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While the film takes no position either pro-war or anti-war, the inhumanity of war has never been shown more clearly and the soldiers boasting and laughter after obliterating a wounded enemy while high on adrenaline, caused considerable debate about appropriate military behavior back home in Denmark. Depending on your point of view the soldiers are either making a difference or perpetuating atrocities in an unwinnable war. What does become clear, however, is the bond formed by the men and their lack of questioning of their mission. Like adolescents on a drunken rampage, they are excited by the thrill of the moment. We owe Metz a debt of gratitude for showing us the mindless, sadistic, and dehumanizing behavior that war can induce. Armadillo stands as one of the most visceral and frightening documentaries about combat ever made.

So journalists should find information they do not care about and heartlessly report about it?

Yes, they should. It's called "being objective", and is one of the tenets of good journalism. It's odd that you think otherwise; perhaps you are hiding some sort of agenda?

Unless your camera can detect depth, I'm pretty sure that kind of security is easy to bypass. See Columbo And The Murder Of A Rock Star.

Everybody knows the proper time for living out a zombie infestation is 28 weeks.

Well, I'd almost agree with you... BUT... The Tolkien estate sat on the rights to make a Lord of the Rings movie for decades. They were approached many times and turned it down many times. When they finally got the offer they accepted it really was the best telling of the story they could have gotten

You think The Lord of the Rings (1978) was "the best telling of the story they could have gotten"? Or maybe you were thinking of Jackson's remake?

Whatever you do, just don't dare try to do this.

Why ask why, when *how* is so much more fun?

...military dictatorship as the American Way into the future (Starship Troopers style), then yes.

Here's hoping the Internet will rather make the people(s) call in unison for democratic ways and peaceful international relations.

Restate my assumptions:

One, Mathematics is the language of nature.

Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.

Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature.

Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics;the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well... Right in front of me... hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.

— Maximillian Cohen, Pi

From my perspective (and I'm no Apple user at all), essentially 90% of the design principles of ALL modern smartphones -- the clear focus on touch, the "physical" UI, the focus on detail, scrolling without scrollbars, zoom&pan, end-to-end integration of hardware and software -- can be traced back to the iPhone 1. This is not something that "design by committee" would normally come up with. I would think that very few people within Apple are directly responsible for these things [...]

Yes, well, all that is something "design by movie" could come up with. Minority Report - 2002 -> five years -> iPhone - 2007 Clearly the fact that they achieved these features in an attractive format and with a bearable price tag is an important milestone. But let's not get too excited about these ideas being devoid of design by committee, because it doesn't really take a wizard to figure out that emulating a human-to-machine interface that was successfully shown all over the big screens, all over the world - is a potentially very profitable idea.

Two examples:

Monsters : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/ Budget $800k - CGI effect allegedly done on the director's home computer.
Primer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/ Budger $7k - no CGI to speak of, but one of the best SciFi films of recent years.

Camera are cheap, computers are cheap, locations are everywhere. All you need to make movies now is time, and talent. And talent of course, is the hardest part.

Two examples:

Monsters : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/ Budget $800k - CGI effect allegedly done on the director's home computer.
Primer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/ Budger $7k - no CGI to speak of, but one of the best SciFi films of recent years.

Camera are cheap, computers are cheap, locations are everywhere. All you need to make movies now is time, and talent. And talent of course, is the hardest part.

I'm not sure how to respond...

On the one hand I think you're saying that erotica can be successful (your example grossed $25M in the US, $190M worldwide - not quite in the same league as The Godfather , which grossed $135M domestically & $245M worldwide; but still respectable), which kinda supports what I was trying to say . Perhaps the reason Heavy Metal III isn't getting picked up is because it just doesn't compare well against the other animated erotica available out there.

On the other hand, this one outlier, doesn't make a trend like "summer action blockbuster": I've never heard of anyone looking forward to the "winter animated erotica" season. Other posters saying that cultural acceptance of Barbarella was a product of the 60's probably have a point, and I'd guess that your 1972 film was riding at the tail of that cultural wave. As much as horny men across the nation may want it, I don't expect AMC and Cinemark to fill 2000+ American theaters this year with a cartoon about having sex - that's what I meant by "blockbuster-level".

Regardless, for any director to point at a single film (that he didn't make) and say "they made me fail!" is patently ridiculous. I'd sooner believe that his project is weighed down by failures in his own script, previous movies in the same series (IMDB reports the '81 effort as breaking even on video sales, and its fans routinely ridicule the 2000 film), or cultural norms not accepting that kind of work. Bonus points for all three in this case.

Was there fantasy porn anywhere in Heavy Metal? Even "animated erotica" seems like a bit of a stretch. It's been a while, but IIRC you saw a few pairs of titties, and that was it. Lots of violence, some drug use, and crazy action, and a few seconds of boobie shots make a film "porn" in your mind? Man, maybe we're as screwed up as the Europeans say we are.

Well, let's check your memory... Here's IMDB's content advisory for the movie:

Every adult woman featured in film is topless at one point.

Four animated scenes of sex with clear nudity, including exposed female pubic regions. The 1st segment of the film shows a red head woman and taxi driver at his home have sex. It shows full breasts, nipples, a very exposed vagina. They have graphic sex and orgasm.

Male genitalia featured as well throughout the film.

Perhaps my Pornometer's a bit sensitive, but I think that qualifies. I'm not an expert, but I think that list would have trouble passing the MPAA standard for R rating. For what it's worth, on my personal scale "erotic" starts before the clothes come off, and switches to "porn" when sexual acts are shown on-screen (ie. the purpose of the scene is "let's watch them have sex"), YMMV.

Further, IMDB lists Heavy Metal in the following genres: Animation | Action | Adventure | Comedy | Crime | Fantasy | Horror | Sci-Fi

So there's your fantasy, too.

PS - in the four minutes between your posts did you forget that you had already responded to me?

Honestly, I don't see how anyone can with a straight face say that the reason animated erotica isn't blockbuster-level successful in America is because ONE comic book based movie flopped at the box office.

I dunno, Fritz the Cat did pretty well...

This coming from the guy that said,....

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091225/ - "Howard the Duck is the absolute best SCI-FI movie ever made! It changed my life! George Lucas is a GENIUS!"

I never read the original comic book, so I don't really get all the fanboy angst over altered endings and such (or why it really even matters). But I'm a pretty harsh critic of superhero movies (I can probably count all of them I don't hate on one hand, with a slightly longer list if you include *all* comic book adaptations) and I thought it was a great film. The acting was a bit spotty in parts, but the story and direction were pretty flawless. It's one of the few comic book adaptations that not only got me into a theater, but also made it into my DVD collection.

BTW, one of the best superhero movies of late is one no one has probably even heard of: Special. Great ending on that one.

Great superhero movies: Superman I, Mystery Men, The Watchmen, Special. Everything else is mostly unwatchable dogshit.

I watched Watchmen about week ago for the first time and I thought it was one of the best movies I've seen in a while (I'm not a comic fan at all). Anyway this article is full of shit Zach Snider is doing 2 more adultish Fantasy flicks this year and the new Superman movie next year will probably be aimed at adults as well. I look forward to them all.

I often wonder if films like "Taxi Driver" could ever be made today.

Oh it would get made but it would star Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316732/

To everybody whining about modern plots / Hollywood and the general decline of cinema: I have one and only one suggestion for you -

Zardoz.

Now shut up and thank whatever deity you pray to that we managed to survive the '70s.

It was probably intentional that they did not give it a realistic, human-sounding voice. Research has shown that people do not want machines to appear too human. They react negatively.

[citation needed]

[Star Trek and Asimov references don't count]

Actually, I think humans DO want robots that appear very human, and have wanted them for hundreds of years. I'd also put it to you that humans do and have, in fact, reacted in certain positive ways towards machines that appear human.

The dame de voyage (French) or dama de viaje (Spanish) was a direct predecessor to today's sex dolls that originated in the seventeenth century. Dames de voyage were makeshift fornicatory dolls made of sewn cloth or old clothes, used by French and Spanish sailors while isolated at sea during long voyages.

-- Ferguson, Anthony. The Sex Doll: A History. McFarland, 2010

One of the earliest recorded appearances of manufactured sex dolls dates to 1908, in Iwan Bloch's The Sexual Life of Our Time. Bloch wrote:

In this connection we may refer to fornicatory acts effected with artificial imitations of the human body, or of individual parts of that body. There exist true Vaucansons in this province of pornographic technology, clever mechanics who, from rubber and other plastic materials, prepare entire male or female bodies, which, as hommes or dames de voyage, subserve fornicatory purposes. More especially are the genital organs represented in a manner true to nature. Even the secretion of Bartholin's glans is imitated, by means of a "pneumatic tube" filled with oil. Similarly, by means of fluid and suitable apparatus, the ejaculation of the semen is imitated. Such artificial human beings are actually offered for sale in the catalogue of certain manufacturers of "Parisian rubber articles.

-- Bloch, Iwan. The Sexual Life of Our Time

So, yeah, it may be a bit taboo to some people, but not admitting to your family that your girlfriend is a Nexus 6 doesn't count as "reacting negatively" to the idea of humanoid machines.

On the average, I'd say people at fascinated by human-like machines (see: Androids/cyborgs in science fiction, or, uh, the 80s/early 90s for fuck's sake, it was full of interest) -- Curiosity is a positive trait in my book, and lusting after our machines is a trait that people from gear-heads to PC Gamers and realdoll owners all share to a degree.

(Keep in mind: As a new technolgy TV was unsettling to some, but like all common place technology it's not a big deal now)

You mean something like this wicked contraption?

There are numerous other automatic penis-lacerating devices scattered throughout the USPTO portfolio, including whole metal chastity belts to accomplish the vengeful deed. This is merely the first one that I was able to find this evening.

But really: The most obvious, futureproof, economical, and easy-to-carry solution is for women to simply evolve vagina dentata, as elaborated and dramatized upon in this wonderful film.

The US informers involved with "that company" where left in Iraq. Many where systematically 'lost' in the fog of war, like they where on some list.
The movie Fair Game hints at the details http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0977855/
As for US law, this will be very chilling on the press. From the 1920's and 30's books on US ww1 code breaking to the Pentagon papers, NSA books ect. US law has been clear about the freedom to publish. What has been published is mostly collected from the press, been cleared or hints at deep crime, useless hardware/software, limited hangout efforts, pure propaganda or PR.

...and I thought SHIELD was the organisation with Samuel L. Jackson in it?

You're off by 90 degrees.
David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD

Doom was also just violence against aliens and zombies, which in the US is completely acceptable for afternoon cartoons.

Depicting drug use, on the other hand, is HIGHLY regulated by censors. Movie called Kids came out in 1995 that depicted young teenagers doing drugs that earned it a NC-17 rating from the MPAA.

Bioshock will never be made into a movie and released in the US, which is good because no one can screw it up.

Oh and gattaca http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/

No harm done bro. I enjoy a discussion with fellow slashdotters :) Yeah it's difficult to pull this off but if truly the problem is "only" money, and this dude doesn't seem too shabby directing, I would gladly give $100 towards this fund. The Mexican has a fantastic story, PoTC shows the special fx needed to pull off BioShock's texture. Now all we need is a movement.

I don't know, think I got the idea from One Day on Earth.

Actually Missionaries almost are never out knocking doors at dinner time. It would be odd for one to be there at dinner time.

Strange. Every year when they come around, the new crop hits my neighborhood between 5 and 7 pm. Standard Mormon Missionary dress, packing Books of Mormon to give away, pamphlets, the works.

It's the Jehovah's Witnesses who show up at 11AM. Which has led to some interesting deals when some well-meaning neighbors reported our local black JW's to the cops fearing that they were casing houses to find out who was in or out (our city, sadly, has had a problem with a burglary ring consisting mostly of Guatemalan illegal immigrants).

To not be bothered by them again it is simple. Answer the door and say this. Thank you but I am really not interested. They will mark your address as not interested and will not bother you again.

They've been told that. They keep coming, about every 3 months a new crop. You're either a liar or just clueless.

Sorry if you feel that way about us as a whole. I would not classify my self as gullible or sheeple. I doubt that if you knew me you would feel that way about me as well. You see I am the guy that a friend from another church invited to a lecture on creationism because I was good at science. I was also the guy that stood up in the lecture during the QnA and told him where he was wrong.

I have no -personal- problems with Mormons. Most of them I have met have been very polite, nice people. They can tend to be easier to get along with than, say, the no-fun (e.g. "no dancing, no alcohol, no fun of any sort") Baptists that pervade my locality.

That being said, I find religion itself to be as I described it: for the most part, a method by which control freaks do their best to control the sheeple of the world, under the function of "some intangible parent figure who, who shakes a finger at us from thousands of years ago and says, and says, "Do it... do it and I'll fuckin' spank you."" And yes, I'm aware of the irony of the quote itself, as well as the movie from which it comes.

The irony is that religion doesn't end with people developing rational thinking skills. The more religious someone is, the more stunted their mental growth, because they never get past the "it is because the authority figure says it is" state of thinking. And when you get to Islam, especially the really crazy shit and the "hate what allah hates" crap preached all over the middle east, it's truly frightening.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/

There are places that one can't go with short-shorts on. And I've definitely been kicked out of restaurants for wearing a tank top.

If you tried to walk into a suit-and-tie restaurant, I'd rather expect that.

Different social situations call for different levels of attire. If a restaurant wants to portray an image of being more upscale, you can bet they're going to have some form of a dress code posted. I doubt it has anything to do with religion.

There are new testament passages that certain Christians interpret as meaning that women should never wear jewelry or makeup.

Reverend Lovejoy: "Y'ever sat down and read this thing? Technically we're not even supposed to go to the bathroom."

Paul swore in the new testament that women had to wear head coverings while praying, which you see more often in South American Catholic communities.

Which may have little to nothing to do with christianity - Greek and Roman and Jewish cultures at the time all prescribed head coverings for women, especially in religious events.

And let's not get started on Catholic School dress requirements.

Or the Japanese uniforms? Or are you referring to Rule 34 fetishizations? Seems that school uniforms are rather ubiquitous - and downright similar - throughout the world. As if the arguments had been gone round and round quite a few times...

HTTPS Everywhere is great if you have 3 minutes for every minute to do something. I used it while on vacation and I was forced to use Barnes and Noble.

The bar to resist dictatorship keeps going up. First you have to learn HTTPS Everywhere, then you have to learn tabbed browsing, cyclic tasking, and delayed gratification.

https should have become the default long ago. As it stands, I'm sure the Algerian santa is keeping a list. One shouldn't have to stand out by defending oneself against man-in-the-middle.

On the other hand, the portion of the rebel alliance with "allahakbar" as their FB password were unlikely to put up stiff resistance against sand-troopers with scimitars. Hmmm, I should watch my language.

From Three Kings:

Chief Elgin: I don't care if he's from Johannesburg. I don't want to hear "dune coon" or "sand nigger" from him or anybody else.
Conrad Vig: Captain uses those terms.
Sgt. Troy Barlow: That's not the point, Conrad. The point is that "towelhead" and "camel jockey" are perfectly good substitutes.

Barnes and Noble? Damn! That's rough.

You gotta respect the Japanese... they know the way of the samurai.

Japanese? ROFL. Nokia is Finnish.

Pop culture reference fail. Another character catches the error right away.

To paraphrase, "If you think knowledge is expensive, try ignorance!"

I think the entire West, except Germany, is on the case already to ignorance and indifference... Idiocracy film

(and iirc, the parent trainees were Japanese)

Good thing the citizens in the civilized USA have brave heroes to protect them from the real dangers: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/

There's a lot of subtle references that approach things like ethics and morality in that movie while still being interesting and funny on a technical level.

Such as... acoustic *cough* couplers *cough*?
Though in stark contrast to any director (apparently all filming for a perceived tech-illiterate audience) at least ever since Colossus, no self-respecting sighted hacker would have needed, used or wanted a voice synthesizer.

Rumour (that spelling for a reason you'll see) has it that Commodore's sales took a hit in Europe that Christmas season as Wargames and/or rather its media reception got parents concerned of putting the tools (with 1541 drives, though not from the movie) for summoning Soviet-response armageddon under their kids' trees.

At any rate it wasn't until Gen'82 so much rather than Gen'62 that the geeks would really get the girls (and better yet, even geek girls worth any wait)... ;-)

There's a lot of subtle references that approach things like ethics and morality in that movie while still being interesting and funny on a technical level.

Such as... acoustic *cough* couplers *cough*?
Though in stark contrast to any director (apparently all filming for a perceived tech-illiterate audience) at least ever since Colossus, no self-respecting sighted hacker would have needed, used or wanted a voice synthesizer.

Rumour (that spelling for a reason you'll see) has it that Commodore's sales took a hit in Europe that Christmas season as Wargames and/or rather its media reception got parents concerned of putting the tools (with 1541 drives, though not from the movie) for summoning Soviet-response armageddon under their kids' trees.

At any rate it wasn't until Gen'82 so much rather than Gen'62 that the geeks would really get the girls (and better yet, even geek girls worth any wait)... ;-)

You seem to have missed out on the required reading for this class.

Wouldn't this be more like Sneakers, admittedly not as geeky as War Games but certainly a better fit for whats being done.

But it's fine in movies?

But it's fine in movies?

But it's fine in movies?

I just keep thinking about this. (From the movie 5th Element if you don't get it.)

Never mind. I'm obviously not up on my pop culture.

If we're talking relevancy, then surely Roujin Z fits the bill here.. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102812/

The movie studios are notorious for taking from the commons without giving back. Walt Disney Pictures especially is known for adapting films, often right after they go out of copyright (such as Pinocchio and The Jungle Book), and then closing the barn door behind it by not only successfully lobbying for successive legislative extensions of the term of copyright in all works published during the existence of the company but also acting like it owns the original work and harassing smaller studios that make their own adaptations

For "The Jungle Book," there are only two versions that are likely to survive, Korda's vivid live-action Technicolor epic from 1942 and Disney's delightful and inventive animated musical from 1967.

For "Pinocchio," IMDB returns about 60 results going back to 1911. Pinocchio

It's telling, I think, that the Disney version is the only one the geek remembers or gives a damn about.

The book is not the movie.

Originally, Pinocchio was to be depicted as a Charlie McCarthy-esque wise guy, equally as rambunctious and sarcastic as the puppet in the original novel. He looked exactly like a real wooden puppet with, among other things, a long pointed nose, a peaked cap, and bare wooden hands. But Walt found that no one could really sympathize with such a character and so the designer Milt Kahl had to redesign the puppet as much as possible. Eventually, they revised the puppet to make him look more like a real boy, with, among other things, a button nose, a child's Tyrolean hat, and standard cartoon character 4-fingered (or 3 and a thumb) hands with Mickey Mouse-type gloves on them. Milt quoted " I don't think of him as a puppet, but as a little boy". The only parts of him that still looked more or less like a puppet were his arms and legs. In this film, he is still led astray by deceiving characters, but gradually learns bit by bit, and even exhibits his good heart when he is offered to go to Pleasure Island by saying he needs to go home two times, before Honest John and Gideon pick him up themselves and carry him away.
Additionally, it was at this stage that the character of the cricket was expanded. Jiminy Cricket became central to the story

Pinocchio

What the geek wants from Disney is a set of signature - marketable - Lego blocks.

Pre-built stories and scripts. Character designs and animation. Background art and visual effects. Music, song and vocal performance.

Disney owns a trademark on "Pinocchio" for dolls, so good luck selling toys based on your own film adaptation of Collodi's novel.

Google Shopping returns about 1,300 hits for Pinocchio dolls, 3,000 for Pinocchio puppets. As popular as the trademarked Disney designs may be, they are not the only game in town.

So...nobody saw Stealth, I take it?

Ridley Scott is supposedly working on a miniseries for the BBC real soon now.

Sure ... see fear of computers taking away office jobs! (And at somewhat oblique angle to that, machine guns stopping wars)

Desk Set (1957)

>>Maybe enough of them are to spoil the pot. A person in need cannot research every org to find out who the bad apples are. It takes only being burned once.

You must also hate all Muslims because of Islamicists, and all black people because of the New Black Panthers, and all Jews because some of them made http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103596/ and so on and so forth.

Ignorance is no excuse for false generalizations.