Saw MIB3 this weekend on impulse. It was okay, wouldn't necessarily recommend it unless you want a seriously breezy and disposable movie. Definitely better than the 2nd one, which is not hard to do. If they make another one they need to open up the scale a bit. This movie's budget (admittedly with marketing) is reported at $250 million. That is insane. There are only two real money sequences: a chase to end act 2 that looks like the Obi-Wan and Darth Grievous chase in episode III, and the climax which takes place at the launch of the moon mission at Cape Canaveral in 1969 and looks a lot like Apollo 13.

This movie has some really dumb and small-scale choices. Smith's character is equipped with a device that requires him to plunge from a height in order to gain enough speed to "time-jump". The movie climaxes with Smith literally standing on top of the saturn rocket lifting off for the first manned moon landing. You'd think they'd have a money shot with Smith jumping off the rocket as it lifts off. Those things went pretty slow to start, you could survive the first 30 seconds it takes to get up to any kind of speed, and then jump off for an awesome looking stunt. Or, hell, if I were writing the movie, have him just stay on the rocket until it reaches the necessary ascent speed (something like 100 MPH or some shit.. I remember thinking it didn't sound far from 88MPH), which wouldn't take long after the rockets fire. Then Smith is transported into the future thousands of feet in the air and you have a post-climax gag where he's falling apparently to his death only to have Jones' character sweep in at the last second and save him in a flying car or flying alien bubble pod more likely. Smith's character would be like "How in DA HELL you know I was gonna falling through the air over Florida man!?!?" and Jones' character would put up the video feed that only MIB had access to of Smith riding the rocket and disappearing from 1969's POV. "We had a lot of eyes on that mission" or some shit. Do I have to write this crap for you Hollywood? It flies out of my butthole effortlessly. Instead Smith's character jumps into an evacuation basket and rides it down a zip-line... and this is not even filmed in an interesting way. A whole lot of this movie looked sort of non-commital, like 2nd unit did the whole thing.

They added a "poignant twist" to the time travel aspect which is the same problem with so many movie series these days... Star Wars, Star Trek, Spider-Man.. in a sequel, everything is revealed to have been previously connected.. connected from the start in fact! Oh yawn... more than 30 years later people are still trying to re-create the "I am your father" buzz from Empire Strikes Back. Always at the expense of cheapening the overall franchise and sapping meaning from the actions the characters took in preceeding films. What's worse, they layered on some spiritual/karmic hokum to support another cliche forced by executive interference.

It's crazy to think the first movie turns 15 years old this year. I thought it would be an eternal classic, but the last time I watched it, which might actually have been when MIB2 was coming out a whole ten years ago, it did not hold up.

Call me a sap but, I really really liked that =o)

This exists all over Australia.
People use it for it's hallucinogenic effects.
I've never heard of refining it into a power though.
I believe the popular way is to twist and compress the flowers in a tea towel and suck on the tea towel to get the flower sap (for want of a better word).

Agreed, with one small change.

It all depends on where you live, but even that's beside the next point I'll make. Families with one stay at home person are, in my opinion, at risk for a very high probability that they will have to continue working until death. No retirement.

The cost of college, owning a home, and miscellaneous bills sap any retirement savings that would be created if both parents work. In this day and age, both parents really need to work to secure a comfortable financial future for their kids and themselves.

>> ^Porksandwich:

Whole lot of logic disconnects throughout society. It's a modern miracle things just don't shut down because the disconnect is so hard to deal with sometimes.
You need a college education to get a job.
You need experience to get an entry level job, college usually does not count as experience.
Virtually no businesses are willing to train.
We have virtually no training or licensing for most jobs they want experience for, college does not even broach this subject.
Then you take all of the above stuff and you see the vast majority of jobs that pay a liveable wage (which is not minimum wage) end up being hires due to who you know instead of what you know. And it's in direct contrast to what we are often taught, recited to, and whatever else throughout school and college. You need an education to get a job, and you need to make the most of it. But we see people who are dumb as a brick get a job because they know someone ALL THE TIME. In fact this "know someone" probably decides what job you end up doing more than your skillset or education.
Then we have working families with both parents working. It's in stark contrast to the history of our species.
The fact that we went from the ability to have one parent able to provide to it being difficult to make it on two salaries means we've fucked up something. Your grandparents could do it, your parents MIGHT have been able to do it...maybe. But the likelihood of someone today able to support a household on one income is low. And your kids being able to once they are adults is probably close to zero, you'll be lucky if they don't have to live with you so you can all survive financially.

No, thank you for the great link! I am such a sap, I actually teared up at the end.

In reply to this comment by Hybrid:
Thanks for the quality!
In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
holy crap, this is high *quality. Eat your heart out Ebert, video games aren't art my ass. (then again, this wasn't really a game, more like a movie, DAMN YOU EBERT!)

I've swam through a few of her books,the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged,and I think her philosophy of Capitalism is Holy could work except for one basic problem:human nature. And her supporters in the GOP really don't get where she was coming from either. The protagonists of these books are people who run large companies struggling to provide their excellent products and services in spite of heavy regulations at the hands of the small minded government. They are personally involved with their companies,willing to go the extra mile and get their hands dirty in the persuit of delivering the goods and providing livings for their extended families of employees they feel responsible for. Yet the government in pettiness and jelousy scheme to thwart them in this:making the Creative Movers of Industry gasp under the strain of mad laws written by parasites to sap the energy of the Doers to feed the gluttony of the lazy masses. More or less this. Unfortunatelythis fairy story is a bit backwards nowadays...
Instead of clever creators marketing their dreams,we have souless corporations dissecting the labours of the many to feed the obscenely rich the lions share of profits,and existing only to figure out new ways of paying themselves incentive bonuses while the companies they run heave and expire beneathe them from the sheer weight of their greed. Emploees are not families to these executives,all cooporating with the mutual goal of seeing the company succeed,but disposable pawns easily replaced and forgotten,not worth providing benefits for and certainly not worth considering when cheap if not competant labour is available elsewhere.And regulations ? Taxes? Blasphemies!

Some of Rand's opinions I find valid:armies of the unambitious would swollow every dime you earn with demands for welfare and other government mandated largesses. For every brave sould with a creative spark there are a dozen happy to make them fall for the perverse pleasure of simply watching a great idea fail. These exist:but a socialism is not on the genda in this future of ours...it seems to be evolving into a new sort of feudalism where the Rich rule and the serfs provide the neccessaries. And I suppose there are entrepreneurs out there fighting the good fight,and fighting it with style and dignity for themselves and their employees.

They just don't make the headlines.

I want a dyson sphere. Get some people on that, could ya?
>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^gwiz665:
Nuclear is not perfect, but it's the best we have right now. Coal and Oil are much worse. Wind, Solar and Geothermal are better, but not nearly the same scale as Nuclear.

There are several issues with nuclear and Chernobyl/Fukushima style disasters are frankly the least of them.
Leaving aside the obviously thorny issue of waste management, the other issue arises when you amortise the cost over the total lifetime of the nuclear plant. It's just not that cheap in terms of energy or money to build, run and then decommission.
As for renewable energy, it's nowhere close to providing the energy levels we need yet. Also there are other environmental issues with some renewable energy generation methods as well. Hydro requires large dams (concrete is an eco-nightmare) and can destroy habitats. Geothermal can affect the landscape (subsidence and sapping geysers are two common effects). Lots of people complain about wind turbines as visually unappealing (personally I find the aesthetically pleasing). I'm not saying renewable technologies are bad, merely that there are still issues with them.
In real terms, fusion is where it's at.

>> ^gwiz665:

Nuclear is not perfect, but it's the best we have right now. Coal and Oil are much worse. Wind, Solar and Geothermal are better, but not nearly the same scale as Nuclear.


There are several issues with nuclear and Chernobyl/Fukushima style disasters are frankly the least of them.

Leaving aside the obviously thorny issue of waste management, the other issue arises when you amortise the cost over the total lifetime of the nuclear plant. It's just not that cheap in terms of energy or money to build, run and then decommission.

As for renewable energy, it's nowhere close to providing the energy levels we need yet. Also there are other environmental issues with some renewable energy generation methods as well. Hydro requires large dams (concrete is an eco-nightmare) and can destroy habitats. Geothermal can affect the landscape (subsidence and sapping geysers are two common effects). Lots of people complain about wind turbines as visually unappealing (personally I find the aesthetically pleasing). I'm not saying renewable technologies are bad, merely that there are still issues with them.

In real terms, fusion is where it's at.

@siftbot, you have sapped my powaaaah!

That was awesome, and it did not start 37 seconds in.... the whole first bit was funny too

Also, I think I may have to buy it. This is how artists get me now. I love their stuff, I've watched lots on youtube etc. They give me things I can buy of theirs to support them for small amounts of money.

I do.

I've done it for Jonathan Coulton, Pogo, VAST, erm... others.

And now I think I'll have to for Louis CK. He is consistently my favourite comedian I'm seeing out there at the moment.

(I wish I could compare it to live like I used to... maybe this Melbourne Comedy Festival will be the one I get to go out to again. (bloody kids, sapping up time and energy... why I awdda)

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

You've got to be kidding me? SAP?? [shudder] Double righteous *ban the man who keeps us down.

I said huge profits. I got no problem with profits

Define that. When is a company making 'huge profits' versus just plain 'profits'?

What I think you (and other prog-libs) are doing is not complaining about profits per se. You are complaining about HOW the profits were earned. Nothing the banking industry did in the bubble qualifies as illegal so we can't say they are illegal profits. So we enter a subjective arena where profits can be earned legally, but questionably. Apple, Microsoft, Banks, Oil, Tobacco, Green, Food - blah blah blah... Everyone that earns profit is attacked as achieving those profits unethically from some perspective.

The prog-libs claim the banks behaved questionably and so their profits are 'bad'. Brass tacks - prog/libs say the banks should have told people "No" when they applied for loans that they LEGALLY QUALIFIED for. I remember a story in the housing bust of a guy who earned only $45K a year. He bought a million dollar home and was paying for it by flipping 3 other properties. The bubble bursts. Now the dumb sap has 4 properties and he couldn't pay for any of them. He lost his house, all his credit, and had to go live in an apartment. A Prince trying to live on Pauper's income. Who's fault?

In 1995, the banks would have told this guy to jump in a lake. The interest rate was over 9% and the only loan he could possibly have qualified for was one with a payment of no greater than 25% of his gross monthly income. Check the tables to see what he would have qualified for in 1995. Hint: it ISN'T a million bucks...

It changed with Frank's "Uffodubble How-sing" act. The FED jacked around the rates. The FED changed Glass-Steagall. The FED told banks they would back up ARMs and other risky loans. 5 years later in the year 2000 when a doofus walks into the bank there is a smorgasboard of million dollar risky loans he legally qualifies for. When someone qualifies for a loan, and bank refuses, bank gets sued.

Some banks acted conservatively in the bubble and many others chose to do the risky (but still legal) loans. Just like how there were CONSUMERS who behaved conservatively during the bubble, and others who took the risky (but legal) ARMs. The problem was that the number of conservative players was a lot smaller than the risk-takers. The banks were stupid to take so many risks. People were stupid to take out so many loans. Government was stupid for engineering the whole mess. But make no mistake - the primary offender in this picture is the Federal Government. If they had not interfered in the market, then the whole mess would never have happened.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by Barseps.

They know the audience for this is gonna come because the trailer is a blatant sap fest, and the movie itself has nothing more to offer than that. Damn that heartless governor and those godless commies.

USA! USA! USA!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I'm definitely a fan of my wiener - it's the best wiener in the world.>> ^Skeeve:

So you're a wiener man?
J/K, I totally get it. Personally, if she looks like she's smuggling watermelons, I'm not interested.
>> ^dag:
Man, only mammals would be turned on by modified sweat gland sacks that secrete nutritional sap.
(not a breast man)