Random Thought Thread

[Mr. Sinister]

Never seen Full Metal Jacket or Mississippi Burning

 

Last week I actually watched this movie called Navy Seals. Don't think I'd ever heard o it prior, but it starred Charlie Sheen, Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, and Dennis Haysbert. Seemed pretty cheesy 80's/early 90's, but I thought it was solid.

 

Kind of funny that Sheen plays a wackjob/sociopath, and its probably the closest character he's ever played to the real him

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

Never seen Full Metal Jacket or Mississippi Burning

I can kinda understand never seeing Mississippi Burning, but how in the **** have you not seen Full Metal Jacket? Damn man. Well thanks for making me feel better about not seeing Crimson Tide.

[ixcuincle]

http://www.zagat.com/v/bizarre-bites-the-donut-burger-at-gourdoughs?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zagat+%28Zagat%29&utm_content=Netvibes

 

Are donuts and burgers a match made in heaven? At Gourdough's in Austin, there's no better mix of sweet and savory than the donut burger. Check out the video above to see what our Zagat editors think of this one-of-a-kind Southern comfort food.

 

[Kosher Ham]

First concert I ever went to? New Kids on the Block. When I was 5, late 80's. I swear, I always say I'm living proof a person is born gay, not made. Because my mom and aunt (young aunt, just 6 years older) sure as hell tried their hardest. NKOTB, I remember getting a Jordan Knight doll for Christmas, a cabbage patch doll named Cody, cooked brownies all the time, knew all of my aunt's high school drill team cheers, first album I ever owned was Ace of Base, I can go on and on with this.

Anyway, question: Robert Duvall or Gene Hackman? Who do you prefer, who's better, whatever.

 

This post is all kinds of funny man. Not to pick on you...but damn really. haha. The best parts are where you reference not being made gay, ending with the open question at the end.

 

Love you man.

 

As for the question, I would go with Hackman also. His roles in The Firm and Enemy of the State. Certainly seal the deal on that one.

[Larry]

All these people endorsing Hackman, and not mentioning Unforgiven?

[Dr. Do Itch Big]

Distant Lover.

[Going Commando]

Anyway, question: Robert Duvall or Gene Hackman? Who do you prefer, who's better, whatever.

Duvall for me. Hackman is more of a lead actor and on screen villain. Duvall is more of a support actor/character actor for the most part. Both Duvall and Hackman have been in some pretty awful movies, mostly in the 90's. I give the edge to Duvall because he's been in better movies IMO, and when he's in a terrible movie, he's usually still alright. When Hackman is in a bad movie, he goes whole hog and produces some cheeseball performances. His lowlight reel would probably be pretty bad. Duvall's would probably be meh.

It's an interesting proposition though, because both have been in some true classics.

Hackman - Hoosiers, Superman, French Connection, Bonnie & Clyde, Unforgiven, Royal Tennenbaums.

Duvall - Apocalypse Now, Bullitt, Godfather I & II, To Kill a Mockingbird, True Grit & Joe Kidd.

And I'd definitely take both over Anthony Hopkins. Maybe Hopkins is an incredible stage actor and built his reputation on that, because I just don't see it with him on the big screen. Hopkins brings some gravitas to a terrible movie. But I think he's pretty overrated. He's just in too many bad movies. Most are pretty lowbrow. And the ones that were actually good at the time haven't really aged that well, like Silence of the Lambs and Zorro. Some aged sooo poorly that they aren't even watchable any more, like Coppola's comically terrible Dracula movie and Legends of the Fall.

Platoon or Full Metal Jacket?

Full Metal Jacket, no question. But Apocalypse Now over both. I actually don't like Platoon. I think it's pretty damn cheesy and uninteresting. Oliver Stone sucks.

[Larry]

Me, I really disliked Crimson Tide. Maybe it's just my lack of experience, but I thought the Captain came off as a power-mad child. I thought it was insulting to our military that they portrayed not knot a Captain doing that, but so many if the crew going along with it.

At least, I really HOPE it was GROSSLY unbelievable.

[Going Commando]

Jesus Mad Men is good.

[Mr. Sinister]

I can kinda understand never seeing Mississippi Burning, but how in the **** have you not seen Full Metal Jacket? Damn man. Well thanks for making me feel better about not seeing Crimson Tide.

 

There are a lot of movies similar to that that I've never seen. I've seen pretty much all coming of age/generation/decade defining movies, but there is still a lot in the tier just below that one that I haven't seen.

 

Serpico, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Silence Of The Lambs, Poltergeist, Dirty Harry saga, etc. I just watched Braveheart and Last Of The Mohicans within the last few months. I'll watch them all eventually though.

 

Speaking of Bill Paxton (who I mentioned in my last post), i don't know if there is any actor that I've forgotten about in as many movies as him. It's like every 5th movie that I see that came out before '00, I do a "Hey look, its Bill Paxton!"

 

He was never on the map for me until Twister came out, and then he was seemingly all over the damn place.

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

Jesus Mad Men is good.

You've got me convinced that's the next TV show I watch. I absolutely LOVE me some movies but I'm not really a TV person in the slightest. Probably count on one hand the number of series I've watched from pilot to finale. From your posts, I think Mad Men is gonna have to start that second hand. Living where I'm at now (just moved here a few months ago, renting the attic (basically a studio apartment, much better then it sounds)), we don't have wifi (it really is as horrible as it sounds) so I'm real limited on my entertainment options. Not the case in Denver--thank ****ing God. I think Mad Men is gonna be keeping me company for a bit as I adjust to a new city.

There are a lot of movies similar to that that I've never seen. I've seen pretty much all coming of age/generation/decade defining movies, but there is still a lot in the tier just below that one that I haven't seen.

Serpico, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Silence Of The Lambs, Poltergeist, Dirty Harry saga, etc. I just watched Braveheart and Last Of The Mohicans within the last few months. I'll watch them all eventually though.

You know what might be tight Mr. S? A movie club. I've been trying to start a book club for YEARS now and promising starts to them always quickly fade into nothingness. Maybe a movie club would be easier to work. Have some type of guidelines where a majority of people haven't seen a movie or something. I don't know. You have any interest in something like that? Anyone else?

[Going Commando]

You've got me convinced that's the next TV show I watch. I absolutely LOVE me some movies but I'm not really a TV person in the slightest. Probably count on one hand the number of series I've watched from pilot to finale. From your posts, I think Mad Men is gonna have to start that second hand. Living where I'm at now (just moved here a few months ago, renting the attic (basically a studio apartment, much better then it sounds)), we don't have wifi (it really is as horrible as it sounds) so I'm real limited on my entertainment options. Not the case in Denver--thank ****ing God. I think Mad Men is gonna be keeping me company for a bit as I adjust to a new city.

I am very snobbish about TV. A show can lose me for good if it has some problems that a lot of other people don't care about. Writing is the #1 thing for me. Too many cliches or obvious tropes will kill my suspension of disbelief and I will immediately stop watching a show. Plottiness doesn't hook me either. An interesting, plot driven show with meh writing will bore me. And if a show insults the audience's intelligence, abandons subtlety, gets too predictable, overwrites, and/or panders to the LCD I'll probably stop watching it. Popular, critically acclaimed shows too. Game of Thrones--Absolutely hate it. Walking Dead--watched the first season because my sister gave it to me as a gift then had no interest in continuing. Breaking Bad--Never been impressed with the writing. Downton Abbey--can't stand it after the first season.

That's not to say I don't enjoy campy or mediocre shows though. Star Trek TNG and the new Battlestar are campy and two of my all time favorites. I enjoy Dr. Who. I love Sherlock. But the show has to embrace the camp and/or err on the side of subtlety.

No question Mad Men is the best show I've ever seen. Only other show I've seen with equivalent writing, staging, performances, cinematography, etc. is Deadwood. Deadwood was just three seasons. I'll watch Mad Men episodes for the fifth time and see new layers. "Oh so that's what they were doing. ****. Jesus these guys are good." When I watch an episode for the first time I'm challenged. After it's over, most of the time I'm thinking, "uh... what just happened?" In a good way.

I'm really into sitcoms too. I swear, my little sister could be a writer for one. Her taste is impeccable and when I talk to about some show she's got next level insight. She hardly even laughs at their jokes any more. I'll will pause a show because I am crying from laughing so hard and she will just be smiling quietly.

You know what might be tight Mr. S? A movie club. I've been trying to start a book club for YEARS now and promising starts to them always quickly fade into nothingness. Maybe a movie club would be easier to work. Have some type of guidelines where a majority of people haven't seen a movie or something. I don't know. You have any interest in something like that? Anyone else?

I'm interested. I've posted in conversations on r/books every once in a blue moon but it's usually stuff I read a while ago. It takes me forever and a day to read a book. A movie club would be better for me.

Chewy needs to be in on it, that man has seen everything.

What were you thinking as far as format? Start a movie club thread and then we pick a movie and then just post about it and have a rolling discussion?

[Mr. Sinister]

Sounds good.

................

 

Been watching a lot of stuff on the Crusades as of late. I've said it before, but I can't imagine what a battlefield would've looked like pre-gunpowder days.

 

These days, it is regularly accepted that it takes a lot of crazy to kill someone hand to hand. Picture thousands of dudes hacking at each other, and the post war carnage. a bullet wound is like childs play compared to sword/arrow/spear wounds. There woud probably be blood freaking everywhere, like the ground was painted red. Limbs, tissue probably scattering the ground

 

Guys missing chunks from their backs, chest, arms, legs, etc. Guys getting trampled by horses. Guys with their heads smashed in from giant clubs. People routinely dig up bones from dead warriors and often marvel at the amount of physical trauma they all sustained.

 

I'd imagine that the more ancient civilizations had many ways of combatting infections, but I don't know how you weren't sol in Medieval England, considering its swampy, disease, and un-cleanliness filled disposition. Your arms would probably resemble the underside of a squids tentacle within a week.

 

What a horrible way to live and die.

[Going Commando]

I think battle carnage is worse from the 20th century onwards. Medieval warfare would have been really visceral but those guys lived with the realities of it, weren't phased by it. The carnage of those kinds of battles wasn't on the same kind of scale. Killing was industrialized in WWI and WWII. One of things that stuck with me that a history teacher told me was that after WWI and II, there weren't as many crippled veterans and amputees compared to prior wars. Wars in Roman times for instance created a lot of crippled vets apparently. But the weapons of the modern wars were so effective that people just got killed.

Disease has also been the major killer of warriors since the bronze age I bet. I know it was that way in the Civil War for instance. Many many more soldiers died from disease than battlefield stuff.

[Dr. Do Itch Big]

Living off the wall

[ixcuincle]

Good World War series on History tonight

[Mr. Sinister]

I think battle carnage is worse from the 20th century onwards. 

 

Oh I agree, from an overall mass scale standpoint, wholeheartedly. My thing is the sheer intimate brutality. I mean, I think it would be easier to shoot close range, long distance, drop a bomb, use tanks, or resort to drone warfare, than it would be to repeatedly strike a man to death with a sharp (or heavily blunt) object.

 

I think modern day war crimes like with what we saw in Kuwait, Germany, North Korea, Cambodia, South Africa, etc are inhumane/hellish in nature when you think of it in totality, along with the far more efficient killing methods used today (and in the historically recent past), but per capita, I don't think the carnage from sacking a city/small village, from person to person, was a stroll in the park either.

[Going Commando]

Oh I agree, from an overall mass scale standpoint, wholeheartedly. My thing is the sheer intimate brutality. I mean, I think it would be easier to shoot close range, long distance, drop a bomb, use tanks, or resort to drone warfare, than it would be to repeatedly strike a man to death with a sharp (or heavily blunt) object.

 

I think modern day war crimes like with what we saw in Kuwait, Germany, North Korea, Cambodia, South Africa, etc are inhumane/hellish in nature when you think of it in totality, along with the far more efficient killing methods used today (and in the historically recent past), but per capita, I don't think the carnage from sacking a city/small village, from person to person, was a stroll in the park either.

No life certainly wasn't a walk in the park back then. Wars really targeted civilian populations in antiquity and the medieval era. More so than they did in the World Wars despite the carpet bombing of cities. Now we consider civilian casualties collateral damage. Back then it was often the goal. And epidemic diseases were about as bad as it gets. I can't imagine what it must have been like for 70% of your town to die in a year when the plague hit.

But don't sleep on the awful, visceral brutality of modern weapons. Explosive weapons are so horrible. Peoples bodies get strewn over an area of 50+ yards. I'd rather have my head smashed by a mace or get shot with arrows then die in some of the ways the soldiers died in WWI and II. Those 50 caliber machine guns in WWI were pretty awful too. Somebody told me that one of the terrible things that would happen was when one side started to take a trench from the other and they got a 50 caliber machine gun set up at one end. The trenches were so linear, just an unbroken corridor filled with people so that the machine gunner could basically cut everyone along the trench to pieces in a matter of seconds.

There is a reason why I think it's a lot harder to romanticize the combat in the modern wars. It was dehumanizingly brutal.

[ixcuincle]

I agree, I was reading a lot this weekend about World War 2 and a lot of the stuff the Japanese did was absolutely despicable. The way they have been reluctant to apologize is also bad too, even today. I wonder how one can do that to another person. 

 

There have been so many atrocities in the 20th century...you think about the Holocaust and then what Japan did...then you remember that the US isn't infallible as we saw in the mass killings and burnings of Vietnam villages during the war...and finally Bosnia - Serbia (I was reading an ESPN the Magazine article yesterday, this guy plays for a German soccer team, but grew up watching Serbs invade his village and kill mass amounts of people. It's just mind-numbing. They were told by name to come out, that they wouldn't be hurt. When they came out, they were killed.) 

 

So yeah, the 20th century has been responsible for a lot of human carnage and cruelty. And it's even persisting today with the abuses we see in North Korea and Syria. It is a real shame. 

[Mr. Sinister]

No life certainly wasn't a walk in the park back then. Wars really targeted civilian populations in antiquity and the medieval era. More so than they did in the World Wars despite the carpet bombing of cities. Now we consider civilian casualties collateral damage. Back then it was often the goal. And epidemic diseases were about as bad as it gets. I can't imagine what it must have been like for 70% of your town to die in a year when the plague hit.

But don't sleep on the awful, visceral brutality of modern weapons. Explosive weapons are so horrible. Peoples bodies get strewn over an area of 50+ yards. I'd rather have my head smashed by a mace or get shot with arrows then die in some of the ways the soldiers died in WWI and II. Those 50 caliber machine guns in WWI were pretty awful too. Somebody told me that one of the terrible things that would happen was when one side started to take a trench from the other and they got a 50 caliber machine gun set up at one end. The trenches were so linear, just an unbroken corridor filled with people so that the machine gunner could basically cut everyone along the trench to pieces in a matter of seconds.

There is a reason why I think it's a lot harder to romanticize the combat in the modern wars. It was dehumanizingly brutal.

 

Good points all around. I often think of the kind of person I would be afterwards if I had to witness a lot of what went on specifically during WWII and Vietnam, then have to live with it for the rest of your life. My grandfather fought in WWII and my uncle fought in Desert Storm. Neither of them bring/brought it up. Ever. My friend said his grandfather fought in the Pacific, and it was basically the same thing.  Never brought it up.

 

Then you see all those interviews with people that were in the concentration camps, and you just marvel at how strong they are, to even be able to talk about it, candidly. I think thats one reason why you don't see a lot of romanticizing about modern wars..... Because we can physically see it, and we can hear people involved, talk about it, and even going back to Civil War times, we aren't that far removed to where perspective/firsthand account is completely lost to mythology/misinterpretation, falsehoods, exaggerations,etc.

 

I think a lot of opinions would be slightly different about ancient/medieval times as well if we could somehow see it with our own eyes, instead of articles of text and whatever little physical evidence you can find.

 

If I could take a time machine back to any time, it would probably be ancient Egypt. For as much as we know about it, we still know very little. It would either be that or the Mayans.

[Dr. Do Itch Big]

 

Tried but I failed. I have always heard, it doesn't matter if you fail as long as you tried, but man that sure feels like some bull**** right now. I'm a go lift and see if that makes me feel any better. 

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

Good World War series on History tonight

Really looking forward to it. 3 part miniseries, tonight through Wednesday

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

But yeah, if I start an ES Movie Club thread, you all definitely post in it? I don't want to be left hanging, looking lame as hell

[Mocountyskins]

But yeah, if I start an ES Movie Club thread, you all definitely post in it? I don't want to be left hanging, looking lame as hell

Can I be in the club

[Gibbs Hog Heaven]

The Third Crusade. King Richard 1 (Richard the Lionheart) legendary battle of wits with the equally masterful Muslim leader Saladin.

That really is a millitary masterclass, most concepts of which have been incorporated by many great modern day Generals through different Wars of our time.

That's my favourite crusade.

Hail.