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Post reblogged from Love & Radiation with 17 notes
Nerds, chill out.
Everybody gets to be nerds if they wanna be nerds.
I’ve written before on why the whole nerds whining about nerd cred is tedious and totally beside the point. Nerd cred, by their definition, is all about pettiness, exclusion, and impermeable social isolation from the mainstream. So I accept the definition I see in their actions, if not their rhetoric:
A nerd is someone who cares so much about being defined as such that they reject people with similar interests so as not to sully their nerd reputations and dilute the waters of nerddom.
There you go, nerds! Cred restored! Hope you’re having fun excluding potential friends with similar interests!
Source: love-and-radiation
Post with 109 notes
On Never Letting ‘Em See You Sweat
There are innumerable reasons why last night’s Oscar telecast was completely unwatchable, but the most unforgivable was Anne Hathaway. To those of you lumping all your resentment on James Franco: he was bad, but at least he was bad in a “slowly disappearing before our very eyes” way. But Anne, Anne, you broke the cardinal rule of performing, and especially of comedy—you didn’t hide your fear.
My biggest ongoing complaint about Anne Hathaway is that she is what I call an A-student actor. She is far too studied, over-prepared to a fault. Michael Ian Black tweeted last night that she appeared to be auditioning for the lead in the school play, and that has always been her default position. Every one of her performances reads like an audition. This can be problematic for an actor, but it’s a fatal flaw for a comedian, which is (surprise!) what hosting the Oscars requires you to be.
One advantage of having some kind of formal comedy or improv instruction is that at some point, someone will actually sit down and explicitly tell you that audiences can smell your fear. You have to always pretend not to give a fuck, while actually giving more like a thousand fucks. This is a tricky line to walk and takes practice. Not rehearsal, practice. By which I mean, practice at bombing. At seeing a room full of impassive faces and knowing that you are the reason they aren’t laughing. That it’s going terribly, and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT. And that, above all, there is nothing, nothing you can do about it. It’s a horrible and exhilarating feeling, horrible for all the obvious reasons, exhilarating once you realize that you are going to survive it anyway.
It is important to have experienced the worst case scenario (and believe me, that is the worst case scenario—all the wardrobe malfunctions and spectacular falls in the world cannot compare) because then you can actually have fun. Anne Hathaway was not having fun; Anne Hathaway was acting the role of someone having fun. The difference is glaringly obvious and leads to all kinds of embarrassing moments. Several times during the telecast she tried to oversell a joke that wasn’t working, to re-attack it until it was left a mutilated corpse. Going big can be good, but going bigger almost never is. It makes you seem condescending (“Wait, maybe you didn’t get it the first time.”) and desperate (“No really, it’s HILARIOUS!”) all at once. The minute you do it, you have shown your hand, and everyone knows how frightened you are. At that point, winning an audience back is next to impossible.
But saying it is one thing. The fact is that comedy, like sex, is learned through (often embarrassing and painful) experience. This is why the whole idea of waiting until marriage to have sex is so horrifying to me. Rose petals! Fancy lingerie! Candlelight! I guess that’s romantic for some people, but to me all it says is “The stakes are high; better not embarrass yourself.” Whatever the moneymen in charge of booking Anne Hathaway and James Franco for the hosting gig said about the pair’s SNL appearances (which were okay at best), the Oscars were their first real stand-up gig. They were losing their virginities on their wedding night! James Franco couldn’t get it up, and Anne Hathaway brought handcuffs at Cosmo’s suggestion! And we all had to watch!
So the moral of the story here is that hey Christopher Nolan, have y’all actually signed contracts yet? Is it too late to recast? I will mail you a list of suggestions and maybe some cookies oh please god recast, recast, you can’t let this woman play Catwoman recast please I beg of you.
James Franco, you just keep doing you, but don’t ever host the Oscars again.
Quote reblogged from Let's not. with 2,591 notes
Inception is a movie about a group of professional thieves who rob an orphan.
My Christmas gift to everyone who thought they didn’t “get” Inception is the following:
You did. You got it. You picked up on the fact that it was a heist. That took place in a dream. That took place in a dream. That took place in a dream. Congratulations, that’s the plot. You are smart enough to understand it. You didn’t miss anything. The questions you were left with don’t have answers lurking around. You can speculate on them all you want (and lord knows people have), but there is, and I’m going to bold this, get ready, no harm in ambiguity. If you didn’t like the ambiguity, that’s fine! If you did, good for you! If you pride yourself on your theories about it, you’re probably between the ages of 15 and 30!
I kind of feel for Christopher Nolan, because while Inception has been one of (if not the most) acclaimed of his films, I get the impression from recent interviews that he’s genuinely sick of answering questions about what it all means. In a post-Lost (and Harry Potter, and Battlestar Galactica, and anything else steeped in mystery up until it’s unsatisfying and exposition-burdened conclusion) era, audiences DEMAND ANSWERS and are invariably disappointed when they get them. Nolan seems frustrated that he is expected to provide said answers (“Didn’t they see The Prestige, wherein I directly addressed this issue?” he must ask himself. No Chris, they did not.) despite his protestations that intended for them to remain ambiguous. And then that gets leveled at him as criticism! “Even the writer didn’t know what was going on.” Or maybe knowing doesn’t matter? Maybe? Maybe Inception is just a strange and well-crafted heist movie, and not an IQ test? Maybeeeee???
Source: havisham
Quote reblogged from Insipid Inspiration with 8 notes
[Piranhas 3-D] is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip. And that’s not what’s happening now with 3-D. It is a renaissance-right now the biggest and the best films are being made in 3-D. Martin Scorsese is making a film in 3-D. Disney’s biggest film of the year-Tron: Legacy-is coming out in 3-D. So it’s a whole new ballgame.
James Cameron
Shut up, James Cameron. Piranhas 3-D is exactly what 3-D is supposed to be. I haven’t seen it, but from what I can tell, it’s exactly what you’d expect: a bunch of dumb, drunk bitches getting torn to pieces by fucking maneating fish. I imagine with the 3-D you get lots of fish jumping out at you unexpectedly, and pieces of sorority girls being flung towards your face. That’s what 3-D is good for. I’m sick of all these good movies coming out in 3-D just so I can get charged five extra dollars for some barely-noticeable extra effects. If I’m paying for 3-D, I want crazy shit flying into my face. That’s about it.
(via insipidinspiration)
“When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip.”
SAYS THE MAN WHO IS RE-RELEASING AVATAR LESS THAN A YEAR AFTER IT’S ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE BECAUSE HE ADDED NINE EXTRA MINUTES.
SAYS THE MAN WHOSE DIRECTING DEBUT WAS PIRANHA 2.
SAYS THE MAN WHO SHOULD…STOP SAYING THINGS.
3D is a gimmick, James Cameron. It is a gimmick. And if you really and truly believed otherwise, perhaps you wouldn’t have been so sure that you could get away with cannibalizing at least four other movies and assembling their mangled parts into a lumbering Frankenstein’s monster of a film that you had the audacity to call “revolutionary”.
Source: insipidinspiration
Quote reblogged from 1001 rules for my unborn son with 231 notes
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
Stephen King (via rulesformyunbornson)
This just in: Stephen King has no fucking clue how to use a thesaurus.
Really, Stephen King, because sometimes a word that I can’t recall is on the tip of my brain, but I can recall a related, albeit inferior and less accurate in the context I want to use it, word, and I turn to a thesaurus to find the exact word I’m looking for, confirm via the dictionary and my generally better-than-average knowledge of etymology to make sure it is the exact word I want to convey what I want to say, that means the word I chose is the wrong word? REALLY?!
That’s like saying that if you can’t walk somewhere, it’s too far away. A thesaurus, used properly is a treasure, Stephen King—-A GODDAMN TREASURE.
And don’t even get me started on “no exceptions.”
Jesus.
Source: rulesformyunbornson
I am so glad someone wrote this →
Although one thing I wished this piece had addressed more is the whole “ugly duckling” myth, which is usually how nerdy girl stories are resolved. Because in reality, most of us just grow into ugly ducks, which (surprisingly) does not preclude happiness, coolness, or dating cute boys. WHERE ARE OUR STORIES, DAMMIT?!
Photo reblogged from very filled with dreams with 252 notes
(via stillbeautiful)
aw.
That is adorable.
I don’t know, is it just me, or is it kind of misogynistic — granted, a more benign kind of misogyny than the other way around, no argument there, but misogynistic all the same — to think that a woman never wants to feel fucked? I mean … really? Yeah, certainly, some women never do. And many women who sometimes do don’t at all times and in all circumstances in which they are interested in sex! But that’s why women have recently acquired this brand new, really awesome feature, in which you can ask them what they want out of a sexual encounter. (I hear that men have it also! As well as people of other genders! And recommend that everyone who sleeps with anyone, no matter what their gender, use it enthusiastically!)
isnt james frey famous for making money off a faked hardship life? like i’m takin his quotes to heart. i’m all about getting your head right on how to see, think of, and treat women. but this quote reeks of kiss-assy fake feminism.„aaaand the kind of guy who is a master of leaving hip dance parties to go home alone and initiate Clumsy, Awkward, Saccharin masturbation sessions with his phony self.
dear nezua: you bring me joy. love, me.
I think the point here is that we really just need to retire the expression “make love”. What a weird, creepy euphimism. It has always seemed to me to suggest that sex is inherently icky and barbaric and cannot be an expression of love without somehow clouding it in misguided, allegedly romantic gestures (like lighting candles—eew). It’s the linguistic equivalent of drenching someone in perfume with the assumption that it will make them smell better.
Source: petermcallister-thefather
