Ryse. What the actual fuck?

[EponiCo]

Eh, do you honestly think historical fidelity ever once entered the minds of the people making this "game"? It's just going to be a Rome=USA, Call of Duty propaganda entirely performed through QTE's. Pretty much the same way 300 turned Spartans into macho American parodies, crying about freedom and liberty and fighting against tyranny, when they were actually some of the most disgusting slavers and eugenicists of the ancient world. Fascist social darwinians before the words ever existed.

Well, arguably that's exactly what the spartans did though. They defended their freedom (i.e. not having to bow down to a foreign power or worse, pay taxes) and their way of life. That their way of life was horrible, no question. But freedom and such aside, this are just words with many meanings. I am not quite sure that a rightwing American means "I hope that every person on the planet has the chance to decide himself what he is going to do with his life" when he says freedom. Explain the difference between slavery and people working under horrible conditions with hardly enough to get by and no real chance to get out. Which many right-wing Americans apparently have no problem with. One could make a longer list.
But in the end the thing is, maybe there's actually quite a few values that are actually important to the American Right in real ancient Sparta (more than in say ancient Athens). They were quite gay and pedophile apparently, which is unfortunate, but we have the artistic freedom of taking it out, since it does only distract people from understanding our message about how people awesomely fought for defending their way of life. There's also the crippled guy iirc, which is not accepted by them. This could be perhaps him working in the eugenics stuff, but then the cripple is also portrayed as corrupted ... some viewers might actually sympathize with that view.
I'm not saying the movie was good, it was fairly bad actually because 90% of the screentime was reserved for halfnaked men and halfnaked women barely showed up. Just wanted to rant.

TLDR: The shocking is maybe not that he has a completely flawed understanding about a culture with horrible values. It is that he (openly, secretly or subconsciously) agrees to a lot of those values.

[Tibe]

The movie might have been bullshite, but it was entertaining, with lots of stupid quotable stuff btw.

[[ptx]]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_300_Spartans

[Oberyn]

His interpretation of themorpylae has much more to do with neo-conservatism than objectivism. Neocons that claim to be objectivists didn't understand a thing.

The problem with objectivism is, ironically, how subjective it ultimately is. What one "objectivist" considers the plain unvarnished truth another might completely disagree with. And that would be totally consistent within the philosophy. It's the respect for individuality inherent in liberal mores taken to ridiculous extremes. If you have a consistent, ethical system, based on more than just self-interest, it can be a benign or even beneficial philosophy, spurring you to greater ambition. If you are a giant entitled douchebag, then it's just a free pass to act that way and pretend it's a moral choice, or even that you're somehow doing the world a favour. It's the ultimate philosophy for assholes who think the entire world revolves around them, and that they are part of some enlightened and worthwhile elite, while the unwashed masses are nothing but ungrateful parasites. When you see the world that way, practically anything you do to these people doesn't seem like a crime.
This might be a Godwin but I sincerely don't see much difference from the basic tenets of the philosophy and something like chocolate chip cookie fascism. The one big difference is that despite the rest of her abhorent beliefs Rand never had much truck with racist bullshit. She at least believed that the ubermensch class who deserved to rule by virtue of their obvious superiority (from an "objectivist" perspective, i.e because I think so) could come from any race. She usually had other factors in mind, the largest being wealth.
Because who better to rule over others than someone out to make as much money for themselves as possible. It's not like that's pretty much what a lot of politics already is, and always has been. Truly revolutionary. Let's have the oligarchs in charge! Because that's never happened before.

[Molly]

Yea, well, game is shite cuz of stupid quicktime events that don't even do a thing.

And 300, yea, well, though probably not historically correct, still an entertaining and visually stylish display of proper cinema violence.

(click to show/hide)

C-C-C-Combobreaker!

[CrazyCracka420]

I love Sin City and looking forward to Sin City 2 in August, but intellectually, Frank Miller is a fucking moron. 

[Joker86]

I love Sin City and looking forward to Sin City 2 in August, but intellectually, Frank Miller is a fucking moron.

Rejoice!

[Molly]

Let's talk movies

A new Riddick and the trailer looks promising!

[B3RS3RK]

Fuck Yeah!


Loved pitch black and riddick 1

I thought the story to be very interesting and always wanted a sequel, FINALLY!

[Overdriven]

Pitch Black was amazing. Riddick after that was not so good so will be interested to see what they do with this one. This looks like more of a return to the Pitch Black style.

[Molly]

To be honest, I watched the Riddick movies when they were already old cuz I didn't know about them and they blew me away.
I love both of them but the first one is just the cooler and more stylish one in any regard. And yea, the trailer seems to be more like the first one... can't wait

[[ptx]]

Riddick has got to be one of the coolest sci-fi settings.

[Oberyn]

still an entertaining and visually stylish display of proper cinema violence.

Triumph of the Will, best movie ever. It revolutionized film making after all. So many new techniques. Stylish and entertaining. The theme and purpose are totally secondary and not worth any consideration whatsoever. Who cares about the OBVIOUS fucking message the director is trying to hammer through our heads. Everyone knows the medium of film can never seriously be used to transmit values and ideas. We're just retarded, passive observers, absorbing the "fun" parts like some sort of spineless, gelatinous amoeba. Oooh look pretty colours and shapes! Hahaha, clap clap clap, moar, moar! Yup, no such thing as propaganda in movies.

[Kafein]

The problem with objectivism is, ironically, how subjective it ultimately is. What one "objectivist" considers the plain unvarnished truth another might completely disagree with. And that would be totally consistent within the philosophy. It's the respect for individuality inherent in liberal mores taken to ridiculous extremes. If you have a consistent, ethical system, based on more than just self-interest, it can be a benign or even beneficial philosophy, spurring you to greater ambition. If you are a giant entitled douchebag, then it's just a free pass to act that way and pretend it's a moral choice, or even that you're somehow doing the world a favour. It's the ultimate philosophy for assholes who think the entire world revolves around them, and that they are part of some enlightened and worthwhile elite, while the unwashed masses are nothing but ungrateful parasites. When you see the world that way, practically anything you do to these people doesn't seem like a crime.
This might be a Godwin but I sincerely don't see much difference from the basic tenets of the philosophy and something like chocolate chip cookie fascism. The one big difference is that despite the rest of her abhorent beliefs Rand never had much truck with racist bullshit. She at least believed that the ubermensch class who deserved to rule by virtue of their obvious superiority (from an "objectivist" perspective, i.e because I think so) could come from any race. She usually had other factors in mind, the largest being wealth.
Because who better to rule over others than someone out to make as much money for themselves as possible. It's not like that's pretty much what a lot of politics already is, and always has been. Truly revolutionary. Let's have the oligarchs in charge! Because that's never happened before.

I may sound like a communist saying that Stalin wasn't a communist, but that's not what I gathered from objectivist literature. In any case, fighting over the names of philosophical movements is pointless.

But that's also exactly why it is entertaining

To me, you can't be objectivist when you consider that any moral system which you create for yourself is valid, that's pretty much full blown subjectivism. An objectivist moral system would have to be universal and exist by itself outside of cultures.

[Molly]

Triumph of the Will, best movie ever. It revolutionized film making after all. So many new techniques. Stylish and entertaining. The theme and purpose are totally secondary and not worth any consideration whatsoever. Who cares about the OBVIOUS fucking message the director is trying to hammer through our heads. Everyone knows the medium of film can never seriously be used to transmit values and ideas. We're just retarded, passive observers, absorbing the "fun" parts like some sort of spineless, gelatinous amoeba. Oooh look pretty colours and shapes! Hahaha, clap clap clap, moar, moar! Yup, no such thing as propaganda in movies.

Well, some half naked dudes using shield and spears fighting ogres and ninjas has obviously a direct connection to the world we life in today. No way a normal human being can differ between reality and fiction there.
No way of over interpretation of a Hollywood action flic... -.-