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When I read the headline, my immediate thought was from the movie 2010 from 1984. The Russians (the soviets then), allowed Americans to share a ride on their space ship to Jupiter to save an ailing American spaceship caught in a gravity well from the 2001 movie ending (the one with HAL 9000). Halfway through the movie, there was a conflict on earth that got out of control and put the Soviets and Americans at odds. So the Americans and Soviets in space were required to separate.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086837/

They're Shards.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083791/
The Dark Crystal (1982)

The idea for the movie Idiocracy must have come from US.

Mike Judge captures the future outlook on USA as a country briliantly. Just take the energy drink-thing in the movie, and change it to Christianity, and you'll probably see where US is in 500 years.

...There were Clone Wars. Animated.
Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky of the Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack fame.

And they were decently animated and had some good stories.
The Lucas empire even dropped a more than a decent part of the prequel trilogy's story into those episodes.
If you look at the duration of all three seasons you come up with about two films of about an hour+, or one of two hours+.
Hell... General Grievous is one big WTF if you don't at least take a glance at the animated series.

But I guess that was not good enough.
Or translated from Lucaspeek - It was not a bunch of lifeless 3D rendered puppets, reimagined once again.

What is the matter with Lucas?
Is he really trying to degrade the franchise beyond the "meh" level?
The entire Star Wars universe is slowly being turned into a "you know... that saga nobody really cares about any more, but once it was the best saga evah".

For fucks sake, lay it off for a while.
It is becoming embarrassing to say you actually enjoyed any of it. Ever.
Like it is American Pie or some other endlessly sequelled gag-humor movie.

in the thread on the tragedy of the anticommons, but it seems even more relevant to this topic

on the subject of intellectual property and the rare souls reviving old media through blood sweat and tears, the filmmaker vincent gallo said this four years ago:

Capone: The songs selections here are inspired at times. I really liked the Gordon Lightfoot song "Beautiful."

V.G.: Thank you. The amount of time I spent choosing the music of the film would be unbelievable to you. The funny thing is, when it's not right, you spend all your time playing songs for people saying, "What do you think of this one? How about this one? How about this one?" You're dying, when you're on that level. When you hit it, it's so obvious and you immediately get a desperate feeling that says, "How am I going to get the rights? Are they going to fuck me on the rights to this song?" And guess who are the worst people in the movie business. The licensing people. They are most miserable, mean, selfish, insensitive, regressive, unproductive on the planet earth. You don't know what it's like to feel so strong about something and not have a budget to make that go away. It's not like I was looking to get some Paul McCartney song for my movie; I'm talking about esoteric music. Some of the music in the film didn't even exist, I had to rebuild the original master tapes that had decomposed. I had to re-bake the tape stock, the emulsion on the tape had peeling off. I'm the only person in the world who would salvage this particular recording because I had an original three-track machine and I knew how to bake that type of Ampex tape. The tape would have disappeared in two more years, and it's highly spliced. Then to be ballbusted for a year and a half on the licensing on that music. We talk about how long it took for me to get the film out after Cannes was because the film wasn't ready due to negative problems. I wanted to use this technique to blow up the negative in a new way. That's why I waited so long to finish the film. But it turns out that I would have had to wait seven, eight months anyway was the releases for the music. If you were dealing with the musician directly, you wouldn't have these problems. It's the people representing these artists that kill the process. I realize if you want to use the Beatles song "Revolution" to sell eyeglasses, I understand the exploitation of that. I understand that I'm using culturally significant relics to manipulate people into attaching those to my product. But if I'm using a rare piece of music by and unknown artist, not to brag, but the people whose music I use in my films sell way more records than they were selling before they were in my film. Proof of it is, the Italian artist who did this one jazz piece in my movie had sold 600 copies worldwide before my movie. Before my film was released just on the announcement that they were included people tracked down the music, and they sold something like 6,000 more copies. Why you're treated like you're exploiting this music makes no sense. If they're going to make a tough deal for you, just be up front about it. But this sort of, "We don't have time for you. What do you want?" stringing along is nonsense. And I'm the producer on THE BROWN BUNNY. I didn't have a music supervisor. I did the licensing for BUFFALO 66 and THE BROWN BUNNY. And of all my memories of making the film, that's my most painful memories.

bottom line: revive old media, bring renewed attention AND SALES to a long forgotten artist and piece of music, and expect the corporate intellectual property assholes to punish you for effort

thats the state of intellectual property today

I'm unsure if your pick of XIII for the title was supposed to be a joke, because there actually IS a XIII. I think you should have gone with XIV.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139111/

I'd explain this more but I have to go pick up The Land Before Time XIII: Littlefoot's Revenge for my daughter.

His name was Robert Paulson.

There fixed that for you.

I can't buy, for example, in any way!

I live in Romania, Eastern Europe country where the ratio of average game price and average income still is way low...
Even the bargain bin isn't such a bargain!

So just because I can't afford buying a decent amount of games - I'm a gamer I just can't save and buy one game a month! - I must be shot down and denied my 'craving'? I never make any profit out of this but I do keep the chain alive by seeding as much as I can:P

Also I pirate movies because - except the newest stuff - it is next to impossible finding what I like.. American Astronaut anyone?

I recently saved and purchased a Wii - but I had to mod it cause there was no way in hell I could play anything decent on it - 4-5 games amounted to another Wii (including Sega Bass Fishing and EA Playground - which is fair to say are average or worse)

What have they written in the past 2000 years even worth translating into English, let alone learning Chinese for?!

Gunpower. Bruce Lee. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

Ni how
Ni how ma?

Falcon

Spot on! The GF4600 I had at the time was not the greatest card out, but it certainly was no slouch either. I assumed it would work fine with Doom 3.

I guess we know what happens when we make an assumption.

No way am I supporting those Georgians. May I remind my fellow Americans that a Georgian separatist once tried to kill the governor of California?

The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming...again.

Episode 3 was the crowning achievement in the Star Wars saga, what with having an actual interesting plot and all.

You must have missed this one.

Ford wasn't a big star when he was cast as Indy.

How old are you? Or, what planet are you from? Harrison had already done two of the three Star Wars films and a couple other things that were very popular, even at that time. He was very well known.

Hint:

• American Graffiti: 1973
• Apocalypse Now: 1979
• Star Wars IV: 1977
• Star Wars V: 1979
• Raiders of the Lost Ark: 1981

No. In the Young Indy series, it was Sean Patrick Flanery. River Phoenix was only in Last Crusade.

In Lucas' mind, his movies are the only ones that exist. Never mind that Star Wars was The Hidden Fortress. If you listen to his commentary on these recent movies (I've made a huge mistake,) he's including homage to his own earlier movies.

As such, there are only about 10 movies to watch in the entire history of film. So we clearly need more.

No I'm talking about the bad guy he got The Hat from. I recognised The Hat, and saw he was digging up stuff so I assumed he was Indy.

I didn't realise it was a flashback to his childhood.

That was Richard Young who's been in a ton of stuff, including "The Ice Pirates". You're right, he would have made a good Indy.

That's what Lucas should do is cast relatively unknowns (i.e. not big stars) and do a James Bond thing - as everyone else has suggested. Ford wasn't a big star when he was cast as Indy.

demonization of the infected

Didn't they make a movie about that? I think it was called 28 Weeks Later. Or maybe it was 28 Days Later. Maybe it was I Am Legend. Oh, now I remember, it was Quarantine.

Seriously, what is with all the movies about disease that turn people into raging demons?

demonization of the infected

Didn't they make a movie about that? I think it was called 28 Weeks Later. Or maybe it was 28 Days Later. Maybe it was I Am Legend. Oh, now I remember, it was Quarantine.

Seriously, what is with all the movies about disease that turn people into raging demons?

demonization of the infected

Didn't they make a movie about that? I think it was called 28 Weeks Later. Or maybe it was 28 Days Later. Maybe it was I Am Legend. Oh, now I remember, it was Quarantine.

Seriously, what is with all the movies about disease that turn people into raging demons?

demonization of the infected

Didn't they make a movie about that? I think it was called 28 Weeks Later. Or maybe it was 28 Days Later. Maybe it was I Am Legend. Oh, now I remember, it was Quarantine.

Seriously, what is with all the movies about disease that turn people into raging demons?

which implies that the state will be supporting you - and your dependents - from the moment when - and not if - your reserves are depleted or you are no longer able to work.

sometimes, I think the movies have the geek just about right. GoldenEye

You might want to check out the movie Crazy People. It's about an advertising exec who ends up getting thrown into an insane asylum after a few unusual ads he created (with emphasis on truth in advertising) are mistakenly published into the wild, only to become highly successful. Some of the ads are real gems, in a UHF sort of way.

You might want to check out the movie Crazy People. It's about an advertising exec who ends up getting thrown into an insane asylum after a few unusual ads he created (with emphasis on truth in advertising) are mistakenly published into the wild, only to become highly successful. Some of the ads are real gems, in a UHF sort of way.

J.K. Rowling and her publisher are known to aggressively fight perceived copyright infringements of her Harry Potter Series of books, as well as the movie and merchandise empire it has inspired.

Works involving Harry Potter generate a lot of income for parties with licenses to produce goods linked with the storyline.

I always thought that it was quite humorous that 10 years before J.K. Rowling first published her copyrighted works there was already a Harry Potter movie that starred Sonny Bono!

Its a great example of how just having a movie about a character named Harry Potter does not immediately imply that Ms. Rowling engaged in any infringement. The 1986 Movie and her 1996 books deal with completely different subject matters.

J.K. Rowling's book deals with a young boy named Harry Potter who must fight against evil magical forces to save his friends and even a family that despises him.

While, on the other hand, B-Movie creator Charles Band's Movie deals with a young boy named Harry Potter Jr. who must fight against evil magical forces to save his friends and even a family that loves him.

All kidding aside, they are completely different stories. Otherwise Sonny Bono might come back and Haunt J.K. Rowling for copyright infringement! That would be way scarier than Voldemort!

Maybe it's El Guapo, in which case the GP is lucky, "El Guapo only kills men. He does not kill crying women!"

Unfortunately, NASA ran into some copyright / prior art issues with Frank Herbert's estate and they had to resort to drinking reprocessed pee.

Wouldn't that last run afoul of a certain Kevin Costner property as well?

I wish you hadn't brought that up - It wouldn't have been an issue.

There are a lot of people who have read Dune (or at least watched the mini-series or had the movie seared into their brains). But not even Costner sat through Waterworld - Since even the stage-hands and producers had blocked that movie out of their memories, nobody would have ever sued over the reprocessed pee scene.

Thanks a lot for cluing them in...

Unfortunately, NASA ran into some copyright / prior art issues with Frank Herbert's estate and they had to resort to drinking reprocessed pee.

Wouldn't that last run afoul of a certain Kevin Costner property as well?

I wish you hadn't brought that up - It wouldn't have been an issue.

There are a lot of people who have read Dune (or at least watched the mini-series or had the movie seared into their brains). But not even Costner sat through Waterworld - Since even the stage-hands and producers had blocked that movie out of their memories, nobody would have ever sued over the reprocessed pee scene.

Thanks a lot for cluing them in...

Unfortunately, NASA ran into some copyright / prior art issues with Frank Herbert's estate and they had to resort to drinking reprocessed pee.

Wouldn't that last run afoul of a certain Kevin Costner property as well?

I wish you hadn't brought that up - It wouldn't have been an issue.

There are a lot of people who have read Dune (or at least watched the mini-series or had the movie seared into their brains). But not even Costner sat through Waterworld - Since even the stage-hands and producers had blocked that movie out of their memories, nobody would have ever sued over the reprocessed pee scene.

Thanks a lot for cluing them in...

Unfortunately, NASA ran into some copyright / prior art issues with Frank Herbert's estate and they had to resort to drinking reprocessed pee.

Wouldn't that last run afoul of a certain Kevin Costner property as well?

I think you're referring to The Last Starfighter

Kudos on the mess equality thing :-D

Oh well, that's typical of /., isn't it?

Natural selection isn't creating some noble super-race. It favors the strong, but also the violent and the crafty. It looks only at outcome; it doesn't moralize about tactics. And its measure of outcome seems, by modern theory, limited narrowly to "has offspring ready to play the game anew". That's a possible theory of "good", but not the only possible theory. It seems just a little limiting, in fact. Which is why society tries to circumvent it through conscious thought and group policy, for better or worse.

Following on my prior remark about how selection is selecting the physically strong, not other attributes, I wanted to add one thing: If right now we just let the weak in the gene pool die, and we saved only the people who were physically strong, I doubt that would save us from Climate Change. Nature might recover from that on its own, but it's likely that its way of doing it will be to shed most of the species on Earth, including us, and start back with bacteria. It's nearly certain that the reason Nature has the cataclysms it does is that it's subject to the Hill Climbing Problem in its broad brush attempt to survive. That's robust in a sense. We are, in the end, a fragile species and perhaps there is a robust one that Nature might eventually come up with if the Heat Death of the Universe didn't loom so tangibly close (at least, when weighed against the speed of average case convergence for the algorithm Nature uses for coming up with good species).

Now, it's theoretically possible that Climate Change will stop suddenly of its own accord and that either brain power miraculously won't matter or adaptive physical strength will be all that's really called on to live in a world of altered air and water. So it's possible brains won't be what we need. But those who do have brainpower right now are not bullish on these options, and I think it's not because they're worried about their jobs or ego. I think they're worried for their kids and grandkids. So we'd better pay some heed to preserving their ability to see not just the calamity of the moment but the potential calamities of the future in time to do something other than the narrowly selfish to the needs of the business quarter.

Mankind right now, through the actions of scientists, not football players, has the self-awareness to recognize that an adaptive algorithm inserted just about now might improve matters for both Nature and ourselves, and brainpower, not musclepower, is what's going to give us our only real chance. It's the only tool man has ever had that allowed it to rise above the other animals, and we dare not at this point suggest that it is of no consequence. There may come a day when indeed we can't save everyone. But when that day comes, what we'll probably need is brains, not muscle. And if that day comes, it will be the rich and the politicians, if that's not redundant, making the choices. So let's hope we keep the world safe for all now to avoid having it safe only for the Dr. Strangelove contingent later.

Obligatory Relevance Comment: What has this to do with medical records being sold? Because they are not being sold to people who are optimizing the outcome of humanity. They are being sold to those who are optimizing their portfolio, a portfolio that is not taxed in proportion to the dissonance between its own size and the good meta-health world. In meta, they are playing out the same survival game in business as we're playing out in the world, with Capitalism substituted for Nature. But they're not equipped to survive the storm if Mankind is wiped out through their follies. So all of these things are interconnected, and Climate Change is, I allege, not as off topic here as one might be tempted to presuppose.

"It's water, but not as we know it";

"It's water JIM, but not as we know it". Yeash. If you're going to make pop culture references, at least get them right!

In other news, I vote we go to war against California. They are obviously attempting a scorched earth policy against the world's oil supply. Once we've secured the area, we can bring John Wayne in to take care of the problem.

It's been done.

You're starting to show your age... or just being an ass, the Surface is a good idea with our current technology, and will remain for quite a few years yet even if holographic stuff became popular/accessible because it doesnt interfere (think about schools and offices).

But, this is entirely different from the Surface, and I don't really mean just tech-wise, think about "there is no spoon", its almost a spiritual tool, the (possible) freedom is almost limitless in what you can do, almost as good as having your brain directly linked into the computer.

Having said that and probably some already stopped reading, depending on how (or when) portable it is, this could be a major problem, especially in the beginning with people walking around terrorizing young and/or old people, or causing traffic accidents etc "I swear Officer, there was a car there!".

There could also be problems with subliminal things, although it could be argued that its possible (and in some cases does happen) with current technology, it would be much easier and far less noticeable to embed slight alterations, and hidden messages into the the hologram/projection, I'm thinking about this in the context of later on when there might be people who have it on permanently (think of Strange Days).

However, as much as I am fond of Trains, Gas Guzlers, CRT's and Physical arts, I for one welcome our new holographic overlords.

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious here, but how seriously are they considering the possibility of contamination? Because unless I'm remembering something wrong, perchlorates are most excellent oxidizers and hence commonly used in, oh, say, solid rocket fuel, among other things.

I think it's important to note that the White House briefing was due to the following:

The results from Sunday's TEGA experiment, which analyzed a sample taken directly above the ice layer, found no evidence of this compound.

"This is surprising since an earlier TEGA measurement of surface materials was consistent with but not conclusive of the presence of perchlorate," said Peter Smith, Phoenix's principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

In other words, the important part is that they didn't find perchlorate once they used the trenching tool. So, either the landing rockets contaminated the top layer of soil, or some sort of wierd chemistry is forming perchlorate when sunlight hits the soil. Either way, the subsurface chemistry seems to be conducive to life. I get the feeling that you just need to add water and tomato seeds to get a vegetable garden growing. (Either that, or my earlier comment turns out to be true.)

Is the presence of perchlorate needed to manufacture fuel in situ? If so, this would make some of the proposed manned missions a bit harder. On the other hand, it may mean that along with making fuel, robots could farm food and other plants for future astronauts to consume while staying on Mars.

I believe you are thinking of My Favorite Martian.

Of course, that would have made Jacques de Molay even more surprised and fearful if the Spanish Inquisition showed up on his doorstep.

Is he in anyway related to Count de Monet?

Actually, "The Astronaut Farmer" would be more suited for sequel here.

They could even re-edit the first Astronaut Farmer movie to match its Billy Bob Thornton with the Armageddon one.
Make it so that Bruce Willis' character is actually Armageddon Bruce's twin brother.

Only to make it bigger... have those two halfs of the asteroid from the Armageddon break into two halfs each, and back on their course to Earth.
FOUR MOTHERFUCKIN ASTEROIDS!!!
Call it "The Astronaut Farmer 2 - Four Riders of the Apocalypse".
Have Ben (Affleck), Billy Bob and 2nd Bruce (get it - Plan B) stopping one 'steroid each - with one left over to obliterate France. Again.

I'm not sayin' that it would get anywhere close to topping off The Dark Knight...
But it could probably take out Finding Nemo.

The Knights Templar, as parent and GP mentioned, are very unlikely to be making any material claims.

Ouch! It almost sounds like there are no consequences for perpetrating a successful genocide.

Well Duh!

I'm reminded of a quote from the mini-series " Shogun":

  Toronaga asked Pilot to name any excuse that justified making war on your Lord, the Pilot responded "Winning"

And there I was thinking it came after Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon used a magic remote...

I completely agree with the parent. Whatever happened to the idea of USING YOUR OWN TWO FEET? The number 11 bus line is *always* running as long as you have the use of your legs, so use them. When I used to live in the Mid East, I used to walk 7-10 km just because the weather was nice and exercise is good for the body. I still walk a lot, but in Chicago that can be limited by the weather very easily.

I have the distinct feeling that movie Wall-E was a social commentary on many levels...

I thought the most famous Lipshitz ever was Dr. Lipshitz from Rugrats

There's also Buckaroo Banzai who besides being a rock star was a physicist and a renowned brain surgeon. :)

Now all he needs to do is learn how to do brain surgery and start making movies.

If you don't get the joke, rent this one:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086856/

and watch the extended version

So what? Oranges are not the only fruit.

Office Space, Memorable Quotes

Michael Bolton: We get caught laundering money, we're not going to white-collar resort prison. No, no, no. We're going to federal POUND ME IN THE ASS prison.

Samir: I don't want to go to ANY prison!

Yeah, but those mice were buff and hyperintelligent

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/quotes
"The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy. Look at you, you're the prodigal son; you're quite a prize."
Dr. Eldon Tyrell
Blade Runner