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Noufa's Replies
Buck went all Lt. Dan, too.
BTW Johnny Hardwick, the voice of Dale Gribble, has just started posting on YouTube.
You have a point. They carefully groomed Kenny to do terrible things. But that's how most vices work. You do something dumb, get invested in it, then escalate to something even dumber. Kenny never shows the fortitude to break the cycle. Keep in mind that he was doing all this for a mere CHANCE to cover up his crime. The trolls had no incentive to keep their word.
I would call it murder. He tried to kill himself, which rules out self-defense as a motivation. It was more like "kill or be exposed".
This reminds me of a recent tragedy in Las Vegas. A woman got a manicure & tried to sneak away without paying for it. The salon owner saw her & tried to stop the getaway by standing in the way of the thief's car. The salon owner was run over & killed:
https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/homicides/mother-killed-over-manicure-at-las-vegas-nail-salon-boyfriend-says-1562026/
I don't think the thief wanted to kill anyone. She just wanted to keep the 35 bucks. Doesn't matter. It's still murder. If she got lucky & the victim survived, that doesn't absolve her reckless behavior.
The viking age was 1k years ago, not thousands.
Then the region went through several plagues in the dark ages. Wiped out half the population. You've never seen the Seventh Seal?
It's pretty glib to dismiss the Napoleonic Wars & Swedish imperialism as "some fights back in the 1600s".
Scandinavian emigration reached an all-time high in the 19th century because of widespread crop failures. And they lasted up to the Great Depression.
Post-war life was relatively easy in Scandinavia. That's in large part because of the strength of cultural institutions built to endure those earlier calamities.
The target audience already know the toys. I mean, there's probably a place for a toy-centric documentary. But I really enjoyed learning how these "corporate" products were just ad-hoc collaborations by a group of average, middle aged guys.
That scene was weirdly hilarious.
And yet I agree with everyone else here that the murder was disturbing. I don't think it's just because Murphy was a good guy. Bob Morgan was scum & his death also freaked me out.
So did the rapist scene, for that matter. Which reminds me of this NSFW doozy:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=dthPLndYg08
Her Asian heritage was irrelevant. It was her Polynesian roots that were central to the plot. Lot of Asian activists pounced on this movie to usurp a Polynesian role. Very craven power grab. Not a good look.
And I wonder if the more sincere critics even watched the movie. Becuase her character was constantly fighting the perception that she didn't belong with the locals. Even the king was leery, suspecting superficial flattery. None of this would have been apparent if she was played by an obviously hapa actress. So...no, she was definitely not miscast.
Just watched the video & you're exactly right. The silliness of the costume was NBD, it was the Joan Rivers show. It'd be weird if she wasn't acting goofy.
What's off-putting is that she seemed completely serious about "deserving" the role. In the next segment, they brought in some pop-psychiatrist to praise her as an ambitious woman who went after what she wanted. True enough but she needs to be smart about it. Airing a list of grievances won't make people want to work with you. It gives them a valid reason to refuse to work with you.
I'm not too familiar with comic books. But I always got the impression that Catwoman was a femme fatale; aloof but irresistible. Any cruelty was incidental. Young came off as desperate and a woman scorned. More manipulative & vindictive, like Poison Ivy.
Not so much the message of the movie as of reality. That's something I've always liked about Diablo Cody.
I also got the impression Theron was saying something about her own life. Seeing how she adopted, it's not so much about the physical toll of child birth as the mental toll of becoming responsible for another person. We become less sexy with age regardless.
The blackmailer wouldn't be able to terrorize him if he admitted his crime. I'm not familiar with the UK legal system. But a confession holds serious weight in common law. If he turned himself in to legal authorities, he probably would have gotten off with counseling & probation. That's the whole tragedy of this story; it didn't have to be a big deal.
I am making an assumption that he would go on molest children first hand. But considering the lengths he went to cover up his kiddie porn history, it's not a stretch.
The Catholic school was there to support their own protest, the March for Life.
And the Black Israelites were hardly respectful to the Natives:
"Video footage posted on the patheos blog site titled 'LETTERS FROM THE EDGE OF ELFLAND' shows the four men yelling expletives to Indigenous people at the march telling them that 'God took away their land' for worshiping animals and that the word 'Indian means savage.' They also insult Native elders, women and men."
https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/the-whole-story-before-and-after-video-of-nathan-phillips-magayouth-and-more-_O6lTVo8M0muOgi6Foug-w/
According to the ADL, The Black Israelites are a black supremacist group. They used the Native man as a tool against the white kids but they're no friends of Natives, either.
He kept escalating to avoid consequences. First, acting as a "mule" with the cake. Then robbing a bank. And finally committing murder. The progressions all seemed understandable, in isolation. But it all sustains his identity as a child rapist. What are you supposed to do with someone like that?
I'm being easier on Kenny than you. He could have redeemed himself if he bit the bullet & reached out for help.
"Only" looking at porn? I suspect you're trolling. But it was pornography involving children. Serious harm had already been done. Whether he was actively involved in the creation of the video is a legal distinction, not a moral one. Kenny was creating a demand for something evil.
Again, I realize you're probably just being contrarian. My point is that the plot doesn't really work if what he had done was NBD.
Not really. California is comparable to New Hampshire or Wyoming on per capita income. And neither of those states come close to CA's poverty level.
It's true that violent crime has dropped off. There was an awful spike of gang violence in the 90s that has passed.
They cut like 20 minutes for the theater release. I remember being unimpressed when I saw the that release, years ago. Just watched the director's cut & it is definitely a better movie.
Adds a lot of character development. Rudy & Nick seem more like friends than partners in crime. In the planning process, Rudy seems shrewd & more in control. There's an additional scene with Dennis Farina to establish his motivation.
On a superficial level, the violence was more graphic & I saw too much of of Ben Affleck's ass.
It really does capture the feel of a brutal, upper Midwest winter. More so than even Fargo.
It's pretty much what you'd expect:
"Pardon me, is the room available for me to rent?"
"No way. Not for you, nerd."
FWIW, it just turned up on Vudu's "free with ads" section.
I remember being a kid & seeing the box cover all over video stores. Sure made it seem like she was the star of the movie. She's definitely not.
Reminds me of what Roger Ebert said about The Hot Chick. Rachel McAdams swaps bodies with Rob Schneider, why are we following Schneider's body? And casting Jennifer Love Hewitt as the overlooked "plain-Jane" friend was a head scratcher. I'm guessing she appeared in the movie as a favor.
They did the same with Dirty Harry:
https://www.rogerebert.com/letters/dirty-harry-is-not-fascist
In retrospect, the criminal justice system of that era was definitely too lenient.
Critics need to understand that it's not their job to discourage people from watching "bad" movies. I've never avoided a movie because of negative reviews. But thanks to positive reviews, I've seen plenty that I otherwise might have skipped.
I hear ya. That is precisely why I left the Bay Area. I moved to another Democrat leaning state so it's not even a partisan thing. It's more that California's just too large a state to permit face-to-face, retail politics. We viewed every issue through the prism of television. So elections became more about signaling "tribe" membership than quality of life.
I see. Merry Christmas!