This is the problem for so many Americans. Our first stated goal was to free the Iraqis. Arguably a moral thing to do. We have done that.
Have we? How exactly is it that one can free a people by destroying a regime under which they were not free and then not set up a government in its place? That's like repairing a car by removing a faulty engine and not putting in a new one.
Our new goal is to protect democracy...
In short, we are destroying the foundation of this government, one that we pay such high lip service to, in order to have the illusion of our own safety.
How have we destroyed the foundation of this government?
Hmm maybe because these terrorist are not that stupid to wear a 'terrorist uniform' or something.
Soldiers have to kill terrorist. But how are you going to see the difference between a terrorist and an innocent men in Iraq? There is no difference on the outside.
that's my point. Clear now?
Yes, we realize that terrorists dress up like civilians in order to maximize civilian casualties while minimizing their own (which, in my opinion, is a strong argument against our moral superiority, but that's just me). So what's your point?
about my second point. I was answering:
The number of innocents killing is not a reason to call someone a terrorist or not. I think that is a clear statement of me?
No, but if your motive is specifically to kill innocent people, I think it's a pretty good indication as to how large of a threat you are.
Yes I agree with the fact that it makes a difference about how you feel about the victims. I don't say that america is a terrorist,
Really? Because I seem to recall your entire contribution to this thread being feeble attempts to position America, as a whole, to be as morally bankrupt, if not more so, than the terrorists are.
Killing innocents just because you are angry.
There's that generalization again. By saying "you", you're essentially saying that every American soldier engages in an orgy of murder and bloodshed for the fun of it at the drop of a hat. Which is not true at all.
So I'm sick of it that the American soldiers are the good guys. They are soldiers, they are trained to kill. how can someone who is trained to kill be a good guy?
Because they are fighting for a cause that they believe, and I agree, is a just one.
Here's something that occurs to me.
People are saying that al-Zarqawi's death means nothing. That he will be replaced. That any terrorist we kill will be replaced. That terrorists are being recruited all the time and all that. However, does it occur to anyone else that we don't really have to kill every last terrorist in order to win?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the driving force behind recruitment in insurgency networks the fact that the US is a continued presense in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam? I mean, I realize there are other factors, such as the fact that the deposed government was a minority government and there are those who fear the tyranny of the majority and other such things, but it strikes me from what I know, which I will be the first to say is very little, that the unifying factor among all of these people is the fact that the US is in Iraq and people want them out.
Therefore, while destabilizing these terrorist groups is clearly a necessity, it seems to me that the greatest weapon we have against these terrorists is setting up a stable Iraqi government. Once we do so, we can withdraw. And it seems to me, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that once we do withdraw, the factions that are now united against a common enemy will at least not be as united as before.
Next year, in school, we are starting an extracaricular (wow, that is so spelled wrong) film club in school. I want to know how we can make a somewhat like-able movie on a rediculously low budget.
What type of story should it be? It should be something that wont require too many flashy effects that we wont be able to produce.
Any suggestions?
Not that I think you'd be able to shoot film if you wanted to, as if you had that kind of money it wouldn't be a low-to-no budget film, but shoot digital. If you can get a camera that can shoot in 24p awesome, but even a lousy digital camera is fine.
Don't try to shoot a feature. By all means write a feature, hell write a hundred if you can and get started now. But don't try to shoot one. Start with a short. Make it as simple as you can. When writing it, take a page from Robert Rodriguez and be your own producer. Know what you have to work with and take that into account.
To be a good writer, you have to read. Watch as many films as you can, preferably good ones although bad ones can show you what not to do, and watch them. Also, read scripts so you learn how to write a script.
Tidwell's got some good advice in there. Since this is a school club, this is a good opportunity to make mistakes to further your knowledge about how things work.
That's cute. I guess that I will go ahead and take that into mind when I read your posts from now on. I am sorry that there are people with that point of view.
Harkius
Harkius, to be fair, I think it's pretty clear he's joking. Given the pinor noir scenario was a bit exaggerated, you did kind of open yourself up.
Quote from pacmanvr »
1 how are you going to see the difference between an innocent men and a terrorist?
How can one NOT see the difference between a terrorist and an innocent man?
2 The number of innocents killed is not a rule to say who is a terrorist or not.
Until you actually develop a point of argument you're really just wasting your time, pacman. We've already established (and hell, even Bizkit Overlord will agree) that there is a clear difference between the US and the insurgency in terms of our reaction towards innocent casualties. We have regarded innocent casualties as atrocities. We have condemned the soldiers who perpetrated them. We have voiced disapproval. The terrorists have done no such measure, and not only show no remorse towards innocent casualties, but actively plan their measures to promote them.
If this fact, if our treatment of the innocent versus their treatment of the innocent, does not matter to you, if you honestly cannot see the difference between the two and acknowledge it as significant, then what are you arguing?
Yes, Zarqawi was trained to do such unhuman things, and I'm glad that he is stopped. but who trained these terrorists? Bin Laden is trained by the US... just like other terrorists, and these guys trains the new terrorists.
Bin Laden is not trained by the US. That would imply that he is still continuing to undergo US training. No, Bin Laden was trained by the US. He was trained in an effort to prepare a guerilla force against Soviet invasion. I fail to see how this constitutes to the US training terrorists. I fail to see how this excuses the terrorists' actions against us. And I fail to see how this is even relevant. It's about as intelligent as trying a car manufacturer for murder because someone decided to drive their car into another person's house.
And it isn't proved, but I've heard that the tortures in Abu Ghraib were not an accident but an order.
I agree, who needs to PROVE things for them to be evidence? To limit yourself to true arguments is to tie one hand behind your back!
Of course there will never be proof of this, because it would be stupid to make such things public. So we will never now about this I think.
See, I fail to see how one can point to an elaborate government conspiracy to cover things up when negative actions just get so much publicity. How, then, by your opinion, did we hear about Abu Ghraib at all?
While the context of a baseball team might be more straightforward in its goals (win games) than a movie or album (artistic statement, political message, any number of metrics), from an economic perspective they all have the same goal: make money. Fill the seats. Capture eyeballs for advertising purposes. Merchandize. The criteria by which Alex Rodriguez is judged to be entertaining just happens to congruent to the extent he can play baseball well, and this is only because winning games (and hopefully championships) is understood to be more profitable than not doing those things. I take this to be Stax's point: that there are intrinsic criteria for entertainment in sports (as opposed to art), which means that the qualities of "skilled," "entertaining" and "profitable" tend to neatly align.
Indeed. This is the reason why baseball players go on strikes if they don't get paid enough. What constitutes "enough" is, as it always is, quite fluid. The interesting thing about baseball, you can replace interesting with any adjective you like, is that baseball players do have a monopoly. If they stop playing, you can't just replace them. There's a reason they got into the majors in the first place, and you could bump up people from Triple A, but they will neither have fame, nor necessarily the skill. And in a market where everyone's selling themselves, that's a damn good setup.
Quote from Harkius »
Unsurprisingly, I do not feel that entertainers are being overpaid. I think that it is singly impossible for an entertainer to be overpaid, because they provide a commodity which is simply not needed.
Entertainers and sports stars provide us with the one great unmet need for the industrialized world: Entertainment. We have safety (more or less). We know where our next meal is coming from. Our education is usually free (to the college level, at least). <Shrug> The only thing that we need is to be distracted from the fact that we are not what we want to be.
Given the choice between facing a cold, harsh reality featuring ourselves as the sorry actors experiencing large amounts of pain and the glamourous worlds of Hollywood, Paris, New York, and professional sports, we choose the latter. It is easier to focus on the flaws of these people, and their extraordinary successes, then it is to fix what is wrong in our lives.
What they provide us is the ability to ignore our own pain. They give us that medicine, which we need only to make life easier, not to make life livable, and in return, they can freely ask for anything that they like.
Are they overpaid? No. So long as they can get the money that they ask for, they are not overpaid. By definition.
A rather bleak view of the human condition, but not untrue. I'd prefer that entertainment exists to give people hope, but either one works. Either way, the bottom line is the entertainment exists to reaffirm the belief that our lives and our actions matter and have meaning (save certain types of tragedy).
Then there's the middle ground games. Legend of Zelda: fantastic game, semi-coherent plot. I'd say don't touch it. The franchise continues to thrive and stories continue to be explored without a movie. Plus, based on the success of past game-to-movies, you know it wouldn't get budgeted properly and turn out looking like crap. If Peter Jackson directed it with the money he had for one Lord of the Rings movie, I'd say go for it. But if some guy off the street just wants to pick up the name and make a few bucks, it's not worth it. Plus, as someone said, most of the game, Link is alone. This would mean they'd give him a sidekick - probably a fairy - with a really annoying personality and a ton of horrible jokes.
That would have been me.
I actually think if they show Link as part of a group, such as Four Swords Adventures, it wouldn't be bad. But the problem is that we have a balance of two forces here. On the one hand, Link alone is uninteresting. On the other hand, Link with other people may dilute the whole "warrior of legend" thing. Link is essentially one of the baddest asses in video games, and that needs to be emphasized. The more people you put in, the less time Link gets. Also, Zelda will probably get shafted if it follows the format of the games, which is unfortunate, as Zelda is a character that gets very little time but is massively important, and is very strong, and to have a character that only really gets met up in the end of games, save Ocarina of Time, and then have that game become a movie, truncating the time even further... It will need a skilled hand at writing this.
Incidentally, there was a TV series of Legend of Zelda if I'm not mistaken. Anyone know how the episodes were formatted?
But I think the safest bet is to jump on a truly horrible game that no one's ever heard of. You lose the star power of the headlining game, but you have more freedom to develop it into a movie without trampling too much on what the game has already done. You can almost write it off as original material. I had this really old game for my PC called Merit's Galactic Reunion. It was an okay game, with a semi-interesting plot, but I've always thought it would have served better as a movie. Someone could easily jump on it and hammer out a plot and it might not turn out too bad.
I like where you're going with this. The thing is a video game movie of a video game no one's ever heard of might defeat the point, because part of a video game movie's appeal is because you already know the video game.
What I really want is something that takes place in the World of Mana. I envision something Firefly-like, taking place before Seiken Densetsu 3 where people still sail as opposed to travel by cannon, very loosely based off the series. I especially want some of Sword of Mana in there, partly because the characters offer possibilities, and partly because the game is unfortunately quite bad, so all of the parts worth keeping are very obvious.
The movie can definetly be fixed to be a 2- 2 1/2 hours long. I loved the characters and the story. If they have to make it like 7.
I really don't think it can. Or else you'd have to write out a lot of the plot, which I wouldn't really have too much of a problem with except that amount of the plot would probably wind up being about 2 disks worth.
Because entertainment generates more revenue than a school disrtrict, revenue of which the entertainer deserves a large share.
Quote from Blinking Spirit »
Thing is, movies make their money by having just about everyone on Earth shell out a measly six bucks. It's not really a micropayment model, but it's close. So while individually, you may be giving far more of your money to the school district than to Universal Pictures (indeed, if you pay property taxes, you are), the grand total summed over the aforementioned everyone on Earth is much higher for the movie studio.
Indeed.
Moreover, I never thought the Nobel Prize was necessary meant to be a large sum. It's more the prestige of the award. Not to mention I don't believe anyone who receives a Nobel Peace Prize is lacking in deserved notice.
Quote from A Banana »
Why is Alex Rodriguez Payed more than the man who invented the internet?
Did any one man invent the internet? Is there a patent on the internet?
I think there is a point to the question, probably along the lines of pointing out how our society is degrading/has degraded, but since I do have aspirations of being a part of the entertainment industry, I fail to sympathize.
That said, I enjoyed MK in a 'This is really bad, but entertaining' way. The sequel, not so much.
I also seem to be the only person in the world who likes the first RE movie (Though no, I wouldn't call it good, and the protagonist is attractive enough to distract from any dodgy parts). What's the sequel like?
I was pretty impressed by it. "Hey, a video game movie that doesn't blatantly suck!" Although, no, it wasn't that good.
I understand why you disagree with me, and I would be on your side. However, this is a different example: We are not destroying a regime like with Hussein--we are merely killing a "general" in guerilla warfare.
The problems with your statement are two-fold. First, I never said that what we did was useless, I don't think.
Yeah, and I wasn't quoting you, was I?! Harkius, why does it always have to be about you?!
Second, you are failing to acknowledge here (although you may have at other locations in the thread) the fact that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, while an important leader, was still only the leader of a portion of the people that we have declared war on. Removing him is not going to destabilize the entire network.
Someone probably made the most insightful statement on this thread and I didn't see it when I first looked through, so let me go back and accentuate it:
Quote from Rowsdower »
I have always argued that "one less terrorist" is nonsensical from a practical perspective because aren't a finite number of them.
THIS is, in my opinion, why our War on Terrorism will fail. Because simply put, there are an infinite number of terrorists. Iraq is about 437,000 square kilometers in area. Terrorists have mass. They might not individually have a lot of mass, but they have some mass, and that's enough, because there's an infinite number of them. So we're looking at an infinite density here. Infinite density over a finite area is a very bad thing.
The bottom line? If we don't get Osama Bin Laden soon, Iraq will become a black hole. End of story.
My honest thoughts on this? While I will grant that we must battle the insurgency movement politically, because otherwise they will rally others to their cause to replace those they kill, to say that to kill insurgency leaders will do nothing is not a valid statement. Al-Zarqawi was the leader of Iraqi insurgency forces. You do not become a leader in a militant force of an ideological movement by devotion alone. This man was very skilled at what he did. He was good at leading. He is now dead. To train another Al-Zarqawi can be done, but it takes time. Continuing to kill the leadership positions in these networks will accomplish something.
Except that is not what I am saying. I am saying that leaders should be captured if possible, even if exception means are necessary. Run of the mill grunts are bullet fodder.
Harkius
Quote from Harkius »
Have you read a word that I have posted?
Go back and read it again. Because killing a footsoldier is not justifiable in the long-run. It is an unfortunate occurrence of war. I am saying that it is worse to kill a footsoldier than it is an enemy commander, if the enemy commander has political influence.
Harkius, it strikes me that these two statements are direct opposites. Can you clarify this?
[*]Did God create man in his image, and thus give man his creative potential? Or,
[*]Did man create God in mans image, and thus give God his creative potential?
Depends on whether you believe God exists. If so, the first, if not...
[*]Is it relevant in the slightest who sprung from who?
Absolutely it's relevant. That's like the most important question of all. The fundamental nature of us and of the universe hinges upon it. If God exists, God exists. If God doesn't exist, then man created God out of necessity, as a need for a standard of meaning and morality.
[*]If you accept that man created God, did we create him as a figment or abstract figure, or did we create him as something more akin to tradition religious sense of him, as a real figure?[/LIST]
Depends on how you interpret God. There's more than one way to interpret Him, and if you believe that God doesn't exist, every person who believes in a higher state of being creates God in his own way.
Quote from Blinking Spirit »
Wouldn't omnipotence include the power to find out anything you wanted, effectively covering omniscience?
Thing is, I believe omnipotence and omniscience require one to be on the level of God, making the two essentially the same thing.
List tags are malformed.
I'd rather watch five hours of David Boreanaz attempting an Irish accent than five minutes of Nathan Fillion being a good ole boy again. What really hacks me off is that the people who 'ship Fillion are the same people who hated Marc Blucas in Buffy, citing as their reason all the things that make Fillion suck.
Still thinking Fillion was amazing. Caleb and Mal just rule, Jedit. I'm sorry.
Have we? How exactly is it that one can free a people by destroying a regime under which they were not free and then not set up a government in its place? That's like repairing a car by removing a faulty engine and not putting in a new one.
How have we destroyed the foundation of this government?
Yes, we realize that terrorists dress up like civilians in order to maximize civilian casualties while minimizing their own (which, in my opinion, is a strong argument against our moral superiority, but that's just me). So what's your point?
No, but if your motive is specifically to kill innocent people, I think it's a pretty good indication as to how large of a threat you are.
Really? Because I seem to recall your entire contribution to this thread being feeble attempts to position America, as a whole, to be as morally bankrupt, if not more so, than the terrorists are.
There's that generalization again. By saying "you", you're essentially saying that every American soldier engages in an orgy of murder and bloodshed for the fun of it at the drop of a hat. Which is not true at all.
Because they are fighting for a cause that they believe, and I agree, is a just one.
Here's something that occurs to me.
People are saying that al-Zarqawi's death means nothing. That he will be replaced. That any terrorist we kill will be replaced. That terrorists are being recruited all the time and all that. However, does it occur to anyone else that we don't really have to kill every last terrorist in order to win?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the driving force behind recruitment in insurgency networks the fact that the US is a continued presense in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam? I mean, I realize there are other factors, such as the fact that the deposed government was a minority government and there are those who fear the tyranny of the majority and other such things, but it strikes me from what I know, which I will be the first to say is very little, that the unifying factor among all of these people is the fact that the US is in Iraq and people want them out.
Therefore, while destabilizing these terrorist groups is clearly a necessity, it seems to me that the greatest weapon we have against these terrorists is setting up a stable Iraqi government. Once we do so, we can withdraw. And it seems to me, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that once we do withdraw, the factions that are now united against a common enemy will at least not be as united as before.
Not that I think you'd be able to shoot film if you wanted to, as if you had that kind of money it wouldn't be a low-to-no budget film, but shoot digital. If you can get a camera that can shoot in 24p awesome, but even a lousy digital camera is fine.
Don't try to shoot a feature. By all means write a feature, hell write a hundred if you can and get started now. But don't try to shoot one. Start with a short. Make it as simple as you can. When writing it, take a page from Robert Rodriguez and be your own producer. Know what you have to work with and take that into account.
To be a good writer, you have to read. Watch as many films as you can, preferably good ones although bad ones can show you what not to do, and watch them. Also, read scripts so you learn how to write a script.
Tidwell's got some good advice in there. Since this is a school club, this is a good opportunity to make mistakes to further your knowledge about how things work.
Harkius, to be fair, I think it's pretty clear he's joking. Given the pinor noir scenario was a bit exaggerated, you did kind of open yourself up.
How can one NOT see the difference between a terrorist and an innocent man?
Until you actually develop a point of argument you're really just wasting your time, pacman. We've already established (and hell, even Bizkit Overlord will agree) that there is a clear difference between the US and the insurgency in terms of our reaction towards innocent casualties. We have regarded innocent casualties as atrocities. We have condemned the soldiers who perpetrated them. We have voiced disapproval. The terrorists have done no such measure, and not only show no remorse towards innocent casualties, but actively plan their measures to promote them.
If this fact, if our treatment of the innocent versus their treatment of the innocent, does not matter to you, if you honestly cannot see the difference between the two and acknowledge it as significant, then what are you arguing?
Bin Laden is not trained by the US. That would imply that he is still continuing to undergo US training. No, Bin Laden was trained by the US. He was trained in an effort to prepare a guerilla force against Soviet invasion. I fail to see how this constitutes to the US training terrorists. I fail to see how this excuses the terrorists' actions against us. And I fail to see how this is even relevant. It's about as intelligent as trying a car manufacturer for murder because someone decided to drive their car into another person's house.
I agree, who needs to PROVE things for them to be evidence? To limit yourself to true arguments is to tie one hand behind your back!
See, I fail to see how one can point to an elaborate government conspiracy to cover things up when negative actions just get so much publicity. How, then, by your opinion, did we hear about Abu Ghraib at all?
Indeed. This is the reason why baseball players go on strikes if they don't get paid enough. What constitutes "enough" is, as it always is, quite fluid. The interesting thing about baseball, you can replace interesting with any adjective you like, is that baseball players do have a monopoly. If they stop playing, you can't just replace them. There's a reason they got into the majors in the first place, and you could bump up people from Triple A, but they will neither have fame, nor necessarily the skill. And in a market where everyone's selling themselves, that's a damn good setup.
A rather bleak view of the human condition, but not untrue. I'd prefer that entertainment exists to give people hope, but either one works. Either way, the bottom line is the entertainment exists to reaffirm the belief that our lives and our actions matter and have meaning (save certain types of tragedy).
That would have been me.
I actually think if they show Link as part of a group, such as Four Swords Adventures, it wouldn't be bad. But the problem is that we have a balance of two forces here. On the one hand, Link alone is uninteresting. On the other hand, Link with other people may dilute the whole "warrior of legend" thing. Link is essentially one of the baddest asses in video games, and that needs to be emphasized. The more people you put in, the less time Link gets. Also, Zelda will probably get shafted if it follows the format of the games, which is unfortunate, as Zelda is a character that gets very little time but is massively important, and is very strong, and to have a character that only really gets met up in the end of games, save Ocarina of Time, and then have that game become a movie, truncating the time even further... It will need a skilled hand at writing this.
Incidentally, there was a TV series of Legend of Zelda if I'm not mistaken. Anyone know how the episodes were formatted?
I like where you're going with this. The thing is a video game movie of a video game no one's ever heard of might defeat the point, because part of a video game movie's appeal is because you already know the video game.
What I really want is something that takes place in the World of Mana. I envision something Firefly-like, taking place before Seiken Densetsu 3 where people still sail as opposed to travel by cannon, very loosely based off the series. I especially want some of Sword of Mana in there, partly because the characters offer possibilities, and partly because the game is unfortunately quite bad, so all of the parts worth keeping are very obvious.
I really don't think it can. Or else you'd have to write out a lot of the plot, which I wouldn't really have too much of a problem with except that amount of the plot would probably wind up being about 2 disks worth.
Indeed.
Moreover, I never thought the Nobel Prize was necessary meant to be a large sum. It's more the prestige of the award. Not to mention I don't believe anyone who receives a Nobel Peace Prize is lacking in deserved notice.
Did any one man invent the internet? Is there a patent on the internet?
I think there is a point to the question, probably along the lines of pointing out how our society is degrading/has degraded, but since I do have aspirations of being a part of the entertainment industry, I fail to sympathize.
I was pretty impressed by it. "Hey, a video game movie that doesn't blatantly suck!" Although, no, it wasn't that good.
Yeah, and I wasn't quoting you, was I?! Harkius, why does it always have to be about you?!
Yeah, but it'll help right?
THIS is, in my opinion, why our War on Terrorism will fail. Because simply put, there are an infinite number of terrorists. Iraq is about 437,000 square kilometers in area. Terrorists have mass. They might not individually have a lot of mass, but they have some mass, and that's enough, because there's an infinite number of them. So we're looking at an infinite density here. Infinite density over a finite area is a very bad thing.
The bottom line? If we don't get Osama Bin Laden soon, Iraq will become a black hole. End of story.
My honest thoughts on this? While I will grant that we must battle the insurgency movement politically, because otherwise they will rally others to their cause to replace those they kill, to say that to kill insurgency leaders will do nothing is not a valid statement. Al-Zarqawi was the leader of Iraqi insurgency forces. You do not become a leader in a militant force of an ideological movement by devotion alone. This man was very skilled at what he did. He was good at leading. He is now dead. To train another Al-Zarqawi can be done, but it takes time. Continuing to kill the leadership positions in these networks will accomplish something.
Depends on whether you believe God exists. If so, the first, if not...
Absolutely it's relevant. That's like the most important question of all. The fundamental nature of us and of the universe hinges upon it. If God exists, God exists. If God doesn't exist, then man created God out of necessity, as a need for a standard of meaning and morality.
Depends on how you interpret God. There's more than one way to interpret Him, and if you believe that God doesn't exist, every person who believes in a higher state of being creates God in his own way.
Thing is, I believe omnipotence and omniscience require one to be on the level of God, making the two essentially the same thing.
List tags are malformed.
Still thinking Fillion was amazing. Caleb and Mal just rule, Jedit. I'm sorry.