Blarghagh

Can't believe I'm going to have to defend the goddamned academy here, but... I think you're overreacting a little bit. Ponyo definitely deserved a nomination, but so did all the movies nominated for an academy award. It was just a fantastic year for animation. I personally would rate Ponyo above Princess and the Frog and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but both are close calls. Don't get me wrong, I love Miyazaki, but Ponyo wasn't near his regular level of excellence. It was actually a little standard. It's good enough to compete with these other movies, but unlike Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away it wasn't so amazing that it just blows the competition out of the water right away. It's a great film, and if it was nominated, hell, if it won, it would have deserved it. But all films that were nominated for the best animated feature deserve it too.

Oh my god. I have shamed myself as an animator and as an animation fan. How could have flown under my radar until it was nominated for freaking Oscar.

Really? I love Jayne because there's a person hidden underneath all those layers of stupid. He is the stereotypical henchmen, except when it really comes down to it, he's not. I actually think the real appeal in Firefly lies in the characters. Every other show I've ever watched there were the characters that I thought were boring or bad. But on Firefly, I like everyone. Even when I dislike the problem of the episode, the characters are such a blast to watch that I still love it. So yeah I might be biased because I like everyone. When it got to me like no other movie has done before.

Anyone got any recommendations for someone who likes Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams? I don't read a lot of books but I'm slowly getting there.

I don't know who she is, but I googled her and I must say you are correct. EDIT: Holy hell, her music does make the ears bleed. She's like Avril Lavigne for people who don't like the manufactured rock chick shtick. Have two weeks vacation time before I got back to school for exam projects. Yay! Slept a lot and am now watching Eddie Izzard shows.

I think KotOR 2 has a more original plot and does it's best to avoid the Star Wars pitfalls, especially the black and white lightside/darkside system. KotOR 1 did feel more like a full game though, yet somehow I find KotOR 2 has far more replayability.

If your function is aesthetic or about something aesthetic like a film, or in-browser-games, I'd say they're fine working websites. Honestly, it's kind of like comparing apples and oranges. It's what you do with them that counts. I find that flash websites that are used for the right purpose are great websites. An information website or a fansite or a forum, though, has no business using flash. Doesn't mean that flash is not great for certain types of websites, like you claimed. The real great websites are the ones that manage to combine everything and use whatever is best at what aspect.

I'm sure we'll all agree that they hate bad flash websites (which there are plenty of, just like there are plenty of bad normal websites). But the problem is that Flash things are really applications rather than websites. You'll find the same problems in any video game or visual application. Because most people who hate flash probably don't even hate flash, they just hate load times. But how else are you going to make something visually heavy like the website I linked? You sure as hell can't code it together in HTML, and what are you gonna do if you need an animation? If there's anything that makes for a terrible user experience it's animated .gifs. Javascript, maybe. If they ever make it anything other than a complete hassle to even get it to work on any computer.

Yeah, pears are also universally hated among fruit lovers. You can say just about anything. Doesn't make it true. I'll bet half of the time you hear people complain about flash websites it's from coders, who are far from being a group representing 'internet-dwellers'. EDIT: About your 'only even mentioned because I want to hate it because I'm trying to antagonize the person not agreeing with me' nitpick: The cursor 'lag' in this case is deliberate editing of mouse settings - the visuals would get stretched out and broken if it used computer mouse settings.

I've made a whole lot of flash websites myself, thank you very much. The problem with that website is that they throw large video and image files everywhere and that they just use the thing wrong. The problem is not with flash, it's with idiots making terrible flash-based websites. Most flash websites work great. On the other hand, I can guarantee 90% of the websites featured on sites like The Favorite Website Awards is going to be flash based. Flash is supposed to be used for visually interesting and/or interactive websites, and there's not much else that's better for those kinds of websites than flash. Also, what do you even mean with normal website? A standard website has what? A banner, some text, a few links and pictures? Of course it's going to run better than a website like that with all the video on it. I mean, something like this: http://soytuaire.labuat.com/ may not fit into your view of what a website should be like, but it's still a genius website. EDIT: Apologies for off-topic thread hijacking.

Flash not that great for websites?

The other issue is that they apparently think female ejaculation is urine and OH GOD EWW GROSS SHE PEED RIGHT THERE. They apparently have both the emotional maturity and anatomic knowledge of an ten year old.

What exactly is the use of this? Isn't it just an iPhone which can't call and which is too big to carry anywhere? With a large, exposed touch screen meaning OH MY GOD I ACCIDENTALLY BUMPED INTO A PERSON MY TOUCH SCREEN IS BROKEN. It obviously just requires you to buy extra accesoires just so you can use it. I mean, the iPhone and the iPod were successes because of their functionality and their size. Did Apple just decide to completely ignore the main reasons their other products sold so well?

Those are pretty poor reasons to call something 'the same' I think. You might as well say Lord of the Rings are Cameron movies just because there are some surface similarities. Also, I'd wouldn't call a theme of maternity explored through both the human characters and the antagonistic alien race 'cheap trickery'. How is anything that gets an emotional response trickery? You can't fake a feeling. As for Terminator being his most original premise, didn't he lose a copyright case over it?

Uh'huh, I'll be sure to let my girlfriend know. It'll save me a ton of effort.

Yeah, with them hooking up USB cables as a part of intercourse despite the fact they've been stickin' that thing into animals for the entire flick. I understand why it was cut and it should probably remain cut.

Please explain to me how Aliens is the same as Titanic? I get the point you're making but you're horribly exaggerating it.

According to Box Office Mojo, Avatar is now the highest grossing film of all time. Even though it's not the highest amount of tickets sold and the record falls apart when inflation is taken into account, it's still nice to see something knock Titanic off the top spot. It's been there disturbingly long.

Speargun! Severed but intact alien limbs across the map like breadcrumbs.

EDIT: Nevermind. The sooner people stop posting in this thread the better.

If we can just shrug off good 'n proper stuff with a handwave like this, I'mma go with "never trust anyone's opinion on the internet because they're just trying to annoy people and don't even believe it themselves". Seriously, you are like some trollish, one-track devil's advocate. I don't think you're even really a socialist - you're just repeating things you heard to see people get pissed.

I gotta see this movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx0GaB2EHUs

Watched the first episode of Firefly again due to being in that horribly annoying mood where you're bored as hell but don't actually want to do anything. I always end up watching something I've already seen a thousand times.

It's still playing, so you could still go if you want. I guess you could say we're talking about the one that has "Episode One" in the title. One of the pointless yet entertaining enough to fill in a couple hours prequels.