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Post by Dano on Jul 9, 2010 14:30:47 GMT -5
Thankfully Degeneration was produced by Capcom. Anderson needs to die in a fire.
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Post by matrixdragon273 on Jul 9, 2010 21:42:42 GMT -5
Also off topic, there was a preview that played of an upcoming CGI animated comedie about a lizard with hopeless survival skills. It looks epicly (epically?) funny and I wanna see it, but can't remember the name of it for the life of me!
And returning to the topic at hand, I couldn't stand how blurry it got when the camera would scroll around. It almost made me think MY EYES were the problem.
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Post by adamassc on Jul 9, 2010 21:47:24 GMT -5
Thankfully Degeneration was produced by Capcom. Anderson needs to die in a fire. If you were a woman I would marry you.
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Post by Dano on Jul 9, 2010 22:25:45 GMT -5
I am a woman. I'll be waiting for my engagement ring in the mail. Also, I pressed the wrong button when I tried to reply and ended up editing your post, lol. Sorry bout that.Also off topic, there was a preview that played of an upcoming CGI animated comedie about a lizard with hopeless survival skills. It looks epicly (epically?) funny and I wanna see it, but can't remember the name of it for the life of me! Is this it? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rango_%282011_film%29
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Post by matrixdragon273 on Jul 10, 2010 0:35:56 GMT -5
Yeah that one! Thanks!
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Post by Tilly on Jul 10, 2010 3:01:20 GMT -5
And yet other people find it quite offensive; telling them they can't be hurt is, yanno, hurtful too.
Regardless of how you feel on the matter, stop using it in that fashion here. It's not your word to reclaim, and even if it were I would take issue with it being used around people obviously uncomfortable with it in a way that's...well, not exactly reclaimy.
(edit) This was, obviously, in response to Epyon's post. That'll teach me to leave tabs open.
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Post by KAndrw on Jul 10, 2010 9:03:47 GMT -5
Hrm. I didn't mean to come across so scoldy, and perhaps I should have given more of a background... I remember the look on my aunt's face the time I described something I didn't like as '*Watch your language!*'. She didn't look offended - she looked disappointed. Disappointed that I'd so casually and unthinkingly use a throwaway term that is also used as a perjorative against her daughter. I got the feeling she expected more of me, and so I decided I should expect more of me too. Mental retardation is a clinical term that is falling out of use, largely because lay society has picked it up, abbreviated it, and started misusing it (as society often does - eg bulimia). If you look at textbooks from a couple of decades ago, you'll find terms like mongoloid and spastic used instead, words that also became popular insults and were phased out. I am extremely impressed by the fact that Epyon's family have raised his sister to shrug off the popular use of '*Watch your language!*' as a perjorative, and have instead embraced the idea that the term only ever refers to stupid actions taken by non-mentally challenged people. It's a real achievement and if every disadvantaged person in the world lived in such a caring a supportive context, things would be fabulous. However, it's worth noting that developmentally challenged groups are generally not in favour of the popular use of the term. The people they care about ARE referred to as 'retards' by the insensitive and mean-spirited boors of the world, so it's use to insult able people is doubly hurtful. The message is - "You are so stupid, you are at least as stupid as a mentally challenged person, who by the way is thoroughly undesirable". www.down-syndrome-facts-and-fiction.com/mental-retardation.html"There will always be ignorant people who continue to use medical terminology as a slur, just as there are still racists who use the “N” word. However, I know that the good, responsible people of this world will understand and be a little more sensitive in what they say. My family, my little girl, and people the world over thanks you for not putting a part of our human family down that needs all the hands up it can get. "As I said, I'm not hurt or offended by the use of the word '*Watch your language!*', and I don't need it to be considered a taboo word on this forum. I'm far more interested in getting other people not to say it because they don't want to (similar to how I used to have no problem with the single syllable abbreviation of 'japanese' but, thanks to explanations by other people on this forum, I now avoid saying it). If people hear my justifications and still feel that it's acceptable for them to use the word '*Watch your language!*', I'm not going to take it any further.
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Post by Chuckles on Jul 12, 2010 4:59:54 GMT -5
Mm . . . I love how the discussion of a bad movie can turn into a heated debate on the ethics of semantics. I don't feel one bit of bad for the director/casting people/etc. They brought it on themselves. Same with Jackson Rathbone, who was all "omg I can just get a tan and it'll be okay". Fff. I don't blame you, but you should know by now that I empathize for anyone so long as they aren't deliberately trying to ruin something. The way I see it, the commercial and reputational damage was equal punishment. Condemnation from fans, justified as it is, is just harsh.
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Post by adamassc on Jul 13, 2010 14:00:43 GMT -5
I am a woman. I'll be waiting for my engagement ring in the mail. Also, I pressed the wrong button when I tried to reply and ended up editing your post, lol. Sorry bout that.While I have no engagement ring, I have a selection of Lantern Corp rings, will one of them work?
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Post by Dano on Jul 13, 2010 14:46:00 GMT -5
Actually, let's forget the engagement and start our own crime fighting galaxy defending zombie blasting superhero syndicate with those LC rings.
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Post by KAndrw on Oct 5, 2010 16:19:17 GMT -5
This movie is almost everything I could ever hate about the movie industry in a nice little ball. It's a racist, whitewashed, poorly-executed pile of FAIL, and its director and casting people were all bad kinds of oblivious. Well, I finally got around to watching Airbender now it's out on dvd, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so, that I immediately started watching the cartoon. I'm only halfway through the first season, so it's possible that my impressions are incomplete... I really don't get the furore over the 'racism' in the film. If anything, the film is considerably more racially heterogenous than the cartoon, in which everybody seems to belong to the same quasi-white-asian ethnic group, with blue eyes reserved for the goodies. That works in cartoons, where features can be left sufficiently ambiguous, but not so much in movies. It seems to me that the controversy has just been manufactured by people in the grievance industry with their own personal axes to grind. It's a shame that, just like with Golden Compass, the sequel will probably never be made because of protesters, most of whom probably haven't even seen the film. I especially liked how distinct the different bending styles were in the film. I haven't really noticed that in the cartoon. Also it's great to see Cliff Curtis play yet another ethnicity :D
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Post by Tilly on Oct 5, 2010 21:09:25 GMT -5
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Post by KAndrw on Oct 6, 2010 2:58:06 GMT -5
Yeah, I really do think that this issue is made up largely of hysteria, hyperbole and personal axe-grinding. I read several of those stories after watching the film, and was appalled at the wild exaggerations found in practically every one.
The cartoon takes place in a world where everybody is culturally asian and racially ambiguous. The movie takes place in a world where there is greater racial diversity, and everybody is still culturally asian (or more accurately, of cultures that are based on asian cultures.)
When I watch the cartoon and see the water tribe, I see indigenous Nordic communities, which are made up of both caucasian and mongoloid gene stock. So when people get all angry and make statements like this:
"We will, however, hold adult actors accountable for culturally insensitive statements, such as Jackson Rathbone’s assertion that he would get “a tan” to play Sokka, a person of color."
... I think the people making the statements are leveraging a non-issue to promote their personal agenda. In this case, I think the agendum is a good cause, but that doesn't excuse the attack they're making. Sokka is not a person of colour. He is a cartoon character of no clear ethnicity, with a tan.
Obviously whatever race person was chosen to play Sokka, they would have to find a girl of the same race to play Katara. While there are undoubtedly both male and female child actors of asian descent who could have played the role, I can't think of a single A-lister who fits the bill. And unfortunately, big-budget films need A-listers. Consumers make their viewing choices based on them.
I daresay that people who identified the cartoon characters as ethnically asian were upset, perhaps even hurt, but I don't think they are justified. Nothing was taken away from them. The movie didn't take ethnically asian characters out of the cartoon, because the cartoon deals with people who are culturally asian in a racially homogenous world. I'm surprised that Aang wasn't cast as somebody of asian descent, but I don't think it affected the movie. Hell, I hadn't even figured out what race the actor actually was by the end of the film.
Nor do I need to in order to enjoy a movie.
[edited several times for shoddy language use. Stupid cold-medicated brain]
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Post by Maethius on Oct 6, 2010 9:57:10 GMT -5
Just curious (and, yes, it is exactly on topic), anyone have a problem with Samuel L. Jackson playing Nick Fury? How about Billy D. Williams as Harvey Dent in the 1989 Batman movie? Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin in Daredevil?
Here we have three (fairly) modern examples of black actors (the term African-American is so overused, you know... I'm not a Scottish American, I was born here, just like they were... but you may supplement the term if it suits you) playing characters that were written as white. Did they do a good job? Of all of them the one I felt was best for his role was Duncan... who else can play a man that huge without special effects?
What if we look back to Hollywood's golden age? Charlton Heston and Anne Baxter in 1956's The Ten Commandments? Charles as a Jew and Anne an Egyptian? This wasn't done specifically to offend anyone... they were big roles and studios wanted solid actors to fill them (and to fill seats).
Personally, I think selecting different Asian ethnicities to represent the nations was a brilliant stroke... if not executed well. I was more offended at the level of acting, shoddy editing, and lack of adhesion to a wonderfully envisioned world.
On a much brighter note, can't wait for the second series!
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Post by KAndrw on Oct 6, 2010 13:55:27 GMT -5
Just curious (and, yes, it is exactly on topic), anyone have a problem with Samuel L. Jackson playing Nick Fury? How about Billy D. Williams as Harvey Dent in the 1989 Batman movie? Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin in Daredevil? To be fair, black actors taking 'white roles' is a different issue to white actors taking 'asian roles'. White actors are well represented in principal acting roles, so this sort of revisioning-as-positive-discrimination only helps to level the field. The fact that the black actors here are 'big names' underlies what in my opinion is the bigger issue - big movies generally need big stars for principal roles. I think there is a race issue in the whole Airbender shindig, but it is one step removed from the movie's casting - this step. Boycotting the movie because it didn't cast actors that would be impossible to cast helps nobody. Even if Airbender didn't serve as a vehicle for introducing (many) new asian actors to the world, I think it still did a pretty good job of stealthily normalising asian cultural precepts. It did a much better job than the vast majority of blockbuster films, which don't even try.
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