Balta1701

For the next time we hear how we should be able to reshape the entire economy in a short bill, this one is 1100 pages (still holding a grudge over people thinking that was a useful point about anything).

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Dec 19, 2017 -> 02:47 PM) I’m assuming those are the Knights of Ren and I thought they showed them briefly in the TFA during a dream or flashback sequence. If so, are they still alive and where have they been? Maybe they’ll make an appearance in the final movie. I was assuming "Knights of Ren" was the long lived group that he had joined a-la when Vader joined the "Sith".

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Dec 19, 2017 -> 01:54 PM) It was a typo on my part, I corrected it. TY, I got lost by that one.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Dec 19, 2017 -> 12:49 PM) Youre right, he didnt use it in this movie. Are we reading each other clearly? I said he "did" use it in this movie, in TLJ. Is that what you're agreeing with? the "Didn't" is confusing me.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Dec 19, 2017 -> 01:44 PM) I dont think Snoke is supposed to be more powerful than the Emperor. They barely show any use of the force and they dont show him able to send lightning out, which is generally reserved for only the strongest force users. I think that actually most of the characters are supposed to be overall weaker in the force. Didn't he use the lightning early in the movie with Ren? I believe he did.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 19, 2017 -> 11:30 AM) http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2749640...er-be-a-good-qb Time to blow it all up Have they even built anything out of the rubble of the last time they blew it all up? Aren't we just detonating rubble?

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 07:06 PM) Jake might be an interesting and relatively cheap option for us to look at to fill the veteran pitching role and help the young pitchers develop.He is a competitor. One year contract I dislike this reputation of Jake Peavy as a competitor or a useful veteran. He talked a big game and could never back it up, and never knew when to shut his mouth when he wasn't backing it up.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 05:27 PM) How long would a team be willing to go on Donaldson? I see him getting a 3 year deal with an option for a 4th covering his age 33-36 seasons. Let's see what he does next year. That was a pretty big dropoff in games played. If he gets back to a full season and shows his usual MVP quality form you could readily talk me into gambling a 5 year deal on him, especially if we could move him to DH towards the end.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 05:36 PM) Sort of on the same thread as this, something caught my attention during Luke’s version of the flashback. He said when he woke up that Kylo had taken some apprentices with him, and killed the rest. So where are the force users that he took with him? I didn't catch that but I assumed the First Order guards that they killed in the lightsabre duel had some training.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 05:34 PM) Yeah Im not sure if Rey will be an actual Jedi or something else. But I think the idea that "she could be something else" is what makes these episodes different. Snoke didnt really fit into a Sith/Jedi box either, maybe Rey will take some of the training. So you're saying it would have helped a lot to get the tiniest bit of backstory of Snoke and the Knights of Ren? We didn't have much backstory of the emperor and it worked because the Emperor stayed in the shadows through 4-5. He was an outside presence, only referred to in #4 and only hologram once in #5. Maybe if Snoke had been more of a shadowy presence I could have bought that, but they threw him out there as a beat up, ultra powerful force user who somehow had already gotten access to Ben Solo while he was at Luke's school. Just was too many holes in that part of the story. Anyway, if "She could be something else" then stop fighting against that. She had the texts. Luke calls her a Jedi. Go with it!

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 03:59 PM) Jean Paul Satre's "No Exit" is an entire book about being in a room. If you think the Plot was a "slow speed chase", then maybe you are watching the movie too literally? Because my interpretation of the plot was the cracking of the old order of the Jedi/Sith and the rise of something different. Which is why the director tries to beat that idea over the viewers head in the scenes where Luke calls out the Jedi for their failing, in the scene where Luke fails as a master and in the scene where Yoda explains to Luke that failure is something to learn from. If you think that is bad plot, so be it. If you think its a dumb movie, you are completely entitled to your opinion. And I was willing to buy the end of the Jedi as a lesson for their mistakes and the starting of something else. It would be an acknowledgment that the Jedi rules themselves led to Anakin's downfall and Ben's downfall. Then we got to "and I am not the last Jedi".

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 01:55 PM) Totally agree. My first thought was what a catch. My second thought was, if anything, it was a fumble caused by the ground that he recovered in the end zone. He clearly caught the ball, controlled the ball, made a "football move" with the ball, got a knee down and then "fumbled," which I think is a pretty weak fumble to begin with. The NFL is just terrible. The sport makes no sense anymore. Not only do you have these stupid catch situations, I despise the fumbling forward into the endzone calls that the Bears had earlier this year and Carr had last night for Oakland. When all the rules are skewed towards the offense anyway, why are we penalizing offensive players from making scoring plays? And why should the defense benefit? Everywhere else on the field if you fumble out of bounds you spot the ball where it was fumbled. Why on earth should the endzone, the opposing team's endzone!!!, be any different? If you make a catch, turn and make a football move, and cross the goal line, the play should end when the ball crosses the goal line. We've seen this enough. I might even be disagreeing with myself from a couple years ago.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 12:04 PM) But a hand-off is a different situation from a forward pass. I didn't think he ever really had complete control until the ball hit the ground and shifted on him. For a running back, you'd talking about a situation where he for-sure has control of a live ball. I very much disagree, he had control with both hands the whole way down and then it moved when it hit the ground. He had made a football move to go into the endzone after having control.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 11:02 AM) Part of what I hate about those movies is he is the worst actor of all time. I don't think Rami Malek could have delivered most of those romance lines well.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 10:55 AM) Maybe I should have added compared to 7 and 8. To me they had a very different feel. I think you're referring to Lucas trying to write dialog that seemed over the top and philosophical between Anakin and Padme when it just came off as garbage. We didn't have to deal with that in this one at least.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 10:53 AM) Did she? I don't remember that. I'll have to pay attention when I go again. They're in a drawer in the Falcon at the end.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 10:14 AM) I really don't get the controversy over this one. I didn't think it was a catch as soon as I saw the replay. By the rule it wasn't a catch, but as they noted above if a running back was handed the ball and does the exact same thing then it's a touchdown, that makes it hard to buy the text of the rule.

Overall, I kinda am glad I waited 2 days before commenting on this after seeing it because they really do beat the living daylights out of you with the action in this film. It really doesn't let up, you walk out of the theater feeling like you need to catch your breath. Most of it felt somewhat germane to the film, but you definitely don't get a payoff for Finn being in this movie at all and that's the one where the action does start to feel excessive and contrived. I think my favorite parts were clearly anything involving Skywalker. He remained such a rich, emotional character, even the scene where Ren turned against him where it could have come off as silly he pulled off. It's not a revelation in filmmaking of any sort, but it's not a bad action film. It had some moments of heart, but I think there was a little too much shoved in.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 09:27 AM) A Democratic winner in Virginia says it’s time for bipartisanship You just won a sweeping election and this is how you act. Smdh. Aside from the part about how people need to have their "skin in the game" on Healthcare (after all, no one cares about their own health unless it costs them money?) I don't find this that disagreeable. The fact that you won one election shouldn't be a pass to try to systematically dismantle the other side's votes, and it's disappointing that we've just gotten used to that being the case.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 10:19 AM) And Lea shoudl have died in space. Having her "fly" back was garbage. A movie with most of the rebel force dying should have been darker, and more hopeless than what was presented. I feel like in the end this scene will go down along with the "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" from Ep 3 as one of the worst moments on film from Star Wars.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Dec 16, 2017 -> 02:03 PM) Even then we don't get a ton of backstory other than his rise to power and a little bit of exposition about him usurping power from his Sith master. QUOTE (Tony @ Dec 16, 2017 -> 02:06 PM) Right. I think that’s one area where fans have gotten really unrealistic the last few years, because the franchise has been around for so long, SO much has been written about the original characters, anyone new introduced people expect an entire foundation built around them. It just isn’t that realistic. So, the lack of a Snoke backstory is still bothering me more than you folks allowed here. The entire rest of this movie was built around tying up the loose ends from TFA. Rey's parents, what happened between Luke and Ben, they went through and in detail covered these items except for the fact that they left a powerful and well trained force user coming from a background of the "knights of ren" with no backstory. I feel like that did weaken the storytelling and the interest in him - he became almost a Maguffin, a toy to drive the plot forwards without doing much. You didn't even feel like his death affected the plotline that much - Kylo Ren immediately screamed "I am the Supreme Leader" and everyone accepted it.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 18, 2017 -> 10:05 AM) Pretty confident that was a lie. I think it would flat out suck as writing to say that, so blatantly, after teasing the question the entire first movie, and then have that turn out to be a lie with no specific hints whatsoever that it was a lie. That would really offer a convincing case for the director of 8 being on a different page from 7 of 9.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 17, 2017 -> 04:30 PM) Saw a pretty long one this morning on the owner of the Carolina Panthers. Apparently he will sell the team in response. Wow. That's the team that was scared to do anything after Trump's comments because of him.

That was disgusting. Even the announcers couldn't figure out what was wrong for like 9 reviews, and it decides home field in the AFC.

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Dec 15, 2017 -> 09:10 PM) I agree with you. I just don't understand this apparent zeal to deteriorate that talent. And the other effect of this bizarre strategy is not trading Abreu, which, honestly, they really should do I'm equally ok with extending him. I just think whatever the call is, it should be made by the end of this offseason.