In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
You know, you have a much clearer understanding of fantasy than reality.

In reply to this comment by Winstonfield_Pennypacker


Au contraire. I have a perfect understanding of both.

Tolkiens pacing was terrible

I'll dispute that. Story pacing is highly dependant on the reader's level of immersion, and Tolkien was attempting a deeply immersive story where the 'pacing' was largely irrelevant. Many people are quite jaded in this regard, and if the plot isn't moving along at a brisk pace they lose interest. That isn't necessarily the fault of the author, but a matter of a lack of tolerance/patience on the reader. No work of literature can satisfy every reader in that regard - so the end result of whether a book is properly paced is highly individualistic. You have writers on both extremes. Some move so fast that the reader feels like the story is choppy and shallow. Then you have guys like Jordan who spend so much time on so much background that the plot is almost utterly lost. I think Tolkien strikes a masterful middle-ground where he provides depth of background and detail, while not having so much that the average reader feels the plot is moving too slowly. Again, that isn't universal because everyone is different - but the fact that LOTR has endured the test of time and remained a classic proves that it is an assessment that applies to 'most' people.

and some of the characters (looking at you, Tom Bombadil) add nothing to the story.

Depends on what you mean by nothing. The Old Forest, Bombadil, and the Barrow Downs are chapters that some people don't get. If the hobbits had just gone straight to Bree then a lot of people would be happier. It can be argued, but Bombadil gives some background to Middle Earth that Tolkien felt was important. For him (JRR) the work was a literary exercise in establishing what he felt were 'lost' Anglo-Saxon mythology. Iarwin Ben-Adar was part of that world for him, and a part that he felt mattered. He is referenced in the Council of Elrond, and here and there in other parts of LOTR. He may fill no vital plot function, but he certainly adds to the story (not to mention background on the Northern Kingdom, and the Westernesse blades).

The first half of book 6 is essentially "Sam and Frodo keep walking to mount doom", but it really drags.

I felt quite the opposite. I thought that the chapters of Sam & Frodo walking to Mt. Doom were rather a breakneck pace compared to what was happening. But at that point JRR is breaking down both Frodo and Sam physically and spiritually, so it can't just be a rapid "Poof! We're at Mt Doom now!" thing. It had to be a hot, blistering, difficult slog. For it to only be 2 chapters was actually pretty breif I thought. Escaping Cirith Ungol took a chapter - then two chapters were them walking and Mt. Doom itself. All in all I thought it went pretty fast.

It all depends on what folks like, really. Some people can't stand it when Tolkien takes 2 pages here and there to describe the landscape of the Woody End, or a couple pages there to talk about some bit of Rohan's history, or whatever. Some people love it. I personally felt that JK Rowling's pacing blew chunks because she spent tons of time focusing on bullcrap character junk (mostly Harry whining). But some readers just eat that stuff up, so I have to allow that my personal tastes cloud my judgement on Rowling's pacing. It's a matter of taste. What seems irrelevant to you may be pure gold to someone else.

Jackson and Walsh's story is better structured

Don't get me started on Jackson & Walsh. I liked the LOTR movies generally, but these two ham-hands did some pretty awful writing considering the pure perfection of the source material. One example: Aragorn's perfect speech, "We shall make such a chase as will be accounted a marvel among the three kindreds - elves, dwarves, and men. Forth, the Three Hunters!" was changed to the god-awful, "Let's hunt some orc!" I could literally go on for hours listing scripting crime after crime. Jackson/Walsh were NOT either masterful writers, or pacers. When they stuck to the story and didn't jam thier fumble-witted fingers into the pie it was great. The more they took "creative license", the worse it got.

Seems the entire hobbit company save one are for comedy relief. Hope I'm wrong. Can't remember one goofball in the book

Well - to be perfectly fair - very few of the 13 dwarves had any kind of role at all in the book. The only major exception was Thorin - who was given a very stubborn/arrogant/long-winded role integral to the end of the story.

Aside from that the dwarves only had VERY minor roles that hardly ever showed up.
Balin was sort of a friend/mentor role as he was the one who was most friendly to Bilbo. He also was sort of a 'background' teller as he was the oldest and had been around a lot. Also he was lookout. Bombur was a comic-relief useless fat load whose incompetence & weight caused problems. Fili and Kili were the 'young' dwarves but didn't do hardly anything. Dori a couple of times ended up carrying Bilbo around on his back or by his legs and whined about it. Ori, Nori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur or Dwalin hardly did a thing at all. By and large, the entire company of dwarves were nothing but a bunch of hostages that had to be rescued. They were captured by trolls, captured by goblins, captured by wolves, captured by spiders, captured by elves, and then cringed behind rocks as Bilbo faced Smaug.

I knew this was going to have to happen though. You can't have a group of 13 dwarves on the big-screen for 2+ hours and have only two or three of them with a personality. I knew that PJ was going to give each of the dwarves a 'character' to play which would go WAY beyond what was provided in the book. So I'm not surprised by this at all. Neither should anyone else. It was inevitable that the dwarves (except Thorin) would probably end up having comic roles just so they weren't entirely without purpose. It will be odd, and seem out of step with the book but there really isn't anything else that can be done. The dwarves have to have SOMETHING to do, or they might as well just have Bilbo and Thorin haul around 12 logs.

Offensive to Christians, but who cares about them, right?

Pretty much. It's perfectly fine to be proud of your idendity if you're a Muslim, or a Jew, African-American, Hispanic, Atheist, or whatever. But when a Christian is open about their identity then they must be stopped at all costs, mocked, and told to keep it to themselves. The hypocrisy of society towards Christianity never ceases to amaze me with its breathtaking lack of self-awareness. Even worse are the retards who justify it with such idiotic mental diarrhea statements as, "Hey - it's OK because they're the 'majority'.

Do this skit about Muslims with Mohommed and you'd have suicide bombers blowing up the studio in a week. And the SNL staff would be apologizing for hurting the bombers with studio shrapnel. And the rest of our PC enslaved society would apologize for having offended them in the first place.

But let ONE Christian so much as say, "Your skit is offensive to me" and the same people would jump down every Christian's throat for being a jerk, using thier faith as a club to suppress free speech, and for just plain being a dirtbag with no sense of humor. Ah - hypocrisy - thy name is prejudice against Christians.

People taking to the streets to demonstrate - it's crazy, radical, violent and lawless

As is typical with Prog-lib-dytes, this ignores the 400+ actual examples of craziness, radicalism, violence, and lawlessnes. Congratulations on flunking Common Sense 101 and Remedial Reading.

displaying this website's bias

Of course Big Government is biased. Videosift is biased. CNN is biased. Fox is biased. MSN is biased. Now - at least you haven't flunked Remedial Reading like Drax, but you still flunk Common Sense 101. The bias of Big Government as a website is rather irrelevant compared to the CONTENT of the listing. Maybe you should - you know - actually read the 400+ independant news articles from the AP, NYT, CNN, NBC, Fox, and many other news outlet from which the unbiased and accurate list of OWS crimes was compiled. Your call. You can keep pretending that OWS was just a bunch of people 'taking to the streets' if you want. Fact and reality tells quite a different story though. But - as I say - facts and reality are foreign to the typical Prog-lib-dyte, so I wouldn't be surprised if you keep trying to ignore them.

Uh - he'd have to be blind as a bat for that excuse to hold water. The letters are well over 3 inches tall, and at the end there his head is bowing down to within a foot of her chestal region. I've got terribad vision and without my glasses I can read T-shirts with similar lettering from over 10 feet.

I think this looks more like some extreme members of the tea party... Looks more Tea Party to me...

You mean the ONE guy who ONE time expressed his 2nd Amendment rights and legally took a pistol (openly in a holster) to a meeting? As opposed to this...

http://biggovernment.com/jjmnolte/2011/10/28/occupywallstreet-the-rap-sheet-so-far/

OWS was (and stil is) far more violent, radical, crazy, and lawless than the Tea Party ever was. Members of OWS are far more likely to engage in violence and subversive actions.

Not to put too fine a point on it - but his essential point is quite correct. No one was really called a "Palestinian" except in very recent world history. Certainly not within the context that the term is being used today.

However, that doesn't really matter much. The modern Jewish state also did not exist until recent modern history. They had a history as a nation until the Romans sacked the place, but after that point their identity was not that of a people/state, but simply as a 'race' which was scattered. Does that mean they did not exist? Of course not, and the Palestinians may not have had a state either, or necessarily an identity linked to a specific nation - but they were there.

As always - this whole discussion is pointless. The world should forcibly relocate all Jews to an island like Sicily. Then relocate all the "palestinians" to an island on the other side of the planet. Then build a big fence all around the disputed territory and turn it into an international museum run by the Swiss and no one else is allowed to live there. Problem solved.

Barker was a notorious hound-dog - the very definition of a dirty old man, really. Without any doubt if he could have had his druthers he would have used his position of power to bed the chick. He used up and spit out his 'prize girls' on a regular basis.

Wave and solar power are where the investments should be made

Oh for... SIGH. From the Energy Information Administration...

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

The most efficient forms of energy are Coal, Coal, Coal, Natural Gas, Natural Gas, Natural Gas, Natual Gas, Natural Gas, and Nuclear. In that order.

The LEAST efficient forms of energy are Hydro, Biomass, Geo, Solar, Wind, and Wind.

Anyone notice anything interesting about the list there? Anyone? Beueller? Bueller?

"Green" energy is an absolute joke. America has enough Coal, Gas, and Oil to last well into the next century. Sure - put R&D into Solar, Wind, and Tidal - but swapping over to these forms of energy "right now" just for the sake of it is the height of idiocy. You swap energy sources when they make sense - not because of some moronic hoax (I.E. AGW).

Can't put my finger on why, but this trailer sparked no reaction from me. It gets a resounding, "m'eh"...

I think they should have kept the setting more contemporary. The whole "cultural mainstays of yesteryear in modern fish out of water situations" is a comedic dead-horse to me. I mean, Snooky, really?

I also sort of get annoyed when they take things from the past and stick them in a clearly 'current time' setting. My overall preference is for a movie to be designed in such a way as to be relatively 'timeless'. When you make a movie in such a way that it constantly spotlights a subject or idea from a very specific modern time period then it becomes VERY obvious and then the show becomes dated very quickly as time goes on. The end result is that a good movie that would have otherwise been a 'classic' ends up seeming very cheesy. I think the Stooges movie would have been better off avoiding that kind of thing. Just have the Stooges there, keep the setting vague and non-specific in terms of its period, and let the hijinks ensue.

That being said - I loved seeing Snookie get poked in the eyes... Give her a few triple-slaps while you're at it, Moe.

Ah - in the video clip above there is a shot of the cannon lying on its side. It appears to be the cannon that Tory built himself that they used for the "Ball and Chain Prison Escape" episode. It also appears to be mounted on a pair of old timey wagon wheels via some sort of shop-built rig. If there was any sort of anchoring system in place then I couldn't see it in the vid.

There's a reason why old style field artillery on wheels had that big wooden splay in the back. It provided an anchor point that prevented the canon from bucking up when fired. Looks like the Build Team took out thier home made cannon, had no anchoring system, and let fly with it. They used more powder than they did in that particular device in the past, and chaos ensued.

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that JD Nelson (who was on the site) didn't say something. He usually seems to be pretty savvy about explosives, and should have observed that the cannon needed some means of fixing in place. Doesn't seem like thier other explosive expert (Frank Doyle) was there, or it may have gone better. I also bet if Jamie or Adam had been around that this wouldnt' have happened. They have experience with firing real cannons from the Pirate episodes, and they probably would have noticed a problem.

Right message. Wrong motivation. Don't become less materialistic because you think you're 'saving the planet'. Become less materially oriented because it's the right thing to do morally. "Where your treasure is, there your heart is also."

OWS=Fix Government... Tea Party=Destroy Government...

Based on - what exactly? Even the most cursory examination of the OWS goons shows they are a bunch of anarchists who would blow up the whole system if given thier druthers. The Tea Party has shown no such tendencies.

The Tea Party operates on the premise of influencing elections legally by voting for people who will reduce the size, scope and influence of government (a VERY necessary goal). OWS operates on the premise of illegal squatting, riots, and attacking completely innocent 3rd parties like cops, businesses, and private citizens.