WordWolf

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.

People are getting smarter and the times have changed! It is FAR to easy to look up twi online and see all the criticism. Even if twi did a FANTASTIC presentation, eventually they either have to say their name, or have everyone suspicious because they refused to say their name. Looking them up online quickly shows all the warnings, and hundreds of pages of discussion, analysis and direct testimony of eyewitnesses RIGHT HERE. So, we still starve their fire of fuel by informing the strangers and the clueless. "In vain is the net spread in sight of any bird." There's also no zeitgeist like the hippies for twi to hijack. vpw lied and deceived his way into their trust, and used them to sell twi on both coasts. There's no equivalent group available now. There's no dynamic speaker to even SELL twi to the stranger. Rosa-lie is dry and boring, and any dynamic speaker would be a threat to her-even if they HAD one. There's no "special knowledge" anymore. It's far too easy to find local churches that teach the Bible, it's far too easy to find "special knowledge" websites for free. So, twi has NOTHING to offer new people. So, its current recruitment is to recruit the kids of innies. This becomes especially ironic after decades of discouraging innies to HAVE children. So, there's a few spoiled kids of the inner cadre, and a few kids of the rank-and-file. That's not enough to replace the people who leave due to finally getting fed up and leave due to dying. So, the numbers keep dwindling every year, even if it's in the single digits. And the younger ones think they can turn it all around. Why can't the younger ones turn it all around? A) No special knowledge not already out there. B) No zeitgeist to plug into. C) Everyone's been warned about twi. So, everything they have to offer is old, tired, and worn-out, and usually only re-served to those who've sat through it thousands of times by now. And if they COULD energize people somehow? Rosa-lie would guillotine the whole thing because anyone with a lick of talent is a threat to her, even Donna. Any dynamic leader could "steal" her entire base away from here before she saw it coming. So, she clamps down on talent. So, twi dwindles every year, and the members get older, and a handful of members become teenagers and adults. That's a tiny handful, from whom SOME may join the Corps, which explains why any active Corps program would be in the single digits.

That IS a good reply. Some "team-building" doesn't make any sense, and some exercises aren't worth doing. I'm reminded of "Momentus"(and all the aliases it operates under because people have been warned of Momentus already) and the lifeboat exercise, where one is required to decide that their own life is more important than everyone else's in the group, and announce so, and the group ridicules those who refuse to do it. The only thing that taught was to be callous and self-centered, and a supposedly Christian organization does it, and it's still being quietly advertised and promoted by a different Christian organization *cough stfi cough*. Some groups aren't worth building or being a part of.

EyesOpen's account of the horrific event illustrates what I said before. "it was with the goals of building a sense of group identity (the group all did it together), obedience (do this silly thing and don't question it) and developing peer pressure to promote social conformity in the corps (if ONE of you fails, ALL of you fail, and ALL of you will know who failed and obviously will give him/her static over it.) " The group identity was built for the whole group who had to stay together even when some were ill-equipped and injured. The entire enterprise was being undertaken at that moment because it was more important to keep to the schedule than to keep the participants alive. (24 hours of waiting before performing the climb would have made a critical difference.) The obedience thing is more obvious when one realizes most of them were taking damage from sustained exposure to the wet and cold because they were told they HAD TO. As for the peer pressure to promote social conformity, that was all over things. It seems a number of LEAD or Corps groups were TOLD they were considered screw-ups or wash-outs. (Yeah, that's a real Christian way to proceed with volunteers you accepted into your program who paid a premium to be there. Even if they WERE, it's the fault of the nonexistent "screening" process that they ended up there and the program that it wasn't organized to have a Plan B or C for that.) So, the groups were told they were no good, and had to really be blindly, jump-off-the-cliff obedient, and ignore common sense and self-preservation, and had to keep the group intact. So, where sensible people (who could recognize the signs) would have delayed the climb until after the poor weather, or turned around as soon as it was obvious they were under-prepared for the current weather and regrouped and replanned from someplace warm and dry, we had adults who were compelled (by social conformity and threats of social sanctions very obvious) to ignore self-preservation and stay, even past the introduction of long-term or permanent injuries. The entire program was organized more about what was cheaper and whar promoted social conformity and obedience rather than what was in the best interests of the participants. That's why missing persons, body counts and rapes never got vpw to reconsider anything (like the illegal hitch-hiking), and the first thing that got any changes to happen was the multiple lawsuits from people injured because twi went out of their way to ignore their well-being. The programs eventually changed-not out of concern or even practicality, but after listening to twi's lawyers. How would you feel about joining a religious group that treated you as disposable until their LAWYERS compelled them to change that?

It does sound that way. One hallmark of twi- and a lot of people object whenever someone points this out- is that vpw was both LAZY and CLUELESS. He wanted things, but he never wanted to do the work to get them or to even understand what they entailed. That's why the most successful program, IMHO, for twi was the WOW program. Take some young people with drive. Tell them to go somewhere and do something, and provide neither support nor oversight nor transportation there. and wait for them to succeed. (Think about it-other than class materials, the WOWs were COMPLETELY on their own.) There was also zero screening before the zero oversight, so the kids could discover, on the field, that one of the people in their group was predatory or mentally ill and a danger to himself or them. And if there was a problem on the field, the WOW was put on a Greyhound Bus and sent home and forgotten about. (We've had stories about how someone traumatized or injured was just put on a bus, then turned up home WEEKS LATER, or how someone wandered off the bus and later was discovered before they were killed or otherwise harmed further.) As for the Corps, vpw liked the IDEA of the Corps. He liked that the IDEA of the military had trained people who did whatever the higher-ups told them to do. Did he know what it was like in the military? No- he had no advisors setting up the program with any military experience. Did vpw have ANY military experience? He didn't even enter the ROTC program-that would have been work. The man plagiarized his way through school and picked soft options wherever he could (like Homiletics), and the idea of the work in the ROTC program or Reserves or National Guard was antithetical to his entire personality. So, if he overheard of some exercise any branch of the military did, he would certainly just adapt it without understanding it fully, or going over the possible dangers and drawbacks to a completely different type of people performing the exact same exercise.

Ok, how's this for a movie? 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 one is approaching the US coast, and they all try to claim it for their team.