Consie

But aren't you just criticizing the film here (as opposed to Cameron's direction)? Cameron became infamously attached to Titanic on a personal level, and allegedly spent years researching the physical Titanic itself as well as much of the lore surrounding its sinking. He was responsible for massive overspending and delays because he was extremely particular in the set (it was apparently authentic to the slightest detail) and direction. Editing the film was difficult because he was reluctant to cut anything from the film. If all of these are true (I admit that was all just stuff I heard at the time), his case sounds similar to other "great directors" in film history. I think Titanic suffers from a trite story and an awful script, but the direction wasn't bad...

One of the contestants on American Idol sang that song last week.

Um, so it's a cover(?) of the Sting song Englishman in New York?

But there are health risks, a lot of them. For instance, at age 25, a woman has about a 1 in 1,250 chance of having a baby with Down syndrome; at age 35, a 1 in 400 chance; at age 40, a 1 in 100 chance; and at 45, a 1 in 30 chance. The miscarriage rate skyrockets with age, especially over 45. Low birthrates, premature births, and birth defects are hugely increased after age 40. There is also research suggesting the older the man is, the risker the pregnancy as well. I think it's almost irresponsible to have a child so late - I mean think about it, a 1 in 30 chance of Down syndrome??

Thanks for posting so early! I'm glad Nelly had at least one week, the song's popularity peaked earlier this month, she was just held back by Beyonce for ages. Mika will likely be a slow riser, mainstream radio is warming to him and he's sold a lot considering the little airplay. I think he will peak much later on this spring, maybe even May or June. They just need to put the song on an iPod commercial or something :P

Looooove The Anthem. By far their best.

You bring up a good point because even though people will ALWAYS bring up religion, I think the vast majority of homophobia in the world is ignorance. How else can you explain people who, as you say, engage in all manner of sinful acts, including sexually, but then justify their homophobia with a stuanch religious stance. It's just a fukking convenient excuse, people who couldn't care LESS about Christianity get away with being homophobic because of a couple ridiculous lines buried deep in the bull$h!t of the book of Leviticus (which, as well all know, endorses slavery, condemns eating shellfish, etc). Certainly there are a few people who deeply believe in religion and truly believe homosexuality is sinful, but 90% are just ignorant people using the Bible as an excuse...

I liked the Cable Guy too! A decent black comedy. I think it has a bad rep because it was the first film he did that wasn't Ace Ventura style slapstic and everyone came back from the cinema feeling they got duped. I have absolutely no problem taking him seriously and he doesn't look half bad in "23," though I can hardly take the premise seriously because I always heard the number that came up so often was 32 :P

Exactly, this isn't something you can chalk up to "chav culture" or violence on TV or drunkenness or Britney Spears exposed cooch... just a really deeply depraved person, and they exist everywhere and always have.

Speaking of Jamaica, this is disturbing... Cops save three alleged homosexuals from angry crowd The Jamaica Observer THREE men branded as homosexuals were yesterday rescued by the police from an angry mob outside a pharmacy in Tropical Plaza, where they had been holed up for almost an hour. But even after the police managed to take the young men from the Monarch Pharmacy, one of the three was hit with a stone, forcing officers to fire tear gas on the crowd which included men, women, teenagers and small children. The approximately 2,000 people gathered outside the Kingston pharmacy hurled insults at the three men, with some calling for them to be killed. The crowd grew larger as the minutes ticked by and the three men and staff inside the pharmacy were visibly terrified as the mob demanded that they be sent out so they could administer their brand of justice. "Send them out!" shouted one man. The men, who all had bleached-out faces, and dressed in tight jeans pants and skimpy shirts, were saved due to quick action by police from the St Andrew Central Division. When the officers arrived and attempted to push the crowd back from the front door of the businessplace they were greeted with some resistance and when they attempted to escort the men to a police service vehicle, which was parked near to the entrance of the pharmacy, one of the alleged homosexuals was hit on the back of the head with a stone as he flashed a wry smile before attempting to hustle inside the police car. The cops were forced to disperse the large mob by dispensing tear gas canisters and whisking the men away as the crowd scampered in all directions in an effort to escape the irritating fumes. One man in the crowd was determined to get a chance to beat them and hurled insults at the police when they drove out of the premises. "Unu can come save them nasty boy yah? Them boy yah fi go down," the man bellowed. One woman expressed surprise at the brazenness of the men who were clearly displaying effeminate behaviour. "Jamaica has lost its way if men think they can openly flaunt being gay without any consequences. We don't want that kind of open gay life in this country," the woman said. Homosexuality is frowned upon in Jamaica and gay rights groups have constantly branded the island as anti-gay. Under Jamaican law a male can be slapped with a sentence of up to nine years if caught in a compromising position with another man. Source: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/2...ANGRY_CROWD.asp

Right, "third world" isn't PC anymore, plus it was used to describe communist nations during the Cold War, totally unrelated to any measure of wealth or industrlialization. Academics absolutely cannot decide on a proper terminology. Some of the most popular ones are developed, underdeveloped, undeveloped developed, less developed countries (LDC), least developed countries (LLDC) Then of course some still use "The North" vs "The South" which I never understood... Spoken like a true WB/IFC slimeball :lol:

After Dixie Chicks' "Not Ready to Make Nice" won Record of the Year and Song of the Year, it immediatley shot to the top of the iTunes chart. That's why it rebounds hugely to #43 only 2 days after the Grammys. The Hot 100 next week could see the Dixie Chicks blasting into the top 10 from nowhere. The song is also rebounding in Canada, Australia, even Spain. Shame it only limped to #70 in the UK last year...

I've given my anti-record company speech on this board way too many times already :lol: The major labels are absolute scum, they are the greediest and most dispicable people in world and for way WAYYY too long, millions of people lined up to hand them gobs of money. You want me to pay $18 for a CD when the physical disc costs $.10 to make and the artist is receiving less than $1? And you guys pay even more in the UK, especially for singles. It is SUCH a ripoff! So then with all that extra money, the record companies bought (or bought off) the music stores, the radio stations, the music channels... so they basically operate a system by which they force an artist on you through various means, you buy the CD, and the money keeps piling up. So then digital music came about and instead of exploiting that important market, they whined and complained and sued 7 year olds for FIVE YEARS. And now they're furious that people aren't buying albums anymore and they aren't raking in as much as they used to. It's PATHETIC, they expect people to be buying CDs in 5 years? Give me a break, digital is the future and it's a lot more difficult to sell digital music for the absurd prices people pay for CDs.

I enjoyed it quite a bit but I'm really not rooting for it during this awards season... Bill Condon takes another classic theatrical production and manages to not screw it up, that's about what it was. While he deserves some credit, the film was always going to be good because it's based on a very good musical. But considering that dumbass Shumacher's butchering of The Phantom of the Opera, I guess we should take what we can get...

...Another biopic... and surely another Oscar for someone acting like someone else...

Yeah we're really not setting a great model, seeing as how the US has self-appointed itself the world's moral authority on democracy. The same country where Bush has weilded his power like a tyrant. His record is the worst in US history with regard to democracy. He's scoffed at the judiciary, fired judges with whom he disagrees and crammed the courts with his own far-right facists. He's corrupted the legislative, seeing over dozens if not hundreds of corruption/embezzlement/intelligence schemes to keep Congress on his side. He's vastly increased his own power to an unprecedented level. The founders of American democracy would be aghast and ashamed. I even read Freedom House might even lower its democracy rating of the United States in response to all this. It's appalling. Then there's the very idea of a terrorist sitting in the government of a democracy, something that will shock and offend every citizen of the US and UK. Uh, newsflash dumbasses – there already is one and he’s currently running your country!

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq's parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence. Jamal Jafaar Mohammed's seat in parliament gives him immunity from prosecution. Washington says he supports Shiite insurgents and acts as an Iranian agent in Iraq. U.S. military intelligence in Iraq has approached al-Maliki's government with the allegations against Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, whom it says assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as "a conduit for weapons and political influence." Repeated efforts by CNN to reach Jamal Jafaar Mohammed for comment through the parliament, through the ruling Shiite Muslim coalition and the Badr Organization -- the Iranian-backed paramilitary organization he once led -- have been unsuccessful. A Kuwaiti court sentenced Jamal Jafaar Mohammed to death in 1984 in the car bombings of the U.S. and French embassies the previous December. Five people died in the attacks and 86 were wounded. He had fled the country before the trial. Western intelligence agencies also accuse Jamal Jafaar Mohammed of involvement in the hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner in 1984 and the attempted assassination of a Kuwaiti prince. Jamal Jafaar Mohammed won a seat in Iraq's Council of Representatives in the U.S.-backed elections of December 2005. He represents Babil province, south of Baghdad, in parliament. A U.S. Embassy spokesman said officials are actively pursuing Jamal Jafaar Mohammed's case with Iraqi officials. Al-Maliki has urged American intelligence officials to share their information with Iraqi lawmakers, who could strip Jamal Jafaar Mohammed of his parliamentary immunity. "We don't want parliament to be a shelter for outlaws and wanted people," al-Maliki told CNN. "This is the government's view, but the parliament is responsible. I don't think parliament will accept having people like [him] or others currently in the parliament." Al-Maliki's political party, Dawa, claimed responsibility for the Kuwait bombings at the time but now disavows them. The Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim party was forced into exile under former dictator Saddam Hussein, who was executed in December. The prime minister says the situation is embarrassing -- not only to his government but to a U.S. administration that holds up Iraq's government as a democratic model for the region. Top U.S. officials, including President Bush, have accused Iran of meddling in Iraq by fomenting sectarian violence and providing arms to illegal militias. Bush has authorized U.S. troops to use deadly force against Iranian agents in Iraq to defend American or allied forces, and the administration's increasingly tough warnings to Tehran have raised concerns that the four-year-old Iraq war could spread. Al-Maliki told CNN last week that the United States and Iran should stop using his country as a proxy battleground, accusing Iran of targeting U.S. troops in Iraq but saying he doesn't want U.S. forces to use Iraq as a base to attack Iraq's neighbors. Source: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/05/...aker/index.html I highlighted the part about how a seat in parliament makes one IMMUNE FROM PROSECUTION. That's the democracy we're supporting?? When you change allies so often... giving him arms Monday, convicting him on Tuesday, installing him in the government on Wednesday... well, you're bound to screw up once in a while, I guess! Another utterly absurd story coming out of the horrendous debacle that is the War in Iraq.

Well, No One was kind of unlike any of their other songs. That whole third album was pretty different, except "The Real Thing." The albums did have a bit of variety, but if you listen to Hits Unlimited and you hear their top 12 hits in a row, it really sounds like nearly the same song over and over...

Oh I've heard them and I love them. Orbital and The Shamen, in particular, are probably my two fav pre-'90 dance acts. But those days were so different, raves were like incubators for a totally new genre of music... styles from around the globe were being experimented with in a totally organic way. Like we talked about on your countdown thread, KLF's disgust at suddenly becoming "popular" is sort of like Cobain's suicide over the popularization of the grunge movement. So can dance ever again be like it was back then?

Very true. As a counterpoint, I wanted to ask here "is an album of covers really all that much better than an album of 10 songs that sound nearly identical?" But of course, Cascada did both!

To be honest, I did love many of those songs back in the day and I still enjoy some of them from time to time. But I also think this board has way too much reminiscing… everyone claims the golden age of dance was back in the 90’s. But some say it was early 90’s rave music, some say mid 90’s Eurodance, some say late 90’s trance… either way I agree that the dance music on the charts has been pretty bad lately (though I’ve liked several), but I think the stuff in the clubs these days is great. Some of my all time fav dance tunes have been released to clubs in the last 3 years. I just think too many people base their judgment of dance (and all music, really) on sentimentality. Can anyone really argue that “legends†like 2 unlimited or Culture Beat are actually any better than much-loathed Cascada?

:huh: :huh:

Oh absolutely, of course Beyonce was on the defense because of some nasty rumors about homophobic comments. I'm not saying those rumors are true, but they did come from somewhere (and whoever fabricated them had a reason). Anyway I reread my earlier comments and they could possibly be misread as over-generalizing or stereotyping. Obviously I'm speaking about a "culture," not really skin color. And of course there are exceptions. But there is a huge problem of homophobia in black urban culture (thus hip/hop culture and music).

The problem is really a lot deeper than hip/hop music, the homophobia comes from black urban culture in America. It’s a combination of poor education, the fundamental Baptist church, and other influences (such as Rastafarianism, as Russt pointed out in the Perspectives forum). Kanye West was quoted as saying the comment he was most attacked for last year was not the infamous “George Bush doesn’t care about black people†but his criticism of homophobia in hip/hop music. Sadly, it is an entirely racial issue. Eminem uses the word “fag†and a firestorm of criticism erupts. There are protests and boycotts and anger. Meanwhile 50 openly flaunts his homophobia and no one seems to care. Both hip/hop acts, but one of them gets away with it because he’s black. I think this Deadlee guy is spot on – he’s speaking in the only language the hip/hop urban community understands. Chances are he won’t reach the success of Eminem or 50, and Dino is probably right that hip/hop will largely ignore him. But I doubt he’s looking to sell 10 million albums – he’s already organizing a tour and album that will be successful on a smaller scale. This is why I wish that Ne-Yo would just come out already, he’d be the first mainstream black urban GAY artist.

I wish more of them had shorter commentaries or perhaps brief "making of" episodes or discussions with the filmmakers. The last thing I want to do after watching a 2 hour film and restart it and listen to 2 hours of rambling commentary all for just a few interesting facts or stories.