Free Republic

“Again, why can’t they fix the poor protagonist’s spinal cord, maybe because in this future they pass the health care plan he is still waiting for treatment......”

- This. I just downloaded the trailer as Im a big Cameron fan (the director, not the liberal). First thought went through my mind..why the eff cant they correct his spine??

You can never have too many books!

Agree! One good reason I'd like to live for a few more centuries is just to be able to read all the books I'd like to read. I'll never be able to with current lifespan.

If I had to be on a desert island and I could choose between the human companion of my choice or an unlimited library... I'd take the company if it were only for a few weeks or months. But if I'm stuck there forever, I'd probably go for the books.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I would. The books.

I guess, to me, the difference between reading an actual book and reading something on a reader is the difference between having an old friend come to your house, and having a friendly conversation with someone in a grocery checkout line.

And yet, I love reading stuff on my computer. Doesn’t make sense, I know. LOL

**then one day you’re like ‘Ahhhhh! Now I understand!’**

I’ve read and reread LOTR I don’t know how many times, starting in the mid 70’s when they were a Christmas gift from my dad. I’ve prob got more books than the local library, and most I’ve read at least twice and a lot of them more than that.

You can never have too many books!

I enjoyed it, but I'm shallow that way. :-)

Me too, me too!

What do you think of the kindles and other book “readers” ?

I haven't used one yet. I've only ever read ebooks on my computer. I can say I don't enjoy that method. I like curling up in the bed or on the sofa with a book. I don't think an electronic format is ever going to do the trick for me unless it can replicate the look and feel of a book.

People ask me why I read books over and over—it’s like revisiting an old friend!

Yep. Some books I read again and again. There's one I re-read called Replay by Ken Grimwood. It captured my imagination when I was younger and when I read it again, it's like going back to my younger state of mind all over again- which is pretty cool. I love revisiting my favorite authors after a few years. I find they teach me new things that I couldn't see before because I didn't have the right experiences under my belt the first time around. Life's kind of like that too. Older people will tell you something that doesn't make sense to you at the time and then one day you're like 'Ahhhhh! Now I understand!'

Heck even a late 1800’s prospecting company could dig a freaking mineshaft.

Let us now praise Philip Deidesheimer.

I watched it for a little while
I love to watch things on TV

- Lou Reed

Thanks for your comments. Have a nice day.

“Its a major award!”

It really is and I promise I won’t break it when dusting. Unless he ogles it. hehe

“one of my favorite scenes is near the end, when “the old man” is sitting in the chair, watching the snow fall. His wife sits next to him and he hugs her.”

That’s one of my favorite scenes too. Plus, I love the scenes when they’re watching the Christmas Parade with their kids and then doing their shopping at the big department store in their community (in their Sunday best, no less!). Not all young kids today have this experience, with the malls and big box stores taking over. Besides the nostalgia aspect to the movie, it’s nice to see a funny movie about a normal family during a simplier, more gentle time.

LOL, for what they charged for that 20” lamp I sure hope it comes stamped “Fragile” on the box, but thanks for the tip and I will make sure he knows it’s an “Italian” import. 8=)

Those people are nuts. And what is “hetro,” anyway?

:^)

What do we call Westerners willing to destroy their own civilization but who won't lift a finger to stop a real madman?

Domestic enemies...against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

No offense tasken. I was just not familiar with the reference. Still thinking about it. Still don’t remember!

I’m really good at multitasking! My teachers finally left me alone about reading in class, after they found out that I could keep up and answer any question they threw at me!!!! LOL

People ask me why I read books over and over—it’s like revisiting an old friend!

Love your story about The Rescue! That’s so romantic! Used books are always so much fun that way. My grandma stuck four leaf clovers and news articles and little tidbits in all her books. It’s fun to go back and look through some of her books that I have. i lost her a long time ago, but it’s like having a nice talk with her, kinda.

I write alot as well. In my spare time, LOL. I manage a greenhouse and I’m the chief cook and bottlewasher and the gopher and the bookkeeper and the cashier and the... at the garden center where I work. People are always amazed that I don’t get bored watering or transplanting. Sure they’re repetitive and tedious, but I can let my mind wander while I do them. Usually I’m working out a plot or a bit of dialogue.... :) I’ve never been accused of having no lack of imagination!

What do you think of the kindles and other book “readers” ? So far I’m not impressed. I’d much rather have an actual book in my hand.

I didn’t mean any insult at all...apologies if it seemed as if I did.

I was pretty into it so I guess I remember more detail. Did you ever catch the Goon Show on radio in the early seventies? They ran on WRVR late Saturday nights. It was the radio fore-runner of the monty python guys. Peter Sellers did multiple characters before his film career started.

Nope.

Tiger says.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGQ-ISsDm8M

hi Anna!

Imagine all the great movies that never get made because Hollyweird is PC. It’s crazy.

I guess I’m not a true Shep fan then.

It was 40 years ago when I was listening. Forgive me for not remembering, though I have to say I don't remeber that. In fact, I knew no one else at that time who listened to him.

About the time that the movie came out I was sitting my local pub and all these guys were raving about it. They were all younger than me and didn't even know who Jean was.

Any true Shep fan recognizes “you fathead” as one of his common sayings, as in, “Excelsior! You fathead...”

My earliest childhood memory is having to be removed from the theatre during “A Christmas Story”. I started screaming hysterically because I thought there was some kind of monster bird inside the pole trying to rip the poor boy’s tongue out. I was three years old.

That’s how I got my first rifle, a Marlin bolt action single shot .22. My old mam hid it behind the couch on Christmas. I think it was 1965.

Geez, don’t think I need to be insulted for getting the venue wrong. What the hell is your problem?

It was the Limelight, you fathead, not the Hungry Eye.

I grew up on the island and caught shep 2-3 times a week from @ 64-67 on WOR.

You know... the twin plot devices of Big Evil Corporation and Pure and Noble Savages is really getting kinda old. They've just been beaten to death too darn many times.

Somebody ought to try something *really* avant-garde and portray some corporation as the hero. That comes into town and cleans out the socialist weasels that’ve been tyrannizing the indigenous people... raising them out of the squalor and fetid disease-ridden lives they've suffered with for so long...

Something like that...

Oh man,that is too funny!

LOL!

I can see you not liking them, but....

You're absolutely right. The movie is based on one chapter. I live in New Youk State just north of New York. In the 60's Gene Shepherd had a nightly radio show on WOR radio which I surreptiously listened to when I was supposed to be sleeping. On Saturday nights he had a longer show broadcast from a bar in NYC, I think it was called the "Hungry Eye". Anyway he told most of these stories.

The thing that struck me when I first saw the movie was that his dad comes off OK. I never got that impression from his radio show.

That being said, this might be the perfect movie. McGavin is great, as is Melinda Dillon.

At some future date I will pay $1.00 for the DVD at a yard sale.

“The current aliens are nothing more than heavily anthropomorphic version of blue skinned humanoid types...”

I bet Tiger would hit one.

Sorry.

Yeah Christmas Story, the only “straight” Christmas movie I actually like (my other favorite Christmas movie is Die Hard).

I had the same reaction to the preview when I saw it.

We were always blowing fuses that needed to be replaced. And although we had oil burner, the furnace would belch smoke.
Yea, I miss my Dad too but great memories.

“I like the Wizard of Oz”

I got my first bb gun as a hand-me-down from a cousin. Blue and white Daisy. It was so gutless, I had to shoot several inches above the target 20 feet away...to account for loss of velocity. LOL. Birds just looked at me and laughed if a BB hit them. :)

Oh, I’ll see it, all right, at SOME point — in a manner that minimizes the revenue to its producers.

It doesn’t upset me. You on the other hand have gone pretty nuts just at the sight of my screen name. Here’s pretty funny:”I. DON’T. WANT. TO. DISCUSS. IT. WITH. YOU. I’m not angry. “ The guy doing all caps then saying he’s not angry. You are demonstrably angry.

Of course that’s not as funny as this: “You’re the kind that will NEVER let it go...The one argument I had with you- I saved it to disk. That was over 5 years ago.” Really _I_ can’t let things but YOU saved a conversation we had to disk for FIVE YEARS. Mr Pot I’d like you to meet Mr Kettle.

But that does confirm some memory jarring I had going through Best Buy on the way home. You were the guy in the Matrix conversation. You should understand I REALLY enjoyed that conversation, your posts were insightful and interesting, a hell of a lot more interesting than the movies you were defending. I didn’t walk away from that conversation because it was fun, for however long that lasted (and it did last a long time) I looked forward EVERY MORNING to reading your latest post, they were great posts that DESERVED replies, so I replied. We should have written our own script for a film, it would have been better than you think the Matrix movies are. I didn’t think it was a waste of time, I thought it rescued the time I’d spent watching the Matrix movies, it took time wasted on movies I still to this day think are stupid and redeemed it with time spent on a really neat conversation. And yeah we didn’t accomplish anything, but we were talking about movies, movies are entertainment and conversations about movies are entertainment, neither ever really accomplishes anything.

So now that I have context, I sincerely apologize that our Matrix conversation left a bad taste in your mouth.

May I join you?

By all means. I don't know how big the theater is, but I suspect it will hold all the people who don't show up for this bomb.

I am shocked it is left wing.

Shocked I tell you...

My MIL went to the performance of “A Christmas Story”, and she loved it... but, then again, I don’t call her my “lib-in-law” for nothing.

My family and I see "A Christmas Carol" at least once each season, and have done so ever since moving here 15 years ago. I will not see "A Christmas Story" and I detest Eric Rosen for destroying what for many people is a Christmas season tradition.

I wouldn’t have seen this even if it was promoting conservative values. Those big blue aliens are exceptionally stupid looking.

Well played. Never even considered the fact that they can clone but can’t fix a spinal cord. Haha.

Does the movie actually refer to America?

As I understand it the bad guys speak, look, and act like Hollywood caricatures of bad Americans, so who cares if they use the word? Have you never heard of an allegory?

Oh my...words escape me. Has society really come down that low? “Can we even assume that interspecies interaction will be heterosexual?” Pathetic.

The first couple trailers tried to mask it, but I saw the full latest trailer in the theaters this weekend, and thats when I finally figured out what this crapfest was all about.

Yep. Corporations want precious mineral on the planet. The blue people live where there is the greatest concentration of it on the planet. Corporations send in the military to wipe them out.
As I watched the full final trailer, the political agenda of the movie came clear. That if Cameron is going to make all the hundreds of millions back, he has to make sure he uses the formula to sell just as many tickets outside the US.
That formula being, “Lots of cheap shots at conservatives, corporations, military, while ramming a anti-american, leftist-marxist agenda down your throats to please the euros and 3rd worlders.

I guess the 'Hollyweird' movies you like are the ones that demonize Arabs instead of America.

Planet of the Arabs

Many great comedians would agree with you. From the Wikipedia entry:

Shepherd's oral narrative style was a precursor to that used by Spalding Gray and Garrison Keillor. Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media wrote that Shepherd "regards radio as a new medium for a new kind of novel that he writes nightly." In the "Seinfeld Season 6" DVD set, commenting on the episode titled "The Gymnast" Jerry Seinfeld says "He really formed my entire comedic sensibility—I learned how to do comedy from Jean Shepherd." Furthermore, the first name of Seinfeld's third child is "Shepherd."

We have been seeing the SRM promote this movie for several months. That alone, is enough to convince me that this movie is left wing propaganda. This movie will win all the “awards”.