@Robusto that's not how I mean it.

It's an open question.

I am not saying this is marble. I am wondering if it is.

Maybe it's plasticine and you can do macrame out of it alright.

We don't know. It is unexplored.

@Robusto I am not being petulant now. I am being petulant always.

@Robusto see, that's the magic words. Should've started with those.

Warum nicht gleich so?

@RegDwigнt 12 weeks, not 12 years, Anyway the movie is noir-gangsterism w/ revenge, maybe redemptionism.

@RegDwigнt Weil ich dachte, du könntest schneller aufgeben.

@RegDwigнt On the whole, I think "Gregorian chant with jazz chords" is the more apt simile there. Each scale system has its own musical domain. Even when one is mixing two systems one idiom must dominate.

Example:

This is clearly Bach from the outset—and pretty straightahead Bach, not jazz—even though it alters the instrumentation (which was certainly common in the Baroque era).

And this is pretty much jazz throughout:

I dunno if "Blues on Bach" was meant to embody that description throughout, but I can hear no real instances where the two idioms blend into something new. They oscillate (osculate?) back and forth between the two poles.

Another example:

Anderson plays the intro as straightahead Bach, then switches to rock without a backward glance.

Kind of a Bach-on-rock-bread sandwich.

Sorry for that metaphor. Rather a dog's breakfast, but I think you see what I mean.

Stravinsky doing jazz comes to mind as well. It's not really jazz, but it is Stravinsky.

@Robusto Well I've watched it.

Very good. Trademark Coens in every particular. Noticeably from right between Blood Simple and Hudsucker Proxy. And I won't even look up if that's actually true. Here's a hundred bucks saying that it is.

Intricate blocking. Quotable lines with not a word wasted. And you can tell Carter Burwell from the first note.

And boy do they know how to light a lady right.

So there. Now you.

If you have a point and aren't just brushing up on your small talk.

@Xanne I'd be curious to know how you combine "I've watched maybe five movies in this whole entire year" and "I have here a list of about sixty movies" to arrive at "12 weeks, not 12 years".

Actually no, I'm not curious. Your math is wrong.

Anyway that's six movies down, one to go with still three months left. Should be doable.

It's 2019 and Shutterstock thinks this is how you do ads.

I can see fuck all in those six images.

Can't they give some college student $2 to hand-pick six images that are actually nice to look at and will make me click.

I'm not clicking on this garbage,

(Or are these the nicest six pictures from their catalogue that the student could find for $2?)

@RegDwigнt If they picked some young college student willing to even feign effort, then all they'd end up with are anime and video game related imagery that they couldn't use. Besides that, why pay somebody when you can just have a randomizer pick them out for free?

At any rate it's not so bad. The image quality makes it difficult to discern what's being depicted in those thumbnails but I think they could've done worse than the Elephant sitting on the tree and the child riding the bull, and of course although the stock image of the people gathering their hands together is a little boring, it is exactly the sort of image human resources would use in a slideshow meant to bolster morale.

With that having been said, it's shutter stock. If anything, the more interesting photos are out of place.

@RegDwigнt :R*:tyjqq::Thank you, Jasper, for stating the obvious.

It's as simple as this.

Whenever you type tyjqq, this will be automatically and immediately converted into the desired sentence.

@RegDwigнt Congratulations. I knew you had it in you.

BTW, it is between Blood Simple and Hudsucker Proxy, but not immediately. You have Raising Arizona right before it and Barton Fink right after. Doesn't matter, though.

I wasn't just indulging in chit-chat. I do wish to extend our discussion of dialogue from before, because I think the dialogue in Miller's Crossing is sensational. It's lean, it's hard, it's cruel, and yet in its own way its every bit as ornate as Tarantino's.

I also wanted to start a discussion of Coen Bros (henceforth CB) character tropes.

@Cerberus But you still have to type tyjqq. Can't AHK just automatically blurt out the right line without that sort of prompting?

@Robusto If you provide the desired context, then it can.

Such as "do it every ten seconds".

Or "whenever the following text is visible on the screen".

Ah, interesting.

I was being semi-facetious, of course. But that sort of thing is good to know.

Just as Reg was.

Have you busied yourself organizing to defeat evil Copenhagen for BBCITW?

@RegDwigнt: I also want to make the point that dialogue is a natural aspect of character. That may seem obvious, but to Tarantino it's not. He gives his own voice to multiple characters. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but also sometimes it's so damn funny we don't care, even though maybe we should.

And when dialogue can be talked over in layers, as in the Adam Sandler film you cited, it's just a throwaway. Which means the characters are pretty much throwaway too.

As you said yourself, there was not a word wasted in Miller's Crossing. And that's a good thing.

Now, on to character tropes. Certain characters appear over and over in CB films. Let's take a simple example first. Look at the Dane from Miller's Crossing, Grimsrud from Fargo, the nihilists from The Big Lebowski, Jackie Treehorn from The Big Lebowski, and Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. What do they all have in common?

They are the unthinking chthonic presences that provide the driving dramatic force for those films.

That Eddie Dane is a "smart" character does not negate his unthinkingness. He has the destructive instincts of an animal, as do the others mentioned.

What's interesting is that these forces can be subverted for comedic purposes, as in Lebowski.

And also in Lebowski we see Peter Stormare, Grimsrud in Fargo, as one of the nihilists. No accident, I think.

Similarly, you have the "half-wise" character who thinks he's got a handle on everything but doesn't. In MC it's O'Bannon, in Fargo it's Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and William H. Macy's Jerry Lundegaard, in Lebowski it's Walter Sobchak, and in NCfOM it's Josh Brolin's Llewellyn Moss. This also provides much of the dramatic force, as these characters make the mistake of thinking they know more than the characters representing chthonic fate.

There's also the character who exists to put everything right. These are the most interesting ones, and they are the most diverse in the forms they appear in.

In only in two of the films that they actually succeed (only partially, mind you) in actually putting anything to right. Tom in MC and Sheriff Marge Gunderson in Fargo. This person fails utterly in NCfOM, as Tommy Lee Jones's Sheriff Bell simply retires from the ring, acknowledging his defeat. In Lebowski it's The Dude himself who has the responsibility thrust upon him, and much of the humor comes from him trying to avoid it but repeatedly being forced back into that role.

There's a lot more to talk about, including more of the CB opus, but I'm a bit tired of writing right now. Hope I've put enough out there to initiate a response, but if nothing comes, well, fuck it, let's go bowling.

Seriously, how funny is it that The Dude keeps having to play the adult in the room?

@Tonepoet you are missing your own point and not following your own logic. Curious.

If all a college student can do is pick out anime and video game related imagery, then all the college students of the world will immediately click on that because that's what all of them are interested in.

That a human picks out something they actually like is the whole point.

An algorithm doesn't even know what "like" means. Hence the result.

@Tonepoet amen to that.

@Robusto yeah I didn't mean immediately in-between. I simply meant right in the middle. Either by the number of movies, or years, or possibly both.

So yeah. Apparently my guess was more accurate than I ever planned.

@Cerberus thank you. Excellent.

@Robusto that was a direct quote from the movie, you silly bugger.

"Is there a point or are you brushing up on your small talk" is what Gabriel Byrne says to James Freeman who's about to kick his teeth out.

Maybe you should go watch the movie. Tee hee.

@Robusto that is an interesting point.

Though I'm not sure. IRL all people all talk over each other all the time, but not all people are throwaway characters.

I dunno. I'll think about it.

@Robusto I missed a dream sequence. I was hoping there'd be one. That's one of their other major trademarks. Of course it's not the only movie where they omit it, but usually there's good reasons for that. In this one I felt like it would fit right in. Indeed the shots of foiliage against the sky came close.

@Robusto Stay out of Malibu, deadbeat. Keep your ugly goldbricking ass out of my beach community.

@RegDwigнt I recognized the quote, but I thought you were using it as a serious challenge, not a throwaway. Sorry I overestimated you.

^_^

@RegDwigнt Yes, but IRL not everything everybody says is worth noting. Within the confines of film or the stage, we shouldn't really have the luxury of discarding sentences as not worthy of note, even if people really do talk that way. They can talk that way and have it mean something, or nothing. I don't want to go see a film that's about nothing but perfunctory conflict.

@RegDwigнt The problem is that getting a person to click on a link is only an intermediary point of advertising. The ultimate goal is usually to make money. Unless stockphoto owns publication rights to such imagery, which I doubt, they can't actually sell you anything like that, and could even be sued by the people who do for using it in their advertising. It's a total waste of $2!

Thx, Reg Dwight.

Many people shat on you saying you can't sing a song artistically if you don't even know what the words are.

But I will shit on you because you typed those words into a device that can display them.

That's the level of moron you are at. Congratulations.

@Tonepoet um, obviously the student would select the photos from the site in question's own collection and not just from all the images on the Internet. What are you even on about. Come on now, mate.

Anyway, yes. Getting a person to click on a link is only an intermediary point in advertising. But getting them to not click on it is not an intermediary point in anything.

@Robusto I understand. But that is simply not enough. You must swear to never overestimate me again.

Vote Trump, BTW.

@RegDwigнt That would be ideal, but who would suffer through that for only $2? You'd have to at least buy the bloke a beer that costs $2 (works better if the student's under 21) and by that point so they can be drunk enough to not notice or care, and by that point in time you're doing that, it's just too much effort. ;-)

I just read "CNN says 6 out of 10 Americans say Trump doesn't deserve a second term".

My understanding is that the very fact that the number is not 10 out of 10 is all the proof we need that he'll get elected again.

I derive that understanding from living on this planet, looking at things, and using my magnificent brain.

@Tonepoet simple solution. Move him to Russia first, where a beer is 15 cents.

$2 my ass. What a ripoff. Make America great again!!!

Anyone who's allowed to buy sex and guns should be allowed to buy beer and Kinder Surprise.

@RegDwigнt Ah, but the problem is getting him there in the first place. You'd have to get past Putin's wall!

There is no wall. You'd know if you went.

I've been many times.

Anyway you don't have to go. The student does. Any walls or lack thereof is his problem. He still got $1.85 in change, remember.

It's all for the greater good of me having animes to click on on ELU.

I demand justice for myself, and entertainment.

@RegDwight Oooh, I see. You want him to fold himself into an envolope, by a stamp and mail himself to Russia!

I don't want any of that in particular. I just want this garbage shit to get off my main page.

There's enough shit in the world as is. I don't need more.

For all I care the student can stay right where he is and write us a gorgeous symphony to embed in lieu of the animes.

Whatever really.

Just not garbage shit.

Kthxbai.

@RegDwigнt Hmm? Well, now that we're being somewhat more serious, I have a question: Do we have actual advertising now? if so I thought this website wasn't popular enough for that yet. I think you'd be best served by requesting enablement of the reduced-ads privilege

Serious answer. We always had advertising on every site. Once you registered you got fewer ads. Once you got to a certain rep threshold they were gone altogether.

I've been on SE since before it was called SE. This is the first time I see ads.

SE used to live off venture capital. Now it wants to live off Shutterstock. Not a good sign.

Your link says "The areas in gray are the sidebar ads, which will remain visible." That is new.

@RegDwigнt I have read statements to the contrary:

Very clever if true.

First you say "your site doesn't have these ads so there is no privilege to remove them", and then you just add the ads. Ingenious.

@RegDwigнt They'll probably turn it back on if you ask nicely so they can pretend like they just forgot, instead of conveniently "forgot". XP

Ask nicely? Have we talked before?

Never! No microphones! XP

Just put on the headphones and I'll show you how nicely I can ask you if you can hear me.

How 'bout ironically nice? Can you do that? If you're ironic enough then there will always be a chance that somebody will confuses it for sincerity, and then you can groan to yourself about it to allieviate some of the stress that the plan actually working might have. <_< >_>

Both the concept of "nicely" as well as the concept of "asking" is for people well below my age.

One day you reach a threshold where you don't ask, people ask you. As a direct result, you have to stop being nice.

The only questions I still ask I ask at people who are older than myself. Like my violin teacher. Or @Rob.

It's a curious thing. One day you're walking through the streets and suddenly realize that every policeman is half your age.

Doesn't happen gradually. Hits you like a two by four, ten years too late.

It never occurred to me to wonder what it's like to live in a world where university professors could be my children.

But now I make sure to wonder what it'll be like to live in a world where every judge could be my grandson.

searching for information quite takes time. if you have friends who can inform you related information, they are highly valued.

@RegDwigнt Ah, so December 30th 2013 is to be remembered as the day you became an old man.

hi

I'm looking for a word is this the right place to ask