When did this become a "challenge?" Are we curing Lou Gehrig's Disease or something?

Hair Cut with a Weedwacker Challenge? Nail Trimming with a Bench Grinder challenge? I can come up with more if we need to cure some more diseases.

Worst mistake I ever made was repainting my '51 Chevy. The patina was on the way to being perfect.
Now I take photos of every worn, vintage car I find so I can faux reproduce it on my '74 Karmann Ghia. There's nothing more beatiful than paint worn through to primer at the edges and the satin luster of old stainless trim.

No, I agree @newtboy, no one likes a mouth full of hair. I prefer to only floss twice a day!!

I have been with both women and men where there is so much of it you almost need a weed whacker to find the goods. I have heard women say they feel like a pre-pubescent girl when it is all gone. I prefer a happy medium, or as us ladies put it, shave the undercarriage and trim the hood. If I had any musical talent at all, I could write my own rebuttal song!

It is interesting that you brought up guys who manscape...I never thought about it making them look like pre-pubescent boys. Most gents I know who do say it makes the "package" look bigger. I think balls just look better without hair, but that is just my opinion, since I find them such a weird and intriguing part of the male anatomy.

The last word in pedicures...or scream.

...how many ways is this a real bad, very bad, idea?

Oh well, a new way trim the verge.

"Automatically ok"? Not necessarily. But in cases where it makes sense, at a stretch even "plot sense" for the character to be there; yeah, I think that is OK.

The Last Samurai isn't a documentary. But, the general historical justification for Tom Cruise's character being in Japan is pretty much valid. Meiji was interested in the West -- clothes, technology, weapons, and military. He actually did hire Westerners to train his army, although from what I read it sounds like they were German, French, and Italian rather than American. Still, the movie portrays the general situation/setting with at least *decent* broad-strokes historical accuracy. LOADS of movies deviate from even this degree of historical accuracy *way* more without drawing complaints; particularly if their main purpose is entertainment and not education / documentary.


Your hypothetical reverse movie makes some valid criticisms. Even though it would have been historically possible for a Westerner to be in Japan at the time -- even to be involved with training a Western-style military -- it would be unlikely for such a person to get captured, run into a Shogun that speaks English, become a badass (or at least passable) samurai warrior, and end up playing a major role in politics and significantly influencing Emperor Meiji.

My defense against those criticisms is that, for me at least, the movie is entertaining; which is kinda the point. Your "Union Samurai" movie might be equally entertaining and therefore given an equal pass on historical inaccuracies by me.

The whole characters as a "lens through which the audience can appreciate a culture/history outside their own" issue is (slightly) more weighty to me. I don't think those are often necessary, but I don't feel like my intelligence is being insulted if the movie maker feels that they are in order to sell tickets.

I love the Chinese historical novel "Three Kingdoms". A few years ago, John Wu made the movie "Red Cliff", mostly about one particular battle in the historical period portrayed in that book. For the Chinese audience, Wu made the movie in two parts, summed up about four and a half hours long. For the US / West, he made a version trimmed to just over two hours. Why? Because he (and a team of market researchers, I'm sure) knew that very few Westerners would go to see a 4+ hour long movie, entirely in Mandarin Chinese (with subtitles), about a piece of Chinese history from ~1800 years ago that very few in the West have ever heard of or know anything about.

I think the full 4+ hour long movie is great. In my personal top 10 favorite movies of all time, ahead of most Hollywood stuff. But I also understand that there's no way that movie would appeal to all but a tiny, tiny fraction of Western viewers in that full-on 4+ hour format. But, even though I personally think the cut-down 2 hour "US" version is drastically inferior to the full cut, I am glad that he made it because it gives a suitably accurate introduction to the subject matter to more people in the West (just like the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Dynasty Warriors" videogames do), and makes that tiny, tiny fraction of Western people that know anything about it a little less tiny. While being entertaining along the way.

For other movies, sometimes the best way that a filmmaker can sell a movie to an audience that otherwise might not accept it (at least in large enough numbers to justify the production costs) may be to insert one of these "lens" characters for the audience to identify with. I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with that. It might not work for movies that are taking a more hardline approach to historical / contextual accuracy (ie., if Tom Cruise showed up in "Red Cliff" in circa 200AD China), but outside of those situations, if that is what the studio thinks it will take to sell tickets... Cool.

The Last Samurai is, like @ChaosEngine said, a movie primarily about an outsider learning a new culture (and accepting his own past). He serves as that lens character, but actually the hows and whys of his character arc are the main points of interest in the movie, at least to me.

I'm sure that an awesome, historically accurate movie could be made dealing with young Emperor Meiji, Takamori (who Katsumoto seems to be based on in The Last Samurai), and the influence of modernization on Japanese culture at the time. It could be made with no Western "lens" character, no overt influence by any particular individual Westerner, and be entirely in Japanese. But that movie wouldn't be The Last Samurai, wouldn't be attempting to serve the same purpose as The Last Samurai, and very likely wouldn't sell as many tickets (in the US) as The Last Samurai (starring Tom Cruise!) did. That wouldn't make it a worse movie, just an apple instead of an orange.

pretty well constructed.
I like the trimming the paper bit.

Thank goodness you trimmed the bushes around your house

I went down to a number 1 razor beard trim once so my wife could see what it did to the shape of my face (basically stubble).

The words "Never again" and "Holy shit" came out more than a few times.

I keep my beard on because it softens my face, without it I look a bit younger, but my chin leaves me looking kinda harsh (my neutral expression goes from "bored" to "angry" imo).

Plus...

http://videosift.com/video/If-your-dad-doesn-t-have-a-beard-you-ve-got-two-mums

Good eye you got, I must of seen what I wanted to.

http://a248.e.akamai.net/pix.crutchfield.com/ImageHandler/trim/1400/900/products/2001/575/x575800A2.jpeg

- is the amp's I was thinking of, I recall you could take the end caps off and joint amp's together for a cosmetic appeal. Although, I might be wrong on that as well ( without reading about it ) because all the wires and setting controls are on the sides.

Thank's for bringing that up, it must be some sort of grill off of a vehicle or so.

watched it again, it is totally the front end of a vehicle, from the side shot you can see it clear as day, not to mention the head light area. Glad I have that figured out now thanks !

I've been thinking about growing tree-chairs when I finally get settled in my own house, except I don't want to grow them and then cut them off the stump; I want to plant 4 saplings in the exact location the chair will always exist, form them into a bench or chair using the same techniques seen here, and then unbind them and let them continue to grow there permanently.

They may need a little trimming to keep the surfaces smooth (or maybe not if they're sat-in enough), but I like this idea more than growing a chair and then chopping it off to stick it in the dining room.

It's kind of sad that the homeless in America can't even live in a shanty town, or under a bridge (they put spikes under bridges). I'd much rather my taxes went to putting a roof over their heads then say the f-35 or the new stealth bomber. Maybe they could live on the Koch Brothers yacht... you know the one trimmed with dinosaur bones.

That music.. and all the "uh.. like.. eh, yeah.. we were like.. uhm.."

The most boring account of a dangerous situation. Evar.

"And then like.. my dad like.. said I wouldn't be like.. trimming the uh.. sails like uhm.. on his yacht.. uhm.. this summer."

It's too bad they make him work like that without allowing him to trim his fingernails.

Trim the entire movie from existence.

Interesting, but doesn't add much to the scene, can see why it was trimmed.