JsARCLIGHT

Well, it takes guts to come in and explain your actions... for that I have to commend you. But you have to admit that many people will see what you have done as "unnecessary" and "overboard". IMHO you accomplished nothing. You embarrassed a man who only wanted to entertain you with his artwork. For some reason you took his attempts to entertain you personally and assaulted him in a public place. It's one thing to "not like" something and bitch about it on a message board, that is "normal". It's normal to complain... everyone complains about everything. But when you take that step, that step from normal everyday run of the mill complaint to something like this you cross a line. You yourself claim to be a writer... how would you feel if you were hired on somewhere to write something and someone found what you had to say completely abhorrent and decided to hunt you down and publicly humiliate YOU simply because you wanted to entertain him with your writing? Would you change the way you are working because of it? Would that one pie to your face suddenly make you say "My GOD! This one single dork is RIGHT! I Suck! I need to change everything I do from here on out to the way he wants it right now!" No... it wouldn't. If anything you'd say "wow... look how crazy the people who dislike my work are. Why should I put any credence in the opinion of someone who thinks it's OK to walk up and publicly embarrass someone? That guy's a nutjob!" Everyone's a critic but that leap from "talk" to "pie in the face" is actually a step backwards rather than forward. You didn't address your desire for change, you simply expressed your rage... and when you do that you are easily written off as a "lone kook". ... and Yes, MWers are Jerks. Then again one man's opinion is another man's "being a jerk"... at least we don't go around smashing pies in people's faces.

If that indeed is the pieman de jure, perhaps he will chime in here to regale us with his reasons why he thought this was a good idea. And if it is him... dude... let me recommend some good places to get a haircut, some new clothes and a tan. You need them. BAD.

Seriously though... just look at that guy. He is the poster child for the angry anime dork. Pasty white freckly skin from never seeing daylight... Nasty ass tangly long red hair that looks like it hasn't seen a barber, a comb or anything outside of a rubber band in 10 years pulled back in the stereotypical "dork ponytail"... White button up "geek" shirt... Limply hanging overstuffed Backpack clad in a color that doesn't occur in nature... "uh huh huh huh" goofiness and carry... All he's missing is some great big old school '50s scientist glasses and a pocket protector. I bet when that happened someone put out the word to security, gave them the description and seconds later half the convention floor was cleared as "suspect" in the dragnet. Seriously... When I picture some mouthy, angry dork posting on a place like MW... THAT is what I picture. And ironically when I think of what some angry anime message board dork would do in "retaliation", this is what I picture as well. Something immature, hostile yet non damaging and worst of all CHEAP. Dork: Hey, you're "that guy". Guy: yeah Dork: We've never met... have we? Guy: Uh... no Dork: You have no clue who I am... do you? Guy: Uh... an anime fan? Want some free anime stuff? Dork: NO! A-HAAAAA! -SPLAT!- Dork: THAT is for not sufficiently entertaining me! I HATE YOU for your attempts to create something contradictory to what I want things to be!

I can't believe I watched that whole AVI.

The Family Guy Star Wars special is supposed to be the first episode of the new season this fall, 1 hour long. If I had to throw out a guess I'd say Septemberish.

Funny you should mention South Park... I used to about die laughing at it and the movie nearly killed me, but every time I watch it lately I struggle to even giggle at it. It too has completely lost it's appeal to me and IMHO it is another show that has outlived it's "funniness". But it's all personal opinion... we'll see how well the Simpsons movie does come it's release. My guess is it will do "good" but not "great", like most comedies these days.

I have to say that part of me wants to see this movie... but to be honest I didn't laugh once at that trailer. I have not actually out loud laughed at the Simpsons in years. Family Guy on the other hand makes me about pee myself laughing weekly... I think Family Guy completely eclipsed the Simpsons for "which is funnier" in my mind a while back and now my brain simply will not laugh at the Simpsons anymore. I have no doubt the Simpsons movie will be funny... but I'm not sure it's entirely "my cup of tea" anymore. As I said months and months ago earlier in this thread, had this movie come out in say 1998 I would have been all over it waiting in line with the rest of you... but it's 2007 now and my interest in it has wained.

Looks like Clone Wars, Samurai Jack, Powerpuff, Dexter's Lab and all the other CN in-house Genny Tartakovsky designed shows. Those shows are all about the art direction, flow, "feel" and motion rather than details and toy-specific design intention... I think as far as "high pop art" goes, they started a trend in animation that is quite hot today with designs like this one. As far as fanboy nitpickery and "THAT'S NOT -fill in the blank character-!!!!1!" go it's par for the course. I remember reading the same comments about Clone Wars and look how well that turned out. IMHO Transformers is two entities, the toys and the show. You don't need to have one directly mirror the other beat for beat. If that was the case the original show would have featured nearly paralyzed immobile block like robots with wheels sticking out their butts, hands that pop off and legs that don't move.

The original Die Hard has some pretty harsh language in it (McClaine is quite the potty mouth if you listen), some very gory death scenes (Mr. Takagi gets his head blown off, other baddies get killed quite graphically) and at least two scenes with brief nudity (couple going at it in an office, nudie pics in the work areas). When it came out in '88 it met the criteria for a solid R rating, I would assume the same stands today. Just that single brief nude scene is enough to tip it to an R... and that is kind of the point I've been trying to make, the things that made the original Die Hard an "R" where so brief and fleeting that most people don't even remember them being in the movie. They contributed nothing to the plot other than being gratuitous and when they are edited out no one misses them.

A large problem lies in the fact that the ratings system is outdated and rather open to interpretation. Hence why most ratings systems have now opted to add "descriptive content ratings" to their ratings. After all, the only people who look at ratings are parents of children... and most of those parents have "hot button" topics that they wish their kids not to see but other topics they are fine and dandy with. When you slap an obtuse tag of "PG13" on something it doesn't really give a parent a good idea of what is actually in the film to give it that rating. Now they will say "PG13 for violence and brief language"... that gives a parent a better idea of what is actually in the movie and allows them to say "yes" or "no" based on information rather than just some cryptic rating. Edit: It should also be noted that "ratings" are not "censorship". The MPAA and the ESRB do not prohibit certain movies from being made or marketed, they simply slap a grade on it and that's that. If someone wanted to make a movie or a video game that was all guts and boobs and cuss words they could... no one would stop them. The problem is that they would have a tainted product that no one would show in their theaters or sell in their stores. There are no laws stating that certain content cannot be put into movies or games and there is no system of regulation akin to a "black bar brigade" that would forcibly edit or alter movies or games. The "power" of ratings is in the power of the purse... people feel they have to restrain their content otherwise they won't be able to sell as many tickets or game cartridges. Every now and then you get someone who says "frakk you" to the ratings system and releases their art anyway... George Romero comes to mind with his classic movie Dawn of the Dead. He refused to edit his movie or submit it to the ratings board, he just handed it over to his distribution company and they released it for him... unrated. It still did very well. In the end the rating is nothing more than a social blessing or a social stigma, if your art is good enough it will overcome that rating and prosper.

Ah, but what if the original intent is a PG13 rating? Speaking of edits implies a knowledge of an unedited form, which predisposes people to a certain train of thought. For correct debate on this matter we should change gears and limit ourselves to the topic of what is in a movie and what could have been in a movie rather than what we know is in a movie and what we know has been taken out of a movie. Using that logic, take favorite fanboy punching bag Aliens Vs. Predator. It is rated PG13. Everyone knows what is in the movie... but people feel that if the movie could have had more R rated material in it there is a possibility that the movie could have somehow been better. That simply "opening the door" for the director to show more R rated content would have somehow "fixed" the movie. IMHO that is flawed logic, it is implying that R rated content alone and not script rewrites or perhaps a different director would improve the movie. This same logic applies to prejudging a movie that is yet to come out based on it's rating. To say that, for example, Die Hard 4 is going to suck because it's PG13 is indirectly saying that just the simple inclusion of R rated material would make the movie better. No plot changes and no dialog alteration (outside of perhaps adding a frakk! every few minutes), just making it so that every time John McClane kills a terrorist his body erupts in a fountain of blood, and that one time you see his daughter in the bathroom looking in the mirror this time she's topless. It really doesn't "fix" anything about the movie... it just adds R rated materials. The movie is still "the movie"... it will still be good or bad on it's gestalt merits. Now if for instance Die Hard 4 is filmed to be an R movie and certain R rated scenes are taken out of the movie to award it a PG13 rating... still... is it noticeable? If the audience never knows the footage was there, is it missed? It's one thing to speak in known instances of edited scenes and altered movies for TV broadcast, but what if you never knew a scene existed? Would the thought of that color your perception of a movie before you even see it? Knowing there is a scene of John McClane cutting a guy's head off with a lawnmower that was "taken out"... does it really change how you would feel about the movie? But if you never knew about that scene you'd never have it as a point of contention.

But you do have to see my point that those singular scenes of intense R rated content do not instantly make the whole movie good or bad. The movie still has to stand on it's own merits as a gestalt. The very brief R rated content itself does not directly contribute to the plot and it's removal in no way directly affects the movie. Using your example, take out the scenes of ED209 blowing away the yes man and take out the scene of Murphy getting shot up and the movie still holds up, it still is entertaining and funny. Sure it lost two split second moments but by and large the movie still holds up. My comments on R rated material should not be seen as an argument to remove it from films but rather it should be seen for what it is, a gimmick. In purely numerical terms the difference between an R rated Robocop and a PG13 rated Robocop is the removal of literally less than one minute of footage and the altering of fewer than 15 words. If you had never, ever seen Robocop before and then saw the edited version... would you right off the bat call it crap and terrible because it was PG13? Would you be standing on your seat in the theater demanding blood, guts and cussing? That is the thrust of my argument... when R rated content is not present, does it "demean" the movie? No, it doesn't. It's silly to think that one movie which holds an R rating is instantly "better" or "more enjoyable" than a movie that holds a PG13 rating.

It should also be noted that the MPAA ratings system itself is an imperfect beast. As The Shade already hit on, movie ratings are more or less someone's opinion on the movie. The same amount of politics and back room chicanery that go on with making movies also go on with rating movies. You could submit two movies that have the same "content" level in them and have both receive different ratings. You can also expect a movie to be marketed for a certain demographic and then submitted and re-edited and re-submitted to the ratings board several times to hit their key rating required... sometimes with things hardly changed at all. For instance, look a the movie Scarface. They submitted it like fifty times to the ratings board and never got the rating they wanted. They kept cutting and cutting until finally they got fed up and sued to have their R rating, at which point they used the first cut of the movie which was originally rated X.

It's easy for an individual to have artistic merits and a sense of their product having worth, but Hollywood in general is a business machine now. The big slam-bang movies are going to be shoe-horned to fit into the widest audience they can. Hollywood's financiers are not concerned about "art" anymore, they are concerned about the bottom line for their multi million dollar business venture. They still want to entertain, but they want to entertain in a way that earns them the most money. It's the standard side effect of turning art into business... the business side eventually corrupts the art side. Once something has to "make money" and be profitable it ceases to be art and becomes a manufactured good like a toaster, and toasters are designed to appeal to everyone. The way to "fix" this problem is for people to just simply stop "consuming" these kinds of movies... send Hollywood a message that we no longer want to see this kind of drivel. But that won't happen. People nowadays are so eaten-up with the marketing machine and the "you simply MUST see this movie" forceful trends that stopping the Hollywood business model now is impossible. The only thing that can bring back creativity and good movies is if directors find ways to finance themselves and remove themselves from the machine. Rodriguez did just that, as did Lucas and Mel Gibson. Then the problem becomes one that when you cut the purse strings you personally feel the impact of your decisions... and once again you get directors pandering to the most common denominator. Art is art. Business is business. It's best to see what they both are and what they both hope to achieve.

Another thing to consider is this: Do "good" R rated movies suddenly become "bad" when they are edited and run on broadcast TV? Does the first Die Hard become a travesty when all of 30 seconds of footage is removed and all the language is muted so it can run on NBC? Does Pulp Fiction become a terrible movie when the language is cut out so it can run on TNT on a Sunday afternoon? That IMHO shows they are good movies no matter how they are ever so slightly edited... their "quality" comes not from their language, nudity or violence but from the craftsmanship behind them. In that same way of thinking would extra blood, gore and language have "saved" Aliens Vs. Predator from being a steaming pile of crap? Would added nudity, spilled guts and having Jack Sparrow burp out a few choice slurs have made Pirates of the Caribbean "better"? IMHO no... one is an example of a poor effort and the other is an example of a good effort, ratings regardless. In all seriousness the difference between a good PG-13 movie and a good R movie should not be the R rating, they should both be good movies despite it. When you watch either on network TV you should be entertained and you should enjoy them... if an R rated movie suffers terribly from editing then perhaps that movie was not crafted too well to survive outside it's R rated trappings.

If you ask me it comes down to a feeling that you are "not seeing what you want to see"... which begs the question, do you really need to see someone's head get blown off? Do you really need to hear eighteen cuss words in a row? Do you just have to see those boobs? Most of the time the answer is no... you don't absolutely need to see R rated material to make a movie good. R rated material IMHO is a crutch in many cases... lack of story and substance are made up for by boobs, blood and cussing. It is more than possible to have a "mature" plot with none of those things in it. Being "mature themed" in my mind does not mean having to endure constant sailor talk, constant pointless T&A and a barrage of glorified blood and guts. I myself would be complaining about the drop in overall quality first rather than the removal of R rated content from movies. After all, it takes a more talented movie maker to "rise above" the cheap exploitive R rated imagery. Think about it... you lust after someone a bit more when you don't see the boobs in every scene. You are twice as scared of the monster killing you when you don't actually see it happen. It's just that in today's CGI digital world directors now feel they have to tell a story through images rather than substance... hence we have all these styrofoam PG-13 movies. They are not bad because they lack R rated content, they are bad because they are just bad. They are poor cinema.

Happy Feet, to me personally, was terrible. It had decent visual quality but it's story was all over the place, it half-finished things and half-started others, the "music" if you can call it that was pretty much all recycled "karaoke" rather than original songs and then finally you have the heavy handed emotionally charged environmentalist message they jam down your throat 3/4 of the way through with the feel good, never-happen-in-real-life ending. Yes I know it's a movie about singing and dancing penguins but the whole thing just reeked of schlock, over the top effort to appease certain audiences and, to be honest, I was soooooo pissed it beat out Cars for the oscar. That was a fix if ever I saw one. Happy Feet is the first children's movie I've gone to see that I was squirming in my seat over how awful I thought it was. And I sat through BOTH Hoodwinked and Doogal. Call me stuck up but I don't go see children's movies to get preached to about socio political things.

I will take that as a promise to limit your post reporting to only serious issues. As such I'll remove your member title. Just remember that I was not the one who put it there and the person who did may replace it if they feel you continue to "misuse" the report post function. Hopefully this will conclude this issue in a civil fashion.

Seeing as other staff members have not responded to this issue, I'll step up to the plate. First off, I'm not the one who changed your title. In truth, I'm not sure who did. To be honest between all parties let's face some quick truths... both the staff and you (areaseven) know that your reporting of "nuisance issues" has been addressed in the past (I believe we had a thread just like this a while back having to do with your member title involving quoted pics. Hurin has a record of a PM somewhere involving that past incident). While we appreciate your dedication to the site and diligence in reporting these minor issues, some members of the staff feel that your reports are... how to put this... not constructive. It is kind of the unspoken belief by the staff that the "Report Post" function of the boards is to be used as an "emergency call" of sorts, a "911" that the membership can use to report bad behavior, spam or other serious, pressing issues that demand immediate attention. Almost all the time these reported posts are handled instantly by someone on the staff and the problems they draw our attention to are dealt with swiftly. In this chord, it has long been felt by the staff that certain "issues", such as double posts, quoted pictures and other simple message board goofs, flubs or commonalities are not immediately pressing requiring our instant attention. Our thoughts are that we will eventually get to them in the course of time and they pose no immediate threat to the message board or it's community at large. Some issues like quoted pictures are even considered by some to not even be an "issue" at all. It has come to our attention several times in the past that you feel differently about these issues. We also believe we have addressed you in regard to these issues in the past as well, informing you that we do not hold these perceived problems as "problems" per se and reporting them to us under the "Report Post" function is more or less, to use a local phrase, nit-pickery. Certain members of staff take your reports under advisement and act upon them while others see them as a misuse of the "Report Post" feature. Needless to say the growing consensus among the staff is that while your vitriol and help in tracking down the nuisance issues of the board are appreciated, it is not necessarily warranted. We have been down this road before, perhaps not this openly but all this has been discussed in the past. If I might speak openly, your member title was most likely changed by a staff member who is becoming frustrated with your constant... "help", despite past requests to cease. I myself mean no disrespect or disgrace but to be honest it is obvious to most that you have upset certain peoples at levels of the command structure of the board with your "aid" and they, in a manner of speaking, responded to this with their own "action". In an attempt to be a mediator in this issue I will promise to remove your disrespectful member title if you will promise to take it easy on the post reporting for minor issues. I know you feel strongly about these things but please understand the feelings of some of the members of staff and that your reports can and are seen as bothersome by some. I believe that is a fair compromise that will appease both sides. If you feel otherwise, let me know via PM and perhaps we can arrange something else.

Out-Ethics is a Scientologist term. See the definition below:

Very few laymen would recognize an original but the people who would covet an original and attempt to acquire one would most likely move in circles where their acquaintances would know an original. Art hounds move in packs of other art hounds, just as anime geeks move in packs of anime geeks, car guys move in packs of car guys etc. etc. Think about how some of the people we know would instantly know on sight a Macross cel from DYRL, it's the same way with art hounds. Some folks are just so dorked out that they can simply tell by brief sight. Another sad thing to think about is that this event that this prop was stolen at was by invitation only... think of the possible Hitchcockian Lifeboat levels of accusation and finger pointing that could have erupted had that prop not been returned. I mean, I've seen some Macross World witch hunts over pretty much nothing in the past... imagine a witch hunt over what probably could have amounted to grand theft with the right legal wrangling?

You misread my use of the comparison. I was not inferring the prop is some kind of precious art item I was inferring the prop is publicly MARKED. You cannot simply steal a Rembrandt out of the Louvre and turn around and display it in your home or sell it to a fence... one of a kind things are inherently marked by their one of a kind status and the right people will know exactly what you have, and in fan circles just like art circles some people will instantly know what you have is stolen. Holding onto a one of a kind stolen item is like holding onto nuclear waste... you have no where to go with it other than hiding it in your sock drawer where only you can see it. Unless the thief is a total Gollum kind of person who hides away alone in a cave with his "precious" there will always be the risk of being caught by showing it to the "wrong person".

I saw it opening day. It both is and feels like it was written by committee. The movie has like seven people in writing credits. The visuals I personally thought were greatly improved from the past Shrek movies in certain spots but severely lacking in others. Some shots where beautiful and others just looked rushed. As usual the Dreamworks people seem to have such talent in designing and rendering creatures and monsters but their human beings seem so lifeless and bland. The movie that is coming out next weekend that I really want to see is Surfs Up. I love penguins and the water effects look outstanding in that movie... plus I'll do anything to get the wretched taste of Happy Feet out of my mouth.

On the positive side I think that was a fair representation of how the American Hollywood movie machine would sit on Macross and bounce up and down on it's head. Seriously, that "fake" trailer is beat for beat the kind of summer movie blockbuster full of itself drunk on it's own hugeness fare we're used to. All that is missing from that trailer is a few Wilhelm screams, brief clips of Will Smith or Chris Tucker screaming "daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaym" or something to that effect and the James Horner "ride 'em cowboy" escape the atmosphere processor soundtrack music from Aliens.

Well, that is some good news to hear. Perhaps it finally dawned on the pathetic thief that what he did was akin to stealing a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh... you just can't steal something like that and expect to "do something" with it. My guess is his friends are super dorks like him and they would know what it was and possibly report him, he couldn't sell it as it was a "marked item"...