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Today I've been mostly fixing balcony lamps. :(

I have a long chain of small star-shaped light bulbs that I wanted to put on my balcony. Had I known what a hassle it was, I might have just left it. Trying to fit the ladder on a small balcony filled with stuff, moving that stuff contantly around. The star-shaped bulbs stuck on all the balcony decorations (like fake ivy). I was perching high up on the ladder, and I'm not too good with heights -or balance. I used a stick to help me reach the hooks I was trying to get the wire through, but it was like trying to get a snake captured on a stick. All this was accompanied by loud clanks when I kept moving the metal ladder and stuff kept falling on the floor, must have made my neighbours happy at 11am Saturday. Fitted the lights, then noticed I cannot open my balcony glazing anymore. :facepalm: Fixed it, then I couldn't close the glazing so I had to start taking the lights off - I live on the 7th floor... I had to do the whole thing again and fit the lights in a different manner. When I got vertigo, I thought this is it this time.
 
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I watched Titanic for the first time a couple nights ago and I genuinely did not expect to be as moved as I was. I have never cried so much during a movie.

I also have “My Heart Will Go On” living rent free in my head and it’s not leaving. Which isn’t a bad thing, it’s a fantastic song, but I’d like to move on already... :/
This film has played a pivotal role in my life:

It first came out in 1997 when I was in the middle of my A Levels and I went to see it in the cinema, along with my brother and some of our friends. We were fully expecting it to be excruciatingly awful and basically only went out of curiosity to find out why it was so expensive.

Anyway, after being (to put it mildly) pleasantly surprised by how wrong we were, I decided I would like to see Southampton. I hadn't chosen a University yet and the higher education fair had come and gone by then, so on a whim I phoned Southampton Uni and asked them to send me a prospectus. I thought I could at least go down for the open day and this would get me a couple of days in Southampton to look around the town. But it was Southampton that I eventually chose, and this in turn led to my meeting the Boyfriend and living here after I graduated. Thus we were here to witness all the commemoration events for the 100th anniversary of the sinking. Funny ol' world ...
 
This film has played a pivotal role in my life:

It first came out in 1997 when I was in the middle of my A Levels and I went to see it in the cinema, along with my brother and some of our friends. We were fully expecting it to be excruciatingly awful and basically only went out of curiosity to find out why it was so expensive.

Anyway, after being (to put it mildly) pleasantly surprised by how wrong we were, I decided I would like to see Southampton. I hadn't chosen a University yet and the higher education fair had come and gone by then, so on a whim I phoned Southampton Uni and asked them to send me a prospectus. I thought I could at least go down for the open day and this would get me a couple of days in Southampton to look around the town. But it was Southampton that I eventually chose, and this in turn led to my meeting the Boyfriend and living here after I graduated. Thus we were here to witness all the commemoration events for the 100th anniversary of the sinking. Funny ol' world ...
I don’t think I’ve ever properly watched Titanic from start to end but if it’s this good...
 
Also, in times when everything is tongue in cheek and with this ironic brackets that always make it possible for you to say "just kidding", so that no-one can think you really mean something seriously (and it was so already in the 90's), it takes IMHO some serious balls to create this serious, all-out romantic melodrama that takes itself completely seriously.

P. S. - Also someone once said - James Cameron made three films in the 90s. Terminator 2, True Lies and Titanic. Think what you will about him, James Cameron knows how to make money.
 
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I think there’s a solid argument to be made that involving a fictional romance as part of a tragedy overshadows the latter, but for my money Cameron did exactly what he set out to do: involve the audience and make them truly comprehend the disaster through characters they’ve just come to love over an hour. It’s a really intricate film but one that isn’t totally upfront about its intricacies. More than worthy of being labeled ‘the biggest film in history’. (I know that Avatar hasn’t really seemed to age well in the public mindset and it remains to be seen if Endgame will keep the monster status it had from the hype surrounding it before its release. Titanic meanwhile seems to remain one of those “must-watch” films for all generations that have come after its release.)
 
Oh, for sure. I like his biggest hits, financially, least of his movies, but every time he seems to pick a market and craft a piece perfectly designed for them, and it makes tons of cash. It's honestly impressive as hell.

Well, I'll even admit this - sure, in hindisight you can see all the flaws in Avatar (and there are many and have been beaten do death over all these years), but honestly, watching it for the first time in the cinema in 3D.... That was a helluva experience, an unforgettable one, at least for me.

Never going to be my favourite movie, but I want to give credit where credit's due, that's some fine craft there.

Same goes for Aliens - I'm probably one of the very few people who prefer 1 and 3 over 2, but the fact he turned it into a completely different genre, gave it a completely different feel, made it completely his movie... and yet it totally fits the series, is still thought about as one of the best sequels ever and for many people it is the favourite installment, that's a no mean feat.

Heck, "best sequels" - again, I like Terminator 1 more than the second one... But darn if what he did with the sequel wasn't impressive af.

I think there’s a solid argument to be made that involving a fictional romance as part of a tragedy overshadows the latter, but for my money Cameron did exactly what he set out to do: involve the audience and make them truly comprehend the disaster through characters they’ve just come to love over an hour. It’s a really intricate film but one that isn’t totally upfront about its intricacies. More than worthy of being labeled ‘the biggest film in history’. (I know that Avatar hasn’t really seemed to age well in the public mindset and it remains to be seen if Endgame will keep the monster status it had from the hype surrounding it before its release. Titanic meanwhile seems to remain one of those “must-watch” films for all generations that have come after its release.)

Yep, I'd say that doing a disaster movie and picking a symbolic, representative storyline is legit. Though I'm not quite sure what makes me love Titanic and hate Remember Me, but there must be some fundamental difference there...
 
I like Terminator 1 more than the second one... But darn if what he did with the sequel wasn't impressive af.
It would have been even better if the marketing hadn’t immediately blown the twist that Ah-nold was the good guy in the second movie. The first 20 minutes or so of the film play out completely differently if you’re assuming he’s bad, and then he whips out the shotgun and saves John Connor instead of killing him. Imagine how much more impact that would have had if they’d kept it a secret...
 
I don’t think I’ve ever properly watched Titanic from start to end but if it’s this good...

The ship sinks in the end. There, spoiled it for you.

Well, I'll even admit this - sure, in hindisight you can see all the flaws in Avatar (and there are many and have been beaten do death over all these years), but honestly, watching it for the first time in the cinema in 3D.... That was a helluva experience, an unforgettable one, at least for me.

Well, my experience with it was somewhat different. I only ever saw the film once, in the cinema, and I've never had the desire to go back to it, for two reasons. Basically, I remember predicting virtually everything that would happen in the film accurately, even minor details. It was such a transparently constructed plot. And I don't meant the obvious "It's an LSD vision of Dances With Wolves played by smurfs" argument (no matter how true it is, and it's absolutely true), but the fact that I could predict the way every plot device would be used later in the film from the moment it was introduced. The only thing I didn't predict was the gung-ho sarge ending up sitting in a battle robot, because I didn't expect the film to resort to that kind of cliché.
The other thing I kept thinking was, "wow, this is gonna look so old in ten years". I couldn't get myself immersed in the visuals because I'm just too cynical about CGI. All that came to mind back then was, "this isn't real, it was all rendered on a computer and it's gonna look as dated in ten years as Phantom Menace looks now". And that's actually the only reason why I would be interested in re-watching the film at some point, to see if I was right about that.

So yeah, I couldn't get immersed plot-wise and I couldn't get immersed in all this world-building stuff, so there just wasn't anything for me in this film.
 
The ship sinks in the end. There, spoiled it for you.
One more thing that makes Titanic really great is the fact that it doesn't matter if one knows the plot or not, the experience is still just as incredible. Like beyond the actual sinking of it. There is so much in this film that is a given up front.

Just in case so I don't actual spoil it: You know right from the beginning that:

1. The ship hits an iceberg and sinks. It does not get away. They don't manage to turn it time. It's fucking toast.
2. You know inherently that Rose survives because she is the one telling the story.
3. You also know that Jack dies because no one else can make any connections to him (and because if he lives then there's no real reason for her to be telling this story).

And a lot of the iconic moments too. She gets painted in the nude. The door only has enough room for one of them (yeah I know there's a debate but who cares), and she has to - ironically - let go of Jack to hold on to her promise. And I also knew that the film would close with Celine Dion singing "My Heart Will Go On" (which hits far more potently once you've seen the film). I knew all this upfront and thought that nothing about the film would surprise me,
and I still burst out into tears at least four separate times during my viewing of it. It's just powerful.
 
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