TV/Movies Megathread

[Liep]

A new Star Wars trailer for the Japanese market, still no Luke

https://youtu.be/SdAUiyeJMFQ

[celedhring]

Love that shot of the TIE fighters against the sun.

[Josephus]

As long as it's not actually WRITTEN by lawyers, might be good.

My first post-school work was proofreading legal documents....God...

Then you didn't read stuff written by good lawyers. Good legal drafting and writing is clear (and persuasive, if persuading is its goal), by definition.  It may not be entertaining, of course, because there is only so much entertainment one can wring out of a contract to supply reinforced concrete (or whatever). 

Legal writing tends to suffer because, in the area of contract drafting, lazy drafters attempt to recycle precedents, both to save time and because they fear they may be missing something important if they don't. I can't count the number of times an in-house client has come to me with some elaborate 30 page agreement full of pointless boilerplate, and I have advised them that, for what they actually need to accomplish, drafting up a simple letter agreement that actually spells out what needs doing in clear, simple terms. The "art" lies in spotting the actual risks and how to avoid them - those complex, indecipherable contracts often create risks.

See....I dozed off midway through that last paragraph

[dps]

Too bad today's lawyers and lawmakers can't take lessons from the drafters of the London Naval Treaties.

[celedhring]

Blood Diamond. One of those films that tries to be important before trying to be good. There's some pretty compelling visuals and directing in here, and it's certainly better that some other entries in the "Africa is a fucked up place" oscarbait subgenre that became so popular in the 2000s. But the plot is very contrived and I actually don't think it conveys anything clearly. They seem to throw a bunch of (worthy) causes into the pot, from child soldiers, to blood diamonds, to refugees used as slave labor, to war profiteering... but nothing really meshes together.

[Admiral Yi]

I could watch Jennifer Connelly reading a phone book for two hours.

[celedhring]

Sadly hers is actually not that important a character in the movie. She's in it for less than an hour.

[Admiral Yi]

My theory about Blood Diamond is Leo couldn't quite get the Boer accent down so they had to rewrite his back story to be a Rhodesian who moved to South Africa.

[celedhring]

His accent sounded really weird to me, but I'll be damned if I ever met or heard a white Zimbabwean.

[Admiral Yi]

There was one at my American school in Korea for a year.  Sounded kind of like a Kiwi.

[mongers]

'Interstellar' there's a point part way through where they're discussing what to do, that's when I started to consider shooting myself in the foot.

[Admiral Yi]

Do it you wuss.

[Eddie Teach]

If you shoot your foot off, you'll have a hard time getting up to change the channel.

[Martinus]

I am rewatching "Yes Minister". This show has not aged at all. Really top notch.

[Savonarola]

'Interstellar' there's a point part way through where they're discussing what to do, that's when I started to consider shooting myself in the foot.

I once knew a guy who shot himself in the foot. 

My advice, if you choose to go that route, is to use a small caliber and try to miss any bones.