Post a controversial opinion

yea c'mon even a hail mary pass is plausible, i literally don't understand how golf works and how anyone that isn't tiger woods can get a hole in one

― flappy bird, Monday, October 15, 2018 7:08 PM (forty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a hole in one is the easiest aspect of golf to explain: it's luck. note also that it's usually not tiger woods making a hole in one, but players you otherwise don't hear about.

To be more precise, getting the ball within 2 or 3 feet of the hole is skill. It's the remaining distance for the hole-in-one that is luck.

Anyway, controversial opinions. If that Trump painting was a 1000 piece puzzle I would buy it (and the Obama one).

Flappy, like baseball, it's flush contact of club to ball that drives the distance. Each club has a certain shaft length & stiffness and clubface angle & weight to return a certain yardage. Aim is a combination of body / hand positions, timing, tempo, concentration, etc. I saw a cartoon years ago that showed a man surrounded by a hundred thoughts during his swing. My swing thoughts are just down to keeping my head still during the swing (which should keep me centered and not rearing up and down) and my left arm straight through impact.

The hole-in-one comes from luck, as said, combined with the skill of knowing which club to use for what yardage and hitting that club precisely. Once you can dial in a distance, you can factor for wind, the shape of the green, how the ball will roll when it lands, and other variables that separate the amateurs from the pros.

Sure there are wankers (the trend of soundtracking your round with a loud radio = DUD), but it's a surprising equalizer, playing in leagues with people of all manner of jobs and educations.

golf is wonderful.

Insofar as I am required by my cultural entourage to mock golf and/or be indifferent to it, I should rebel and give it a fair shake. But this is one of those cases where the Latin hivemind is manifestly correct.

Politicizing tragedies is good.

Spaceballs is funnier than Young Frankenstein

christ

sb

The Big Sleep, Chinatown, and Blade Runner are all dull and overwrought films known for a couple of striking moments and otherwise completely forgettable.

Chinatown in my memory: incomprehensible discussions of water usage in a palatial room--> "She's my daughter/my sister/my daughter and my sister"--> "Forget about it Jake it's Chinatown."
Blade Runner in my memory: It's dark all the time and looks kind of Tokyo-ish-->tears in rain monologue
Big Sleep in my memory: there's a bookstore and also a house and maybe some driving on windy roads and I may also have parts of Double Indemnity mixed in there

You have a bad memory.

Though I kinda agree The Big Sleep isn't that good.

I don't think I like noir much. I mean I can't say that across the board, Third Man is great for example. I think I like Coen Bros homages to noir more than actual noir.

Arty noir kinda sucks. Caveman noir like Detour or The Big Heat is great.

man alive half otm really. I haven't seen The Big Sleep but I was really underwhelmed by Blade Runner - other than the vibe being completely amazing and evocative of PKD's whole body of work, it's pretty boring, and the tears in the rain monologue does feel like a 'big' moment tagged at the end of a boring blur of a movie. tbf I'm not a fan of the Do Androids..., wouldn't make my top 15 PKD. I loved Blade Runner 2049 though.

Chinatown is one of my favorite movies but I just watched it again at home in September and saw it in a theater with a friend who'd never seen it last week. My rewatch at home was great because I hadn't seen it in a couple years, but the film is so plot driven and point a to point b that I was really flagging in the theater, and so was she. I realized how talky and slow it is in the theater, but it's totally gripped me when it's been fresh.

man alive's read on The Big Sleep is bizarre to me - say what you want abt those other two films but TBS really *moves*.... i actually can't remember any "moments" from it at all, the pleasures are in the script and delivery, scene by scene by scene.. admittedly bogart doing a "gay" rare book dealer is pretty bad and i wouldn't fault anyone saying it's a deal-breaker.

Blade Runner has the same feel to me as ambient music, I mean basically just a few things happens and it moves slow but it casts a spell; I think seeing the re-release a few years ago on the big screen was eye-opening for me, I was pretty mesmerized by it. Maybe it did more for me after years of seeing various versions on VHS and DVD.

I do think Blade Runner 2049 is outstanding, it revisits the first film without being a fan service disaster. Gosling is put to very good use, Harrison Ford is alive and committed to the role, Leto is...inoffensive.

Strangely I think the film it reminded me most of all was The Two Jakes, which as a sequel to Chinatown was a lot better and more ambitious than it had to be, and similarly did not revisit the first film in ways that were totally predictable. I don’t think it’s as good a sequel as BR2049 (which I was impressed enough by on first pass to consider the pair of films put together more Alien/Aliens than Jaws/Jaws 2) but it’s a very good SoCal period noir. Nicholson is a bit more “Jack” than Jake, but not in ways that really bugged me. Anyway, worth a look.

My favorite noirs these days are probably Kiss Me Deadly or Gun Crazy, if you can really call the latter a noir (which you maybe can’t.)

so what is it you want from a movie that The Big Sleep doesn't provide you with??

Omar thanks for the reminder & recommendation for The Two Jakes, which I've avoided for years. & apparently Van Dyke Parks did the score, amazing

I rewatched Chinatown recently, and it was better than I had remembered it, but I just enjoy 70s Jack Nicholson doing his thing. Will have to try Two Jakes.

Blade Runner has always been slightly too dull for me.

flappy solidly OTM re the Blade Runners and Chinatown

The films are not on trial here

all three of those movies are masterpieces

I like Blade Runner a lot but I think Blade Runner 2049 is even better

I saw BR2049 on a huge Imax screen and I haven't seen a movie that made better use of the Imax screen and sound system. It was an amazing experience.

hate for the original Blade Runner is especially disheartening to me. I still find it to be singularly immersive and transportive.

yep

it's a big mood as the kids say, one of my favorite movies to fall asleep to

omar otm about 2049 too

2049 ruled, much to my joy and amazement

Haha, I appreciate your commitment to good sleeping movies. My go-to is Fellowship of the Ring.

xp

Love Blade Runner, hated 2049. It was big for big's sake - the original BR was extremely intimate, despite the immersive worldbuilding. The sequel felt like a series of background paintings with nothing happening on them. The only part I liked was the early scene where Gosling fights Dave Bautista's farmer character.

The BBC Blade Runner making of doc >>> Blade Runner

The sequel felt like a series of background paintings with nothing happening on them.

this is what i liked about it, the epic desolation of it all. and it's not just mood, there are so many great moments: for sure the farmer scene, the hologram girlfriend glitching out in the rain, jared leto's yellowy watery lair, the ending on the stone beach or whatever... i will say i saw 2049 in a theater and that undoubtedly helped - i've only seen the original at home. will definitely check it out in a theater when i get a chance. btw, is there a consensus on what version of the original is the best? i watched 'The Final Cut,' the most recent version.

i know ppl find scott's insistence that deckard is a replicant insufferable but imo the final cut is still the best version available

i watched the theatrical cut last year and went in as open as i could possibly be toward the narration, but it's a huge obstacle

that unicorn shot may be from legion but i love it

does The Final Cut have added any added sfx? it looked suspiciously modified, but that could've just been the quality of the blu-ray vs. the few clips I'd seen of the movie in documentaries, on TV, etc. that were much more washed out and less pristine looking. sound design is still incredible and ahead of its time.

that unicorn shot may be from legion but i love it

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Monday, October 22, 2018 10:46 AM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

legend*

the final cut has pretty radically different color scheme from the previous prints but that's bc they worked hard on remastering it afaik

other than that idk

gotcha, that's what I thought. i'd really love to see a 35mm print of BR despite its issues.

the final cut on the big screen was something else, the colors (which seemed actually a bit muted in previous versions) really popped, especially the blues and neons. and that version actually has some reshoots involving Joanna Cassidy; i don't recall why they were there, but they were in the street chase scene iirc.

it was because Ridley thought the stunt double was too obvious

professional sports teams should all be seized through eminent domain by the municipalities they play in

Estranging oneself from one’s parents doesn’t seem like it should be as difficult as people make it out to be.

its not really unless yr aunts are involved ime

Xp it depends on the type of relationships you were raised with, how much emphasis was put on “family”, what kinds of things tie you to those relationships. Eg im still on mostly good terms with my parents but have divorced a quite a few other relatives who I think are assholes, including my big brother. It wasn’t hard for me bc there was never much stock placed in the concept of family when I was growing up. We didn’t do things as a family, we didn’t talk to each other about anything meaningful. There was no real closeness there.

I really feel for people who are in toxic relationships with family that they can’t readily extract themselves from, no matter how much better off they’d be.

Estranging oneself from one’s parents doesn’t seem like it should be as difficult as people make it out to be.

― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby)

i can't really parse this. it was difficult for me. the idea that it could, nonetheless "should", have been easier isn't something i can get my head around.

As Freud said: parent/child relationships are really simple.

It's sad but it's not difficult if there is a valid reason and you are unwilling to keep enabling that behaviour or giving a pass on it. I know a woman who can't estrange herself from her toxic, racist, Trump supporting parents because she needs the free childcare. Allyship for most people absolutely just means "whenever it's convenient."