Chindie

11 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

That's true if you view them as individual films, but the prequels tell a single coherent narrative, albeit badly, and that does ultimately make them more than the sum of their parts. I do actually think the high level plot beats of the trilogy could maybe have been made into decent enough films had Lucas been subject to more typical levels of studio oversight and they'd got some decent scriptwriters involved. Whereas it absolutely baffles me that Disney were unable to write a coherent three-part story for their new films, especially when GOT and the MCU were so popular at the time and showing the power of good creative direction. Writers can't be *that* expensive.

But other than that I have to agree. I'll probably sit my kids down in front of some Star Wars in a few years, and I imagine they'll think the new trilogy films are pretty cool. I'll only try the prequels if they need a nap.

I actually agree with the big concepts, ideas, headline plots of the prequels being good. The story that they tell is the one you'd pick to tell. It's just the execution is terrible. Lucas is a big ideas man, he can't write like a script writer, and the more you ask him to zoom in his ideas the worse it gets. George works when he can say 'let's do a rise of the Nazis allegory, and Vader origin', not when he decides he needs to explain what the Force is, or where C3PO came from, or why stormtroopers exist, or why Vader is evil, or... The big headline ideas are excellent, but you can't make that into a film, and everything else is **** awful. 

The sequel trilogy Disney absolutely **** up. They didn't even really need to look at things like their stablemate, Marvel, on how to do a big franchise spanning narrative, Star Wars wasn't trying to do the same thing, but they should have had some idea of how they intended the thing to go. Instead they get Abrams to do a soft reboot with god awful mystery box narrative, then let Johnson do whatever for the important middle movie, and his decision was 'your first film was shit', so he makes something that throws it in the bin and makes his own mess that is at least interesting, and then the finale is a hopeless rescue job by a hack that's worse than everything. Had they had some kind of guiding big picture narrative they might have got something better, but they didn't, and they paid for it.

It's alright. America and the West generally will continue to cash in any moral soft power we have by simply refusing to acknowledge that wrong is wrong, because our 'friends' are doing it.

Just now, Aston_Villan4 said:

So now that Slot’s been confirmed by Pool, they announced he’s the head coach. What’s the difference between a manager and head coach though? 

Nowadays in most clubs theres not much difference really because all the biggest teams have similar structures now, but historically a head coach usually meant they are part of a larger club structure which limits their responsibilities to matters on the pitch and training ground, rather than the old fashioned idea of a manager who was basically running the club from a footballing perspective in every facet. A head coach would be working alongside (or potentially beneath) a director of football, a head of recruitment, and might even be expected to largely work with an established set of coaches/trainers/staff etc etc, whereas the old fashioned manager would calling all the shots and expecting a completely clean card to work from, their own guys, their own style, etc. Nobody really does this anymore (because when it goes wrong it's expensive and potentially catastrophic), so everyone really is a head coach. Oddly enough one of the things that probably attracts Emery here is he operates in a structure where is a head coach, but everyone around him is essentially his guys so he basically gets the best of both worlds.

The sequel trilogy isn't good, by any means, you could fill pages on why, but besides the last one (which is just a mess of rancid arse water) they're well made movies with generally good performances and solid plots (if in the case of the second one, a plot that doesn't fit what anyone expected or anyone really wanted, or fits the series terribly well, or works as a vehicle for what it wants to say). The prequels, meanwhile, are genuinely bad on multiple levels - plots and scripts that barely read like a human wrote them, absolutely atrocious acting, bad cinematography, bad CG, bad filming choices everywhere (multiple 'big spectacle action scenes' that are like watching some hundreds and thousands dropped on a table) - the only thing you can rescue from them is some of the art design was good, some of the music is very good and a couple of scenes are solid. The best of the prequels, RotS, is at best an alright movie, and even to say that you've got to overlook some total stinking clunkers in it's very being.

Theres nothing about the sequels that is that bad. Except maybe RoS. For all that FA is just a rote retread of ANH with some new paint, nostalgia porn and mystery boxes, that TLJ is a weird grudge of a movie that resents it's predecessor to the extent it chucks it's plot in the bin, and RoS is a car crash, they aren't genuinely, irredeemably terrible. The prequels, in the main, are. They gave us one of the worst characters in any medium, Binks, have catastrophically bad writing that actively creates plot holes retrospectively because the writer is too stupid to plot them better, and give us a romance across 3 movies that is less convincing than the love affair between a table and a carpet.

I won my bet with how quick the problem would be some variation on 'woke', with an extra bit chucked on Mary Sue.

It won't come to anything, but it's the right decision. 

The Israelis spluttering with rage at the courts decision to go for them as well is particularly sweet. They can't stand that the world doesn't think they have a carte blanche to do whatever they want.

There's probably cheaper ways of getting the locker keys back.

16 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Everything Disney did with Star Wars was far far worse than the Prequel trilogy. 

No it isn't. 

I'm not a huge fan of the sequel trilogy, but it's better than the prequels, which are appallingly bad follies on multiple fronts, and it's generally accepted that some of the best Star Wars content has come under Disney's watch.

It's diabolically bad.

Helicopters have an incredibly poor crash survivability, even the one best known for surviving crashes, the Black Hawk, has a bad record iirc, and this is nowhere near that. Unless it was a very low speed low altitude crash, without incredible luck everyone is dead.

A **** drop shadow. A drop shadow, in 2024.

What the actual ****.

It's so **** bad.

You could put this is various threads. But some will like it because it has that there Liverpool in it, centre of the world, la.

Anyway it's an interesting video on the state of local government in the UK. It starts in Birmingham, obviously. There's nothing really revelatory but it's always good to see something put together that lays out how things are ****.

That's rather similar to the US states legislation that makes it illegal for organisations receiving government funding to engage in BDS activities. 

Which should tell you everything you need to know about why BDS is important.

Presumably more focus is being placed on the chopper take off procedures needed to take the trophy to Citeh's match than a dress rehearsal for an event that won't happen.

6 minutes ago, VillaJ100 said:

Was that in a cup? I'd imagine LA and Charlotte play in different leagues?

No, it was a normal league match. The MLS is mental - the league this year has 29 teams, 15 in the Eastern Conference and 14 in the West, and each team has 6 (or 7, if you're in the West) of inter conference games, and then the expected American playoff series. They don't really 'do' cup games like we do - there's technically 2 'domestic' cup competitions, but one was so unpopular with MLS teams that they've made a compromise where they only enter academy sides and the other one includes Mexican teams and takes place, entirely, in a midseason month long 'league break'.

Coming from a European tradition of leagues and cups it's mental.

Drew with LA Galaxy at home. 

This match is so bad that the highlight package includes a badly over hit corner. Not a badly over hit corner that turned into a chance, just a badly over hit corner. The corner is taken, sails over everyone's head, the last man collects it, and we cut to the next 'highlight'. Diabolical.

Ok. I'm not saying only sex offenders want Leeds promoted, but...

Nobody likes Leeds, nobody wants them to win. 

They also derided the UN as a 'terrorist organisation' earlier this week. Which is one of those things you hear and just think 'oh **** off' followed by never listening to a thing they said ever again.

Matt Paydayloan, for when you're really ****.

Starmer's pledges are made on rice paper, written during a typhoon.

Beat Chicago Fire away. 

Not a great game by all accounts but a solid free kick from Westwood to win it.

The amount of money you'd need to spend to buy Watkins you'd go elsewhere.

The guy who shot the Slovakian PM, as expected, seems to have done it because of his domestic policies, most notably moves to close the Slovak public broadcaster (which he appears to be doing because it's not supportive enough of him, in his view).