Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

[Kepler]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

Respectfully, if my company was defrauding investors or committing a crime and I knew they were lying about it, I would speak up and I would hope you’d do the same.

Whistleblower laws are in place for a reason. You’re forever ****ing yourself to publicly report. But at least you get a cut IINM.

You can also drop a Manila envelope in a mailbox.

I would hope I would as well, but you must remember what the .01% will do to protect themselves and their class.

If you whistleblow some little turd start up with some VC money behind it you're probably safe. If you whistleblow a big company with a lot of well-connected people on the board don't be surprised when child porn just happens to appear on your computer, your life is ruined forever, and your loved ones are similarly smeared or even threatened.

The rule of law is cute and all, but we never left the jungle, and the f-cks who own us play for keeps. I hope I would have the strength of character to come forward, but you would have to do so understanding your life would then be at risk.

And not just yours.

 

[The Rube]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

Oh you will love it...it tries to be something so important and avante garde yet it is just another "telling the same story from 5 different angles" crap we have seen since the early 1990's. It so badly wants to be a Tarantino film but it isnt nearly clever enough.

It is right up your alley...lots of "look how different we can be" without being different and all with lots of actors being over the top trying to make the lack of story have some real depth that just isnt there.

That's exactly why I said the sum would be less than the parts involved, had all the directors I mentioned had some input. Their influences are heavy. Make no mistake, I didn't think it was a great movie, it was interesting, and I enjoyed watching it. It is missing the "it" factor that each of those directors would have brought.


Wakefield:

An unhappy father/lawyer quits his suburban life, and vanishes into the attic above his garage, where he watches his family move on without him.

Bryan Cranston stars, which is why I gave it a chance. It's like watching a slow-moving train wreck in the the main character's mind. The downward spiral of either freedom or madness. You find yourself either sympathizing with the main character, or hating him for what he's doing, at any given moment. Definitely worth a watch.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

Respectfully, if my company was defrauding investors or committing a crime and I knew they were lying about it, I would speak up and I would hope you’d do the same.

Whistleblower laws are in place for a reason. You’re forever ****ing yourself to publicly report. But at least you get a cut IINM.

You can also drop a Manila envelope in a mailbox.

In a more dignified way, psychologists will tell you that most people are lemmings and will do what their immediate authority figures tell them to do. Most people track towards an authority figure, it's why the world likes to have its leaders.

 

[Handyman]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

That's exactly why I said the sum would be less than the parts involved, had all the directors I mentioned had some input. Their influences are heavy. Make no mistake, I didn't think it was a great movie, it was interesting, and I enjoyed watching it. It is missing the "it" factor that each of those directors would have brought.

The first half of the film is good...very noirish. If falls apart right about the time Jeff Bridges becomes the focal point. Chris Hemsworth is awesome as his character but that storyline was so awful...

If someone like James Mangold who did Identity had made the film I think it could have been amazing. Instead it wastes the good actors and lets the mediocre ones take over the film. It also banks on people loving Jeff Bridges even when he is rather worthless to the story.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

The Old Man and the Gun. I'll be slightly generous and give it a B-. Redford and Spacek are very cute together, even at their age. The whole thing is pretty paint-by-numbers though.

On the other hand, RBG (the documentary) was really good, even though I had to swallow a gag reflex when Orrin Hatch was given his 5 mins of bloviating about bipartisanship.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

In a more dignified way, psychologists will tell you that most people are lemmings and will do what their immediate authority figures tell them to do. Most people track towards an authority figure, it's why the world likes to have its leaders.

I get that, but for most scientists and engineers, the truth is their authority. Or rather, I'd like to think so.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

I get that, but for most scientists and engineers, the truth is their authority. Or rather, I'd like to think so.

One of the most counter-intuitive and creepiest results of the Millgram experiment was that the kids with more science education were more likely to follow orders and apply the shocks.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

I has a sad

 

[Kepler]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

I has a sad

Yeah. That's one of maybe 5 things I've heard in my life where I thought, "Wow. That makes me rethink a tenet of my worldview." It's up there with the double slit experiment.

(Don't, mookie, Just don't.)

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

Double slit is the one where it seems to violate time, right? When I first heard that I think I sat there for a good hour and tried to wrap my head around it. Futile.

I’m going to have to think about the Millgram thing. Something else had to be a factor there.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

Double slit is the one where it seems to violate time, right?

First of all and most importantly, it doesn't "seem" to do anything. It's not an illusion. It's what really happens.

In the tame version it just violates the wave / particle duality. That part's boring: who decreed particles have to behave like large objects? No problem so far.

In the strong version it violates causality, and f-ck that noise that's where I throw my pages in the air like Zappa watching Terry Bozio play the Black Page one-handed while eating a sandwich. That's Nature saying "hold my beer."

A fun logical overview of the same.

 

[state of hockey]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

It's messed up. When detectors are thrown on to track the electrons the interference pattern disappears. Mine asplosion.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

One of the most counter-intuitive and creepiest results of the Millgram experiment was that the kids with more science education were more likely to follow orders and apply the shocks.

I thought the most interesting part of this particular documentary was a guy named Dan Ariely, who I think is some sort of behavioral psychologist.

The director seemed intent on analyzing the question of whether Holmes is just a greedy, pathological liar (a position I tend to support), or, was she a "true believer" who had so wrapped herself up into this thought that her company truly had a chance to change the world and people's health condition for the better that she couldn't conceive that what she was doing is wrong.

The psychologist talked about experiments they had performed involving dice. The participants were handed a single die and told to toss it. They were told that however many dots on the die came face up, they would get a dollar for each dot.

Then they changed the experiment. They told the participants they would throw the die, but before they did so, they should choose to get paid based upon the dots that came face up, or the dots that were face down. They weren't to tell anyone their choice (face up or face down) but simply keep it in their mind until after they threw the die. At that point they were asked to reveal what their choice had been.

The psychologist reported that if the die came up with the one or six face up, the participants would usually claim they had chosen the side with the six. However, whenever the die came up with the three and four in play, participants were more willing to say they had gotten "unlucky" and would say they were thinking of the side where the three was located, you know, to show they weren't just claiming to have always been thinking of the side with the most dots.

But then they changed the test for a final time. This time the payment based upon the dots that were on the side they had silently chosen would be made to a charity of their choice. The participants would almost always claim they had picked the side with the most dots. Because they weren't getting the money, there was no "guilt" about lying, coupled with the fact that in their minds the money was going to a good cause.

Now, what that little story told by the psychologist had to do with a young woman scamming people out of millions of dollars I really have no idea, but I've always enjoyed hearing about human behavior experiments like that one.

 

[Slap Shot]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

I'm off track here - what is/are the name of the documentary(ies?) being discussed?

Thanks

 

[SJHovey]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

I'm off track here - what is/are the name of the documentary(ies?) being discussed?

Thanks

I was talking about The Inventor: Out For Blood in Silicon Valley that was on HBO earlier this week.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

That experiment is great. Thanks.

I did some graduate work in a topic called "Distributive Justice," which consists of those kinds of fun social psych experiments and assorted Stupid Human Tricks. The thrust in this case wasn't about the degree to which people lied, cheated or whatever but the degree to which they would view certain configurations as just or unjust. It was somewhat interesting work, if only because my job was to do lit surveys so I would summarize dozens of these experiments run all over the world. I thought it would be much more interesting to study what experimenters came up with as testable criteria of justice -- a sociology of social psychological experimentation -- but my adviser was a stodgy old school Harvard guy then allied with Hoover and he wasn't interested. That should have told me everything I needed to know about the department right then, TBH.

 

[burd]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

It's interesting to see the degree to which these tests show how our tendencies are either active or vestigial survival tools. It is difficult to fight the monkey brain, but if we understand what the brain is doing and why, we at least stand a fighting chance to become better humans. And prosper, both.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

Interesting. I had completely missed that her chemical engineering processor at Stanford was one of the most vocal supporters.

I has more sads.

 

[The Rube]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

The first half of the film is good...very noirish. If falls apart right about the time Jeff Bridges becomes the focal point. Chris Hemsworth is awesome as his character but that storyline was so awful...

If someone like James Mangold who did Identity had made the film I think it could have been amazing. Instead it wastes the good actors and lets the mediocre ones take over the film. It also banks on people loving Jeff Bridges even when he is rather worthless to the story.

Dang, forgot about Identity. That movie crossed my mind for a moment, but the all the other stuff in the movie made me forget why I thought of Identity in the first place. Well done! (BTW, I did love Identity; any movie where you really can't say anything w/o spoiling it...).

12 Round Gun:

Boxing guy falls on hard times, tries to redeem himself b/c of (insert family and personal life problems).

Yep, as cliched as the description makes it. I will say I liked it, only because the actors did well with what they had to work with. The story itself has been told 100x over. Time killer at best, overall.

 

[ticapnews]

Re: Bohemian Rap City: Movies Thread

The headline is that the president of Fox studios was fired today as part of the Disney acquisition. The real story is the 4000 rank and file employees about to follow him out the door. Unlike him, they don't have golden parachutes. They are being pushed from the plane with anvils in their backpacks.