I have, just earlier today, watched a TED talk by Daniel H. Cohen about arguing. You might ask, “What is it about arguing that is so profound that it deserved a TED talk?” To which I ask in return, “what is the definition of arguing or being engaged in an argument?” To out-reason our opponents, prove them wrong, and, most of all, to win, some will say. But is that really the point? Arguments are not a zero-sum game where one must win and the other must lose, after all, since the loser learns something new, that there is more convincing evidence contrary to what he or she initially knows.
So essentially, arguments should always end in a win-win situation, where the winner gets their egos stroked and the loser learns something new. Keyword being ‘should’, since, as we all know, that this is rarely the case. People get involved in arguments not only to state their opinion and reasons behind it, or to exchange information and come to a conclusion based on statements and evidence presented by both sides, but to be crowned grand champion of having the most right opinion in the first place even if the opposition presented agreeable points in the process.
This sad scenario happens because of the innate competitive drive in our nature. Or indeed in the nature of everything alive. You want to pummel your competition to submission, willing or otherwise, even when doing so is counterproductive. In the wild, it gives a sense of security (it ensures one’s survival, after all), but in civilization, it just gives you a sense of pride, sometimes unjustified. Another reason might be the fact that people are mostly educated into being phobic about making or having made a mistake, but that just leads to the right thinking that they are superior and the wrong are inferior, which was illustrated by the initial point.
The reason I mention this is because I just had an argument barely an hour ago. With the worst possible opponent – a grumpy old man who is incapable of moving with the times (and the changes that come with it) as well as being pathologically afraid of being wrong. Textbook "short man syndrome” is how one would describe this man, though I honestly hesitate to use the word. The subject of our argument? A Guinness World Record for the highest kick among women. The record, last I checked anyway, was 2.15 meters by the way.
How it started? Well, two people were to kick a small platform with a pin sticking out of the top, which would poke and burst a balloon being held slightly above it when said platform was pushed upwards. Seemed pretty straightforward, didn’t it? Except for the fact that one of them managed to kick the platform without popping the balloon. Said person’s foot only grazed the platform’s surface, as it were. The judges still counted it as a hit, despite the balloon being intact.
So I asked a question – which, to me, was simple and completely justified – “what was the point of the balloon, then?” The record attempt was in front of a live audience so I thought aloud that the effect was meant to for the spectators; probably to excite them or something, the way some spectator sports work I guess – people watching NASCAR for the crashes or rugby or American Football for the clashes and injuries sustained from them. Short grumpy old-fashioned old man then went on to say that the pin and balloon was for an affirmation that the platform below had indeed been kicked. To which I replied by pointing out the fact that the previous attempt was still counted even when the balloon remained intact after the platform was kicked, rendering the pin and balloon redundant. To which he then insisted on his previous point, just adding to the fact that if the balloon popped, it would not require a close-up slow-motion video playback for the judges to consider. I then said it was still redundant because the live audiences were not the judges, and the official judges had access to the video recording which would be working either way, and would still be referred to should the pin and balloon fail to serve their purpose, which they have. In other words, why waste resources, no matter how cheap they may be, in setting up a fallible secondary method of validation when the primary, fool-proof method was already there to begin with? It’s not like watching a video playback would take more than a few seconds anyway.
Instead, of saying “I don’t know,” which was precisely the reason behind my asking the question, or “that was just the decision of Guinness or the organizer,” he uttered his trademark line of “I don’t want to argue with you. You argue for the sake of arguing.” Which I took quite seriously and a bit personally as he says that every single time I succeed in countering an argument of his no matter how valid my rebuttal was. Not being able to take anymore of such bullshit, I confronted him and said that if he had any point to counter my point or defend his, he should just say them until I was convinced, since I was able and willing to do the same. Then came an attack which I can only consider personal: “Before you talk so much, go get a job first.”
Well, what gives? Not only has he failed in in doing his part in the active disagreement, he resorted to personal attacks just to have the last word. Yes, I am currently between jobs, but do I need to have the fact rubbed in my face as retaliation to my argument? By my own father, no less.
This is why if he was to end up in any life-threatening situation, I will do many things – committing suicide included – before I save him. Any anyone trying to convince me that he is a good man with good intentions will be about as successful as anyone trying to convince me that a benevolent monotheistic God exists.
People used to ask me if I had a single most influential role model and my answer was usually ‘no’. In fact, I did and I still do, but for the complete opposite reason. While people try to emulate their role models, I do the complete opposite for the one that has the most influential impact on my moral identity. Which is why anything my father is, I do or try to be as exact an opposite as humanly possible, with the only exception so far is my unfortunate employment status.
And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
When spring is hotter than summer
It’s another slow month, for a number of reasons, chiefly being Sony Malaysia’s unwillingness to release the Xperia Z1 Compact before people completely lose interest. So, to kill time, I have decided to review four more movies that I have watched recently. I know it’s still very early in the month, considering Need for Speed isn’t even out yet, but worry not for I shall work on that when it does go on air. Again, spoiler alert, because some really deserve mention.
First off is American Hustle. A show which starts with the most amazing intro ever: ‘Some of this actually happened’ instead of the usual ‘based on a true story’. A story about how a pair of con artists get pulled into an FBI op to nab as many ‘criminals’ as possible, or that’s how it started anyway. It slowly turned into an operation to arrest as many people as possible, even if it means baiting honest politicians (two words you don’t normally feature in the same sentence, let alone next to each other) into taking bribes. The film ends with politicians being arrested and real criminal masterminds
remaining free to terrorize whoever they thought was born with a wrong face.
This is a good movie, which I like for a number of reasons. The first is that despite the happy-ish ending, it ends with a bitter taste, much like reality, though this may be because of it being based on a true stor… *ahem* because some of it actually happened. Actually, most of which still hold true today; rich criminals kill every man than isn’t a subordinate and rape every woman that isn’t a wife or mistress and still get away scot free while the one politician that actually serves the people among the infinite that lord over the people get lumped together and are treated like scum anyway.
Second is that it touches on the very grey nature of the world, with insights into the life of the nearly non-existent good guy politician and maybe the FBI as well. Now, I’m not sure how the FBI actually works, but in this movie, which I’m going to trust because apparently some of it actually happened, they’re much like salesmen; like how the sales of the salesmen matter while the quality of a product and the honesty of their marketing doesn’t, the FBI seems to work with a similar principle where it’s the number of arrests that count and not who they arrest and the legitimacy of the arrests. And so there’s a very convenient plot: the FBI needs to meet their arrests quota for the year or something, so they go at first aiming to arrest members of the criminal underworld. When they realize that that’s not possible due to insufficient evidence and time to gather them, they turn to arresting politicians, most of which are not clean anyway. When even then they fall short, they resort to baiting the rarest thing in existence – a clean politician that actually serves the people of his constituency – into taking bribes and hence putting some dirt on him to justify his arrest. So yes, this world is very far from black and white, where the supposed good guys do very far from good things to falsely maintain their good image, and the brilliance of one good guy politician getting overshadowed by and lumped together with the rest of the scumbag politicians. And this movie portrays it quite nicely. Almost perfectly, in fact, but that may be due to the fact that some of it actually happened (yes, I absolutely love that phrase).
So yes, good movie all in all, but I will not recommend watching on any of Malaysia’s big screens. This is simply because there are far too many cuts, most of which I would attribute to Amy Adam’s character, who is very scantily dressed at her most dressed moments, to say the least. While this is very much understandable as she has to play a stripper in the late 1970s, what is not understandable is the movie, being rated 18, still has cuts. So what is the bloody point of the bloody age restriction? They might as well give it a 13PG or U rating since they cut all the bits deemed inappropriate for kids anyway despite the 18 rating. Either that, or I overestimated the standards of the horny old geezers at the censorship department; they can probably fap to a female tennis match, when the players’ clothes start to get soaked in sweat and their nipples start poking out of their clothes (this is not meant to be an insult to athletic women, but it is meant as an insult to the horny old geezers at the censorship department and their mind-bogglingly low standards of pornography). So to rectify this problem, there should be two classifications for this movie; 18 for the uncut version and a 13PG or U version where they can cut the whole movie as far as I'm concerned.
With that done, we move on to Non-Stop. If you’ve seen the trailers, then there’s not much more to say, since that’s pretty much the gist of it. Also, if you have seen the trailer, you’ll be able to see the plot twist coming way before it happens. Or at least won’t be surprised when it does. There isn’t much action, but there is a lot of tension. Which is to be expected from that sort of scenario, but a lot of it seemed very unnecessary; nothing good old honesty can’t solve. Because of this, the movie can feel quite draggy. Then you have the clichéd good guy wins ending.
Despite all this, I would still say that this is worth your money. Yes, it is stereotypical without much innovation, but the characters are played so perfectly that the realism alone makes it worth your money. Well, realism of the characters staying in character at least. The major fly in the ointment is that the plot would be dramatically shorter and there would be less tension in the air if the main character was honest from the start, but I still say that this movie deserves a chance to be judged by yourself.
Then we have 3 Days to Kill. This is, to me, a gem in more ways than one. The first being the main character who isn’t the most overpowered character in the story. This is a rare break from the cliché that we are otherwise too familiar with; the main character always has the better technique, reflex, instincts, thinking etc. This time, the main character is strangely overshadowed. Sure he is skilled, but it is strangely pleasant to find that there is someone out there half his age with twice his skill. And while not the first, it is quite refreshing to see a movie that mixes seriousness with comedy, and in this particular film, you see the main character juggling his job with his family as well.
The fly in the ointment, however, can be found at the ending. It’s quite fairy tale-ish when it could have ended in a darker, more realistic tone. That aside, this is a movie that I would really recommend watching.
And finally we come to Philomena. I was initially put off by the title because it sounded like a Malay movie, which meant complete utter rubbish with very, very, VERY few exceptions. As it turns out, that was just my ignorance in action, because it was actually a British-French-American comedy-drama based on the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. So yes, a based-on-a-true-story movie. Which I loved, because it does touch on some fairly emotional themes.
What I did find strange, however, was that there was a cut or two in this film. With hindsight, this wasn’t strange at all because the film was distributed by The Weinstein Company, which was famous (or infamous) for the production of many anti-Catholic films. This meant that the cut scenes had something to do with the presence of religion-bashing dialogue. What this shows is, the feeble-minded horny old geezers at the censorship department not only have low standards of fappable material, they also have dangerously low faith in the faith of their fellow believers. The bleeding irony right there, ladies and gentlemen.
And so, because of that, this is the perfect movie – with no flies in the ointment – that I will not encourage you to watch on the big screen. Sure the cut dialogue may seem insignificant, but I can’t help but feel cheated. In fact, I don’t even know if it was actually insignificant or not. It might actually turn out to be a big chunk of key plot explanations, for all I know.
Right. Now that we are done with my reviews, I would like to talk about movie reviews. Yes, irony number two incoming. It would seem that the current trend, based on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, at least, is that if there is action, the movie isn’t good. Which is rubbish. Take 3 Days to Kill for example. It has one fly in the ointment. One. But there was a lot of shooting and killing and driving fast sideways. And what rating did it get? 31% based on 64 reviews. American Hustle, with close to no action and no fly in the ointment? 93% based on 240 reviews. So one fly in the ointment, muzzle flash, death and tyre smoke deserves a 62% drop? Really? Seriously? The consensus at Rotten Tomatoes says that American Hustle is “Riotously funny and impeccably cast, American Hustle compensates for its flaws with unbridled energy and some of David O. Russell's most irrepressibly vibrant direction.” Which is fair, except for the first bit, because if American Hustle was ‘riotously funny’, then 3 Days to Kill would give you asthma. American Hustle was funny, sure, but only just, while 3 Days to Kill, on the other hand, was properly funny. You could have a full house watching American Hustle and you would still not get louder laughs than an empty 3 Days to Kill screening, let alone more of it. The only exception to this ‘action is bad’ trend is The Lego Movie, for reasons that will forever remain unknown to the thinking man.
Then we have RoboCop which got a 49% based on 180 reviews. Rotten Tomatoes consensus writes "While it's far better than it could have been, José Padilha's RoboCop remake fails to offer a significant improvement over the original," which is to say “it’s as good as the original, therefore it’s rubbish.” I mean, seriously? So filmmakers take a 10/10 film and turn it up to eleven and you call it rubbish. Do they have to make it eleventy one zillion times better before you give it the good rating it deserves?
In conclusion, reviews – including this one – are useless. This is because sometimes you get a reviewer having completely wrong expectations about a movie, getting disappointed when watching and ends up raging about the movie not meeting the initial unrealistic expectations. These are probably idiots who go watching 3 Days to Kill expecting it to be literally 72 hours long, among other things. Although, admittedly, it would be better if they named it 3 Months to Kill instead.That said, some movies really do deserve their low as hell rating, like I, Frankenstein and The Legend of Hercules which got 4% based on 71 reviews and 3% based on 63 reviews, respectively.
So what you should do instead is read on a movie’s synopsis, not review, and then decide if it would be worth your money. Because reviews – which tell you if a movie is worth watching – are unreliable, you will, as I did, just have to make the gamble yourself and see if a movie is really worth your money.
And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.
First off is American Hustle. A show which starts with the most amazing intro ever: ‘Some of this actually happened’ instead of the usual ‘based on a true story’. A story about how a pair of con artists get pulled into an FBI op to nab as many ‘criminals’ as possible, or that’s how it started anyway. It slowly turned into an operation to arrest as many people as possible, even if it means baiting honest politicians (two words you don’t normally feature in the same sentence, let alone next to each other) into taking bribes. The film ends with politicians being arrested and real criminal masterminds
remaining free to terrorize whoever they thought was born with a wrong face.
This is a good movie, which I like for a number of reasons. The first is that despite the happy-ish ending, it ends with a bitter taste, much like reality, though this may be because of it being based on a true stor… *ahem* because some of it actually happened. Actually, most of which still hold true today; rich criminals kill every man than isn’t a subordinate and rape every woman that isn’t a wife or mistress and still get away scot free while the one politician that actually serves the people among the infinite that lord over the people get lumped together and are treated like scum anyway.
Second is that it touches on the very grey nature of the world, with insights into the life of the nearly non-existent good guy politician and maybe the FBI as well. Now, I’m not sure how the FBI actually works, but in this movie, which I’m going to trust because apparently some of it actually happened, they’re much like salesmen; like how the sales of the salesmen matter while the quality of a product and the honesty of their marketing doesn’t, the FBI seems to work with a similar principle where it’s the number of arrests that count and not who they arrest and the legitimacy of the arrests. And so there’s a very convenient plot: the FBI needs to meet their arrests quota for the year or something, so they go at first aiming to arrest members of the criminal underworld. When they realize that that’s not possible due to insufficient evidence and time to gather them, they turn to arresting politicians, most of which are not clean anyway. When even then they fall short, they resort to baiting the rarest thing in existence – a clean politician that actually serves the people of his constituency – into taking bribes and hence putting some dirt on him to justify his arrest. So yes, this world is very far from black and white, where the supposed good guys do very far from good things to falsely maintain their good image, and the brilliance of one good guy politician getting overshadowed by and lumped together with the rest of the scumbag politicians. And this movie portrays it quite nicely. Almost perfectly, in fact, but that may be due to the fact that some of it actually happened (yes, I absolutely love that phrase).
So yes, good movie all in all, but I will not recommend watching on any of Malaysia’s big screens. This is simply because there are far too many cuts, most of which I would attribute to Amy Adam’s character, who is very scantily dressed at her most dressed moments, to say the least. While this is very much understandable as she has to play a stripper in the late 1970s, what is not understandable is the movie, being rated 18, still has cuts. So what is the bloody point of the bloody age restriction? They might as well give it a 13PG or U rating since they cut all the bits deemed inappropriate for kids anyway despite the 18 rating. Either that, or I overestimated the standards of the horny old geezers at the censorship department; they can probably fap to a female tennis match, when the players’ clothes start to get soaked in sweat and their nipples start poking out of their clothes (this is not meant to be an insult to athletic women, but it is meant as an insult to the horny old geezers at the censorship department and their mind-bogglingly low standards of pornography). So to rectify this problem, there should be two classifications for this movie; 18 for the uncut version and a 13PG or U version where they can cut the whole movie as far as I'm concerned.
With that done, we move on to Non-Stop. If you’ve seen the trailers, then there’s not much more to say, since that’s pretty much the gist of it. Also, if you have seen the trailer, you’ll be able to see the plot twist coming way before it happens. Or at least won’t be surprised when it does. There isn’t much action, but there is a lot of tension. Which is to be expected from that sort of scenario, but a lot of it seemed very unnecessary; nothing good old honesty can’t solve. Because of this, the movie can feel quite draggy. Then you have the clichéd good guy wins ending.
Despite all this, I would still say that this is worth your money. Yes, it is stereotypical without much innovation, but the characters are played so perfectly that the realism alone makes it worth your money. Well, realism of the characters staying in character at least. The major fly in the ointment is that the plot would be dramatically shorter and there would be less tension in the air if the main character was honest from the start, but I still say that this movie deserves a chance to be judged by yourself.
Then we have 3 Days to Kill. This is, to me, a gem in more ways than one. The first being the main character who isn’t the most overpowered character in the story. This is a rare break from the cliché that we are otherwise too familiar with; the main character always has the better technique, reflex, instincts, thinking etc. This time, the main character is strangely overshadowed. Sure he is skilled, but it is strangely pleasant to find that there is someone out there half his age with twice his skill. And while not the first, it is quite refreshing to see a movie that mixes seriousness with comedy, and in this particular film, you see the main character juggling his job with his family as well.
The fly in the ointment, however, can be found at the ending. It’s quite fairy tale-ish when it could have ended in a darker, more realistic tone. That aside, this is a movie that I would really recommend watching.
And finally we come to Philomena. I was initially put off by the title because it sounded like a Malay movie, which meant complete utter rubbish with very, very, VERY few exceptions. As it turns out, that was just my ignorance in action, because it was actually a British-French-American comedy-drama based on the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. So yes, a based-on-a-true-story movie. Which I loved, because it does touch on some fairly emotional themes.
What I did find strange, however, was that there was a cut or two in this film. With hindsight, this wasn’t strange at all because the film was distributed by The Weinstein Company, which was famous (or infamous) for the production of many anti-Catholic films. This meant that the cut scenes had something to do with the presence of religion-bashing dialogue. What this shows is, the feeble-minded horny old geezers at the censorship department not only have low standards of fappable material, they also have dangerously low faith in the faith of their fellow believers. The bleeding irony right there, ladies and gentlemen.
And so, because of that, this is the perfect movie – with no flies in the ointment – that I will not encourage you to watch on the big screen. Sure the cut dialogue may seem insignificant, but I can’t help but feel cheated. In fact, I don’t even know if it was actually insignificant or not. It might actually turn out to be a big chunk of key plot explanations, for all I know.
Right. Now that we are done with my reviews, I would like to talk about movie reviews. Yes, irony number two incoming. It would seem that the current trend, based on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, at least, is that if there is action, the movie isn’t good. Which is rubbish. Take 3 Days to Kill for example. It has one fly in the ointment. One. But there was a lot of shooting and killing and driving fast sideways. And what rating did it get? 31% based on 64 reviews. American Hustle, with close to no action and no fly in the ointment? 93% based on 240 reviews. So one fly in the ointment, muzzle flash, death and tyre smoke deserves a 62% drop? Really? Seriously? The consensus at Rotten Tomatoes says that American Hustle is “Riotously funny and impeccably cast, American Hustle compensates for its flaws with unbridled energy and some of David O. Russell's most irrepressibly vibrant direction.” Which is fair, except for the first bit, because if American Hustle was ‘riotously funny’, then 3 Days to Kill would give you asthma. American Hustle was funny, sure, but only just, while 3 Days to Kill, on the other hand, was properly funny. You could have a full house watching American Hustle and you would still not get louder laughs than an empty 3 Days to Kill screening, let alone more of it. The only exception to this ‘action is bad’ trend is The Lego Movie, for reasons that will forever remain unknown to the thinking man.
Then we have RoboCop which got a 49% based on 180 reviews. Rotten Tomatoes consensus writes "While it's far better than it could have been, José Padilha's RoboCop remake fails to offer a significant improvement over the original," which is to say “it’s as good as the original, therefore it’s rubbish.” I mean, seriously? So filmmakers take a 10/10 film and turn it up to eleven and you call it rubbish. Do they have to make it eleventy one zillion times better before you give it the good rating it deserves?
In conclusion, reviews – including this one – are useless. This is because sometimes you get a reviewer having completely wrong expectations about a movie, getting disappointed when watching and ends up raging about the movie not meeting the initial unrealistic expectations. These are probably idiots who go watching 3 Days to Kill expecting it to be literally 72 hours long, among other things. Although, admittedly, it would be better if they named it 3 Months to Kill instead.That said, some movies really do deserve their low as hell rating, like I, Frankenstein and The Legend of Hercules which got 4% based on 71 reviews and 3% based on 63 reviews, respectively.
So what you should do instead is read on a movie’s synopsis, not review, and then decide if it would be worth your money. Because reviews – which tell you if a movie is worth watching – are unreliable, you will, as I did, just have to make the gamble yourself and see if a movie is really worth your money.
And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.
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