Posts by Jessica Morris6

briskhound2 said:Honestly, I see the guy more often sitting on the couch with Graham Norton than I actually see him in movies...

Check him out in the series Get Shorty. He's absolutely brilliant there... It’s almost like he’s carrying the entire show on his back.

I can't speak for what's happening over at Netflix, but it's already made its way onto the pirate sites...

Rebecca Scott95 said:So, we finally have an official title: The Cloverfield Paradox and it’s dropping straight onto Netflix.

TEASER

It just dropped.

I honestly wish someone would just grab the admin's computer and completely scramble every single subforum and thread on this site... I know we can all eventually get used to a new layout, but the one thing that’s absolutely driving me crazy is how they took all the international music sections and dumped them straight into the general discussion boards. Could you guys at least set up a dedicated space for foreign artists or something similar, instead of just shoving them in here amongst all these random topics?

Just open up several different accounts on Megaupload and go ahead and install Dropbox. They give you up to 50 GB for free, though you really have to stay organized and keep track of all your login credentials...
The way I see it, you just install Dropbox, dump 50 GB of files into a shared folder, log in, and then just sit there waiting for the upload to finish.
Once everything is wrapped up, you simply create a brand new account, uninstall Dropbox, reinstall it, and run the whole process over again.
It’s a completely free method, if you have the patience for it, but the catch is obviously that you're stuck with that 50 GB limit per account. From what I can tell, they never actually delete anything you put up. So, whenever you eventually need something back, you just log into the specific account and pull your file down...

restlessdrifter12 said:Is there any way to convert a subtitle to 23.976 FPS?

Did you try syncing it by adjusting the frame rate using that tutorial I sent over? It might be a bit more of a headache on your end depending on how the file is structured...
First, you just change the FPS, then you nudge the subtitles bit by bit using the alt+m shortcut. Everything is laid out in the guide. This method is actually pretty fast, though it really depends on how many times you have to shift things around...

The most tedious way to sync anything would be to install Subscene, load up the video and the subs, and then just sit there watching the movie and clicking a button every single time someone speaks. That’s basically manual line-by-line synchronization...

As for different versions of the movie, you should check out The Pirate Bay, Paradise Island, WarezBoard, Bold.cd, alluc.eu, Upload, or RARBG...

restlessdrifter12 said:I completely lost my mind earlier... I tried downloading that old movie "Corrina Corrina" (from '94) for my mom, but the only subtitle file I could find was a complete mess that didn't match the dialogue at all...
So, I went on a bit of a hunt to see if there was an actual version online with decent subtitles, and I finally managed to track one down here
The problem is, I downloaded it, but it just gave me the movie file without any of the subtitle tracks attached...
Does anyone actually know how to grab the subtitle file along with it?

I can't really test it right this second, but you might want to try using JDownloader 2... it usually scrapes everything available on a page. If that doesn't work, your best bet is probably installing Subtitle Workshop 2.51 and just manually syncing the file... honestly, it’s usually a thirty-second fix once you get the hang of it. Here is a guide: https://www.prijevodi-online.org/smf...c,12022.0.html
Using the two dots or hitting alt+m is typically the easiest way to go...

velvetbear372 said:Interesting... 🙂

A million people have decided: This is the greatest actor of all time

Aside from Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks isn't exactly known for his transformations, and honestly, I feel like that really ought to be one of the primary benchmarks when you're deciding who truly deserves the title.

Personally, I thought Dallas Buyers Club was absolutely fantastic, but I actually turned off The Revenant after just twenty minutes... It really all comes down to individual taste, doesn't it? Just because a film doesn't click for you doesn't mean it's objectively bad.
I haven't seen that other one yet.

velvetbear372 said:I'm putting together a poll, please bear with me for a moment...

God, I just hope she doesn't turn out to be anything like a Donald Pleasence character. 🙂

I've been sitting here for the last hour just staring at my screen, trying to make sense of how we even got to this point... It feels like every single time I log on to these forums, there’s some new, half-baked argument being thrown around that ignores the basic reality of how things actually function in this country. You see people jumping to conclusions without looking at the data, or worse, ignoring the sheer scale of the issues we're facing under our current economic landscape... It’s exhausting, honestly. There’s a certain level of nuance required to understand these systemic shifts, yet everyone seems content to settle for the loudest, most superficial take available, leaving the actual substance completely buried under a mountain of noise and ego... It makes you wonder if anyone is actually listening anymore, or if we're all just shouting into a void while the real problems continue to fester in the background... kaže:
It’s the same old story. The moment someone dares to voice an opinion that doesn't align with the majority, the vultures circle immediately with insults and personal attacks...

If the way people talk on Reddit really gets under your skin that much, then honestly, you’re better off just staying quiet. This whole platform was practically built for venting frustration, and if you can't handle the noise... maybe just don't participate at all...🎉
I honestly think your main issue isn't even about the facts, it's just that you lack the actual depth of knowledge to back up any of this, and frankly, you don't have the arguments to sustain a real conversation... Do you really want me to go digging through archives on other forums to find screenshots proving you just recycle the same tired talking points from those random internet critics? You even admitted it yourself right here—that you haven't actually looked into most of the vital details...
If you’re going to sit there and make sweeping claims—like the one you just made about how Pop Art is nothing more than mainstream garbage rather than actual fine art—then at least have the decency to do your homework first... if you're going to take a stand, you should actually be prepared to back it up with some research...
If you haven't spent any significant time wandering through the digital corridors of Taste of Cinema, you’re essentially leaving half of the cinematic experience on the table... It’s one of those rare corners of the internet that actually respects the medium, offering these deep, sprawling dives into film theory and curation that you just won't find on the mainstream, clickbait-heavy sites that prioritize SEO over actual substance. They don't just give you a rating or a shallow summary; they provide these long, meditative explorations of style, mood, and the underlying soul of a director's vision, which is exactly what someone looking to truly understand the craft needs... It’s a slow burn, much like the films they celebrate, requiring a certain level of patience and intellectual curiosity to fully digest, but for those of us who view movies as more than just mindless weekend distractions, it serves as a vital sanctuary in an increasingly shallow media landscape...
Recommendations, please... I'm looking for something worth my time, though finding a decent movie these days feels like an uphill battle against endless streaming algorithms that don't actually know anything about cinema... What's actually good out there right now?
Go out there and dig through the lists for trashy flicks, mainstream blockbusters, low-budget indies, high art, and everything in between... just start absorbing it all and building up that knowledge base...

Here is what they have to say... The Lexicographical Institute... it’s one of those institutions that just feels like it exists in its own vacuum, much like the National Archives or some of those heavy-duty research libraries you find in D.C. It carries this weight of academic prestige, attempting to catalog everything under the sun, yet you can't help but wonder if all that meticulous documentation actually keeps pace with the sheer velocity of modern information... though I suppose that's the nature of such massive, sprawling scholarly endeavors...H. Turković is out here claiming that when you're making an art film, you shouldn't have a single thought about the bottom line while you're on set... It’s that same old, tired argument that true creativity can only exist in a vacuum, completely detached from the reality of budgets or how people actually pay for movies to be made...
Forgive me if I've gone on a bit too long with this quote...

I’ve been sitting here thinking about this whole concept of "art house cinema" lately, and honestly, it feels like we’re losing the thread... It’s one thing to appreciate a slow burn or a director with a specific vision, but there’s a fine line between a profound cinematic experience and just watching paint dry for two hours while pretending you're being intellectual... I find myself increasingly frustrated by the way certain critics try to pass off pretension as depth, acting as if a lack of narrative structure is somehow a substitute for actual storytelling... It makes me wonder if we've forgotten what it means to actually connect with a film on an emotional level rather than just checking boxes on a list of avant-garde tropes... maybe it's just me, but the more I see these "masterpieces" that feel like they were designed specifically to alienate anyone who isn't part of some tiny, elitist circle, the more I miss when movies actually had something to say without needing a PhD to decode them...When we look at cinema through a critical lens, there's this distinct divide that defines how we categorize what ends up on the screen. First, you have those films that position themselves in direct opposition to the massive, populist blockbusters—the kind of high-octane commercial fluff designed for mass consumption. These works strive for the status of "high art," aiming to secure prestige within elite cultural circles rather than just chasing a weekend box office record. We’ve seen this manifest historically as specific production niches, like the early experimental movements or the rise of auteur theory and the New Wave era... It’s a bit of a paradox because, even though modernism pushed the entire medium toward being recognized as a legitimate art form, the sheer dominance of the Hollywood studio system and its massive distribution networks means that "artistic" films essentially have to exist in their own separate ecosystem. They end up relegated to specialized non-commercial circuits and boutique art-house theaters just to find an audience that actually wants to engage with them... Then, there is the second way we slice the medium, which focuses more on the actual mode of storytelling. On one hand, you have the purely imaginative branch—films that prioritize the sensory experience and the cultivation of imagery, such as expressionist cinema, poetic documentaries, or animation. On the other hand, you have the more pragmatic, discursive side of filmmaking, where the goal isn't necessarily to transport you to another world, but to inform or instruct through educational films, scientific documentaries, newsreels, or utilitarian corporate media... It really comes down to whether the filmmaker is trying to stir the soul or simply deliver information...

It’s just another populist piece of cinema, isn't it... designed specifically to pull at the most basic emotional levers of the masses without offering a single shred of intellectual substance or nuance...Cinema is such an interesting beast when you start looking at how certain categories function... there's this specific class of movies designed specifically to appeal to the broadest possible demographic—you know, the "mass market" crowd—and because they have to capture everyone's attention, they tend to lean heavily on these tried-and-true, highly attractive themes and polished presentation styles. Since these types of productions are practically engineered to guarantee a massive box office return, people often dismissively label them as nothing more than "commercial cinema," whereas their complete opposite is usually branded as "art house" or, if you want to get cynical about it, "elitist filmmaking"... it's a constant tug-of-war between what sells and what is considered pure art...

I’ve been sitting here staring at this latest commercial, and honestly, I can’t help but feel a certain level of exhaustion setting in... It’s just one of those polished, overly produced pieces that feels like it was engineered in a lab to trigger a specific emotional response rather than actually saying anything meaningful. You watch these high-budget spots, all those sweeping cinematic shots and that perfectly curated soundtrack, and you realize they aren't selling a product so much as they're selling an idealized version of a life that none of us actually lead. It’s all very calculated, very deliberate, and frankly, a little bit soul-crushing when you think about the sheer amount of capital being poured into these glossy illusions instead of, well, something substantive...When you look at cinema through this specific lens, you’re really just looking at the category of commercial filmmaking—movies built from the ground up on the foundational principle of turning a profit. At its core, being commercially viable, or having the ability to sustain itself within the market, was the absolute prerequisite for the very existence and survival of the entire Hollywood industry. Its direct opposite would be non-commercial film, which many people tend to lump together with the concept of populist cinema...

It’s just another one of those non-commercial films... you know the type, where the director is more interested in their own obscure artistic vision than actually engaging an audience or following any kind of narrative structure that makes sense to a normal person... they spend two hours on slow pans of empty landscapes and shots of people staring blankly into the distance, all while pretending it's "deep" or "subversive"... it’s really just a vanity project disguised as cinema, lacking any real commercial appeal or even the basic decency to be entertaining...When you look at cinema through a certain lens, there’s an entire category of filmmaking that exists entirely outside the crushing weight of commercial pressure and the desperate need to turn a quick profit... It’s a realm where the art isn't being squeezed by studio executives or quarterly earnings reports. You typically see this kind of purity in experimental works, indie features, and amateur projects, though a massive chunk of it lives within documentaries, educational pieces, and scientific films. It stands in total opposition to what we call "commercial cinema"... which is really just another word for mass-marketed product.

Experimental cinema... there’s just something about it that refuses to sit still, doesn't it? It’s not like those polished, cookie-cutter Hollywood blockbusters where you can predict every beat from the opening credits. No, true experimental film is more of an experience—an assault on the senses, really—that challenges everything we think we know about structure, narrative, and even the very concept of what a "movie" is supposed to be... It pushes boundaries, tearing up the rulebook to find something raw and unfiltered underneath all that commercial gloss... Experimental cinema—or what some might call avant-garde or alternative film—is really a genre defined by its refusal to play by the rules... it’s all about experimenting with techniques and visual effects that push back against the standard Hollywood way of doing things, opting instead for associative and rhythmic editing in a desperate attempt to uncover these untapped sensory and social potentials within the medium itself. You see this first wave of the avant-garde emerging back in the 1920s, primarily under that "avant-garde" label in places like France and Germany, driven by figures such as Luis Buñuel, Jean Clair, Fernand Léger, Man Ray, Hans Richter, and Walter Ruttman. Once that initial movement started to fade out during the 1930s and through the late 1950s, a second wave of the avant-garde began to take root across the United States, Austria, Great Britain, and Poland, led by visionaries like Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Paul Brakhage, and others who pushed the boundaries further... then, by the 1970s, the evolution shifted toward a video-based approach known as video art, pioneered by names like Nam June Paik, the Vasulkas, Bill Viola, and Steina Vasulka. When you look at the established subgenres of experimental film, you're really looking at abstract, surrealist, structural, and conceptualist works...

amateur film (also referred to as non-professional filmmaking). 1. Any production that doesn't emerge from a professional setting or involve professional obligations, regardless of how much technical skill might actually be on display. – 2. The broader social sphere encompassing non-professional film and video creation and its associated organizations. A. Amateur work is typically, though not exclusively, tied to what we call "narrow format" techniques (think 8mm film, for instance) or, more recently, consumer video technology. These enthusiasts often band together in film clubs, host their own festivals, and essentially form a distinct branch of cinema...

documentary film, a genre defined by the attempt to bear witness to perceived events through the use of the cinematic possibilities of recording, imagery, and sound. Unlike narrative fiction, documentary claims to present actual events—things that truly happened—so the question of authenticity is frequently raised as a vital element in how these works are experienced and judged. The very first moving images captured were documentaries (think of those early Lumière brothers capturing spontaneous scenes on the streets of Paris). In the 1920s, Robert Flaherty introduced principles of narrative structuring to the genre (what we call narrative documentary) alongside truthful reconstructions of typical real-life situations (reconstructive documentary). Avant-garde creators (like Luis Buñuel, Jean Epstein, Walter Ruttmann, Dziga Vertov, and Jean Vigo) viewed documentary as an expression of their own (poetic) perception of reality (symphonic or poetic documentary), while the drive to capture events in their unique, unrepeatable flow fueled movements like Cinéma Vérité (observational, testimonial film, such as the work of Jean Rouch), Direct Cinema (pioneered by Frederick Wiseman), and eventually the hidden camera techniques that became so ubiquitous on American television. Since the 1960s, television has taken the lead in capturing and broadcasting documentaries, though the advent of video in the 1980s and the digital revolution of the 1990s have certainly helped the explosion of independent documentary productions...

educational film (also known as instructional, enlightening, or pedagogical film), a genre consisting of films intended to spread or acquire culturally standardized knowledge for a specific target audience (leading into purposeful filmmaking). Its foundation is primarily conceptual and descriptive, though it occasionally tries to boost engagement by using framing devices or occasional narrative and poetic presentation strategies. Common subcategories include: (a) instructional films, created specifically for use within a classroom setting following established curricula (such as educational shorts used in schools), (b) general educational films, aimed mostly at adult education or any interested general audience, (c) training or vocational films, made with the goal of teaching a viewer how to perform a task through demonstration and verbal instruction, and (d) popular science films, which convey scientific discoveries to a broader audience in an accessible way. Educational films are often further categorized by the subject matter they cover (for example, historical films, medical films, geography films, or natural science films)...

dustycanyon5 said:Honestly, it doesn't matter how much cash they throw at it, it's what the creator is actually trying to say that counts...

The problem is, most people don't give a damn about that. Movies, just like any other form of art, have a responsibility to be entertaining. If cinema were strictly "art," then only hipsters and wannabe film snobs would ever bother watching anything... and we’d all be stuck watching some transcendental nonsense, listening to those Japanese scream artists, and instead of watching a good stand-up special, we’d be staring at Marina Abramović while she glares at the audience and carves a pentagram into her stomach.

And regarding this whole "message" thing, as a few others have pointed out, everything carries a message—even *The Room*. The only difference is whether that message comes from an arthouse flick, an action blockbuster, or some old Soviet musical. Films by Steven Spielberg carry a very clear message that American idealism is beautiful...

Buddy cop movies tell us it’s not worth being a villain because honest cops will eventually take you down; *Terminator* warns us not to mess too much with technology; *Lady Vanishes* tells us fascists are evil, and *Salò* does the same...
Your Bunuel? He shows how jealousy can destroy a man, or how *Los Olvidados* demonstrates that the poor are human beings too, though for most of them, there’s no saving them... I forget what *Le Fantôme de la liberté* and *La Voie lactée* are trying to say, I think it was something religious, but I never quite caught their drift...
So, sending a message isn't strictly tied to "high art," because even non-artistic works can theoretically deliver a more powerful message; it really all just comes down to the quality of the film itself...

Karen Smith9 said:Don't go being so hard on Hitchcock. Just because he works within strict genre boundaries—if you want to call it that—doesn't mean there isn't art in his films; quite the opposite, actually. When I look back at Vertigo, Psycho, or North by Northwest—and several others besides—it's nothing short of pure cinematic art.

I wouldn't call him strictly a genre director, since he did tackle a few dramas, though they weren't exactly anything to write home about. I watched this one and if I recall correctly, most of the film felt like some kind of heavy melodrama, and honestly, there wasn't much tension to be found at all... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042004/

As far as the high-quality stuff goes, I’ve only actually sat through Loveless and Shot Caller. Honestly, it's tough for me to pin down which one hits harder... though neither of them truly blew my mind...

briskhound2 said:Actually, it was Jaws. That was the one that really kicked off the whole summer blockbuster thing—wide releases everywhere all at once...

That’s a fair point. I honestly didn't realize those massive hype cycles started with Spielberg's shark... I've come across that idea a few times before, but whenever people talk about the birth of the modern blockbuster era, they always seem to point toward Star Wars instead...

briskhound2 said:Nah, I’m asking what makes it so deep or dramatic that people insist on labeling it "art cinema." The whole concept of a "blockbuster" didn't even exist back then, though Odyssey was definitely shot with commercial appeal in mind—kind of like how they approached The Shining...

Exactly. The first true blockbuster was Star Wars.

Kevin Turner4 said:[/I]

👍

I honestly think it might be the most successful Brazilian film out there.

I’m not so sure, we really need to look at how much those elite SWAT units actually pocketed... It's a tough call, though I'd say Pixote is also a strong contender since it hits on themes pretty similar to City of God.

dustycanyon5 said:Honestly, I haven't really sat through a single Hollywood blockbuster that actually holds any artistic weight. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're all garbage... some of those big studio flicks are actually super fun and I love them for what they are. But from an artistic standpoint? Nothing really sticks. At the end of the day, their main goal is just making bank at the box office.

Let's start with an example. I would argue that this particular film manages to be both a commercial success and a genuine piece of art. 😉

I just caught a comment from someone who was actually startled because they opened a thread for a German series, and it got me thinking about how we structure things here. I’d like to propose that we rephrase the "Unseen (USA and UK)" section so it serves as the primary hub for all prestige shows—you know, the ones that aren't soap operas, reality TV, or that kind of fluff... Unseen - other series doesn't really feel like the right home for starting discussions on shows like "Dark," or anything coming out of New Zealand, Canada, or Australia... since the audience watching those is essentially the exact same crowd watching American or British productions.
Right now, the "other series" area is mostly dominated by Turkish soaps and various local dramas from the old America era, which attracts a specific demographic that prefers that style, so we’d probably see much more meaningful discussion if everything high-quality was grouped under "USA and UK."