Thanks, AC!
In reply to this comment by alien_concept:
My daughter does a really great impression of Joby's owner, considering she's a 13 year old English lass, but my god it's getting old. Both of my kids quote parts of that video at least once a day, it seems there is always room for, "whatcha doin' dawg?" or "that's the nastiest thaaaang". They even sing the autotuned version, which drives me up the wall! But it's still hilarious and this is brilliant and deserves a *promote

>> ^brycewi19:

3 words:
BRING. IT. BACK.

NOW. (OK, 4 words.)


They are, on March 15th:
http://www.tvline.com/2012/02/community-season-3-return-date/

...unless you meant MacGyver? I miss it too, but Richard Dean Anderson is nearly as old as Harrison Ford and I couldn't stand it if he started hiding in fridges too.

Did not see many movies this year, so I've only got 6 total on my list, which you should be thankful for, because I can't write film reviews worth a damn. Thanks for posting your list Sarzy, you've got great taste.


The Good

1) Drive - Awesome, like a more commercial, modern day Vanishing Point. Minimalist, tightly paced male action-fantasy with art-house nuance and an effectively simple score by Angelo Badalamenti. A real human being... and a real hero....

2) Super 8 - A nice homage to the Speilberg of the 80s, with some violent Abramsisms tossed into the mix. Not as deep as Spielberg, but still a great time at the theater.


The Bad

1) Harry Potter: Part 7: Part 2: Part 1 - booooooooooring

2) Melencholia - boooooooooooring. Remember when Lars Von Trier used to make good movies like Dogville and Dancer in the Dark? No more. The movie focuses on a loathsome, uninteresting family during the last few days of the Earth's existence. Very little happens. Then they die. The opening credits are beautiful and have more to say than the entire rest of the film.

3) Cowboys & Aliens - Complete failure to combine some tried and tested elements (The Western, Sci Fi, Harrison Ford and Jon Favrau).


The Ugly

1) Sucker Punch - It's a bold, beautiful, ambitious and highly imaginative disaster. Ridiculously stupid story. If you like terrible movies, this is one to put on your list. Supposedly the directors cut is even better/worse.

The first hint I got that Cowboys and Aliens would be a disappointment was Harrison Ford.

I'm such a bitch. But it's true.

Now Craig, get back to being the best Bond in decades.

>> ^valorumguygee:

While its true that wasn't in the script, it wasn't improv, as they decided to do it since Harrison Ford was very ill and didn't want to do the fight, he said to Lucas, "Why doesn't he just shoot him?" so they decided to just do that.
>> ^saber2x:
A a great mix, but its missing one of the best unscripted scenes, In Raiders of the Lost Ark when Harrison Ford shoots the big guy with the sword, he was suppose to fight that guy but because he had the stomach flu he just shot him to end the scene and the big guy played along with it.



True, and it's my favorite part of the movie.

While its true that wasn't in the script, it wasn't improv, as they decided to do it since Harrison Ford was very ill and didn't want to do the fight, he said to Lucas, "Why doesn't he just shoot him?" so they decided to just do that.
>> ^saber2x:

A a great mix, but its missing one of the best unscripted scenes, In Raiders of the Lost Ark when Harrison Ford shoots the big guy with the sword, he was suppose to fight that guy but because he had the stomach flu he just shot him to end the scene and the big guy played along with it.

A a great mix, but its missing one of the best unscripted scenes, In Raiders of the Lost Ark when Harrison Ford shoots the big guy with the sword, he was suppose to fight that guy but because he had the stomach flu he just shot him to end the scene and the big guy played along with it.

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

But to care about SF, it has to be about how it relates to human beings. In some sense we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who are experiencing the wonder. Otherwise it's dry and boring.

When I think about SF movies without good character, I think of Transformers. Style over substance.

Contact on the other hand had a great central character that let you feel the wonder of what she was experiencing through her eyes. That's vital.

>> ^gorillaman:

>> ^dag:
Hmmm. Examples? I guess Dave Bowman was pretty flat, but HAL as a character definitely wasn't. Deckard in Bladerunner was not flat, very tortured nuanced performance by Harrison Ford. I think I'd have to disagree with you gorillaman. The best SF, like all stories, is character driven.
Well there's Rama, where Clarke correctly focuses on the ship. I feel like people who complain about the humans' characterisation just aren't reading the book right. I read Schild's Ladder recently - the characters have intellectual disagreements but not much else, to the point of lacking differentiated sexes, and it still paints a compelling portrait of future civilisation. I hesitate to mention Ayn Rand's Anthem, but she understood if you detail your protagonist too explicitly then you lose your universality of meaning.
It's not often an author can write SF in its purest form and still get published, so it's easier to find examples where too much emphasis on the human elements detracts from the work. Like Asimov's Foundation, one of my favorites. The characters in that book are downright intrusive on what's otherwise an exploration of events on a galactic scale. After the reader gets his introduction to the wonderful concept of psychohistory, the characters start to drive the plot and everything falls apart. The rest of the book and the subsequent books in the series become just Some Stuff That Happens. Well stuff happens every day, I don't need to read about stuff. Just like Rama's sequels, no good can come from watering down high literature with narratological cliches.
Good SF communicates to the reader a single idea as clearly and elegantly as possible then ends. Characterisation, even plot, are distractions.
It's an educational experience. How would you feel if your maths textbook gave the number two a quirky personality, and the equals sign a terrible secret to hide? That's fine if you just want to be entertained, but not if you want to learn something. I use SF as a kind of zen meditation, projecting my consciousness into a construction of a future I won't visit in person, in order to become enlightened.

>> ^dag:
Hmmm. Examples? I guess Dave Bowman was pretty flat, but HAL as a character definitely wasn't. Deckard in Bladerunner was not flat, very tortured nuanced performance by Harrison Ford. I think I'd have to disagree with you gorillaman. The best SF, like all stories, is character driven.

Well there's Rama, where Clarke correctly focuses on the ship. I feel like people who complain about the humans' characterisation just aren't reading the book right. I read Schild's Ladder recently - the characters have intellectual disagreements but not much else, to the point of lacking differentiated sexes, and it still paints a compelling portrait of future civilisation. I hesitate to mention Ayn Rand's Anthem, but she understood if you detail your protagonist too explicitly then you lose your universality of meaning.

It's not often an author can write SF in its purest form and still get published, so it's easier to find examples where too much emphasis on the human elements detracts from the work. Like Asimov's Foundation, one of my favorites. The characters in that book are downright intrusive on what's otherwise an exploration of events on a galactic scale. After the reader gets his introduction to the wonderful concept of psychohistory, the characters start to drive the plot and everything falls apart. The rest of the book and the subsequent books in the series become just Some Stuff That Happens. Well stuff happens every day, I don't need to read about stuff. Just like Rama's sequels, no good can come from watering down high literature with narratological cliches.

Good SF communicates to the reader a single idea as clearly and elegantly as possible then ends. Characterisation, even plot, are distractions.

It's an educational experience. How would you feel if your maths textbook gave the number two a quirky personality, and the equals sign a terrible secret to hide? That's fine if you just want to be entertained, but not if you want to learn something. I use SF as a kind of zen meditation, projecting my consciousness into a construction of a future I won't visit in person, in order to become enlightened.

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

Hmmm. Examples? I guess Dave Bowman was pretty flat, but HAL as a character definitely wasn't. Deckard in Bladerunner was not flat, very tortured nuanced performance by Harrison Ford. I think I'd have to disagree with you gorillaman. The best SF, like all stories, is character driven.

>> ^gorillaman:

Can't help butting in on this conversation.
The best SF has absolutely flat, generic characters. Because they're not the point of the story. Why does everything have to be a soap opera?

Thanks!

In reply to this comment by Sarzy:
*quality

Your video, Harrison Ford Settles a Feud (with Chewbacca), has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Also, it's important to check out the Youtube comments and the video uploader's description. If you did that, you'd know his non-dying performances outweigh his dying performances. Someone did all that work and now you don't need to: http://www.compleatseanbean.com/deathbycow.html

HE DIES IN:
Airborne - bye bye Toombs
Caravaggio - Rannuccio gets his throat slashed
Clarissa - Lovelace is skewered by Sean Pertwee
Don't Say a Word - Patrick Koster is buried alive
Equilibrium - Death by Poetry - Partridge is blasted away by Christian Bale while reading Yeats
Essex Boys - Jason Locke meets a nasty end in a Range Rover
Far North - Loki is frozen. Naked. In the snow. A chilling end if there ever was one.
The Field - the infamous Death by Cow - Tadgh falls over a cliff, pursued by a herd of stampeding cows
GoldenEye - Alec Trevelyan falls a long way down and is crushed by a satellite dish thing
Henry VIII - Robert Aske meets a gruesome end
The Island - Death by Clone. Merrick is shot in the throat by a nasty grabber thingy with a sharp
hook and a cable that gets wrapped around his neck, and while he's struggling with Lincoln
Six-Echo, the catwalk they're on collapses, and Merrick ends up dangling by the neck. Currently
the most creative dispatch of Sean's career. Definitely well hung.
The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King) - Death
by Orc. Boromir. Arrows. Need I say more?
Lorna Doone - Carver Doone drowns
Outlaw - Dead Dead Dead. Was there ever any question? Dead.
Patriot Games - Sean Miller is beaten up, boathooked and finally blown up by Harrison Ford
Scarlett - Lord Fenton is dispatched
Tell Me That You Love Me - Gabriel Lewis is stabbed by Laura. Or he stabs himself. We're not
quite sure about this one, actually.
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion - Death by summoning a god's avatar. Martin Septim (the son of the Emperor, aka The Lost Heir) meets his X-Box end when he attempts to save the world.
The Hitcher - Surely you jest. You need to ask? (There were two different versions filmed. He dies
in both of them.)
War Requiem - The German Soldier dies, but returns in the afterlife


HE LIVES IN:
(Leo Tolstoy's) Anna Karenina
A Woman's Guide to Adultery
The Big Empty
The Bill
Black Beauty
Bravo Two Zero
Exploits at West Poley
Extremely Dangerous
Faceless
The Fifteen Streets
Flightplan
Fool's Gold
How to Get Ahead in Advertising
In the Border Country
Inspector Morse: Absolute Conviction
Jacob
Lady Chatterley
The Loser
My Kingdom for a Horse
National Treasure (But only because of a rewrite. In an early version
of the the script Ian Howe got eaten by alligators in the subways of
New York. Really. Honest. I wouldn't lie to you. I wouldn't.)
North Country
Percy Jackson (Zeus is more or less an immortal so death seems a bit
redundant, really...)
The Practice
Pride
Prince
Punters
Ronin
Samson & Delilah
Sharpe (14 films)
Sharpe's Challenge
Shopping
Silent Hill
Small Zones
Stormy Monday
Tom & Thomas
Troubles
The Canterbury Tales - The Nun's Priest's Tale
The Dark
The True Bride
The Vicar of Dibley
Troy
Wedded
When Saturday Comes
Windprints
Winter Flight

Major Theatrical Performances:
Macbeth ... Yes. He dies. And gets his head impaled on a spike.
Romeo & Juliet... What do you think?
Fair Maid of the West ... Spencer doesn't die!

So says YouTube.

>> ^nock:

Is this from The Great Escape?