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Mike Booth, the guy behind Some Grey Bloke, gave me a great idea for a post (which will be coming soon), so I’m using that as an excuse to post this video of his about the famous Red Pill, which is apparently quite popular outside the manosphere as well as within it. Apparently it comes from an old sci-film from a couple of decades ago called The Matrix?
I would feel sorry for Beiber, but he’s a git. And now I have a new name for… something? Beiber’s Hamster.
@Marie:
Iron Giant is sweet and awesome.
Mission Impossible is another thing that should not be treated like a series. The first Tom Cruise movie is a fun exercise in film-making by Brian De Palma. It plays with the tropes of a thriller, and generally has a lot of fun with itself while being all super-serious.
Then the next one is an excellent example of a John Woo movie. It’s practically a remake of every movie he’s ever made. It nods at the Mission Impossible franchise, but it is NOTHING but a John Woo movie.
And in the same way, the third one is a JJ Abrams movie. It goes so far out of its way to be a JJ Abrams movie that it just… these movies don’t really exist in the same universe.
So when Brad Bird, the guy who directed The Incredibles was signed on to do the fourth one, I just threw my hands up in the air. There is no continuity or cohesiveness throughout these films. It is a history of fads in hollywood, documented on Tom Cruise’s face.
@howardbann1ster
Huh. I didn’t like the first one, but I don’t think I liked any of them *shrugs* Of course, it was added on by the fact that Tom Cruise can’t act, and his mannerisms were really getting on my nerves.
@Marie
Yeah, I totally get that. MI:1 was probably the most toned-down performance I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s still bad enough to drive me up a wall.
But I was watching it and getting all film-geeky going ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ every time De Palma started going wild with the camera. I love that stuff.
Ohhh, Shutter Island. That was another movie where the plot was thin and the main character wasn’t totally likable and DiCaprio was annoying and I was all ‘SHUT UP SCORSESE IS A GOD GIVEN MORTAL FLESH AND A KICK-ASS CAMERA I LOVE THIS’
So, y’know. Milage varies!
Millionthing (or whatever) all the Iron Giant love.
@Argenti
I really liked the first two Underworld movies, and loved the third. It’s Romeo and Juliet with vampires and werewolves! (I have a crush on Michael Sheen though, so that might have a lot to do with it. Plus, most anything with Bill Nighy hamming it up is enjoyable to me.) That might explain why I was bored by the fourth and kinda glad we didn’t wait for the box set.
@howardbann1ster
I love the first Mission: Impossible! It is crazy fun and I am a sucker for heist movies anyway. It doesn’t get a lot of love so it is nice to find someone else who appreciates it. 🙂
@Marie
😛
@howardbann1ster
huh. Now I’m almost curious enough to watch more movies with him to see how much it bugs me. (I haven’t seen any in a while besides the first mission impossible.)
@some gal
YMMV 😛
DON’T DOOOOOO IIIIIIITTT!!!
…in Knight and Day he kind of Shatners it a little, doing this over-the-top version of himself in a way that kind of pokes fun at the very over-the-topness of it all.
But other than that, it’s all hideous Top Gun smirks all the way down. Even when he’s playing an obsessed depressive with a messiah complex….
@howardbann1ster
ohmygod I hate his smirks! I cannot stand them! I think I was yelling at him the whole movie 😛
I can’t stand Tom Cruise and his “acting” style. I can overlook it in the first M:I, almost overlook it in the second, couldn’t do it in the third, and was distracted enough by Jeremy Renner in the fourth to enjoy the film anyway.
Basically, I only trust Tom Cruise as far as his director in any given film can throw him…
Like Spielberg. He basically behaves for Spielberg. Basically. The movies they make together come out okay.
But somebody has to tell him to stop smirking, and I can’t do it from THIS side of the television….
I haven’t seen mission impossible.
Reviews are mixed! Think hard about how much Tom Cruisage you’re willing to forgive in any given movie!
OMGYESIRONGIANTSQUEEE!!!!
Ahem.
There are three modern animation directors I gush over: Brad Bird, Chris Sanders, and Mark Dindal. I still haven’t seen MI4 Ghost Protocol, which I hear is actually very good thanks to Brad Bird (on the whole Iron Giant thing…)
On little known modern animated gems, If you can hunt down “Cats Don’t Dance”, it’s a lot of fun. Same frantic pacing of “Emperor’s New Groove” and “Chicken Little” (same director). Have a lot of hate for Space Jam for killing this movie die to corporate politics, and was sad that Chicken Little didn’t cause WB to revive “Cats Don’t Dance” on DVD the way The Incredibles forced them to revive “Iron Giant”.
True words have never been spoken.
@leftwingfox
I didn’t care much for MI4, it seemed like they were trying too hard. (that may not make sense, but I think it will when you watch it … XD) Though keep in mind I’m not a huge fan of any of them, so my opinion may be a teensy bit (a lot a bit *cough* tom cruise hate *cough*) biased.
Yeah, I enjoy the Iron Giant, but I’m a sucker for robot-searches-for-meaning stories. Inception I came in with the admonishment, “it’s a heist movie, just think of it as a heist movie,” and was able to enjoy it that way.
I’m still waiting for one of those movies where people plan a headspace invasion and the twist is that their mark is multi and the system WRECKS them. I mean, a lot of those stories rely heavily on the mark not understanding how their own minds work, while we have our headspace mapped, warded, and guarded. We’re pretty well-armored against SUBCONSCIOUS threats; what would foreign invaders have on that?
I know there’s an Ursula K. Le Guin book where that happens but I can’t remember which one. But that’s exactly what happens: The bad guy’s trying to mind-control the good guy’s main personality, when the other personality ambushes him.
@LBT
Maybe an indie movie. I figure a mainstream film would deal with it as well as they currently deal with mental illness* (or, let’s face it, any kind of difference, really).
/pessimism
*Is this an okay term for me to use? I use mental illness to refer to my bipolar and other DSM categories in general, but it never seems like it fits that well. I know crazy has a lot of baggage and detractors, but I personally think it sounds far better than mental illness. Maybe I am emotionally atypical? Anyway, I don’t want to classify you in a way that you are not comfortable with. Apologies if I did.
@katz
It might be “The Lathe of Heaven”, but I haven’t read Ursula K. Le Guin in decades.
I should reread her books as well as my other youthful faves Joanna Russ and Jessica Amanda Salmonson.
I’ve only read the first four Earthsea books (loved the first three, hated Tehanu) and Left Hand of Darkness, which I found pretty meh and depressing.
Has anyone here read Andre Norton’s Catseye? Love that book.
Awesome video.
I guess I would conceptualise each mind as a house, and then have a multi mind conceptualised as a larger house with sort-of suites for each individual? And the invaders would go in and see this house and set up their tools and then they’d wander into different suites and get lost and freaked out by the sheer diversity (one suite is like a gothic victorian playroom, and another like an artists studio, and one’s a nerdcave, for example) and then on top of that it’s full of traps and mindscrews (the person who lives in the Nerdcave set up the cymbal monkey to go as soon as they heard the invaders, for instance – victorian gothic kid thinks it’s cute) and barricades and secret passages. And then the invaders are driven off and the people in the house have a rearrangement of stuff and try to get it back together and have a supportive group hug because having your mind invaded must be traumatising even if you are prepared.
(This isn’t specifically based off you, LBT, beyond the initial idea.)
(My house would have monsters that frequently escape from the basement and get driven back by memory-puppets of my special peoples.)