Contentious C
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Posts posted by Contentious C
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16 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:
Late Night With The Devil - Just got back from the theaters. GO SEE THIS NOW. It'll be on Shudder next month.
What did you think of the AI?
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I did some of the Technico Special today for incline. But only 3 sets and only 150 lbs. I think I'm going to keep doing it for a while instead of dumbbells. A couple of years ago, I got up to 200 on the pin press version of that; wouldn't mind pushing closer to that number again with proper ROM. Did some of Arnold's old lateral raises where you lay on an incline bench and swing the weight in front of you, too, and those felt a bit better today than the behind-the-back cable raises I'd been doing lately.
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Might have 2 with the Alabama game pace of play.
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Clemson!
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3 hours ago, Technico Support said:
I just side-eye the Smith because it feels dangerous in that it locks what should be fluid exercises into a flat plane of motion. It also keeps you from strengthening stabilizers because, well, you're not using stabilizers. I only use it for calf raises.
Well, the real bonus of the Smith is that it lets you safely overload things you may not otherwise. You can much more safely overload a military press or an incline bench there than you could with dumbbells or a barbell. For whatever reason, my mid-back is not great at stabilizing those, especially OHPs. I guess I could try push presses, but I feel a lot better about using the Smith for overloading that.
It's a total game changer for lunges, too. Again, the capacity for overload is higher *because* stability is taken out of the equation to a large extent. It's not like I don't also do squats or Bulgarians or something else to get my adductors and hips working. But being able to really focus on glutes or quads or getting deeper than normal is really helpful.
Basically, the Smith machine is cereal: part of a balanced breakfast, not the only thing you should gorge yourself on.
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Kentucky about to choke it away... couldn't happen to a nicer coach.
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The real March Madness is seeing closed captioning butcher, "Oh, Champs-Elysees" into, "Oh, Sean's ABC".
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Well. This ought to be strange.
Starman - Probably the first John Carpenter I ever saw but one of the ones I'd seen that I remembered the least clearly (likely caught bits & pieces on HBO or something when I was maybe 7). Not at all what I was expecting; one Letterboxd reviewer referred to it as "E.T. for adults" and I think that's about right, both good and bad. I think it just feels a little too formulaic for me to think it's that special: of course there's comical misunderstanding with the alien, of course there's weird sex stuff with the alien who resembles the dead husband, of course they bring up the no-babies thing so it gets fixed at the earliest possible convenience. Some of the visuals are pretty good - certainly better than some of the similar stuff that would keep coming out over the course of the decade, like Cocoon or Flight of the Navigator. But if it has staying power, it's because it's an interesting meditation on grief; makes you wonder why Carpenter took it on. But, I don't love it; leave me in Team They Live, I suppose.
Side Roads - Heyo! Here's a hardcore contestant for the WOAT Title if there ever was one. Jeff motherfucking Speakman rocking the porniest porn stache I've ever seen in a movie that (at least gauging by its poster/cover art) seems to want to be a sleazy late-night Skinemax type but instead is just the most 68-degree-bathwater of lukewarm, lame-ass neo-noirs you can imagine. Having watched Kiss Me Deadly recently, you can picture that movie strangling this movie until it's dead and then dumping it in a lake; it's that bad. In fact, it almost looks - in terms of the way it's shot - like the director wanted to make an actual porno, couldn't find anyone to go along with it, and then just settled for this instead. Plus, the boom mic makes a cameo in one scene and a Life Net makes its own later on. Is this as bad as The Crow: Wicked Prayer? Maybe? But when you adjust for talent, production value, and expectations, this was in a sewage ditch before it ever began. It's probably more comparable to A Better Way to Die, which is a movie that feels like Scott Wiper saw this movie and thought he could do a better job with it (but couldn't, actually).
Slaughterhouse Rock - Here's one for you sickos: Jeff Speakman's Best Film of 1988! Because Side Roads was the other one, so, duh. Is this good? Not really. The main actor is the son of one of the producers and is quite possibly the best non-Trump argument against nepotism any of us will ever see. Just wooden and terrible beyond belief. But the visual style here is a LOT better than you'd expect from something this low-budget. Granted, they were clearly stealing from a lot of far superior horror films, since the 80s are littered with them, but at least they picked the right things to steal from. Plus, Toni Basil, she of the Weirdest Career in Hollywood, makes an appearance, and DeVo does the soundtrack, even if it is a low water mark for them musically. I'm sure plenty of you have already seen this and have stronger opinions than I do, but hey, it's not a total waste of 90 minutes.
Fallen Angels (1985) - This is, uh, NOT, I repeat NOT!! the Wong Kar-Wai movie. Much like Side Roads, you have to do some well-placed digging on the Interwebs to find this, but find it you can. It's a very early documentary about the porn industry as it transitioned into VHS, and, hey, it's surprisingly good. I landed on it by seeing a review of Serial Mom, forgetting that John Waters directed that and loved casting Traci Lords in things, then after looking at her filmography on Letterboxd, I realized they actually include *ALL* of her films, no matter how legal they are. Ick.
This, strangely enough, is one of the only ones from the era that is actually legal, because she only appears briefly for the premiere of one of her movies. But that's not the biggest reason this might be relevant. It's also evidently a big influence on Boogie Nights, down to lifting shots from this. It became pretty apparent as well when Hal Freeman's case is discussed, and one of the women in his films gets threatened by the police with having her kids taken away (a direct line to Julianne Moore's character arc, you may recall). But yeah, otherwise, it's exactly as depressing and fucked-up and wrong and ugly and horrible as you might expect. Not much has changed in that department, or, at least, not enough.
Horrible Bosses - Hey, here's some of the usual stupid garbage as a palate cleanser, right? Big shock that Brett Ratner produced this shambolic turd. And why is Jason Bateman famous, again? I mean, I get it, Arrested Development, but why did he even land that gig after doing a bunch of straight garbage in the 90s? Charlie Day and Jennifer Aniston are the only parts of this that aren't awful, mostly because it just doesn't give Colin Farrell time to really flesh out his potentially much funnier role. No, let's spend 40% of our time with Kevin fucking Spacey; that's a decision that's held up well in retrospect. Otherwise it's just bouncing from one stupid moment where you want to punch Jason Sudeikis in the face to the next.
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Ehhhhhhhhhhh. This has got to be the least interested I've ever been in an Alien movie. Granted, the last one being so fucking grim and smug did no favors there. I liked the metatext of Prometheus but they really need to do something new here. Beats the shit out of me what that is - different scale? Different stakes? A better look at why we're doing so much dumb bullshit off-planet that risking this kind of thing seems sensible? This is probably going to break my streak of seeing them in theaters since # 3.
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31 minutes ago, Leonidas said:
I'm sorry no, not allowed. James Bond can't be younger than me, it will rip a hole in the fabric of spacetime or something.
Don't worry, his wife is older than you.
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Pretty sure they both did.
I also kinda thought Detroit had a prayer tonight in Boston, since we were missing Horford, Hauser, Holiday, & Tatum, and Porzingis was coming back from an injury on the second night of a back-to-back (not to mention Brown & White being a bit dinged up).
Won by 25, DWhite had a triple-double, Detroit didn't win a single quarter of the game.
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2 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:
Got back from the theater and saw....
Problemista - Essentially "Job Hunting in Late '20s/Early '30s: The Movie." Tilda Swanson's character literally gave me anxiety every time I saw her on screen. Glenn Close's character from The Devil Wears Prada but overwhelmed and on cocaine, meth and caffeine combined.
You mean Meryl Streep?
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On 2/23/2024 at 10:06 AM, Curt McGirt said:
I have no idea. I'm doing the right thing and watching Trash Humpers (which I've somehow neglected to see) on Youtube for free with Spanish subs, which is today's version of finding an unmarked VHS on top of a Dumpster.
And TODAY's version of this version was finding Side Roads, a *JEFF SPEAKMAN* joint pre-The Perfect Weapon where he has a porn stache that would make Harry Reems jealous, and yet despite its cover art looking like straight-up Zalman King softcore smut nonsense, it's instead some bullshit wannabe neo-noir with exactly the level of quality you'd expect from it, given that it's starring Jeff Speakman. Truly a How Did This Get Made if there ever was one.
I've been watching a ton of Dropout TV lately, especially Game Changer & Make Some Noise, and I swear, the overwhelming majority of Brennan Lee Mulligan's villain monologuing and Jess McKenna's musical improv would put this *actual movie script* so badly to shame that, had those shows existed in the 80s, the writers of the film would have hung themselves rather than make the movie. And yet...here we are, stuck with it. It's like there's really no bottom to the amount of indigestible trash someone else thought would serve as entertainment.
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8 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:
Oh, and they are the first team to pull off the five wins in five nights to capture the conference title since UConn in 2011. You remember, the year Kemba Walker turned into Superman for 11 straight conference and NCAA tourney wins.
Ten games, anyway. Butler had one of the all-time worst shooting performances in a title game in the final and basically handed them the championship. Not that I'm really complaining, as a part-time UConn fan.
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5 hours ago, JLSigman said:
Well, it's definitely Spring in South Carolina... just a little bit of pollen...
I've always preferred the term, "arboreal bukkake".
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3 hours ago, RIPPA said:
Aaron Donald will not be terrorizing QBs anymore
He announced his retirement
The WHOOOSHing sound you heard earlier today was Geno Smith's sphincter unclenching.
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I'm pushing closer to 195 myself these days, but then again, I'm trying to and have the frame for it anyway.
Leg day was weird in a good way: heavy squats (that's only 225 for me, but DAAAMN my mid back is not equipped to handle squats that well anymore!) for 3x5, then hack squats at 290, 3x10, with a 3-second pause near the bottom to eliminate any stretch reflex. Then back to the squat rack for 3x8 at 135 to fry what was left of my glutes at that stage, then Nordics.
Push was pretty light-ish because I was pressed for time (hahah). 3x8 of the 65s for incline dumbbell, then 4x8,7,5,4 of Smith machine military presses which left me with a good crick in my neck. Some super-ROM laterals, some tricep extensions.
Today was Pull, and I thought I was going to do some crazy bullshit. Instead I did differently-crazy bullshit. Instead of 3x5 at 185 followed by 3x15 at 135 backoffs, I just did 5x7 of the 185. They were...pain. Glorious, glorious, back-growing, slab-o-meat pain. Curls and some underhanded lat pulldowns (which I'm now doing at 135 lbs for reps, a previously unthinkable number for me) fried the rest. It's probably a little scary that Push day used to be my favorite because I could get through it and not be so sore, but now Pull day is my favorite because I can throw up the Big Numbers AND be super sore afterwards. I'm a sick fuck.
And an increasingly jacked one.
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Porzingis coming off the Celtics bench in a suit looks like a movie mobster you'd call "The Giant".
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4 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:
Indy signs Raekwon Davis, 2/14
Las Vegas has told Handsome Jimmy that his handsomeness will no longer be required. So, the question is, how quickly can he get a flight to Minneapolis.
Not as fast as he can knock up an owner's girlfriend, but...pretty fast.
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Please, Aaron Rodgers. Please take that next job. Please. Do me a favor and sink two ships at once, buddy.
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Dulcolax is her Dragon Shout name. Except she doesn't shout with her Voice.
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Man, there are a lot of buses in this county, but not nearly enough of them running over my shitty neighbors. Also great to complain multiple times to the building management about it, only to have them, as of 2 hours ago, talk to me like I was fucking crazy and just making it all up. Like I don't recognize people's voices after 2 years or can't tell when things are literally hitting the shared wall between bedrooms. Let's just say the email I sent to that management douchebag's boss was...lengthy.
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4 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:
Needs a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
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4 hours ago, Pete said:
On the women's side, tiny Presbyterian College is dancing for the first time after winning the Big South tourney as a #5 seed, dumping top seed High Point on their home court in the process. Take off you (Blue) Hosers.
I wonder if they'll feed PC to South Carolina as a 1/16 just to cut down on travel and also give them a little bit of a "Hey, we won! Aw fuck, we won..." moment.
A New TV Commercial Thread
in MOVIES & TV
Posted
Draymond Green and AT&T can go fuck themselves.