Maedhros
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Posts posted by Maedhros
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I'll admit it's been a long while since I read through the Silmarillion, but that's part of what Peter Jackson had said he was doing. Adding in chunks of background information from that to flesh out the story and lay elements that turned up in the LoTR stories.
There's nothing from The Silmarillion (or Unfinishes Tales) in the movies, as they don't have the rights to it. Some of the background information comes from the appendices in Lord of the Rings, but it's mostly just fan fiction from PJ .
I just wish they'd make two movies instead of one. There's too much new material that makes little sense, and doesn't make the movies better. Gandalf going to High Fells (why?), Silly romance triangle, Radagast Binks, drawn out fights, etc. Bilbo says it best: "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."
I'm obviously arguing from a Tolkien fanboys' point of view, but I loved Lord of the Rings despite of all the changes they made there. Those actually made sense for the most part. I can't shake the feeling that the studio producers have had much more influence on this triology, sadly.
One positive thing though, I loved Thranduil! Lee Pace being impressive as always.
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Desolation of Smaug. Worst movie made in the Middle-earth universe so far (and that includes those cartoons from the 70s).
Oh is that out now? I won't see it in the theater but I suppose my usual "I saw the first one" means I'll see it when it's on PPV. I didn't like the first one much tho. It wasn't bad, exactly - just boring. Sometimes magic can't be done twice.
The first Hobbit film suffered from poor pacing due to all of the shoe-horning of Silmarillion material in there to pad it out to a trilogy.
Most of the scenes that aren't in the novel is just fan fiction from Petter Jackson, with a few exceptions. They don't have the rights to Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales. Agree that all those new scenes totally messed up the pacing though.
Desolation of Smaug as a movie fails because they're trying to make a lighthearted adventure novel into an epic to match Lord of the Rings. Never gonna work, and they should've focused on what makes the Hobbit a good novel - Bilbo's adventure. All that other stuff is irrelevant to the story of The Hobbit. They had the right idea when they expanded the Bard character, as he kinda appeared out of nowhere in the book, but pretty much everything else just lessens the experience. Why did they think it was a good idea to keep
drawing out the Smaug fight. It made the dragon look like an idiot. "Hey you, over here!!" Seriously?
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Top 5 movies this year:
1. The Act of Killing
2. Prisoners
3. Rush
4. Before Midnight
5 The East
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Desolation of Smaug. Worst movie made in the Middle-earth universe so far (and that includes those cartoons from the 70s).
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Wasn't there something there about one of Napoleon's generals getting a field promotion to king there?
Bernadotte. Not one of the better marshalls and he actively hated Napoleon despite, iirc, being his brother in law. In a vaguely on topic observation it was one of his descendants who the Stern Gang (or was it the Irgun/ Haganah?) murdered just prior to the partition of Palestine when he was trying to mediate for the UN.
Should have gone for one of:
Davout- as best marshall
MacDonald- could establish a chain of restaurants equivalent to Ikea in ubiquitousness, also possibility of forming United Kingdom of Sweden and Scotland in a year or so time to compensate for losing Norway's North Sea petrodollars. Plus Etienne MacDonald is a very cool name.
Poniatowski, despite being a mere general- epically trolling P/Russia and Austria and as a sort of reverse Gustav Adolphus, plus lots of free cores on Poland and Lithuania.
Bernadotte was probably more suited to be king than most of the other marshalls. In many ways he was similar to Napoleon, with that "larger than life" quality that made him such a good leader of men. Skill in the field doesn't necessarily mean you're suited to be king though. Someone as cold and stern as Davout isn't king-material for example. In general, the french marshalls under Napoleon were mostly all pretty badass, here is one example:
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Thanks to Bester I tried DOTA2 out but it really wasn't for me. There's very little to do, which is what happens when you cut Warcraft III down to a single hero unit, and the game relies on a lot of memorisation of effective combinations. I imagine its very time consuming to be good at the game, but its just not all that much fun to play.
Not sure what you mean by there not being a lot to do? Dota can be a very hectic game, you're always supposed to do something. The charm of it is the endless potential of how good you can play as a team. Playing it alone, with random internet strangers isn't very fun.
Considering buying Europa Universalis III, but I'm still having so much fun with Crusader Kings II. How does it compare to it?
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He also happens to be an accomplished actor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOV3ghVxVkY (How to embed youtube videos here?)
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In no particular order:
The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
Radiohead - Ok Computer
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
The Eels - Electro-shock blues
Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
The Cure - Disintegration
Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's
Led Zeppelin - IV
Pink Floyd - Animals
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I think the death penalty is one of those things you have to leave behind if you want to head towards a better society. Humans shouldn't have the lawful right to kill other humans. However I suppose it's easy to be naive about these sort of things, when you live in relatively peaceful Norway.
I am glad, and heartened a great deal, that this thread is full of people who have never had some seriously horrible **** happen to a loved one.After the Breivik-massacre the mantra in the country, including the people who lost their friends and family was "more humanity, more democracy, more love" etc, rather than "off with his head". So it's definitely possible to be anti-death penalty even if you've lost loved ones.
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I've heard death penalties are usually more expensive than giving someone lifetime without parole. Googled it:
http://www.acadp.org/contents/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=40:costs&catid=14
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Finished Heart of the Swarm. Was alright, but nothing special. If you didn't like WoL, chances are you won't like this one either. For me the quality of Starcraft lies in e-sport. Watching the pros play in front of large audiences is awesome.
To the people worrying about a Starcraft MMO - don't. Blizzard has said their next MMO is going to be something completely new, and not related to SC/WC/Diablo.
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Might not be everyone's cup of tea here, but this is my favorite song of 2013, so far:
2013 list (spotify link(shameless self-promotion))
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Scandinavian girls in the "big" cities are the best (no bias here
). Healthy, fit and educated. It's impossible to walk around in the city here (Trondheim) without noticing the sheer amount of pretty girls. It's not that the best looking girls here are better looking than the best looking from other countries. It's just that there are so bloody many of them (relative to the population). Too bad everyone uses chewing tobacco (snus) though.New York (Manhattan) had a lot of stunners as well. Wasn't too impressed by the other places I visited in the US though - Miami surprised me in that it had an insane amount of fat people everywhere.
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Moonstone: A Hard Day's Knight. Don't really remember much from it, except that it was scary as hell for a 6 year old, especially that swamp monster. :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uvS4uhVXkmM
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Duncan Jones is a very talented director, so that's good news for the Warcraft movie.
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I don't think it could have been better. It's a kids book which isn't cinematic at all. They did what they could with it while still trying to please the purists. Honestly, I felt the movie would have worked better if they changed more. I could have done without the trolls especially, and I know from the book that
we're going have to suffer through yet another instance of the eagle ex machina
and I had my fill of those after Return of the King.
So you do think it could've been better?
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I thought the Hobbit movie was very fun to watch, but I still had a lot of beefs with it. The Fellowship of the Ring, which it kinda parallels in structure, was a much better movie.
The pale orc, Azog, was just annoying, and never as scary and imposing as Lurtz was in Fellowship of the Ring. I suspect this has much to do with him being computer animated.
Radagast was just ridiculous and annoying. Not as bad as Jar-Jar Binks, but almost. Served no purpose in the movie at all (In the book, it's Gandalf who finds out about the necromancer, in the same place he finds the key from Thorin's corrupted father).
The intro with Frodo was too drawn out, and not necessary. Would've been a lot better to start with the cozy "Good morning" scene after the flashback prologue (which btw was the only scene that truly felt Tolkien-like).
The music wasn't as impressive as Lord of the Rings, where pretty much everything had a unique theme. Why did they play Aragorn coronation theme when Thorin was hugging Bilbo in the end, and why did they play the Nazgul theme when Thorin charged Azog? I also thought the music was very unfitting at other times, in that it was overly trying to tell you what to feel, which ruined the moments for me. (For example the overly epic music when Gandalf presents the key, or when he does that speech about "the little things".)
That rock giant scene was just lame, and what's up with the cheap thrills at the end of it with Bilbo, and then Thorin almost falling down from the cliff?
I know I'm sounding negative now, but I'm just a bit frustrated since it could've been so much better.
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The Hobbit.
Barely noticed it was running in 48 fps, so don't really see what all the negative fuzz is about.
There were some dissapointments, but overall I enjoyed the movie, and looking forward to the next one. Liked the inclusion of other stuff Tolkien has written about, one flashback in particular was amazing.
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I've only tried a couple of the games released this year, and found them all to be underwhelming: Mass Effect 3, Mists of Pandaria, Guild Wars 2, Diablo 3 and Dishonored. Gonna buy Football Manager 2013 soon, guessing that will be my GotY, they're always good.
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Dota 2 is pretty much the only game I play nowadays. Such a fantastic remake of Warcraft 3's best custom game. Feels just the same, only with a better matchmaking system, prettier graphics and a much better interface.
(PM me if you want the game for free btw. Got 2 invites to give out).
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This is why I can tell you are a not so secret anti Isreali bigot. isreal is guilty of lots of bad things but you try to whitewash Palestine's part in the thing and amke thee excuse that they are 'weaker'. Beingw eak ism not an excuse for poor behaviour. This works both ways. Diplomacy has proven not to work with Hamas specifically or Palestine in general. And, the only reason Hamas agrees with 'peace talks' is because they use that time to build up their rocket supply adn recruit new people. And, when i say recruit, I don't just mean,"Hi you wanna join against the enemy!?!". It's mroe like 'Join us or die and your family will die!" L0LZ
What are you talking about? I simply replied to a post where someone was wondering why Palestine didn't try to "give peace a chance", and gave one reason (of many) why it's not so simple. I completely detest both Hamas and its supporters, so stop putting words in my mouth you silly goose.
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One should wonder why Hamas or any other anti-Israel fighter bother with those petty rockets. I mean Israel has proven since 1948 that they will answer with full-scale war each for each provocation. Maybe give some sort diplomacy a chance or do they simply think that the collateral damage caused to their own people as an acceptable loss?
AGX-17 answered this some posts above. The Israeli have proven time and time again that diplomacy with them is useless. In "peace time" the Isreali simply spend their time systematically stealing Palestinian homes and land.
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Watched Red Cliff today. A John Woo movie.
Did you watch the trimmed down western release? Because there are two movies really, they mashed them together and left out a lot of stuff for the western audience.
It's based on my favorite period in history, so I quite enjoyed it. But the 2010 miniseries Three Kingdoms was better (of which the Red Cliff part is 10-12 episodes or so). Cao Cao (the "villain") is a much more nuanced and interesting character in that.
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Wow, banana on pizza? Never heard of that before.
I'm pretty bad at making the "perfect combinations", but I love garlic- or chili marinated shrimps on pizza. A simple pizza with only some mozarella and green pesto can be nice, too.
Us Norwegians often use something called "rømme" as well. It's kinda like sour cream, except not as sour I guess. A more milky taste, kinda hard to explain. It makes for a really good contrast when you add it to spicy pizzas.
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The wire, although it's a cop show, has much more true to life characters, even if some are a bit over the top. Homicide was better in every sense and would not be a terrible comparison.
Pretty much anything David Simon touches turns to gold. The Wire, Homicide (based on his book), Generation Kill, Treme, The Corner...all very good.
STEAM!
in Computer and Console
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Has anyone tried Aarklash: legacy? Party-based RPG that's on sale now (40%). Might wait for an eventual 75% discount, but is it any good?