled-into-silence concerning politics in America. Anyone who says it�s about anything else but vile self-servitude n shuffle-to-survive n sandbox pecking order is either lying to themselves or just..plain..lying. There may be idealisms going in, there must be---gota be, ..but those go to meeting with the quellers� gloaming not too shortly after taking office in most cases, it seems, and partisanship, rah-rah-sis-boom!-bah-humbug become the golden microphone. The TRUTH.. is in our faces. What truly does need be fixed SOON is reduced in importance to [merely] fodder for the chaff (the chaff being the political methodology, the carp hatchery, the coalition for self-gratification & profligacy & talking point punditry ad-nauseam all up in the curdled cream where the fruit flies feed).

& so, Heathcliffe, what, sir, can a people do when the shit is stacked so high that the fruit flies fly free in thin air breezes whilst the citizenry are relegated to sucking oxygen through heavy-duty McDonald�s sippin� straws barely poked up out from the shoopa-dupe-n-poop? Really. What? I mean, if a purposeful anvil comes falling down upon your head, my head, anybody�s head, kathunk!, smashed heads, and smashed heads cannot, by order of physical law, peacefully protest or write their congressman or run for the uglier offices of state.

So herein the poop, persevering to pay the Docs, laughing when we can get a breath of fresh air and crying when we think too much, ...we wrench our souls against the dickhead tides that be while trying to make meaningful heads or tails out of the day-to-day workings of an imbalanced 21^st Century existence that has gone insane for lack of common sense and basic human nobility. You wana argue politics on one of the smartest boards in cyberspace? Than argue, maestrobro. Argue your aces off. Somebody�ll join the dance. �but all I got left is modest poetic insight mired in nonsense and a fair amount of drivel�or that may actually be drool. ..Even my Lotus Bubble has holes you could drive a Mick & Brad through.

[Too much of all of it feels dangerously akin to the last paragraph of Cat�s Cradle.]

Re: On the status of Poetry in America (edlorah)

posted by edlorah on 3/9/2010 10:20:17 AM EST
There's songwriting material in there somewhere David ....

Re: Oscar Pick (edlorah)

posted by edlorah on 3/9/2010 10:19:38 AM EST
Yeah, I haven't noticed T-Bone missing from the Awards circuit much ...

Re: Oscar Pick (Baerwald)

posted by Baerwald on 3/9/2010 10:04:30 AM EST
T-Bone does just fine.

Re: On the status of Poetry in America (Baerwald)

posted by Baerwald on 3/9/2010 9:44:50 AM EST
I can attest to Jewel's poesy. She once told me without a hint of irony that she was the biggest poet in America. Sadly, as well as being decidedly unashamed of her rank atop the mountain, she was also telling the truth. She also confided to me her many similarities to Mother Teresa, repeatedly, continuing to do so until I informed her that in my opinion Mother Teresa was probably a necrophiliac. She asked me what that was, and I replied, "a person who likes to fuck dead people, Jewel." Our friendship didn't last long after that, I'm very sorry to say.

A Feel Good (cassandra)

posted by cassandra on 3/9/2010 5:56:02 AM EST
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mZ1zV1l2KQ

Kids from ps22 sing phoenix's Liztomania. Cool choirmaster, too.

On the status of Poetry in America (Herring405)

posted by Herring405 on 3/9/2010 2:02:34 AM EST
Even if you are not intrigued by the subject line here, read this.

By turns, I find it amusing, relevant, hilarious, and frightening, like some kind of ghost snake monster friend.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=238942&page=1

Herring405

Re: Some Terry Southern madness...or not...you be the judge... (edlorah)

posted by edlorah on 3/9/2010 1:13:12 AM EST
It's a great movie. I haven't seen it in years but always think of it as a big influence on Terry Gilliam (Brazil, etc;)

Re: Oscar Pick (cyanaura)

posted by cyanaura on 3/8/2010 10:08:16 PM EST
(First things first: You didn't like Terminator 2 or Titanic? Not even a little bit? Guilty pleasure level, even? I really find this hard to believe.)

The Hurt Locker to me has been done before... War is hell, yep, and yet some types are seduced by it to the extent that they feed off of it as if it were some kind of drug. Platoon, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Taps, Full Metal Jacket, insert your own example here... It was brilliantly executed to be sure. But Best Picture? Not much of a story, frankly. I think it won because of: a) US politics (while it didn't argue in favour of the war, it certainly didn't go out of its way to make any kind of heavy-handed indictment, cf. Paths of Glory, Coming Home, Born on the Fourth of July, etc.) and, b) because it was Oscar's first real opportunity to say 'yes' to a female director, which I suppose comes back in a sense to politics.

Avatar suffered from many flaws, not the least of which was an at times contrived and maudlin storyline (I don't think a spoiler alert is required when I say that), some pretty piss-poor dialogue and a relatively limp ending. Disappointing, to be sure... But overall it was a spectacle that had no precedent, IMO, not only in terms of the use of CGI and 3D elements but with respect to the epic scale of storytelling that incorporated those elements. It had vision, grandeur, romance, and invoked a sense of wonder... It mattered very little that a heavy dose of CGI was involved because you could literally get lost in it as you watched, transported, if you will... It was a Wizard of Oz of sorts for our times, except that it was based on Cameron's genius and not Frank L. Baum's adapted screenplay. It was magic. So while the negative elements detracted from the movie, for me they were far outweighed by the scope, imagination and the sheer creativity required to execute such a work. None of the other nominated films came close to going where Avatar went, as far as I'm concerned. Call me pedestrian, if you like, because I'd say the same thing about 1997's Titanic... Good Will Hunting? I don't think so...

Re: Oscar Pick (Reg)

posted by Reg on 3/8/2010 9:10:33 PM EST
I'm impressed that you saw all of the films. So why would you choose Avatar over The Hurt Locker? Without giving away anything for those that may not have seen these films, I'd like to hear an explanation. I have not seen Avatar either mainly because the trailer did nothing for me and I really have not enjoyed anything James Cameron has done other than his deep sea documentaries and The Abyss. Even with The Abyss though the story was so damn hamfisted that it took a really good cast to make it compelling and of course all the underwater stuff. Also it was kinda funny that Ed Harris had to be restrained so he did not beat the shit out of Cameron during the shoot and I believe he swore he'd never work with the guy again.