A MacGuffin is a plot device that motivates the story's characters, but whose specific nature is unimportant to the overall plot.
But is there a term for a plot device that is a primary motivator for the audience, but that the characters are not invested it, or are even oblivious to?
For exampl...
@Catija @Walt I recently asked a question regarding an actor who changed his "credited" name from when he was a child. In your opinion(s), was that appropriate to ask on SE movies &tv or should it have been asked on another SE site?
So yeah basically the main character tries to exploit a bunch of mentally handicapped people in this western by first getting one guy to count cards and the film climax's with a western shoot out in a ghost town against bandits.
@steelerfan It's sort of borderline since questions should be about films but you did frame it in relation to a film... so... it's mostly fine. Someone could argue that it's not appropriate but it's about his professional life, not his private life, so I think it's OK in the long run... that's my chain of thought.... and my final answer is "it's fine".
I remember when I was younger I found this movie at blockbuster (yeah a while ago) that was about a bunch of forest animals who for some reason had to go out on a journey to find an object or something like that. I remember they all had clothes on and lived in little houses in a community. And I ...
Buddy lent me his DirecTV account creds, but their streaming service blows. Fortunately they let you login directly to Adult Swim's website. Sucks I'm missing John Oliver, though.
I don't remember much about this movie, but it is just a memory I have from years and years ago. I think about it from time to time and it drives me crazy I can't figure it out.
All I remember is there is a sex scene in the movie where the woman is on top and slowly rocking on the man. They're ...
Meh, guess crass doesn't bother me that much. I want good stories with dark, twisted humor sometimes and this show gives it to me in spades. This season alone has been pretty messed up, hell the episode I'm watching right now is, whooooo.
I'm trying to date a childhood memory that involves a 70's or 80's softcore / erotic / porn movie. I've tried googling and searching on IMDb, but my memory of it is too vague for that to work. Let me tell you what I remember:
I saw this in the mid-eighties (I think) on a cable pay-channel in E...
In the ending scene of The Darjeeling Limited, the three brothers run on the platform to chase a departing train. Suddenly they throw away their luggage one by one and board the train without their bags. What is the significance of this scene ? What does 'the throwing of bags' imply ?
Wes Craven Week
He is a famous director, writer, producer, and actor known for his work on horror films and he died of brain cancer on August 30, 2015. It is not good to appreciate his work and submit over condolence to his loss to the industry.
In Heroes we have seen that Sylar use to kill the persons with special abilities and cut open his skull but with the part of the brain taken from each person, how he use to extract the power and get powerful?
I can't remember the cartoon series whose title track is similar to the mission impossible movie track. Can anyone help me out here, I am scratching my head over it for a long time!!
@AnkitSharma I don't know. One user already seems to like it. I wouldn't personally have guessed that Wes Craven is that universally missed, but there seem to be quite a few voices in chat already that deem him significant enough. So since that proposal is already voted positively and we don't have any other challenges in the near future, why not? I'm just not sure when, any ideas?
It struck me this morning that the original Star Wars trilogy had two Unintelligible main characters, Chewbacca and R2-D2.
What other shows and/or movies have had two or more Unintelligibles in the leading cast?
In Breaking Bad, as far as I understood, Gustavo Fring never really had a family of his own. It is logical from one perspective not to have anyone valuable to you when doing business of the sort. However, following Gustavo's ability to keep his enemies close and display himself as a low profile b...
@Catija Me also not so much, but he's undeniably quite a big name in the genre. (And personally I liked the Scream series very much, even if not every other teen slasher it inspired was that great.)
@Catija Well, we could do a general horror challenge on Halloween still (given somebody proposes it as an idea).
Since very beginning, Gustavo's personal bodyguard and executor "Mike Ehrmantraut" is shown as an smart and an always aware man. Consider that Mike is an ex. policeman and a walking lie detector. Not only that he reads people well but he also possesses certain human qualities. He stops trusting W...
@TomCody Yeah... Oh well... I'm not even sure what the primary's like. It's going to be such a crazy election. Of the 9 candidates, I'd vote for 5 of them. Ugh.
@Catija Well, the primary is just a fun and interesting intermediate stage in the form of a classic SE-style up-/downvote fest of all the candidates, throwing out everyone but the 10 top-voted candidates.
@TomCody Me neither. Just kidding. I think I voted for two of the three winners... but I didn't know people as well then. I feel like a few of the people who ran disappeared after the elections.
I just chose to give some lesser-voted but IMHO still very good candidates a chance in contrast to voting for the three favourites that honestly became pretty apparent after the primaries already.
@Catija Well, I think there generally are many avid users whose activity has quite a bit ceased unfortunately.
Which is not to say there isn't also some great new blood to take their places (counting present users ;-)). It's probably just natural membership fluctuations.
The 2015 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page a...
@Catija Well, it was just an intuitive move, since I don't really know shit about how that STV thing works in practice at all. So I don't really know if my strategy was of any practical use at all.
@Catija Oh, you mean in the results? Sure, that makes sense. I was talking about the ongoing election.
@TomCody Essentially, if you need 100 votes to win and 100 votes are cast for you, only 1% of each of those votes is awarded to you... leaving 99% for the other two candidates. If your second choice candidate has very low votes, you may give the remaining 99% to that person and nothing to the third... I think.
@TomCody Yeah... so in a little over a week, I'll know whether I was 4th or 9th. :P
In The Matrix, during Neo & Trinity's initial meeting at the club, Trinity and Neo say:
Trinity: It's the question that drives us mad. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question just as I did.
Neo: What is the Matrix.
Clearly Neo has knowledge of the Matrix and Trinity clai...
The Lady In Black 2 was actually better than The Lady In Black 1 (not hard to do), had some pacing issues and was relatively predictable. The jump scares were annoying but the art and story were still fun I thought. The acting was actually decent as well, with only one stinker (that pilot's performance hit all the wrong notes). I'd suggest it to anyone who loves horror with the caveat that it's still not particularly good, just simple and fun. Others should still stay away.
One thing about horror films is there's a strike zone between about 30% and 70% of the movie where they have to show the monster. Whatever the spook is, no matter how much or little, if they wait until after 70% they've drug on too much and now they have to compress the scares in the end, and frankly I don't care anymore. Before 30% and you're going to really work to keep it scary to the end. Lady In Black 2 hit the mark there, but lots of horror movies fail that simple test.
then again lots of people perhaps like movies where the creep is never actually put on display... I just get bored though, they gotta feed my imagination.
I read somewhere that Buñuel made movies in three languages. All I know are his movies in Spanish and French. Is that true and in which other languages has he directed movies and what are those movies?
Dim memories of this from my childhood - asking now, obviously, because it's so topical.
Set in some kind of Fortress Europe in the near future, lots of African migrants trying to get in (maybe a massive drought across Africa, millions on the move?).
The one scene I remember clearly are the pol...
@TomCody As a moderator, is there any sort of precedent for how to deal with a user who intentionally creates an account with an identical name to an established user?
Clearly, if it weren't allowed, SE wouldn't make it possible to have more than one user with the same UN... but I feel there's a line that should be drawn at an obvious attempt at mimicry.
@Catija Hmm, I don't really know. It might depend on the circumstances. There are coincidents and there are trolls. If there is a definite history between the user and the moderator, it's at least quite questionable.
@TomCody Yes... but I honestly think it's a coincidence. There was a user who got in a bit of a tiff yesterday with him, and I think he's continuing to act out... I don't think there's any direct connection to the election.
@TomCody I just got home from class. I have to get to it...
@TomCody That has certainly been done. Honestly not sure if there's much a mod could do other than putting the user on a time out... and if it is a troll, they'd likely simply make a new account and come back for another round.
Well, they could talk to him in a private moderator message and try to call him to reason and calm him down. But I also don't want to prescribe what they should do, as lacking in context as I am.
We care a lot about the feedback we get. Sometimes it needs ...interpretation, but it's useful nonetheless.
We're being a bit slow because holidays, but here's what we are working on:
A simpler UI for newbies which "grows with your experience"
The ability to save your searches
User on-boarding...
@TomCody Yeah, don't worry about it. We sort of have two active mods right now, since one is back to run for the election again... so hopefully it will be handled soon.
@Catija Hmm, point 1 sounds like a possible solution to the frontpage dilemma (even if the best solution is admittedly also the easiest, which noone in SE seems to realize). But point 2 sounds great, too. Just recently thought it would be cool to save and organize some often needed searches.
Another disadvantage I didn't realize before is that when you are on the front-page, the URL is total crap, messed full with stupid search queries. No way to just easily get the basic site URL.
@TomCody I think that was one of my points in my question, actually... the logo should go to meta.stackexchange.com - which shows the recently active posts... And that's it...
@kalina All the context is actually in his meta question on Meta Stack Exchange, his question on Movies & TV Meta and the chat discussions linked therefrom. There wasn't really much more to it at all (apart from an unrelated earlier incident where he made a slightly sexist remark in chat that got deleted and explained to him (after which he even apologized for it)).
@kalina And you forgot the tagging drama (which should have been especially interesting to you), which was yet another completely different incident on the same two days. ;-(
@kalina It was faaar more difficult. Basically SciFi migrated an ID question, that might have been closed here for lacking detail, but might as well have stayed open. But before anything could happen SE staff, made attentive to it by an utter coincidence, stepped in and downright rejected the migration. Which led to confusion and dissatisfaction by basically all the parties.
@kalina Meh, check the Agents of Nothing room for the most recent instance. That's pretty much all there was to say from my side. I don't really want to incite anything again. Read it if you want and make your own thoughts.
one day a bunch of people were just sitting around a campfire, and one said "its odd how some of our teeth are pointy, I wonder what we can do with them?" and another said "look, there's a cute baby deer over there, I bet our pointy teeth would work well on that." the end.
sad to say, reading that tag discussion in the agents of nothing channel leaves me in a situation where I either have to agree with SF&F or say noting at all
no doubt I missed something crucial as the thought of agreeing with SF&F...
like a disclaimer at the top "all names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved and to confuse future reading"
@TomCody no I "abandoned" you because pointing out the failings was resulting in no change at all with lots of "oh stuff is changing but we're discussing it first" for months
The episode, i believed, started out with a shot of a lighthouse and a woman seducing a man, then his wife walked in so the unknown woman kissed him and stole his soul or breathe? Then later in the episode she did this with what i believe looked like buffy's guiles?! I have NO clue but it was a g...
@TomCody Because that OP does... and I see Americans screw them up all the time... I just wondered if someone who doesn't speak English natively can manage to understand the difference, considering so many Americans are idiots.
@TomCody Me neither. Just wondering. It's one of my pet peeves, really.
Ugh... I'm just delaying the inevitable... I need to answer those questions... and I should have been writing drafts all weekend so it was already done today.
But it's also hard to remember the actual learning process of something that has basically been flesh and blood for over a decade to me. Maybe I did have difficulties with it once.
So yeah basically the main character tries to exploit a bunch of mentally handicapped people in this western by first getting one guy to count cards and the film climax's with a western shoot out in a ghost town against bandits.
I don't remember much about this movie, but it is just a memory I have from years and years ago. I think about it from time to time and it drives me crazy I can't figure it out.
All I remember is there is a sex scene in the movie where the woman is on top and slowly rocking on the man. They're ...
I'm trying to date a childhood memory that involves a 70's or 80's softcore / erotic / porn movie. I've tried googling and searching on IMDb, but my memory of it is too vague for that to work. Let me tell you what I remember:
I saw this in the mid-eighties (I think) on a cable pay-channel in E...
In the ending scene of The Darjeeling Limited, the three brothers run on the platform to chase a departing train. Suddenly they throw away their luggage one by one and board the train without their bags. What is the significance of this scene ? What does 'the throwing of bags' imply ?
Wes Craven Week
He is a famous director, writer, producer, and actor known for his work on horror films and he died of brain cancer on August 30, 2015. It is not good to appreciate his work and submit over condolence to his loss to the industry.
In Heroes we have seen that Sylar use to kill the persons with special abilities and cut open his skull but with the part of the brain taken from each person, how he use to extract the power and get powerful?
I can't remember the cartoon series whose title track is similar to the mission impossible movie track. Can anyone help me out here, I am scratching my head over it for a long time!!
The 2015 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page a...
In The Matrix, during Neo & Trinity's initial meeting at the club, Trinity and Neo say:
Trinity: It's the question that drives us mad. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question just as I did.
Neo: What is the Matrix.
Clearly Neo has knowledge of the Matrix and Trinity clai...
I read somewhere that Buñuel made movies in three languages. All I know are his movies in Spanish and French. Is that true and in which other languages has he directed movies and what are those movies?
Dim memories of this from my childhood - asking now, obviously, because it's so topical.
Set in some kind of Fortress Europe in the near future, lots of African migrants trying to get in (maybe a massive drought across Africa, millions on the move?).
The one scene I remember clearly are the pol...
We care a lot about the feedback we get. Sometimes it needs ...interpretation, but it's useful nonetheless.
We're being a bit slow because holidays, but here's what we are working on:
A simpler UI for newbies which "grows with your experience"
The ability to save your searches
User on-boarding...
The Screening Room
The Screening Room