Post by PJ on Dec 17, 2007 10:59:37 GMT -5
An Epic Tale of Love
Love isn't like in the movies. The guy doesn't always get the girl in the perfect, best way. It never works out that way. True Romance doesn't exist.
But somehow, inexplicably, it has happened, right here in this little forum of ours. At first, I didn't believe it. But...it happened. And it warms my heart to hear of such wonderful things.
Let me tell you about a story. A story about a boy and a girl, separated by distance, but connected by the Internet. They talk and joke and laugh, and they love, even though they haven't even met each other. The hi-light of their day are those precious hours they can speak to each other in. But still the distance parted them.
Then, one day, the boy had enough. He got into his car, and fueled by loud music and energy drinks, he drove 531 miles, across 3 states, for ten full hours, just so he could attend the girl's Christmas theater production.
I cannot say what went through her mind when he showed up without warning at her theater (as I haven't had the chance to talk to her yet), but the boy assured me that the subsequent two days have been, without a single doubt, the most happy days of his life.
Congratulations, Fancy and Tragedy. I wish you well, and I hope that all of us can see from this example that true love does exist. Romance is far from dead. At least Hollywood has got something right.
I still can't freaking believe it. I'm so happy for both of them. This is the best news I've heard in ages.
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Happy Birthday Charlotte!
December 17 marks a very distinctive occasion at 667 Dark Avenue. We celebrate the birthday of Charlotte, whose last name may or may not be a word that means “To act in a deliberately artificial, vulgar, or banal way.”
This is a special day because she isslashwas a special member. As timartwonis, she joined 667 early in 2004. Prior to that, she was an active member of UE.net while I was Head Moderator. Over those four years, her contributions are legendary. She was administrator for a day with Celinra (it is also her birthday but I do not know her well enough to write for her) and Pandora, using the account “Guidecca.” She also played a key role in the Randoms vs. Intellecteers War, a crucial struggle for the identity of 667 Dark Avenue. She fought valiantly for the Randoms, set on the notion that this forum was meant for fun and silliness, rather than making long, serious, complicated posts so that you can look smart to internet people. Her fun loving nature was observed even further when Charlotte helped release the 668er, a one hit wonder of journalism that will never be forgotten. More recently, she made news at Dark Avenue for being uncaring Friend Number 1 and breaking Friend Number 2's heart. But we know better. Charlotte’s outward signs of disinterest are simply a result of her caring too much about too many things so that she is spread too thin at times.
This birthday is an especially important one in the life of the member once known as “stinkyfeett+cheese=me.” She is now officially a teenager, so watch out world. She’s growing up fast! Those lucky enough to be invited to her party this evening will enjoy breaking piñatas, eating cake, singing songs, pinning tails on donkeys and wearing conical hats.
In closing, I would like to share with you the first few PMs Charlotte ever sent me on Dark Avenue. They are a brilliant reflection of her dedication to the forum and her boundless enthusiasm.
Subject: The Baudelaire Files
Why wont you put the link [to your website, The Baudelaire Files]?? It's not fair!!! It's just making me want it more!! Why don't you want to and why did you bother posting about it? Just to bother me?
Subject: peppermint for stars
look at my peppermint. sorry they're not grat but i used paint.
Re: peppermints for stars
y havent you looked at my peppermints??? they are really cool!!! (and minty fresh! )
Re: peppermints for stars
I have ¡Ý2 things to say.
1. USE THE PEPPERMINTS!!1
2. The banner on the top of the page isn't working
3. the picture in ur sig isn't working
4. USE THE PEPPERMINTS!!!
Oh Charlotte, you little goofball. 667 Dark Avenue will welcome you with open arms whenever you realize you’re just thirteen and have not outgrown us.
As Tim would say, many happy returns to you Charlotte. We miss you very much and wish you could be with us today to celebrate this milestone.
-Tragedy
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Samreen Reports about Beating Up Five Year Olds (for lunch moneys? Read on to find out!)
How many 5 year olds could you take in a fight?
Good question!
For me the answer is roughly 24. For all of those members who got more than me, you guys are heartless beasts (or just really big and strong...and heartless). Personally, I thought that my number would be lower (roughly 10, or so. It's hard to estimate); I don’t think I could beat up 24 little kids, maybe tie them down to a chair or something, but not physically beat them up. Unlike the guy in that little clip that PJ posted. Those poor kids. ):
667 obviously has members with a variety of moral sense. We range from 7 to 33 five year olds (or 2000 as a team)! Example: Linda, our sweet and kind member of 667, could take on 7. 7! If everyone in the world was a little bit more like Linda we could achieve world peace. Compared to Sam and Quiggles who were over 25.
Another question: Are five year olds really that bad? Do we really have to take them out? I'm pretty sure I could just bribe them all with a Barbie/Power ranger doll/action figures. Maybe if they were around the age of 8-10 would they would be a bit more vicious, ugly, inhumane, etc.. My sister wasn’t like that till she turned 9. Then hell broke loose. But that's beside the point. 5 year olds should be harmless, unless it depends on location (if it is, then Michigan has harmless 5 year olds that are really cute) (editorial insert: In Australia, we leave our 5 year olds in the outback to fend for themselves and wrestle crocodiles and kangaroos for sustenance!).
I'll leave you all with a quote from the wise yet meek (at least, in the five-year-old-beating-up-sense) Linda.
lindarahldeen said:
Um, this is strange. Who thinks of these types of quizzes?---------------------------------------------------------
Tim Speaks Out
a read alert from tim : tim here with to say my most happiest thing is not to be grounded from the computer which is what my mom do. and why because i talk to her about how to make fixed Amandas problem to have a boyfriend since doctor love is still in vacation in the bahamas you lucky dog. well she went cracy tim what are you talking nonsense about and who the devil is learning you this things!
but have no fear because my mom says that if i behave very nice then i can use the computer again so keep your chin up mister.
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Movie of the Week: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Trailer / IMDb Page / Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%
For those of you who just don’t know, IMDb is a general movie site that gives you a bunch of information about the movie (quotes, actors, plot, review, etc.) while Rotten Tomatoes collects a huge bunch of reviews from the most prestigious sources and then gives the movie a score based on that. So that means that 75 % of the reviews of this movie (in this case, 133) rated it positively. Which is very good, considering what most critics are like.
Minor explanations aside, on to the actual movie!
It was great. No, really, it was an excellent movie, and I’d highly urge all of you – yes ALL of you – to watch it. It just…it had…it was….I’ll do this methodically, damnit!
First off, the plot. The movie follows the exploits of Robert Ford, the man who shot the famous American outlaw Jesse James. This in itself is unique; most media is all about James, this movie, rather, follows his murderer. Robert Ford is a young man – only 19 – yet he idolizes Jesse James to the point at which he briefly joins the James gang for a train heist. When James tosses Ford aside like an old rag, admiration turns into resentment, then jealousy, culminating in Ford assassinating Jesse James in order to attain the glory associated with bringing down such a notorious criminal. This backfires when Ford is almost universally portrayed as a coward and is despised by many; the movie ends with Ford being killed a few years later by a fan of the late Jesse James. It at this point, at the very end of the movie – not the start – at which the title finally is shown: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Those of my readers who are in High School – or heaven forbid, have finished it – will instantly recognize (due to countless hours of it being drummed into their heads in English and Literature classes) that this isn’t randomly done. No, there is a Reason the title is shown at the end (what is the director trying to say? What message is he trying to send? You have one hour).
The entire movie is beautifully done. The script, the acting, the dialogue, the plot, it’s all insanely well crafted to make one heck of an amazing film. Dazzling, even. Where to start? The way the story was told, I guess.
The cinematography was absolutely fantastic. The movie is narrated not by some generic deep-voiced dude, nor by some random guy with a British accent. The movie is narrated by some American guy who you could easily imagine sitting in a bar somewhere, sipping a beer after a hard day’s work…doing whatever it is people do at farms. An average joe, I’m trying to say. The narrator would speak between the scenes, placing things historically, giving background information, doing, well, what narrators are meant to do. The effect of this was to distance the movie from any sort of Hollywood style western movie – it said that this movie was supposed to be a psychological examination of Robert Ford; what his motives were, what kind of a person he was like, etc. etc. The movie doesn’t try and twist history into an interesting tale; the movie is almost a documentary, except without historians making boring speeches spliced with random black and white photos and/or re-enactments.
The narration scenes were filmed as though from the bottom of a beer bottle – there was a brownish tone to everything, representing the grittiness of that day and age – while the edges of the picture were blurred, thereby intensifying the focus on the middle of the screen.
The scenery was truly epic, beautiful. Whether its Jesse James standing on a frozen lake wearing animal furs, with enormous snow-capped peaks in the background, or whether it was the Ford cottage in winter, everything looked amazing, picturesque.
There was one scene in particular that stood out, for me. The Jesse gang are waiting by the rail tracks, all wearing hoods or masks, waiting silently with rifles slung over their shoulder for the train to arrive. At first, you hear a distant thrumming, which continues to grow louder and louder, until suddenly a brilliant light bursts through the trees, lighting up the silhouettes of the gang, as the train slowly comes into view. It’s hard to describe – let’s just say that the scene, while relatively mundane (some criminals waiting for an approaching train in the woods at night), was filmed in such an amazing way that I won’t forget it for as long as I live.
The acting was superb. Brad Pitt was Jesse James, and he played the character extremely well – Mr. Pitt does brooding quite well, and there were quite a few quiet shots of James, as he reclined in his bath, smoking a cigar, or him just standing in a field of wheat, watching the sun go down. He portrayed the ever present menace and paranoia of Jesse James in an extremely competent and realistic fashion.
Casey Affleck – that’s Ben Affleck’s younger brother – portrays the young Robert Ford, and he, too, was amazing. He pulled off the southern drawl extremely well – when nervous, he would mumble, making him hard to understand. Towards the end of the movie, when Robert Ford is waiting for the opportunity to kill Jesse James – while James, on the other hand, is extremely suspicious of Ford and doesn’t drop his guard for even a second – the tension is so thick you could have cut it with a saw and sold it off as cheap building material. Those last few minutes of the movie – Ford sweating profusely, his hands shaking, his voice trembling – while James is just sitting there, smoking his cigar, coolly watchful – were simply awesome to watch. I know I say awesome a lot, but in this case, I really, really mean it. The scene had me in awe of their acting skills. It was amazing.
The film left a lot unexplained. Robert Ford’s true motives, for instance, were only hinted at. Similarly, we never really get to understand Jesse James – we only get glimpses of his character. The climax of the movie is strange – Jesse James has just read some very incriminating evidence about Robert Ford in the newspaper. Robert Ford is sweating, he is extremely nervous, he is expecting James to pull his guns and kill him any moment, but James only sighs, and for the first time in the movie, he takes his gun belt off, claiming he doesn’t want people to get suspicious at the fact that he is so heavily armed. Then he slowly walks over the wall, remarks that a painting is dusty, pulls up a chair, and starts to dust it, turning his back fully on the surprised Robert Ford, for the first time, truly defenseless. Then Ford pulls his gun, and James hears it being cocked, and keeps dusting off the picture, and then is shot dead.
Why did James leave himself in such a vulnerable position? I have speculated as to the answer, but really, you have to see the movie to understand it at all. Don’t get me wrong, when I say that a lot was left unexplained, I mean it in a good way. The characters don’t just announce their feelings and motivations, we only get glimpses and hints, and have to make up our minds for ourselves.
The only fault I find with this movie is its length. It ran for almost three hours, and at times seemed to deviate wildly from what seemed necessary. Robert Ford would hang around with other James Gang members, and then the story would shoot off on a tangent about the other gang members such as Dick Liddil or Wood Hite. It all added to the plot, sure, but was it really all necessary? I enjoyed the movie, but I can understand other people being somewhat bored by its length.
Acting, Cinematography, Script, it was all pretty much perfect. There hasn’t been a new movie this good for months. Therefore, I’m giving it a solid Great (watch this movie or die trying). You really ought to watch this movie. Just watch. It’ll win like, 50 oscars, mark my words.
I’ve found that I rambled on a bit during this particular film review, but eh, it wasn’t the easiest movie to review. It’s a very complex movie, but it is therefore also very, very good.
Next week I’m doing the freaking awesome hardboiled detective thriller Brick, which came out in 2005. Until then!
-PJ
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Unfortunately I didn't get any captions this week, so the image will roll-over until the next edition.
Remember you can submit as many witty captions as you like each week. Send them to Sixteen (volunteer16) by next Saturday, and your caption may be posted in next week's edition. Good luck!
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And now a word from our sponsors:
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Editorial:[/u]
Akbar hasn’t posted the 667er. He seemed to be having problems with his Internet; at least, I talked to him on MSN a few times and the messages never got through. When they finally did, and I asked him what had happened to the 667er, he simply replied “dead” before his internet failed again. Or maybe he just went offline. I take it that he didn’t receive enough articles, or some such.
Whatever the reason, I’m posting the 667er. And I hope to do so in future. Akbar seems to have almost left 667 – at least, he hasn’t posted often, as of late. I’m not sure what he’s going to make of this, but I’d like you to send me articles from now on. If he wants to contend this, then, well, we shall have to see.
I’m sorry to all those who sent in their articles to Akbar which didn’t get published. If they are absolutely current affairs and cannot wait until next week, then PM them to me as soon as possible and I will add them to this edition. If not, then just PM them to me, and I will post them next week. If I don’t receive enough articles, then I shall simply postpone the 667er until I do have enough. So, basically, if you guys are slack and don’t write, then I will be slack and won’t publish in a disciplined manner.
Thank you for reading. Additional thanks go to Tragedy and Tim, who provided articles when I needed them most.
P.s. Go Tragedy and Fancy. Tancy? Francedy? Frag? Whatever. Go them.
-PJ, the Editor