Stop Blowing My Mind!

[RowdyRodimus]

Isn't The Expendables as much as a geek movie as Scott Pilgrim VS. The World?

Yes it is. Think about the fact that they advertised it as a film with Stone Cold Steve Austin and Randy Couture from WWE and UFC respectively, both considered to be geek pasttimes in their own right.

What people don't get is that the term "geek" has a broad spectrum that it emcompasses. While I might love comics from Marvel and DC, I don't give two shits about the indie books from Oni Press (Scott Pilgrim comes to mind). So while I will run out and see Spider-Man, Iron Man and Batman I'm not going to go out and see Scott Pilgrim because it doesn't appeal to me.

You can be a geek and love Devo or be a geek and love KISS and hate Devo. You can be a geek and vote Democrat or be a geek and vote Republican. Everyone has some geek tendencies, not matter how "anti-geek" they seem. The frat boys that hate RPGs for all the geeky number crunching does all that geeky number crunching every Sunday night when they figure their Fantasy League standings.

tldr; the geekiness of media will never end because every form of media is a geeky pasttime for someone.

 

[Luke Cartner]

Possibly the real point to this is movie makers should diversify there focus. Rather than have the entire industry focus with laser like intensity on one sub-genre before exhausting appetite for it and moving on much like with tv, books and music a broader spread is needed.

After all geeks and nerds are the intellectuals of the world (for now atleast). Rarity if nothing else will ensure we are never truly mainstream. Therefore focusing all your available budget to make media just for us will never have the return on investment movie producers desire that a more diverse approach would.

 

[DayDark]

Oh dear. Leftism, hooo!

Our most influential non-elected political figure? Al Gore.

He was. Then the Climate Research Unit scandal happened, showing that the premise for man-made global warming is pure bunk. They fabricated their research and then destroyed it so that no one would be able to tell what they did.

It didn't disprove anything, they were not talking about a decline in temperature, but I'm guessing you don't even know what I'm talking about, because you just took it at face value and ran with it.

Man made global warming is pretty much accepted as being true in the scientific community.

 

[370999]

You have great faith in the movie going public I must say! Well, of course many an acute mind visits the cinema from time to time but when you take into account the mass of cretins who also go the average is brought down a fair amount. I certainly can't produce an official tally of their intelligence so my only source would be that I worked in a cinema for a year and I love going to the cinema myself! Sturgeon's law must also come into the equation I'm sure you'll agree.

We are going with the second one right? The everything being crap?

The opoint is that unlike say, opera, films and cinema going are universal in appeal and don't especially appeal to braniacs or Johny idiot. Particular films might but as a whole I don't think you can say so.

Memory does of course play funny tricks on us, I still am amazed at how rude some people were when I worked in the service industry.

Apologies, when you mentioned these people referred to Iron Man as 'fast food cinema' I got the impression they thought it was beneath them, which certainly seems pretentious. When a film so universally loved is disliked by an individual they tend to be only saying this to make you think they know something you don't. Of course if they just didn't like it then that's fair enough, albeit a shame. The Expendables was a terribly made movie regardless of who liked it. To use a musical analogy... U2 the band. Suppose I hated them. It matters not, they make good music whether I like it or otherwise!

It was my fault for the wording.

We come into a tricky subject here though, how do we view something as good or bad? This is a seperate (though related) issuse to what we like. An example for me is the film "Laurence of Arabia" is a great film IMHO, but I'm not sure how much I would like it, I could only watch it once and I admired the filmmaking but didn't warm to it.

"Date Movie" is IMHO a horrible unfunny film but I'm sure someone would argue that it was a cinematic triumph (though they might happen to be the directors). My problem is how do I prove the primacy of my opinion over there's? I don't think I can so ultimately my opinion is limited to myself, rather obviously actually but so was the wheel.

I guess it varies from school to school and town to town. Such labels were once based on individual groups. The existence of these labels led to people augmenting their appearance, musical taste, personalities and even cigarette brands to better suit the 'requirements' of the group they wish to assimilate into. Metalheads will grow their hair to become 'more metal'. Emos will all of a sudden start reading Twilight novels and collecting Tim Burton crap all in the hopes of appearing 'more emo'. Accordingly self-proclaimed 'indieheads' will wear vintage tees, skinny fit jeans, all of a sudden turn vegan and watch 'quirky' films. That is why Juno was 'so cool' and had a Kimya Dawson soundtrack. That is why Nick & Norah was soaked in Indie essence. It's also why the indie comic Scott Pilgrim was chosen to be made into a movie. It was marketed deftly to these cretins. The industry thrives on these credulous slaves.

How bizarre. These people actually exist? I thought they were some hyper idealised version of teenage life where clans were created to make dramatic tension ("Oh no she's dating outside here clique, jow could she?").

 

[someotherguy]

Hot damn, another chance to use this

That makes my running count like 4 now, right? I really find it annoying when people generalize everyone who sees a movie, and yes, imad.
While the comments on these items have become really a depressing thing, I'll say this
Society, in short, essentially ended the whole struggle thing.

And 370999,
As far as I know, those clan type things, they don't exist, atleast where I'm from.

 

[camazotz]

Isn't The Expendables as much as a geek movie as Scott Pilgrim VS. The World?

Sorry I need to defend this movie and say.
Fuck you.
The expendables is a cliché action movie with B rated actors, even the explosions aren't that nice.
While Scott Pilgrim is creative and actually focuses on something except for explosions.
Really don't put Scott Pilgrim and The expendables in the same room, why? Because the expendables is a movie for the masses, while Scott can be enjoyed by everyone and the geek will understand more of the jokes.
But you get the point.

Please don't be so insulting; he's got a right to his opinion, as much as you do. I thought the same thing, myself: Expendables is by definition a type of geek entertainment, because it revels in presenting old action hero stars in a common film, exploiting the tropes of its particular genre. It's not the same kind of movie as Scott Pilgrim, by any stretch, but you don't have to fill a film up with ridiculous video game references, young actors, and loads of ridiculous nonsensical special effects to qualify for geek-dom*. There are layers here, many of them; that's why I think Movie Bob's article is only reflecting a basic fact that's been overlooked: to be geek is not to be united.

* may or may not be accurate as I haven't seen either film. But I am a geek, even though I couldn't give a rat's patootie about Scott Pilgrim; it's not catering to my specific brand of geek (or age): D&D playing Sci Fi junkie with a couple hundred games from Steam.

 

[Nocturnal Gentleman]

I really don't even understand your distress here about "geek movies". As others have said you could call serious fans of any genre a geek. As far as I'm concerned I never really saw any particular activity or hobby automatically define someone as a geek or not a geek. Plus many of the movies you gushed about weren't too good, so I wouldn't mind seeing those kinds of films disappear.

Also, I really resent this feeling that so many geeky people think they are of the highest intelligence. More than anything self proclaimed geeks tend to just be more opinionated, elitist, and hard-headed. I know plenty of people who often watch brainless flicks and are just as intelligent, if not more intelligent, then you. Also, I know many people have the opinion that if a movie is in a genre they despise than it can't be as smart or fun as a movie in a genre they like. There are people who can find messages in everything. Even the dumbest of movies can seem intelligent if the right person twists it enough.

Entertainment is just that, something to entertain. It doesn't necessarily need a profound message or pop culture references to do its job. Besides, most styles in movies never truly go away. They just tend to come and go at random.

 

[Nocturnal Gentleman]

Yeah... sure.

I guess all the drastic climate changes that happened before we even existed. Never mind before our industrial revolution just never happened ay?

"DAMN YOU PERMIAN EVIDENCE... for foiling my clever strawman!!!!!!"

Did we have an effect on Natural climate change? Hmmmm debatable. But possible.

Did we cause it? Fuck no. What hippie world do you live in?

Hmm..Maybe I'm just kind of out there but I always felt the problem with global warming was more that we were accelerating it not causing it. I don't really see that effect as being debatable. Human kind has too much of an impact on the earth to not throw something out of wack. To me what I find more debatable is when global warming has truly picked up, species are lost, and others flourish will we really be in terrible shape as some predict? We might just get along fine in a different way or we may lose some people when ways of life are really threatened.

I agree with your last statement though. We can't really cause something like that just effect it in one way or another.

Let me stop commenting on this its going off subject.

 

[Vkmies]

And now, before the row is over, they need to make a good Judge Dredd movie.

Hopefully with Judge Death and Luna 1. And especially Walter.

 

[The Stonker]

Isn't The Expendables as much as a geek movie as Scott Pilgrim VS. The World?

Sorry I need to defend this movie and say.
Fuck you.
The expendables is a cliché action movie with B rated actors, even the explosions aren't that nice.
While Scott Pilgrim is creative and actually focuses on something except for explosions.
Really don't put Scott Pilgrim and The expendables in the same room, why? Because the expendables is a movie for the masses, while Scott can be enjoyed by everyone and the geek will understand more of the jokes.
But you get the point.

Please don't be so insulting; he's got a right to his opinion, as much as you do. I thought the same thing, myself: Expendables is by definition a type of geek entertainment, because it revels in presenting old action hero stars in a common film, exploiting the tropes of its particular genre. It's not the same kind of movie as Scott Pilgrim, by any stretch, but you don't have to fill a film up with ridiculous video game references, young actors, and loads of ridiculous nonsensical special effects to qualify for geek-dom*. There are layers here, many of them; that's why I think Movie Bob's article is only reflecting a basic fact that's been overlooked: to be geek is not to be united.

* may or may not be accurate as I haven't seen either film. But I am a geek, even though I couldn't give a rat's patootie about Scott Pilgrim; it's not catering to my specific brand of geek (or age): D&D playing Sci Fi junkie with a couple hundred games from Steam.

And as do I.
I was talking about the quality of the movie so yeah, Scott pilgrim is new while The expendables is a piece of steamy pile of sh*t

 

[DayDark]

Yeah... sure.

I guess all the drastic climate changes that happened before we even existed. Never mind before our industrial revolution just never happened ay?

"DAMN YOU PERMIAN EVIDENCE... for foiling my clever strawman!!!!!!"

Climate reacts to whatever forces it to change at the time. Humanity is now the dominating force. It is obviously true that past climate change was caused by natural forcings. However, to argue that this means we can?t cause climate change is like arguing that humans can't start bushfires because in the past they have happened naturally. Greenhouse gas increases have caused climate change many times in Earth's history, and we are now adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere at a increasingly rapid rate.

Did we have an effect on Natural climate change? Hmmmm debatable. But possible.

What? debatable? Source [http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf]

"It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes. The challenge, rather, appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact to policy makers and to a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists."

Did we cause it? Fuck no. What hippie world do you live in?

Reality? Here's a nice simple picture to sum it up:

[EDIT for clearity]
The first four pieces of evidence show that humans are raising CO2 levels:

1. Humans are currently emitting around 30 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.

2. Oxygen levels are falling as if carbon is being burned to create carbon dioxide.

3. Fossil carbon is building up in the atmosphere. (We know this because the two types of carbon have different chemical properties.)

4. Corals show that fossil carbon has recently risen sharply.

Another two observations show that CO2 is trapping more heat:

5. Satellites measure less heat escaping to space at the precise wavelengths which CO2 absorbs.

6. Surface measurements find this heat is returning to Earth to warm the surface.

The last four indicators show that the observed pattern of warming is consistent with what is predicted to occur during greenhouse warming:

7. An increased greenhouse effect would make nights warm faster than days, and this is what has been observed.

8. If the warming is due to solar activity, then the upper atmosphere (the stratosphere) should warm along with the rest of the atmosphere. But if the warming is due to the greenhouse effect, the stratosphere should cool because of the heat being trapped in the lower atmosphere (the troposphere). Satellite measurements show that the stratosphere is cooling.

9. This combination of a warming troposphere and cooling stratosphere should cause the tropopause, which separates them, to rise. This has also been observed.

10. It was predicted that the ionosphere would shrink, and it is indeed shrinking. As a consequence of greenhouse warming, which we are the dominating source of.

Souce [http://www.skepticalscience.com/10-Indicators-of-a-Human-Fingerprint-on-Climate-Change.html]

 

[DayDark]

Some people still try to blame the entire thing on us.

I will conceit that it is probably likely we have had some effect on this natural shift. It may seem drastic by our standards. We've possibly sped up the change by like 100 years or something. I'd say that's looking at the top end of our effect.

To think that we have like this immense effect on the worlds climate. Like we caused it to shift a 1000 years to early or something. Well it just seems arrogant to me. To think that we actually influence it so much.

I'm not entirely convinced we've done much to it at all.

The main gas we're responsible for is of course co2.

Our contribution accounts for something like 5% of the total co2. Which accounts for something like 20% of the total GHG's. That doesn't amount to much.

Naturally emitted CO2 is kept in check by itself through a cycle of adding and removing CO2 from the atmosphere, Humanity only emits CO2, but we don't remove it like the natural effects, this causes it to build up over time.

Water vapour is the largest one. Shall we start blaming the sea?

Water vapour is the most dominant greenhouse gas. Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and amplifies any warming caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. This positive feedback is why climate is so sensitive to CO2 warming.

Water is the dominant greenhouse gas, but it is a function of temperature, and temperature is a function of CO2.

Increased CO2 = increased warming = increased water vapor in the atmosphere = more heat is trapped on earth.

 

[Jjkaybomb]

Um
When did this become an environmental lecture, DayDark? ^^;;

and I like the xkcd comic, tryx3. I really do think that everyone has been generalizing everyone else as sheep[/hypocrisy]
No, really, I agree with the comic, and theres been a lot of that in this thread, and in how MovieBob has been generalizing the public. Though it seemed to be a bit out of anger when calling out The Expendables.

 

[tautologico]

Then the Climate Research Unit scandal happened, showing that the premise for man-made global warming is pure bunk.

The IPCC (and Al Gore) may have exaggerated the extent of the consequences, but this doesn't mean that human activity causing global warming is completely bogus. Let's keep politics out of this, please. It's a scientific issue.

I guess all the drastic climate changes that happened before we even existed. Never mind before our industrial revolution just never happened ay?

"DAMN YOU PERMIAN EVIDENCE... for foiling my clever strawman!!!!!!"

Did we have an effect on Natural climate change? Hmmmm debatable. But possible.

Did we cause it? Fuck no. What hippie world do you live in?

No, sorry. For a long time I've been very doubtful about global warming being caused by human activity. Actually I was not comfortable defending either position, as we should be when we don't know enough about the issues involved. I thought, like you, that climate changes happened before in the world's history, so the present fluctuations couldn't mean much. They could possibly not even be caused by human interference.

Actually, the more I read and get informed about it (from scientific sources, not political panphlets), the more I am convinced that there's human influence is a definitive factor in global warming. The scientific community is not really divided about it, most climate scientists agree with it.

The real consequences of global warming are hard to predict, but they may be very bad if some boundaries are crossed. So it is worth trying to change that, and discussing about the best ways to do it.

I'm not particularly inclined to the "left" side of politics, but here I'm not siding with any particular political ideologies. I'm siding with science.

 

[DanDeFool]

And if they can't? Ah, well. Good times are fleeting. Blind Side 2, anyone?

Hell, I'll take it if the boxshot has as nice a picture of Sandra Bullock's ass as the last one did.

Spoiler: Get a load of THIS blind side :)

http://www.entertainmentwallpaper.com/images/desktops/movie/the_blind_side01.jpg

Something pleasant to stare at while I'm waiting around the self check-out at Walmart.

Oh yeah, and wait for Scott Pilgrim to hit DVD. It'll probably do a lot better there than it did in theaters.

 

[The Great JT]

It's sad that geek-friendly stuff never seems to do well. It's even sadder when you realize Cracked.com was right about a lot of geek movies don't do well compared to...well, stuff that's not as good. [http://www.cracked.com/funny-4739-scott-pilgrim/] It's a little thing I like to call the Property of Inverse Awesomeness. Presuming awesomeness could be something to be measured, as awesomeness continues, success of the movie too will increase. However, throw in something nerds like (science-fiction, fantasy, zombies, superheroes, et cetera) and we see a decrease in success. Just imagine if there was a "genre movie" equivalent to Best Picture in the Oscars.