Orius

Probably should've stuck with the Quarter Pounder they delivered by mistake instead of getting them to change it to the Double Quarter. Couldn't finish it. lol Also, some spicy McWings:

Love this song. It's currently stuck in my head. This is my current jam. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A68j28KQaik

Since I've written some really lengthy posts in the forums, it's got me thinking how most of the time, I'm just winging it. There's no real thought process behind my writing, and this has got me concerned sometimes whether if I sounded as eloquent as I wanted to, or rather, needed to (like when I was defending Sayaka lol). It's the same with narrative writing, and probably a bigger problem there as opposed to normal writing. When writing a story especially, writing itself would seem to me like some kind of mystical art that I need to unlock. It can seem so daunting sometimes, like how do I find the correct words to sound convincing? If you've paid attention to my posts, you'll notice that my vocabulary can be quite limited. Here are the words I'd remember often using: depressing, rather, kinda, probably, awesome, epic, generic, and mediocre. I try to be creative with my words as much as I can (especially seeing how well Cy~ can write), but it's like I can only write with so much variety, and that there's a wall blocking me from writing better. Part of this is due to my own self-esteem issues, but I feel that's a very small part of the problem. A bigger part would probably have to do with my own laziness in editing my posts. I'd almost never edit my posts before submitting them, whether out of impatience or just negligence. Therefore, I would often not realize how to make my posts sound better till after the post is submitted, and most probably read.

Saber, the woman who became King in an age of men: And of course, there's Revy. Noteworthy is her moeness alongside her badassery: Last but not least, the one I really want to mention today is Amane Suzuha, whom I've deemed to be quite the badass herself. Not only is she a highly-trained soldier from the future, her stoic persona is so cool, even though she has those cute twin-tails: Also, she has a really cute smile in the VN:

Can't believe I forgot about this lovely girl: I fell in love with her ever since I saw her face with her hair let down: She looks so innocent and pure without those ponytails. And her ending in Steins;Gate was really sweet and heartwarming.

One of my favorite scenes from my favorite satire, Tropic Thunder: [spoiler=Les Grossman]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odd8Zdhuj9o This just shows how amazing an actor Tom Cruise can be when he's not type-cast in a generic action hero kind of role (who constantly runs and shouts a lot). Tom Cruise's talent is criminally wasted nowadays. You should've seen him in A Few Good Men or Born on the Fourth of July. [spoiler=Black Stereotypes]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDwj1Gn1fZc This (and many other scenes) just shows the kind of clever writing the movie has as it satirizes actors working in Hollywood. Chino, a black guy, getting offended by Lazarus' Hollywood stereotype portrayal of a black guy was hilarious to watch. [spoiler=Scorcher VI Trailer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZocvme6cYc This was my favorite fake trailer from the beginning of the movie that parodies the cheesiness of Hollywood action movies and its tendency to milk a franchise of so many pointless sequels. The best part was easily "Now, the one man who made a difference five times before... *dramatic pause* is about to make a difference... again." LOL Just to throw in a few more of my favorite comedies... [spoiler=Mr. Bean's Analysis]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNzMjrJQKsc Surprisingly, I completely forgot about this video, since it was the one that got me to make this thread in the first place. It's just such a surprisingly sincere speech by one of the goofiest characters you'll find that really makes the film stand out. In spite of its titular character's eccentric mannerism (to put it lightly), there's a lot of heart in the movie than you might expect, and I feel it's quite an underrated gem forgotten by time. [spoiler=Liar Liar - Turkey Scene]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNLpPbmB8go Next to Tropic Thunder, Liar Liar is easily my favorite comedy of all time. There are so many scenes that still got me laughing today I wouldn't know which to pick from, but I managed to select this one. His over-the-top style is just my favorite kind of comedy. The timing of it is great, and I would imagine not a lot of people can pull it off without breaking out of character at least to some extent. Jim's hilarious in a lot of his movies, including my other favorite of his, Bruce Almighty, but this one was him at his top game.

Restless, and kinda bored. Probably have to do with that cup of coffee I drank.

I like apple juice. It's sweet. Buuuut, my favorite kind and the only kind I drink is the carbonated kind, not the pure apple juice. My parents tried to boil apple juice for me as a kid in order to cure my bladder stone, but it was too nasty and I never drank it... Probably shouldn't have been fussy to keep my privates free of stones, but still. *shrugs*

I hate people who smoke, or more accurately, I hate people who smoke in my face. I don't mind if they take the courtesy of blowing away from my face, but god, I don't want that cancer in my lungs. If you're going to kill yourself, please leave me out of it. It smells horrible too. I don't mean to offend smokers out there, but it's a major peeve of mine.

I used to have a friend in college who drew tattoos for people using his pen. I requested a Hell Girl tattoo from him, the same mark you get in the anime after you made a request in her website: I had it drawn on my neck like in the anime. lol Too bad it didn't last long...

That kinda proves the quiz correct in one way...

Edward is fun. She would've been my waifu if she's not like 10 or something.

Spider-Man from Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Part of it is because I grew up with that '90s cartoon, and most of it is because Spidey's my favorite superhero of all time (which I've already explained in a similar thread). I looked up to him a lot as a kid, being just this Joe Average constantly traumatized and toyed around by his writers, and yet managing to stay lighthearted all the same. I'm almost surprised Spidey didn't at least hit Stan Lee in the face when he met him in the animated series (though to be fair, he's gotten over most of his tragedies at that point in the series). In terms of what I think qualifies as a superhero... The funny thing is, some people consider magical girls a form of superhero, but for girls. There are also a lot of anime characters with superpowers aside from Saitama that people considered to be legit superheroes, the most famous of whom would of course be Goku himself, often compared to the likes of the one and only Superman (he lost that fight against Supes in not just one, but two calculated matches in Screw Attack's Death Battle; fanboys were salty). So, by that definition, I guess you could say Miki Sayaka is a superhero too, one with a similar sense of justice as some of my favorite "Straight Arrow" superheroes like Captain America and Spidey (not that big of a fan of Supes myself, but I feel he's unfairly hated and unfairly compared to Batman). And since characters like Iron Man whose superpower comes from his suit, you might even consider mecha pilots (like Simon from Gurren Lagann) to be superheroes as well, but that's probably stretching it. And since some detectives of the past were also considered to be superheroes (The Spirit comes to mind), are anime detectives like Edogawa Conan superheroes as well? Even if they don't have a secret identity like how a lot of superheroes don't have them? It's certainly an interesting notion to consider. Though I guess technically speaking, Conan does have a secret identity. lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEtdyn2QEzA

This time-travel parody is a lot of fun. It features Bill and Ted, Doc Brown from Back to the Future, Dr. Who, Spock, and even f-ing Hermione Granger for crying out loud. lol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPuE_nd7hnM The only one missing here is Okabe Rintaro! lol

I have some favorites myself, but most of them aren't really the classic kind of classical music, and more like remixed covers (which you're bound to run into very often, considering how old many classical songs are). One of my favorite covers is Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons, Summer: III. Presto": She also did a cover of Toccata & Fugue I like, though that's largely attributed to the band enhancing the music in the background, I'll admit: There's Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca from the Amadeus movie: Of course, my favorite has to be "Play With Me" by Extreme from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, which takes cues from the above Alla turca. You should be able to tell easily why this is my favorite:

I'm more into nu metal like Linkin Park and Disturbed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09LTT0xwdfw

YouTube mostly. I would just type in my favorite genre and search from there. I find music-sharing sites like Dubtrack.fm and Plug.DJ to be helpful too, particularly Dubtrack, since there is a wide variety of music fans over there playing many different kinds of music that you're bound to run into something you'd like.

With marketing as prevalent as it is today thanks to the invention of the Internet, it's another reason why so many bad movies are being paid for, and why Hollywood manages to get the wrong idea about what audiences want.

That's actually one of my biggest complaints about modern movies, that they are not setting new trends in filmmaking and storytelling (cinematic universes don't count, and I find it a superficial marketing). I feel like instead of finding new ways to change people's perspectives, there are a lot of movies, even non-comic book ones, that play safe. A bold movie I could think of was Miracle on 34th Street, a Christmas movie about a court case of all things. That's original and never seen before, not to mention damn interesting. And I can't agree that it's just comic book movies that suck. Look at the many movie reboots and remakes today. They are symptoms of an ongoing problem in Hollywood, playing safe and making the movies that would appeal to the broadest audiences. They remake these movies because the original movies made money. It's as simple as that.

That, and the heavy marketing the mediocre and terrible ones constantly receive. IMO, MCU is part of the problem I'm trying to emphasize here. While they're entertaining movies, they don't serve as anything else meaningful. I don't feel they shape our culture as significantly, or rather, as meaningfully as older movies used to.

Actually, it's because they didn't make it here into the hands of Hollywood executives that they ended up much better than your standard American movie.

I originally wanted to talk about this in my "Upcoming Movies" thread rather than create an entirely new thread, but I feel it's unrelated to that topic and merely serves to derail the discussion more than it already has. What inspires this thread ultimately is not just @brycec's good point about modern movies, but also this particular video, which I feel has also made a lot of good points about the problems I have with modern cinema: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW3o2JYoK6Q To put it simply: marketing. A lot of Hollywood movies today (emphasis on "Hollywood", an emphasis I'll explain later) are less pieces of artwork than they are gigantic tent-pole marketing mediums. While they spit out the occasional great story, most of them merely serve two hours of decent entertainment that's more or less worth your seven bucks, but wouldn't serve as some world-changing cultural-molding Mona Lisa. Yes, the MCU has shaped geek culture in significant ways, but I feel they've contributed to the same problem of filmmaking as described in the video, which is withholding important information in a story so that you could come back next movie. Joss Whedon in particular has talked about this in an interview to his work, "The Age of Ultron". When asked why he didn't like the ending to The Empire Strikes Back, he said this: I agree to a certain extent with his quote. I prefer it when a movie has a complete story on its own, as what movies are doing nowadays with incomplete movies are the same exact problems with video games leaving us with an incomplete game, forcing you to buy DLCs for the complete experience. A story's fundamental golden rules are not meant to be broken - a beginning, a climax, and a resolution. They are there for a reason. And even if they should be broken, it certainly shouldn't be done so in such a way, for the sake of cheap marketing ploy, forcing you to watch the next film. While the MCU isn't the main culprit of this terrible filmmaking process, being able to conclude almost every movie without leaving a trail of unsatisfying stories (aside from those sloppy Avenger movies, Civil War included), it has certainly influenced other filmmakers and Hollywood studios to lazily slap together cinematic universes (and otherwise, like Fox's X-Men movies) for the sake of earning a larger profit from a supposed demanding audience. There is no longer an intention to create art among Hollywood. Gone are the days when filmmakers had to get creative when profit wasn't as abundant as it is today. Both executives and filmmakers alike seem to be so brain-dead with the pursuit of money that they seem to no longer care about creating something that truly speaks to the audience, and not just give a good time for two hours. THAT BEING SAID... The reason I placed emphasis on Hollywood is because not every movie studio and filmmaker are like that. A lot of the smaller studios and indie filmmakers still retain their creative rights. The problem lies not with the executives and filmmakers (as my italicized emphasis on the word, "seem" hopefully tells you), but with the system of Hollywood itself, and how it green lights movies. The system is becoming more flawed with each passing year, and nobody is bothering to fix it because money is flowing in at a healthy rate, and then some. I couldn't say whether if the executives ever cared about the artistic pursuit at all, even back then, but I could say that the filmmakers' hands are definitely tied by this system, forcing them to create stories under a very restrained set of rules Hollywood executives set out for them. In particular, I could imagine those rules would be along the lines of "Create a movie that attracts the audience to come back for the next movie." However, as all good movie fans know, Hollywood is NOT cinema itself. There are other good movies beside your mainstream Hollywood films, even today. So the question is an interesting one depending on what kind of movies you've been watching, and what negative influences they might have given you. Do you think that modern movies are no longer salvageable, or is there still a chance for good movies to exist? Personally, I of course think that there are still a lot of underrated gems out there today that go unnoticed because they weren't marketed as heavily as Hollywood films. Stuff like Sicario, Arrival and Moonlight show the kind of potential filmmakers still have today to tell a good story without cheap marketing techniques influencing their writing. So I do think it would be a bit unfair to dismiss all modern movies as inherently bad, when it's the system that's the real problem here.