Image macros that make you laugh, cry, or both.

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Sun Dec 04, 2011 9:59 am

Prak_Anima wrote:

My train of thought when first seeing that:

Ok, that's pretty funny.
Wait, a snorkal? What about the Zora's Tunic?
Wait a minute...

Edit: Added spoiler-copy of image due to page break.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Tue Dec 06, 2011 4:22 am

Was too entertained to sblock image.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 6:18 pm

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 7:39 pm

I notice that 中国 didn't make the list...

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 7:59 pm

[acts paranoid and suspicious]

Look! The bottom of the image is truncated. Maybe it was there, but the government deleted it!

[/acts paranoid and suspicious]

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 8:45 pm

This seems to possibly be the 'original':

I'm not sure why the Chinese labels are on the one with the Euro. This one is without:

Notice how the text gets more heavily pixelated past Japan.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 10:00 pm

The text changed font. Not sure how you saw pixelation but not that.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:14 pm

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Wed Dec 14, 2011 9:45 pm

angelfromanotherpin · Wed Dec 14, 2011 10:17 pm

Technically Leia tried to rescue Han, only to be captured and turned into couch candy. It was a pretty good try, though.

Janeway was a criminally incompetent asshole who only accomplished anything because the writers were bigger idiots than they wrote her to be.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Dec 14, 2011 10:38 pm

That image was posted by George Takei on his Facebook, and Janeway (as well as Leia) is an add-on, so I can understand the favortism.

Jilocasin · Post by **Jilocasin** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 4:00 am

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 5:09 am

Put my vote down for Janeway as worst captain (although that last one with the weepy intro music is awfully close, I blame overall horrid writing for that, and not the actor in any way).

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 8:58 am

Uh, the character really should be the writing. The enjoyment you get from the show is a mix of writing, cast and other stuff, but the actual character, and how good or bad they are, depends on how they're written, not who is playing them. So really, "that's a case of bad writing, not the actor" should make it worse.

Though maybe that just reflects how much I want to punch people when they say "___ is going to be great, it has ___ in it!" (see: Johnny Depp makes anything sell, the guy who played Giles in Buffy becoming "the reason to watch Repo: the Genetic Opera" rather than it being a fucking awesome horror-musical, and so on).

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 2:45 pm

When you say the character really should be the writing, do you mean that Janeway should be the writing or Kate Mulgrew should be the writing.

Incidentally I'm not too sure what you mean by "should be the writing."

When it comes to acting, I've always been a fan of method acting. Brando, De Niro, Christian Bale, and Johnny Depp (not so much) are all method actors. To be convincing is to take a script or simple character descriptions and then add both your own personal experience as a human being & experience as the character role (this gets hard very quickly)

--

To throw my two cents into the worst Star Trek captain, I would have to say Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula).

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 2:57 pm

Good acting can make up for a certain amount of bad writing - if the dialogue is wooden or hokey or otherwise sub-par, some combination of charm, irony, or emoting can overcome that. That effect is basically the only thing that makes watching Babylon 5 or Fringe bearable.

What good acting cannot defeat is terrible plotting. Janeway was written to take really objectively bad actions and inactions all the time, and there's no amount of acting that would make those decisions not terrible.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 4:22 pm

StarWars Episode 1 through 3 are great examples of how good actors just cannot do anything about horrible scripts. Ewan McGregore is the only actor who managed to come across as not horrid, and that's because he's a great actor, who had way more latitude.

Natalie Portman and Hayden Christiansen are both excellent actors. But in those movies, they come across as on par with Will Farrel.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:31 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Good acting can make up for a certain amount of bad writing - if the dialogue is wooden or hokey or otherwise sub-par, some combination of charm, irony, or emoting can overcome that. That effect is basically the only thing that makes watching Babylon 5 or Fringe bearable.

That also describes the First Dr. Who. You would have thought that they had gotten the actors right off of the BBC Radio lot with a three week course in how to make expressions. Otherwise they stand like statues during dialogue.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 8:19 pm

Koumei wrote:Uh, the character really should be the writing. The enjoyment you get from the show is a mix of writing, cast and other stuff, but the actual character, and how good or bad they are, depends on how they're written, not who is playing them. So really, "that's a case of bad writing, not the actor" should make it worse.

Though maybe that just reflects how much I want to punch people when they say "___ is going to be great, it has ___ in it!" (see: Johnny Depp makes anything sell, the guy who played Giles in Buffy becoming "the reason to watch Repo: the Genetic Opera" rather than it being a fucking awesome horror-musical, and so on).

Well, writing, acting and star-power draw are all different things.

A script will give basic directions - something like"<character> enters room angrily and bellows "what did you do this time!" at <other character>. The actor's job is to interpret whether that means:

kicking in the door, throwing something, pointing and stammering "you, you, what <pause>... What did you do this time?!"
flinging the door wide so it slams, standing completely still in the doorway and yelling the line from across the width of the stage/set.
a controlled pacing into the <other character>'s personal space and delivering the line in an over-enunciated mock whisper while vibrating slightly to indicate tension and repressed rage.
running into the room, slapping the <other character> in the back of the head and saying "Hey dumbass, what did you do this time?"
Some other combination of actions and delivery indicating anger

And whichever way the actor plays it, their job is to make sure that the rest of their character's actions and delivery match up with the decisions they made about actions and delivery in that scene. If they decide the character's version of anger is kicking doors and throwing things, then it becomes inconsistent if the use the controlled tension and repressed rage for a second angry scene. Now some authors and directors, (*cough* Samuel Beckett ) are very very precise about how actors should play things and how many milliseconds each pause is, but others are exceedingly loose and will give actors free reign to rewrite lines - but there is always some room for interpretation by the actor.

And then Star Power is something else entirely. Without knowing anything else, I can say with confidence that a Jackie Chan movie will have Kung Fu fighting, a Will Farrel movie will have lowbrow comedy and a Hugh Grant movie will be a romance. I can also tell you which one I'm willing to see in a theater, which one I'll likely rent and which one I will ignore totally based solely on those genres. None of those "actors" really play notably different characters in most of their movies, and as a consumer, I don't really care - their names alone tell me useful info about the movies they appear in.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 8:48 pm

Um, actually, deciding what that means is traditionally the director's job. Actually doing those things is the actor's job, although good ones will also give the director suggestions.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 9:16 pm

sabs wrote:Natalie Portman and Hayden Christiansen are both excellent actors. But in those movies, they come across as on par with Will Farrel.

Hey, that's just not fair.

Will Ferrel is actually amusing, unlike the acting in the prequels.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 10:08 pm

Will Farrel is only amusing in voice work. His face seems to send out some kind of "hate me" vibe...

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Fri Dec 23, 2011 10:48 pm

Now for a picture that is quite awesome.

edit: I accidentally copied the large image rather than a smaller one.

Those interested in the larger one should look here.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Dec 23, 2011 11:08 pm

sabs wrote:StarWars Episode 1 through 3 are great examples of how good actors just cannot do anything about horrible scripts.

If I recall word on the street was it was a good example of how good actors cannot overcome insanely bad Direction.

Some of the stories about what Lucas was demanding from the actors were pretty crazy shit, but looking at the resulting performances... seem pretty credible in retrospect.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Sun Dec 25, 2011 2:22 am