El Pibe

I saw Source Code, which was a neat little premise with a vaguely satisfying ending as long as you didn't expect internal consistency or any degree of plausability even within the realms of near future speculative science fiction. Then they tacked on a stupid twist/happy ending that ruined it all. Just click eject when they do that sort of freeze frame pan through the train and it'll be fine.

Shadow Dancer was alright.

GOd don't make me do another list.... Offhand I can already think of a few films of his I like regardless of my personal feelings about the man. LA Confidential and A Beautiful Mind spring to mind. Gladiator is defintely Patriot and Braveheart territory with added boredom.

ok, had a look at imdb Dislike most of his films. I loved Lethal Weapon when I was 14, but apart from having dated visually it has aged very poorly, the sequels followed the quality trajectory of most trilogies. From the (non sequel) films i've seen post mad max 2 As Actor The Good: The Bounty Bird on a Wire (when I say good we're not talking oscars quality here, enjoyable pap is perfectly acceptable) Chicken Run The Indifferent: Lethal Weapon The River Mad Max 3 Air America Forever Young Payback What Women Want We Were Soldiers The Bad: Braveheart (i hate it i hate it i hate it) Ransom Conspiracy Theory The Patriot Signs The Singing Detective Edge Of Darkness -------------------------- As Director: Only Bad: Braveheart The Passion of Christ Apocalypto From this I conclude that although patchy, he made worse choices as an actor as he got older, but he's just loathsome when it comes to his own projects

Maybe Bob, though it was poorer for not having many neighbours actors in it. I'm not sure We Were Soldiers did. It did a bit of 'oooh they have photos of families too' stuff as a nod to a modern motif that we maybe ought to care about the enemy, but for the most part it did the usual yellow peril stuff. It was really a tedious celebration of the US infantryman as doomed warrior hero surely. IT was better than My Big Fat Greek Wedding though!

Gibson's, horrible film. I think he's just a massive gore fetishist misanthropist. I can't stand any of his films truth be told. He hasn't really done it for me as an actor since he left Oz either. Gallipoli last decent film he made?

Be interesting to see profitability in that list. Grease must have cost buttons to make!

Titanic still defies explanation for me. Was there some Max Headroom style blipvert tucked into Celine Dion's godawful songs?

are they pyjamas or onesies? Easily mistakable (and equally ludicrous) in my experience.

Intersting question. I'd go with "Up" for a film that pleases both equally. I've watched edited highlights of Star Wars with my (just) 3 year old. He likes Spaceships and robots, we skipped over neck crushes, he seemed indifferent to lightsabers, most scared of the wookie and was quite taken by the princess, weren't we all! I wouldn't say his eyes lit up with the magic, Ben & Holly still wins hands down on that, but it has been requested again, the robot bits.

Gone are the days where I really thought I could be a jedi or someone would invent a lightsaber in my lifetime, and sadly I even reacehed the stage where I realised that star wars isn't the-best-film-in-the-world-ever, it's not even top 50. Yep, I'd actually settle for watchable whilst the sounds wash me in a nostalgic haze.

oh yeah, spot on Jeremey and bob who sort of made the same point earlier. Lucas never erally understood less is more, and it was the organic nature of the effects that made them so...well effective!

I guess Star Trek has shown you can revitalise a franchise with a new cast, and it somehow managed to shed the pompous self importnace it embraced from Next-Gen onwards. There's certainly potential and god knows it's best that Lucas has gone given how much he farted on about the integrity of the IP, before a)ruining everything, then b)selling rights to the IP to absolutely everyone, yoda selling phones ?! I quite like the idea of a film with the old cast though. a post mid-life crisis Luke getting on a scout bike to the shops and giving himself a hernia, a haggard and embittered man eating leia all mutton dressed as lamb, Han saying 'it's quiet, too quiet' alot...

On a scale of 1 to 10, but with a figure not exceeding 3, how much are people looking forward to Disney's Star Wars films? Ooh, scripted by the chap that gave us X-Men the last stand, Mr & Mrs Smith and a Guy Ritchiew Film. Can't wait. Still, it could be made by Uwe Boll and it'd still be better than the prequels.

Ww2 is a pretty big subject to tackle in four sentences!! ;)

I didn't suggest anything about the position of Swiss neutrality at all, no idea where you get the bribe bit from. I suggested that when the failure of the third reich was becoming apparent, that this may well have precluded an invasion because a neutral Switzerland was more useful thing to have on ones borders. The fantasy is that somehow having a well armed conscript force was in any way shape or form a deterrence to a German invasion. We can't know why Hitler didn't give the order, but I t certainly wasn't on cautionary advice of his generals who drew up plans that evidence suggest would probably have gone according to plan, as much as war ever does. In 1941 the Germans invaded Yugoslavia to bolster the humiliating failure of their Italian ally's Balkan campaign. They faced 700,000 well armed troops, although their artillery and armour were dated, it was not significantly worse than their Swiss counterparts. Yugoslavia is also difficult terrain in which to fight a war. It took the Germans a few weeks at the loss of about 600 soldiers. The red army had the best tank forces of the war, the best ground support fighters and an army of several million men and only stopped the germans a thousand miles beyond their border, thanks to an unusually deep winter, and a further four years of bitter conflict that saw 6 million soldiers die to defeat Germany. The British were able to win in North Africa primarily thanks to the Royal Navy and Air Force based in Malta strangling the supply lines. The allies in the western front won thanks to overwhelming air superiority, and the vast advantages in supplies, and it still took millions of men to do so. The precedents don't exactly support a theory that the Swiss were somehow uniquely positioned to successfully stymie a Wehrmacht advance.

All very well but something of a fantasy. The Wehrmacht were dismissive of the Swiss forces and felt they could conquer the place with relative ease, and they were probably correct. No one can know for sure why Hitler never gave the order, but it seems pretty likely that they simply had other priorities. After the invasion of France hitler was unduly paranoid about British manoevering in the Balkans and Norway, and got bogged down in Greece, Yugoslavia and of course North Africa. Shortly afterwards Barbarossa kicked off and that was that really. Progress was slow enough in Italy that Germany never needed to use the Swiss Alps to prevent Allied forces exploiting them, and I'm guessing that in the latter phase of the war Swiss neutrality proved very useful in siphoning and laundering their loot, not to mention getting the hell out of Der Texas!!

That's how you keep a thread to yourself Malumbu!!!!!

Wow. Have finally watched Avatar. I cannot express on how many levels its awfulness works. Quite quite staggering. What was JC (for it is he) trying to achieve. A catharsis of self loathing? "You're right" those cinema goers they all said, "I will take down my flag and stop sporting a yellow thingy" upon reflection "for this war on terror that we thought was righteous IS just like the genocide of the native people that we also inflicted, my country is predicated on merciless self interest and racist destruction of all other cultures, I'd commit seppuku if I wasn't such a fucking redneck hick that I'd have no idea what it meant, and those marines, they can't possibly really say things like "get some" except of course in all those films where they do and it's cool, like what those films JC used to make that made me feel better about myself....and the English, aren't they just awful, cos they were the real bad guys in this of course, arrogant rugby winning sods.....

I have noticed with some indy games that you have to be careful wich download button you hit, the more prominent one is rarely for the thing you seek.

Excellent, sounds like they have a similar approach to fear; make you powerless and horribly vulnerable. This sort of feels like a quick fix arcade version of Amnesia.

finished Dishonored. Genuinely brilliant, it's been a while since I've enjoyed a game that much. Started playing Amnesia: the Dark Descent as intended, dark room and headphones. Can't play it for more than about ten minutes without needing to go have a nice cup of tea and look at cuddly things. Really quite unsettling!!! I'm not sure I'm really enjoying the experience though. To quote the linked review "Amnesia: The Dark Descent is to date, the only game that has ever scared me. Not scared as in a short burst of shock, but in a heart-pounding, sweat-inducing, I-need-to-stop-playing-so-I-can-calm-down kind of scared" Ooh look, even yahtzee quite liked it http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2092-Amnesia-The-Dark-Descent

QPR 2 Norwich 0 Arsenal 2 Stoke 0 Everton 1 Aston Villa 0 Newcastle 0 Chelsea 2 Reading 1 Sunderland 1 West Ham 2 Swansea 1 Wigan 2 Southampton 1 Fulham 0 Man Utd 2 West Brom 1 Tottenham 2 Man City 2 Liverpool 0

My mate lives there/ He has a nuclear bunker under his house. It's an odd place, but, as SJ states, they're a nice bunch, but it all seems too nice on the surface. David lynch territory for sure!!! As for the humour thing, I reckon that's just all cultures. I worked in Holland for a while, the British and Dutch senses of humour were mutually exclusive.

Drugs are boring. People on drugs are boring. Every fucking waking minute your friends banging on about them....boring. Still, had some great times...... ......though on reflection they were shitty times, bad places, bad people, the odd hospital attendance.......