Serious Movie Discussion XLI

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

Reading @JSN's posts convinced me to become more of regular poster. He could write intelligently (at least it seemed to me then) about a lot of different things. I remember spamming #freeJSN in some threads about old posters with thebluerider lol.

The mass unbanning thing is too funny.

 

[HUNTERMANIA]

I really enjoyed Vision Quest @Bullitt68 --- I found it highly reflective of our differences. That was such a normal, good, healthy movie and human perspective on life. Compared with what I view as inspiration and my personal vision manifested in Black Swan -- that pretty much sums us up.


But I'm a lot closer to Vision Quest these days (and have been for a long time... I'm just not afraid to talk about when things were really fucked up and that part of my life is a part of me, that's a part of who I am and it has been from the day I was born). You were very blessed to have parents that said 'Atlas Shrugged' is your Bible. Your person makes complete sense knowing that from the last thread or two whenever Ayn Rand was being discussed. No, I have not started my study in that area, but I am making really great progress physically, getting stronger, feeling good, living healthy. Finally solved all of my nervous system problems, it's all strengthening now, it feels really great for my body to be alive and growing again for the first time in years.

I won't forget about it

 

[Bullitt68]

@aquamanpunch

Here's he's using it at UFC 93 and 82 for instance

So that's why that was news to me: At the time of both of those fights, I hadn't seen Vision Quest yet. Thanks for posting those vids. Makes him even cooler

Nah, you're just trying to galvanize me into your scheme to have his name mentioned in every post of this thread.

Why can't both be true? Seriously, he had the weirdest fucking taste of anybody I've ever come across either online or IRL. I wish I still had those lists he'd post where he'd rank his favorite weirdo movies. I'm sure you'd have seen most of them

I've seen mention of Kubrick seeing and loving a ton of movies that you wouldn't expect him to.

He was like Hitchcock. They're known as these ultimate genius craftsmen, yet people forget that, first and foremost, they were just big movie fans. Hitchcock saw everything of everybody's. Kubrick was like that, too. And since he was such a boss, he'd have directors send them their shit before it even came out.

It is intresting to note though that it's not to uncommon to hear MMA sportsmen call MMA a team sport.

That's why I love guys like Bas and Mirko. Crazy dudes who trained pretty much by themselves (Bas by necessity, Mirko by choice). In any case, though, having a good group of training partners and/or a good coach still doesn't take away the profundity of Modine's line. Even in MMA, no matter how tight you are with your crew, when the cage door closes, they're not in there with you. If Michael Jordan had a bad night, he at least had Scottie Pippen and the rest of the Bulls line-up to bail him out. If you have a bad night in the cage, there's nobody there to bail you out. You either get your shit together or you get your shit pushed in. There's no third option.

Yeah Friday Night Lights would be the opposite. It's a strangely emotional movie but it is very much about the brotherhood formed between teammates in crazy ass Texas where pressure is absurdly high for HS football players.

Well, a movie can be awesome even if it doesn't perfectly line-up with my belief system. I think individual sports have more philosophical honesty and intensity, but that doesn't mean I think all team sports suck or people who play team sports are pussies.

Also, just FYI: I wanted to look up a bunch of football movies just to remind myself of what I've seen in the past. I Googled "Best Football Movies," and I don't know how Google determines which movies show up/where they show up on that image slider thing that comes up, but Friday Night Lights was the first movie listed, even before Remember the Titans, which everybody loves (never got into that one). I don't know what that means, but it's one more reason this movie has me so curious.

PS. Who is my bash brother?

You've got enough bash for two people all on your own. I've never seen you as part of a Bash Brothers duo. I've always seen you more aligned with @theskza as sort of a leveler for you. He's just so laid back and unflappable. You two go together in my head like Bender and Brian.

Reading @JSN's posts convinced me to become more of regular poster. He could write intelligently (at least it seemed to me then) about a lot of different things.

He was sharp as fuck. The only thing I can remember ever agreeing about with him was that Bergman was awesome (although he didn't think he was as awesome as I thought he was, so we even disagreed a little on the thing we agreed on) but even so, I enjoyed his posts. And even though he was pretentious as fuck in his taste, he wasn't pretentious with the way he expressed his opinions, which made it fun to talk to him even if I rolled my eyes at every other post of his (I miss the old animated face icons).

I really enjoyed Vision Quest

I don't know if you've ever read these, but in that scene where Louden apologizes to Mr. Tanneran for giving him the cold shoulder when he thought he was banging Carla, Mr. Tanneran tells the class to read the Ralph Waldo Emerson essays "Self-Reliance" and "The Over-Soul."

http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

http://www.emersoncentral.com/oversoul.htm

These might provide some extra dimensions to the film. I prefer Rand to Emerson, but I think of all the "big" thinkers of the past, Rand has more affinities with Emerson than anyone else I've read, including Nietzsche (who, for his part, was HEAVILY influenced by Emerson).

That was such a normal, good, healthy movie and human perspective on life.

Hmm. I'd be curious to hear you elaborate on the film's normalcy. I've always seen it as underlining the craziness of ambition, craziness Rand tried to articulate in the following passage from Atlas Shrugged:

"All your life, you have heard yourself denounced, not for your faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those qualities of character which are your highest pride. You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgment and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been called anti-social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads. You have been called ruthless for the strength and self-discipline of your drive to your purpose."

I especially love the line with "vision" in it, since Louden was initially ostracized from the team for even wanting to wrestle Shute. Right before he says the "wrestling is not a team sport" line, Otto gets on his case in a fashion that represents to a fucking T the kind of castigation Rand had in mind in the above passage:

"The rest of us are sweating ass in here. Where you been? If you're on some kind of ego trip, man, that's your problem. You're not a team player and you never was."

The fact that everybody in the movie thinks Louden is insane seems to highlight how abnormal he/it was, no?

I am making really great progress physically, getting stronger, feeling good, living healthy. Finally solved all of my nervous system problems, it's all strengthening now, it feels really great for my body to be alive and growing again for the first time in years.

Even if you don't know these guys or their channels, you'll like these videos of, respectively, CT Fletcher and Mark Bell (Caveat, you watch these guys?):

 

[europe1]

EDIT: Somehow this got deleated in the posting. I've seen both Friday Nights Light and Remember the Titans. They where both good sits but nothing overly special. Fun team-spirit and all that. Stuff like Miracle trumps them both though.

Hockey > Fotball in all other instances as well.

Seriously, he had the weirdest fucking taste of anybody I've ever come across either online or IRL

Except for... yourself obviously?

But hell, there is a ton of alien flavors out there. People who proclaim 2010 a masterpiece but 2001 utter trash. People that love the strangest of arthouse crap. People that just wallow in exploitation movies. Hell, there is this one blog I follow about Peplum films and the guy who runs it has such a minute, encyclopedic, all-encompassing knowledge about these flicks that it legitimatelly baffles and frustrates me to no end how this guy can possess such vast knowlage about a trashy, virtually-forgotten, low-budgetet genre wave in Italy from the early 60's.

Strange tastes abound on the internet, my friend.

Makes him even cooler

Just to add -- fighters don't always pick their own walk-out songs. Many don't really care and let the production team pick for them.

That said, in my heart I hope he picked it himself which makes him even cooler.

He was like Hitchcock. They're known as these ultimate genius craftsmen, yet people forget that, first and foremost, they were just big movie fans. Hitchcock saw everything of everybody's. Kubrick was like that, too. And since he was such a boss, he'd have directors send them their shit before it even came out.

See, I have a friend who has dreams of becoming a great director. He's done commercials and short films like that but nothing even comparative to a feuture. But the thing is... the guy watches very little from before the 80's. He's seen the popular stuff from the 70's, and the popular stuff by Hitchcock, as well as some other big stuff, like the 30's King Kong. But the guy just isn't intrested in movies before that time period -- he finds them boring. He has never sat through a Film Noir. Never sat through a Kurisawa film. Virtually nothing from classical Hollywood. Nothing that can be categorized as non-mainstream. And so on. His intrest is squarely centered on his own lifetime (and even in that category he is no wonder).

I keep trying to tell the guy -- every great director is a great director becuse they freaking love movies. They absord them like spunges. I give examples to him about how extreme the forays of Tarantino are into the cinematic libraries. How Scorsese can tell a story about every frame he has filmed and why he framed it like he did. How Akira Kurisawa would just sit around all day and think about the movies he had seen.

Basically, I try to tell the guy that there's a diffrence between loving movies as escapism and entertainment and fanboyism.. and loving movies as something more than that, as an craft, as an art, to love their existance. To love movies to the degree that you think about movies constantly in your everyday life. How every movie started is something to behold onto itself (even if you end up not liking it). How the sheer nature of movies is fascinating, their themes, craft, historic background, style - everything. How you can't be a great director unless you entrench yourself in movies like a fucking WW1 infintryman and spend your days poking and proding their every facet and angle.

But nope, most movies dull. Don't need to watch anything before the 80's and nothing that can even remotely be categorized as unconventional

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

Well, a movie can be awesome even if it doesn't perfectly line-up with my belief system. I think individual sports have more philosophical honesty and intensity, but that doesn't mean I think all team sports suck or people who play team sports are pussies.

Also, just FYI: I wanted to look up a bunch of football movies just to remind myself of what I've seen in the past. I Googled "Best Football Movies," and I don't know how Google determines which movies show up/where they show up on that image slider thing that comes up, but Friday Night Lights was the first movie listed, even before Remember the Titans, which everybody loves (never got into that one). I don't know what that means, but it's one more reason this movie has me so curious.

It's my favorite sports movie, so it goes without saying that it's my favorite football movie.

You've got enough bash for two people all on your own. I've never seen you as part of a Bash Brothers duo. I've always seen you more aligned with @theskza as sort of a leveler for you. He's just so laid back and unflappable. You two go together in my head like Bender and Brian.

Does that make you Andrew? @aquamanpunch is Carl the janitor?

 

[HUNTERMANIA]

I don't know if you've ever read these, but in that scene where Louden apologizes to Mr. Tanneran for giving him the cold shoulder when he thought he was banging Carla, Mr. Tanneran tells the class to read the Ralph Waldo Emerson essays "Self-Reliance" and "The Over-Soul."

http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

http://www.emersoncentral.com/oversoul.htm

These might provide some extra dimensions to the film. I prefer Rand to Emerson, but I think of all the "big" thinkers of the past, Rand has more affinities with Emerson than anyone else I've read, including Nietzsche (who, for his part, was HEAVILY influenced by Emerson).



Hmm. I'd be curious to hear you elaborate on the film's normalcy. I've always seen it as underlining the craziness of ambition, craziness Rand tried to articulate in the following passage from Atlas Shrugged:

"All your life, you have heard yourself denounced, not for your faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those qualities of character which are your highest pride. You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgment and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been called anti-social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads. You have been called ruthless for the strength and self-discipline of your drive to your purpose."

I especially love the line with "vision" in it, since Louden was initially ostracized from the team for even wanting to wrestle Shute. Right before he says the "wrestling is not a team sport" line, Otto gets on his case in a fashion that represents to a fucking T the kind of castigation Rand had in mind in the above passage:

"The rest of us are sweating ass in here. Where you been? If you're on some kind of ego trip, man, that's your problem. You're not a team player and you never was."

The fact that everybody in the movie thinks Louden is insane seems to highlight how abnormal he/it was, no?



Even if you don't know these guys or their channels, you'll like these videos of, respectively, CT Fletcher and Mark Bell (Caveat, you watch these guys?):

Well, I guess what I'm saying is: that IS what I view as normal and that's what I've been trying to tell you this whole time, lol! Like, I agree with the abnormality of what should be normal... but just because it's abnormal does not mean it SHOULDN'T be normal. This movie, to me, defined well what should be the 'human' perspective on life (and when I say human, I mean the perspective on life that doesn't include God --- which I know you don't believe in and I'm not trying to debate at all right now --- that is the perspective that seems right to me). I've always agreed with you about that, the difference is you had parents teach you these things and I had people fuck me up my whole life. Now, I am not making excuses, my mistakes are my own, but that doesn't mean that what happens in anyone's life, especially before ideas like these can be fleshed out and meaningfully understood, does not have more causes than one person making 'wrong' decisions in a vacuum. I get the ideal, I believe in that, but I also hated myself and wanted to die because I suffered severe trauma as an infant, which was exacerbated by my family growing up :: that is the difference between us. You grew up healthy (as far as I have been told, if I'm assuming, please correct me), saw the ideal, and were able to easily attach to it. I did not grow up healthy, at all, I saw the ideal, but too many other things, when combined with my health problems, were pulling me in a different direction to where I just said fuck all of that. Even my health problems are a result of my unhealthy upbringing.


I've been changed for a while, I changed myself because I knew that ideal was deep inside of me and I just had to tap into, that's why I love Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan so much, they're easily accessible real life examples of those 'crazy' ideals. I've had a different mindset for over 3 years, fully embracing that ideal again and really going after it as hard as I can, BUT, I haven't been able to produce visible results because by then, my problems were so extensive it's taken me this long to get where I'm at. Whatever it might appear on the outside, I'm totally different now internally both physically, mentally, and emotionally. The mental and emotional part changed first, the physical has taken so long to catch up. if we continue to post together, which I'm sure we will, you will see that what I am saying is the truth. Now, the reason I post about those problems, those mental problems, the thoughts of hopelessness, etc, even though they're not a part of my life and have not been for a long time -- I haven't attempted suicide in almost 4 years and I've been actively working for my own good as best I can for 42 months -- is because so many other people on here have similar stories, or are in a similar situation themselves and I try to share my experience to give perspective and show that it can be overcome... but really all that comes out of those posts is, "at one point I was really fucked up and I'm probably still fucked up now," even though that isn't my message, lol. Also, that's who I was for many years, and I accept that, you know? It wouldn't be wrong to say those thoughts are part of what identify me, even now, because for so long I had such at toxic mental and emotional state, that's who I was and that's still in my brain, like I remember all of it very clearly, lol.


I'm just saying: dude, I feel you, I've always felt you, I've always understood where you're coming from, we agree about these things, but you don't understand the other factors in my life that shaped me also.


God is a totally different aspect and right now I'm not following God at all. I don't think I can ever 'unsee' the reality of God, and I kind of wish I could because it's like fucking Inception over here with a few different ideas that I can't get rid of, lol. I'm just so angry --- dude, a lot of shit has come up that makes everything else make sense, but it also... IDK, I'm not even gonna begin to try to describe where I'm at intellectually/spiritually or why I'm there right now, but mainly I'm back on board the Louden Swain train, lol.


But I feel you, Buillitt, I've always felt you, I'm right there with you, I just had other things that had to be dealt with first, and, admittedly, I don't present the best image of myself.


It's similar to the scene with his dad when his dad talks about his mom leaving them with another man, and Louden says, "Why do you always talk about it? Are you proud of it?" That's a normal response (Louden's response) --- there are many normal things that I did not have activated inside of me, and one of my defense mechanisms is that I tell people the very plain truth about myself, normally the ugly version first, so they get the full picture good, bad, and ugly and if they don't like that, they won't get close to me so they will not hurt me later. It's a way of weeding out people - it's not healthy, but that's who I was and a little bit of who I still am because these things don't just disappear.


Anyways: good shit. I loved that movie.

 

[therealdope]

Reading @JSN's posts convinced me to become more of regular poster. He could write intelligently (at least it seemed to me then) about a lot of different things. I remember spamming #freeJSN in some threads about old posters with thebluerider lol.

The mass unbanning thing is too funny.

He is free, he's just bored by Sherdog.

He's doing well BTW.

 

[therealdope]

Had a little '80s marathon last night. I watched Cutting Class, Secret Admirer, and Vision Quest just for the hell of it. Cutting Class is a terrible fucking movie but it's so much fun to watch. Secret Admirer is one of the most ingenious romantic comedies ever and it's even more fun to watch. And Vision Quest is just one of the greatest things ever.

I had a massive crush on Lori Loughlin after seeing Secret Admirer. Vision Quest is an all-time favorite.

#geekathlete

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

Even if you don't know these guys or their channels, you'll like these videos of, respectively, CT Fletcher and Mark Bell (Caveat, you watch these guys?)

I do naht. Weightlifting and hockey are mainstays in my life but I mostly try to stay dissociated from the ideologies surrounding them, tbh.

Though I did like this audio piece when I heard it:



It's bodybuilding focused, but it fits my neuroticism better.

He is free, he's just bored by Sherdog.

He's doing well BTW.

Good to hear.

 

[JSN]

Maybe @JSN will stop by tomorrow.

almost


RIP Hunter'sCreed, creator of the best thread of all the times.


I guess I've been too busy to post since having my sentence commuted plus I hated the interface and Sheepdog is so ban-heavy that you spend a few years away and only know like 5% of the people.

 

[ufcfan4]

The Jungle Book definitely was good and visually impressive, but I think I just expected more. Having loved the Disney animated film as a kid, I was enthusiastic about this, particularly knowing Favreau is quality as a filmmaker and having heard the good reviews. In many ways it fleshed out and improved upon the animated film, but I just kept waiting for it to kick into an extra gear. The final confrontation was very well executed and the way the animals were brought to life was quite good.

 

[ufcfan4]

Well, holy shit- that knockout was brutal. Werdum of course is still one of the greatest heavyweights ever, but that is a tough loss to take.

Heavyweight is obviously the division in which it will be most difficult to establish a long-term, dominant champ. People are packing too much size and power and even the best of the best guys will get caught with something that puts them down or out at some point. You could even look back to past fights where guys like Antonio Silva and Mike Kyle who I'd say Werdum is patently better than put him into very bad spots.

Stipe, conversely, is and was significantly better than Struve and yet got finished by him. That said, he's improve din all facets since that loss and I think it's clear he is one of the more well-rounded, tough guys in the division. I look forward to him vs. Reem. Definitely seems like a bad fight on paper for Alistair though, as good as he is.

Cool to see Cyborg in the UFC. Smith was pissed as fuck at that stoppage- and yes it did strike me as a bit premature- but Cyborg had hurt her and I feel prolonging that might just have led to a Kim Winslow-esque sanctioned beatdown until it was stopped proper.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

almost


RIP Hunter'sCreed, creator of the best thread of all the times.


I guess I've been too busy to post since having my sentence commuted plus I hated the interface and Sheepdog is so ban-heavy that you spend a few years away and only know like 5% of the people.

Come back bro. I miss my Challenge homie.

@aquamanpunch

 

[JSN]

Come back bro. I miss my Challenge homie.

@aquamanpunch

That reminds me- I need to get on watching this season. I am disappoint that I didn't make a thread before this one came out.

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

Watched Good Will Hunting for the first time tonight. It wasn't as feel-good as I expected to be - actually there were more than a few things I didn't like about it. Damon's character was far too superhuman, I never felt really enamoured by his girlfriend or budding romance, and the main conflict didn't really come into focus for me until later in the film (and even then never really felt urgent at all).

I thought there were some good questions asked about what to do with genius and what it means to live with passion. In the scene where he burns the math proof and the professor comes racing over to it, I thought I saw some envy in Will as he watched someone act toward something they felt was important. Did he ever get around to feeling that himself? He liked the girl but whatever grander conclusions he came to about his life weren't shared with us. Williams made a good case for not living your life around a singular pursuit but it felt like a cop-out when he pulled the "you haven't actually done this" card a hundred times on the park bench. He didn't come close to being as inspiring as he was in Dead Poet's Society and a few of the counseling sessions - including the breakthrough one - felt very awkward.

Anyway, it's not one I'm going to wake up thinking about tomorrow, and I had expected it to be more thoughtful.

My re-watch of Gone Girl, on the other hand, was excellent. I felt far less removed from the chaos of the second half when I was actively anticipating it. I realized that after the first watch I never questioned whether Nick really ever got violent with Amy. He denies it in front of the cops, though with some hesitation, and when she's describing how she wrote her journal she only refers to the happy early times as the true ones. Just because we saw the flashback doesn't mean it necessarily happened, imo, though I entirely believe that she witnessed the kiss between Nick and his mistress when we saw that scene unfold in her memory.

I'm curious about how we're supposed to feel about Amy once things are all said and done. I think the easy answer is that she's a psycho bitch, and that she balked at suicide only to return to Nick empty-handed to use him as another part of her developing legacy. But if we give a little credence to her claim that she returned to the version of Nick he presented in the interview she watched, maybe she doesn't have to be a complete lost cause. She still expresses a desire for intimacy with Nick in their private moments, which shows a pretty intense commitment if she's just acting to manipulate him. But her statement about marriage at the end threatens any sympathy I wanted to have for her.

I think she over-reacted initially towards Nick and tried to run away from a version of herself that she felt she hadn't been in control of creating - the same way her childhood was developed without her input in the fictional stories of Amazing Amy. In trying to escape that version of herself she pushed too far in the opposite direction and gave up maintaining any sense of virtue whatsoever - but I'm not sure that's who she really wanted to be either, it was just a reaction. Then she killed Dessie, who really was a fucked up weirdo trying to imprison her in a much worse way than Nick ever did (his line about not forcing himself on her was especially chilling as a veiled threat). She returns to her home with Nick with a new sense of power of him. But does this reversal put her in a position more like Nick's previous one, or Dessie's?

People in intimate relationships should expect to be changed by them. To be threatened by that is to misunderstand what you're getting into. Marriage shouldn't be a struggle between people trying to control each other. It should be people trying to improve themselves, and each other, through each other. Amy took the victimization thing too far and her local audience stepped out of the way to let it happen. There had to be a feminism angle there somewhere, lol.

I'll stop there, but wanted to say that I was glad I put it on to think over a second time after the discussion of re-watches earlier itt.

 

[HUNTERMANIA]

Well, holy shit- that knockout was brutal. Werdum of course is still one of the greatest heavyweights ever, but that is a tough loss to take.

Heavyweight is obviously the division in which it will be most difficult to establish a long-term, dominant champ. People are packing too much size and power and even the best of the best guys will get caught with something that puts them down or out at some point. You could even look back to past fights where guys like Antonio Silva and Mike Kyle who I'd say Werdum is patently better than put him into very bad spots.

Stipe, conversely, is and was significantly better than Struve and yet got finished by him. That said, he's improve din all facets since that loss and I think it's clear he is one of the more well-rounded, tough guys in the division. I look forward to him vs. Reem. Definitely seems like a bad fight on paper for Alistair though, as good as he is.

Cool to see Cyborg in the UFC. Smith was pissed as fuck at that stoppage- and yes it did strike me as a bit premature- but Cyborg had hurt her and I feel prolonging that might just have led to a Kim Winslow-esque sanctioned beatdown until it was stopped proper.

Werdum was overconfident, acting like the victory was coming to him no matter what. After beating Cain like he did and fighting in front of his homecrowd, I can see why he felt that way, but it was a mistake. He will come back better and regain the title, I think.

I think Stipe can beat Overeem, but IDK, Overeem is really good at avoiding damage now. That will be a very interesting fight.

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

That reminds me- I need to get on watching this season. I am disappoint that I didn't make a thread before this one came out.

Yeah i didn't start watching yet.

Last season was kind of funny with Abe being completely out of his mind.

 

[Sigh GunRanger]

werdum pissed me off. Who just runs at a guy like that? Ridiculous.

I dunno, but i was the one saying it was the best Cagney movie.

far and away


and i'm downloading fury road and her. not going to try and stream it, since i lack the attention span.



i started Rio Grande, and was loving it, but got interrupted which sucks

 

[Flemmy Stardust]

werdum pissed me off. Who just runs at a guy like that? Ridiculous.


far and away


and i'm downloading fury road and her. not going to try and stream it, since i lack the attention span.

I don't really have an opinion on Her. Fury Road i expect you to love the way i did.

i started Rio Grande, and was loving it, but got interrupted which sucks

Still haven't seen that, but I'm at the end of 3:10 to Yuma right now. This movie is so fucking good.

 

[Bullitt68]

@aquamanpunch

You know, Flemmy, I think that, for as often as our tastes match up, we're usually split when it comes to absolute favorites. Bruce and Seagal don't seem to do much for you, they're my jam. Back to the Future and Jaws are at the top of the mountain for you, I can see them on TV or OnDemand and pass them without a second thought. Sadly, this is once again evident in the fact that me and Friday Night Lights just didn't click.

You mentioned that, from the individual vs team sport angle, Friday Night Lights was the other side of the coin to Vision Quest. I think it's also worth mentioning that, beyond that split, they're also split in the sense that Vision Quest is optimistic and inspiring while Friday Night Lights is pessimistic and uninspiring (except, unlike Raging Bull, it's also not a very good movie, but I'll get to that later). I spent the whole time waiting for someone to not be a pathetic loser in a shit life surrounded by other losers in shit lives. Never happened. Everybody in that movie sucks. What is it about the experience of those characters that hits you so hard? I'd be very curious to hear you elaborate on why it's such a special movie to you.

For me, football movies always have an uphill battle since I really don't like the sport. I don't hate it, but I don't ever need to watch a football game, and if I had a choice between watching a football game and virtually anything else, I'd pick the latter 9 times out of 10. It's not impossible - I love Little Giants, The Replacements, The Program, and though I haven't seen them in years, I used to love Varsity Blues and The Waterboy, as well, not to mention Blue Mountain State is one of the greatest things to ever air on TV - but a football-related story is really going to have to move me or make me laugh, and the way to do that is to make me care about the players. I couldn't do that in Friday Night Lights. Boobie was an obnoxious idiot, so I didn't care about his injury. Redneck kid from Crazy in Alabama was a dull mope and I never learned WTF was up in his family life, so I didn't care about him struggling to step up and lead. Fumbles was a whiny dork and his dad was a sad piece of shit, so I didn't care about him. Preacher was the only cool character and him riling up the locker room at halftime at the end was easily the best scene.

And, as I feared, Billy Bob being the coach did nothing for me. I've never really liked him and I wasn't expecting much from him. And I didn't get much. Combine the shitty script with his lousy acting and that last speech about playing with love and joy in your heart just made me cringe. And then they lose and go off to toil away in their miserable lives. I like being galvanized by movies. I can watch Vision Quest at 2 in the morning, and when it's over, I want to go to the gym or run around my neighborhood or jump rope. I just want to do shit. After Friday Night Lights, it was just like, "Ok, bye losers." There's no takeaway except the confirmation that there are some people out there with shitty lives and no will to be their own fuel to something better. And I don't want to spend my movie time with people like that anymore than I want to spend my real-life time with people like that.

Also, not to keep pouring salt in the wound, but it was just a bad movie. The cinematography was garbage and the editing was choppy as fuck. The football sequence in Fast Times at Ridgemont High with Forest Whittaker killing everybody is like a two-minute sequence that they probably spent all of an hour planning and shooting and it looked like ESPN compared to Friday Night Lights. There was also a strange sense of detachment in the style. That could've worked if they integrated the media shit better like what Kubrick did in Full Metal Jacket. Instead, there were just those random shots of the players talking to nameless and faceless reporters like they were going for a day-in-the-life documentary style, which really didn't come off well, especially since they'd then switch gears and try to be all intimate but with the same detached style. You can't switch gears that drastically without also switching the aesthetic, otherwise it's just weird. And this contributes to the lack of an actual sense of brotherhood or even friendship period. None of the characters seemed like they actually liked each other. They just happened to be playing football on the same team. They talked about brotherhood, but I didn't see it and I damn sure didn't feel it. There was just nothing in this movie that was executed the way it should've been.

So yeah, not my cup of tea.

Hockey > Fotball in all other instances as well.

Except for... yourself obviously?

Shit, I'm the sanest person in this thread.

Spoiler

I have a friend who has dreams of becoming a great director [...] I keep trying to tell the guy -- every great director is a great director becuse they freaking love movies [...] Basically, I try to tell the guy that there's a diffrence between loving movies as escapism and entertainment and fanboyism.. and loving movies as something more than that, as an craft, as an art, to love their existance. To love movies to the degree that you think about movies constantly in your everyday life. How every movie started is something to behold onto itself (even if you end up not liking it). How the sheer nature of movies is fascinating, their themes, craft, historic background, style - everything.

Not to be a dick, but forget about not getting this: If your friend even needs to be told this at all, he's not going to be anybody special. And sadly, this is 99.9% of film school students (I don't know if your friend is in film school, I just feel like ranting now that you brought this up). And this is why only .1% of film school students actually become anybody worth knowing. It's that .1% who love movies more than anything who have the drive you need to make it in that crazy ass business. You also need insane networking skills and you have to love and be good at building relationships and working with all sorts of different people (no surprise why I knew almost immediately that filmmaking wasn't my bag) but first and foremost your life has to revolve around movies. If it doesn't, then you shouldn't be in film school in the first place.

Does that make you Andrew?

I think the most accurate would be a fusion between Andrew and Brian (I always played sports but I was too nerdy to really qualify as a jock), but if I had to identify with a single character, it'd be Andrew. Actually, rewatching that clip that I posted, I forgot about that scene when he's got all that food and everybody looks at him like he's a circus act. That happens to me all the time. But basically I'm a milder version of him. I didn't resent my dad as much as him or get as pathological, but my dad could be pretty ruthless when it came to how well I needed to do whether it was hockey or baseball.

And I tend to go for weird girls

Well, I guess what I'm saying is: that IS what I view as normal and that's what I've been trying to tell you this whole time, lol!

You're making more sense to me now.

This movie, to me, defined well what should be the 'human' perspective on life

I've always agreed with you about that, the difference is you had parents teach you these things and I had people fuck me up my whole life. Now, I am not making excuses, my mistakes are my own, but that doesn't mean that what happens in anyone's life, especially before ideas like these can be fleshed out and meaningfully understood, does not have more causes than one person making 'wrong' decisions in a vacuum.

I wasn't actually taught any of this shit. Better yet, I was given room to discover shit for myself. I think it's less a matter of being put on a path and more a matter of not having people trying to stop you from going down the path you want. And for people who experience the latter, like you, you're right, it's that much harder. And that's why action movies and sports movies and the like are (or could/should be) so fucking awesome. Like Rand said (in her book The Romantic Manifesto):

"The major source and demonstration of moral values available to a child is Romantic art ... What Romantic art offers him is not moral rules, not an explicit didactic message, but the image of a moral person - i.e., the concretized abstraction of a moral ideal. It offers a concrete, directly perceivable answer to the very abstract question which a child senses, but cannot yet conceptualize: What kind of person is moral and what kind of life does he lead? It is not abstract principles that a child learns from Romantic art, but the precondition and the incentive for the later understanding of such principles: the emotional experience of admiration for man’s highest potential, the experience of looking up to a hero - a view of life motivated and dominated by values, a life in which man’s choices are practicable, effective and crucially important - that is, a moral sense of life.

While his home environment taught him to associate morality with pain, Romantic art teaches him to associate it with pleasure - an inspiring pleasure which is his own, profoundly personal discovery … [Unfortunately,] the battering which his precarious, unformed, barely glimpsed moral sense of life receives from parents, teachers, adult “authorities,” and little second-hander goons of his own generation is so intense and so evil that only the toughest hero can withstand it – so evil that, of the many sings of adults toward children, this is the one for which they would deserve to burn in hell, if such a place existed. Every form of punishment – from outright prohibition to threats to anger to condemnation to crass indifference to mockery – is unleashed against a child at the first signs of his Romanticism (which means: at the first signs of his emerging sense of moral values). “Life is not like that!” and “Come down to earth!” are the catchphrases which best summarize the motives of the attackers, as well as the view of life and of this earth which they seek to inculcate."

I don't think I can ever 'unsee' the reality of God, and I kind of wish I could because it's like fucking Inception over here with a few different ideas that I can't get rid of, lol. I'm just so angry --- dude, a lot of shit has come up that makes everything else make sense, but it also... IDK, I'm not even gonna begin to try to describe where I'm at intellectually/spiritually or why I'm there right now, but mainly I'm back on board the Louden Swain train, lol.

If you change your mind, I'd be willing to hear it. If not, at least you're on the Louden Swain train

I had a massive crush on Lori Loughlin after seeing Secret Admirer.

I grew up watching Full House, of course, but when I saw Secret Admirer, holy shit was she hot. And after that, I watched a bunch of other movies she made around that time in the mid-80s. The New Kids was a piece of shit but she was hot and James Spader was good at playing psychos even in his 20s. Back to the Beach was a hilariously bad '80s reboot of the Frankie Avalon shit, but she's on the beach, so who cares? And then I tried to find The Night Before with her and Keanu Reeves in a plot that sounds like the teen Mister Buddwing but I never managed to track it down

Vision Quest is an all-time favorite.

And you don't regularly post in here because...?

I do naht. Weightlifting and hockey are mainstays in my life but I mostly try to stay dissociated from the ideologies surrounding them, tbh.

Ideologies? It's videos of big dudes putting up big lifts. Watch them. They're awesome.

I guess I've been too busy to post since having my sentence commuted

Ok, now who else is left to pop out from behind another door? flosh? YeahBee? Valkyrie?

Who just runs at a guy like that?

First thing I thought of when Werdum hit the canvas.

I'm at the end of 3:10 to Yuma right now. This movie is so fucking good.

That was actually one where the whole thread agreed it was awesome and I was part of the group

The original is also awesome. Did you see that one? One of the very rare instances where the original and the remake are considerably different but similarly awesome.