Mediocre Fantasy Movie League 3: The Search for Irk

@Pavlov I noticed after internet-stalking your old name to get your total. Did you rejoin?

@jbartus I dunno if I ever left - @MrsPavlov kerjiggled stuff for me while I was gone and renamed the theater and created another account so I could join a different private league that awards for low score while playing all eight screens. She messed up the names of the theaters, so yes, I am still in the Meh league but have no idea if my account ever officially “left”. Anyway - we’re set - let’s go! Last season was fun!

@Pavlov whatever happened removed you from the Fall 2016 results table leaving a gap at #2. Glad you’re back!

@sammydog01 I do that, too. But I don’t pick all the movies I want to see; just the combo that makes the most money. I don’t use crappy movies.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@compunaut so in other words you like crappy movies but choose other ones?

@jbartus I didn’t use the word like, but believe I prefer the better films.
Example: Suicide Squad. Had potential, but turned out to be a terrible waste of time & talent. Was very popular anyway. Never played in my theater even when it was a money-making play to do so. Just my thing

@compunaut I just changed my name to Sammydog’s No Chick Flick Cinema. No kids movies either but that’s too many words.

@sammydog01 Is Rogue One considered a ‘kids movie’? What about Up or Wall-E?

@compunaut I’m not a kid so if I want to see it it’s not a kids’ movie. By my standards anyway.

@Mehrocco_Mole Use your own account next time!

@JanaS

@ELUNO So HE gets pissed because I left myself logged into MY meh account on MY laptop.
/giphy get over yourself

@JanaS that’s not very nice! For shame @Mehrocco_Mole!

fuck yeah!

@jbartus annnd I’m locked in, with stuff that I was dorking around with and forgot to change to what i wanted while stuck on a phone call.

Week 1 - lets do this!

@jbartus I didn’t get a chance to tweak my bottom 4 - I was on a call. Oh well.

I kept going back and forth between Allied and Arrival in my top 4 with the Disney flick - looks like a lot of people had the same issue.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@cj0e I had a crappy pick set up and planned to change it this morning. I ended up in meetings all morning and missed my chance.

In other words, it’s been a crappy week.

@conandlibrarian well, I’ll raise my glass to wish you a better weekend. Heres to a deserved break.

@Pantheist I’ll let you know on Tuesday.

@Pantheist
/giphy rubbish

@Pantheist Oooh! Are we having a pool?
I’ll say, umm… $53.9M

@medz
/giphy so far, so good

@Pantheist Hey, my guess was pretty good, since it didn’t include the $6M bonus for 3 BP screens

@compunaut Dead on.

@compunaut Hey, that’s what I got!

@compunaut
That 's where I saw Awakens. Time for tix.

@compunaut

You can buy tix there right now.

@f00l $14 each. I think Movie Tavern is $4 at the same time (matinee price, I guess?). Hmmm…

@compunaut
Did you see Awakens at the museum?

If you want the big experience, that’s the place. Just watching their projection system in action is a trip. Tricky to be in the theater, even with the lights on, if someone has vertigo or inner ear probs tho. I met one person who had to leave before the lights went down when she was a kid. She won’t set foot inside.

https://www.wired.com/2015/12/best-star-wars-screens/

@f00l the IMAX in Reading is very nice.

@jbartus
This one is an IMAX Dome. Built in the 1980’s, continuous upgrades.

There are plenty other imaxs around, and faux-imaxs in DFW. In our area, this is the one that rocks. Part of a museum.

That museum was great in my childhood memory. Lots of tusks and skulls and skeletons and fluorescent rocks and gemstones and transparent plastic people with organs that light up and, best of all to a kid, shrunken heads. Then someone with $ re-did it as interactive, not well-planned, and it looks to me like even the 7 year olds are bored. And they still have the bones but you have to search to find them. And lots of sponsored exhibits from the oil and gas industry.

The IMAX theater and planetarium still awe.

I’d like to visit some of the other true IMAX monster theaters someday.

When I am in the seats, I always feel like I’m about to pitch forward into nothingness.

@f00l the Reading one is on the list you linked is all. We have a big dome IMAX at the Museum of Science in Boston.

@jbartus
Since that theater is Reading is newer, it’s prob better than the one here.
Except one thing, I bet it doesn’t have any shrunken heads.

Do you also feel like you’re gonna fall outta your seat there? Is it a DOME or conventional?

@f00l conventional. The one in Boston is a dome. It probably doesn’t have shrunken heads either since it’s at a science museum not a history museum.

@conandlibrarian I um… did slightly better. If it makes you feel any better I am 420th overall.

Sorry for your crappy weekend!

@conandlibrarian I’m currently in first place. In the other league I’m playing in with a different username that tracks low score based on all eight screens played. Of course, I’m tied for first place with like 10 other players - HA. I doubt that lead will last long though, too easy to pick a low revenue best performer sometime during the season and suddenly have your total jump $2 million.

As far as the traditional game (such as the one here) goes, I need to either find a way to completely block off my schedule for the half hour before screens lock on Friday or quit giving a shit - it isn’t that I give two shits about coming in first (winning), it is that I find it too frustrating (personally, internally) to know I basically beat myself by not being able to better control my schedule to have free time prior to the screens locking down (like time spent re-ordering my bottom four would have been nice - I would not have changed my top four). But you know what they say about control . . .

Maybe I just need to learn to embrace the ‘Mehness’ of it all.

@Pavlov
Ideally one locks down that late due to late data checks?

@conandlibrarian I am tied for tenth with my all WW2 lineup (plus Trolls because that’s how much $ I had left). That’s better than I did all last season.

@jbartus How’s that fantasy football season going?

@f00l Yes, to allow for the latest numbers that morning to be published and rolled into estimates. There are screen counts that can change on Friday AM too - it is rare, but it happened a couple of times last season. Also, there are a bunch of highly ranked players that share their screens via private (and a few public) Twitter feeds around 10 minutes prior to lock-down. You’ve then got a few minutes to comparatively go back and decide if you want to adjust based on BP/PC probabilities. If you’re playing to win, you live and die by the BP/PC money. And you can’t reliably account for that bonus money on Thursday. It can be done, but I’d argue it is pure luck if you pick and hit early more than three or four times in a season.

@sammydog01 I gave up on that shit, the world conspired to shit on me.

@Pavlov for what it’s worth I made my pick this week Wednesday and ended up not changing it

@jbartus Cool - maybe we can make a Google doc where we can dump our picks by Wednesday midnight and then go back and compare how they would have held up. That would be fun! Seeing how things change on Friday with final picks vs. how they look earlier in the week would be interesting - I’d even award a prize for best Wednesday picks - Can you do that (make the doc)? We could open it to everyone here . . . I’m an idiot when it comes to Google docs and online sharing, etc. - confuses the shit out of me and I never get it right and I get frustrated. If someone sets it up (a mechanism to place picks in on Wednesday and have it lock or timestamp and have it viewable / shared) I’ll find a decent prize to give out or throw together one of my famous fuku to award to whomever gets best picks by locking in on Wednesday. We could run the mini contest for maybe half the season or something for shits and giggles. What are your thoughts?

@Pavlov I’ll get that set up. Starting it next week or?

@jbartus Sounds great - thanks! I say let’s run it week 2 through 9 for a total of eight weeks of play (we may have to figure out how we’ll approach a split week if they have one on FML but we can all discuss that here in thread) - I’ll find a prize and post details for that tomorrow (or I’ll throw together a fuku and leak one or two items that will be guaranteed to be in it). I say we lock 'em in by midnight Eastern on Wednesday nights and we compute the weekly winner off Box Office Pro’s numbers late Monday nights - we’ll add 2 mil a screen for BP and 5 mil on top of that for PC. It’ll be fun to see if most people play what they choose early or if they change picks later in the week. But, we can really open it to anyone here - not just people already in the league - it’ll be fun. Once you have it, I’ll post a new thread on Monday alerting people to the contest with an explainer and link to the shared doc.

@conandlibrarian I am feeling so much better about my low placement this week. It looks like everyone is very close together, with a good chunk of us only being separated buy a few hundred thousands. It looks like the bonus will make a huge difference this week.

@Pavlov fyi this is not forgotten and will be ready to go as soon as pricing for week 2 is available. Submissions willbe via Google Forms feeding a Google Sheet with public viewing for transparent proceedings. Forms will generate timestamps that will all be in consistent time zones and cannot be gamed. Can also set expiration on the form.

@jbartus Awesome! Thanks - I’ll throw together a prize and post details Monday now that I know for sure

I’m sure @MrsPavlov will take care of things on my end if I happen to emerge victorious.

@jbartus Hey, could you please make a thread / posting about the contest for me if you have time / get this before I am able to? I’m slammed at the office and I my evening looks shot to shit - I’ll throw together a nice fuku as a prize - mehmbers will need the link to the form / doc you made and know the contest is open for everyone. Thanks in advance!

@Pavlov @jbartus This is a cool idea! I’m pretty sure my results are mostly luck; I’m one of those who doesn’t change from Wed inputs (unless I don’t get a chance to work on it at all til later). I’m not sure what to check after that, except maybe late theater expansion. Haven’t even found where to find Thurs night results before FML locks in on Fri

@Pavlov working on it now had to wait for the new screen prices to come up and then had to help my brother get his internet working at his new apartment.

@Pavlov A thought occurs (given the goat shenanigans of late) – how do we want to prevent people entering in someone else’s name? I can limit it to single submissions enforced via Google account or possibly at least have it tied to Google account to verify the identity of the entry. This would prevent people sabotaging others by entering in their name and/or putting multiple entries then claiming some were fraudulent to favor their best performer.

I hate having to think like this but I would never have expected someone to fuck with the goat nomination process either.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@jbartus
I don’t even use the Meh email address for think - I think I don’t.

Not sure

@jbartus you could just have everyone send their entries to a private email as well as putting it on the doc- then if there are any signs of fuckery you could check the emails

@Pantheist I think I’m gonna just do the google account thing. People can sign up for a free gmail account if need be. The way it works it requires a sign in to submit and they can edit their entry if we choose to let them so it limits things nicely.

@jbartus works- I haven’t really managed google docs for groups so didn’t know how that worked.

@Pantheist @Pavlov @f00l @compunaut IT’S ALIVE

https://meh.com/forum/topics/mediocre-fantasy-movie-league-early-bird-cineplex-contest-open-to-all

@compunaut

Haven’t even found where to find Thurs night results before FML locks in on Fri

Deadline.com has a good run-down on Thursday night real revenue numbers that is published on late Friday mornings (https://deadline.com/v/box-office/). Sometimes they post right up to 5 minutes prior to league lock, so you have to keep checking. Occasionally they don’t publish or they wait until later in the day. Generally though, the Thursday night numbers, if they are going to be released by the studios, will be reported in the press by Friday noon Eastern. Also, Box Office Mojo updates their weekend number projections (at the bottom of the page) on Friday AM too - just follow the link from the top left of their main page to the weekend projections each week. For Friday AM metrics, those would be good starting points. There are screen counts and other metrics you can find (weekly) by really digging in to the research pages on the league site. Hope this helps.

@Pavlov This sounds like way too much effort. I think I’ll stick to my very scientific () method of using information that’s available Tuesday

@sammydog01 Arrival is most definitely a chick flick. Just sayin’.

@Pavlov Crap! I thought it was science fiction. I just look at the pictures.

@sammydog01 Amy Adams is the star of Arrival. Tho it is science fiction, there’s loads of drama. Love her work, but some people might dismiss it as to “chick-heavy”.
Do you watch the trailers to see if you like them?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Pavlov @sammydog01 I just watched it today. I wouldn’t call it a chick flick. It was definitely sci-fi.

@compunaut That’s a thought- maybe next week.

@sammydog01 @RiotDemon It is science fiction - but the movie is a complete chick flick at heart, IMO.

I enjoyed the movie overall - had some issues with it technically and with the script in a few places, but overall I really liked it. One of the biggest issues for me was that the ending was too long - but that may have been my being critical of a movie that expects us to examine (internally) the concept of time non-linearly, when the only manner in which we may experience time from within this dimension is linearly. I can understand (abstractly) that time is in fact a flat circle, but it is impossible for me to experience it as such. Also, once you ‘get’ the hook in the movie, the remainder of the film is superfluous past a certain point, IMO.

Made me cry = chick flick.

@Pavlov I didn’t cry. Was I supposed to?

I guess I was too annoyed at the old couple right across from me that apparently bought tickets to the wrong movie because they spent the first ten minutes asking what they were watching and if they should leave, once they figured out they had meant to watch something else. Then one of them fumbled with their phone for way too long, announcing they were trying to put it on vibrate. Then throughout the movie they kept asking each other if they understood what was happening because the other person was confused.

I ended up shushing them a few times because they weren’t even attempting to whisper. At the end, I got dirty looks while leaving the theatre. Fuck them. I spent money to watch this shit, at least try to be polite. Not like the movie was loud, and they kept talking through the really quiet talking parts. Ugh. This is why I go to movies before noon, but this one wasn’t playing then.

@Pavlov

examine (internally) the concept of time non-linearly, when the only manner in which we may experience time from within this dimension is linearly. I can understand (abstractly) that time is in fact a flat circle, but it is impossible for me to experience it as such.

More
Drugs

Use a philosophical approach when you consider what and how much.

You will not be able to remember exactly what you thought you experienced. But you will likely remember how it felt.

PS. This is a really really bad thing to do. For so many reasons. Even for college-age people. Don’t do this. Bad bad bad idea.

@RiotDemon I’m sorry you had that experience at the theater. It is worth viewing again in a quieter setting, IMHO.

SPOLIER AHEAD - STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW

For me, there was a central theme within the film which really hit deeply. Louise has technically already done everything that we see her doing since it’s happening both in and out of time, in the past and the future. So, is Louise destined to have already made all of her own decisions? And, by that regard, does she simply have to resign herself to never feeling in control of her choices ever again? It’s the free will versus predestined debate, and there are arguments for both. And in the manner it was presented in the film, it broke me down. Hard.

@f00l

You will not be able to remember exactly what you thought you experienced. But you will likely remember how it felt.

Exactly. There and back again. There and back again . . .

@Pavlov
Hah hah. It did snow in my face. All sorts of diff kinds of snow. So I learned something after all.

There were plenty of other ways - non-chemical - to trip. Books. Ideas. Politics. Coding. Math. Science. Lit. Languages. Parenting. Travel. Survival. Film. Music. Dance. Social interaction. Business. Growing things. Hunting clean and sober for food. Family. Sailing. Running. And more. If you take the right approach. Doesn’t mean being irresponsible.

The fucking world was so alive then. Or perhaps I was young.

There are other non-chemical ways to experience time differently also. But several of them involve grad school in the hard sciences.

PS they have various models of time. But no one knows what time fucking is. And I suspect they never will, not fully, even as far out as you can imagine our species. Serious (math) work has been done on this - on knowing - that could be seen to point that way. Our methods of knowing - with biological brains and with {language and logic} as we experience those tools to build a model with - would not seem to encompass knowing all and everything as a possible endpoint.

Which is cool by me.

Hamlet:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Than in anyone’s philosophy. All good.

@f00l On the topic of human perceptions of time - dig in really deep sometime with the Doctrine of Eternal Return . . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return

Then again - maybe . . .

http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

@sammydog01 Sounds like you have the same lineup as me

@Pantheist I don’t think I used Arrival this week, but I don’t care enough to check.

@Pavlov
One thing that many younger people don’t understand about the boomer generation:

Films could be great, but if you didn’t live where there was a reperatory filmhouse or art house or museum series, you didn’t get to see that much variety. Big city or university was where you saw Jules and Jim.

TV was - well, you know what TV was then. Had its moments: Monty Python, the Prisoner; but all too predictable.

People had music. Nice to grow up on a musical culture where the quality and creativity still astonish. Amazing how much time kids spent playing music loud to annoy their parents.

And - this is huge - they - we - read. Its almost impossible for someone today, living in the media and connected and instant momentary cultures, to understand how much people read. 100x more than the War generation. Or 1000x. SF. Fantasy. Classics. History. Romance. Long books. Serious fiction. Philosophy. Junk. Porn (remember written porn in paperback?!). Commonplace for your average young person to have read one or several books up for a National Nook Award.

People read so much that it wasn’t all that unusual to find someone with no particular intellectual pretentions or ambitions in their lives - say, a nurse or mechanic - who had just finished something by Kierkegaard or a translation of Cicero or some Eastern culture major religious work. Book is abstruse and 1200 pages? No prob! People might work thru a little every coffee break.

And all that reading gave a conceptual framework to the cultural madness (Life Magazine’s cover story “Revolution” In 1969). And to the transformation of the arts and music and everyone’s intent to “break on through” Huxley’s Doors of Perception to the other side. And to the educational and drug and war and life experiences.

Talking to one’s parents, or to the boomers who didn’t read and didn’t adventure with that open mind was like a simultaneous translation experience. You had to remember to speak in language that fit their framework.

The war generation’s hard work, and the economic opportunities from the war period, combined with the discipline and work and optimism of the war generation-come-home created the richest generation of overeducated children ever. With books and music and trad films, not “multimedia”.

The boomers didn’t understand the unheard-of economic luxury and unique place in economic history we’d been handed. But we sure ran with it.

If you haven’t encountered this book:

Dispatches
Michael Herr was assigned as a war reporter in Vietnam by Esquire Mag. This is the book that came out of it.

https://www.amazon.com/Dispatches-Michael-Herr/dp/0679735259

From Wikipedia:
Reception

John le Carré described Dispatches as “the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time” and it featured in the journalism section of The Guardian’s 100 greatest non-fiction book list in 2011.[1]

In screenplays

Several of the fictional (composite character) soldiers mentioned in the book were used as the basis for characters in the movies Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatches_(book)

Here, if you have not read it, here are some quotes; to whet the appetite:

“There was such a dense concentration of American energy there, American and essentially adolescent, if that energy could have been channeled into anything more than noise, waste and pain it would have lighted up Indochina for a thousand years.”

“There was a black marine called Philly Dog who’d been a gang lord in Philadelphia and who was looking forward to some street fighting after six months in the jungle, he could so the kickers what he could do with some city ground. (In Hue he turned out to be incredibly valuable. I saw him pouring out about a hundred rounds of .30-caliber fire into a breach in the wall, laughing, ‘You got to bring some to get some’; he seemed to be about the only man in Delta Company who hadn’t been hurt yet.)”

@f00l

And - this is huge - they - we - read.

I asked my son just this evening as he was asking Siri for definition after definition of different vocabulary words to complete his homework if he knew how to use a dictionary. He replied, “Yes, but no one uses a book anymore.”

Shudder.

I’ve got Dispatches in the hardcover first edition published by Knopf, 1977. Actually used that book maybe more than any other single source for my thesis at UC Santa Cruz (Go Slugs!).

@Pavlov
I got it in paperback when it first hit. Read it so many times and lent it to so many people I wore it out. By now I’ve been they I dunno how many copies because books vanish over time.

When someone asks me what it was like back then if you were young, I tell them to play something trippy and read that book.

There is a fundamental diff in the brain between a generation that reads 1000 page heavy duty books all the time and one for whom a blog post is too long.

Dunno what it means.

@Pavlov

Go Slugs? Honestly?

@f00l Go Slugs!

@f00l

Yup.

@jbartus
@Pavlov

Well. hell. Do they go faster if you encourage them with salt?

@Pavlov
Can I ask for what was your thesis topic?

@f00l - PhD in Film and Visual Studies

@Pavlov
I think I knew that much. That you had a PhD in film. Ever teach ()?

I meant what is the title of the work or topic you produced and defended. (Or, you could call it the monstrous bribe you paid for an Honorable Discharge if you’re feeling cynical.)

Or did you make a film?

Go Slug!

(Omg a sports team that, no matter how great, is its own perpetual kid’s joke. Just thinking the words in the phrase turns me into a snickering 4 year old. I bet the students and alumni wouldn’t change out the mascot even in exchange for all Bill Gates’ $.)

I keep imagining a Mark Twain novella about The Magnificent Slugs.

@f00l If I publish here the name of the dissertation, I could potentially be doxxed and I really don’t want that to happen, I like having fun here and being frank, cutting loose, without worrying about if it will come back on me one day (and believe it or not 99% of what I write here is true and the PTA mom’s would have a field day with this shit) - right now I still have plausible deniability . . . suffice it to say the thesis was in the general sense about how a specific time period in a specific country could be recreated using film. Yes, a film was involved. Yes, I used to teach (on again and off again when I felt like it kind of thing) at a local Art Institute. Yes, I understand the rage face.

@Pavlov
There are reasons besides laziness and distractibility and fatal immaturity as to why I don’t have a PhD. At a certain point one might realize one doesn’t want the career that goes with. (ok I would have been better off if I’d taken the career, but that water’s gone to the sea ages ago.)

or at a certain point you realize that you honestly picked a grad school in NYC not because it was a serious program (it was), but rather because you’d seen all those film and music listings in the New Yorker and the Village Voice for all those years, and you wanted to be a grownup kid let loose in the ultimate big city of ideas and chatter.

This is death to one’s mathematical ambition. Math is so abstract that if fanaticism or obsession doesn’t carry you 2/3 of the way, you prob won’t get there. It’s just takes too much concentrated endurance to get into the headspace - once you get past the first years, on some days it can take hours to do the mental/conceptual prep just to get mentally close to the area or problem you are trying to look at.

Of course some students actually possessed work habits. Alas … poor @f00l. Ok my work always got done. Was fine. I was one who was either intimidated by my professors (major serious social anxiety, not intellectually intimidated) or just interested in something else so I badgered them about my own fav of the day. And $ was an issue in NYC as a student and one day I didn’t wanna be one anymore. This is commonplace in math. You burn out (you can’t even talk to the next student about your work, the person won’t have time and energy to go there; let alone fam or friends) - or you get so fascinated in a particular area that you won’t put effort into anything else. These students almost never get their degrees which is fine because it’s way hard to get on tenure track. And I would have been trying right when the Wall came down. What’s some peanut American PhD worth when you can hire a world-famous Russian or East German who thinks that $50k a year is riches beyond riches?

NYC was a trip of its own tho.

Here is a good story. (I honestly was not present and only heard about it later.)

So I knew these two guys who had roomed together at Colombia undergrad. Great friends. One was working for the city, and no-one in his dept of whatever would deal with computer probs. So he was, much to his own astonishment, becoming a v serious geek, having been a history major or similar.

The other was on an extended legal internship before he went to some big name law monstrosity. Ha-vad perhaps, I think. Not sure anymore.

So the pre-law guy just happened to be part of a minor serious family w money and influence. And part of his inheritance was an actual genuine Rembrandt drawing.

So one evening the two guys were hitting the bars with the gf’s and in this era alcohol wasn’t all people did openly at bars. I don’t what what went into the mix, but I think it included a quite a bit more than just whiskey and Vit C.

So the night wore on and they were speculating on how great it would be if the Rembrandt drawing weren’t so lonely anymore and became part of a pair. I mean, why have just one? Who would do that?

And then they’d been kicked out well past 2am from some bar (perhaps Soho?), and hailed a taxi to head home. Upper West. And here’s where there is some sort of partial blackout, and no one remembers anything clearly.

Somehow when memories start to function again, they weren’t at home. They were in Central Park at the Metropolitan Museum and the taxi is long gone. And the gf’s are gone. And they were around the back or side and planning their assault and one of them was trying to figure out how to climb the building and the other was trying to figure out a plan for “inside”.

And they are still planning with verve whatever they had been planning during the blackout period - which seems to involve the idea of liberating another Rembrandt drawing to go with the one the law guy owned legit. And their moods were almost all “action” but perhaps that was starting to fade. Cause they kept looking at each other like “I’m game if you’re game. You’re not gonna call it off, are you?” And within a few minutes they were wondering if perhaps this was the worst idea in history and perhaps they weren’t quite sober enuf to think this thru, let alone attempt. And they figured at last it was time to leave. Quietly and ASAP.

So they kinda woke up enuf to return close to a normal world of judgement and wound up taking some circuitous route thru the edge of the park a ways south in hopes they won’t be seen. And back to Fifth Ave. Another taxi. Home for real this time.

Turns out the gf’s were there at the apt asleep or passed out. Turns out the gf’s were close to passing out in the 1st cab, and the guys perhaps had paid Mr Taxi Driver the big bucks to get his promise to walk the gf’s to the lockable front door of the building? The driver must have spoken English in that case. I’m not sure what story the guys gave their gf’s about their intentions. Perhaps the gf’s were to the point where stories would have been too much trouble to become conscious for anyway. No-one was in a state to know.

Or so the fading memories seemed to indicate? One of the gf’s was sure the guys had personally taken them home and gotten the taxi driver to wait for the guys to reappear. I’m not sure the gf’s knew at the time or for a few weeks or longer after where the guys had really gone that night. There was some embarrassment. Way after, yes. A few people knew. I heard about it from the geek one I think years later when we were seriously messed up someplace or other. But the other one later privately confirmed - and showed me a photo of his drawing which was in some bank.

And so nobody got all that close to stealing a Rembrandt drawing in a state of mad adventure that night. They seem not to have encountered Museum security. The law guy did mention that getting caught might have seriously messed up his law career and that his Grandmother (a Power) Would Not Have Been Happy.

Even Grandmother (a Roaring Twenties type) finally heard about it and found reason to mention it privately to the law guy every once in a while to his embarrassment and amusement. Let it be said that the law guy liked to drink with his grandmother every so often so you can guess where she got the story. She was something else in her own right. FWIW, the straighter-laced parents appeared never to have heard.

His family was of those types of families - Easterners with generations of social dignity who know how to handle these little wayward incidents. The law guy said Grandmother had some stories of her own. He would never tell hers tho. The two were pretty tight.

Or the whole thing was an exaggeration or a put on. Perhaps. Or not.

@Pantheist I’m in sixth place. Did everyone else quit?

@sammydog01

I’m at a stellar 34th place.

I did pick without knowing the film titles I was choosing, cause “wonderful app” and was in a hurry.

That’s a way bad excuse isn’t it? I’ll have to find better excuses. Easier than finding better films.

@sammydog01 @f00l 8th for me, but I was in 2nd, and there’s a big gap between 8th and 7th. For the week I’m in 20th.

@sammydog01 @Pantheist I’m falling in the rankings like a stone . . . back to the not being able to find time on Friday AM issue (and the finding time issue is just going to get worse as this season continues on for me - but that’s okay as I am still in first place in my other league in which one strives to be in last place - LOL). I’m not complaining, I’m having fun - and this little contest is proving more interesting to me than the main game in many respects.

@Pavlov

So you’re not going to the Rogue One premier? Or if we watched could we see you without recognizing you in some kinda penguin suit?

@Pavlov our contest or your race to the bottom one?

@jbartus our contest.

@f00l I am not going; I have already screened the completed film.

And yes, I am under embargo just like everyone else.

@Pavlov I’m curious to see the splits for next weekend

@Pavlov

Can you tell us if we’ll like it or would they remove body parts from you if you did?

Just:

Like Vs Meh?

Or not allowed?

@f00l I can tell you I have seen the completed film. I can tell you this only because many of us that were on the re-shoot / pick-up teams have seen the final film and such has been publicized.

Lucas has seen the film and he loves it.

@Pavlov

Good to know. Thx.

IMAX Dome Thursday.

@Pavlov Lucas saw it and liked it… so it’s junk?

@jbartus

Perhaps he’s got some
Distance now on overuse
Of bad cgi.

@f00l you mean screwing his ex out of royalties?

@jbartus

Those royalties. @f00l
Did not know he deprived his
Ex-Wife. @f00l has heard

He took her name off
Whatever he could, wrote her
Out of histories.

@f00l the whole reason we don’t get releases of the theatrical cuts on Modern formats is because he doesn’t want her to get any more royalties. I am hopeful that now that Disney is in charge this may change

@jbartus
I didn’t know cutting her out of royalties was a reason. I thought the reason he wouldn’t do theatrical cut releases is that he was so committed to his weird mid-life vision of “ruin everything, esp ruin it with cgi”.

But surely she’s still due royalties or something with the “revised, remastered, and extra-bad” versions? She had her fingers in and was involved in huge portions of of the footage and story, esp the editing of the originals, right? They can’t wipe her rights off the new releases, can they? Or did she give some rights up in the divorce?

When we - me & friends - saw the “improved” versions in theater, we cringed at new crap.

If he really keeps the originals off blu-ray to hurt her - well, the labels one applies to that conduct are pretty obvious, both re her and re the fans. That’s pretty far to take petty revenge for something decades old.

But whether he’s still playing divorce games or not, he’s never been a normal guy.

@f00l intellectual property law is complicated, when you change something to a certain extent you’ve created a new work and it can be separately copyrighted. There’s of course nothing official in writing about it or anything but that’s been one of the principle rumors for why they’ve refused to release the much-preferred theatrical cuts for decades now.

Marcia Lucas is often credited as being the secret behind the success of Star Wars, having been one of the three people who edited the original film (and having completely refactored the trench run scene from a dismal original scripting) to having made various contributions to the other two original films. She was one of George’s principal sounding boards for ideas and often told him the hard things that needed said. She even has an Oscar for her work on the franchise which is more than George can say. Divorce is such a messy business.

@somf69 wrong thread? For the contest we just need to know which of the three options you want to pick

@jbartus office party, fantastic beasts, edge of 17

@somf69 I am so confused…

@jbartus
WTF are you doing to be so good at this? And dies it take up significant time?

@f00l I spend maybe an hour on picking my theaters during the week across all days. On Monday I look at the new releases and contemplate what movies I think they are similar to, look up opening performances for those and guess at performance accordingly. On Wednesday I check theater counts and daily numbers for films already out in theaters and see how I think they’ll do based on their prior week’s performance and their week-over-week performance (how it did this Monday compared to last Monday for example). That’s where I get my picks for our side contest and my initial picks for the week. Depending on my schedule either late Thursday or Early Friday I make my final changes, if any. The big things to check are for late-breaking theater count updates and Thursday preview figures for new releases.

I spent more time this week preparing things for our side contest.

@jbartus

How do you get history for films similar to current films, and how they performed or fell off from week to week - esp similar films with similar competition during similar seasons?

@f00l Box Office Mojo. This should help you for this week:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=starwars7.htm

@jbartus
K thx.

@f00l you pick a movie you think is a comp then check out its opening weekend for other competition to see if it’s a good comp. For example you can see that TFA took a big chunk off of kids movies like The Good Dinosaur. It’s a pretty good bet that other kids movies will get a sharp decline this week compared to last.

@jbartus
I expect R1 to kill everything in its path.

They won’t be counting me in the revenues tho. Thursday tix.

@f00l industry practice is to roll Thursday ticket sales into Friday’s numbers.

@jbartus I suspect Trolls is gonna crash; Moana might still have a little juice. They both can’t survive R1.

@jbartus Why?

@compunaut because it makes life harder. The pricing is usually insane and the resulting theater combos are weird. It’s not nearly as cut and dry as most weeks are.

@jbartus Gives the rest of us a chance to get lucky & climb closer to the top. Skill, insight, & knowledge were not how I slipped into the top 5 last season

@dashcloud I took Saturday, Friday just took up so much of the budget and I thought I could make more money going deep on Moana and La La Land. Wish me luck!

@conandlibrarian I was so excited when the estimates came out and I was in first place! Turned out I was tied with $0 with everyone else. But it was a nice moment.

@sammydog01

I like to win too.

@conandlibrarian as far as I can tell it’s mostly luck. Drunken picks on Wednesday this week brought me from 30-something (35 maybe?) to 5.

@Pantheist I guess it depends where in the pack you’re popping up. I think it’s safe to say that myself and whoever Mopboy is have been doing some research.

@jbartus for effort vs reward I still think I’m doing alright.

@Pantheist oh certainly, just noting that some of us are doing research is all.

@jbartus fair enough. I don’t expect to win, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy with how well my gut-reaction method has been working.

@Pantheist it’s okay, come January I expect my performance to degrade unless I get lucky. Too many large commitments on my time from the work side of things, though I can at least try to get my picks in on the app each week it will very much become more gut oriented.

@jbartus well, that was short lived!

@jbartus

And I suck. Woohoo.

@Pantheist yeah Arrival finally died out

@Pantheist passengers was much better.

@RiotDemon Most people disagree: Passengers RT score=31/68, Arrival RT score=94/83. Note: Have not personally seen either yet, tho I’m pretty sure Amy Adams is a superior actress over JLaw.

@compunaut personal opinion of course.

@jbartus I thought you had an odd lineup

@Pantheist maybe I’ll luck out and some fluke will result in it being the perfect cinema?

@jbartus You’d definitely be the first to select it if it’s from last week

@Pantheist true story. Fingers crossed?

@jbartus hey- I’d be impressed.

@Pantheist me too!

@jbartus So maybe I will finally make the top 20! I have has a rough season.

@darksaber99999 yes, yes it is. I blame @ELUNO.

@PantHeist

Oh shit. I also forgot.

@PantHeist I thought the season was over since the other one ended.
Damnit @ELUNO.
Not that it matters much… I’m pretty much last out of all the people actually playing.

@f00l @PantHeist @RiotDemon it’s okay, I’m in 2nd place and after last week I’m nearly 100M back on the leader.

@PantHeist
For Got A Gain.

@jbartus in all seriousness, I kind of need to know for the thread I have to make tomorrow so I can list them as the winner.

/giphy mop boy

I need Plexiplex too for the new thread.