WordWolf

Welcome back. And Happy belated Birthday, GSC. You've done so much for so many, and all with the power of words and the voices of people.

Ok, I will once again be very sneaky when doing a movie round. A British secret agent is lured out of retirement. (His successor and "namesake" was ineffective.) He is placed in charge of MI6 partly because of horrible attrition as agents are killed all over the world. He then orders that ALL surviving MI-6 agents in the field will be assigned the same name and will all be namesakes. We follow the story of a NEW agent who is assigned with all the others, first in Miami, then in Montenegro.

That explains a lot right there. vpw ws deficient in ALL THREE. Good moral conduct and honesty? Do I really need to rehash the failings of that alcoholic, chain-smoking, plagiarising, raping pervert? (Or is that a good summary?) Leadership by example? The man had to know how to lead first. He knew how to bark orders and expect people to carry them out, and to read his mind when he failed to explain things. That's testimony more to his days as a bully than as any kind of "leader." He never "led by example" except to want people to imitate him-like when he gave lcm a motorcycle. As for telling people to do things he wouldn't do, that was his standard policy. lcm recounted an example-where lcm didn't want to go out onstage in rain. vpw PUSHED him out, saying if the people get wet, he does, too. When I read that, my first response was that I would have stepped out into the rain and introduced lcm, and invited him to join me on the stage. vpw was really into telling others to do it all. As for administrative ability, that was severely lacking, also. vpw was notoriously cheap for the organization. (When others were expected to cover expenses, he asked for expensive stuff, and he bought lots of alcohol and cigarettes for himself, but the organization's stuff was always done as cheaply as possible.) This made a certain sense when they were first setting up and needed things like chairs for empty rooms and so on, but there was no sensible investment on INFRASTRUCTURE. Where it was sensible to get durable things for the group, vpw got the cheapest and tasked others to maintain it rather than ever just get new. And, when he did "greenlight" expenses, he did it in ways that most sensible people would have avoided. There are houses on-grounds that were made with his favorite woods- that were completely unsuitable for Ohio weather and the wood rotted rather quickly, resulting in lots of maintenance hours and expenses wasted. But he didn't care how many hours of slave labor was lost. And as sensible as it was to have a facility on-grounds for seating people for teachings and presentations, that GARISH VEGAS SHOWCASE was a waste of funds. So, vpw would have been a poor leader in the military no matter what his delusions were. I also remember a friend studying for Officers' Candidacy School. He mentioned his thinking that a failure of the group he led would mean a failure in himself as the group leader, since his responsibility was to make sure they did not fail, and to make sure they all performed well, responsibility always ended with him. vpw always said the opposite- whenever something bothered him, he yelled at others and called them failures and so on. Actually, I used that type of exercise as an illustration of responsibility and trust. I designated someone I trusted to catch me, explained, blindfolded myself to prevent myself from interfering, and a few seconds later, fell back (and was caught safely, thanks, Raf!). I was making a point about the trusting one having the EASY part, where it was easy for me to fall when I trusted the other person, and so on. I was NOT making a point about responsibility. I wouldn't have used that another way, certainly without demonstrating it myself first, and I wouldn't have done it with people moving and making it easy to miss catching the person.

Most likely "Iron Man of Steel". ("Iron", of course, being more of a name or a descriptive word and not a technically accurate one. As was pointed out at the end of the movie "Iron Man", the armor was a titanium alloy but the name sounds better as "iron".) Actually, the concept here reminds me of the Amalgam character "Iron Lantern." Hal Stark found the crashed spaceship of an alien, and used the Power Battery to power an armor that saved his life and could form energy constructs when he focused his will.

This remaking of movies into bigger budget turkeys is not narrowing the answer down a lot. I thought of a few movies, but the latest one that was an "original" came out in 1990, not 2000. A different trend, that of revisiting public domain subjects, that makes a lot of similar movies look like remakes of previous movies when they're just similar concepts.

Seriously, dude. Do we have to make a petition or something? It is PAINFUL to try to read a TEXT-DUMP, when someone just posts a block of unrelieved text. If you want people to read your stuff, make a paragraph indentation, or 2 or 5. A LOT of people will see a text-dump and just SKIP IT ENTIRELY. Was the goal of posting to get people to SKIP IT ALL ENTIRELY? If so, congratulations! Keep it up! Most posters, after a while, won't even open threads that are guaranteed to be all text-dump. If you actually want people to read your stuff, then make some space. This is the first thread of yours in a while that has even gotten replies. Are you even READING any of them? This is a "DISCUSSION" forum, so that's supposed to be the idea. We DISCUSS, and add to each other, and agree and/or disagree, often all at the same time. So, reading the replies of others is an important part of the entire process here.

In "About The Way", a moderate amount of ranting is expected periodically. There's plenty that deserves some ranting (and more than a little outrage.)

Gregory Hines Running Scared Joe Pantoliano

He took an ex-sailor to the barber shop? Did he try to lead you by the hand at the time? Did he tell the barber what haircut to do? I'm actually curious. twi treated/treats innies like children, often, so this isn't terribly shocking.

Actually, in this thread, Twinky mentioned it first. However, we've discussed this over the years. vpw said, many times, that he wanted something like the military when he started the way corps, and was jealous of the military's ability to get people to do things without arguing and additional motivation. (Which showed he had no idea why they were doing it or how they got there.) Some people-all of whom were never in the way corps nor the military- have been quite outspoken about how injuries and other problems that could have been easily avoided were not to be dwelt upon because it was supposed to be like the military (and variations of that sentiment). We've pointed out that the military is a lot clearer about physical danger being a component-it's a military. Bang, bang, kaboom. Plus, they really do plan things out to minimize accidental injuries during training. twi does not, vpw never did. Then again, he never knew the military does/did, and didn't really CARE since it would have been a LOT harder to make a program that minimized the risks to the participants. When injuries happened, vpw never re-evalutated dangerous practices and insisted they would continue.

POW! You hit it out of the park in one, George! That's it. Your turn.

It's a standard movie Before-and-After with 2 movies. Just like with "Big Trouble in Little China", 1 movie can sound like 2 because more than 1 thing happens in it. And don't forget I have to actually mesh the description into 1 thing.

I was happy when I was able to link the 2 "Oz" movies the way I did. Ok, next movie. Since a foreign monarch's search for a teacher for all his children comes up blank, he has one built for him by a scientist who reanimates dead tissue. The result serves as a teacher for a short time, but leaves to wander the Earth, and ends up warring against demons on Earth disguised as mortals.

"Heaven Can Wait Until Dark." I actually remember "Wait Until Dark" because Marisa Tomei was in a run of the play some years ago and I remember hearing about that one. "Heaven Can Wait" I remember from a commercial where they used a text-dump moment from the movie. "I'm not Leo Farnsworth. I'm Joe Pendleton. Farnsworth is dead..." I forget the rest.

If I've got the right movies, I think this was a very nice connection. It sounds like it's one movie, doesn't it?

"Scavenger Hunt for Red October" was correct. "Scavenger Hunt" was a little 80s film (1979, actually) of a madcap chase comedy. The cast list is extensive, and I like to use the movie from time to time in Triple Movie Links as a result. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079858/ Vincent Price, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Avery Schreiber, Liz Torres, Stuart Pankin, Dirk Benedict, Tony Randall, Willie Aames, Meat Loaf, Roddy Mc Dowell, Scatman Crothers, Cleavon Little, Cloris Leachmann, James Coco, Richard Benjamin. Honestly, I don't think it gets nearly enough airplay. It's family-friendly and fun to watch at least once.

A) They ran off the previous talent. B) They can't attract new talent. C) If they used real talent in the songs and visuals, rfr would feel threatened by their existence, so they'd have to be stomped on. ("Tall Poppy Syndrome.") A) Better quality would cost money. B) rfr is serious about preventing "Tall Poppies."

That might be one way to describe it....

Perhaps not. The treasure is the prize for the winner. They're not looking for valuables, as such.

How would you DESCRIBE the other part? What are they participating in?

To inherit the huge fortune of a game-maker, several people compete in a race to gather (without buying) all sorts of things in the hopes of earning the most points- winner gets the fortune! The game-changer is the item worth far more points than the others- a submarine! They find out a Soviet one is approaching the US coast, and they all try to claim it for their team. This 1979 ((1990) film has a wide ensemble cast.

He's the face of the program. I question whether he's really in charge in any practical sense. At least from what I saw before, it looked like others made all the decisions about the thing, then handed over a desk and chair to this guy and told him he was in charge and inflated his ego. He gets to take all the risks and they get not only a young face for a group of old relics, but he gets to think he's really in charge and they get the name that matters more to them than any substance would.

Oh, yes, them. Their Corps is also teeny, but a lot of what made the original has been cloned mindlessly, which means the same problems have just been transplanted over. So, you can choose WHICH organization you can pay to have you perform manual labour, teach some Bible while claiming it's special, elite knowledge (serving pride and arrogance alongside Bible for no additional charge), and still be dismissed without prior notice, explanation or recourse completely at the whims of the powers that be. I'm not exaggerating about how they're rehashing the things we've already examined and found wanting. In their commercial, the only words they found worth memorializing was a rehash of something that wasn't noteworthy and can be found in the old pfal class. That they can think that, of all the things they could say, is THE noteworthy thing, says a LOT about their program and the people running it. They're running on nostalgia and retreading without reflection, examination or overhauling- complete with shoving someone cursed with the name "vpw" in front of the thing. It's hopelessly derivative and horribly dated.

Oh, the "Go Away" website. Yeah, it's insulting, but I don't find it offensive as much as I find it BORING. The guy can have a legitimate joke, but he drags the thing on until it's larded full of stuff that makes it a punishment to read an entire article. I came across it some years ago, and found one article with a lot of images was amusing if I summarized all the paragraphs into 1 sentence each, then showed the relevant images to someone, in order, with the relevant sentence. Otherwise, it just dragged on.... And coming from someone who goes on, I know that you better GET somewhere and have something periodically if you're going to on at length. Otherwise it becomes a Bataan Death March just to read it all.