Belatedly, thanks for the answers. I'm planning to read the books. I do have a follow up, if anyone's willing to tackle it.
The first season raises an enormous number of questions with regard to backstory. There are a lot of questions I have regarding bloodlines, character motivations, etc that I really want to know but probably can't without learning spoilers.
That leads to a very loaded question...is there anything you can tell me regarding backstory, that you would think I'm supposed to know having watched the first season, but that they haven't had time to cover? In particular, I'm wondering what the story is with Jorah Mormont, how and why Ned Stark's brother died (the one that Petyr Baelish was jealous of), and whether Sam Tarly's house is of any particular note.
If the answer is no, then by all means say so. I don't want to learn anything prematurely and I do intend to start reading the books in the next few weeks. I haven't been this interested in any TV series in a long time.
I've been watching the first season for the second time, but I've never read any of the books. I had a question that I hoped some of the readers could help me with. The catalyst for all the action in the show is the death of John Arron, the Hand of the King. In the first episode, if I'm understanding correctly, they say that he was married to Lady Stark's sister. We are led to believe that John Arron was a great, honorable man, Ned Stark's mentor, etc. Yet we learn later that:
Lady Stark's sister is a raving lunatic, who breast-feeds her tween-aged son. That doesn't really make sense to me. Was she always nuts, or are we supposed to assume that she was driven mad after losing her husband? Why would John Arron marry this psychopath in the first place? I'm having difficulty reconciling how we're supposed to perceive John Arron vs. how his wife is portrayed.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's basically required reading for anyone interested in 20th century literature, and easier to get through on your own than Ulysses. I'd also recommend John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath is probably his best, but he also has a lot of shorter works like The Pearl or Cannery Row if you want something less daunting.
Edit: I'll stop back later with some less obvious suggestions.
Mine would be both the National Treasure movies. The premise is ridiculous (We have to steal...history!), Nic Cage is terrible and Sean Bean hams it up. But I've seen both at least three times and always enjoyed them.
I also love Groundhog Day, Mean Girls and Princess Bride, but they don't make me feel ashamed.
When we were walking out of the theatre, my girlfriend said "So that was basically sci-fi Groundhog Day. With terrorists." I thought that was a pretty accurate description.
I liked it quite a bit, but I really wish they hadn't tried to explain how and why the Source Code program works scientifically. It made no sense whatsoever and detracted from what was otherwise an excellent story. If your movie premise revolves around an impossible (or at least incredibly improbable) technology, then let's just accept that it works for whatever reason and move on.
I also agree with Deep Cocoa on the final 5 minutes. It seemed kind of arbitrary, like they just wanted to tack on a happy ending.
All in all, solid movie, very entertaining. Just don't think about it too hard.
Responding directly to the title I would have to say yes it is. I currently make just over minimum wage in MN and if I lived alone I would just barely be able to make rent food and bills working 40 hours a week. The point I want to highlight is that while one can survive on minimum wage, you can't live on it. There is no saving for the future or going out to the movies or mall or any of it. It requires living in a very different manner then most people. This is why it's soul crushing. The things most people do are just out of reach when you have to support yourself on minimum wage and that's what makes it harsh.
Discipline and control. I don't believe schools athletic programs care anything more than winning. Practice Practice Practice.
Win, Win, Win.
This makes me think you've never been part of a quality athletic program. I participated in soccer, basketball, cross country and track in high school and college and I believe it did great things for me personally. Team sports develop personal discipline just as surely as martial arts do, and also help kids to develop social skills like cooperation and leadership. You can't "win, win, win" without instilling positive traits in your players. Honestly, I didn't appreciate how much my athletic programs did for me until I graduated college and didn't have them anymore.
I don't have anything against schools creating martial arts programs. It seems like a fine idea if the interest to support the program is there. However, I don't think it's accurate to portray martial arts as superior to other forms of athletics.
I hate to tell you this, but it's all downhill after the second season. 1 & 2 are great, 3 & 4 are so-so, 5 is worse and 6 is just awful. I stopped watching about 8 episodes into season 6.
*GASP*
no sir, not at all!
I'm not saying its the bestest of the past decade, but its up there.
Are you watching and/or listening close enough?
The characters are certainly NOT one dimensional (ok, maybe the side characters are); the main characters interact very intricately and have definately grown since their first meeting. The plotline makes since if you've followed it since day one. I got mama Qtip watching Chuck last season and she follows it just fine (granted, I had to fill in a few gaps from the seasons she missed, characters she may not be familiar with). I have nothing against the dialgoue (what do you want, Shakespeare).
Plus, who can agrue with the off-beat geek references?
Highroller...do with him as you will, but keep in mind he did admit that's its better than most garbage on at the moment...
It's possible that I'm off-base with Chuck because I haven't seen the whole series. At current I'm nearing the end of season 2. From what I've seen though, it is not a great show. It is decent. I stand by my assertions.
Chuck is the only character on the show that could be considered dynamic, and that's only because he's less bumbling than he was in the first season. Sara's only job is to say "I like you, but I shouldn't!" and look hot (which I grant you, she does very well). Casey is just a stereotypical hardass. Everyone else on the show basically says and does the same thing in every episode.
The general storyline is preposterous on many levels, but that's not really what I'm talking about. It's the holes that show up in the plots of individual episodes. Like, if Dude X was a double agent all along then why the hell didn't he shoot Chuck and company 30 minutes ago? Well, because that wouldn't have been as convenient for the writers. I know that stuff like this shows up in tons of shows, but it's kind of pronounced on Chuck.
The dialogue isn't awful or anything, but it's not up to the level of the shows discussed above. There's a ton of filler in every episode.
(show Chuck on cell phone)
Chuck: Oh my god! Jill's a Fulcrum agent! (cut to Sara on cell phone, turning to Casey)
Sara: Jill is a Fulcrum agent. (cut to the general on the base's monitor)
General: Since Jill is a Fulcrum agent...
Stuff like this happens way more than it should.
None of this makes it a bad show though. Outsourced is a bad show. #$%! My Dad Says is a bad show. Chuck is not a bad show. It does a lot of things right, it's consistently entertaining, and the inside geek jokes are definitely awesome. It's just not up to the level of something like Arrested Development or The Wire or Firefly.
Edit: Maybe I'm being too harsh here. If Chuck is better than 98% of what's on television, does that make it a great show? I'm just operating with the knowledge that most shows on television are soul-sucking dreck.
By the way, no one has yet mentioned Chuck. Why has no one mentioned Chuck? That makes me sad.
Perhaps it is a foregone conclusion that Chuck is so freaking awesome it deserves to be in this thread? Or perhaps people just didn't know.
But if they didn't know they should have asked. I will let everyone off with a warning, but should this happen again, I will start smacking people with the lazy stick.
Chuck is an entertaining show. I enjoy watching it. But it is not a good show. The plotline makes no sense, the characters are one-dimensional and the dialogue is often sloppy. It's better than most shows on television, but I could name at least 20 other shows from the last decade that are much stronger than Chuck.
They appear to include any show that ran during the 00s. The full list:
1. The Wire
2. The Sopranos
3. Arrested Development
4. Freaks and Geeks
5. Mad Men
6. Breaking Bad
7. The Office (UK)
8. Lost
9. Deadwood
10. The Shield
11. The Office (US)
12. Battlestar Galactica
13. 30 Rock
14. Futurama
15. Veronica Mars
16. Friday Night Lights
17. Firefly
18. How I Met Your Mother
19. Big Love
20. Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
21. Curb Your Enthusiasm
22. Six Feet Under
23. Undeclared
24. Dexter
25. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
26. The Venture Bros.
27. Flight of the Conchords
28. Eastbound & Down
29. Wonder Showzen
30. The West Wing
I really like Robert Heinlein, though he is a little repetitive and preachy. Try Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love or Starship Troopers.
Foundation by Isaac Asimov is pretty awesome, but I didn't much care for the rest of the series after the first book.
Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card are both outstanding books. I find it likely you've already read this though.
I also think every sci-fi fan should check out Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Some might classify it as cyberpunk, but I wouldn't get scared off by the label. It certainly reads nothing like Neuromancer, and you won't find any other books that feature a sword-fighting, pizza-delivering hacker hero protagonist who is actually named Hiro Protagonist.
I agree with all of the above. Can't go wrong with Perfect Dark, Smash Brothers, Mario Kart (awesome battle mode here, not just racing) or the Mario Party games. Mario Tennis and Golf are also excellent. I really liked the multiplayer battle mode in Star Fox 64 but it's not a focus of the game.
Goldeneye was amazing in its time, but it gets outclassed by Perfect Dark.
Vampires is neither T1 nor a meta deck. It's a T2ish deck, and most likely will start to see less play now that people have figured out how to beat it(Froelich, while he did get outdrawn terribly in multiple games in T8, still lost 3-1 vs. a deck that clearly did not have Vampires in mind when it was built..it didn't even have good SB for Vampires).
Grave Titan instead of Frost Titan was adopted by UB as a direct response to Vampires (and the wider use of Mark of Mutiny), as was Disfigure over some Doom Blades in the maindeck. Spreading Seas is also a recent addition to UB that is very strong against Vamps.
The UB decks that top 8ed worlds actually look a lot different than the ones that you saw people piloting on MODO 2-3 weeks ago, and I think it should be clear that they were taking Vamps into account.
I still think Vampires is a strong deck, but the best time to play it was a few weeks ago, when everyone said it was a joke and none of the Jace decks were prepared for it. If you pick it up now you're a little late to the party.
The first season raises an enormous number of questions with regard to backstory. There are a lot of questions I have regarding bloodlines, character motivations, etc that I really want to know but probably can't without learning spoilers.
That leads to a very loaded question...is there anything you can tell me regarding backstory, that you would think I'm supposed to know having watched the first season, but that they haven't had time to cover? In particular, I'm wondering what the story is with Jorah Mormont, how and why Ned Stark's brother died (the one that Petyr Baelish was jealous of), and whether Sam Tarly's house is of any particular note.
If the answer is no, then by all means say so. I don't want to learn anything prematurely and I do intend to start reading the books in the next few weeks. I haven't been this interested in any TV series in a long time.
Also, sorry for misspelling Jon Arryn's name.
Among the total population, sure. But among movie critics, 8% seems about right.
Granted, it doesn't look like a particularly good movie. But if Your Highness can post a 24%, I suspect this movie might not be getting a fair shake.
Edit: I'll stop back later with some less obvious suggestions.
I also love Groundhog Day, Mean Girls and Princess Bride, but they don't make me feel ashamed.
I liked it quite a bit, but I really wish they hadn't tried to explain how and why the Source Code program works scientifically. It made no sense whatsoever and detracted from what was otherwise an excellent story. If your movie premise revolves around an impossible (or at least incredibly improbable) technology, then let's just accept that it works for whatever reason and move on.
I also agree with Deep Cocoa on the final 5 minutes. It seemed kind of arbitrary, like they just wanted to tack on a happy ending.
All in all, solid movie, very entertaining. Just don't think about it too hard.
What exactly do you think 'living' means?
This makes me think you've never been part of a quality athletic program. I participated in soccer, basketball, cross country and track in high school and college and I believe it did great things for me personally. Team sports develop personal discipline just as surely as martial arts do, and also help kids to develop social skills like cooperation and leadership. You can't "win, win, win" without instilling positive traits in your players. Honestly, I didn't appreciate how much my athletic programs did for me until I graduated college and didn't have them anymore.
I don't have anything against schools creating martial arts programs. It seems like a fine idea if the interest to support the program is there. However, I don't think it's accurate to portray martial arts as superior to other forms of athletics.
It's possible that I'm off-base with Chuck because I haven't seen the whole series. At current I'm nearing the end of season 2. From what I've seen though, it is not a great show. It is decent. I stand by my assertions.
Chuck is the only character on the show that could be considered dynamic, and that's only because he's less bumbling than he was in the first season. Sara's only job is to say "I like you, but I shouldn't!" and look hot (which I grant you, she does very well). Casey is just a stereotypical hardass. Everyone else on the show basically says and does the same thing in every episode.
The general storyline is preposterous on many levels, but that's not really what I'm talking about. It's the holes that show up in the plots of individual episodes. Like, if Dude X was a double agent all along then why the hell didn't he shoot Chuck and company 30 minutes ago? Well, because that wouldn't have been as convenient for the writers. I know that stuff like this shows up in tons of shows, but it's kind of pronounced on Chuck.
The dialogue isn't awful or anything, but it's not up to the level of the shows discussed above. There's a ton of filler in every episode.
(show Chuck on cell phone)
Chuck: Oh my god! Jill's a Fulcrum agent!
(cut to Sara on cell phone, turning to Casey)
Sara: Jill is a Fulcrum agent.
(cut to the general on the base's monitor)
General: Since Jill is a Fulcrum agent...
Stuff like this happens way more than it should.
None of this makes it a bad show though. Outsourced is a bad show. #$%! My Dad Says is a bad show. Chuck is not a bad show. It does a lot of things right, it's consistently entertaining, and the inside geek jokes are definitely awesome. It's just not up to the level of something like Arrested Development or The Wire or Firefly.
Edit: Maybe I'm being too harsh here. If Chuck is better than 98% of what's on television, does that make it a great show? I'm just operating with the knowledge that most shows on television are soul-sucking dreck.
Chuck is an entertaining show. I enjoy watching it. But it is not a good show. The plotline makes no sense, the characters are one-dimensional and the dialogue is often sloppy. It's better than most shows on television, but I could name at least 20 other shows from the last decade that are much stronger than Chuck.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-best-tv-series-of-the-00s,35256/
They appear to include any show that ran during the 00s. The full list:
1. The Wire
2. The Sopranos
3. Arrested Development
4. Freaks and Geeks
5. Mad Men
6. Breaking Bad
7. The Office (UK)
8. Lost
9. Deadwood
10. The Shield
11. The Office (US)
12. Battlestar Galactica
13. 30 Rock
14. Futurama
15. Veronica Mars
16. Friday Night Lights
17. Firefly
18. How I Met Your Mother
19. Big Love
20. Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
21. Curb Your Enthusiasm
22. Six Feet Under
23. Undeclared
24. Dexter
25. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
26. The Venture Bros.
27. Flight of the Conchords
28. Eastbound & Down
29. Wonder Showzen
30. The West Wing
Foundation by Isaac Asimov is pretty awesome, but I didn't much care for the rest of the series after the first book.
Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card are both outstanding books. I find it likely you've already read this though.
I also think every sci-fi fan should check out Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Some might classify it as cyberpunk, but I wouldn't get scared off by the label. It certainly reads nothing like Neuromancer, and you won't find any other books that feature a sword-fighting, pizza-delivering hacker hero protagonist who is actually named Hiro Protagonist.
Goldeneye was amazing in its time, but it gets outclassed by Perfect Dark.
Grave Titan instead of Frost Titan was adopted by UB as a direct response to Vampires (and the wider use of Mark of Mutiny), as was Disfigure over some Doom Blades in the maindeck. Spreading Seas is also a recent addition to UB that is very strong against Vamps.
The UB decks that top 8ed worlds actually look a lot different than the ones that you saw people piloting on MODO 2-3 weeks ago, and I think it should be clear that they were taking Vamps into account.
I still think Vampires is a strong deck, but the best time to play it was a few weeks ago, when everyone said it was a joke and none of the Jace decks were prepared for it. If you pick it up now you're a little late to the party.