Exactly. Not that bad, but not spectacular at all. That sort of movies are directed to please a big variety of viewers (especially after a somewhat boring year in the movie industry). It's very "templated" because of those restrictions you have got to have in order to please and relate to everyone. The movie has a good plot, great action scenes, horrible dialogues (shitty one-liners made my head hurt), so all-in-all if I would rate that movie, I'd give it a 6 because 7 is the ideal "templated" movie. If it wouldn't be so ordinary-boring as any other simple movie, if it would have some "thing" in it, that special little something that makes you get up and say "This movie is an art!" then it would be considered as a proper film, but for me "Avengers" was just a "bubble-gum for my eyes". A good one, but not the movie as an art.

That's why I also think it's very overrated.

You mean like a cyborg? Reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v... I dunno, as a human I think we would be bored without emotions. They are such a big part of our lives after all.

You cannot feel nothing when dealing with such a...delicate situation. Only some sort of psychopaths have that. But you have to dismiss them. And yes, I had fucked up situations in my life when it was essential to put emotions aside and do the right thing. Also, what's important: you cannot let them get to you afterwards. Or you shall suffer from it, really.

Donations aren't a bad idea at all. Also good point: no-flash, no-sound ads are appreciated. I immediately hate the website where I encounter those things.

I'm sorry for being pessimistic but as I don't really get the whole "let's celebrate this once in a relative amount of time day" I also don't get the "New Year resolution". Why making them so special? Isn't your life should be like "I want this, so now I'm going to do this!", and not use the cleshay courage boosts like some sort of holiday? And why starting them from 1 day specifically and not 2 months ago, when you really wanted/needed this?

No, I don't have a new year resolution: I'm going on my way without any stops. Be more active the rest of the year, people. And make resolutions on a daily base.

When you order a drink, take a first sip and immediately want to spit it out: do you sit there and keeping drinking it, hoping that in the end you will actually like it? Don't you think that a person who has imposed himself in a shell is already corrupted by it and the chance is higher that you won't like him as himself when you finally get to him? I dream all sort of things all the time, thanks to a long imposure of books, movies, history and video games. And I have friends to talk those things over with. But it's harder to find a real person or to break someone's shell to see what's actually inside of him.

My point is: I don't want to waste time digging into someone, who's dreams right now are about a flashy car to impress his friends. I might not even like what's in the end. And now I have to go and spend the same time on someone else? I'd rather go look for someone who's already real, who already has a higher chance of me liking his/her personality. Even if I won't I'm most certainly going to have a very interesting conversation.

lol great tune. But it takes too much time and way too much effort. I dislike the shell immediately, because there are really people without it. They're just super rare. I've met a dude like that 3 years ago: completely blew my mind away. No fluff, straight to the point, became a good friend of mine. You know, when people go out there and...let's call it "meet someone" you hope he or she is nice, polite, respectful and all that sort of stuff. They don't want someone who goes "Fuck your point, and here's why". I had a date like that: the girl left feeling all confused and angry with me, because I haven't met her "shell expectations". I immediately get bored with a shell (I like the word "shell" so much in this particular sense :D ). So in the end there's gotta be some changes in society, in the "moral code" that will let people shake off their shackles of I don't know: uncertainty or awkwardness?

I'd argue that these essential worries are necessary to feel alive. Will it bring sadness and misery? Sure it will. But to be alive mustn't we feel the entire range or feelings and emotions?

I was exaggerating there a bit. What I've meant was you had something not letting you into the absolute comfort zone, that clouds up your mind.

That's what I'm speaking about when I call us to talk to strangers. I feel it's important to get people to remember what the fire feels like. I believe talking to strangers, letting your guard down, and being open are essential to getting the population as a whole to dream again. While it'd only be one person at a time, over time, we'd begin to dream once more.

But how the hell do you do that, when all you can hear is a talk about nothing completely in templates? People don't give out who they are to strangers, you gotta work your way through a man to find out who they really are. You get different answers to the same questions from the people who know you better or worse. In the current time we just create that wall of armor to defend us from society's judgement. So in reality people aren't really interested in who you really are, but in shell you're surrounded with. They would like the idea of knowing real you, but they'd be much more comfortable with a safe shell you've got.

It's one of the things that has to go really. Now, hold on, don't call me a monster just yet. I love the real books, the one with the fresh paper smell, brown pages due to age and leather covers (I love leather covers). But due to unavailability and price it's hard to obtain everything you read physically. It takes 10 minutes to get a free digital book, and it takes several days to find if book stores in your town have what you need then spend some time on amazon or ebay looking to buy it online, then wait for delivery. I'd absolutely love for physical books to be just as easy to find as digital were, but it's impossible. That's why this will go out in the history.

But will you put your emotions aside when it's really necessary? For instance they tell you to kill a man for food. And not just any man, let's say he's got cancer and he'll die soon 100%. He also begs people to finish his life and not let him suffer. Imagine the ammount of emotions in your head when you're faced with that bad-case scenario? Would you be able to dismiss them? Would you still do it?

But that gets me to the point, that not having emotions is not so bad also. The common sence or your moral standarts come into play. They will let you do something that's not considered good or bad but what is really necessary. Let's look at the example like in the TV-show Scrubs. So doctors there sometimes deal with the patients who have no medical insurance. Now, faced with it what are your emotions: one side we have compassion for another human, on another we have fear for loosing our job. Now the emotions might vary your judgement towards one or another outcome (if you like or dilike the person you're more/less willing to help). Now if we dismiss them the common sense stays and tells you the way you could deal with this issue in a most efficient way. Your clear thinking might even tell you not to help the person because you are being closely watched and get fired if you break the rules hence you won't be able to help anyone anymore. So my idea is, emotions distract or cloud your judgement (sounds like something a Jedi would say lol), but your cold calculations let you make the best deision.

Ah but it's sometimes so hard to do...People are so shelled.

It really is. Good list. Especially American Beauty. I absolutely loved Kevin Spacey's character saying "fuck it" and start living his life as happy as he wanted it to be.

No wonder that my favourite ones I've seen more than a couple of times. 1) Braveheart. Even though it's historically inaccurate (as Scotts themselves say) the conept of freedom, not only physical, but mental is amazing for me. That became one of my own life philosophies and I'm happy I could trully understand the message from that film. It goes pair to pair with the second one 2) Into the Wild. Same concept, more modern days. Freedom of materialistic, distracting things in life which distract you from you and the world around you. 3) Pulp Fiction. The most fun I ever had watching a movie. Simply amazing. Purely because of Tarantino's way of directing.

Oh I get it, so you mean God as an essence, not the religion's interpretation of his character or what not. Well. Now I remembered a Futurama episode where Bender got lost in space and found himself in this weird cosmic-creation, who had conversations with him about stuff. The thing is, that you can explain anything with just "God", but science finds more and more ways to actually measure unknowns and describe them. Even the dark matter has certain patterns of it's being because of the gravity readings around it. It's really hard to think of it as if it had it's own mind, or if it were a God. There might be something in it, like another form of life or reality, which we can't even wrap our minds around. But God as if "creator of everything and reason behind everything" not really.

And as for the "universe is trying to tell us", as if "See how unknown and weird it is? Well leave it alone, you shouldn't fuck with it" :). The universe doesn't tell us anything: it just exists. We're just humans who are curious and want to study everything around them so we take a look and start "poking it with sticks".

Sounds nice. Thanks, mate! :)

Oh, yeah, hardship wasn't exactly my point. What I ment is that it's too comfortable to forget about your mind in everything that's sort of known or available right now. Imagine yourself in 1800, right? You've done some work around the house, you've chopped some wood, you went into the house, had a dinner, now what: you sit in front of the fire with your pipe in your mouth thinking about tomorrow, about your relatives, about life. You're not busy, because right now you're doing nothing. Now lets go back to the present time, you came home from work, bought some groceries on the way, cooked some rice & chicken, drank some OJ, opened youtube/tv/videogame/magazine and started doing stuff, which is nothing really. So now you're too busy doing nothing, instead of "exploring your mind". Do you know what I mean? It's like there's too many distractions nowadays then they were.

I don't know yet. We'll see. I think a true tallent and great work ethics cannot stay unnoticed. We have 3 nice theaters in my city that actually go on tours around the country with their best plays.

The funny thing is: how is our time suddenly became more dangerous than the past? With hookers and drunks on every corner. With first cars driving without any sets of laws. With almost everyone carrying a weapon. How is it that in the past we had less crazy or dangerous people around? The over-protection is a real issue: how the hell do the children these days explore the world around them? Only TV and internet? That's not it: you can see but you cannot feel the world around you. You cannot become a certain part with it and take something from it inside you.

I'm a 23 year-old man from Chelyabinsk, Russia. I work night shifts at the hotel, not graduating anything (failed 2 universities and 3 different faculties), love movies, online games and studying acting all by myself thinking about pursuing a career in theatre.

There can be a lot of things to be said, going a little deeper into personality, but how can a couple of paragraphs trully describe who you really are? :) So lets keep it short and nice. Hello, everybody!

We live in the amazing time, where you can get anything, find anything, go anywhere (well...almost everywhere) and you mostly don't have to worry about essential things like people did in the past (crops are failing, 5 out of 6 children are going to die). We are so comfortable in our time that we are just relaxed and enjoying everything we can get. We don't do hard labour as people used to, we get better money, we can entertain ourselves with Breaking Bad on TV and tons of other things instead of cheap whiskey in a brothel. The main difference is that in the past there was a lot of unknown to an ordinary human mind and people dreamed about crossing the ocean on a plane, finding out what's killing the babies, how many stars are there, when today it's all known. What about the new stuff, isn't there always something new? It is, but we're too busy not dreaming about it just because we're so comfortable living. So instead of spending a night next to a fire, looking at the stars we watch youtube, talk to people on-line and play videogames. We're very comfortable. People have realized their potential nowadays yet they do nothing with that. We put a veil in front of our eyes so we wouldn't notice the cold, hard, unexplored depths of human mind or universe so we wouldn't take ourselves out of our comfort zone. And about speaking to strangers: a lot of times those strangers don't even have anything interesting to say. In order to get to the essence of a person you have to break through that veil and found out, what kind of real "fire" is inside. We're too afraid to be judged, too scared to be challenged, too frightened to escape the routine, too nervous about achieving something, too unsure about anything and everything. We, the people, hold ourselves back and only we can break this cycle. Don't look at anyone else and do your own thing, ask yourself what do you want and what do you really think. Imagine there's nobody else around you, and break free of everything that might hold you back. Your mind is one amazing thing and you should explore it and eventually that road will bring you up to your standarts of quality life (I mean the non-routine one). At least that's what I think.