kimmy

I've seen Battle Royale, and to say Hunger Games was lifted almost entirely from Battle Royale is massive hyperbole. Only the general premise-- teenagers forced to compete in a fight-to-the-death tournament-- is the same. Does Hollywood innovate? Many of their most successful stories come from other media-- history, legends, novels, and lately comics. And the insistence on remaking successful movies over and over is pretty annoying. I'm not sure that Spiderman needs to be rebooted every 5 years, or why a there has to be a new Ghostbusters movie. On the other hand, innovative projects do get made. Every once in a while something comes along that breaks new ground in some way. Toy Story, The Matrix, and Pulp Fiction are examples of movies that were innovative and had lasting impact on films that came later. I think those are examples of movies that truly innovated. There are lots of other movies that while not truly innovative are at least original material. I think that if we went through a list of movies and called them either innovative, original, or regurgitated, I think that the list of regurgitated movies would be shorter than you'd expect, and the list of original movies would be longer. -k

So... I assume they had to take Jokinen to take some salary off the Predators hands. I haven't heard of Leipsic before... he apparently scored a lot of points in junior. The draft pick will probably be very late in the first round. The Predator's first round pick will probably be just a few spots ahead of the Leafs' second round pick. -k

I'm not entirely sure whether it's hatred of the west or the desire to find some purpose in their life beyond pouring double-doubles at Tim Horton's. But either way, I think we're at least on the same track here. I don't know how much of a threat Islamism really poses to us in the west. You've been reading my posts for long enough to know that I'm not one to make excuses for Muslim treatment of women and religious minorities and their barbarism in general. But I'm not sure how much of a threat they are, in the bigger scheme of things. I'd be all for it. I'm not sure what leverage we have, though. Even our powerful American friends are willing to bend over forwards to maintain happy relations with the Saudis; I'm not sure how we Canadians could possibly make a difference. -k

Well you've certainly left us a steaming pant-load to talk about. Let's look into it. People who self-identify as atheists tend to be white and middle class. Ok. And? This says nothing about the belief system itself, but does raise interesting questions about why some people choose to self-identify with it while others prefer not to. It's pretty hard to find atheists in the third world, period. It's not like they can just stroll down to their local college campus and join the Secular Students Association. This is drivel. More men than women self-identify as atheists, but the number of people who identify as non-religious is pretty much equal between the sexes. If your implication here is that women will cling to religion because their silly little female brains don't like science and prefer magic... it's crap. And this goes back to the earlier question regarding why young educated males are more comfortable self-identifying as atheists, while women prefer to self-identify as "not religious". Personally I believe it's the same reason why many women prefer not to self-identify as feminists: the word itself carries a bunch of baggage that people just don't want to be associated with even if they do share many or most of the core beliefs. You know where else women go and return with horror stories? Gamer conventions. Gamer websites. Software developer conventions. In fact, the same probably goes for just about any community which is overwhelmingly male. You're obviously referring to "ElevatorGate" situation involving Rebecca Watson. Her only complaint was that being one of the few females at the conference resulted in her getting hit on a lot; she suggested attendees ought to stop doing that if they wanted more women to attend in the future. Suggesting that any sort of Bill Cosby situation occurred is an outrageously inaccurate misrepresentation of her complaint. And suggesting that Richard Dawkins himself may have been behind Bill Cosby type behaviour is utterly slanderous. You've stooped to a new low here. Online, I've found that the worst misogynists (aside from the hilariously misnamed MRAs) are gamers, personally. The online atheist community and online gamer community have some things in common. They're overwhelmingly male, they're young, and they tend to be shall we say, socially marginalized. I don't believe that people who are socially successful tend to seek out this sort of identity for themselves-- once again, the key is that these are not all atheists nor all gamers, these are the ones who choose to make that an aspect of themselves that they build an identity around. It's a way for them to build themselves up, find a peer group, find some sort of positive identity as opposed to being a dork or nerd or outcast. They choose to identify themselves as atheists because they would like to think of themselves as intellectuals or freethinkers instead of being outcasts. And it's no mystery that many young men who feel socially marginalized have resentment for women. For me, I play games but I don't go to gamer conventions or participate in the gamer online community or identify myself as a gamer. It's something I do, not who I am. Likewise with atheism. I am an atheist but I am not part of the atheist community and I don't go to atheist conventions or rallies or announce my atheism to people. If anybody asks, I'll say "not religious", because I don't want to deal with confrontations and stereotypes and negative associations that the word "atheist" carries. I never really thought of myself as an atheist at all, actually. It was only persistent badgering and attacks on the non-religious by Betsy here on the forum that convinced me to take a stand. -k

This is something I've been thinking of more and more lately, given that a significant chunk of these "homegrown" terrorists seem to have converted to Islam not long before committing violence or shipping off to foreign lands to join the cause. Maybe these converts are just full of fiery zeal and enthusiasm for their new belief system, kind of like how ex-smokers are often the most obnoxious anti-smoking crusaders. But I can't help thinking that perhaps the joining Islam in the first place was motivated by something other than genuine religiosity. Maybe these angry young mooks feel like something is missing in their lives and get excited about the idea of joining a cause. Why not both? I don't think being mentally ill precludes you from being a terrorist. Although some people use the word "terrorism" anytime a Muslim does something violent, it's a word that has a fairly specific meaning. It's violence and threat of violence with the intention of achieving political goals. It can be reasonably applied to a guy who decided to kill Stephen Harper in retaliation for Canada's actions against ISIS, even if the guy's mental stability is debatable. If he's sane enough to be capable of forming intent at all, that's all that's required to meet a reasonable definition of terrorism. Terrorism could also apply to lots of other situations, like sniping abortion providers or setting fire to a mosque. -k

See, this is why it was important to point out that I was not referring to "bankable" in the Ed Asner sense. To some people "bankable" apparently means that you can get a guest spot doing voice acting work as Old Man Walters on The New Scooby Doo Adventures, and take your $200 cheque to the "bank" and cash it. But for purposes of this discussion, that's not the kind of "bankable" we're talking about. We're talking about the kind of "bankable" where a guy can phone Disney and say "ok, I'm going to need 7% of the back end, plus raises for Chris and Scarlett and Chris. Or else you go find somebody else to be Tony Stark," and Disney's response is "sure thing, Mr Downey. We'll draw up the contracts right away." -k

Sorry for getting back to this thread late... This *is* a massive story, that has drawn international attention. But had the victims not been Muslims, this is a story that few people outside Chapel Hill would have heard of. Only the potential anti-Muslim aspect of this story has made it notable in the least. So while "terrorism!!!" makes for big fat headlines in the newspapers, so does "hate crime!!!" -k

Back on the topic of "Apple is bad for business": Apple is bad for business. So are Google, Adobe, and Intel. They're among the defendants in a massive anti-trust lawsuit that's in progress. The focus of the lawsuit is collusion between these tech giants for the purpose of keeping tech salaries down. The strategy was conceived by the sainted Steve Jobs (peace be upon him) himself. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/tech-firms-may-find-no-poaching-pacts-costly/ -k

Psychic spoon-bender Yuri Geller has an explanation for that! I'm not even kidding! Meanwhile... is anybody else just not that excited about upgrading their phones anymore? I was looking at the new Moto X phones, which I think are physically the most beautiful phones I've ever seen, available with real wood, bamboo, or leather backs. At least, they are if you live in the US, in which case you can go to the Motorola website and select any number of options to customize your phone. If you live in Canada, you have to buy your phone through Telus, and Telus only has 2 varieties. Apparently you just can't buy one unlocked in Canada-- Motorola apparently figures that in Canada it's more lucrative to make exclusivity arrangements with the telecom mafia carriers than to sell to customers. (I refuse to purchase my phone through that business model.) But, even as pretty as it is, why would I upgrade to a Moto X anyway? I've had my Nexus 4 for two years, and it's still capable of doing everything I want, plus lots of other stuff I haven't even thought of yet. I got upgraded to the latest version of Android OS last month, and I can run any app I've felt like trying. What's my incentive to plunk down a bunch more money for a new phone when my current one is so splendid? Slightly better camera? Slightly faster processor? More storage memory? Previously when I upgraded from my Milestone to my Nexus 4, there was a quantum leap in performance and capability. The hardware and the operating system had all come a long way during the time I owned my Milestone. I'm not sure I can say the same this time. I can't see that a 2015 phone can do anything in particular that I couldn't do with my 2013 phone. I imagine a lot of people who own iPhone 5 variants feel pretty much the same. For me, I lost any interest in replacing my main computer somewhere around 2010, when I put a new processor into my 2008 setup. I've added more memory since, and replaced the hard disks with solid state drives, but I can't picture myself replacing the whole thing, barring a major hardware failure. It's ridiculously fast. It has ludicrous speed. Maybe you could build a faster computer today, given some non-trivial amount of money, but what's the point? For me, my computer has reached a "don't care anymore" plateau of performance, where a further improvement in speed would be both imperceptible and pointless for the kinds of computer tasks I do. And for myself and probably for many people, I think cell phones may have also reached a "don't care anymore" plateau. If you go buy a phone today, is it going to do anything to meet your needs significantly better than the phone you already have? For me, the answer is "probably not." Of course, for some people the answer to that question is "probably not" even if their current phone is a rotary-dial land-line. -k

Well, I haven't seen 50 Shades of Grey, but Australian tv host Lisa Wilkinson has. Her review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMh-ou0TKXk I especially enjoyed her co-hosts acting as her hype team, reacting to every comment as if it was the greatest burn since the Chernobyl meltdown. -k

I'm sorry, I was typing the word "bankable" and I couldn't help remembering that argument. I don't recall a spanking. I do recall yourself and whats-her-name spending a lot of energy arguing a point that has been proven hilariously wrong in the time since. Amy Pascal's comments have no applicability to anything beyond the world of Hollywood. The thing that separates Hollywood stars from most other kinds of employees is that they aren't interchangeable with each other. They're similar to pro athletes in that sense. You're out trying to find a defenseman for your NHL team and you call Dustin Byfuglien and say "hey, I have $6 million. Come play for my team!" and he says "sorry dude I am signing with Winnipeg" so then maybe you call Mark Giordano next, but you have to remember that if you do that you're getting a completely different player with different strengths who will make your team different from the first guy you called. And the same is true of movies. You've got $10 million and need to hire a leading lady for a film project. Who do you call? Sandra Bullock? Charlize Theron? Jennifer Lawrence? Well, they're all completely different. Your movie will be different depending who is in it. J-Law is completely wrong for the role, and Sandra Bullock won't even cross the street for $10 million right now. So maybe Theron is your top choice, but her agent is making a lot of demands and then you start thinking, maybe Milla Jovovich would make the movie for a lot less money. Is Charlize Theron worth all the extra money and headaches, or could the movie still be a hit with Milla? Like, there's no objective way to gauge how much an actor or actress is worth to a movie project, because there are no objective comparisons to be made. It's all subjective, based on intuition and historical performance. Maybe the producers then start thinking "well, Charlize is a much bigger name, but we're making an action movie and Milla has made lots of action movies that have done pretty well so she would still probably bring action movie fans to the theatres." In discussing Jennifer Lawrence's paycheques it should be pointed out that she has not been a big name for very long. She may have earned much critical attention for "Winter's Bone" but that was not a widely seen movie. I suspect they got her signature on the contract for all 4 Hunger Games movies before they started making them, to avoid getting shaken down by contract demands. She also signed her contract to appear in several X-Men movies prior to Hunger Games becoming a giant hit, so she is probably being vastly underpaid for the X-Men movies as well. "American Hustle" looks like it was her first chance to really cash in on her new stardom, and it looks like she didn't make the most of the opportunity. Perhaps she felt that the chance to work on a prestige project like "American Hustle" was worth it as a career-builder for her regardless of how much she was paid. Perhaps at that point in her career she and her agent thought that what they were being offered was amazing and had no idea that she could have probably demanded much more. Here's an email exchange regarding her pay on the movie: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/12/exclusive-sony-hack-reveals-jennifer-lawrence-is-paid-less-than-her-male-co-stars.html It looks as if the production company-- "Annapurna Pictures"-- was only offering Lawrence 5% and Sony kicked in an extra 2% to get her on board. Sony felt like if more money was required it should come from Annapurna's share, not their own. But ultimately the movie did get made, and Lawrence and Adams did settle for less, and they got more shiny trophies for their cabinets from the movie. I think there are two lessons from this. The first is that it is, as Pascal said, a business. Jennifer Lawrence probably knows now that she has a lot more leverage to ask for more money, and I am sure that she will use it when they try to hire her to return for more X-Men movies. The other lesson here, clearly, is that Jeremy Renner has an amazing agent. -k

oh my gosh if he actually said that, that's one of the best hockey quotes ever. da-a-a-amn, that sounds pretty bad. I have not followed his career, and when I think of him I always think of the rambunctious kid who punched Matt Cooke's stupid head in, which made every hockey fan stand up and cheer. I hadn't realized he had turned into an NBA player off the ice. Sounds like he has some growing up to do. Yashin wasn't a bust. He was a very good hockey player. My family was living in Ottawa at the time. His greed and his obnoxious agent led to his contract hold-out, which led to him getting traded out of Ottawa (for Chara and Spezza! what a move that turned out to be!) Then the Islanders gave him a 10 year $100 million dollar contract and he turned into a lazy slob who didn't feel like he had to play hard because he already had his $100 million. -k

The song was written for an English audience, not a Russian one. To an English speaking listener, Nikita *sounds* feminine, as we're used to hearing diminutive forms of words with an -a on the end. Novel - novella, senor - senorita, sharkman - sharkmella, this sort of thing. In non-English parts of the world, Andrea is a man's name and not a woman's. Mostly I suspect that Taupin went with "Nikita" because it had 3 syllables, plus a grace and lyrical quality that "Ludmilla" simply did not. -k

Seriously, though, that must have been one ugly track suit. -k

THOU SHALT NOT DUBBETH MY SON AND HIS APOSTLES "JC AND THE FUNKY BUNCH". -G

Trying to draw any parallel between the gender wage gap in Hollywood and the gender wage gap on Main Street is completely wrong, because the reasons are completely different. For regular people, things like differing work preferences between the genders are factors. None of that applies in Hollywood. In Hollywood, female stars have historically been paid less than male stars because movies driven by male stars have historically made more money. In the not-too-distant past there was always an assumption that you could just roll a truck with $20 million dollars up to Will Smith's door (or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis or Jim Carrey or lots of other mega-stars) and you would have a guaranteed blockbuster hit because everybody would just go see Will Smith or Bruce Willis or whoever. That was the thinking. These mega-stars were money in the bank. They were "bankable" (in a real sense, not an Ed Asner sense, BC2004.) And there were no female equivalents, no female star whose name alone would create a blockbuster. I think this has somewhat changed. First off, I don't think there's any "mega stars" anymore. I don't think there's any actor or actress whose presence alone is enough to guarantee a hit. And I think that the number of hit movies driven by female stars has increased in recent years. Studios are probably more willing to risk money on a movie based around female stars now than they would have been in the past. Conversely they're probably less willing to give a supposed "mega star" $20 million, because recently we've been seeing "mega star" vehicles become commercial failures. -k

The evidence shows that smoking pot is bad for developing brains, but the results from Colorado and Washington are showing that legalization hasn't lead to more young people smoking pot anyway, so that's not a very good argument. -k

So what was the deal with Kane? It can't be all because he wore a track suit to a team meeting, right? Was that the last straw of some issue that's been building for a long time? If so, what was the issue? -k

I have Plex installed now to go with my Chromecast, and I'm getting pretty mixed results with the channels. Some of them work, others like the History Channel and Showcase say there's nothing there when I try to open them. I tried the CBC live sports stream during the hockey game on saturday, but it didn't work either. I gather that the Plex channels are actually plug-ins that have been scripted by users who aren't actually affiliated with Plex or with the channels they're written for? -k

Reminder, when religious people kill people it's an isolated incident that has no relationship to the overall belief system. When non-religious people kill people it's proof that humans are innately evil who need religion to tell them killing is wrong. -k

I have been enjoying the Agent Carter 8-part mini-series on ABC. The decidedly dull "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D" show is on a mid-season break, and in its time-slot ABC is running another show based on the Marvel movie universe. Peggy Carter was the love-interest in the first Captain America movie, and the Agent Carter show catches up with her in 1946. She's still employed by the "Strategic Scientific Reserve", the fore-runner of SHIELD, but with the war over and the men back from the field, her duties mostly consist of making coffee and fetching lunches. That all changes when she's contacted in secret by Howard Stark, the playboy industrialist and genius inventor. Someone has stolen some of his most dangerous inventions, and they are being sold on the black market to America's enemies, which has Stark suspected of treason. He needs help clearing his name, and since he worked with Peggy on the Captain America project she is the only one he trusts. With the help of Howard's butler Jarvis, she works frantically to recover the super-science gadgets and find out who is behind the heist. And she has to do it without her colleagues finding out she's helping Stark, or she'll be accused of treason as well. I like the cast and the enjoyable vintage feel they have created. Most of all this works because it's fun, something "Agents of SHIELD" forgot to be. -k

The right to protest is not in question here. What's in question here is the right to practice your profession. If a program doesn't meet the standards of the professional bodies, then so be it. But to propose that TWU law graduates should not be allowed to practice law because the TWU code of conduct prohibits unmarried sex is nonsensical. It has nothing to do with the graduates' fitness to practice law. -k

The part where she compared smoking pot to molesting children was also brilliant. She might have a future in politics. -k

It might seem like real estate agents get paid a lot for the amount of work they put into a sale, but keep in mind that they also do a lot of work that doesn't result in sales. What percent of clients that a realtor spends time with actually result in a sale? I suspect that when you average it all out, it's not as sweet of a gig as it might sound. Always Be Closing. -k