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Star Wars Minutiae
Class Act Dynamo writes "CNN does a story on some of the finer points of making the Star Wars flicks. I like the part where Mark Hamill discusses the theoretical logistics of employing janitorial staff for the entire Death Star. Enjoy."
Janatorial staff? I thought that's why they invented droids.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Je-heee-zuz H. Christ.
This was a mediocre story which used advanced techniques for about two years and was quickly eclipsed by much better stories using the same and better techniques.
SW is much like Flash Gordon. Put it on the shelf and relive it with a buzz on every five years or so.
Elsewise, get a life, get a life, get a life.
actually..
there's a shitload of civilians above every bigger imperial vessel.
or maybe not in lucas's universe. maybe he'll change storm troopers to be robots some day too(like he "meant to do in the first place").
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The recent spate of kidnappings in Iraq represent a horrific, real-world example of the situation laid out by the parent. A number of friends/associates of mine have been offered exceptionally high paying jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan. None of them have accepted as they regard the risk as too great, but I have found myself wondering:
* The pay is high because the risk is high - anybody who takes on such a job must realise this. Is it thus their fault if they are harmed/kidnapped/killed?
* Also, since they are working for/in-the-name-of people whom some Iraq's would regard as the enemy (they do this knowingly) and since by mutual admission of both sides, this is a war - are they legitimate targets?
I would like to point out that I am referring to people working for western corporations, rather than people performing aid work - the fact medecins sans frontiers and aid workers are being targeted is in my opinion, one of the saddest aspects of this conflict.
Randal: Well, the thing is, the first Death Star was manned by the Imperial army-storm troopers, dignitaries- the only people onboard were Imperials.
Even that is not true - we know that Death Star had lots of prison cells (we know that there are more cell blocks than just the one where Lea is kept. It's safe to assume that on Death Star there were at least dozens (if not hundreds) of prisoners of the Empire. Now, some of them could be also evil, like drunken stormtroopers or a lousy TIE-fighter pilot who scratched paint on Vader's machine while parking, but many of them were probably genuine freedom fighters - the prisoners from blocade runner, for example.
It was probably sometime in the late 80s or early 90s when movie trailers began to be tolerable. Often, I prefer watching the trailer to sitting through the actual movie, so I used to try to show up early to the theater to catch all the trailers. Now, of course, they beat you over the head with 20-30 minutes of trailers and stupid MovieTickets.com commercials. It's easier to watch them at Apple's Quicktime movie trailers page.
For a while in the 90s, every movie trailer that I ever saw seemed to be done by the guy who did the voice for Optimus Prime in the original Transformers series, Peter Cullen. You could pretty much tell whether or not a movie studio took the trailer seriously if they used him for the voiceovers....
"(rising voice) A time of prosperity.... (lowering voice) A place of peace. (slow, heavily enunciated lower voice) Now.... one man... threatens.. it.. all." Fun stuff, even though there seem to be more trailers now that don't use voiceovers at all but instead rely on screens of text to piece things together.
My major pet peeve about trailers, though, is when they show the entire movie plot in the trailer. It completely removes any element of surprise, and makes it almost pointless to go see the movie. For example, the new trailer for Flight of the Phoenix does just that - the entire story is compressed down into a two minute version, sort of like a Readers Digest condensed book. It's sort of how trailers for comedy flicks show you the funniest parts of the movie in the hopes that you'll shell out $9 to see it, but then have nothing additional to offer.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
(Yeah, yeah, off-topic but you've got to respond when someone asks that kind of question.)
The US occupiers in post-WWII weren't calling in air strikes on cities and killing innocent men, women and children in the process. If you're American, you hear about every US soldier that dies but how often do you hear about Iraqi deaths at American hands?
According to some estimates, this war has killed over 25,000 Iraqi civilians so far. Note, those are estimates, because nobody's been keeping an official count of Iraqi dead probably because - and this is the honest truth that most politicians wouldn't admit - most people in positions of responsibility don't give a shit.
Now, answer honestly, if you're an average Joe, and your wife and kids are killed in by an American air strike that flattens you home and you neighbourhood, just how hurt, how frustrated and how angry are you going to feel? And what are you more likely to do: take it lying down or want to fight back.
300 Iraqis civilians are dying every week as a result of the ongoing fighting. That's 300 people per week in a country with less than 10 percent of America's population. In other words, that's the Iraqi equivalent of a September 11th every damn week.
Now do you get an idea of why the country is so fucked up?
Did I mention that the war's illegal? That there never were WMDs? That there never was any link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime? That September 11th had nothing to do with Iraq? Etc, etc.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
They don't wear uniforms
Really? The rebels even have their own insignia!
they are not commanded by a government,
Then how was a princess involved? Leia's own mother was a queen of a government on Naboo.
The guerillas are actively targeting the reconstruction crews in Iraq. They view them in the same light that they view the armed forces. Now that we sit on the Empire's side of the whole contractor debate, do we view the death of the contractor's as any more or less tragic then the death of the soldiers?
Very simple...
The contractor's working on The Death Star were building a weapon capable of detroying entire planets.
The contractor's in Iraq are trying to rebuild a country as to provide a better life for it's citizens.
Any questions?
My major pet peeve about trailers, though, is when they show the entire movie plot in the trailer. It completely removes any element of surprise, and makes it almost pointless to go see the movie. For example, the new trailer for Flight of the Phoenix does just that - the entire story is compressed down into a two minute version, sort of like a Readers Digest condensed book. It's sort of how trailers for comedy flicks show you the funniest parts of the movie in the hopes that you'll shell out $9 to see it, but then have nothing additional to offer.
In general, I agree this is true. I think a far worse case is when comedies have every funny bit in the trailer
However, sometimes, the movie itself is worth watching; especially if the spectacle outweighs the story. Remember, for example, that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet gave a summary of the entire plot in the opening sonnet. You knew what happend, you knew how it ended. It was watching the characters get there that was worth seeing
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Wow. You might want to lay off Fox News for a while. You seem to be getting a bit worked up if you think that anyone (except the occasional serial killer or vampire) engages in that sort of activity for absolutely no reason.
You're engaging in circular reasoning. If your defintion of terrorism is, as you state, "[w]hat makes a terrorist a terrorist is the fact that he [kills] for absolutely no reason," then the answer if trivial, but you have the problem that your defintion applies to almost no one we usually label terrorists.
Let's look at another defintion from the FBI: "the unlawful use of force against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population or any segment thereof, in the furtherance of political or social objectives"
Note the qualifier "unlawful". So all I have to do is pass a law saying what I do is ok. But if we remove that qualifier, no doubt that most major governments are terrorist organizations. Ooops.
And that's the problem. Every state uses force and terror for political goals. There is no clean shining line between "freedom fighter" and "terrorist".
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood