ValentineXavier
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Posts posted by ValentineXavier
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Reality TV = the ultimate oxymoron.
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Fred, you made a terrible mistake in board etiquette. "Nyaaaah!" should always be followed by
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Fred, I've been reading stuff about precolumbian Mesoamerican cultures for 50 years. Perhaps it was in Diego de Landa's Relaciones de las Cosas de Yucatan, but maybe not. As best as I recall, when thousands starved, the priests did relent, and let the Maya go back to the fields. I don't recall if it was two years, or 20. I was able to find a small mention of the reason for that confining to the towns (which you omitted from your quote) on the wikipedia:
>Known to the Aztecs as huautli, it is thought to have represented up to 80% of their caloric consumption before the conquest. Another important use of amaranth throughout Mesoamerica was to prepare ritual drinks and foods. To this day, amaranth grains are toasted much like popcorn and mixed with honey, molasses or chocolate to make a treat called alegr?a, meaning "joy" in Spanish. Diego Duran described the festivities for Huitzilopochtli, a blue hummingbird god. (Real hummingbirds feed on amaranth flowers.) The Aztec month of Panquetzaliztli (7 December to 26 December) was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli. People decorated their homes and trees with paper flags; there were ritual races, processions, dances, songs, prayers, and finally human sacrifices. This was one of the more important Aztec festivals, and the people prepared for the whole month. They fasted or ate very little; a statue of the god was made out of amaranth (huautli) seeds and honey, and at the end of the month, it was cut into small pieces so everybody could eat a little piece of the god. *After the Spanish conquest, cultivation of amaranth was outlawed,* while some of the festivities were subsumed into the Christmas celebration.
Huitzilopochtli was a pretty evil guy, to the Spanish. Considering the nature of the rituals done to worship him, it's not surprising that the Spanish banned amaranth cultivation.
Added after Fred added much to his post:
Fred, the classic era of the Maya was over about 600 years before the Spanish set foot in the Americas. Yes, the Maya were very war-like. I would recommend Linda Schele's book A Forest of Kings, to see just how pervasive and fundamental that was to Classic Era Maya culture. But, none of that justifies how the Spanish treated the native Americans. The Church was so upset about it, that Diego de Landa wrote his book as an explanation and apology to the Church, trying to save his a$$.
Edited by: ValentineXavier on May 22, 2012 12:09 AM
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Calm down, guys. I think you've taken the discussion as far as it can go.
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> {quote:title=ginnyfan wrote:}{quote}
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> As for that last comment, I just don't believe you are for real.
That makes at least two of us.
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Arturo, you are quite right, what happened goes well beyond a mere "quibble." I think the film would be much more honest if it had depicted the massacre at Cholula.
How much of the decimation of the native population of the Americas was deliberate, or accidental, at least approaches a quibble. I'm not sure it matters that much. Yes, there were mainstream newspapers in the US calling for the extermination of the Indians, as late as the early 1900s. No, I don't know of the Spanish openly calling for that, but their actions speak for themselves. Thousands starved in the Yucatan, because the priests made the Indians move to town. That is because if they were free to farm, they would grow amaranth, and the Spanish considered it food of the devil. If a deliberate act leads to an easily foreseeable, but unintended result, can that be genocide? An interesting philosophical question.
You probably know that we are just learning that much of the Amazon was farmed, using highly advanced methods, including aquaculture, systematic earthworks, towns, roads, etc. The earliest explorers wrote of this, but were not believed. Later explorers found none of the native peoples survived. Much the same thing happened in what became the US. There's a good historical film depicting this, *Cabeza de Vaca*, 1991. It wouldn't surprise me if you had seen it.
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Filmlover, a couple of points. First, the SD broadcast standard is 480i, not 480p. Second, some HDTVs do very well with 480i signals, and will look way better than they would on the best SDTV, but many don't do a good job with 480i, and will look like crap. DLPs generally do a very good job with 480i.
Also, TCMfan23 doesn't say whether they are talking about a HD CRT, or an SD CRT. When HD was new, lots of people thought that HD CRT looked better than other early HD sets. I doubt that many would think so today. Just a few years ago, the last time I shopped for a HDTV, there were lots of really crappy LCD sets, and I can believe that a really good HD CRT would look better. But, I don't really doubt that the best LED and LCD sets will look better than CRTs today.
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A classic, from *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,* film and book:
>*The Book:* It's an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, Man had always assumed that he was the most intelligent species occupying the planet, instead of the *third* most intelligent. The second most intelligent creatures were of course dolphins who, curiously enough, had long known of the impending destruction of the planet earth. They had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger, but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for titbits. So they eventually decided they would leave Earth by their own means. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double backward somersault through a hoop while whistling the star-spangled banner, but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish. .
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> {quote:title=wouldbestar wrote:}{quote}From FredCDobbs: I think maybe you intended your post to look more like this:
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> Fred, you know I did. Thank you for taking the time to correct it for me. I'll never take credit for another's post. I'll watch more closely before I click away.
That makes Fred the La Malinche of this thread...
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> {quote:title=hlywdkjk wrote:}{quote}
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> As far as insane characters go, I think Peter O'Toole in *The Ruling Class* is pretty much the standard bearer.
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> Kyle In Hollywood
That wasn't a standard he was bearing, it was a cross...
Seriously, and on topic to the thread, crazy, yes, but also with lots of insight, delivered as social commentary. One of my favorite quotes:
>*Lady Claire Gurney:* How do you know you're God?
>*Jack Arnold Alexander Tancred Gurney, 14th Earl of Gurney:* Simple. When I pray to Him, I find I am talking to myself.
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> {quote:title=joefilmone wrote:}{quote}"Brokeback Mountain" is the ultimate man movie...
Sort of a man's man's man movie...
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> {quote:title=TCMfan23 wrote:}{quote}want to debate ? I think CRT's give a better picture than a LCD or a LED.
DLP beats the heck out of all of them. The whole surface is light, there is no grid. They do not get dimmer with time, like the others. You just replace the bulb every few years. They can't get burn-in. They use 1/2 - 1/3 as much electricity as other systems. DLP is what they use for the best digital projection in theaters. Also, I have seen 63" DLP sets on sale for $700!
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> {quote:title=clore wrote:}{quote}
> > {quote:title=Hibi wrote:}{quote}How 'bout Chief Dan George? Did he do anything after Little Big Man? Nothing I can remember...........
> He was also in OUTLAW JOSEY WALES
He has 14 movie listings, and 15 TV listings on the IMDb. He was also in *Harry and Tonto*. I remember him well from an ep of the Kung Fu TV series titled Ancient Warrior. Surely Old Lodge Skins was his best role.
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> {quote:title=Arturo wrote:}{quote}
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> Highly enjoyable movie. My only quibble, as a student of Mesoamerican history, are the less than accurate designs of the plastering on the temples.
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My quibble is the omission of the genocide of thousands that took place during the course of Cortez' trip to Tenochtitlan.
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I didn't think of him as insane, but rather as expressing the rage of a normal human, who had been pushed too far.
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> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}Doña Marina was a real person. Cortez picked her up during a stop in Yucatan. She spoke Mayan, Spanish, and Aztec, and she helped him communicate with the Indians between Vera Cruz and the Aztec headquarters at Mexico City (the Aztec city on the island).
She is better known to history as La Malinche.
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I also remember J. Carrol Naish as the Indian. That show is probably part of why he is one of my favorite character actors today.
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I've always thought that Ruth was pretty plain looking, even if I liked her in some roles. But, in the shot you posted, she is hot!
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> {quote:title=SansFin wrote:}{quote}
> Ally Sheedy comes to my mind. In *Short Circuit* (1986) she is a warm, innocent and not-particularly bright vegan virgin. In *High Art* (1998) she is a cold, calculating and duplicitous drug-addicted bisexual.
Ah, but those two characters are only a night or two apart...
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> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}
> Don't tell me how to set my TV. And don't try to pass a federal law requiring that I set my TV the way you want me to set it.
I guess you missed this part of what he wrote:
>If you like the way your HDTV looks with the sharpness turned up to the max, that's one thing and it's your right to do so,
He is quite right. "Sharpness," as it applies to a TV display has nothing to do with focus, but is electronic enhancement of a sort that you have objected to in other contexts. To me, and some others, turning up the "sharpness" all the way makes the picture look 'crawly,' sometimes described as "dot creep." But, if you like it that way, it is certainly your prerogative to do so. And no one has suggested any laws to stop you.
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> {quote:title=skimpole wrote:}{quote}
> I'm curious about movies where there is serious debate over whether a character has genuine insight or is actually crazy. Is there a movie which plumps unambiguously down on the side of clearly mad?
That is a major theme in Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse films. My take on them is that Dr. Mabuse is clearly mad, and genuinely insightful.
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It would cost too much to run him down...
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Can you provide any reference that says Michelangelo planned for his work to be darkened by the smoke of the times, and altered it accordingly, or is this just your surmise? Personally, I think the restorations look wonderful, at least in photos I have seen. I haven't been there. They also brought out a lot of details that hadn't been seen in centuries, and removed a lot of inaccurate overpainting from past "restorations."
Good point about the grain, or lack of same, in Technicolor. I hadn't thought of that. Still, they would have to go back to the original dyed elements, to get a grainless image.
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Joanne Dru was in a short-lived TV series, called Guestward Ho. I liked her very much in that. Personally, I found her good looking, but no stunner. I liked her personality. But, then I think that Marylin Monroe looked like a caricature of a woman, not a real woman... such is taste.
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No CGI studio!
in General Discussions
Posted
I think there are things that look better done in old style special effects, and also things that can only be done in CGI. The problem is, that most of the top mainstream filmmakers, who do effects-laden films, don't consider using the old style stuff, even when it is best. It probably is cheaper to just go all GCI.