Would you care to make a case for Lady in the Water? I don’t recall a huge amount of that movie, but what’s there is not positive. Admittedly, his gall in writing a character who is destined to save the world through his art, and then casting himself in said role, left a pretty sour taste in my mouth, but I shouldn’t let that affect the other aspects of the film.

Well, now I can only think of being Sherlock Holmes battling bioweapons, and I fear you’ve set me up for disappointment!

Dis u?

I’m not comfortable with companies using any kind of marketing tactics.

Now, I felt like I was fairly gentle in pointing out the absurd nature of that statement. I even readily acknowledged what I assumed to be your intent, i.e. there are absolutely marketing tactics which go beyond the pale. But, as I, and others, have pointed out, you’re the one operating on your own personal definition of marketing here, which is in contradiction to what that concept actually is. Any intro to business class will tell you that marketing is, essentially, ANYTHING an entity does to inform people of its services. It’s an enormous umbrella, which includes tactics both odious and innocuous. It is as readily applicable to the gal who posts on Facebook that she’ll do your hair for $20 as it is Facebook selling that information to a third party so she can be served targeted salon equipment advertisements.

All I’m saying is, if you say “all marketing is bad”, you need to be prepared for people to call you out on the hyperbole of that statement. Therefore, you might consider arguing the point you actually intend to make (which is good and I agree with you about!), instead of leading with a statement which you don’t actually believe.

Calling you Chicken Little was facetious, but meant to be a gentle dig at the hyperbole. Still, I shouldn’t have said it, and I apologize.

Take it easy there, Chicken Little. “I’m uncomfortable with any kind of marketing” is so hyperbolic, it’s almost parody. Putting the name of your business above the door? Thats marketing. Creating a website where customers can find and engage your services? That’s marketing. A minority-owned business proudly owning that status? That’s marketing. A friend telling you about the great meal they had the other day from a local restaurant? Believe it or not, that’s marketing.

Marketing is not evil in and of itself. Unless humanity returns to a tribal social structure where you can count the number of non-related acquaintances you know on your fingers, it is a necessary component of operating a business. Of course, you’re 100% right that there have been dubious applications of the principle, but again, you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water, and it hampers the salient point that you’re trying to make.

Man. I really need to start watching movies from the French New Wave. I knew Alphaville was technically a science fiction story, but I didn’t realize how far I to the genre Godard leaned.

High Hopes by Mike Leigh seems like it at least partially checks that box.

Zack Snyder, not JJ Abrams.

Your final sentence provided me an audible guffaw.

When you nut, but Bernoulli keep sucking…

And it’s pretty good! I had fun with the time I put into it, though it did feel a little bloated in the same way their Pathfinder RPG did. I think it’s a consequence of their Kickstarter success for these games, which just kept talking on more stretch goals.

The good news is there is a LOT of game present for those that enjoy it.

Not in Education, Employment, or Training. NEET.

They don’t make Ballnostrillian mask, I worked with what I had access to.

Idk about that, I heard a fair number of folks who were less enthused with Eternal vs 2016. The general sentiment among those folks was that Eternal skewed too far into “combat puzzle” territory, where encounters felt like they had prescribed “solutions” that you needed to perform to succeed reliably. This iteration being less about resource management and high speed encounter flow seems to be a reaction to those critiques.

Pep and shrooms is such a good combo; I bet it was awesome!

Nice to see Newton and I have one thing in common, and, let me tell ya, I don’t know shit about astronomy.

Well-meaning idiots, in Wayne’s parlance, and I doubt very much that Eastwood’s philosophy differs that much. Unsurprisingly, the ideological bent of the film was a topic of some controversy, even during its release. The term “fascist” was thrown around with the frequency of a Lemmy politics thread, and not without good reason. For their part, the director claimed that he was a left leaning liberal who viewed Callahan as “as evil, in his own way, as [Scorpio]”, and Eastwood, while denying the movie was right wing, stated it was about “frustration with the judicial system”.

Suffice to say, the politics of these movies are complicated (at best), if you choose to engage with them on that level.

In addition to the above, which explains the actor’s thought process, I think it’s an intentional choice by the filmmakers to juxtapose the “peace and love” iconography of the hippy movement / era against the depravity of Scorpio.

Obviously, Dirty Harry was directly inspired by the Zodiac Killer, whose confirmed kills occurred in 68-69. Significantly, the Zodiac’s first and second letters were sent to newspapers on July 31st and August 4th, 1969. I say that this is significant because, not even a week later, on August 9th, the Tate-LaBianca murders occurred. Moreso even than the Zodiac murders, the Manson Family belies the viewpoint of Dirty Harry, i.e. that, for all the flower power aesthetic and grandiose ideas, the hippie movement was populated by anti-social, perverse, and dangerous criminals.

These people, if not representative of the hippies as a whole, were at least taking advantage the well-meaning idiots who would naively take their side. See this quote from John Wayne about the counter-culture: “I’d like to know why well-educated idiots keep apologizing for lazy and complaining people who think the world owes them a living. I’d like to know why they make excuses for cowards who spit in the faces of the police and then run behind the judicial sob sisters. I can’t understand these people who carry placards to save the life of some criminal, yet have no thought for the innocent victim.”

I believe this sentiment is, in essence, Dirty Harry’s thesis. Consider the scene in which Harry is reprimanded for obtaining evidence against Scorpio illegally, making it inadmissable and leading to his release from custody. Furthermore, in the final seconds of the film, after beating Scorpio in the quick draw contest, Harry spends a little bit of time ruefully gazing at his police badge before hurling it into the lake, presumably because of the number of obstacles that bleeding hearts put in between him and getting the bad guy.