eugene
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Posts posted by eugene
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this whole format is awful, literally all of those night tv shows suck, yes, including stewart, conan and that british twat everyone loves who tells you how to vote. bad scripted jokes and scripted laughs and scripted interactions with guests. they all feel very dead and fake, that particular american type of fake, like some mass manufactured, focus grouped, factory product.
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So this commercial I did the music and sound design for has been nominated for an award
what is this a commercial for? depression?
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I have a son.
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trump on cyber is just pure comedy.
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climpton is alright, but jesus, her smiling like an insane person each time trump disses her is just so wrong..
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gonna watch the FUCK out of today's debates.
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lol
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I just finished a BBC 3 series called "Flowers" that is on the streaming service "SeeSo".
It was one of the most brilliant and moving stories i have ever seen told through a visual medium.
I couldn't recommend it more highly. It stars Julian Barratt AKA Howard Moon of the Mighty Boosh.
lol, the vast differences in taste on this forum never fail to surprise and amuse me..
i don't think i've hated a show that much in such a short amount of time, i gave it exactly 13 mins (i remember) before deleting the whole thing and i was just overflowing with hate and awestruck about how something that obnoxious and disingenuous could be made and offered to human audience.
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went to the cinema today for the first time in 15 years. yes, the last film i actually saw in a movie theater was the first lord of the rings. it was about that time when broadband internet was becoming more available and affordable, so getting movies online for free made more sense. the major incentive for going to the cinema today was the "israeli cinema day" that precedes the israeli academy awards by a day, so the tickets for israeli films were subsidized and cost only 10 nis (2.6 usd). i was also anticipating that film and was curious about the modern cinema going experience.
the first thing i witnessed is the unmistakable evidence for the influence of american cultural imperialism - overweight, middle aged+ people hauling huge buckets of popcorn and drinks while squeezing in between the seats on the way to their destination. the film itself was the antithesis of a popcorn movie, all of the director's previous features were much more european festivals, left wing, chin stroking kinda films rather than something for mainstream audience.
i managed to shield myself very well from commercials on the media, so the 20 minute block of food commercials and trailers preceding the film itself seemed really obnoxious. i'm pretty sure keanu reeves talked about it before, but it's still amazing how literally every single trailer without exception has this mid bass-to-low bass sine wave sweep accompanying cuts to black before some significant part of the story is revealed (and as mentioned a few times before, trailers these days reveal pretty much most of the movie). that sweep appears regardless of the movie, be it some tender drama with fassbender about how he and his wife find a live baby in the sea, a whatever sequel to da vinci code or that laughable, paulo coelho-like film about will smith writing letters to death, time and love where half the actors of the hollywood take part. you can easily replicate this sound, just enter 120hz start freq, 20hz end freq and a duration of 2 seconds here and hit play: http://onlinetonegenerator.com/frequency-sweep-generator.html.
nevertheless the trailers were useful for me as a i had the chance to judge and compare the picture and sound quality to my home theater. the screen seemed like it was dirty or something, there were visible vertical stripes from top to bottom that were darker in comparison to the rest of the screen, but otherwise it was just okay, nothing remarkable, i definitely get a better picture with my plasma at home. the bigness effect was nice though, it left me wishing for a 60 incher to replace my current 50. sound wise they're really overdoing it with the subwoofers, when a voice of a male on screen gets lower it immediately sounds subwoorish and unnatural. the 3d sound positioning seemed better than what i get at home, in particular there's a sense of a sound present behind the actual screen that i noticed and it sounds quite realistic, i don't get that effect at home. sound quality itself overall was worse and less natural though, but then i labored over my system for like a year, researching and reading, testing and calibrating in order to get it all right, so that was a satisfying confirmation of the success of my efforts.
the were only about 20 people at the screening, all aged 50-75, but the hall was pretty small (~70 seats) and they made themselves noticeable and irritating enough: overreacting with gasps to not-that-dramatic moments (like when someone pulled a gun to chase for a robber), laughing more than the comic situations really called for, trying to predict what's gonna happen next and voicing their success with self importance when they got it right, getting sms's and calls, and googling things with their blazing bright phones. the elderly couple sitting to the left of me didn't know the hebrewdized expression "milfit" (MILF-like), so they googled it and read the description to their friends on the left who also had trouble with it, in the page they got the definition wasn't actually literal and was sanitized, it was defined as a "modern nickname given to an attractive woman of middle age", something like that. but the thing that really got me the most was the sing alongs. there were quite a few old and canonical israeli songs used in a somewhat cynical fashion, songs that those elderly viewers grew on i'm pretty sure, so literally everyone in the hall hummed along them, correcting each other on the words if they got it wrong, annoying but quite amusing nonetheless.
5 bags and a replacement thermostat module for the AC unit, it was borderline uncomfortably cold during the screening.
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a brain that has not enough computing power
there's no such thing though, at least it has never been proven to exist for humans because it's impossible to control for social factors and isolate those neurobiological ones. IQ measures how well you do IQ tests and is heavily culturally biased, not anything more. those theories are only popular within the so called scientific racists and evolutionary-psychology hacks, and naturally the onion people constitute a high percentage of those admiring those fields.
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been watching bates motel, it's really good despite some glaring weaknesses. the relationship between the two main characters and the ensuing psychodrama are superbly conceived. that borderline-too-weird-for-tv grownup son-mother relationship gets very uncomfortable, and it's exciting, it's something i don't think i've ever seen on tv. vera farmiga's acting is really the best i've witnessed for a while on the screen. pretty much every scene with the two main characters is engaging and full of energy, even though highmore tends to overact from time to time. it's just captivating even without any actual development into some particular direction.
but then all of it couldn't really exist in a vacuum so there's this fucked-up-but-high-brow, oregon crime town that's been conceived to give characters a world to inhabit, and that's where the show is significantly weaker. it gets bogged down in (mostly) boring crime related story lines (the whole weed wars/zane/nick ford shit was just dull), and poorly developed characters. there's something twin peaks about it, at least it tries to go for that with all kinds of mysteries and webs of lies and messed up teenagers, but it never really takes off anywhere interesting apart from that weirdly nonchalant and casual attitude to death and murder (which happen very often) by most of the characters. although i can't even say if it's an oversight by the writers or actually something intentional, in any case it kinda makes it amusing in a way. all those interleaved town proceedings make the show a quite a bit soapy and sort of mask its real strengths, but keeping up with it payed off.
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there's no problem because in current discourse it means/understood as bigotry towards muslims in general. there's really no need to delve more into that and pretend that it's not what it currently means.
ffs, that's exactly what I'm saying! smh. when it's then used to describe someone who's just offering some critique on some part of Islamic ideology it's a problem. if this was some minor issue that almost never happened then I wouldn't even mention it, but it's widespread.
so there are two solutions, either wankers on the left stop using it incorrectly, or talk about changing to a more sensible term to highlight said wankery.
those public intellectuals who tend to "just offer critiques" about islam are very often using those critiques as a vessel for islamaphobia though, and stem-educated, reddit refugees such as yourself don't really have the right tools to grasp that, but dealing with that is alco's part anyway...
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there's no problem because in current discourse it means/understood as bigotry towards muslims in general. there's really no need to delve more into that and pretend that it's not what it currently means.
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regarding definitions..
the reddit is strong within the new watmm arrivals. it's exactly that autistic type of argument that is highly valued in there - nauseatingly talk in length about some ancient concept definitions (with sources of course!) that are completely irrelevant to the discussion and while completely missing the point, all while thinking they are making a good point of course.
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i have some suspicion that he might be trolling because he is obviously self conscious enough and not that dumb to utter such things with a straight face as is evident by his comedy, but i dunno..
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if you followed the mde reddit you could distill their politics pretty easily though, it's pretty much typical delet+zeffolia+lumpy with bits of euro imperialism, libertanianism and all that comes with. this is actually sam's post i think and it's so clear that there's nothing to distill really: https://www.reddit.com/r/milliondollarextreme/comments/3luw09/is_mde_becoming_more_right_leaning_from_a/cva0nd2
some of my favorite bits:
"Europe is in a dire situation: culture is being destroyed"
"This will continue until white people have been sucked dry"
"...losing these beautiful civilizations that took so long to create..."
"whites need to regain some sort of cohesive tribal self-interest and identity"
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it wasn't really good though.
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Sprite Girls
Dr. Alban-Pepper
The Fanta Trio
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better things is really bad. the first episode was weak to borderline amusing, and had one beautiful scene, but the second one is just a complete trainwreck. it's just mindbogglingly humorless, uninspired, dull, poorly edited, directed and acted. that mix of bratty, obnoxious middle-aged woman with a really teenage sarcasm and sense of humor, and that particular manner of dialogue delivery that is pamela adlon's character/acting is just painful to watch. there's nothing amusing or interesting about her or her depicted life, but allegedly, according to the reviews, she's supposed to be some new feminist flag bearer. i really hate to sound even remotely like the local alt-right, but it really does feel like the good reviews this uninspired shit is getting has to do with the fact that the show presents itself as something progressive and feminist, like it's checking the right "issues" boxes or something. ffs, just because some women related issues are not getting enough screen time and coverage it doesn't mean that simply covering them makes your shit automatically artistic or important or makes for a good drama/comedy. even sadder is louie ck's involvement, it's just amazing how literally none of the strengths of his own show are present here.
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so far i just got that one because that "arrival" trailer popped up and i got real excited about it till i noticed that villeneuve is the director. and now after reading the story it looks like the film really won't have that much to do with it besides the basic premise anyway, seems like they're ditching that touching, personal and diary like storytelling for something big and global.
i already bookmarked exhalation after searching the thread for other mentions of chiang and you were the only one, which is indeed quite peculiar for such a sci-fi-interested forum, from what i gathered chiang is a quite acclaimed sf writer. i guess it's something about the short story format? seems like a perfect format to me - you don't have to spend a too much time to determine whether what you're reading is a waste of time.
i'll probably jump on "understand" next though, i actually liked limitless (the film) quite a bit, lol.
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i dunno how this thread works so i will just spoil-er everything:
i read "story of your life" by ted chiang because the talentless villeneuve will inevitably ruin it with the upcoming "arrival" (in fact i remember very well that he will, hah), and to me, establishing communication with aliens it is too fascinating of a premise to experience a shit version of it, so i turned to the original.
the depiction of the process of establishing communication and getting to know the alien language, though quite technical and requiring quite a few detours to dictionary and wiki, was fascinating. the intermittent passages of protagonist's memories of her child were beautiful, and about halfway through gain an even more poignant dimension as it becomes clear what that language is like and what it apparently did to the protagonist. in fact once that becomes clear the actual reading becomes even entrancing in way because the chiang manages to convey that newly attained perception of time by protagonist in first person really well. the notion of deriving emotional fulfillment from performing own predestined life as it was depicted is, again, simply beautiful.
i did have a bit of trouble making that leap of faith and accepting that the protagonist did attain the ability to see the future, it's one thing learning to think like aliens through language, but actually gaining the ability? that particular bit was not as well presented as was needed, i felt. in fact for most of the time i thought the protagonist was an unreliable narrator of sorts, having become accustomed to that mode of thinking but without having an ability to actually see the future, and thus stuck seeing only some kind of possible future. that would make a pretty cool twist..(and perhaps it's actually a possible interpretation?).
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little miss flint never wrote that letter to President Obama. She could barely form a sentence during interviews on the news and just made stupid faces to the reporter.
lol
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star trek beyond - this is just shit. poorly directed action, save the crew-save earth-revenge driven villain-self sacrifice story line that's been featured in hundreds of films. everyone's a joke cracker, references bloat, fucking music videos within the film...it's like everything is on cocaine, so tripe, dumb and predictable. i never watched the tv series, just the 90's films, and i remember that it's supposed to be more about interaction with aliens, diplomacy and weird worlds exploration, more or less complex social dilemmas and shit, and there's none of that here. there aren't even aliens, just swarms of cannon fodder that shoot and ram into stuff. i also always liked that uss enterprse slogan: "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise bla bla...", that was shoved to the end of the reboot films and that sequence that followed of camera quickly snapping to and circling all kinds of planets and nebulas and other cool stuff. that was the most interesting thing about this film. the whole thing is like a misuse of sci-fi - there's very little science fictional going on besides the hi tech stuff, there's no wonder, nothing imaginative, nothing to really get you intellectually challenged, even for a bit.