geefe
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Post by geefe on Feb 21, 2024 9:20:44 GMT
I haven't torrented in years. I remember a mate at uni trying to get a full series of Prison Break. Think it took him a solid 2 days with his laptop constantly on.
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cubby
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Post by cubby on Feb 21, 2024 9:24:05 GMT
The good old days.
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Post by zisssou on Feb 21, 2024 9:32:05 GMT
I haven't either. I'm on a Discord with a few mates, and one setup a plugin for his media server. You just login, then request what you want, then when it's done, you get pinged a.. PRISON BREAK HAS DOWNLOADED.
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Post by harrypalmer on Feb 21, 2024 9:35:54 GMT
Yeah my brother-in-law has done that, it's pretty sick. I still torrent because I download stuff pretty infrequently and it works fine.
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Post by MolarAmđ” on Feb 21, 2024 9:40:49 GMT
King Boxer
Man is an aspiring master of the Iron Palm, intending to win a fighting tournament until his fingers get broke by evil Japanese people. But they get better!
8/10
Five Deadly Venoms
Man is tasked by his teacher to find a treasure hidden by another man. But it is also being sought by 5 Tom Hardys dressed up in masks with various insect themings. He fights them.
9/10
The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter
Man's family is killed by traitors, he goes to a monastery to very angrily learn inner peace, only to give up and learn to fight with a pole instead. He kills lots of people!
10/10
Five Elements Ninjas
There is a group of Chinese fighters who challenge some ninjas for some reason. They get absolutely fucked by those sneaky, tricksy Japanese ninjas, and then they learn a couple of things and then... then it is their turn to deliver the fucking. It's pretty cool, one guy gets ripped in half!
9/10
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Post by technoish on Feb 21, 2024 10:01:28 GMT
Napster was worse! Sometimes you had to wait for the one person with the album you wanted to go online and then it would be like 0.001kb/sec.
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Post by dfunked on Feb 21, 2024 10:08:08 GMT
It's pretty ridiculous how slickly you can set up automation of downloads these days. I haven't gone for all of the bells and whistles, but can just add stuff to a trakt list while I'm out and about and it'll be ready to go when I get home.
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Feb 21, 2024 10:40:42 GMT
It does raise the question of what is a fair price to rent/ buy a film online, so that creators get a fair cut.
I don't want DVDs and stuff cluttering my house but I'd happily pay up to ÂŁ5 to watch a film on 48 hour rental. Cheaper than going to cinema, no people and I haven't had to leave the house.
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Post by Leolian'sBro on Feb 21, 2024 10:42:25 GMT
Paying for a film online and the creators getting a fair cut are almost entirely unconnected.
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cubby
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Post by cubby on Feb 21, 2024 10:47:13 GMT
Not entirely true, SAG members get residuals from sales and rentals. It's why streaming is causing such an issue because residuals have been difficult (perhaps intentionally) to quantify residual payments, and weren't counted due to contracts not including streaming. It's a big factor in what all the strikes were about.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Feb 21, 2024 15:09:03 GMT
It does raise the question of what is a fair price to rent/ buy a film online, so that creators get a fair cut. I don't want DVDs and stuff cluttering my house but I'd happily pay up to ÂŁ5 to watch a film on 48 hour rental. Cheaper than going to cinema, no people and I haven't had to leave the house. Talking new films or older ones?
If we're not talking very recent releases, a fiver sounds a bit excessive to me. But I'd pay 2.99 or 3.99.
1.99 deals are the sweet spot though.
You can quite often 'buy' (as in long term rent) digital downloads for 3.99 or 4.99 in sales.
The tricky thing is pricing the more recent releases, and the problem there is that they're trying to take into account that it might be one person watching, but it might be an entire group. So it's really hard to compare to movie ticket prices that are per-person.
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Post by clemfandango on Feb 21, 2024 20:12:28 GMT
Money Train - 4/10
Well the good run has ended⊠Snipes and Woody are back as foster brothers in this watchable hot garbage. Jennifer Lopez is here too for what itâs worth (why is she dancing in an empty room on her own next to the bar they all hang out in?). The tone is all over the place, Woodys character is a prize bellend throughout.
The story involves the police trio pretending to be homeless at the local subway to catch criminals. Woody has a gambling habit. They both fancy Jlo. Snipes gets Jlo.
Oh and some borderline psychotic police chief runs the âmoney trainâ thatâs collects all the gate money on the subway lines. Right at the end Woody tryâs to steal it even though he has a heart of gold. Snipes stops him. The end.
This is absolute crap, but you can guess that snipes and woody are watchable together so itâs a 4 (should be a two).
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nazo
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Post by nazo on Feb 21, 2024 21:09:04 GMT
The Creator
Enjoyable sci-fi with some stunning FX that crap all over Marvel's efforts but it felt a bit disjointed at times. Maybe a too little close for comfort to Avatar with its jarhead gone native story and irredeemably awful miltary goons but no-where near as tedious thankfully.
7/10
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Post by simple on Feb 22, 2024 0:58:55 GMT
Empire Records (amazon rental)
Teen comedy where each character is just a different teen stereotype. Its very silly and feels a bit like it was designed by committee to hit as many marketable demographics as possible. Its got its charms but it feels very much like the mainstream MTV version of this sort of thing. Nearly every scene looks like its a Hollywood idea of what a music video looks like. Its âweâve got to save the youth club from evil developersâ for people who were told by their moms they were too young to go to Lollapalooza.
Chasing Amy (dvd)
I always consider this the grown up one and Holdenâs emotional journey is pretty mature for this kind of film but there is also a lot more comedy than I remembered. Most of the jokes have dated horribly though and are virtually all variations on âlol lesbiansâ. I get the impression Kevin Smith wouldnât write Jason Leeâs character like this today but even if he did I donât think many of his lines would still be allowed anymore.
Iâve seen it called homophobic and I donât think it means to be, its just very ham fisted and of its time. The homophobic character might get all the gags but heâs also played as an unreasonable jerk who says some stuff that clearly paints him as being awful at times. So even if Smith is having his cake and eating it I donât think he means for you to be on Jason Leeâs side. So thereâs homophobia in here but its a story thats partly about homophobia rather than a homophobic story. Ultimately its probably Joey Lauren Adams who is the most sympathetic character even if Affleck is the lead protagonist.
I suppose you could say maybe Smith wasnât the right person to write sensitive portrayals of gay women in 1997 but guys with goatees who have issues dealing with their partnersâ romantic and sexual history is a central theme to a lot of his films and this is another iteration of that.
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Post by MolarAmđ” on Feb 22, 2024 1:18:23 GMT
I dunno, I think you're meant to sympathise with Affleck's character to some extent. It's almost impossible to these days - there's enough red flags in that relationship to fill a meeting of the Chinese Communist Party - but I'm not sure Kevin Smith would have been that aware in 1997.
It is kind of homophobic, too, but not in a mean-spirited way. It's more benignly ignorant than mean.
Not that I'd hold that against Smith today. Movies can sometimes age poorly, and that's fine. I'm sure he's matured a lot since then, too, though there's a common element of sickening schmaltz in his Clerks and Clerks-adjacent movies that I'm not ever really on board with.
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Blue_Mike
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Post by Blue_Mike on Feb 22, 2024 2:03:06 GMT
Money Train - 4/10 Well the good run has ended⊠Snipes and Woody are back as foster brothers in this watchable hot garbage. Jennifer Lopez is here too for what itâs worth (why is she dancing in an empty room on her own next to the bar they all hang out in?). The tone is all over the place, Woodys character is a prize bellend throughout. The story involves the police trio pretending to be homeless at the local subway to catch criminals. Woody has a gambling habit. They both fancy Jlo. Snipes gets Jlo. Oh and some borderline psychotic police chief runs the âmoney trainâ thatâs collects all the gate money on the subway lines. Right at the end Woody tryâs to steal it even though he has a heart of gold. Snipes stops him. The end. This is absolute crap, but you can guess that snipes and woody are watchable together so itâs a 4 (should be a two). I feel bad for suggesting it a while back. Felt like they should have taken the sub-plot about The Torch and expanded him into the main villain of the movie, with him robbing the money train as his ultimate goal. (Apparently there was some controversy at the time about Torch inspiring copycat robberies?)
Incidentally, after looking up trivia about it, I learned about the actor who played the psycho-chief getting done for, and later acquitted of, the murder of his second wife (he was her tenth husband) only a few years after that film, then later being found liable for wrongful death in a civil case to the tune of $30 million.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Feb 22, 2024 2:30:58 GMT
Re: Chasing Amy
I always liked this one at the time, though I haven't watched it in decades. Of course, at the time, I would probably have been completely unaware of most LGBT stuff. As I suspect many of the viewers would have been.
It's interesting that a lot of the things that pushed representation forward now appear to have dated worse than the ones that didn't bother. Things like the LGBT characters in Friends or Will & Grace, or the behavior and language of people towards Eddie Murphy's characters in a bunch of his early movies.
I generally take these things as being well meaning, and often valuable in pushing things forward. And it's because things *have* moved forward so much that they now seem problematic.
And things moved forward pretty quickly. Around 1997 you had almost no representation of gay characters, by 2007 you had representation, but it was often focused on their struggles, and by about 2013 you'd start to get gay characters and relationships that were just treated as normal.
That said, I haven't seen Chasing Amy in decades, so I can't be sure where it's intentions lie.
PS/ Blade is the best Wesley Snipes movie.
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kal
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Post by kal on Feb 22, 2024 7:08:26 GMT
Chasing Amy was considered problematic when it came out let alone now. It was always out of touch.
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Post by simple on Feb 22, 2024 8:53:18 GMT
I think the eventual emotional pay-off and resolution gets to where Smith wanted the story to go and that is broadly a good or at least well intentioned one.
But like I say heâs had his cake and ate it by that point. So even though Alyssa is the only emotionally mature one throughout the film you do spend a lot of time with Bankyâs undisguised homophobia and Holdenâs underlying âfuck the gay awayâ attitude.
It retrospect you can see the red flags but at the time I think a lot of the audience wouldnât. That audience being teenage boys.
It probably doesnât help that Banky is given the voice that Randall had in Clerks and Brodie in Mallrats, where heâs got free reign to be gross because heâs the cool funny one. So even though everything he says and does around and about Alyssa is shown to be gross and wrong I donât know how a 14 yr old in 97 would see it.
Plus thereâs production stuff like the woman Alyssa is kissing when the guys are perving over her was Jason Leeâs wife, and Alyssa played by Kevin Smithâs girlfriend.
I think if you did it now youâd need to tone down the language a lot obviously but just as big youâd need Alyssa and Hooper to be a lot more explicit in calling the boys out much earlier in the film. Leaving it all the way to the epilogue is probably too late for the audience even if it is where Holden and Banky need to find it.
Stylistically its very mellow dramatic too but Smith has gone that way a few times over the years.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Feb 22, 2024 8:55:17 GMT
It got pretty good mainstream reviews iirc. How it was viewed by the LGBT community at the time, I couldn't say.
But that's kinda the thing. It takes these kinds of basic initial efforts to push mainstream awareness forward.
I imagine the LGBT community might not have been that happy with early seasons of Friends, but the mainstream loved it, and the presence of LGBT characters step by step advanced things to the point we're at now.
I don't remember that many movies with gay main characters back in 1997, and iirc Alyssa comes out of the movie looking much better than the 2 main guys do. Then again, it was written by straight white dude.
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Feb 22, 2024 8:59:43 GMT
Yeah. Alyssa comes out looking the best and you're kind of against both blokes by the end. I saw it when I was about 16/17 and even I felt she was the hero of the story.
As noted - it's perfectly valid to look back at something and say "that wouldn't fly now" but I feel he was well intentioned. You've essentially got a fat nerd, known for writing stuff directly for fat nerds, attempting something about a more mature subject and it doesn't end with them happily ever after because real life isn't like that.
All things considered, that's a net positive.
People like Ebert and such also saw it as a cut above his other work.
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Feb 22, 2024 9:07:55 GMT
Though that fucking song sequence. That is ill-judged at any time.
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kal
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Post by kal on Feb 22, 2024 9:23:00 GMT
I think weâre giving the film a bit too much credit here. Philadelphia, The Birdcage, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo all came before Chasing Amy and were all more mainstream and more considered and progressive in their representation of homosexuality. Even in the context of the time, it was a clumsy and insensitive effort, and âwell meaningâ only gives you so much of a pass.
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Feb 22, 2024 9:29:44 GMT
While I get that, we also know that allies are a useful thing.
As I said - a fat nerd, writing for other fat nerds and purposefully making a film in which straight white, pussy-obsessed men are made to look at least questionable in the face of a somewhat progressive, successful and independent woman isn't a hindrance. Considering that American Pie came out 2 years later and openly had a speech about how women owe guys their virginity, with the whole spying on the webcam scene.
Priscilla, Philadelphia, etc weren't aimed at straight young men. Chasing Amy was.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Feb 22, 2024 9:34:17 GMT
Even at the time it was called out as being very ham fisted. She gets slut shamed for the entire movie and dudes can't be close friends without one of them having the gay.
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Post by simple on Feb 22, 2024 9:41:07 GMT
I think everyone is probably somewhat right here.
It does probably boil down to the issue Geefe has highlighted. A straight, fat nerd writing a comedy film for other straight, fat nerds probably lacks the tools to write a sensitive, nuanced portrayal of how Holden could come to terms with Alyssaâs life and past.
Banky and Holden are pretty representative of who the films audience wouldâve been too which complicates how their attitudes are demonstrated.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2024 9:45:31 GMT
pussy obsessed men.
Just when I thought Geefe couldn't get more cringe.
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Bongo Heracles
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Post by Bongo Heracles on Feb 22, 2024 9:52:29 GMT
Banky and Holden are pretty representative of who the films audience wouldâve been too which complicates how their attitudes are demonstrated. I mean, its probably representative of the films writer, too (which is one of the reasons it kinda sucks). A lot of it feels like a spiced up diary entry, him just being insecure and intimidated by a woman because he was a fat virgin rather than some elaborate threesome setup.
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geefe
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Post by geefe on Feb 22, 2024 10:05:07 GMT
The threesome idea does come out of nowhere. I certainly wouldn't see it as a solution to the issue.
And user Rum Monkey, I get you don't like my way with words but that was a phrase chosen to represent exactly what the mindset was. I have no idea how old you are but I was the right age to see this film and I can tell you a young lad, surrounded by other young lads, growing up in the late 90s- mid 2000s that was absolutely phrases you would here.
In the late 2000s, our guest lecturer at uni was an editor of a lad's mag. That language was pervasive. In front of impressionable young men and, what I am now aware were probably horrified young women. That should be indicative of the world the audience inhabited.
If you were genuinely offended, I apologise but I really want to make the point that, over the years, change for a lot of people came from like-minded people whom you respected making statements.
Kevin Smith has made some absolutely shite films but it's also really important that someone like him can come out and say "hold up, maybe we need to think about this", such as his comments following Weinstein's reveal.
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kal
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Post by kal on Feb 22, 2024 10:11:03 GMT
Ok we are definitely now giving Smith waaaaay too much credit, plus some serious cinematic revisionism.
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