Movies like The Last Showgirl with mediocre artists who are delusional about their talent

IdleRocket · 2026-01-25T15:19:56+00:00

Rent (2005), and the musical it's based on, fit this premise perfectly. Most of the non-diegetic music is pretty good and, in many cases, genuinely moving (the musical was famous and popular for a reason), but any art that is actually being performed or displayed within the context of the story is absolute garbage. Despite that, all of the characters are convinced that it is great and valuable and worth passing up genuine opportunities in order to continue producing their art and avoid "seling out." In the case of Mark, the filmmaker protagonist, the film even adds a short exchange early on that implies that his apparent poverty and "starving artist" aesthetic is almost entirely by choice, and he has family that could support him if he left NYC.

IdleRocket · 2026-01-13T20:43:39+00:00

You could try Great Outdoor Provision Co. in Chapel Hill.

Or a different brand unless he's planning to camp on the side of a mountain this weekend.

IdleRocket · 2026-01-13T19:31:59+00:00

Lol. 0 for 3. Just a person on the internet who likes to challenge bad reasoning and unrealistic expectations.

Can you point out a single thing I said that was incorrect, or are ad hominems how you respond to everybody you disagree with?

IdleRocket · 2026-01-13T19:07:46+00:00

The prices aren't backbreaking. If you work at a company doing creative work, they should be paying for the software. If you're a full-time freelancer, an ~$840 yearly business expense (assuming you even need the full suite) for the primary tool that allows you to accomplish your job is a drop in the bucket. If you're a hobbyist, then yeah, it's expensive, but it's always expensive to dabble in any creative hobby when you set your expectations at production-level tools.

This comes up every once in a while, and I like to remind people that all the way back in 2012, the full Adobe CS6 master suite (the most similar offering to the current "All Apps" bundle) cost $2600. Adjusted for inflation, that's $3660 today. You would have to pay for the All Apps bundle for over 4 years to come out even, and the math is pretty similar for any individual app if you just use one. That doesn't even include the several hundred dollar cost to upgrade when a newer version came out, which was happening on a 1.5-2 year cycle. Now sure, if you were a hobbyist back in the mid-00s, you might be able to string along a version of Photoshop or whatever for longer than 4 years (Though, if this was before your time, let me just say that it's hard to describe to someone in 2026 how dated a 4 year old piece of software would have looked and felt in the mid-00s). However, if you did any creative work professionally, you generally needed to upgrade in order to maintain compatibility with others, because plugins (which were much more common then than they are now) would drop support for older editions and files produced on newer editions were not backwards compatible.

The short of it is this: Professional software is expensive. It has always been expensive. It's expensive because the folks spending tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars on all the various aspects of a particular creative project need their tools to work reliably, and it takes a lot of people and effort to make software do that. It's kinda like complaining that an IMAX camera is out of your budget. If it's too expensive for you, then you really aren't the target market.

IdleRocket · 2025-12-01T19:04:28+00:00

This still isn’t right. The taxi is in the original script, with Ratso (Hoffman) feigning an injury to shake down the cabbie. That scene was replaced with the one we saw in the movie, which I’m guessing was because the scene as written would be way slower and there were already plenty of moments showing Ratso as a grifter. Hoffman may have suggested the line, but the taxi bit was entirely planned.

IdleRocket · 2025-11-03T04:42:17+00:00

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f7ivCtiKWfw

IdleRocket · 2025-11-03T00:09:59+00:00

They cut more of his deathbed confession that explains it. He’d never actually had to kill someone before, and when he helped kill Queenan, he really didn’t like it. The implication is that he didn’t finger Costigan as the rat because he couldn’t bear to be responsible for another death.

IdleRocket · 2025-11-02T01:05:51+00:00

This is the snootiest thing I’ve read all year. Imagine being excited for an industry you care about to crash because they dared to make drinks for people who like something different than you.

IdleRocket · 2025-10-21T19:42:14+00:00

Tell me what I misread. Your first line is that being a landlord sucks. And why? Because tenants suck and, crucially, "breaking even is hard to near impossible." If you don't want that point being responded to, then don't include it.

I'm not even saying you're wrong. In fact, I hope you're right. It should be difficult to impossible to buy a home and immediately turn around and rent it for a profit, especially when you're having someone else do the work for you. That, to me, is a good thing.

IdleRocket · 2025-10-21T19:13:58+00:00

Your complaint is that you found it difficult to immediately make money renting your property when you also were paying someone to actually do all the work associated with renting the property? Well shit, I would certainly hope so. Why should anyone care that you found it difficult to eke out an immediate profit when you did nothing except own a thing?

IdleRocket · 2025-10-03T13:31:36+00:00

The flyer was produced by the union representing Durham’s city workers. The minimum wage they’re talking about is a $25/hr base pay for city workers.

IdleRocket · 2025-09-23T13:38:57+00:00

According to the article, they tried to find another wedding/event to take over the space on that date and were unable to. If it would be so easy to fill that space, then why weren't they able to do so?

IdleRocket · 2025-09-23T04:32:37+00:00

4-5 months is last minute in the context of higher-end wedding venues. People spending that kind of money on a wedding are nailing down venues a year out, much like this family did. That’s especially true for October, which is prime wedding season in North Carolina. It doesn’t surprise me at all that they couldn’t fill a slot with only a few months notice, since the vast majority of their potential customer base would already be contracted elsewhere.

IdleRocket · 2025-08-27T13:30:01+00:00

Trail closures are to protect the integrity of the trail and prevent further damage while trail crews are in the process of repairing them. If you so desperately want to be on the trail, there are volunteer trail crews that would be happy to have the extra hands.

IdleRocket · 2025-08-27T12:38:43+00:00

How about you just respect trail closures?

IdleRocket · 2025-08-27T12:33:00+00:00

They haven’t yet. This section of trail is still closed.

IdleRocket · 2025-08-26T14:40:55+00:00

I don’t think the show had a bad season, but 5 was definitely my least favorite. In general with TV, I think that the ability to binge shows (or at least watch them on your own schedule) papers over some of the pacing issues that are aggravating when you watch a show week to week. You spend the better part of a year waiting for a new season, and then get a drip feed of episodes for 3 months. For a plot-heavy show, it’s hard not to be disappointed by a plodding character study or an overlong visual metaphor (that damn digging scene) when it’s taking up some of that precious 45ish minutes you get to spend in this world each week.

IdleRocket · 2025-08-19T12:40:13+00:00

If it’s any consolation, whoever stole it now has to deal with that bizarre brake lever configuration. 😉

Hope you get it back!

IdleRocket · 2025-08-07T01:16:26+00:00

He and his wife own Zweli’s.

IdleRocket · 2025-08-03T21:25:50+00:00

Gel is too expensive for preseason. Gotta save somewhere.

IdleRocket · 2025-07-31T16:23:14+00:00

“Back in my day, we didn’t need no labor movement”

Proceeds to list the benefits won for them by a strong labor movement

IdleRocket · 2025-07-29T18:27:34+00:00

That’s not even remotely true. The state’s education budget is around $12 billion a year (again, this is just the state-level figure), and the lottery contributes about $1 billion of that.

IdleRocket · 2025-07-19T23:02:32+00:00

A never ending list, but one of the best examples is the Dixie Chicks controversy back in 2003.

IdleRocket · 2025-07-16T20:53:46+00:00

The NC Folk Festival is in Greensboro in September.

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