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bartist
Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 12:13 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Quote:
When I hear about a whale killing a person, I can't blame it.
Agree. Sort of the attitude in that film with Marion Cotillard getting her leg bit off by an Orca.

Saw the first half of The Maiden Heist - a 2009 lighthearted caper film with Chris Walken, WH Macy, et al. It offered charm, but nothing else, and I could not keep my eyes open long enough to see it through.

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Joe Vitus
Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 2:31 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
carrobin wrote:
I don't think I could watch "Blackfish." Years ago I proofread a book by a woman who studies whales, and who lived on the coast of Alaska and became familiar with several pods. Her descriptions of the families and the "language" and the intelligence of whales were impressive, and she gave very convincing arguments against imprisoning them in SeaWorld-type enclosures. When I hear about a whale killing a person, I can't blame it.


I wouldn't say "blame" but I'd say "put it down--stat."

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bartist
Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 5:17 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Put it down?

I'm not following you, Joe. An intelligent species is ruthlessly hunted and exterminated by another species (humans). A few are captured and imprisoned, then tormented and coerced into performing tricks. If any member of this species fights back against this holocaust, we should kill it.

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whiskeypriest
Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 5:42 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
bartist wrote:
Put it down?

I'm not following you, Joe. An intelligent species is ruthlessly hunted and exterminated by another species (humans). A few are captured and imprisoned, then tormented and coerced into performing tricks. If any member of this species fights back against this holocaust, we should kill it.
It is a small step from the first taste of manflesh to the Orca jumping into the stands and devouring the audience like t is a fat man at a Golden Corral.

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carrobin
Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 9:58 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
That's a scene worth pitching to a studio head. (Working title: Ahab 2015.)
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billyweeds
Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 5:46 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
bartist wrote:
Put it down?

I'm not following you, Joe. An intelligent species is ruthlessly hunted and exterminated by another species (humans). A few are captured and imprisoned, then tormented and coerced into performing tricks. If any member of this species fights back against this holocaust, we should kill it.


Joe--bart is 100 percent right. The last thing one should do is "put the animal down." You are someone who has to see Blackfish in the service of your own enlightenment.

(Of course, that would mean subscribing to Netflix, which is something I know you're against, but this would be a good reason to do so all by itself.)

Rather than kiiling the orca, what one has to do is to stop imprisoning orcas for the sake of making a ton of money.
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billyweeds
Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 5:49 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
whiskeypriest wrote:
bartist wrote:
Put it down?

I'm not following you, Joe. An intelligent species is ruthlessly hunted and exterminated by another species (humans). A few are captured and imprisoned, then tormented and coerced into performing tricks. If any member of this species fights back against this holocaust, we should kill it.
It is a small step from the first taste of manflesh to the Orca jumping into the stands and devouring the audience like t is a fat man at a Golden Corral.


Wrong. Just...wrong.
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whiskeypriest
Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 7:16 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
Pitching that to the Sci Fi channel Monday.

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bartist
Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 8:17 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Quote:
It is a small step from the first taste of manflesh to the Orca jumping into the stands and devouring the audience like t is a fat man at a Golden Corral.


First of all: spit-take!

Secondly: "fat man at a Golden Corral" is redundant.

Third: good luck with "Orcnado!"

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gromit
Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2014 7:25 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Catching up on some Chinese films I've been meaning to watch for a few years.

The Shaft tells the tale of a father, daughter and son in a small town where mining is about all there is. The compositions are really lovely and they even manage to make the grimy mining town look almost charming. Everyone is rather dissatisfied. The film takes turns focusing on one family member at a time. The problem is that the characters are very taciturn and tone-faced and have poor social skills. Everyone is so uncommunicative that it's hard to get too involved or not to feel that they contribute to their own problems. But they really did manage to pick some interesting locales and frame them like paintings.

As for the plot, the daughter has a miner boyfriend but wants more. Her family finds her an older guy from the city with a wealthy family and eventually she marries him after an alleged dalliance with a mining boss (and beat down at the mining office from the boss' wife). The son tries to avoid the mine, almost gets jailed for his minor involvement in his friends' illegal clothing sales. Finally he starts coal mining, but retiring Dad manages to hand over to his son his relatively cushy supervisory job, usually reserved for older workers. We also learn that Mom was a purchased bride and hasn't been around for a decade plus since her family came and rescued her. Retired Dad turns 60 and makes some effort to find his ex-wife and the mother of his children.

And that last bit ties right into Blind Mountain, which is all about a girl sold to be a bride in a mountain village. Kind of harrowing. One interesting twist is that this isn't a poor girl or one from a dysfunctional family. Instead a college grad takes on her first job, which is supposed to be buying medicinal herbs from mountain pickers. A girl she knows introduced the job to her and goes on the trip with her and a business manager. But she gets drugged and wakes up to find her ID and companions gone, and learns that she's been sold as a bride to a 30 something peasant. Not only is the peasant family all in on this, but the whole village basically accepts the concept of bride buying (ie kidnapping) -- and indeed there are at least 4 other purchased brides in the village. So it's sort of a rural Chinese Rosemary's Baby -- everybody is in on it. When there's a communist party official visit to the village, all the purchased brides are driven into the woods and held there until the gov't functionaries leave.

The new groom doesn't really know how to go about asserting his marital rights, most likely never having been with a woman before, almost certainly never meeting a college grad before, let alone raping and forcing her to submit to him. Fortunately his friends have the helpful advice of just beating her, raping her, and knocking her up. Throughout most of the film, she plots her escape, gets caught and chained up, and plots some more. It's kind of spooky the way some folks who should know better (the village council leader, a policeman in town, etc) don't want to get involved in what is characterized as a "family dispute."

It's a fairly bleak film. This was made by the same team that put together Blind Shaft, a tale of deceitful miners, which is a very powerful, but similarly bleak film. I guess in a way, Blind Mt. is topical what with groups of folks in Nevada trying to bond together to thwart the law and mouthing off on the benefits of slavery. ...

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Syd
Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2014 1:18 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Day for Night: I don't believe I'd seen this since the 1970's and didn't remember the details, which is good because I got to enjoy it all over again. Nicely acted top to bottom. I liked Nathalie Baye and David Markham every bit as much as Cortese, who got an Oscar nomination, and I'm fond of Nike Arrighi, who plays Odile. And Jaqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Aumont are just charming, as are the cats. If you enjoy seeing how the magician does his tricks, the movie's a delight, either the second or third best movie I've seen about making movies (8 1/2 is about not making a movie). #1 of course is Singin' in the Rain.

Poor Pamela. We just met her and she's already gone.

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marantzo
Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2014 4:01 pm Reply with quote
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Not unlike Syd I also saw the movie and didn't remember what it was about. I looked it up and found out what it was about. I remember liking it very much. I don't even remember where I saw it. Seeing as it was released in the States in early September 1973, I might have seen it in NYC, or back in Winnipeg after I left New York later in September.

I'll have to watch it again.

Thanks for reminding me about it, Syd.
carrobin
Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2014 4:05 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
That was one of the first screenings I attended at the film class. I remember it as being amusing and interesting and, of course, French. It would be fun to see it again.
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2014 6:19 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
Billy, any animal that kills a human should be killed in turn. It is that simple. Perhaps you need to be enlightened yourself.

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bartist
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2014 7:14 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Joe Vitus wrote:
Billy, any animal that kills a human should be killed in turn. It is that simple. Perhaps you need to be enlightened yourself.


Saying your assertion is simple doesn't lend it any persuasive value, for me. Actually, ethics seems to run towards the complex and messy. What about any human that kills a human? Same simple rule? I'm not searching for consistency here, just wondering how widely you want to apply the "kill the killer" rule.

To be more concrete, it seems to me that animals do not attack with lethal force unless they are abused in some way or have their personal space invaded in a way that makes them fearful. When humans do this, we call it "self-defense" and tend to seek a lighter penalty.

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