The votes of a few people don't add up to a hill of beans

Post #19,378 by kmself 11/26/01 4:32:10 AM Reply	The votes of a few people don't add up to a hill of beans Casablanca. End discussion. `-- Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com] What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?`
Post #19,381 by Ashton 11/26/01 5:54:15 AM Reply	..the stuff that dreams are made of The Maltese Falcon. Mary Astor as Bitch Goddess before.. any Murican would have uttered such a thing! except, when stoned, to a fellow degenerate. Wilmer: the prototypical looser for all time, long before Billy made so many other recent ones. (A close second, maybe even surpassing Astor: Agnes Moorhead as Bogey's ex, in the film shot in SF really noir - Dark Passage) So if it's Bogey time: was you ever stung by a dead bee? Films to be interred in reinforced concrete for at least a century: It's a Wonderful Life (along with Keane's Family Circus, still treacling up the Sunday comics. Garfield.) Ashton Critic
Post #19,400 by Silverlock 11/26/01 10:55:21 AM Reply	re: end discussion Not. A toss up for me, Casablanca On the Waterfront Shane The Godfather Citizen Kane The Toxic Avenger :)
Post #19,446 by kmself 11/26/01 5:28:17 PM Reply	Global appeal Part of the reason for putting in Casablanca is, in its own way, it's the perfect formula piece, without consciously seeking to be the forumla. In many ways, it created the formula. It's got the quiet, mysterious, loner, the beautiful woman, intrigue, violence, more freestanding dialog than anyone since Shakespeare, yet it doesn't seem forced or artificed. Casablanca isn't a movie that's going to top everyone's list, but it's going to be up there, and I feel it's going to have an extremely broad, strong, enduring appeal. I still remember seeing the remastered 50th edition release, cleaned up. The Godfather (haven't seen it) strikes me as missing some of the family appeal that Casablanca would have -- couldn't see taking young kids to see Marlon and horse's heads. It will be interesting to see where the top 20 films listed fare in another 25 or 50 years. The IMDB top 250 posted to this thread pretty much agrees here. Casablanca's in sixth place, but that's a five-way tie (Star Wars also rates an 8.7). The top six placeholders: The Godfather (1972) 9.0/10 (42,490 votes), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) 8.9/10 (60,020 votes), Schindler's List (1993) 8.7/10 (43,953 votes), The Godfather: Part II (1974) 8.7/10 (22,010 votes), Citizen Kane (1941) 8.7/10 (26,419 votes), Casablanca (1942) 8.7/10 (29,587 votes). Getting back to Casablanca's dialog, the 14th place film is based on a line from the movie. I've seen four of the top seven films. Definite interest in The Godfather I & II, Shawshank, and Memento. `-- Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com] What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?`
Post #19,512 by Silverlock 11/27/01 11:03:10 AM Reply	Not sure I can agree Popular appeal isn't quite synonymous with quality. I'm not saying they don't often match up, but let's face it, commercially succesful films are mostly crap and quality films mostly fail at the box office. I could care less if a kid is going to appreciate The Godfather, it's still one of the best films of all time. For that matter, The Godfather Part II is that rarity of rarities, a sequel better than the original. It doesn't matter how much a film makes at the box office when determining if it is actually worth seeing. Inspired writing, creative direction, believable acting and camerawork that complements the story will get me to watch wether or not the public at large does. All that aside, Casablanca is one hell of a story and an amazingly good film. I just can't pick any one film as the "best" though. When I visit the aquarium, the same thought keeps running through my mind; Leemmmooonnn, Buuttteerrr, MMMmmmmmm good!
Post #19,580 by wharris2 11/27/01 10:38:43 PM Reply	I'm one of the drooling masses Casablanca doesn't do anything for me. No, actually, I want to puke when I see anyone saying it's the best movie of all time. (apologies for your sensitivities.) Terminator and Terminator 2 is the all time best movies for me. (Star wars? shoot, Doom, Doom2, Heretic, were a lot more entertaining.) "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Post #19,598 by static 11/28/01 4:24:04 AM Reply	Terminator! Yes! I knew there was a Hollywood film I wanted to remind everyone's attention. Terminator is one of those all too rare films that, among other things, does a time-travel story correctly. That T2 trashed all that was the prime reason I thought the first was sooo much better. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #19,631 by inthane-chan 11/28/01 11:01:45 AM Reply	Just curious... How did T2 trash T? I never really watched the first one (as in, I didn't go over it with a fine-toothed comb) but I loved T2 - enough that it was the first DVD I picked up. (Mainly because I wanted some big explosions to test out the 5.1 dolby, but that's just me. :) ) "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #19,676 by Ashton 11/28/01 6:05:32 PM Reply	That IS its highest Purpose.. no?_____[troublemakery]
Post #19,681 by wharris2 11/28/01 6:46:39 PM Reply	Eh? T2? Terminator 2 was pretty logical; it took the finale of Terminator and extrapolated it. Linda Hamilton as the insane (but, errr, really, sane) mother and John as the son was tremendous. The liquid metal garbage was the big problem with the movie. "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Post #19,690 by static 11/29/01 12:00:57 AM Reply	What I Didn't Like About Terminator 2. The original movie had a time-travel story that interlinked completely. Someone from the future made the past happen which made the future happen so that someone from the future went back to make the past happen... To put it in dry metaphysics terms, there was one timeline that was not altered in any shape or form as the result of time-travel occurring. (Incidentally, this is how Babylon 5 did its time-travel stories.) The writers of Terminator 2 decided that the characters were able to create an alternate timeline. Or, to put it another way, 1 human and 2 cyborgs from the future came back and made it so that the future they came from would never be. It is also the only thing I objected to in Terminator 2. (This is also how Star Trek does its time-travel stories. I don't usually like time-travel in Star Trek, either.) Doing things the former method requires better story writing. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #19,694 by wharris2 11/29/01 7:52:03 AM Reply	Ah. I get the objection but I still think T2 had a decent story. The best Star Trek time travel story (IMO) was the one in ST:TNG where the Enterprise met an earlier version of itself, which had come to the future via a rift in space/time and went back through the rift to almost certain destruction, but in so doing making peace between the Federation and Klingons possible. Close to it is the "not really" time travel story in which Picard gets mezmerised and dreams of a civilization on the verge of destruction, which (lacking the technology to evacuate) chose to launch a probe containing the history and essence of their civilization. When ST:TNG ended, there was a 5-show "best" combo on the local station (don't know if it aired elsewhere.) For some reason, the Borg episodes were on top; I never could understand why people like the Borg shows/episodes. Talk about silly technobabble about how they managed to evade/destroy them. "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Post #19,739 by Meerkat 11/29/01 6:18:49 PM Reply	I (predictably) like the Dr. Who approach Basically, whatver is convenient for that particular story :) There is only one timeline: Pyramid of Mars As many timelines as you please: Inferno No we can't go back and change what happened: Earthshock/Time-Flight Heck, let's go back and changed what happened: Genesis of the Daleks Or something. John. Doctor who dag, and lovin' it.
Post #19,762 by static 11/29/01 10:36:18 PM Reply	Dr Who had an extra quality the others lack. Notably that only a Time Lord can play games with the timeline. Despite the other foibles, I rather liked that touch. There was one Dalek episode that I read rather than saw where that worked rather well - I think it was called Day Of The Daleks - where some guerilla fighters from the future went back in time to try and prevent the Daleks from taking over Earth. Of course, in the original scenario, their blowing up a house led directly to successful defeat of earth by the Daleks (how ironic) which was quite the opposite of their intentions. Enter the Doctor, who, because he is a Time Lord, manages to get the same guerilla fighters from the future to blow up the same house for the same reason (!) only this time with Daleks inside and thus changes the future. That was good story writing. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #19,769 by Ashton 11/29/01 11:54:08 PM Reply	Re: Dr Who had an extra quality the others lack. Nother quality: Quality. Sylvia (?) and the Bannermen, with a real Vincent Black Shadow w/sidehack, as one of the transports.. was woven throughout the episode - the girl gets the Vincent in the end! (nice touch, that..) I dunno about the production crew through the years, but obviously someone on writer's side had enough pull to create such an episode (even if many watchers of the time would know little of cycles and maybe nothing of Vincents and what they signified). An understandable insertion: stark reminder (at least to some of us) of the times when British cycle design was the Best anywhere, even via clapped-out left-over WW-II tools. Oddly, the V. was made for the wide open spaces of Murica! Never could comprehend where anyone could cruise 'at the ton' on that Isle? Here you could do it for hours; SF --> LA in ~5 hours, with no Interstates then. Anyway - memorable episode. When I saw it approaching I Knew! and marvelled that it had been sneaked-in as a subplot. (Hey.. the girl knew how to use the compression release! and start the 1000 cc V-twin, right at the end.) {sniff} Ashton fond memories of that 150 MPH (not KPH) speedo
Post #19,772 by static 11/30/01 12:26:52 AM Reply	Delta And The Bannermen. That was with the seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy. One of the few I've seen in first-run. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #19,966 by orion 12/2/01 1:41:21 PM Reply	Dr. Who, set the standards for time travel It wasn't always the Time Lords who mucked with time, there was the Jaggeroth or whatever that got split into several pieces and the destruction of his ship had energized the primal ooze that life sprang from on Earth. Then there was Adric, who died on a ship that killed the dinosaurs and made mammals the domminate lifeforms on planet Earth. Then there was The Master and that timelady who was turning people into trees but I forget her name. They were evil timelords and would manipulate time to their advantage. Don't forget the White and Black Guardians of time from the "Time Key" segments. What is up with that? Plus somehow Timelords can meet earlier versions of themselves, but suffer from amnesia of the meeting after the meeting is done? Or how about the "Back to the future" movies? You can change time, but it could backfire on you and make things worse or make things better. Not to mention you could meet yourself from a previous time or a future time. There could be more than one of you. *Picking up the pieces of my broken life.*
Post #20,115 by Ashton 12/3/01 4:20:08 PM Reply	All that and more.. Time travel as chimera. The idea of time travel, irresistible to all grades of imagination - surely is about forcing us to recognize: that we are constitutionally unable to grok the concept of the present moment, and are constantly generating imaginations about 'the future' - based upon that thing we call memory = a most selectively 'recalled' version of a small slice of the past. Thus, most of us are never in fact experiencing er.. now at all; just the next look-back at what just occurred (!) and the omnipresent imagining-ahead. Presumably those (few) who purport to have mastered the (experiencing of the 'present moment'?) - via somehow ignoring the mind chatter in both directions - demonstrate that we Can become freed from the tyranny of imagination, and to some purpose: one might even call it timelessness. Why not? (But we suppose that that is not nearly as much fun as.. all the imagination stuff? Hah!) Ashton Time is nature's way of (giving us the illusion that) everything isn't happening at once! Actually...
Post #20,120 by orion 12/3/01 4:27:01 PM Reply	Time Travel To God, being an eternal and supreme being and existing out of time, time has no meaning for him. God can see all timelines and knows the outcome of each event, yet lets the chips fall as they may. God does roll dice, and those dice are called free-will. Time is a hard thing to grasp, it can be unchanging yet changing, it can be set yet flexiable, it can be contradictary at times. When we try to change it we can either make things happen as we think they did, or change things so they happen differently, or error and make things happen just the way they did before. But one thing is true, we are all living within time on this mortal plane, and cannot be removed from it, at least not yet. Is my future already set, or am I just now starting to take steps to change it into something else? Only someone outside of the timeline can see what will happen to me. :) *I am free now, to choose my own destiny.*
Post #20,451 by static 12/6/01 5:47:39 AM Reply	God and Time. One of my favourite analogies about God and Time to imagine Time being like a pencil line drawn down a sheet of paper. God is like the paper. :-) Also, I remember a Dilbert (!) sequence about the meaning of Time. It was a discussion between Ratbert and the garbage man. It was something about time being a filter over reality. It actually almost made sense. Ratbert, of course, sprained his brain... Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #20,539 by Ashton 12/6/01 6:49:35 PM Reply	Paper.. and also 'projection screens / filters' are often used similarly - as a means of grokking the significance of the maya, world of appearances in which we, they and zIWE dwell (along with roses, lemurs, nukes and sunsets). (Of course too.. no one ever achieves a grokking to Fullness 'here'! - at least, it is presumed that any few who Do: have Nothing to say about It ;-) For the rest of us, it's just like Mornington \ufffdrescent poetry contests. No? Ashton who shares with the species: not knowing shit. either. ('least I know That)
Post #20,537 by Ashton 12/6/01 6:41:34 PM Reply	There is no limit to what people may impute to 'God'. Your "speaking for Her"; your imagining that you "can guess that some time-concept might mean something also to Her" [!!] is the prime evidence of that near-universal homo-sap defect. It is ALL in your head (as you are oblivious to whatever is not in your head). That limns Your 'Universe' but has nothing at all to do with The Mystery. Nada, zippo, cipher. Pure Imag-ination of that which cannot be 'imaged'. Sorry Norm, but every didactic utterance beginning with, God thinks/wants/ __ blah blah merits the above Universal Certificate of Error. Collect a thousand of those and -- Ashton Error-Listings R'Us Ltd.
Post #20,723 by static 12/7/01 8:23:44 PM Reply	Reality parse error. I would think that refusing to ascribe any view or opinion to a potential omnipotent being would rather prevent them communicating to us. But what do I know? You won't believe in my idea of God. :-) Wade, who does know this is not the right forum for that argument. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #20,770 by Ashton 12/8/01 6:02:40 AM Reply	Interesting idea. (One's access to er Reality?) (Great second line here, but you'd have to have seen Laugh-In, for it to work.. ;-) Don't think logic will be of much help here. Some would say: the 'communications are all around us'. (So would I.) Seems to be a matter of perspective. It's the idea of Language, of written words = 'in our words', as if from a similar critter and a similar er mammalian nervous system: that is where the worldwide trouble began. A current embodiment is 'the personal God' <2-way> 'conversation with this entity'. I can see the appeal. But it has consequences for all. People kill people over other people's interpretations of alleged Words direct from God. People invent 'favored tribes' meant to inherit 'promised real estate'! (Lots of junk-DNA in all those Words from on-high, when we get through with imagining.) Rest case on basis: this model hasn't worked, just creates Wars. Like today's. (Particularly annoying when someone avers, "The Entity 'says' thus". Y'know?) Words have some astonishing usefulness; poetry can capture what prose can't. They don't however, tell us anything about the Mystery - except what we want to hear. What reads't thou, Hamlet? words.. words.. Cheers, A. Caution: objects in mirror may be farther away than shown Now as to your sig.. ;-)
Post #20,771 by Ashton 12/8/01 6:07:20 AM Reply	LRPD: Thisisyour brain on bad interior design.Any questions?
Post #20,958 by static 12/10/01 10:11:23 PM Reply	'Twas a heads up only. I just didn't think you should dismiss Norm's (and my) opinion of God's Message quite so readily. That's all. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, Ashton. (-: My sig would take too long to explain unless you've seen "The Wings of Honneamise" a few times. Perhaps in another thread...? It is oddly appropriate, however, though perhaps not quite in the way you think. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #20,977 by Ashton 12/11/01 1:27:45 AM Reply	Nahhh. Prime Directive states clearly, Don't spit in the soup Everyone's got to eat (Some just think the okra's slimy, and like to play with it) :-\ufffd Ashton The Medium is the Massage
Post #19,747 by Ashton 11/29/01 8:04:13 PM Reply	Borg popularity? Simple familiarity: Microsloth here&now..
Post #19,897 by boxley 12/1/01 6:01:06 PM Reply	well ya had to set up T3 dinja? tshirt front "born to die before I get old" thshirt back "fscked another one didnja?"
Post #19,920 by wharris2 12/1/01 9:52:09 PM Reply	Terminator happened to air a couple days ago In it, I noticed Reese does make mention that he is from a "possible" future. A couple of times. He isn't from "the" future, he's from a possible future. So I'm not going to give you the "variable timeline" argument. What I did notice, on my viewing, in Terminator was that they had destroyed the time travel facility after they sent Reese through. There's no possible way that this particular timestream could have sent another terminator or two or three or a dozen through. I think that's what logically destroys T2, more than your arguments: there is no time travel facility, because it was destroyed. If it wasn't destroyed, then this isn't the same timeline and nothing else makes sense. But T2 is still a fun movie. "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Post #19,947 by static 12/2/01 5:32:24 AM Reply	Riposte. IIRC, the robots found another time travel facility at the start of the second movie. You make a good point about Reese saying he's from a "possible" future, except that it's a major kick in the movie when you get to one of the last scenes and see that, in this movie at least, the timeline is, in fact, immutable. :-) You may be able to go back, but you can't change it; and at worst, you'll make it happen. Which is what Reese did. I liked that. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #19,608 by Silverlock 11/28/01 9:02:13 AM Reply	Puke away Everyone's entitled to .. yada, yada. Your opinion (and emetis) won't be likely to change the impression of Casablanca being one of the best of all time among 90% of film viewers. The Terminator? Excellent piece of work. In the top 5 of SF films, maybe in the top 100 of all films. But that's just my opinion. :-) When I visit the aquarium, the same thought keeps running through my mind; Leemmmooonnn, Buuttteerrr, MMMmmmmmm good!
Post #19,419 by boxley 11/26/01 2:23:31 PM Reply	Lord Jim, Fist full of Dynamite, The Searchers, comancheros, Treasure of the Sierra Madres, State of Grace, The Quiet Man, African Queen, Pink Panther(sellers versions) lottsa movies ahead of SW or ilk. thanx, bill tshirt front "born to die before I get old" thshirt back "fscked another one didnja?"

Welcome to IWETHEY!