Rate Cloverfield

[Donovan Morningfire]

I am in the same boat.

Normally shaky-cam doesn't do anything more than annoy the heck out of me, so I figured I'd be fine, especially as I don't suffer from any kind of motion-sickness. This is the first time I felt any sort of physical pain from it. But then again, every other time I've sat thru a shaky-cam scene the scene itself was short and not as jarring.

 

[Felon]

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Google Ebert Zero Stars and you should turn up about a few pagefuls.


And I liked the first movie Ebert's talking about.

Wolf Creek? I agree with Roper that it was mean-spirited trash. And even putting that aside, it makes me wonder how protracting the act of some thug shooting a couple of people into a two-hour film can qualify as an entry into the "horror" genre. There are films about Rwanda and Darfur that surpass that act of inhumanity in about three seconds.

But a zero-star rating still represents a decision not to vote rationally.

The point remains: if you're going to have a zero, you might as well have an eleven. And a -100, and a 1,000,000. People who rabidly hate the movie will just vote the lowest available rating, and those who love it passionately will vote the highest available rating.

 

[Felon]

ENWorld needs to get over the collective terror/hatred of frat boys. My brother was a Delta Tau Delta and is today a VP for JP Morgan Chase.

Well, to be sure, fraternities don't just exist for immature males to party non-stop and endlessly try to hook up with girls that suffer from low self-esteem. They also provide a way for said immature males to do professional networking after graduation when they have to sober up and move on to the next phase of their pre-programmed existence: landing a job and trophy wife and rugrats and a house in the burbs and a couple of gas-guzzling SUV's. Frat boys wind up as VP's all the time. If anything, that fact bumps up resentment a notch or two.

I've got a manager in my workplace whose office is located near mine. His primary daily activity is calling up his brothers for an hour or two and arranging various outings. His ringtone is his house brothers shouting their little cheer. The guy's pushing forty and the rest of his life has suffered for his steadfast refusal to grow up. This is the sort of fellow who, were he a character in a horror movie, most people would cheer his gory demise.

Having said that, I reiterate that I don't see the frat-boy connection with this movie. These twentysomething people don't seem particularly obnoxious or spoiled or possess any of the other arrested-development traits that make the stereotypical frat boy so deserving of violent death. There is nothing inherently wrong with partying and scoring a home run with another consenting adult. It's when people ignore that there's more to life than partying that they become the sort of shallow and insipid 2D characters that we can't wait for some monster to munch on. All things in moderation.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, to be sure, fraternities don't just exist for immature males to party non-stop and endlessly try to hook up with girls that suffer from low self-esteem. They also provide a way for said immature males to do professional networking after graduation when they have to sober up and move on to the next phase of their pre-programmed existence: landing a job and trophy wife and rugrats and a house in the burbs and a couple of gas-guzzling SUV's. Frat boys wind up as VP's all the time. If anything, that fact bumps up resentment a notch or two.

See, this is the kind of general slur that, if it were about pretty much any other group, I suspect would earn one a vacation from ENWorld. But here, it's so commonly shared -- despite most posters being a decade or more out of college -- it's treated as being truth.

Here's a sample listing of fraternity men (with a relatively high concentration of DKEs): Rutherford B. Hayes (DKE), James Garfield (Delta Upsilon), Chester Arthur (Psi Upsilon), Benjamin Harrison (Phi Delta Theta), William McKinley (Sigma Alpha Epsilon), Theodore Roosevelt (Delta Kappa Epsilon/Alpha Delta Phi), William Howard Taft (Psi Upsilon), Woodrow Wilson (Phi Kappa Psi), Calvin Coolidge (Phi Gamma Delta), Franklin D. Roosevelt (Alpha Delta Phi), Harry S. Truman (Lambda Chi Alpha), Dwight D. Eisenhower (Tau Epsilon Phi), John F. Kennedy (Phi Kappa Theta), Gerald R. Ford (Delta Kappa Epsilon), Ronald Reagan (Tau Kappa Epsilon), George H. W. Bush (Delta Kappa Epsilon), George W. Bush (Delta Kappa Epsilon)

Surely there's one or two men in there you would characterize as something other than booze-swilling skirt-chasers.

But hey, if everyone at ENWorld wants to invest fraternity guys with so much power that they are able to cast a pall over posters' lives for the rest of time, I guess that's everyone's call. To me, investing that much power in anyone is a little irrational.

 

[Felon]

Surely there's one or two men in there you would characterize as something other than booze-swilling skirt-chasers.

Well, there are exceptions to every classification--mean nuns, nice nazis, you name it.

Do lots of guys join frats to swill booze and chase skirts? Sure. I'm not sure why consider that a slur.

Do they join frats for job-networking purposes? Sure. Not sure why you consider that a slur either.

Do some guys deviate from the stereotype? Sure.

Are the number of guys who join frats for the stereotypical reasons large enough to allow for a certain amount of generalization? That seems to be the point of debate.

But hey, if everyone at ENWorld wants to invest fraternity guys with so much power that they are able to cast a pall over posters' lives for the rest of time, I guess that's everyone's call.

Nobody's doing that.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Lets take any future 'fraternity' discussion into a thread on the Off-Topic forum, and leave this forum for Cloverfield.

Thanks!

 

[Darkwolf71]

Lets take any future 'fraternity' discussion into a thread on the Off-Topic forum, and leave this forum for Cloverfield.

Thanks!

Which, by the way, was a great movie! If you haven't seen it and can handle the shakey cam, go see it!