AA.org's M.I.A.

Lol!

@Imperious:

I have seen: Mo’ Better Blues, Do the Right Thing, School Daze,Boys in the hood and Bamboozled

Most of the cast are African Americans but i was making a joke about him casting an african as a German General but its not too far off from reality from the examples of his casting in other movies.

Haven’t seen all those, but some of them were not good.  It happens.

Fair enough on the joke, but it is not reality at all.  He mainly does movies about the Bronx, in black neighborhoods.  That is appropriate.  Casting black men as German generals is just stupid (but yes, funny), and not something to do since he was so interested in showing contributions of blacks in WW2 - albeit from a book.

Oliver Stone only does movies where they ridicule conservatism viewpoints, so i expect to get that in all his movies.

Ok, maybe you do, but that’s Oliver Stone.  But “only does movies” is completely wrong when you see: Natural Born Killers, Alexander, Any Given Sunday, etc., or look at most of the movies he wrote the screenplay for.

@Cmdr:

Well, I never claimed he had black nazis, but yes, I’ve seen some of his fiction.  They’re okay entertainment value, but not something I enjoyed as a primary repository for my hard earned cash.  I prefer Jerry Bruckheimer :P

I wasn’t attributing the black nazi to you.  You don’t like him, ok, that’s fine.  No need to pull something nonsensical or unrelated like Michael Moore (yes, I know you don’t like him either).

@Cmdr:

I just went to see my first movie in the Theater of the year: “An American Carol” it was hilarious!

I only went to the effort to see it in the theaters because Blockbuster is boycotting it (like they did with Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed until they lost the lawsuit.)

Good fiction huh?

Question: how can a movie rental company boycott something that just came out on screen?

@Imperious:

I saw Miracle and as i suspected it was a typical spike lee movie. He extrapolates once again south central/bronx ghetto rough language of the 1990’s in every sentence, while the Germans look like mensa candidates. The Africans are portrayed as disgusting, corrupted and uneducated soldiers ( with some exceptions) ‘looking’ for opportunities. Its like he made it to appeal to the audience that watched his other movies by trying to turn WW2 france into “Gang Wars of the Hood” and frankly their was not any way it would have worked unless it was specifically about the “buffalo soldiers” and their bravery in fighting in spite of how they were treated at home. ON this level it had a chance and intimated that and similar points but it was very weak effort.

It should be a box office bust.

I saw stroke of genious and this was better but formalistic plot sequence.

Thanks for the assessment, I will reply once I’ve seen it.  Not holding much for it with the reviews, but will save the opinion for myself.

Either cyber psche, or bad programming… am I closet che supporter?  They should fix their way of advertising.  Although I have to say it worked.  I did do a poll from this board.  Let the junk mail begin!

triplea is java might be able to work
it worked on my sun workstation

I think most of the backing came due to two facts:
(1) the USSR needed reforms, that was obvious.
Still, they probably wanted a long term leader that could be influenced => a younger one, after the two short reigns of Andropov and what-was-his-name… Probably, the influentials wanted some change, but surely not that much that it would threaten their power-base, one of the reasons for the coup that failed due to Jelzins help for Gorbachev.
(2) The general secretary and all the other positions he fills made him the most powerful man in the USSR. Probably, whoever put Gorbachev into place, underestimated him. Pretty much the same underestimation that Hitler faced when he was appointed Chancellor, but luckily Gorbachev used that to reform positively, and i consider the new freedom of information, the right to ask wether the party is right and that the crucial reform.

So, I don’t think that there was “real” backing, i believe Gorbachev was kind of a compromise candidate, kind of a makeshift. Of course, once he was into power, you ccouldn’t remove instantly, that would have meant that the party made a mistake (which was not “allowed” before Gorbachev). And he was clever enough to stay into power, and use his popularity at the beginning (which soon, after the economy started to collapse openly, was reduced to more or less nothing) to enforece the reforms.

IL, this is 2002.

Well apparently bringing old threads back is in vogue.

Nah, the government still withholds information from World War II even though all the major players are dead.

regarding Risk 2110, I have played it and it is a lot of fun. Not nearly so involved as the AA games, but it is fast paced and wildly unpredictable. The main problem of the original Risk - players amassing enormous armies til it was foolhardy for anyone to attack anyone else - has been eliminated with the introduction of the command cards and “energy chips” (money). We got a four player game together, and there was just no way to tell who was “winning” because those damn cards can swing the balance of power in an instant. There’s also only 5 rounds to a game, so a player has to think ahead and yet not bide his time TOO long. Only played twice, but I’d say it’s worth the purchase price.