kimmy

Are you suggesting that Hadfield has received financial consideration for praising the realism of Gravity? Are you suggesting that Hadfield's opinion about the realism of Gravity is tainted by the fact that he is now selling a book? To reiterate, you're claiming the movie got the physics all wrong; the guy who has actually been to space praises its realism, and the rest of us are more inclined to take Hadfield's word over yours. By what standard are we to compare them? What the hell are you even talking about? Is that a cut-and-paste you had left over from a message in a different thread? What does that have to do with what I wrote or what you wrote or anything in this thread? The truth (and it's not putative, it's an objective fact) is that when it comes to movies, your posts are more "far out" than any science fiction movie ever made. -k

Here is what Chris Hadfield ACTUALLY SAID about Gravity: http://teamcoco.com/video/conan-highlight-chris-hadfield-gravity-diapers In the context of the question he was asked and the response he gave, it's completely retarded to propose that Star Wars or Wall-E or fricken Event Horizon are reasonable comparisons. I can't address the topic of "GAY NIGGERS FROM SPACE" however. -k

It seems clear that Hadfield was talking about realistic depictions of space, and "Event Horizon" and "Alien" are certainly not realistic depictions of space. -k {guh.}

Michael, you should be thoroughly embarrassed for letting Dick distract you from the real topic here. The issue is not simply a matter of a doctor or even an institution refusing to provide a medical procedure on moral grounds. The issue is that the doctor or institution deceived the patient. -k

That might be true, but if you put a Nazi flag on your house or a swastika tattoo on your arm, nobody is going to think "hey, that guy must support scientific achievement!" Regardless what else happened under the Nazis, that symbol is irrevocably linked to the mass extermination of Jews and other "undesirables". -k

"Redneck" is a stereotype we're all familiar with, and many of us know people who fit that stereotype to a tee. Especially in my part of the country. I have yet to meet any Canadian who displayed the Confederate flag that didn't fit the "redneck" stereotype to a tee. -k

I'm somewhat baffled as to why many Canadian rednecks choose to identify themselves with the Confederate flag, however. -k

Thanks for the warning. I think the original Godzilla was as much as I need for that genre. I saw the Transformers movie and was appalled that people were entertained by that. It was like teen beat models standing in front of animated robots - to the sound of grinding metal. I had originally been thinking of doing an August-style review of Pacific Rim because it's a great opportunity to riff on some of August's favorite themes, particularly excessive CGI and 14-year old boys in Hong Kong. I'd actually say 14 year old boys in Tokyo, because even though much of the movie is set in Hong Kong, the story is actually based in a long-standing theme of Japanese "manga" comics and "anime". That theme is GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING SPACE MONSTERS (!!!). But rather than poking fun at August yet again, I'm going to respond to what Michael raises here, and explain why I think Pacific Rim was actually pretty decent. As I've mentioned a few times, I write fiction. And for a long time I was also involved with a creative writing group, providing advice and assistance to other would-be writers. I participated in some on-line work-shops and stuff like that. I think that the best advice I received was: make a promise to your reader, and give them what you promised. The promise is a setting and a mood and a theme. This story is going to deliver suspense and mystery in Victorian London, or something like that. If your reader has finished the first 10 pages or so and still doesn't know what kind of story you're going to tell them, you will lose them. And if you don't deliver what you promised, then obviously you've failed your reader. So my criteria for what makes a good movie are much the same. What does this movie promise? And did it deliver what it promised? If you go watch Something About Mary or Kingpin and criticize them because they didn't deliver complex thematic issues or sophisticated character development, you missed the boat. That's not what they promised the viewer. What they promised was gross-out comedy, and they deliver in spades. They're tremendously successful in delivering what they promise. If you go to watch Transformers, and you're not expecting Rimbaud and you know it's going to be giant robots and CGI and all kinds of silliness like that, and you still come away disappointed, then that's a reasonable criticism. Transformers promised giant robots, and they gave you giant robots, but was that all they promised? Well, no. They promised more. Excitement and action was also promised.. A lot of viewers, like Michael, didn't find much excitement in the various Transformers movies. The characters are all either robots or humans with the emotional range of robots... hard to care what happens to them. The CGI battles were just a blur of chaos. It was hard to know what was going on, and hard to care. And I didn't even know what all the fighting was about. Some kind of glowing cube or some crap like that? Why do I care? Not very exciting. So, a quick plot summary for Pacific Rim. They explain during the opening credits that in the mid 2010s, a horrific monster, hundreds of feet tall, emerged from the Pacific ocean and attacked the west coast of the United States. And after days of sustained military counterattack, the creature was finally slain. Later, another creature came. And then another. When Pacific nations realized that the monsters, called "kaiju" (a Japanese word meaning GIANT SPACE MONSTER) would keep coming, they banded together and build new technology to fight them. This technology was (you guessed it) GIANT ROBOTS called "jaegers". The jaegers are not actually robots, they're giant humanoid mechanical war-machines controlled by teams of two human pilots who are cybernetically linked to the jaeger as well as to each other. The jaegers were effective at fighting and killing the kaiju, and the pilots became rock-star celebrities. But things changed. Each kaiju was bigger and more powerful than the one before. They mutated and adapted new and more dangerous abilities to combat the jaegers. Soon the jaegers were being damaged and destroyed faster than they could be replaced. The main protagonist is a jaeger pilot whose jaeger was destroyed and his co-pilot (his brother) was slain in a battle against a particularly vicious kaiju. When our story begins, the jaeger program is being shut down and our hero is working in construction, still not recovered from the scars of losing his brother. He is contacted by the commander of the jaeger program to come out of retirement for one last mission. The commander has a plan to stop the kaiju attacks once and for all, and he has gathered the handful of remaining jaegers to do it. Our hero reluctantly agrees. He must bond with a new co-pilot, win the respect of the other jaeger teams, and kick kaiju ass. In the case of Pacific Rim, the promise made to the viewer is GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING TO SAVE THE EARTH FROM GIANT SPACE MONSTERS (!!!!) and for the most part I felt like I got just that. Excitement is part of the promise, and I felt like the movie delivered. The battle scenes made sense, you could figure out what was going on and there was a coherent story to what was going on in the action sequences. This is a Guillermo del Toro movie, and he brings more skill to this than it would have if it was a Michael Bay or Roland Emerich movie. Just as he made Pan's Labyrinth more than just a fairytale, and just as he made Hellboy more than just a big red dude kicking the crap out of badguys, del Toro makes this a more human story than it would have been in lesser hands. The other thing Michael mentioned that I had to think about was the comparison to Transformers and Godzilla. The Transformers is basically two tribes of robots fighting with each other, and the earth is their boxing ring. The robots don't really represent anything, other than a line of Hasbro ™ action figures. What about Gozilla? Godzilla has some not too subtle symbolism... Godzilla is the story of the unintended results of environmental recklessness rising up to bite us in the ass. Godzilla is more or less an avatar for mother nature. What about Pacific Rim? And why has giant human-shaped war-machines with human pilots been such a long-running theme in science fiction? Well, the giant human-shaped war machines are symbolic of... us. We are just pathetic little meat popsicles. But with our technology we can be giants. We can stand toe to toe with 400-foot tall space monsters. I think these movies and comics and video games keep employing this theme because they symbolize our ability as a species to face any challenge. The Hugh Jackman film "Real Steel" employs the same symbolism. The washed-up boxer and his estranged son repair a busted old robot and campaign it to the championships of the robot fighting league. The robot they're repairing is an avatar for Jackman himself, and the championship they're fighting for is really their father-son relationship. And Real Steel too was better than you'd expect a movie about GIANT FIGHTING ROBOTS to be. -k

It's Cousin It! What neither she nor Sun Boy mentioned was that everything in Agenda 21 is voluntary. Nobody is compelled to do anything, and so the idea that the UN is using Agenda 21 to take away our sovereignty falls flat on its face. It's just the latest fetish of the same people who've been paranoid about "one world government" for much longer than Agenda 21 has existed. -k

If by "lasting impact" you mean that she continues to be the butt of jokes, then I agree. -k

The people issuing that "propaganda" can talk about responsibility and say "we tried to prevent old-people from dying of preventable illness, children from being born with preventable birth defects, and people from catching fatal disease due to high-risk sexual practices". I think they'll be able to sleep at night. -k

I saw Thor: The Dark World recently, and really enjoyed it. I like that they never take themselves too seriously and never lose sight of the fact that they're doing a comic book action movie. Even in the midst of the climactic battle, still manage to fit in comedy bits that say "we're just having fun here." Chris Hemsworth makes a great Thor, still a brash and bold brawler, but much more grown up than when we first met him in the previous movie. Tom Hiddleston steals the show as Loki. I think Loki has to be right up there with The Joker in terms of movie super-villains. Here, he's not just a maniac set on usurping the throne, he's a son and a brother as well. He's not just some villain, he's an important character with needs and feelings and motivations behind his actions. Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo, Idris Elba also bump around; among the supporting cast the real scene-stealer is Kat Dennings as Natalie's bewildered and possibly insane intern. This was just more fun than you could swing an uru mallet at. I dub the Thor: God of Funder. -k

Some kook wrote a book that appeals to conspiracy kooks? wow. -k

It seems as if you're dismissing this as an isolated incident. However, there have been quite a number of deaths of children due to parents withholding medical care for religious reasons. There have also been several outbreaks of easily preventable diseases that have been traced back to churches that teach against vaccination. So, while most mainstream religious denominations accept modern medicine, there are those who don't. And it's not simply a case of a wacko here and a wacko there, it's part of their doctrine. And there are people doing the same for non-religious reasons as well. Jenny McCarthy and the anti-vax movement and the new-age holistic healing kooks are, as I see it, almost a cult in their own right. -k

We did assassinate American Woman, and came up with a clever ruse to hide the evidence. -k

Yes, the Tea Partyists and Alex Jones types have decided that bike paths and wheelchair ramps are the will lead to Martial Law and New World Order government in America, and I assume that Canadian tinfoil hatters feel the same. Golly gee whiz. -k

For Q4, I think it was implied in the first part of the question that Sandeepa only took complete rolls to the bank. For Q2, the wording is completely retarded. I assume that, first off, they want 472/5, not 5/472. I think what they're talking about with this "groups" stuff is, 472 is 4 groups of 100, 7 groups of 10, and 2 groups of 1. So, using "groups" to divide 472 by 5, you'd get 4x100/5 + 7*10/5 + 2/5. So when they say write zero in the 100 position and exchange the 100s for 10s, I think what they mean is perform the division as 0x100/5 + 47*10/5 + 2/5. -k

New York City has been destroyed in so many movies recently that it's kind of lost any impact. General Zod is wrecking New York? Yawn, the Avengers wrecked it better a couple of months ago... And yeah, they never seem to make any mention of the catastrophic death toll and economic devastation that calamities like that would have. Hero wins, end of story. -k

Recently watched "Pacific Rim". I have been thinking of writing a "3 short paragraphs" style post about it, just to annoy August. I somewhat enjoyed it; my rating is: GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING SPACE MONSTERS -k

I really have very little patience for Baby Boomers who think they should get tax cuts now that there's a surplus. Go do a backflip into an empty pool, Baby Boomers. My view on tax cuts is: no to another cut in the GST, and no new tax credits or benefits or exemptions. If there is a tax cut, it should be a cut to the marginal rates for low and moderate income Canadians, and nothing more. -k

Argus posted about Heinz just recently, pointing out that job cutting and cost cutting are a result of the deal Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway group made to acquire Heinz. As a result of the terms of the deal, Heinz is required to provide Berkshire Hathaway with an abnormally high return, so even though Heinz is already a very profitable company it is being forced to cut jobs and operations anyway. The job cuts at Heinz aren't a result of a company failing, it's a result of Wall Street dealings. -k

When this came out that the American Right was up in arms because they thought it was an unfair portrayal of the wealthy. I will probably have a look. I believe the American Right also saw socialist overtones in "Wreck-It Ralph". -k

All of this seems like highly unfair criticism. "Canada's Party Mayor" has brought Toronto the international spotlight that it has always craved! Ford is helping do away with that stodgy "Toronto the Good" image and create an image that is more current, sort of like the fictional city of Los Santos in "Grand Theft Auto". -k

I'm still fairly "meh" on Agents of Shield, but have been continuing to watch anyway. I have hopped on board the Blacklist bandwagon. James Spader alone is reason enough to watch the show! The show is sort of a weird mix. The mash-up of "young career woman angst" and FBI business and occassionally creepy villains makes it sort of like Ally McBeal meets Clarice Starling, but James Spader and his alter-ego "Red" Reddington are enough to carry the whole show. What's his deal? Why is he obsessed with Liz? What dark secrets does he carry? What fragrance would he wear? And the villain-of-the-week format gives them a handy way of creating a variety of different moods and advancing the main story arc within stand-alone episodes (this is a challenge that good serials do well and bad serials struggle with. "Buffy" and "Veronica Mars" did this extremely well... "Heroes" didn't.) I still have not checked out Sleepy Hollow, though I do plan to give it a look. -k