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Amentep

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Everything posted by Amentep

  1. Warner Bros settles FTC suit regarding not disclosing it paid for online positive videos from youtubers, et al for Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/07/warner-bros-settles-ftc-charges-it-failed-adequately-disclose-it
  2. Diego Garcia - the interwebs tells me its an atoll under control of the British Indian Ocean Territory.
  3. Was this post supposed to be in this thread...?
  4. I'd be reluctant to ascribe a singular motive or feeling to large groups of people involving complex situations of which they may only be partially aware.
  5. isn't their purpose to place all of earth under control of the restored caliphate? That would mean you could do nothing at all and still be their enemy if you didn't acquiesce to their religious views and authority.
  6. Sadly, I'd argue the vitrol is on par with the modern echo-conversations of "social media" as people try to one-up each other by describing how something they've never seen and probably never will has ruined their life and/or represents all that is bad about western civilization.
  7. She's also ignoring the report of the police chief who said they tried to negotiate him, only to have those negotiations not work with the shooter expressing sentiment of wanting to kill more people.
  8. I've always wanted to see a movie staring Keith David and David Keith. Just think of it, you could do the billing like: KEITH DAVID DAVID KEITH And it works anyway to read it! ... *ahem* Anyhow the likelihood of that match-up happening dims every year, so I'll go for a Gal-Guy Film. Tarzan always goes back to England as part of his origin story. This story was about why he decides to go back to Africa (where almost all of the later books happened).
  9. Condolences on your loss Bartimaeus.
  10. We get the "south's culture and heritage is in danger of being lost" locally every time some transplant doesn't follow the local custom of pulling over when a funeral procession drives by. People fret about those "northerners" with no respect for the dead, which leads to no respect for southern culture which leads to the inevitable "go back where you came from" sort of thing. That said, I think the worst enemy of "the South"'s culture and heritage is the south itself...
  11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)#Europe_1830.E2.80.931938_.28Bairoch.29 Bairoch estimated Sweden as ahead of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Serbia, Bulgaria, Portugal and Greece ranging somewhere from 4th - 8th lowest GDP during the 1830-1890 period.
  12. It's an anti-bot measure. The first handful posts needs manual approval and new people can only queue 5 posts. After that, people can create threads and posts once we are convinced it's a real human I guess this puts out my theory that 2/3rds of the board are bot-alts of other posters...
  13. I have several electric bug swatter rackets at my house. Most smaller bugs will be killed, most larger bugs will be stunned long enough to kill them in some other fashion.
  14. Used the term was called slash (from "Kirk / Spock" or "Kirk 'slash' Spock" - fan fiction postulating a romantic/sexual relationship between Kirk and Spock). Shipping used to be reserved for fans of a relationship in cannon vs another canon relationship (Buffy's Buffy & Angel vs Buffy & Spike, Willow & Tara vs Willow & Kennedy) or might have romantic feelings (Lost's Sawyer & Kate vs Jack & Kate) but hadn't committed to relationship. I think this then became a catch all for any desired pairing in a fandom whether it had any connection to canon or not, expressing the desire of the fan for the relationship ("I'm shipping X & Y in show Z" for example).
  15. The Shallows (2016) - Nice "killer shark" thriller. Well done.
  16. Being in the middle of nowhere means nothing on the internet. But as long as you're not blasting anything from The Final Cut, I won't complain.
  17. That doesn't sound anything like the Disney version! Yeah Disney changed the plot around, significantly. Co-Director Art Stevens argued that they couldn't kill Chief - a major character off - in the film and the changes snowballed from there.
  18. Beware following the path of The Fox and The Hound novel. 'Tis depressing.
  19. Pretty sure that the government, officially, did not refer to them as cults. I've only skimmed a few of the FBI's "open records" papers on the subjects (as a result of this topic), but Jim Jones was referred to as "Jim Jones" leader of the "People's Temple of the Disciples of Christ" or just "People's Temple". David Koresh is referred to as the "leader of a religious sect, the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists".
  20. Houdini and Doyle ep 8: "Strigoi" Given the pile-up of historical inaccuracies (but to be fair, this has to be an alternate history, really), its sometimes amazing that I like the series as well as I do. This one deals with (Doyle's real life friend) Bram Stoker. Doyle had met Stoker at about 18 or so, IIRC, and they had become friends. Stoker would have already had his first book published and Doyle would have been starting (or about to start) medical school. Later in life Stoker and Doyle would collaborate on two chapters of a collaborative novel, "The Fate of Finnella". Stoker was a fan of Sherlock Holmes. Set about 3 years after Stoker's publication of DRACULA. In real life, while well reviewed, the book was only a modest seller. Dracula's popularity as an element of pop culture was three decades away. Here, though, the novel has made Stoker a veritable recluse - sort of. We find the real reason he has become a hermit is his tertiary syphilis (speculated by biographers, but I believe not actually proven). I believe the symptoms presented here don't really match up, but not being a disease expert I'll leave that alone. Stoker is presented as a little old man - and while he may have been 53 at the time the show is set in, the real Bram Stoker was a big burly man with red hair and beard. Also this presentation dispenses with Stoker's wife entirely - she outlived him by two decades (and while considered a great beauty of the time is mostly known today as the widow who fought the distribution of NOSFERATU for copyright violations and won). Henry Irving - the actor Stoker represented, and Stoker's role as Business Manager of Irving's Lyceum Theater is also missing (this being where he primarily made his money for many years, including the post Dracula ones) That said, the story was fairly fun; Stoker's servant is killed with a stake. Two groups circle Stoker's fame - a group of self-professed vampires and a group of self-professed vampire hunters. Its funny to see Houdini rail against the vampires for hanging around graveyards, given that we're only a year (or so) removed from the Victorian era that saw many seeing a cemetery as a park - a nice place to walk and have a picnic. While Houdini from the US may not have had any connection to that, Doyle and Constable Stratton would have, and so nothing being said seemed odd (or maybe it was because hanging around the graveyards at night was odd - just seemed a bit like a missed opportunity to talk about a weird real-world historical factoid). The mystery adds a lot of inconsistencies allowing the viewer to muse whether or not there really were vampires or not. And as always the main leads make their characters engaging, with Houdini having dialed back some of his more irritating mannerisms to be more in tune with the other characters.
  21. Been looking forward to that starting almost as much as the Twin Peaks continuation.
  22. Darkman was fun. Mind you I liked DC's The Unknown Soldier who has almost the exact same MO as Darkman, so I was already set for the film. Interesting trivia: Darkman came about because Raimi couldn't secure the rights to do a film for The Shadow (now doing a Shadow film is something Raimi has been attached to for 6-7 years now with no real movement that I can see). (As a Raimi side-note, I saw CrimeWave recently - not as bad as its reputation, but certainly a flawed/compromised film. Still worth checking out if you're a Raimi fan, IMO, though).
  23. Given that all the orcs excepting half-orc Garona were mocap performances...it was effects work. IIRC DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES cost $170 million
  24. I agree it is a very small pond, with NARNIA, and HARRY POTTER possibly being LOTR's only modern bretheren amid English language films
  25. For me the best example was in Dragon's Dogma - I spent hours just wandering the wilderness and finding what was there in the day, then at night and even once I knew, sometimes I'd just go wander again because I enjoyed the combat and the locations.
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