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From: mtfester@netMAPSONscape.net
Newsgroups: fj.life.in-japan
Subject: Need a new word
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 20:28:27 -0700 (PDT)
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I'm thinking of either "motard" or "cretard" (f*cktard, apparently, is already
taken.) "Diltard", though, has a certain charm.

Essentially, here's the issue (admitedly, not much of one; one of those
things that annoys you like that gnat that won't settle down long enough to
swat as opposed to, say, getting rid of that drug dealer on the street 
corner who stopped giving you free samples when it became clear you 
weren't actually ever going to pay for any.)

I read Japan Times about once/week. They have decent non-news articles on
restaurants, travel, as in this week's article on Izu at
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fv20110717a1.html
(a beautiful place), some decent book reviews, etc.

For some reason, I cannot avoid reading the movie reviews by Giovanni Fazio.
(Kinda like looking at the "True Crime" magazines when I was a kid, and 
looking at the black and white pictures of the dead gangsters, I suppose.)
I have yet to read one of his reviews that didn't leave me with a "WTF"?
This week, it's the last Potter film, and he's at his WTF best.
"The sceptics meanwhile can point to an opening scene where our heroes
descend a roller-coasterlike track into a goblin vault, in what seems
rather shamelessly like an ad for the inevitable Universal Studios theme
park ride."

I feel almost bad pointing out that that was directly out of the book. 
Rather a central plot point, actually.

"The Christ allegories, meanwhile, are entirely predictable, the fallback
position of every fantasy film striving for significance from "The Matrix
Revolutions" to "The Lord of the Rings."

In this case, it's also the fallback for being true to a rather significant
event in the book, and two chapters are devoted to it.

"when they needed a turn in a darker direction, in came Alfonso Cuaron; the
series grew in intensity as its audience grew up. "

Uh, the books "grew in intensity", as Rowlings planned it, said before their
releases that she was planning it that way, etc.

The most WTF part of the review is
"It also had the advantage of timing - after the success of Peter
Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, every studio wanted its own
fantasy franchise, but Warners was already positioned: "Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone" opened in 2001 - a few weeks before Jackson's
film hit the screens, actually."

So, it had the advantae of cashing in on the success of "Lord of the Rings"
by being released earlier? Not the advantage of riding the tide of perhaps
the most popular book series of our time? Hmmm....

So, I'm leaning towards "diltard". Comments? Questions? Pointless digressions?

Mike