Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
The US occupiers in post-WWII weren't calling in air strikes on cities and killing innocent men, women and children in the process.
That's because Japan/Germany were beaten into submission. Drop 2 atomic bombs on Iraq, and firebomb Baghdad and things might change.
The US should never have gone into Iraq. You cannot occupy a country without breaking the will of the people, and to do that, you pretty much have to decimate it. The war made no sense to begin with, and there was no coherent strategy post defeat of the standing goverment.
Unfortunately the US is stuck keeping troops in Iraq, otherwise, the power vaccuum would most likely lead to civil war and there'd be thousands of deaths a week. So now the US is stuck sacrificing money and lives to try and keep the peace in a situation it caused. We have GWB to thank for running our country into a deficit on a war we didn't need, and for alienating the rest of the world.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73