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Messages - Professor Bear

#1
Film & TV / Re: Last movie watched...
28 May, 2021, 11:32:45 PM
WOMEN AREN'T JUST THINGS, YOU DINOSAUR.

Quote from: Barrington Boots on 28 May, 2021, 10:58:18 AM[spoiler]Time loops? Robots? UFOs? And what happened to the woman they rescued?[/spoiler]

Now, I'm not saying the movie isn't stupid and often illogical, but a lot of the problems I see people having with it are often easily solved by giving it the benefit of the doubt and a couple of moment's thought.

[spoiler]"Time loops" was foreshadowing, and an allusion to the end of the film.  The guy who mentions "everything beginning again" is the one responsible for the virus escaping quarantine, hence his saying "fuck" at the end when he realises that he's responsible for the next zombie outbreak.  This is also meta-commentary, as I don't think there's a single person watching who doesn't know how this movie ends, and Zack Snyder knows it.
The UFO stuff was a reference to one of America's worst-kept secrets: the existence/location of Area 51/Groom Lake, and the conversation about UFOs establishes where the military convoy we see at the start has come from, but also that UFOs are something only crackpots believe in.  It's scene-setting, though as hilariously unsubtle as this sequence is, apparantly it was reshot to include explicit references to Las Vegas because audiences thought the UFO stuff was meant to be literal (the groom was originally played by James Franco, who wasn't available for the reshoots).
The woman they rescued died in the king zombie attack/helicopter crash along with Tig.  Narratively speaking, this makes the surviving character the "parent" of the children seen earlier, so she is adopting the difficult role her father once had and which led to their estrangement.  This resolution is also a loop of sorts, though the obvious implication is that she has come to understand her father's experiences and can forgive him.
[/spoiler]
#2
Off Topic / Re: The Political Thread
26 May, 2021, 11:02:24 PM
Don't worry, the peerless British press will hold them to account.  We're just one unnecessarily-smug Marina Hyde column away from real social change.
#3
Film & TV / Re: Last movie watched...
25 May, 2021, 10:01:02 PM
They were only obeying orders.
#4
Film & TV / Re: Last movie watched...
25 May, 2021, 08:46:40 PM
ZACK SNYDER: Here is a film I have made, and it is about the inevitable failure of capitalism and why concentration camps are bad.
SOCIAL MEDIA: Typical Snyder.  So right wing.

That Zack Snyder's ARMY OF THE DEAD is an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist work is apparently irrelevant to the living torment that is social media commentary, for Snyder is a right-wing hack and that is the only lens through which his work is allowed to be evaluated.  A Sean Spicer cameo is highlighted as proof that the film is right-wing, but Spicer's cameo actually sees him schooled by an African-American woman for failing to acknowledge racial profiling and America's jailing of political dissidents.  Within minutes of this, we see life in America's concentration camps as a living Hell in which people can "disappear" at the whim of guards who use their authority to hide their raping not just detainees, but also those who enter the camp as medical volunteers.  The camps full of people deemed less than human and a threat to American security, treated like they're diseased, all of them seemingly Latino, all confined behind a massive wall - I don't know who needs to hear this in relation to a Zack Snyder movie but this is not subtle stuff, it is not hard to miss, and none of this is my "hot take", this is the actual text of the film story.

There's a whole sub-plot in this movie where an alpha-male character is struggling to communicate with his daughter, and Snyder devotes long, seemingly aimless minutes to a father and daughter failing to express themselves adequately to each other and they cut the conversation short thinking they have time to work this through.  They've left this conversation in a bad place, but they'll sort it out later.  There's time.
I can think of... another interpretation of this part of the story which was written by Zack Snyder that doesn't involve his right wing politics, but Zack Snyder is right wing, so it's probably just about how he doesn't understand women probably.

There's an axiom in left-wing thinking that goes "we can sooner see the end of the world than accept the end of capitalism", and in recent years this has been born out to be true because capitalists are literally burning the planet to death, but if you want to see a fun examination of this notion played out with a zombie tiger, this movie has your back.  I really enjoyed its silly mix of heist and zombie tropes and while I did feel the running time once or twice, it's got plenty going on to keep you occupied.  It starts with a just-married woman declaring "I love life WOO" and if you know where that's going - and you definately do - but can keep watching anyway, you won't have any problems with this.
#5
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 21 May, 2021, 11:22:13 AM
I've avoided entering The Phoenix piece as by my reading it was just a silly - and possibly misinterrupted - swipe. He may have been referring to the specific strip (whatever that might have been?) rather than The Phoenix as a whole?

"Three years ago, I certainly didn't like the sound of a proposed Slaine-light for the Phoenix aimed at Waitrose readers and, thankfully, neither did they in the end."  Seems he was referring to a pitch to the Phoenix that never went forward?  Given that it never went forward, I can only imagine that the makers of the Phoenix shared Pat's opinion.
If you're reading this, The Phoenix, bring back NO COUNTRY, you bastards.

At a stretch, you might argue that Pat was probably thinking of Mezolith - that he saw some of the painted art and assumed it was a Slaine knock-off and got confused between the Phoenix and the DFC, but you'd have to argue in pretty bad faith there.
#7
Off Topic / Re: The Political Thread
15 May, 2021, 11:06:36 PM
Once you adopt PR on the mainland, you can have politicians just like ours.

I was on the BBC News website and out of curiosity I searched to see if anything interesting was happening in Israel, and holy crap they only have a big comic convention coming up this weekend, and a whole bunch of musical events in the coming months ahead LOL just kidding they're murdering children again.
#8
Off Topic / Re: The Political Thread
14 May, 2021, 08:05:17 PM
"My mum still refuses to admit Stalin put a foot wrong.  She used to say to me, you can't make an omelette without starving forty million people to death."  Alexei Sayle.


Each year 9 million people die by design, because artificial scarcity is the engine driving capitalism.  Homelessness and food poverty are required components of capitalism in order that it may function as intended, and I'm not one of them big city sums-doing lawyers, but even I am pretty sure that 9 million a year for a couple of centuries now is probably higher than whatever number is the death toll of communism this week.

One thing I always wondered about these "death toll" numbers, though, is since the death toll of communism includes Nazis killed by Russian soldiers and - double-dipping, but we don't let that stop us - Russian soldiers killed during WW2 BY Nazis, then where do we add the 3-5 million Bengalis who were starved to death by Winston Churchill?  Do they go on Hitler's tally, or on the UK's, or do we just add them to communism's death toll because some of them might have been left-wing?
#9
Off Topic / Re: The Political Thread
13 May, 2021, 09:32:11 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 13 May, 2021, 06:12:57 PM
Not capitalism; corporatism.

Name one place where capitalism has ever worked.
#10
Off Topic / Re: The Political Thread
13 May, 2021, 06:00:45 PM
I recall the follow-up to the End Of History theory was that the future would see resource wars, with countries having to realign their military strategies to deal not with nations, but with terrorist threats caused by said resource wars.  It's interesting to note that even back then, they knew that the end result of neoliberal consensus would be that capitalism would run rampant and destroy nations.
#11
Probably helps that I'm reading Belardinelli's Rat Pack offerings RN.
Massimo 5 : Brendan 0
#12
Shameless nostalgia vote.
Mark Harrison 1 : Ron Smith 4
#13
Announcements / Re: Dave Evans, R.I.P.
10 May, 2021, 01:35:10 PM
A mate's turnaround from major depression came after he rang The Samaritans a few times, yet he still insists they were of no help whatsoever because "all they did was listen while I did all the talking."  Which is, of course, the point.
If you feel you can't talk to friends or family, there are still people you can talk to in confidentiality, and it might be all you need.
#14
Off Topic / Re: The Political Thread
09 May, 2021, 04:21:29 PM
Quote from: CalHab on 07 May, 2021, 11:20:28 AMLabour need to realise that they need to cooperate in elections with other parties and, crucially, agree to electoral reform. Instead they are stuck in a 90s mindset.

The LibDems expressly and repeatedly said they wouldn't work with Labour in 2019.  At this point the SNP would be mad to.

This isn't a dig at you, Calhab, but the loudest proponents of PR I've seen online are always a bit iffy on the specifics, making me view PR as little better than magical thinking.  Britain is a racist country, and PR would see thugs like the BNP go from the lunatic fringe to making policy decisions on councils overnight, and I'm not sure I want to just greenlight that without discussing the finer details a bit first.
For what it's worth, we have PR over here in Northern Ireland, and to put it mildly, it did not solve the problems of a polorised political community and a two-party system.
#15
Announcements / Re: Dave Evans, R.I.P.
07 May, 2021, 01:36:10 PM
Gut-punched.
Was working on a thing with him at the moment and his contribution has gone far beyond just the lettering, much as it has for all the time I've been dabbling in indie comics and had the good fortune to work with him.  Nurturing and patient to a fault.

Godspeed, Dave.