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Just in terms of my favorite that are masterpieces, GRAVEYARD OF THE FIREFLIES is mindblowing. We did a podcast recently with a curated list of great animated films that don't show up on most "best" lists for whatever reasons, and GRAVEYARD OF THE FIREFLIES is bizarrely excluded from most of the lists we could find despite it being among the best ever made. I love this film, and IMO if you've never seen it then it should be among the top must-see movies on your viewing list.
^This reply works for almost anything someone says that starts with, "Those glasses make you look ___" (even if they say the glasses "make you look smart," if it's someone you want to mess with).
I will forever love the reply, "How bad do you want to know?" as delivered by Raul Julia in the movie THE MORNING AFTER...
Shellfish allergy is not caused by iodine, it is caused by an enzyme in shell-producing animals (including insects, and even brine shrimp in tide pools) that in turn can produce an allergic reaction if you touch and/or eat them.
Stomach ulcers are caused by a bacteria, a fairly recent medical discovery that upended decades of medical assumptions that it's primarily caused by stomach acids or stress etc.
Both of these things are surprisingly still not as well known as you'd expect within medical communities, even experts in particularly relevant fields, because there's so much literature and research that comes out every month and year.
I can imagine a version that ends with Red on the bus as it drives down the street into the distance with him looking out the window saying "I hope." But I do think there is something inevitable about the promise of that final scene of them on the beach, and it elevates things with a nice cherry on top at the end.
I get why everybody disagrees with me about the narration, too, it's like watching Birdman or Oppenheimer and being fully aware of precisely all the reasons everybody likes it and realizing I'm a clear outlier and that I'm probably ultimately artistically wrong haha! That entire end sequence from the moment it's revealed Andy escaped is great with the voiceover, and some of the earlier parts when Red does character introductions or his narration serves as a bridge to transition eras of the story. I just think too often it's stepping on really amazing scenes that play better without it. But Freeman's delivery is so mesmerizing and engaging I think it just tends to make anything work. I've watched it a bazillion times because whatever complaints I have it's just so entertaining and well made.
I'm gonna catch so much shit for this, but...
I think the voiceover narration in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION is not only unnecessary but also detracts from the film. It's mostly just describing and explaining what we're already seeing on screen, or trying to explain away a possible problem.
[SPOILERS AHEAD!]
There are two glaring examples I point to that I feel demonstrate my point. The first is when Andy plays the opera song over the sound system at the prison. The narration steps all over that moment, not only serving as unnecessary exposition but literally talking over the beauty of that music and those images of the prisoners reacting, of Andy staring at the threatening Warden as he smirks and turns the volume up. The very concept of the moment, that the music transcended language and represented pure emotion and freedom, that they didn't understand the words because this moment was beyond words... gets voiceover narration to explain that this is a moment beyond words? :(
The second is when Andy is being taken to his cell night he escapes, and has swapped his prison shoes for the Warden's shoes. The narration asks us how often do we ever look at another man's shoes, but the answer is probably... usually? Especially if they're something out of the ordinary or incongruent with the rest of someone's attire? The line is there precisely because they know we're likely to think, "Hey, why didn't the guards notice he was wearing expensive shined black shoes?" He should've just put brown polish on them and made it sloppy, tossed some dust on them, and that's that. I always think it would've been funny to see an SNL skit of this scene but the Warden is a woman and Andy is trying to nonchalantly hobble back to his cell wearing high heels.
Morgan Freeman's voice is so great, I get why folks just love to hear him talk even if he's just reading them a parking ticket, but I don't think his narration serves the film the way narration should when it's used. If they'd introduced the idea that Red kept notes in his journal and occasionally we'd hear voiceover of him writing an entry in it about some particular moment, used sparingly, would've worked fine. But however much I like that film and recognize it's great, and I agree with almost every reason folks say it's great, I will forever feel the narration is unnecessary and distracting.
With $1 million you can buy a great house in somewhere like Metro Detroit with nice homes at shockingly affordable prices, and still have $800,000-900,000 in the bank afterward, I swear to god. So you could get a great house, buy a really great car, and *still* have at least $750-850,000 left over to generate you a healthy $85-150,000 per year in interest, to which you could work the part-time job at a weed store to add another $10,000 for that 2-week vacation you take every year (plus hey a nice discount on weed if that's your thing).
Who would say owning a nice big house and a great new car while earning in the neighborhood of six figures per year and having a big expensive 2-week vacation every year isn't "life-changing?" A lot of this is just stuff that comes from having experience and knowing what to look for, where to look (and not to look), and so on. But this is a doable lifestyle on that budget for sure, so if someone offers you $1 million, my hot take is "take it!"
This is a great point re: inflation, folks should remember the main high inflation rates are in car prices, car insurance, health care, restaurant prices, and rent/housing. I mean, that's "home, food, health, travel" in one sense but it also means folks who walk & bike & use public transit, who eat mostly at home, and who have a job that provides some of their health car feel much less of the inflation, and people tend to adjust their lifestyles during times when this or that aspect of their lives is more costly. For younger folks this inflation sucks especially hard since trying to pay rent when you're starting out is a huge issue all by itself, too. So I don't mean to minimize the impact for those who are hurting from it, I just mean inflation is high right now but it's really centered in certain key areas where there *is* some room to maneuver, and where in the context of this discussion the inflation issue is less relevant.
Yes, you are correct that $1 million is a lot of money, and is also life-changing. Consider that if you put $1 million into the S&P 500 you'd make anywhere from $100-200,000 per year just off the interest, in some recent years as much as about $250,000 in fact.
So, is $100-200,000 per year income a decent amount of money? Would adding that amount to the rest of your income change your life? Of course it would, for the vast majority of us, even those who have a good household income already. You'd have to make almost *half-a-million salary* per year ALREADY before it's less than doubling your income, which any reasonable person would have to consider life-changing at the very least. And $500,000 per year is the amount only 1.8% of the U.S. population tops, for perspective.
With $1 million you could save hundreds if not thousands of children's lives by donating it to the What If? Foundation or Doctors Without Borders or other such organizations. And anyone telling you THAT isn't life-changing needs to have their head examined.
Likewise, with $1 million you could make a low-budget 90 minute horror film -- if it's $500,000 budget, then you can spend the other $500,000 renting about 5 movie theater screens in every state in the USA , and screen your movie for a week on each of those 5 theater screens, in every single state. That's just doing it straight out of pocket at market rates, so you could obviously do better with a distribution deal etc but just straight up making a movie and distributing it nationwide would be pretty amazing and life-changing..
Or make a low-budget animated miniseries/1st season of a show. Or take an incredible dream vacation. If you are simply going to spend all of it instead of investing or anything at all, you could just take a $10,000 week-long vacation every year for the next 100 years.
Now imagine if you just work a part-time job at a weed store, maybe 20 hours per week, in a state where minimum wage is at least $10/hr. You'd make $10,000 per year that way, in addition to what you could make with that money in the bank earning you $100-200,000 interest every year and you're adding the $10,000 back each year that you spend on taking a fabulous $10,000 one-week vacation.
That's all just if you don't even bother investing in Netflix and AMD stock where over the long haul you'll make a shitload more money hahaha -- not stock advice, I'm not an expert or anything blah blah just a joke about stock that's kind of overtly an easy call. The point is, with very little work (using an AI that tracks real-time news and investment data and stock market info for example) you can set up investments that earn you $250,000 consistently, if not much more, so you'd be able to essentially do whatever you want at that point.
People say $1 million isn't life changing because most folks know they'd lose it all or waste it all and feel foolish later, so I think they tend to diminish the value of it to mitigate their sense of awareness of that truth. Pure dime-store psychology, obviously.
It's hard for younger folks to grasp how different it was to go to the airport prior to 9/11 compared to afterward, that security was waaaaay less serious back then. And people didn't call the cops over seeing a plastic shopping bag at a bus stop.
I watched the coverage live all morning and at one point the rumors being reported live on the air included that a car bomb had exploded, and that there was a fire on the National Mall possibly from an explosion. The appearance of a whole ongoing coordinated attack by air and on the ground around the Capitol and New York went on for maybe an hour or so at one point, all sorts of claims on the air on the live news coverage.
I HATE THE GIANT ARROWS POINTING AT RANDOM THINGS IN THUMBNAILS. It's the worst.
When George Bush Sr. ran for president in 1980, one of his biggest backers was a Texas oilman who'd known and supported Bush for a long time. Bush was former CIA director (and previously had ties to the CIA before becoming director, despite false public claims he was an "outsider"), including during Congressional hearings on the infamous MKUltra CIA program that used various techniques including brainwashing to try to create assassins, among other things.
Anyway, he and the Texas oilman's families had ties and the businessman supported Bush for president. But of course, Reagan won the nomination instead, with Bush as VP. So Reagan and Bush moved into the White House, and meanwhile Bush's family remained friends with the oilman and his family, including Bush's sons and the oilman's sons hanging out together and having a meeting right around the time one of the oilman's sons -- named John Hinckley Jr. -- decide to get a gun and shoot President Reagan.
Yes, the oilman was Hinckley's father, the Bushes had strong ties to the Hinckley family, and in a side coincidence John Hinckley Jr. had ties to World Vision, which is partly funded by the CIA-connected USAID, and which is also where Mark David Chapman worked before he assassinated John Lennon three months before Hinckley shot President Reagan.
It's also odd that Hinckley wrote notes while incarcerated and those notes were taken from his cell and never made public -- along with other documents that remain unreleased by the FBI -- and included written claims that he was part of a conspiracy to kill Reagan.
Now, it's important to remember that Hinckley had a history of erratic behavior and mental health issues that seem to have manifested in his late-teens and grew worse over the next several years, and his long history of stalking Jodie Foster and making multiple plans to commit murders -- he initially targeted President Carter but was actually stopped and caught with weapons and handcuffs, so his plans to kill Carter fell through and he wound up targeting Reagan instead. But it's also true that MKUltra and related CIA programs often intentionally used vulnerable people, including mentally ill and emotionally disturbed young people, in their tests and efforts.
So there's plenty of general evidence that Hinckley was just a mentally ill man who got a crazy idea and tried to commit murder(s).
But it's also undeniable that there are some pretty crazy coincidences and connections. And the Bush family not only tried to dodge questions and initially deny knowing anything about it, they literally fabricated a story to lie and claim the two families only had recent vague connection through someone else at a party, so their reactions and lies coupled with the actual ties between the families, between Bush & the CIA during a particularly relevant period, and other elements like the feds' refusal to release all of the info and the mysterious loss of Hinckley's jailhouse notes and the proximity to previous assassin Chapman still raise a lot of eyebrows.
Well, ACTUALLY it does NOT raise eyebrows in the mainstream press, though... Because there was quickly a media blackout instituted on all of this info after a couple of days of questions, and to this day there's no satisfactory investigation of the links, no release of documents still hidden from the public, and no media willing to report on any of this.
So yeah, a rich father who supported a former CIA director for president had a son who, when the former CIA director lost the presidential nomination to a guy the rich father disliked, the rich guy's son tried to murder the guy his father didn't like, which would've made the father's friend and former CIA director rise to president.
You aren't required to stay silent and let men -- your dad or anyone else -- touch you or hit you etc for any reason in any context if you don't want them to, period. The fact he's acting like a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum is because he expects you to give in and put HIS feelings ahead of YOUR OWN, that even if you don't like something physical you should endure it anyway and not complain because HE wants to do it, and I'm sorry but that's a HORRIBLE SHITTY attitude to have in general but it's ESPECIALLY shitty for a father toward his own child. And he's manipulating you AND taking out his infantalized shitty behavior on another child too, which is beyond excessive.
His behavior is bad enough I highly recommend you show him this thread & that other adult men are telling him to stop being a dick, stop being a shitty selfish adult who takes out his childish behavior on his daughters because one of them told him not to slap her on the butt.
And I'm very sorry to have to tell you this, but however "innocent" it may seem, he's your dad & you're 17 yrs old and if he's getting mad because he can't slap your butt anymore that's a BIG red flag about his sense of entitlement toward you and your body, maybe not sexual but STILL reflects a very common and unhealthy attitude in men, especially men with kids. The very fact he got ANGRY at you and is STILL holding a grudge only makes it look even WORSE, so if he wants to stop projecting the impression of a dad trying to get his daughter to let him touch her butt, he better grow up or a LOT of folks are going to get increasingly suspicious of him.
TELL HIM THIS. SHOW HIM THIS THREAD. If he's a decent guy and wants to be a good dad, he'll be horrified that his behavior has been so bad and is creating an increasingly bad reputation for him, and he'll apologize and straighten up. If not, then you know he's a very different man and father than you thought he was or he claimed to be. To the dad -- STOP SLAPPING YOUR DAUGHTER'S BUTT AND THEN STOP ACTING LIKE A RESENTFUL SCHOOLBOY WHEN SHE TELLS YOU SHE DOESN'T LIKE IT. You're a father, so ACT LIKE IT.
^Sorry that's so long, I'm higher than Jesus right now.
Quick info so you know where my thoughts are coming from: I've been with my wife for 24 years, we both had dated plenty etc, we have a great marriage and happy life together, we own our house, no kids, one dog.
You didn't KNOW she was asexual before marriage, SHE didn't know either, you both WANT to stay married, you don't WANT to cheat or do anything that hurts her, and you've remained married despite the surprise and the frustrations and emotional + physical pain it's causing.
Which is why I think everyone saying "get a divorce" is wrong here.
Imagine if you were married to someone who got paralyzed after marriage, would it be reasonable for people to suggest divorce if you weren't able to have sex and if she was emotionally unable to honestly agree to you having sex outside of marriage (at least under the conditions everyone's discussed so far -- more on that momentarily)? Surely not.
There are all sorts of things people get married without knowing, without EITHER of them knowing or not expecting, or things that one/both think are something else or can be dealt with later because they love one another. And people can change over time, too -- the person we are at 20 or 25 isn't who we are at 35 or 45, and those changes sometimes require a great deal of compromise and understanding to work through -- and love is what makes it worth it, and makes it work.
So if this is a loving relationship -- and it sounds like it is, despite this particular issue -- and both of you want to make it work and are otherwise happy aside from the issue of sex (which is important, because it's also about physical intimacy and affection that deepens trust and causes all kinds of chemical and emotional reactions etc that contribute to happiness and bonding), then there are good options to pursue.
First and foremost, I know it's easy to say and even easier to nod your head and ignore, but therapy for couples is a great idea even for marriages that don't have significant problems. You can learn to communicate better, to understand not just the other person but also yourself even better, and to get perspective and objective informed insights and suggestions. It can help have a better relationship with yourself as well as your partner. And this is an environment where people can feel safer speaking more openly and bluntly together, to work through topics or thoughts they are otherwise afraid to voice at home perhaps.
Second, your wife's primary concern about you having sex outside of marriage is that it will lead to you having an *emotional* relationship as well as a sexual one. Which, for the record, indicates (assuming things are otherwise as good as you say they are) she wants to stay married and loves you and is afraid this is going to cause her to lose you. She is probably stressed and fearful about this, even if she's not telling you, and probably already questions herself about it. But also, it doesn't mean she's cruel or selfish to want you to not cheat -- it's not about her saying "don't have sex," she saying "I wish you could be sexually happy but I'm scared the answer will mean you stop loving me." That's very different, and there are answers.
If saw a different escort each time, there's no real chance of it turning into anything besides what it is -- sex (but obviously your wife's concern is as much conceptual as literal, it's about the idea of you having a potential emotional connection with the escort since your wife knows this whole situation is bound up in the fact you are tying the sex part to the emotional part with HER and so she probably subconsciously perceives that more broadly as part of feeling bad about the situation on your behalf too).
The escort can be asked to dress similar to your wife and could have the same hair color or wear a wig (you can even buy the clothing and wig to have on hand each time you hire an escort). Have a romantic day with your wife, go out and have fun, laugh, play, eat, then come home and snuggle and watch a movie etc, THEN she can go upstairs to "get ready" and sneak off to read a book or something she wants to do, and the escort goes to the bedroom (she's presumably arrive at a designated time -- depending on how much you want to deep-dive into this, you can go to the bedroom and your wife can let the escort into the house and give her the clothes etc to get dressed up). Afterward, the escort leaves the room and you wait long enough for her to leave, then you join your wife and you both shower one another in affection.
If you do therapy first, talk this through with your wife and plan it out, then you could do this occasionally and both feel like it enhances your marriage -- the weight lifted off you and her (because again, she likely already feels bad about this, too), the effort to increase your affectionate behavior, and yes the pleasure of finally being able to have guilt-free sex that is coded as "with your wife," and which she can perceive as essentially you carrying out your desire to be with HER.
There are lots of details to work out, and again this might be easier to bring up and talk about openly and work through the feelings in therapy. There's even lots of free counseling you can find online for shorter-term, and if you have health insurance it usually will pay for some or all therapy.
The most important thing is that you both want to SOLVE THIS. You both want stay married, you both love each other, you both want to avoid hurting one another, and you both want to find a solution to this that makes you both happy. If that's all true, there's no reason you can't succeed.
Divorce is not a dirty word, and plenty of people wind up in unhappy marriages or in relationships that simply don't work and where trying to force it to work just causes more harm to one or both people. But it's also true that relationships take work and commitment, and commitment and loyalty are meaningless concepts if we're only committed and loyal when it's easy to be. Not that we should stay in bad relationships, but we also should be careful of walking away from good relationships that simply need the people involved to do the work to make it better.
Good luck to you both, I hope you find answers that allow you both to be happy.
If there is data and points in the article that you disagree with and can refute, or which Variety's article has data and comparisons refutes, please do post it -- you can even post it to the article itself, comments are allowed on the article. I point out the numbers and box office, I note what's historically been happening and why it's contrary to the claims in the Variety article, I point out the fluctuations in how the MCU built up to its biggest blockbuster years, and I point out data and facts that pretty easily and clearly explain the situation with Marvel's box office today. Anyone who disagrees is very welcome to post their refutations of the points I made, or offer data proving Variety's claims. But so far, I see nothing but people saying "well that's just your opinion" and then restating personal grudges or resentments or opinions about the movies themselves etc, not really addressing my article's point that Marvel's decline in box office & popularity is real but simply a small downturn as opposed to a disaster, and that the claims of chaos behind the scenes are exaggerating smaller issues, and all of it is relatively easy to overcome since it's happened before -- and I don't see how people think this is some crazy or controversial claim, or why they try to argue against it without addressing any of the points supporting my position that Variety and other media are overstating things, largely because clickbait sells better and lately there's not enough readership because there's not enough catchy news, and because of access journalism resulting in writers letting other studio folks trash-talk each other in articles & running it as inside sourcing. Fans seem eager to recognize and admit these facts a/b the trades when an article upsets them by contradicting what they like/want, then pretend not to believe it when it's convenient to trust or parrot the trades. Y'all need to stop letting these outlets abuse fandom like this, they know the cycles and take full advantage of it -- they poke fans on both sides of any issue, because fans will share and spread the articles to argue about it. But hey, fine, y'all can disbelieve me -- come back and talk to me next year about who was right, me or Variety.
No, not just "anyone" can write a Forbes article like it's a blank open space for randos to rant & make false claims, you're confusing Forbes with Reddit. Forbes pays freelancers to write, and they pay higher than any other outlet on a per-article basis (I make about five bonuses per month, on top of percentage of ad revenue and base pay). Since apparently it needs to be said every so often (b/c a lot of trolls who resent me for my opinions like to spread silly nonsense): I was hired by a VP editor at Forbes, my readership is in the millions, and I get invited regularly to the Oscars and Marvel premieres and DCEU sets during filming etc etc etc precisely because while some fanboys who don't understand freelance journalism might not know my name, luckily for me the people who actually *make the movies you watch* DO know my name. But that said, you're correct that this is an article expressing MY views, not Forbes' official views. But it's an article and a view that's *correct,* and that's why folks who resent Marvel or resent me tend to whine & trash-talk about anything else *except* addressing my actual points in the article. Access journalists at other outlets frequently run quotes and claims from their sources whom they owe favors and plant PR for them, or just act as stenographers who reprint whatever execs and publicists say to them, while relying consistently on clickbait & hyperbolic claims that frequently don't come to fruition. Yet certain fans flock to it and repeat it, and then forget the next time another clickbait headline arrives. And the same fans who feed that process will complain if anyone points out it's a bunch of b.s.
I made an A.I. program listen to 15,000 hours of this song and it pu-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-partied til it died.
Not sure if this was mentioned in a comment yet, I just saw this and wanted to add the extra note that the screenwriting team brought in at Connery's request to rewrite his lines and character for The Rock (they didn't get credit after WGA arbitration, but they did heavy rewrites and worked closely with Bay on the writing) also previously wrote...
NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, for which they were also uncredited stealth writers!
As someone who loves Snyder's "Watchmen" film & "BvS," and who is also a big fan of "V for Vendetta," I'm always stunned when someone professing to be a fan of Snyder's work disparages the work of another filmmaker in the same manner used by those who hate & attack Snyder's work.
It's especially disheartening when the hate's directed at someone like Gunn, who has a history of making boundaries-pushing films and whose work is among the most director-vision-driven of the MCU releases. I freely admit I love MCU movies as well as DCEU movies, but Gunn's movies in particular are terrific examples of unique outside-the-box approaches largely free of the otherwise common "crossover/tie-in" features of other MCU films.
Gunn's always had a more askew, irreverent perspective about comic book filmmaking, and while I'd not say his style and sensibilities are the same as Snyder's, they're definitely cut from the same sort of "challenge traditional assumptions" storytelling cloth in a lot more ways than many people seem to realize.
Riddle me this -- how bad is your reading comprehension that you literally didn't see the hypothesis stated in the reddit post, and then further detailed with subtext discussions immediately after in my follow-up comment? My reddit posts lays it all out, in far more detail than the Twitter post. You're just whining to be a troll here, b/c you've nothing better to do. I'll just ignore you now, yell at a wall some more.
Have you seen the Red Book Edition version? If you love BF already, this is the definitive version. Schumacher told me personally it was probably the closest thing to his vision for the film. Schumacher actually watched it because (cough cough) someone who had a copy let him watch it.
It's got all of the deleted footage, restoring the actual arc for Bruce and the relevance of hid dad's diary, ties it to the first film and his killing of the Joker as a topic of perpetual regret that drove him to create his "no kill" rule, shows him semi-training with Dick, and other great stuff that makes it feel more aligned with Burton's tone and film. It also removes the neon and the worst campy moments, makes Two-Face much more reserved and scary, and in this form I think it's easily the best film of the original four-film trilogy.
Sometimes hard to find these days online, but FireMerk Studios might be of some help.
What's your "guilty pleasure" DC movie? Mine is ZSJL
DC_Cinematic