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Merry Christmas Everyone

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Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#221

Post by BLKNSLVR »

whoisstan wrote: post #199
globular-toast wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody even knows about Dark City which came out the same year. Because the freaking Matrix came out too. That's just how many good films there were that year. If Dark City came out today it would be lauded as most original thing in a decade.

I refer to dark city all the time when creating AI agents, when Kiefer would inject them with particular memories when the city stood still. And Shell Beach pops into my mind when I take the train to the former grandios Coney Island. Existenz was another unique underappreciated movie of that year and whose theme never got picked by any other movie. When Jude Law realizes that the Chinese food he is eating can be put…

The Matrix, Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor, and Existenz.

Saw all of them in 1999 / 2000, my career direction was decided in that brief period.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#222

Post by JoeAltmaier »

wyclif wrote: post #192

For me it was Christmas 1977 when me and my little brother got an Atari 2600 console. We spent almost the entire day (except for taking a break for meals) playing all the variations of Combat. Later, in 1980, I bought Adventure with my paper route money and I had hours of fun playing that and trying to figure it out. When I finally found the Warren Robinette-created easter egg, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, even tho…

Funny you should mention ET. It was indeed shovelware, Howard's group was challenged to get a movie-tie-in game out in 12 weeks and he volunteered. Worked like a slave to get something that looked like a game, had at least one play mechanic, titles and animation! All with a tiny processor with negligible memory that had to turn the electron beam on and off in timing loops. Still proud that he got anything at all that worked. Proud of the notoriety as well, Howard is like that!

Now he's a family counselor, a good one too. I see him a couple times a month at Movie Night, another old friend hosts those and we get good attendance even though we haven't worked together for forty years.

Merry Christmas!

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#224

Post by BLKNSLVR »

Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #189
jedberg wrote: post #13

I'm Jewish, so all my Christmas's growing up were kinda the same. Sleep in, have brunch, wander over to my neighbor's house around noon to see what kind of loot they got and help them play with their new toys. Sometimes we'd go out for Chinese food and a movie. But my favorite was Christmas 1999. My girlfriend was out of town with her family and there was no reason to go home to mine, so I was alone (my roommates wer…

I'm largely of the "hell is other people" mindset around Christmas, from the overtly fascist elderly relatives to the incomprehensible demands of immediate family. I would love just one Christmas like that!

I think people tend to fascism as they age, the more they've done and seen and accumulated, the more conservative they get and the more their personal experience of the world must be maintained, protected.

Talk to them about their youth, when they were wild and rebellious. Find out what trouble they caused. Remind them, and it just might crack the encrusted exterior a little bit.

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#225

Post by p0w3n3d »

My best/funniest Christmas memory time was when there was a huge cold outside, so the ice froze some antenna cables together. Not sure what was the physics behind it, but the result was I got a cable television in our TV even despite we didn't pay for it. I could watch many foreign channels, except for cartoon network which was on the same channel as another channel from terrestrial, hence these were overlaying together and not possible to watch. Later when the freezing cold faded away, we bought the cable and I could better learn English from watching Cartoon Network and as a result now I can work as a software engineer

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#226

Post by romanobro56 »

jedberg wrote: post #13

I'm Jewish, so all my Christmas's growing up were kinda the same. Sleep in, have brunch, wander over to my neighbor's house around noon to see what kind of loot they got and help them play with their new toys. Sometimes we'd go out for Chinese food and a movie. But my favorite was Christmas 1999. My girlfriend was out of town with her family and there was no reason to go home to mine, so I was alone (my roommates wer…

If you started 30 minutes late you wouldn’t miss all the other movies just the middle one

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#227

Post by abustamam »

Sam6late wrote: post #184
jedberg wrote: post #13

I'm Jewish, so all my Christmas's growing up were kinda the same. Sleep in, have brunch, wander over to my neighbor's house around noon to see what kind of loot they got and help them play with their new toys. Sometimes we'd go out for Chinese food and a movie. But my favorite was Christmas 1999. My girlfriend was out of town with her family and there was no reason to go home to mine, so I was alone (my roommates wer…

I'm Muslim, so all my Christmas's school and college days were kinda the same, 1980s. I would have a real small tree xmass decorated at home and no one would blink about it, then wander over to my christian friends' neighborhood around noon to see what kind of cherry and wine they were serving. This is that neighborhood now https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1031546789002116&set=pcb...

I'm Muslim too and I always find it interesting to see how various non-Christian theists observe Christmas. Obviously we don't "celebrate" but I personally don't see anything wrong with partaking in the secular parts of Christmas (and let's be real, in the west, it's pretty much all secular).

My parents felt otherwise when I was growing up, so my siblings and I weren't allowed to do anything Christmas related, but now my wife and I would do seasonal things like watch a live performance of Nutcracker or Pentatonix or TSO. And can't forget about watching the holiday classic movies like Elf and Die Hard!

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#228

Post by mckirk »

vladgur wrote: post #91
jedberg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1999 is considered by many enthusiasts as a peak movie year. It was a great cap to a great year. https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature&releas...

Of course it was peak - the Matrix came out

Fun fact: 1999 was also 'peak public phone booths'. Ever since then, they've declined in number and now are almost impossible to find. Every year it gets harder to follow that damn rabbit...

Re: Merry Christmas Everyone

#230

Post by heresie-dabord »

29athrowaway wrote: post #79
jedberg wrote: post #13

I'm Jewish, so all my Christmas's growing up were kinda the same. Sleep in, have brunch, wander over to my neighbor's house around noon to see what kind of loot they got and help them play with their new toys. Sometimes we'd go out for Chinese food and a movie. But my favorite was Christmas 1999. My girlfriend was out of town with her family and there was no reason to go home to mine, so I was alone (my roommates wer…

Jews have contributed significantly to what is recognizable today as Christmas time. Many catchy classic Christmas songs were written by Jewish songwriters.

Just say the name of the great jazz artist Mel Tormé...

"I saw a spiral pad... Forty minutes later that song was written. I wrote all the music and some of the lyrics."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Christmas_Song

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