downzy

Thank you for reminding us that there's no one more sensitive these days than white men. May?

Looks amazing. Shame it's not coming out next year.

I don't think you need oodles of money to make the films look good. There's still a lot of the OT that holds up for me. With the prequels, Lucas made the mistake of bear hugging CGI technology. And the CGI from those films do not hold up. Granted, a lot of film makers back then were all about CGI. It was this new shiny toy that many embraced without questioning whether it looked good. And back then, CGI could often paper over weaknesses. I still like the ST (for the most part). Not a huge fan of The Last Jedi, but for all its problems from a narrative stand point I still think it's the most beautifully shot Star Wars film. There are aspects in each film that I enjoy. I can't say the same thing about the prequels (though Darth Maul was cool; shame he died in PM). The prequels are suppose to serve the OT; where as the OT serves the ST. In that sense the PQ have a harder job. The ST can rely a bit on the momentum established by the OT. So they definitely benefit from that dynamic. There's not as fun and lighted hearted in the film as Han Solo's interplay with Chewie and other characters; A Force Awakens definitely benefits from having this character dynamic present. For me, it's OT>ST>PT from a narrative stand point. From a technical stand point, it's ST>OT>PT.

I'll start with the ideas/concepts introduced in Phantom Menace because it really fucks up the entire trilogy. The whole saga is launched over a trade war. A trade war. Look, I get that in the 90s trade liberalization and arguments over free trade were all the rage, but basing the starting gate of the entire Star Wars/Skywalker saga on shipping quotas and tariffs is a first bad step. Whereas the Force was this vague and mysterious force in the OT, it's been quantized in the PT with the concept of midi-chlorians. One of the appeals of Star Wars in the OT was the interplay and tension between science (lasers, light speed, light sabres, etc.) and the less tangible or fantasy-based ideas (the force, faith, belief). The PT now moves the Force into the realm of science, as it's largely something that's based on biology. For me, it cheapens and undermines one of the more interesting dynamics of the entire series. Then there's the concept that Anakin is some sort of Force Jesus. What? So the Force gives birth to its messiah who proceeds to fuck everything up for the better part of 40-50 years. Qui-Gon tests Anakin and his midi-chlorian count is off the charts, leading him to believe he's the chosen one. What? Why? Yoda couldn't bring "balance to the force" because a few thousand midi-chlorians short? From an execution stand point, the casting was the first big whiff. Outside of Ewan McGregor, the PT is easily one of the worst cast film series I think I've ever come across. Lucas starts off the saga by casting the major love interests where the age discrepancy is hard to get past. Anakin looks like he's seven or eight in PM while Padme looks like she's about to attend her first year at college. A few years later we're suppose to believe that Anakin aged 15 years while Padame aged a couple. What? Forget about the fact that neither actor who played Anakin could act to save their lives, and Portman wasn't exactly killing it on screen either - the performances all around were tough to get past (again, save for maybe McGregor). I love me some Samuel L, but it was crazy to put such a well-known actor in this film. (Christ, I haven't even got to Revenge and I've already spent way too much time on this). One more major execution issue I have the PT is that the world Lucas creates a) is not in any way consistent with the OT and b) looks somehow worse than the OT because of the over-reliance on green screens and CGI. One of the hardest things for me to get past when PM came out was how sleek everything looked. The technology presented in the PT somehow looks worlds better than the tech in the OT. After PM I wondered how they were going to merge the two aesthetics in a way that made sense and wouldn't slap the viewer across the face. In the end, they didn't. Once Anakin tuns into the physical form of Vader, everyone for some reason starts looking like they're from the 1970s. The technology looks like it's taken a giant step back for no other reason than the fact that the Empire now exists. Lucas's decision to shoot on digital cameras meant they'll forever look natively worse than the OT and ST from a resolution standpoint. Had he shot them on film they would not be capped at a native resolution of 1080p (yes, there are now 4K versions, but they're just upsampled from the 1080p source). The films appear more like cartoons than live action at certain points, made even more apparent when comparing them to the original and sequel trilogies. Say what you want about the ST, but at least they were (mostly) beautifully shot. I'm no fan of The Last Jedi, but the final battle scene with the white and red dust is striking. For me, this is the worst film of the nine. And it's not even close. It had the most riding on it. We were finally going to see the transition from Skywalker to Vader. I walked into the theatre thinking there was no way Lucas could screw it up. And I walked out saying, "well, I was wrong again." Let's first start with the dialogue. Lucas was never a master at writing lines for his actors to say, but Revenge has to be some of the worst dialogue ever committed to a script in the history of cinema. Anakin: "Only the sith deal in absolutes!" (Never mind what Yoda says about trying.) Anakin: "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil." Yoda: "Not if anything to say about it, I have!" Padme: "It's only because, I'm so in love." Anakin: "No, *little laugh* no, it's because, I'm so in love with you." Padme: "So love has blinded you?" Anakin: *nervous laugh* "Well, that's not exactly what I meant." Padme: "But it's probably true." And the Granddaddy of them all: Obi-One: "I have the high ground. It's over." That line alone should relegate this film to the bottom of the pack. It's so absurdly bad as not only as a line of dialogue but as a plot device that leads to Anakin/Vader's loss. I get that some have tried to justify this line as some sort of strategy to juice Anakin's rage into making a bad choice. But that attempt to justify bad writing is just that, a bad justification for a bad plot device. If the Golden Raspberry awards were to ever create an award for worst line of dialogue, they should call it the "Higher Ground" award. And I'm not even going to touch Vader's yell at the end. It's just mind boggling bad. The ultimate narrative failure of Revenge is with Padme. She dies of a broken heart? What? How does that work? There are a lot of ways the PT undermines the OT, but Padme's death so soon following the birth of Luke and Leia renders one of the more touching scenes in Return (Leia talking to Luke about their mother) at best meaningless and at worst false. The entire point of a prequel is to provide context for the original story told earlier. But Revenge does a great job (as does the entire PT) to undermine the OT and raise more questions than answers. It was the film that we had spent decades waiting for. And not only did it fail to deliver, it made the OT worse. That said, some of the problems with Revenge aren't really its fault. One of the dynamics that makes the sabre battle between Vader and Luke in Empire so great is you don't really know what's going to happen. You assume that Luke will win because he's the good guy, but at the same time, he seems so thoroughly outmatched by Vader. There's a sense of dread that the viewer assumes will be alleviated by Luke somehow prevailing. But he doesn't (which makes sense) and we're left with an ending that's both novel, satisfying (from a logic standpoint), but also depressing. The same could sort of be said about the final battle in Return, with Luke again being outmatched against two powerful opponents. It's through Vader's redemption that Luke survives (arguable if Vader's redemption makes sense). The final sabre battle in Revenge just doesn't hold up. Technically it does what it's suppose to do, with both actors doing all the necessary jumps and fencing one wants in a lightsabre battle (though, it doesn't compare to the Kenobi-Vader battle in the TV series). But you know how it's going to end. You know that Anakin will lose. Only question is how Anakin survives and even that makes little sense (why doesn't Obi-One finish him off; how does Anakin survive on the side of a lava field while being utterly fucked up). I have way more to say about why I found Revenge to be the worst, but I think I'll cap it here. For me, it just doesn't work as a whole. The final twenty minutes of Revenge should have been its own film. If I had to boil down the primary problem I have with the PQ, it's that we got two and a half films of setup for 30 minutes of pay off.

He's insufferable through most if it. I get that one of the two marquee robots had to talk, but they gave C-3PO a grating personality. Honestly, the older I get the less I like the original trilogy. Empire is a fantastic film for a variety of reasons, but even within it and every other OT film there are some less than enjoyable aspects. I feel like the OT was big on ideas, maybe not so great on execution. For me, the prequels had neither (dumb ideas, bad execution). The sequel trilogy is the closest the series as come to having decent execution, but middling ideas. Really wish they'd just re-do the whole thing. It's a great universe and there's so much potential to do it right. Draw inspiration from the nine-film anthology but make the whole thing make sense. It's a shame that more people can't be objective about the series as a whole and support reworking the entire thing. I make this same rant every six months or so... So I'll see you all in six months to make the same point.

Because if we know one thing about judges, they love it when counsel argues a point without evidence. Christ...

I'm no lawyer, but how GNR's legal team thought filing in California was the proper venue seems like a way to bilk Axl and Guns out of more billable hours. This is basic jurisprudence 101. I hope Guns found new legal representation after this.

You seem to be pretty good at it though...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/axl-rose-sued-over-alleged-1989-rape?ref=home

Hillary didn't "illegally take classified documents out of the restricted area." Nobody "hacked her computer." Nobody claimed that Russia hacked Hillary's computer. What Russia did hack was the DNC and the emails of Clinton's campaign char, using a program called Mimikatz. This is all described in the Mueller report. In both the FBI investigation (that resulted in numerous charges) and the Senate Intelligence investigation it was found that Russia used multiple means to influence U.S. voters to suppress support for Clinton and bolster it for Trump. It even had a name - Project Lakhta. Russia setup troll farms that created thousands of fake social media accounts that purported to be Americans that helped spread misinformation within the 2016 election cycle. This, along with hacking the DNC and Podesta - Clinton's campaign chairman, is what people are talking about when they say that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Not that they hacked Clinton's emails that involved classified information. It would have similarities if what you described above was true. It wasn't Clinton who started anything. It was actually McCain that turned over the Steel dossier to the FBI. Moreover, it's not false to say that Russia made attempts to sway the election. Considering how close the election was (77k votes), it's not exactly a stretch to say that Russia's actions likely swung the results for Trump. But no Demcrat claimed it was fraud, that the results should be overturned, and that Clinton should be sworn in. I've never heard of this. I'd love to see where you're getting this information from. Trump had complete control of Congress in his first two years. Republicans were in position to fund the wall had they so chosen to. But they didn't. They didn't pass anything other than a tax cut for the wealthy and corporations. Trump used illegal immigrants to stoke fear about a situation that wasn't nearly as dire as he depicted. Biden's situation is completely different. Keep in mind that there were certain parts of the border that had a wall prior to Trump. It's not a new idea. What was new was that Trump wanted to wall off the entire border; something that Biden still opposes. Thanks. I don't mean to be harsh but it's difficult at times to take discussions on a fan forum at face value at times. You mean well and I appreciate that. But some of your opinions are based on information that simply isn't true or born out by facts. The discussion started by your assertion that there isn't much difference between America's two major parties. And many years ago that would have been mostly true. But in 2023, there could not be a wider gap between Republicans and Democrats. I don't agree with everything Democrats do and I think they're in real trouble if they don't address issues like the border and debt (especially debt), but they are the only party of the two that have any grasp on reality. It's a fairly large chasm between their views and Republicans on abortion, climate change, democracy, wealth inequality, and even immigration. I find it incredible that anyone would believe that their differences are minor. I do think that most Americans agree on most issues, but unfortunately that's not reflected in federal politics.

You're conflating the two and also creating a false equivalency. Russia absolutely interfered in the 2016 election. That is true. Democrats are not attempting to upend the election results because of it. They, as a party, never contested the election results and never claimed that Trump wasn't the duly elected President. It's possible to both say that Trump legitimately won in 2016 but Russian interfered on his behalf (but not at his behest, though he did ask them to hack Clinton's emails and release them). This is a far cry from what Republicans did when Biden won in 2020. Most Republican House members voted against certifying the election. Had a Democrat (Pelosi) not been House Speaker we could have very well seen a constitutional crisis. Most Republicans still will not acknowledge that Biden legitimately won. Again, it's night and day. To claim the two parties are similar on this matter is wrong. Really wrong. Except Biden faces a different reality than Trump. First, Biden's effort to remove Title 42 that prevented migrants from applying for asylum was blocked down by the courts until this past summer. Legally the Biden administration was denied from doing much as his executive orders were held up in courts. Second, when they finally were able to end Title 42 it created a huge rush of migrants crossing into the border, beyond anything we had ever seen before. Moreover it was beyond what border control could manage. There have been far more people trying to enter the US in the last two to three years than at any point during the Trump presidency. It's not even close: What would you have the Biden and the country to do at this point? Do nothing? That's a guarantee way to bring Republicans back into power. You'll have to be more specific since you don't make clear what point of mine you're addressing.

When you say Democrats contested the election, you mean a handful, and that the party or the majority of its membership attempted to call into question the vote totals, didn't orchestrate an alternative set of electors, nor did they call upon Clinton supporters to protest and "fight" outside the capital that resulted in a violent invasion as a means to upend American democracy. Sorry, but this is an absolute horseshit of a false equivalency. Clinton conceded the day after the election. How anyone doesn't find a world of difference between the two is absurd. So Biden is doing the same shitty things as Trump, but we just don't know about them because they're just better at it. You understand why no one should take that argument at face value, right? Except they can't. They'll offer vague generalities about how Trump made America "great again" without pointing to a particular policy or executive action. You claim that there's no difference between Republican and Democrats when it comes to making the lives of average Americans better. But why is it that when you ask a Republican they can't provide a specific list of legislative achievements as evidence that Republicans actually accomplish anything meaningful? Hell, they have a hard enough time picking a Speaker in the House. Great, provide an example.

I don't mean to offend, but this is the take I often hear from people who either don't live in America and/or are not paying attention to what's going on in the country. There are massive differences between each party, both in foreign policy and with respect to solving domestic issues. Night and day differences. Again, i don't mean to be glib, but it's insane to suggest that American's aren't better off having Democrats in power on the federal level than Republicans. Under Trump, the only notable piece of legislation they passed was a tax cut, that mostly went to rich people and allowed corporations to buy back shares (thus juicing the stock market further that further helped rich people, since they own the vast majority of stocks). Outside of the First Step Act, which reformed the criminal justice system (that only saw opposition by Republicans), the U.S. federal government passed nothing to help Americans until covid hit. Under Biden and Democratic control of Congress, America saw child poverty reduced by half in a year after the passage of the American Rescue Plan. That's 5-6 million kids that no longer lived in poverty. Not a single Republican lawmaker voted yes on this bill. It was passed on a strict party-line basis. It did many other things, but the fact alone that it rescued millions of kids from poverty is important. To say that it doesn't matter who is in power is to ignore this reality. When Trump was President, almost every other week was called infrastructure week. But they never passed a single thing to address America's crumbling infrastructure. Biden was able to get Congress to pass $1 trillion in infrastructure that will take ten plus years to play out. That means new roads, bridges, air ports, sea ports and will bring high-speed internet to much of rural America (despite most rural Americans not voting for Biden or Democrats). Again, these are material differences that have a difference. It has helped induce and transform an electric battery industry that almost non-existent just two years ago. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created because government action created a market. It passed almost exclusively in the House by Democrats, with every opposition coming from Republicans. In the Senate a few more Republicans voted to support its passage, but of the 30 votes against it, all were Republican. Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which lowered the price for health insurance plans, lowered drug costs, and required Medicare to negotiate the cost of the ten most used drugs in the U.S. Again, not a single Republican in the House nor the Senate voted for it. But many have launched re-election campaigns in their districts or states championing and taking credit for it. Then there was the CHIPS act, which is addressing both economic and security concerns relating to US reliance on Taiwan for semiconductor production. It will take years, but the $50 billion investment should induce domestic production of sensitive semiconductors and put the country in a less precarious position should China take over Taiwan. Again, Trump did nothing about this critical issue. And for gay Americans, Democrats passed the Respect for Marriage Act that made gay marriage legal at the federal level as a hedge against any effort to ban it at the state level. And that's just off the top of my head. I believe Congress did something under Biden that attempts to reduce gun violence with respect to red flag laws and bans on domestic abusers from owning guns, but I'd have to look it up. So again, how anyone who is paying attention suggests that the two parties are more or less the same is more indicative of one's lack of awareness of what's going on. And that's without bringing up the fact that one party tried to overturn the last President election because they didn't like the result. Republicans were ready to end democracy in America as we know it because they couldn't stand up to the sensitivities of world class narcissist and con man.

If by design you mean one group of people and party have actual policy prescriptions for actual problems while another want to talk about transgendered stalking little girls in women's washrooms, then we agree. Ask a Republican what their policy positions are on healthcare, climate change, infrastructure, criminal justice reform, wealth inequality, or any other areas that need crucial attention by the government. How many shots would you consume if you're required to drink every time they used the word "woke." The primary split in America right now is MAGA vs non-MAGA. That's it. Have you met the American people? Do they currently seems like the kind of group of people that are actually interested in bridging their differences?

Women interested in having reproductive rights and body sovereignty might feel differently.

Yeah, I think it's unlikely too. But I wouldn't be shocked if did happen at this point.

I sometimes wonder if Axl thinks The General was released when it was suppose to, hence why they played it live. I'd be surprised if the band played it because it was leaked (unless it was the band themselves who leaked it, which seems less likely).

I edited my post above to note that the Alex Jones parody was in GTA IV, not V. https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/John_Smith

I think they already did an Alex Jones parody in GTA V (and maybe even earlier). I looked it up - it was GTA IV that had an Alex Jones parody character (his name was John Smith). At least I remember one of the stations having a raving conspiracy theorist as host with people calling in about alien sightings (or something along those lines).

Hey, I really enjoyed She Hulk!

I doubt (and hope) that's not true. Outside of music artists, GTA has never included real people in their worlds, just satirical takes on celebrities and trends at the time. What would make more sense is if they have a Rogan-like podcaster that satirizes people like Rogan, with potential guests that take on guys like Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and incel culture.

Yeah, though in fairness GTA V was far more ambitious than any previous GTA game and it sounds like GTA VI will be even more so. The way I look at it Rockstar gives us a magna opus every five years or so. RDR 2 is probably my favourite game of all time in terms of scope, detail, storyline, etc. It was spectacular. I wouldn't want them to sacrifice anything for the sake of faster releases. I do agree that it would be nicer if they could service each game that wasn't completely reliant on the online platform. I've found both GTA online and RDR online daunting and difficult to navigate. But ultimately I'm in the minority and Rockstar has made a ton of money by using their online platforms to provide new content. Just isn't in my thing. I think GTA VI will be the game that finally gets me to buy a new console (likely a PS5). I just don't have the time or energy to play games much anymore. But GTA and RDR games are special for me. So I'm looking forward to its release, though I'm not expecting anything until maybe late 2024 or spring 2025 (my money is on spring 2025 or possibly fall 2025).

I think it's probably best we not assume of who knew what. All we're certain are the allegations. Who was aware of them is only conjecture at this point. I will say that in my discussions with Beta she made it clear that she never tried to hide anything from Axl, but she certainly didn't go out of her way to inform him of bad press or controversy. Her example she used was the story of Corey Taylor rubbing his genitalia on Axl's piano backstage prior to some show many years prior. She said he has his own laptop and was free to find that story himself, but she didn't feel it was her place or a good idea to bring it to his attention. So take that information for what it's worth.

Yep. I honestly don't understand how the copyright claims get caught up in legal disputes. You either have a contract or you don't. Kat's legal filing makes it clear (if true) that any contractual basis for her employment ended prior to 2016 (or early on 2016). Is GNR trying to argue that stipulations in prior contracts extended to her services post the demarcated dates noted within said contracts? She makes clear, and seems to have a document trail to support it, that she made several overtures to formalize their arrangement but was repeatedly rebuffed by Fernando. Maybe Guns was trying to use their legal firepower to make her submit not realizing the can of worms they were opening. It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out, assuming updates are publicly available (which I'm not optimistic about).