http://www.theonion.com/articles/us-authorities-cant-really-fault-alqaeda-for-deadl,19105/
Though I've only just started reading this, I think perhaps the author is too unfamiliar with this demographic in general to be able to write about this topic. Why does she put "fixin' to get another" in quotation marks? Sure, Deen talks that way, but that's not a particularly relevatory or interesting southernism or anything.
Also, writing an essay about your not-that-fun experience on a cruise invites comparison to that other essay about going on a cruise. You don't want that, Caity Weaver!
that other essay about going on a cruise
Moby-Dick?
1 reminds me of the time a couple of beards tried to blow up a bar near my office on the grounds that "it was full of filthy slappers", which frankly it was, though that's not a very good reason to want to blow it up.
that other essay about going on a cruise
"The Life of Olaudah Equiano".
As someone who quite enjoys cruises, which probably puts me in the minority of Unfogged commenters, I appreciated the exhaustiveness of her trip narrative as much as the Deen commentary.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080569/
I want my superpower to be ending long-form internet journalism and bringing back competent editors. Though I guess I could also get the results I want from the power of shooting flaming lasers from my hands.
I mean Jesus Christ that behemoth should have been maybe four paragraphs max.
I like longform pieces, but I feel that way about egregiously long movies. Fuck you endless false endings. Fuck you lingering shots on doorknobs. No movie should be over two hours.
Ninety minutes for movies, two hundred pages for books. Anything more has to be earned.
Not that I can actually bring myself to stop watching or reading long things. I just get annoyed with them.
No movie should be over two hours.
Take *that*, Claude Lanzmann!
I know the casual use of the word "racist" to describe everything under the sun makes sense on an academic level (kind of like "rape culture"), but this piece just looks like an exercise in baiting the poor unsophisticates who get defensive about being called "racist" and happen to make up about 90% of the white population.
That excerpt just looks like it was written by someone in an odd subculture. Imagine someone writing for the Focus On The Family magazine, saying "Everyone on the cruise was sinful, including me. The people who had hangovers Sunday morning. The people who butted ahead of each other in line. The women who flirted with men in the hopes of free drinks. I was sinful, because I was self-righteous in my expectation that people would be outraged by each other's behavior."
I agree about the long movies. Even if the movie is showing something ostensibly exciting, it can get old if it goes on too long. Titanic was annoying after about the eighth time Rose and Jack had to go below deck on the sinking ship. By the time they were in the water, I was cheering on hypothermia so I could go home.
21 - Yeah fair enough but let's be real, if you've signed up for the Paula Deen cruise you're probably pretty damn racist. Which did we need 10 billion words in a row of bloviation about from Gawker media? No.
You guys wouldn't be so upset about longform pieces if you had a good speed reading app.
Newsflash: even with a speed reading app, after several paragraphs, I've decided not to continue.
There's a new word in English, binge-watching. After 4 minutes of youtube becomes the new normal, it will be applied to sitting still for half an hour.
By the time they were in the water, I was cheering on hypothermia
Y'all are grumps. It was a nice story, well told, on a subject that's interesting: How ought we regard folks who come from a cultural place that's different from - and in significant ways inferior to - our own?
Sure, the answer is always the same: With charity, condescension and amusement. But it's a tough combination to pull off gracefully, and I thought she did fine.
18 Just read genre novels from the sixties and seventies. I always feel a bit hungry after reading one of them - an hour of meaningless escapist fiction just isn't enough.
Now, see, 27 is how it's not done. Instead of condescension, we get contempt - only somewhat redeemed by the fact that she's mocking her former self.
Take *that*, Claude Lanzmann!
And you too, Marcel Ophüls! Blah blah blah Nazis boo fucking hoo. Get to the point, whiners. tl;dw
Watching Titanic made me hate Kate Winslet's character with a passion. Stupid ass gets her lover killed by jumping off the lifeboat. Then throws away priceless jewels. Drown motherfuckers indeed.
Non-facetiously, I have nothing against super-long movies that don't suck. I would watch Shoah ten times in a row before I ever watched Titanic again.
You really do hate the Jews. Understandable.
34: In fact I've found I really get annoyed at very short nothingburger movies. Even if your movie sucks, I'm expecting to be transported out of the phlegm-bag of myself for more than 83 minutes.
The single worst movie I've ever seen was called 'Shining Through'. A friend had won free tickets to the Polish premiere somehow. Along with everyone else in the crowd, by the end of the movie we were cheering on the Nazis in the hope they'd kill the fucking heroes.
*To qualify for the 'worst movie' competition it has to be bad but in no way campy or over the top or anything like that, just pure tedious formulaic crap done really, really badly.
Essear gets it right: the length has to be earned. If it is earned, no problem. But economy is a virtue and probably 100 billion words about your trip on the Paula Deen cruise are not going to be earned, so edit your shit!
Shining Through, that's the one with Melanie Griffith right? I remember seeing the trailer for it in the theater and thinking that it looked pretty bad.
I don't think I would have guessed "had us cheering for the Nazis" bad, though.
I can't believe I wasn't here to write 35. Sometimes having a job really does cramp one's style.
How ought we regard folks who come from a cultural place that's different from - and in significant ways inferior to - our own?
Who's this we, Kemosabe?
the length has to be earned
The girth, however, can be achieved with this one weird trick! Click here to learn more.
From the Shining Through wikipedia page:
"It was while working on this film that Melanie Griffith became aware, for the very first time in her life, that Germans had done bad things to Jews during World War II, and she was quite outraged about it. This earned her the nickname "Brainiac" which was used in Toronto-area print media for some time afterward."
The problem with Titanic isn't that it's long. It's that it's shit. There's nothing wrong with good long movies. The Godfather is 2.5 hours long. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is nearly three hours long. It's when a film is drawn out way beyond its natural running time (Return of the King) that it becomes a problem, or if it would be terrible even at 90 minutes.
When I bought my first DVD player it came with various free DVDs, one of which was "Titanic". That toxic little nugget sat on the shelf under the TV for, literally, six years, gathering dust. I have never seen it, neither has my flatmate, neither of us ever want to. I think it went to a charity shop in the end.
Ginger is right: there are good long films, there are films that are good but too long, which would be better if shorter (American Hustle and similar Oscar-bait middlebrow efforts) and there are films that would be shite at any speed.
Editing editing editing. Though the best editor is Thelma Achoonmaker, Scorcese's long term editor, and Wolf of Wall Street (I hear) probably had like two too many orgies.
23
There's a new word in English, binge-watching. After 4 minutes of youtube becomes the new normal, it will be applied to sitting still for half an hour.
I've been depressed by how much Teresa and I stare at our phones while the TV is on. In my defense, sometimes I'm doing crosswords on my phone, which is kind of erudite, I guess. But still, my attention span was never that great and has definitely got worse since it became socially acceptable to do that kind of thing.
I also notice differences depending on what we're watching. Some shows and movies definitely force you to pay attention better than others. This correlates to overall quality, but not perfectly. Some generally good shows have long lingering shots to establish a mood or whatever, so, eh, I can fill in five clues in that time.
45: Return of the King was long, and probably had a few more long lingering shots than it needed, but in his defense, Jackson actually did leave out big chunks of the book. The fact that there's a Hobbit trilogy is inexcusable, though.
That last line was my Mom's review: "good movie, not sure it needed quite so many orgies."
47: Does the editor really make that kind of decision?
So I saw a headline somewhere or other to the effect that "lowbrow" and "highbrow", as concepts, derive from phrenology and racism. And my response was, "Not surprising, but does that mean they're not useful categories?"
I mean, sure, you shouldn't pigeonhole, every piece of culture is its own unique snowflake of inspiration, but what, exactly, would we gain from excising the various brows from our conceptions and making the parenthetical in 46.2 have to be wordier to express the same idea?
I'll just hang up and listen.
Also, did anyone notice me not being around here so much? (Probably not.) I've been on Unfogged a lot less since I discovered Reddit over a year ago. You people just aren't good enough at being a procrastinatory distraction.
Shite at any Speed
Ralph Nader's sequel to Unsafe about 1970s' downsized American car models.
53: Yes, and I took it personally.
Return of the King was long, and probably had a few more long lingering shots than it needed...
Fortunately, he really developed some discipline later on, and ruthlessly edited King Kong down to a lean 200 minutes.
Though the best editor is Thelma Achoonmaker,
Bless you.
Who's this we, Kemosabe?
Coastal types like me and academic types like some-folks-I-might-mention.
I have a young, non-coastal type who works for me, who rather sheepishly told the joke with the above punchline. She was worried about coming across as racist - because, you know, there's an ethnic aspect to the joke - and could barely complete the story. She seemed to have no awareness that everyone within earshot already knew the punchline.
A white guy - Jewish, actually, and very coastal - wrote me an e-mail afterward volunteering to explain to her why such crude behavior was completely unacceptable in an office environment. I was able to stall on my response, and by the time he and I talked it over, he acknowledged that it was probably too late to have any kind of conversation with her about it. But he predicted that this wouldn't be the last time she'd say something like this, and it was a situation that I was going to have to deal with.
So: Hypersensitive, politically correct liberals, not entirely a myth!
I like the joke that ends in "I said posse" better.
The single worst movie I've ever seen was called 'Shining Through'.
You've never seen a movie based on a Nicholas Sparks book?
The problem with Titanic isn't that it's long. It's that it's shit.....When I bought my first DVD player it came with various free DVDs, one of which was "Titanic". That toxic little nugget sat on the shelf under the TV for, literally, six years, gathering dust. I have never seen it, neither has my flatmate, neither of us ever want to. I think it went to a charity shop in the end.
I've seen it four times; I was making a lot of very long bus journeys around Australia, and McCaffreys were showing it on every one of their routes.
The bastards.
Though the best editor is Thelma Schoonmaker
It sort of blows my mind that she was married to Michael Powell.
God is that ever true. One marriage has 100% of the history of non-silent film in it up until now; Powell got his start working the silent era.
47, 64: Thanks! I enjoyed learning about her. I like this:
When asked how it was that such a nice lady could edit Scorsese's violent gangster pictures, Thelma replied with a smile, "Ah, but they aren't violent until I've edited them"
After Tarantino's editor died while walking her dog, Tarantino's movies became notably... less well edited.
67: I didn't know about Sally Menke either!
Django Unchained is the only movie Tarantino has made since she died - right?
I'm not saying Titanic is the best movie ever made, or that it couldn't have done with a 20% reduction in running time. But really, it's surely in the 75th or 80th percentile of movies ever made. Have you people even see The Lone Ranger (just to pick a recent one)?
Yes, you're right. Somehow I thought there was more evidence for the new lack of editing. But people definitely were a bit puzzled by Django's relatively sluggish pace.
69: I saw one in the 80s. It wasn't that bad.
Especially on a big screen, the flooding scenes in Titanic are great. The ship turning vertical, the water rising...great stuff. I'm a sucker for special effects.
I thought the whole Paula Deen thing was BS, like a lot of these virtual lynch mob things. I mean, who gives a shit what some obscure cooking show host said thirty years ago? So many places that energy could be better used.
The Lone Ranger
Mother of god that was bad. In recent memory though the prize still goes to the GI Joe with Dwayne Johnson. We ordered it though Amazon one night and even drunk we couldn't get past the first twenty minutes or so.
I watched it on a plane. It's bad bad bad but still in the 50th percentile of movies on United.
Mother of god that was bad.
Bad enough to make you start rooting for the Nazis?
Sponsors care, because customers (apparently not including you) care about what kind of world we're living in. The author of the OP is exactly right: people are going around acting as if what she did in 1987 was done in 1962. Newsflash assholes: the memo was long out by 1980.
The memo about racism or Type II diabetes?
I think it was also her rather lackluster approach to handling it. A bit of public apology with some self reflection might have made a huge difference. As is she went into a defensive crouch and let things spin out of control.
Especially on a big screen, the flooding scenes in Titanic are great. The ship turning vertical, the water rising...great stuff. I'm a sucker for special effects.
Like a lot of Cameron films, Titanic has plenty of decent sequences (OK, maybe not plenty, but a few). But nowhere near enough to sustain an entire movie, and basically none in the first hour and a half. Also the characters are loathsome and the narrative structure is like Spielberg at his most saccharine.
75: I wouldn't have minded a smallpox outbreak wiping everyone out.
the memo was long out by 1980
Certain cohorts from southern Georgia aren't so big on that type of memo.
Titanic vs Powell, NO CONTEST. Everyone should just watch I Know Where I'm Going and marvel at its fabulousness. The sequence in the boat was filmed on a sound stage, with buckets of water being thrown at them - screw special effects, when the story is that good, who cares???
I Know Where I'm Going! is one of my very very very favorite movies. I want all of Catriona's dogs.
Titanic vs Powell, NO CONTEST
Well, yes, obviously, but honestly every single one of, for example, the Fast and the Furious movies is better than Titanic, even Tokyo Drift. The Chronicles of Riddick is a better movie than Titanic. And those are just Vin Diesel movies.
I Know Where I'm Going is one of the absolute greatest ever of all time; basically all of the Archers films are among the best ever.
Vin Diesel playing D&D for seven hours vs. Titanic, go.
Okay, I'll up the stakes. Vin Diesel playing a Titanic-themed D&D module for seven hours.
You want more? Fine! Vin Diesel playing a Titanic-themed D&D module as Kate Winslets character (who is also a paladin) for seven hours.
I even love the 49th Parallel which is a pro-Canadian propaganda movie. How could a pro-Canadian propaganda movie be good? And yet it is, it's so great.
In recent memory though the prize still goes to the GI Joe with Dwayne Johnson.
This is embarrassing to admit, but I thought that was an acceptable bad movie. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody looking for good acting or a plot that made sense but personally I thought it was better than the first one.
even Tokyo Drift.
Wow, I haven't seen Titanic but Tokyo Drift is clearly the worst of the Fast and Furious movies, and one I feel a genuine antipathy for (as long as I'm having opinions about bad movies, I thought 3,2, and 6 are the worst of the F&F movies, in that order, with a significant separation between Tokyo Drift and the other two).
Movies like Titanic and Independence Day remind me of how poor my taste in movies was when I was a teenager. Netflix serves that purpose now.
Roll 1d12 for 8 or higher to be sketched topless while wearing absurdly expensive jewelery.
I will however, sign onto the general love for Michael Powell (how could I not) and I Know Where I'm Going.
94: INT check against jewel holding. Roll 1 or better to not be stupid enough to drop the giant jewel in the ocean.
a Titanic-themed D&D module
Here's my elevator pitch: Orcs on a Sinking Ocean Liner. It's like Titanic meets Lord of the Rings meets Snakes on a Plane.
I thought the subtext of the jewel dropping was clear. She did it to keep Bill Paxton/Pullman from killing her and her granddaughter for it.
91: Yes! It is so great! I own it! (And of course IKWIG.)
97: The Actual God Poseidon Experiment
98: I've never actually seen it. Bill Paxton/Pullman doesn't seem very threatening, though. Does he have a cursed sword?
Some shows and movies definitely force you to pay attention better than others.
Foreign movies with subs not dubs. Just saying.
Last night was Dream of the Red Chamber, Shaw Brothers 1962. I'm like, wait, this is a musical...no very little dialogue...it's an opera? And wait, is Bao-Yu always played by a woman? Why does he have a birdcage on his head?
It was all fucking neat. Gorgeous set decoration and costumes. I gather some of the nuances of the novel were sacrificed. The subs felt quite adequate, poetic but unforced during the songs.
Some people prefer the Brigitte Lin 1977 version.
He doesn't seem that threatening, but he's spent umpteen millions searching the ocean for that gem. I don't think he's going to go, "Oh, you've had it all along. Enjoy."
Of course I Know Where I'm Going. Of course. Everything in that movie is incredibly fucking HOTTT. Wendy Hiller is the proverbial librarian whipping off her glasses. The studmuffin I bet has a chestrug puts Connery to shame. Oh, and the island and dogs.
Canterbury Tales is very nice.
86, 87, 89: Why do you keep stacking the deck against Titanic. It's not like it needs it.
Thankfully, I've never seen any of the movies you are all tossing about.
Re: Powell, I've never watched Peeping Tom, I don't want to risk it being too awful. How bad is it, really??? Aaargh.
I might be on or very near Foula later this year! The Edge of the World is so so so so so good.
Random also excellent movie from UK surprisingly not better known, Genevieve. Extremely funny, and then at a certain point both funny and appalling. About half way through our kid was splitting his sides, and we soberly told him to pay close attention so that if ever in future life he found himself acting like the John Gregson character to STOP IMMEDIATELY and reevaluate all life choices.
Thankfully, I've never seen any of the movies you are all tossing about.
Re: Powell, I've never watched Peeping Tom, I don't want to risk it being too awful. How bad is it, really??? Aaargh.
I might be on or very near Foula later this year! The Edge of the World is so so so so so good.
Random also excellent movie from UK surprisingly not better known, Genevieve. Extremely funny, and then at a certain point both funny and appalling. About half way through our kid was splitting his sides, and we soberly told him to pay close attention so that if ever in future life he found himself acting like the John Gregson character to STOP IMMEDIATELY and reevaluate all life choices.
I never watched enough Kay Kendall before I stopped watching English-language media.
||
James Lovelock ...says it's all over
"But it transpires that this is largely a tactical response; he regards it as merely more rearrangement of Titanic deckchairs, "but I've learnt there's no point in causing a quarrel over everything". He saves his thunder for what he considers the emptiest false promise of all - renewable energy.?"
Titanic? Oh, how to respond to the coming apocalypse.
Well, poor people in the holds went all "Oh shit." Rich brutal coercing patriarchs stood on deck, got drunk, and went down with the ship.
The smarter sex grabbed all the lifeboats, and carried their romantic self-serving sorrow to their graves. "For me. He died for me.."
We'll see. Actually I won't.
|>
Fucked up the good quote.
But he fears we won't invent the necessary technologies in time, and expects "about 80%" of the world's population to be wiped out by 2100. Prophets have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, he says. "But this is the real thing."
I'm going to go with the under on the 80% of the population dead by 2100 bet.
80% of the people alive now might be dead by 2100.
I can't enter that in my calendar. It doesn't have an "all century" box.
1st class women survivors 97%
2nd class women survivors 86%
Women crew survivors 87%
3rd class children survivors ........34%
I actually went back to this just now because maybe I could come up with a story blaming the capitalism and maybe a whole lot of 3rd class women gave up their seats for other people's children
3rd class women survivors 46%
Probably not so much. And no, 3rd class wasn't entirely left to fend for itself.
Not surprisingly, most people can agree that long movies aren't always bad but then not agree on which ones are too long or too bad. Some of the movies naned in this thread as examples of long movies that are good are movies I could barely sit through.
It's almost like people have individual tastes.
Well, they do now. But not after the revolution.
Almost, but actually some people just have none!
I loved both I Know Where I'm Going and 49th Parallel. I doubt Harper's Canada would be so keen to celebrate diversity.
In Her Shoes is a middle-of-the-road movie that is made better by being extra long. If it was a predictable 100 minutes, it would have been fluff, but the director lets the actresses inhabit the meandering source material to good effect. It helps that the director is Curtis Hanson, but you can see where someone else would have been forced to make it zippy.
I thought I hated Titanic until I saw Avatar and realized that's what a big, bad movie looks like.
I was going to say "fuck no" to the whole idea that taking something middling and making it way longer could possibly elevate it, but then I realized that this is exactly what I think of Julia (the one starring Tilda Swinton). And while I don't think Celine et Julie Vont en Bateau is middling by any measure it would be probably just awful if made too short and is magnficent as is.
But the recentish mode of making movies extra long on the apparent premise that being over two hours adds automatic gravitas, or something, makes me cranky. So cranky!
I thought I hated Titanic The Abyss until I saw Avatar Titanic and realized that's what a big, bad movie looks like.
Just to clarify, the slur is not the only or even the primary reason to be appalled at Deen. She wanted to have black waiters for an event because of her romanticized view of slavery. Slavery! There is no statute of limitations that can excuse that.
And a much longer transcript, which makes clear she was given several opportunities to walk back her statement and agree that she would have liked to have professional servers of any race. Nope.
http://www.grubstreet.com/2013/06/paula-deen-racist.html
And those are just Vin Diesel movies.
That reminds me, I saw the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy today and even though I don't know the first thing about those characters holy shit am I excite. A machine-gun-toting raccoon!
126: Hey, I rather like The Abyss, at least the first two-thirds of it. It didn't seem overlong either (terrible ending though).
127: I got invited to a ball last year where the theme was The British Empire. They had Zulu dancers outside as you arrived and everything. Fortunately the press never got wind of it.
Christ you people are ignorant sluts. Titanic is a good movie. Movies are a shallow, visceral art form. The point of some movies is just over-the-top spectacle, which Titanic manages. There are no ways in Titanic dumber than Star Wars or The Matrix.
I though the recent Lone Ranger movie wasn't bad, though it had a weird, disorganized plot. The action sequence with two trains was fucking awesome, in the shallow, visceral style that movies are best at.
I think you can reasonably argue that Titanic had sufficiently good spectacle to have been a good movie it is were cut to the length of Star Wars. But if Star Wars had another hour stuck onto it, you'd to notice how stupid it was while you were watching it instead of noticing twenty years later while sitting through The Phantom Menace's interminable exposition.
Christ you people are ignorant sluts. Titanic is a good movie. Movies are a shallow, visceral art form. The point of some movies is just over-the-top spectacle, which Titanic manages. There are no ways in Titanic dumber than Star Wars or The Matrix.
I bow to nobody in my love of visceral spectacle. But, crucially, neither Star Wars nor The (original) Matrix are boring. Whereas Titanic is really fucking tedious until they hit the iceberg. I will find comity with people saying Avatar is a worse movie than Titanic, though.
"Hey, let's provide a biochemical basis for our mystical force as well as finally show people what our bad-ass warrior class does when it sits down to trade negotiations."
I can't watch I Know Where I'm Going because it gives me Whitesnake earworms.
if Star Wars had another hour stuck onto it, you'd to notice how stupid it was
Counterargument: Star Wars is still not stupid with another four hours stuck on to it, as you can tell by the popularity of watching the entire trilogy at a sitting.
The action sequence with two trains was fucking awesome,
Lack of coffee meant I misread this as "The action sequence with two trains fucking was awesome". Which it would have been, of course.
138: We will not speak of the other seven hours.
Ooh, ooh! I have a contrarian opinion!
Since others have leapt to the defense of Titanic, which was indeed an entertaining flick, I will offer this: The best of the Star Wars trilogy was the original movie, and not the quite-good-but-overrated Empire Strikes Back.
That's not really very contrarian. Come back when you can argue that Phantom Menace was better than all of the original three.
Star Wars episodes IV-VI prior to the re-edits and additional CGI is awesome, especially V. Post 'fixing' it's moderately awesome, though having the Death Star explode with a ring of flame jetting out makes no sense. It's spherically symmetric, the reactor is in the center, there is nothing to generate a ring! Lots of stupidity like that in the remixes. Greedo shoots first indeed. And the goddamn additional footage of Jabba the Hutt was especially bad.
Episodes VII, through IX suck balls but you still have to watch them because Star Wars. Jar-Jar Binks, ffs. Stepin Fetchit frog. Meesa Puke-a.
144.2: those are episodes I-III. Episode VII is in pre-production now.
The best Star Wars movie was the original Battlestar Galactica.
140: they're obviously not Virgin Trains. http://www.virgintrains.co.uk/
144 is why I will never re-watch any of the Star Wars movies again. I can't figure out how which edition to watch before all the CGI and re-editing and other crap was put in. It's just too confusing. Also, confession: I'm a big movie and TV Scifi fan but I think the Star Wars movies are just meh.
They had Zulu dancers outside as you arrived and everything. Fortunately the press never got wind of it.
As long as no blackface was involved you should be good. Please tell me no blackface was involved.
It's spherically symmetric, the reactor is in the center, there is nothing to generate a ring!
Asymmetrical mass distribution near the explosion could generate an asymmetrical explosion. If you have a thin disc of polymer next door to a nuclear explosion, it no longer generates a sphere of plasma - it's more spindle-shaped with the axis of the spindle the same as the axis of the disc. Freeman Dyson and that lot did the calculations back in the fifties. Project name CASABA, as far as I remember, but the computer code's still classified.
148.2: no blackface was involved. And the waiters were almost all white, so I think we should be OK.
142: Bah. Serious Star Wars contrarians defend the holiday special.
149: True, you need a rod to generate a ring. A disk generates two oppositely directed jets. That was the trick behind CASABA, and the propulsion concept for Orion. As far as I can recall it was actually tested in underground tests, but it's been a while since I read George Dyson's book on it so I may be misremembering.
Vaguely related, there's video of the C4 powered Orion test vehicle. I love this concept. There's more video out there but it's mostly boring futzing around on the test stand.
150: So the servers were all Americans and ANZACs? How appalling.
153: no; to represent the institutionalised violence underpinning the imperial project, they were all British soldiers.
The new CGI stuff in Star Wars has no impact on whether it's worth watching or not. I like all the new stuff with Jabba and his court of revelers.
As for "Greedo shoots first", that is maddening, but really who cares about Greedo?
We just need to sustain the campaign to remind people that Greedo did not indeed shoot first.