Yeah, long term goof ball and con man.

The Flying Penguin wrote on Jul 16, 2023, 08:31:
Uri Geller is a celebrated 'magician' now? Shit, we are at the end of days. The man is, and has always been, a huckster and a fraud.

Though, aren't all magicians, just with varying levels of showmanship?

Edit - oh, I see he claims aliens gave him abilities, unironically and not part of an act

Enahs wrote on Jul 16, 2023, 12:51:
I will put in a note to give The Patriot on Amazon Prime a try. Two seasons of it, if you have not seen it. Dark comedy/drama, well acted, interesting story, and incredibly "smart". It is one of those shows you can watch several times over and pick up on new stuff.

Describing the pipe fittings was the bomb.

Enahs wrote on Jul 16, 2023, 12:51:
I will put in a note to give The Patriot on Amazon Prime a try. Two seasons of it, if you have not seen it. Dark comedy/drama, well acted, interesting story, and incredibly "smart". It is one of those shows you can watch several times over and pick up on new stuff.

Tru The Diplomat on Netflix.

* REMOVED *

This comment was deleted on Jul 16, 2023, 13:30. Reason: Spam (rule 5)

I will put in a note to give The Patriot on Amazon Prime a try. Two seasons of it, if you have not seen it. Dark comedy/drama, well acted, interesting story, and incredibly "smart". It is one of those shows you can watch several times over and pick up on new stuff.

Uri Geller is a celebrated 'magician' now? Shit, we are at the end of days. The man is, and has always been, a huckster and a fraud.

This comment was edited on Jul 16, 2023, 08:43.

A surfboard-stealing otter is on the run

That could be the title of a song.


As far as the writer's strike goes, crap writing is sometimes the fault of studio exec interference and/or feedback from loudmouth idiots in focus groups.

Most script writers actually don't make very much money. Even for some fairly big films. Add in the fact that they constantly get their ideas stolen after they pitch them to studio execs and the execs just reject them and then turn around and use the ideas.

RedEye9 wrote on Jul 15, 2023, 23:29:

fujiJuice wrote on Jul 15, 2023, 21:59:
I have been watching Legion again. It is so crazy, I just love it.

Agreed
Three seasons of the absolute best acid trip around.

I think it is like Burrito said, I can predict story lines a mile away. I have watched Legion several times and can't confidently tell you wtf is happening during several parts that I have already witnessed.

I have never come closer to watching a comic book on the screen than Legion.

fujiJuice wrote on Jul 15, 2023, 21:59:
I have been watching Legion again. It is so crazy, I just love it.

Agreed
Three seasons of the absolute best acid trip around.

Given the numbers that were askedm the studios are go to lose more money nearly immediately then this fight is even worth. The actors guild joining doesn't really do much except accelerate the amount of money being lost. I don't see how the studios don't have to cave.

I have been watching Legion again. It is so crazy, I just love it.

I know two men that worked in "Hollywood" during the last big writer's strike. One worked special effects and the other wrote screenplays. It really fucked up their lives.
Overnight, Everyone was out of a job.

Fran Drescher Slams Bob Iger’s ‘Repugnant’ and ‘Tone Deaf’ Strike Comments: If I Were Disney, ‘I Would Lock Him Behind Doors’

I'm supportive of the strikers, naturally.

But I don't find most movies or even TV shows all that interesting. I think I have gotten to the point where I recognize the seven stories pretty quickly and then I become disinterested. I find myself watching more and more documentaries and TV shows on science and history than anything else these days. Right now I am on a kick about our neolithic ancestors and how utterly brilliant they were. That to me is far more interesting and worthy of my time than some glossy, overproduced Star Wars, Marvel, or other "Generic Franchise Movie #985" that has been churned out.

1badmf wrote on Jul 15, 2023, 16:14:

off the top of my head, christopher nolan's the only one doing big films with any fresh ideas. everyone else is just chasing the tail of past glories; esp. the comic book films. the writers do the best they can but it's the big wigs that are completely risk averse and only green light past profits that are really responsible. they really shoulda fired kathleen kennedy a long time ago for all the mediocre garbage she approves. it's done irreparable harm to the quality of star wars and all the old lucasfilm IPs.

Yeah, most of the good viewing is TV these days, not movies.

That said, this strike looks like it's going to last a while, so as the FOX story points out, it's going to be Milf Manor and Honey Boo Boo all day every day, regardless of platform. The last time the writers struck we got some absolutely horrible movies with terrible dialog and plot bc the directors and actors did it themselves.

FOX's Fall Lineup is Getting More Reality in The Face of Writers' & Actors' Strike.

thestryker wrote on Jul 15, 2023, 15:30:
The movie/TV industry is absolutely at a crossroads and the AMPTP are basically acting like cartoon villains right now. Between refusing to engage on AI with writers to demanding background actors be paid for a day of work and sign over their digital likeness in perpetuity while doing so. Though it should come as no surprise that the multi-billion dollar corps want all the money.

AMPTP have literally said they aren't going to negotiate until writers start getting evicted. They are literally sacrificing 10s of billions in production revenue to save a 10s of millions in salary.

1badmf wrote on Jul 15, 2023, 16:14:
off the top of my head, christopher nolan's the only one doing big films with any fresh ideas. everyone else is just chasing the tail of past glories; esp. the comic book films. the writers do the best they can but it's the big wigs that are completely risk averse and only green light past profits that are really responsible. they really shoulda fired kathleen kennedy a long time ago for all the mediocre garbage she approves. it's done irreparable harm to the quality of star wars and all the old lucasfilm IPs.

I guess I'd argue that George Lucas didn't do any better with the prequels than Disney has since it bought the franchise. The best moments Star Wars has had is when they're doing new characters and trying different things, but Disney wants to put faces on kids' backpacks and sell toys to make future fans spend money on it 20 years from now. It's not that big of a change; George Lucas kind of pioneered that entire concept.

The problem with all of it is that most of the entertainment industry is owned by a few big companies who aren't trying to make the next Star Wars, they're just trying to find new ways to market the IP's they already own. Studios putting up tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to get films made was never a long-term sustainable way of making original content, so they buy franchises rather than trying to make new ones. The strike right now is a turning point for the same reason; actors and writers making movies as we know them could easily go the way of the dodo if those big studios can start re-selling IP's they already own with stars they own the likenesses of. Arnold Schwarzenegger or Liam Neeson might not be able to star in Taken 38: More Takener at 85 years old, but an AI generated likeness of their 1980's self could. They're already paying programmers for CG everything, if they can cut out the cost of sets and actors and residual payments to mass produce fast-food McBlockbusters for a third of the price they will, especially with streaming favoring quantity over quality.

It's not just movies, though. It's hard to even find good original books these days that aren't derivatives of something that was done better decades ago. There's a sea of cheap content out there, and as often as not the deciding factor in what gets read is how much of a budget went into marketing it and putting it front and center where you notice it over something else. I don't think the problem is the writers, it's that publishers only want a certain thing done in a certain way because something else just like that already made them money, same thing with movies, and TV. Every now and then something new and original will sneak out as a labor of love, and then it'll get franchised and have four sequels in ten years until everyone is sick of it and the cycle repeats.

As to the writers strike - I hope the folks on strike prevail, given the aforementioned A.I.-related and other bungles that's coming up in discussion. What a world.

On a different note, I updated a program last night, that I hadn't touched on my Github in four years, to fix a show-stopping bug. Stupid mistake found, and repaired. Novel program? No. Useful? Probably not. But, at least I can give myself that the program no longer crashes when creating a new project with it in a project directory beyond a certain path length. It's just a hobby, I'm not a pro, and the code is admittedly (imo) extremely sloppy in presentation and implementation.

https://github.com/dkupka2/boiler

Dan =0)

Ozmodan wrote on Jul 15, 2023, 13:05:
Well from a scientific point of view, those talc studies were a bit flawed. Multiple scientists have pointed that out. I think the lawsuits just made a bunch of lawyers quite rich.

As to the writers strike, I can think of a lot of them that should have been fired. Lately, some of the scripts in major movies have really been bad. As Blue mentioned, there is a ton of good stuff from the past.

off the top of my head, christopher nolan's the only one doing big films with any fresh ideas. everyone else is just chasing the tail of past glories; esp. the comic book films. the writers do the best they can but it's the big wigs that are completely risk averse and only green light past profits that are really responsible. they really shoulda fired kathleen kennedy a long time ago for all the mediocre garbage she approves. it's done irreparable harm to the quality of star wars and all the old lucasfilm IPs.

The movie/TV industry is absolutely at a crossroads and the AMPTP are basically acting like cartoon villains right now. Between refusing to engage on AI with writers to demanding background actors be paid for a day of work and sign over their digital likeness in perpetuity while doing so. Though it should come as no surprise that the multi-billion dollar corps want all the money.

Ozmodan wrote on Jul 15, 2023, 13:05:
As to the writers strike, I can think of a lot of them that should have been fired. Lately, some of the scripts in major movies have really been bad.

How to tell someone knows nothing about how movies are made in two quick sentences.