Chindie

I've said before that I really like the Kingdom of Heaven DC in spite of Orloomdo Bland. The DC adds in so many extra scenes and plotpoints, and the main character being apparently played by a chair makes him incredibly easy to ignore. Especially when it's painfully obvious everyone else in the cast is having the time of their lives (Brendan Gleeson and Marton Csokas are clearly enjoying being bastards so much it hurts), and Ridley just knows how to shoot a film. You end up glossing over Orlando's presence. Everytime he's on screen you can subconsciously go 'Oh some guy is having a fight', or 'this fella is saying something important but the only thing that matters is that we know it's probably important, but not why it's important, because we know this story already'. It's well made and has some decent things to say, and is one of the only films I can recall seeing that is rather careful to point out that the enemy aren't heartless bastards - they just disagree. Saladhin is a great presence in it. The historical accuracy of it is nonsense, IIRC, but it doesn't really matter. EDIT - It also has Eva Green in it, and I'd drag my body over hot coals with using only my mouth to spend 5 minutes in her presence. Gorgeous, stunning... drooldrooldrool Robin Hood is Ridley Scott knocking out a film because he felt he should. It's obvious that it's actually a film cobbled together from another idea and script (originally the film was to be called Nottingham and focus on a slightly different take on the myth, from the perspective of a rather more sympathetic Sheriff of Nottingham) and it ends up being a mess. Rather like Crowe's accent, which seems unable to maintain a single region of the UK, and even hops across the Irish Sea a few times. But since it does have such presences like Crowe in it, and because it's Ridley, it's quite watchable.

The 'spiritual' I actually somewhat believe to be more relevant when it's removed from religious dogma. Taken away from it's hostage situation under the church/faith/whatever, it becomes far more personal and far more individually unique imo. I believe I was once accused here of either not being spiritual/or being unable to comprehend the spiritual in life, because I was an atheist. You, once again, have to laugh.

...He's not wrong, you know. ^That. A decent enough bid and with some leg work on a replacement, I'd sell.

I can accept 'soul' on that level - as the summation of what has defined who a person is. A synopsis of their being, if you will. No ooga booga though.

The thing that sets us apart is our intelligence. It's that that ultimately has given us morals and whatnot. We learnt that a community survives more successfully than an individual, and by extension it became a norm to by and large act in the interest f the community. In time we developed that into laws and cultural norms and we raise ourselves in that morality now. That is 'soul', for me. It's nothing more than an offshoot of struggle for success that we have melded into society. Nothing of the religious nonsense, no eternal aspect to us. Just a thing we stumbled on and developed.

I'm genuinely unaware how anyone, in 2012, with the education we have now and the knowledge we have, how anyone could with a straight face and without cynicism or question accept literally talking about demons and angels as if they are real things. You don't even really need to debate it much beyond that, or even really consider it. The moment you are seriously considering angels and demons as real things the 'This is nonsense!' warning light and alarm in your brain should be going off like Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

The Guard needed to be funnier for me. It's not a bad film at all and has it's laughs but the clear similarity (as you'd expect) with In Bruges only serves to remind you that that was a more successful film. ROTPOTA is fun. Silly, but fun.

A few of the AVP games have been pretty good, particularly the 2 on the PC from about... 10 years ago or so. The straight Alien titles have usually failed to live up to much expectation though. And I don't think is going to be any different. And more so because there is a thing that tends to happen with games stuck in development hell. when they eventually get released, they tend to be nothing beyond disappointing. It basically seems to be that if you make something for that long, you rarely end up with something properly shit - broken unplayable shit - and you rarely end up with something incredible either. It's always something that doesn't blow anyones socks off. I also don't have great expectations of pretty much anything Gearbox do so...

I partly agree with this, but then there's a huge part of me which feels that if he did go to another club who were willing to take a risk, then his next move after that would be onto bigger and better things than us. Then we'd just miss out completely. For the record, Lambert is definitely my number 2. I'd accept the risk of him succeeding with another club to such a level we would never have him, over the risk of taking him on with the club in the state it is now and possibly having him fail and take the club with him. I think we're such a precarious position I'm loathe to be too risky in the appointment we take right now - get it wrong and I think we could be headed for the trap door next season. A big gamble on a unproven if possibly good manager is not the move I would make. But if we were to make it, OGS brings excitement in the shape of the unknown to the table I admit.

Destined to disappoint.

Lambert. He's less of gamble having had some proven experience in the league. I'd prefer him to have more proven experience but needs must. I understand the excitement with Solskjaer, and it would be interesting... but I'm worried about the risk too much too gun for him over Lambert. He may be a brilliant manager in the making but I'd be happier giving him a shot at Villa Park when someone else has risked their surivial on giving him a go. I wouldn't be devastated with either, mind, but Lambert is the obvious choice for me. Don't think we'll get him though.

As for the discussion of cults, well they all are aren't they? Some are just larger than others and have managed to make themselves legitimate. The smaller ones are slightly more infuriating, as we've seen in this very thread they're quite good at the fingers in ears approach to criticism. I return to my comments on fanaticism.

BBC Almost dodged a bullet. I suppose theres a quip to be had about the cardinals not fancying kids with Downs or something.

Rumoured to somehow involve Khan isn't it? No Montalban = no go. I've heard that rumour but not sure what the truth is. Benedict Cumberbatch is playing the villain, however it is, though. Won't be his only villainous role this year.

Game of Thrones really building to something big in the next episode. Interesting ep this week though, now things are actually building to a climax it feels more assured.

I think Abrams became a parody of himself a while back, which is a remarkably quick achievement. What I find annoying about all of his stuff is that's all very... 'flash'. It seems to lack substance somehow. Super 8 was a riff on all of Spielbergs 70/80s stuff but you have to stop sort of calling it an homage to those films because it's such a cynical piece of work. He knows how to make a film 'well' but he lacks something constantly. The next Star Trek might be interesting.

The god of Islam, Allah, is the same god of Christianity and Judaism. The Qur'an is, by Muslims, effectively considered the third book of the same god that inspired the Torah and the Bible. They simply believe that he revealed a third tome to Mohammad that had new teachings and that those teachings made the rest a little redundant. Hence the similarities between the 3 faiths, and hence why Muslims have the same stories and characters in their faith, although some things are slightly changed - Jesus is not the son of god for Muslims, but they believe he was a special man who was a prophet of god. Many would argue, and do, that fundamentalist Islam is a particularly dangerous faith because of the nature of Islam as believing it got the final word from god - it instantly puts it into conflict with Judaism, who got the first word, and Christianity, who got the first word and then kinda got the second via spokesman. Mormons are simply a particularly mental form of Christian. They beleive in stuff like man being able to become an angel in heaven and the like. You'd think that by the time the Mormon church is founded people wouldn't simply believe a chap when he said an angel told him all about a new book of god, but apparently not. Buddhism doesn't have a god, really. Some people argue that Sidhartha Gautama basically became a god in effect in the teachings of Buddhism, by becoming truly enlightened, but I don't think many Buddhists believe he was anything other than a truly, truly special man. Christianity gets argued a lot because it's the faith most of us encounter the most, and sadly because we've got a resident Jehovah. For what it's worth, they're all nonsense. Islam can be particularly evil too. Christianity can be particularly nasty. The Mormons believe and do some truly offensive stuff. And so on.

Also, new Bond teaser today Skyfall That looks great. Blowing away Quantum of Solace and it's only about 90 second long.

Black Swan is a great film. It's a shrieking homage to a load of 70s psychological horror films. I do agree that some of the effects a bit ropey though - I rewatched it the other night and noticed that it looked a little rough. Still an enjoyable mad romp though. Super 8 I can understand someone disliking. I thought it was alright but full of little annoyances.

There never was any debate.

That ones come up before too. You're dealing with a brick wall. In more ways than one.

I think the bible definitely has some thing right, like this: Strangely in contradiction to Julie's signature though Information is not the same thing as intelligence. That's why they aren't the same word. These are the first things to raise any emotion in me beyond a kind of flabbergasted anger in about 5 pages of this thread. Thankfullt rhe emotion can be summed up with this

I'm much less concerned about whether there is a god (or two, three, four and so on) or not and much more concerned about the kinds of claims such as the one detailed above. You're about as likely as the rest of us to get a satisfactory answer I fear.

Give it up fellas, we're back to 'father of the atheists' Anthony Flew. That was done to death well over 12 months ago. Nothing is going in here. You could present cast iron evidence there was no god and there would be an answer to it explaining how the Bible was right.

I wouldn't touch him with a bargepole.