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V For Vendetta Trailer
An anonymous reader writes "The V For Vendetta trailer has been posted on the film's official site. The film is written by Matrix creators Andy and Larry Wachowski and stars Hugo Weaving and fan favorite Star Wars star Natalie Portman."
They just had to add bullettime (er, sword time?) for nastalgia.
"The film is written by Matrix creators Andy and Larry Wachowski and stars Hugo Weaving and fan favorite Star Wars star Natalie Portman."
Wow, if they had just used the word prequel, my lack of interest would be complete.
"Derp de derp."
Anyoneelse heard the story about a woman suing the Wachowski brothers saying they ripped of her story for the first Matrix movie?
Quite the action-packed trailer.
can someone more familiar with the comic explain some premise for the rest of us?
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
From TFWS...
Synopsis: Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a mild-mannered young woman named Evey (Natalie Portman) who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by a masked vigilante known only as "V." Incomparably charismatic and ferociously skilled in the art of combat and deception, V ignites a revolution when he detonates two London landmarks and takes over the government-controlled airwaves, urging his fellow citizens to rise up against tyranny and oppression. As Evey uncovers the truth about V's mysterious background, she also discovers the truth about herself - and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plot to bring freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.
Think that they'll be adjusting any of that due to the recent bombings in London?
-JT
I wish I could watch the trailer, but I downloaded the 1920*1080 version and it plays at 2 fps, tops. If my computer performs this poorly on this, who has a computer that can play it properly? (I'm on an Athlon 64 3400+ w/ 1.5 GB DDRRAM and a GeForce 6800 btw)
Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
he wants to be a girl, he's already 3/4 of the way there. lol
Grow up.
let's hope these hollywood hacks don't fuck up moore like league of extraordinary gentlemen
Fucking it up in the style of League of Gentlemen would be interesting though.
The Wachowski brothers had better not fuck this one up. V for Vendetta is a stellar graphic novel and a must read for anyone who enjoyed either 1984 or A Clockwork Orange. I'd hate to see something with such a wonderful story cheapened by hollywood gimmicks.
Steal This Sig
...but it looks interesting at least. Can't say I've heard of it until now, except in name. Though as with "the ghost in the machine," maybe the famed Bros. Wachowski will bring it more into the limelight.
Is this a movie tie-in for the new Windows Vista?
The question going around the Mac forum at Ars is, what are they using to encode 5.1 channel AAC audio in these new H.265 trailers?
This sig intentionally left justified.
I see a lot of people on here that bash the brothers for their poor work after the Matrix. IMHO, it's really hard for anyone to live up to the Matrix, even it's own creators. I think we expect a movie coming from these two guys to be as original and amazing as the Matrix all over again, and that's not easy.
V for Vendetta is based on the comic with the same name. It's one excellent comic, focusing on totalism, freedom, hope, love and payback. The comic's artwork is dirty and raw, creating a very fitting atmosphere for the dystopic story.
Those of you who have read V, probably know that when it hits the mainstream, people will draw parallels to the real world (USA and GB) today. It's as topical as ever.
V for Vendetta only costs $13.59 at Amazon - buy it. It's an intelligent comic and uses the medium to send an important message.
After watching this I peed myself, and memories of the Penny Arcade comic about Americas Army flushed into my mind, whizzing around for many a minute, until it flowed out gracefully.
I guess my penis is proud of me.
G for Grits
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If you just want to get to the highest res trailer, here's the link: http://pdl.warnerbros.com/wbmovies/vforvendetta/V_ trailer_1920_reflect_HD.mov
Personally, I like what the Wachowski brothers have done so far and I can't wait to see this film.
Dude, those penises were photoshopped on! I can't believe they're making money off of this!
After watching the bros publish a trash vacant movie just to squeeze the last remaining dollars out the Matrix institution i am prepared to be underVelmed.
I'd feel like a pedo after seeing "The Professional"
One thing I noticed about this movie is that the Brothers W (or is that Siblings W now?) is that they've handed the directors chair to a cheifly 2nd Unit and Assistant Director who's worked on both the Matrix Trilogy and the Star wars Prequels.
Considering this guy's worked on the top grossing scifi trilogies of the last few years, he must have some potential. And the bros W might have realized that while they have some great concepts, they aren't the greatest at directing.
And if you get a chance, check out the trailer in Quicktimes new HD format, I got to say it looked rather sweet on my plasma.
And the premise seems rather timely and entertaining -- Though I'm a bit worried that a Terrorist Tactic using Anti-hero might get be offensive to quite a few overly defensive Christian Neo-Arch-Conservative types, it should at least produce lots of press for the film after it's release.
However, I suspect that any paralels they make to the current state of affairs will go just as unnoticed as the paralels they made in the Star Wars Prequels.
The trailer realease is rather timely however considering this week saw a fresh round of bombings in London and the renewal of the Patriot Act in US Congress.
Damn, and heres me hoping it'd be something to do with the V series of the '80s.
Watching Natalie Portman swallow whole, live rodents would certainly be worth it!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
he wants to be a girl, he's already 3/4 of the way there. lol
Dating a dominatrix and letting her wax your eyebrows is "3/4 of the way" to being a girl in your circles? What are you, Amish or something? (If so, you better get off the Internet before you get yourself shunned!)
Shit, in most of the country, that sort of thing wont even get you kicked out of an Elk's lodge. This is 2005, for fuck's sake! Let people live how they want to live.
"People should not be affraid of their government, the government should be affraid of their people". There were a couple of other lines in there that made me cringe, but the Nazi-Germany style is refreshing :)
How many more times...? Orwell was not afraid of the Left. You are talking about a man who fought as a volunteer in the Spanish civil war. He was always however afraid of authoritarianism resulting in totalitarianism. Liberalism and authoritarianism are orthognal dimensions to Left and Right, you can choose one from each category. 1984 is a vision of an authoritarian future, not a Left wing one per se (I fail to see where the semi-autonomous trading collectives are mentioned for example).
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
...and Portman would have looked much better (sexy infact) with her head completely shaved bald
- No Sig for you!
Orwell wrote 1984 because he was afraid of the Left. Big Brother, Uncle Joe. IngSoc, English Socialism. The Party.
Have you read any Orwell? He was a libertarian Marxist who fought in the POUM in the Spanish Civil War.
Take, for instance, these excerpts from Homage to Catalonia:
- I have no particular love for the idealised 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
- It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle . . . There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.
- Human beings were behaving as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.
And more importantly, from "Why I Write":
- The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I know it.
Don't you dare try and claim Orwell for the right. He's a Godless anti-state commie, thank you very much.
It is a vision of a Communist authoritarian future. Communism is per se Left.
Maybe he would have written an anti-Right book if by 1947 the Right-wing authoritarian regimes had fallen. The Left wing authoritarian regime (USSR) was not only still in power but in assent.
For some reason, the theme and trailer reminds me of The Phantom of the Opera. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...the lizard people?
Anyone else read this and think of Vendetta from Making Fiends, and get excited that something was out before September 1st?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
take a look at some of the changes in the movie...
0 050721232532306
see:
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2
Grow up?
One of the W brothers wants to be a woman. Don't you find that a little odd/disgusting/unstable? If you don't, maybe you should grow up!
Wrong. One of the Wachowski's is a woman, and her name is Linda. Despite what you've seen on Jerry Springer, genuine intersexed and transgendered conditions do in fact exist, and they have nothing to do with "wants".
Some keywords for your Google searches: Gender Identity Disorder, Klinefelter's Syndrome, Intersexed, and probably many others.
Perhaps, AC, you should grow up and realize modern science and medicine has long past the point where gender is a binary designation. I thought about trying to explain the genetic information, but chances are you aren't reading and anyone that is going to mod me up is already aware of the distinction.
~Rebecca
If you happen to be running an operating system that doesn't run Quicktime natively, download it here and play in mplayer.
_ trailer_480_reflect.mov
http://pdl.warnerbros.com/wbmovies/vforvendetta/V
The trailer actually gives me hope, as it portrays some importants scenes from the comic, as the take over of the tv channel, the torture of evey, and her under the rain.
"The Wachowski brothers had better not fuck this one up."
I'm awfully afraid they will.
I've been reading some old Hellraiser comics lately, some of which were written by Larry. He managed to take a brilliant premise for a great horror story and twist it into an unreadable mess.
No matter how great the original material, I have total faith in the Wachoskis to totally fucking butcher it.
I get the feeling this is going to be another movie I will want desperately to love but will be sadly let down. C'mon, fucking 'bullet time' on the throwing knives?
It's gender identity, not sexual identity. The two are related, but trans and intersexual issues/concerns and such are about far more than just sexuality.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
For anyone that doesn't get this reference: http://imdb.com/title/tt0085106/
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
It is a vision of a Communist authoritarian future. Communism is per se Left.
Thank you for reiterating, and completely ignoring what he just told you. You lose. GTFOMI.
Anyone have a torrent?
Don't you dare try and claim Orwell for the right. He's a Godless anti-state commie, thank you very much.
God bless 'im.
KFG
Nice of the left to claim him half a century after his death. Orwell also ranted endlessly against the socialism of the day, how devoid of common sense it was and how completely unappealing it was to the masses it purported to champion.
Which, of course, is pretty much 'the Left' of today as well (in the US).
What about Animal Farm? That was obviously aimed at the faults of the Soviet Union.
Someone should talk about Animal Farm.
The left of the US today is the right everywhere else.
KFG
This movie looks like junk. Without even going into the "this is your typical shallow hollywood bullshit" line: the characters look goofy, the plot is lame and the overacting is atrocious. Any movie where the bad guy has no depth != a good movie.
I've hated every single fanboy flick to date with the exception of the well-thought-out spiderman flicks. I don't know why I keep making myself go to them.
modern day zorro re-re-hash :)
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
There's a rumor that Larry(Linda being her true name) Wachowski has disclosed that she suffers from gender identity disorder and has a female gender identity.
If you want that in language you won't need to look up: There's a rumor one of the Wachowski brothers is a transsexual, in which case they are siblings, not brothers. Undergoing sexual reassignment surgery has nothing to do with their status as brothers or siblings.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Second time you've posted this troll, coward. On the off chance you want to get educated, look at this for a pretty cogent explanation of the difference between a graphic novel and a comic book.
The term "graphic novel" is older than you are. It has a valid meaning and history.
Unlike you.
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According to Google Suggest, V is for valentines day
Sorry, this sig is beneath your current threshold
I see your crass one liner and raise you one,
The right of the US today is the left of the US 50 years ago.
So where does that leave the left of the rest of the world then?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Afraid.
KFG
Between the cross-like symbols and the music I was having flashbacks to Equilibrium...
That all aside, I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. The trailer looks interesting, the story is interesting, and so it has the potential to be very very good.
It also has the potential to be excruciatingly bad. The Law of Hype will tell us more as we get closer (i.e., if it gets 15 different versions of trailers on trailers.apple.com and has a huge marketing campaign in everything from fast food to office supplies then I'll avoid it like the plague).
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
The right of the US today is the left of the US 50 years ago.
So where does that leave the left of the rest of the world then?
It leaves them watching two ever more blandly populist parties, with an ever diminishing amount of meaningful policy, throw turds at each other in a pointless but desperate struggle for "the middle ground".
In another 50 years they'll probably have achieved they're goal of being nothing more than a well marketed image of two opposing points of view while both parties continue to expand upon their only remaining policy: Feeding at the public trough via an ever expanding Federal government. In the meantime I'm sure they'll continue to argue bitterly and promote divsion in every media form available so that no one will notice that it's mostly bluster without substance, and that enriching themselves and their contributors is about the only action they ever really take.
Which is to say, it will leave the left (and right) of the rest of the world looking on in a strange mix of amusement and fascinated horror.
Jedidiah.
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--years ahead of U.S. as far as cultural/social development. for instance: universal healthcare, socialized higher education, the eradication of poverty in nearly all developed nations, etc.
so, yes, the right of the US today may be the left of the US 50 years ago(but more accurately, the moderates of today are the left of 50 years ago), but that's only because our society and our culture has progressed in many ways since then--towards the left--including the right. this just goes to show that progressives/liberals will always be pushing society forward while reactionaries/conservatives continue to resist progress. saying that the right of the US today is the left of the US 50 years ago doesn't really discredit the left, because the right of the US today is still much less backwards than the right of the US 50 years ago.
Thanks for somebody from /. which posted this article some days ago : Alan Moore despise V for Vendetta. Most interrestingly is the yellow insert (scroll down).
Quote "MOORE SLAMS V FOR VENDETTA MOVIE, PULLS LoEG FROM DC COMICS
[The League]Alan Moore, co-creator of the "V For Vendetta" comic, has publicly disassociated himself from the upcoming Warner Brothers movie project based on the comic book and written and produced by the Wachowski Brothers. And as a result, he has cut his remaining ties with DC Comics, including future volumes of the "League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen."
Moore has promised future "League" comics will be published by a US/UK collaboration between Top Shelf and Knockabout. "
Quote : "Alan On The "V For Vendetta" Movie Alan gave some details about bits of the V For Vendetta shooting script he'd seen. "It was imbecilic; it had plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties. Plot holes no one had noticed." "
Apparently the horse is already out of the barn...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Has anyone been able to play these super high quality versions well on their PCs? I tried playing them on my Athlon 64 3200 and Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz. Both choked when playing these huge sizes. Even 1440 resolutions from other QT7 MOV.
I read Mac G5 have no problems.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I wouldn't put it past them to screw this up. From someone who doesn't bother with comic books, V for Vendetta was the shining exception for me due to the strong characters, deep ideas and frightening moral of the story.
If the film is true to the book, then you have a story in which the hero is an anarchist who terrorises the UK with a bombing campaign and is also, ultimately SPOILER!!!!! a suicide bomber. He is responsible for many deaths. The books also condemns "security" measures such as CCTV and glorifies drug use. I had quite an urge to try LSD after finishing the book.
The dialogue is also many layered and, based on the Matrix trilogy, I sincerely doubt that the Wachowski's have (a) the subtlety to pull it off and (b) the humility not to think they can improve it.
The sole thing I'm looking forward to in this movie is hearing the songs actually performed (that's if they're included). Everything else fills me with a feeling of dread.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I was totally skeptic of how this adaptation would turn out when it was announced. But then the leaked photos and the official posters raised my eyebrows.
Being a die-hard fan of the graphic novel, I watched the trailer just to have something solid to complain about. Surprisingly, I was thoroughly impressed, I must admit that at least visually, this movie seems incredibly faithful to the art of the original. V looks incredible down to the last detail and Natalie Portman is Evey Hammond, no question about it.
It almost got me excited. The trailer, however, confirmed my worst fears. The storyline obviously has been dumbed down into that of a crappy action summer B movie with high production values and a lot of bullet-time, M for Matrix bullshit.
Problem is, this is not the first and certainly won't be the last bad adaptation of Alan Moore's work, Watchmen has been jumping around for a while.
<rant>
My question is: All those guys making the adaptations always claim to be fans of the original sources, then why do they make them despite of the original author's opinion? Sheesh...
</rant>
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Apparently, when they were asking permission to make the film, he told them to just go and do it - he didn't care as long as they didn't put his name to it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Alright, so admittedly the trailer site does mention that a powerful computer is needed to play the high-res version of the trailer.
So. I have an Athlon 64 3400+, 1GB of RAM, a 10K RPM SATA harddrive, and a GeForce 6800GT on a recent Windows XP install. The only extra programs I have running are Gaim and anti-virus software. I keep my computer up to date and swept for spyware using Ad-Aware and use Firefox for browsing.
I'll admit that my machine isn't quite the fastest in the world. I could have slightly faster (4000+) dual processors and more RAM. However, I still think my machine is pretty stinkin' fast by today's standards.
That said, the trailer (using the Quicktime 7 for Windows beta) played like crap, even at half-size. So...what the heck? Is it the player? Have people had better luck with other software? Or is HD really -that- hard to decode?
Nice try, but Orwells works are anti totalitarian. Totalitarism is pretty much the same on the left spectrum of politics as on the right one.
The road is just different. Animal farm is the perfect example for being anti stalinistic (although you might also interprete it as being a satire on revolutions and the outcomes) and 1984 is a clear book against an extreme form of fascism. But in the end, it does not matter if you have a stalinistic regime (which is the dead end for communism) or a fascistic (which is the dead end of capitalism), or some religiously imposed totalitaristic regime, you end up with pretty much the same a handful of people united under one big leader, controlling the masses by fear against some kind of non graspable enemy, and masses who follow like sheep, in poverty while the handful of people get richer and richer.
(It was the same under Stalin as it was under Hitler, even the parades and big events held by the NSDAP and the Communist party had similar faces. It was only the protagonists which were different, under Hitler it was a handful of people surrounding him and a bunch of german Industry leaders (which were able to weasel itself out after the Nuernberg trials). Under Stalin it was the bureaucrats surrounding him. The main difference was that under Stalin you had a higher chance to be killed if you were close to him, than you had under Hitler.
But back to Orwell, his books are timeless philosophical analysis of such regimes, and they fit basically into every spectrum of politics, because he described the mechanisms which work on every spectrum of politics. The supression of people always works the same.
The screenshots from this thing absolutely scream "video game material".
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The same with Constantine, after bad experiences with From Hell and LXG: all he can do is refuse creator credit as it was all work-for-hire (he doesn't own the properties) so it is not like he could prevent them being made.
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Of course, the terrorists (sorry, insurgent) is the good guy.
No. He's a terrorist. And a murdering psycho. That's the whole point.
they made this into a Hollywood movie.
You know, people who lived under socialism believe it's anti-communist/socialist book. There are so many things were exact on money about socialism in the book.
I remember one of Russians in 80s said: "I understand how you can guess this and that but how he could KNOW we have a lack of razor blades???"
speaking on nostaligia...remember???
V
The original comic was partly influenced by "The Abominable Dr Phibes". I'm just hoping some of that influence comes full circle back to this movie. If Evey and V in the shadow gallery echoes Vulnavia and Phibes in Phibes' lair, just a bit, then that'll do it for me.
Oh, transfolk never say you can pick and choose your gender.
Larry is not choosing to become Linda.
In fact, Larry has likely had periods in his life where he wished Linda would just go away.
But that's not how it works.
Transsexualism isn't about "men choosing to become women" or "women choosing to become men", it's about "women finally telling people they're women" and "men finally telling people they're men."
Oh, and I think you meant your sex is decided by your DNA(mostly). Gender's quite a bit more than just DNA.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
He was a libertarian Marxist
Libertarian Marxist? What is that supposed to be?
Libertarianism is a philosophy that places the rights of the individual as paramount. Marxism & Socialism are philosophies that state that the rights of the individual are subordinate to the needs of the society.
A libertarian-marxist is like a sterile-pregnant woman. Cold-heat. Honest-politicians. Microsoft-Works.
This is not a flame. I'm genuinely curious how someone can wrap one brain around two such diametrically opposed philosophies.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Allow me to suggest alternative code:
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I think that's called "doublethink" in 1984. The ability to believe in two completely contradicting ideas without questioning.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You should read The Lion and the Unicorn before you make any more stupid comments about "left-wing people [who] have hijacked the book 1984." It is you on the right who have hijacked Orwell: the man was a dedicated leftist. The problem is that you are so poorly educated you can't distinguish between the Left and Communism (which is to the Left as Wahabbism is to Islam, or the KKK is to Conservatism - a badly distorted variant).
Orwell's attacks on the Communist Party were motivated by his belief that they were anti-revolutionary: that they were Facists in sheeps' clothing: for him, democracy was a necessity for socialism. The joke to "English Socialism" that you obviously don't understand is that it is the same sort of duck speak as "Ministry of Love" - it calls itself socialism, but is actually totalitarian - just like Stalinism.
If you actually read 1984 or Animal Farm with any literary sensitivity, you'd see how in both cases Orwell imagines socialism becoming perverted by the actions of power-hungry Communists - the very same thing he saw happening in the Spanish Civil War (and described in Homage to Catalonia, where he sees the Communist Party as second only to Franco's Facists as agents of injustice). Orwell saw real danger in socialism, true - but the danger he saw was not to a healthy capitalism (which Orwell says bluntly in The Lion and the Unicorn "does not work") but to democracy - Orwell saw democracy as always unstable, as something that had to be supported by the exertions of those dedicated to justice.
Orwell made a lot of mistakes: I think he doesn't understand that all economic systems, capitalist and socialist, are corrosive to democracy because they require either competition (which naturally leads to economic disparities, which give more power to the wealthy, and which therefore undermine democracy) or control (which suppress individual initiative and submits the individual to mass control). For democracy to work, you need to create an unstable equilibrium between planned and open economy that is sufficiently bounded to prevent either repressive sociailism or unfetterred capitalism from gaining the upper hand and suppressing individual freedoms, jolting back and forth like the pistons of a machine. But then Orwell didn't have the benefit we have of having seen what happens to a planned economy.
So will you be voting for Joe Jackson? Or Jack Johnson? I personnaly dont think JJs stance on titanium prices goes quite far enough.
This is the crass one liner thread! You should've added:
:).
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
That said, +5 Insightful
He also gives what he makes on the movies away to the artists of the comics, even though he can't really afford to do it.
I don't think I'll be going to see this movie, the Wachowski's clearly don't seem to get it. I respected them after the Matrix but subsequent movies have shown how superficial they are. Making it look cool for the sake of it.
The script has already been slated on AICN. Looks like another League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to me. Poor Alan.
Hey, shithead: you do realize that the peaceniks he was attacking were those who didn't want to fight in Spain or against Hitler, right? Two facist (right-wing) regimes?
How the HELL could anyone read Homage to Catalonia and decide that Orwell was a populist conservative? Or The Lion and the Unicorn, where he SLAMS English conservatives for supporting Hitler because he's good for business, and he comes right out and says that "capitalism" "doesn't work?"
What Cato-Institute funded mind-job factory were you educated in?
Frankly, nothing in the Wikipedia entry dissuades me from the idea that "Graphic Novel" means either, "okay, yeah, it's a comic book, but it's a good comic book," or, "Okay, yeah, it's a comic book, but we feel rather pretentious today." The only non-subjective distinction I could glean from the article is that graphic novels are usually longer than a standard comic book. But given that some standard comic books have plot arcs spanning dozens of episodes, that distinction strikes me as an unimportant one.
Yes, "comic book" carries a lot of negative connotations. It implies that on some level the work in question is fluff, not suitable for anyone over the age of fifteen. So did the term "video game" twenty years ago. Since then, the genre has expanded and a lot of games of unquestionable artistry got released. Now it's possible to talk about games having powerful stories, compelling characters, and artistic merit without so much as a raised eyebrow from most people.
If the fans of those first few experiments in artful gaming had rebranded the works "raster novels" or some other equally silly term, I don't think that evolution of the original term would ever have happened. Me, my reaction to this story was, "Hmm, so it's based on a comic book? Wait, there are good comic books out there? Where do I find these dealies?"
Stop being so insistent on terminology. You're nearly as bad as the person you're responding to. If these "graphic novelists" are doing what they claim they are doing, they don't need the crutch of a separate designation; the term "comic book" will expand to fit their works.
Just my view, as a total graphicomic novelbook n00b. Take it for what little it's worth.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
In future news: Wachowski Brothers rip off SlashDot post for their next film!
But seriously...
The future you describe is the reality today. The US looks very twisted to observers. I've travelled in the US and know there are many, many good people there, living principled, thoughtful lives. It's a big country... but a relative few are changing it into something that the soldier-philosophers of the War Of Independence would have detested.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Let me see if I can make this clearer without resorting to name calling again.
1. Orwell was obviously an anti-communist. He was a left-wing anti-communist. The first anti-communists were on the left; the dingbat Stalinist ingelligentsia in Britain and America would have disgusted him, but so would American and British conservatism. The problem here is that you've been taught to associate liberalism, the left, communism, and socialism together as though they are all the same thing. They're not: communism is a perversion of left-liberal thinking; Marx took some sound economic ideas and ran with them right off the edge of the earth. The reality is that a healthy economy is a mixed economy (as a healthy government is a mixed government, something that the great intellectual figures who founded the US understood).
2. Orwell might have supported the war in Iraq; hell, Tony Blair is supporting it, and though he's not on the left by any meaningful measurement, he's certainly not on the right, either. Orwell was in favor of opposing facism and totalitarianism wherever it was found, and would have recognized in Saddam Hussein a potential Franco or Mussolini (Saddam lacked the national base to become a real Hitler, and was motivated by pure will to power, not by the weirder psychological perversions that motivated Hitler). However, he might not have favored the current war in Iraq given some of the context (for instance, if China were suddenly to decide it's time to occupy Taiwan, Orwell would have been screaming about our wasting time in Iraq while the real threat was building in Asia).
However, I can guarantee you that Orwell would have been disgusted by the attacks on Social Security and "trickle-down economics" (he would have had quite a bit to say about the fantasy math and sophistic language used to support both positions), and he would have been disgusted by the self-serving language tricks the past two administrations have engaged in (the whole "well, he said Joe Wilson's wife, but he didn't name her, so he didn't violate the law" routine is the only thing that approaches Clinton's "it depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is" in sophistical hypocrisy). On the other hand, I don't think he would have been surprised.
Until you have read "Down and Out in Paris and London," "The Lion and the Unicorn," and "Homage to Catalonia," don't try to talk about Orwell's politics. And don't believe ANYONE who tries to tell you that Orwell was a conservative.
Actually, Big Brother was a combination of both Hitler and Stalin.
Those who are neither on the left nor the right extreme tend to notice how similar both extremes are to each other.
I always hate these type of broad and sweeping statements. They brush aside so many of the complex interactions that it just makes the party line division that much worse. The "right" by and large is not resisting progress. The "left" by and large is not the only group to move things forward. Many people on the right and left lean much more towards moderate, are businessmen and technology people and they care very little for the extremists that are seen as radically pushing the envelope.
That said painting things as progress is also not quite fair. There are many things you might view as progress that others view as an erosion of traditional family values and such. This really has very little to do with the extreme rights religious Zeal. The extremists like the religious right and PETA do more harm to "progress" and seeing their goals met than they do towards actually making a difference. But still, you can't just claim that the right is against progress and the left is always for progress. Mainly because there is no great definition or agreement on what progress is. This is a fun little word game the extreme left likes to play.
Jeremy
what kind of family values are liberals eroding? most of the time when conservatives bring up "family values" they're talking about censorship and blaming crime on videogames or the media, or they're espousing their disatisfaction at the growing acceptance of homosexuality.
and most people in peta, or are affiliated with peta are not extremists--atleast not to my knowledge, and i've been involved with probably more animal rights campaigns than most people who criticize these groups. peta is about disseminating information and raising awareness of animal cruelty, but the media only picks up extreme and very rare campaigns such as people pouring blood on super models, or vandalizing businesses that are inhumane towards animals--this is not what 99% of animal rights activists do. these are just the things that sensationalist journalists like to pick up.
do you think the muchkrackers, the progressives of the 20's, the civil rights activists, the abolitionists, the founding fathers were liberal or conservative for their time? a conservative is by definition one which is trying to uphold the current status quo. there are too many things to be changed in society to justify conservativism.
"What about Animal Farm? That was obviously aimed at the faults of the Soviet Union.
Someone should talk about Animal Farm."
Hey, let's not engage in crimethink. If Big Brother tells you GO was a committed commie, he certainly was.
Orwell was certainly a lefty - of a kind. Not being a cheerleader for Stalin or into mindless hatred of western civ sort of left him on the outside of the establishment commies though...
Naturally, this makes him our favorite little lefty. Live with it.
KFG
Kenny Fuckin' G?
Did you ditch the sax and go all hardcore on us? What other reason for fear is there?
The Chronic *WHAT* les of Narnia!
...for allowing you to download the trailer right out front in the open, and not making you have to jump through various technical hoops to get a file you can watch again down the road without having to re-download it. So few movie-makers these days will let you do that.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Maybe thats because Russia turned in to a totalitarian state not a worker's paradise. There wasn't anything socialist, Communist or left, left in it, except empty rhetoric, pretty much from the point Stalin siezed power after Lenin's death. Same goes for China.
.... a wealthy Yale Skull and Bonesman.
The problem with most governments, no matter how idealistic they start out, no matter the supposed idealogy, they turn in to a small group of people, like 1%, bent on acquring power and wealth at the expense of the other 99%. In China and Russia it was the upper echelon's of the Communist party. In China most of its big companies are controlled by the upper echelon's of the Communist party. They don't care about workers at all now, if they ever did. They are exploiting Chinese workers so ruthlessly, to get rich, its the envy of the Capitalist West.
In western democracies its wealthy businessmen, executives of big companies, working hand in hand with the politicians they buy and get elected with the purchase of TV ads (just like selling soap). They maintain a facade of democracy by running candidates from two parties both of which are in their pockets, vividly exemplified by the 2004 election when a wealthy Yale Skull and Bonesman ran against
@de_machina
I've been downloading this sucker at 1,500kbps for 10 friggin minutes. Either they're uploading the entire movie or something has gone wrong with my quicktime plug-in. Or it's one BIG friggin trailer
Only on
Try this:
Frankly, nothing in the Wikipedia entry dissuades me from the idea that a "Novel" means either "okay, yeah, it's a magazine serial, but it's a good magazine serial" or "Okay, yeah, it's a magazine serial, but we feel rather pretentious today." The only non-subjective distinction I could glean from the article is that novels are usually longer than a magazine serial. But given that some standard magazine serials have plot arcs spanning dozens of issues, that distinction strikes me as an unimportant one.
[...]
Stop being so insistent on terminology. You're nearly as bad as the person you're responding to. If these "novelists" are doing what they claim they are doing, they don't need the crutch of a separate designation; the term "magazine serial" will expand to fit their works.
Why has Hollywood removed the anarchism from this movie?
The Wachowski brothers stole the whole idea
I hear Sophia Stewart is the original creator as in the actual idea owner.
Well, you heard wrong. There was an erroneous story going around that she had actually won something, but all that really happened was that the judge hadn't thrown the case out immediately. As far as I know, it's still tied up in court. She hasn't won, and if you bother to look up the original work she's using as "evidence", you'll realize she's not likely to.
More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Stewart
I like it when people talk about traditional family values. What traditional family values are you talking about? Those from the 4050's when women were expected to stay home and not to work? How about from the 1800's when wife beating was excepted? Further back? When Middle aged men married teenagers all the time? Back to the bible? Have you ever read the old testement? Girls getting their fathers drunk to sleep with them. Men having more then one wife. New Testement...where Jesus encouraged men to leave their families and go wonder around the world with him. The reality is there is no such thing as traditional family values...its just a catch phrase to get all the red-necks up in arms about Gay rights.
Kenny Fuckin' G?
Now that's a fuckin' insult!
May every website you ever visit launch Kenny G music at you.
KFG
And it's been confirmed that they do indeedy blow up Parliament in the beginning.
And for Evey to go from hair to no-hair, well, you know what that means must happen.
So no, if anything, the trailer has brought back some of the hope I had.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
He didn't much care for lefty peaceniks, it would seem. So using his quotes to bash current U.S. policy is somewhat disingenous
Don't be an idiot. Leftism is not equivalent to pacifism, and one can anyway be against a decision to go to war without being a pacifist. I am not a pacifist and yet opposed the US's invasion of Iraq for example.
but you're going to tell me that the man who wrote Animal Farm was a communist? Get real.
Have you actually read Animal Farm? The revolution in general is written very sympathetically -- it is only when it is hijacked by Napoleon (Stalin) that it turns into a nightmare. It is not communism but totalitarianism Orwell is writing against.
"Every line I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism, and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it."
Snowball (Trotsky) is also described sympathetically.
I suggest you read some of Orwell's other writings.
But then I wondered if they'll notice it after all. The US has a very long and proud history of slipping the most socially subversive material into its sci-fi movies and having the nanny-dictators completely miss it. Planet of the Apes anyone? Looking back, the political allegory in that film (in the first three, really) is so blatant it's almost insulting... but at the time, no one really noticed. At least no one with the power to stop the movie from happening.
Or more recently, War of the Worlds. Granted, the fact that it was a truly terrible film rather cut into its impact, but I'm really not sure if ANYONE inside the US really got what Koepp and Spielberg were doing with it. (hint: it was a POST-9/11 allegory. If you think it had anything to do with the attacks themselves, you're dead wrong.)
And many others, leading up to this. And I wonder. Being that it's sci-fi, and from a pair already known for dystopian action flicks... will the Powers That Be even notice it? I'm guessing they won't.
Which is the funny thing about nazis. They always miss what's right under their noses.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Just another brainddead action film from hollyweird, which will make enough money from license.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Check out Political Compass. It has a fairly good description of what the Libertarian Left is.a nalysis2.php
http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/
Basically, someone like Gandhi, Mandela, and the Dalai Lama would be Left Libertarians.
Libertarians are different from anarchists. Anarchist believe that there should be no government. Libertarians believe that government is a necessary evil, but it should limit itself to "essential services" and should generally try to stay out of people's lives.
Left Libertarians consider some government social welfare, government public education, health care, and some business regulation to be essential, but that the government should try to interfere in how people live their lives (If you want to marry a goat or your sister or download MP3s without the permission of the original artist, go right ahead. The government shouldn't stand in the way of social freedoms. People should be able to make personal mistakes without Big Brother "protecting them".).
Right Libertarians consider enforcement of Intellectual Property to be important, creating new forms of IP important, enforce IP laws abroad, government regulation of undesirable behaviour to be important, but thinks that government should stay out of people's financial lives (If you want to pull an Enron or operate your business with less red tape, go right ahead. The government shouldn't stand in the way of financial freedoms. People should be able to make their own financial mistakes without Big Brother "protecting them".).
If you actually read 1984 or Animal Farm with any literary sensitivity, you'd see how in both cases Orwell imagines socialism becoming perverted by the actions of power-hungry Communists - the very same thing he saw happening in the Spanish Civil War (and described in Homage to Catalonia, where he sees the Communist Party as second only to Franco's Facists as agents of injustice).
By the end of his life, I believe he found communism to be inevitably corrupt and evil, given the evidence.
Socialism, a watered-down version of communism, may be less corrupt and evil by degree, but it's no less bankrupt in the long run, as many continental nations are in the process of discovering. The central idea of socialism is institutionalized theft by majority rule, making the state a 'robin hood' which steals from the rich to give to the poor. In the long run, this so impacts entrepreneurship and incentives that it leads to stagnation and true income equality, where everyone is equally poor. Of course, true believers pack bag lunches and sing songs of solidarity, but the best of the rest end up brain-draining to America.
Capitalism, on the other hand, in one form or another, has existed since the dawn of human history. Hell, scientific evidence proves that even monkeys can learn how to exchange goods for services.
I think he doesn't understand that all economic systems, capitalist and socialist, are corrosive to democracy because they require either competition (which naturally leads to economic disparities, which give more power to the wealthy, and which therefore undermine democracy) or control (which suppress individual initiative and submits the individual to mass control).
You try to place moral equivalence between capitalism and socialism where there is, in fact, none at all. Economic disparities stem from individual competence, and competition acts as both a valve and a pressor, pushing progress inevitably forward. You are actually describing China when you're talking about a worst-case for capitalism.
China, which has transformed into a fascist country though it calls itself a communist country, is where you'll find the vicious brew of capitalist economy and totalitarian, pro-corporate (thru its institutional ownership of at least half the economy) society. In the Chinese government, international corporations find a willing partner in wage exploitation, labor migration, etc. And people are not permitted to protest, and the press is state-owned or state-controlled.
Also, to be honest, _everything_ is corrosive to democracy, when institutionalized and permitted to metastasize. The key is finding the balance which provides the most individual liberty while preserving common rights and privileges in the most fair and sustainable way.
ObTopic: there's no way anything like V could happen in the USA, because of our free press and broad and deep gun ownership. Besides, unlike England, our armed services and law enforcment swear an oath to protect the principles enshrined in the founding document of our nation, and many even carry copies of this document with them. If you've ever known any military or law enforcement personnel, you'd know how seriously they take that oath. Just look at what happend to MacArthur. Unpopular president fires popular war hero for insubordination, and while the people protest venomously, the general steps down with grace and respect for the Constitutional principle of civilian authority over the military.
In the former USSR there was a defficit on almost any non-military product. Everything was directed by the party, the statistical bureaus were 'responsible' to define how much and of what needed to be produced and these numbers did not coincide with what and how much really needed to be produced. Besides that in reality nothing was really produced in the quantities the statistical bureaus required.
So where in a capitalist country a product niche would be naturally taken by some private small or large manufacturer, in the USSR there were no private manufacturers, everything belonged to the government and you know how good and fast governments are at starting new things, or motivating people to work.
The only type of products that were really pushed were for millitary use and everything else was just a sideline, a derivative of some sort.
I would know, I was born in Zaporozhie, where dozens of various factories produced various military goods - tanks, radar dishes and electronics, airplanes, ammo, and many people around me (some in the family) worked in those places. And so my aunt for example was (and still is) a director of an electronics factory, which produced tape recorders as a cover product for their military radar electronics line.
So all I am saying is that Orwell could have said that about almost any non-trivial product (non trivial as in it more complicated than matches,) and would have been right.
You can't handle the truth.
Oops, I meant:
... but that the government
> Libertarian Left
> should *NOT* try to interfere in how people live their
> social lives
One of the W brothers wants to be a woman. Don't you find that a little odd/disgusting/unstable?
If you don't, maybe you should grow up!
Go back to Al-Qaeda, terrorist lover.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Big deal, do people believe there is still 1 system that is so intrinsically perfect it cannot turn to the complete horror of autoritarian totalitarism? I think what Orwell was depicting is Human Nature! ... why do lefties are righties feel the need to basically highjack the book to throw it at the face of their natural opposites, when really they should reflect upon it.
It is UNIVERSAL and that is why it can touch us all.
Of course the setting is particular, but the moral and point of the story is general
my $.02
Pacifism and the War. Quite a few other essays by Orwell are available on that site.
From the essay:
Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that 'according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be "objectively pro-British".' But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious 'freedom' station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U. They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.
Totalitarism always has the same face, the road to totalitarism is just different on the left wing side of the spectrum than on the right wing side. But the result is always the same.
One of the reasons why you cannot silence Orwell by telling he was a commie (same argument was used in the third Reich by being anti german or being jewish), because his works are a razor sharp analysis about the evil of totalitarism, which in the end is rather independend of idology or politics, it just needs it as a road to establish itself.
Dont expect that a nieche player has any chance in a totalitaristic capitalistic society.
In such a society everything would be controlled by a handful of corporations (or one in the ultimate eclipse of such a society) which basically would force every competition out. There would be no room for small structures. In the end such a one company rules all system is pretty much the same as the opressive stalinistic country, the SU was. Instead of one party, you have one company, and instead of Big Brother Stalin, you end up with CEO Stalin. And instead of a Gulag you get a free vacation on one of the slave labor camps which are called prisons (Dont expect not to have such camps in such a system)
If you think that is impossible, do the same as Orwell did, take existing structures and society developments, and think a few decades further, with the same development which has been going on for the last decades.
Typical, that the largest creative force behind the movie (i.e. the Author) is hardly mentioned and should at least be on the Bios page. Bah.
If you're looking for a crap movie with "Vendetta" in the title, look no further:
Vendetta: A Christmas Story
I lose money on it, so it's okay to plug, right?
Don't think Orwell liked the USSR. He had been criticizing it a LOT before 1984 was even written.
Is it just me, or is this the futuristic version of "El Zorro"?
Vi havas e-poston.
"why do lefties are righties feel the need to basically highjack the book"
Because anyone that labels themselves "Left" or "Right" is already braindead.
I find it ironically funny that John Hurt seems to be playing the head of the oppressive party in this movie while he played the exact opposite kind of character in 1984.
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
OK, I've got $2 says they "do a Stallone" and show V with his mask off.
Any takers? I woin either way, cause if I loose then it might mean the film will be watchable.
OK, theres a slight risk in that, because they shaved Ms. Portman, which would indicate that some of the most intensly disturbing parts of the book are still in there, but it's brought huge ammounts of publicity for the film, so it could be a good sign or a bad sign.
Actually, this could be a good Ask Slashdot. "I am a comics fan who shys away from comic book adaptations because I've seen too much unredemable crap - and that's just in the trailers.
Keanau as Constantine? Stallone taking his helmet off? Tom Sawyer in LoEG? Sean Connery in LoEG, for that matter! Dr Doom not using magic? The Punisher being a policeman instead of a soldier? (In both versions!) Hulk dogs? No Screwball in Mysterymen?
So, Slashdot, what comic book movie adaptations can I, as a comic book fan, see and enjoy?"
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Don't you dare try and claim Orwell for the right. He's a Godless anti-state commie, thank you very much.
Yup, he was a card carrying lefty. Just like Christopher Hitchens and Paul Wolfowitz.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Nice try. Orwell was not afraid of the Left. I know this because George Orwell himself wrote that he was not afraid of the Left in his essay "My country, Left or Right". Sheesh, and you bring up insufficient research?
Listen "Dad", theres no need to stare at tea leaves or chicken entrails or "research" your own interpretation, he wrote a regular column about what he thought and felt and also discusses the book he was working on (that was to be 1984) during and just after the war. Seldom has any author been more pelucid with regard to his political beliefs. Google around for "As I please", it should be available somewhere.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Yes, I've read Homage to Catalonia as well. He was disillusioned with the particulars of how that worked out (esp. lack of leadership and unity) and having to flee to France. However as to what he thought...?
"One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word 'comrade' stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. One had breathed the air of equality."
I think you are overstating the case basically. He felt that way despite his bad experiences.
What you somewhat fail to see is that its possible to have political belief about the best way in which man can live within society and also be a contemporary critic. Thus, there are plenty of people today who believe in economic liberalism and capitalism who can still find it in their hearts to dislike, say, America or the UK for how those approaches are manifest. The Left wing is essentially conflated with Communism these days but there are (and it used to be more clear) that there were a range of ways in which society could be changed that might have different results (whether you or I believe that to be the case is immaterial, we are talking about George Orwell here; the semi-autonomous trading collectives would be just one alternative scheme and indeed were what the term "communism" was initially supposed to mean).
In the case of Orwell he was of course concerned about Soviet Russia (and indeed, shopped around 70-odd sympathisers to the security forces at the time of writing it). But to re-reiterate, what frightened him wasn't that they were "left wing" (the unthinking fear of which is a uniquely American prediliction anyway) so it would be unlikely for him to share that) what frightened him was the authoritarianism.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Not a bad point, though that's not the way the etymology of "novel" actually developed. The word "novel" was coined in the 16th century because the stories contained therein were considered, well, novel. In addition, the term was often used to refer to a single story in a bound collection. Magazine serials didn't really come about until the 19th century, as a way to fill pulp magazines.
But the strict factuality of the comparison isn't important. In retrospect, it does make sense to make a distinction between the forms. I think my initial reaction was that the inventors of the term "graphic novel" were being pretentious, trying to elevate their work to an art form by equating their works with an already credible genre. But upon further consideration (and some berating by a real life friend who occasionally monitors my Slashdotting misadventures), the whole thing is starting to make more sense.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Vendetta: A Christmas Story. And oldie but a goodie.
I haven't collected comics for twenty years, but the last series I did gather was Warrior 1-26, a UK magazine. Among other gems, this contains the first printing of V for Vendetta. They've been kept in bags all this time. I understand that there was a significant trade bubble that made the dot com burst look modest (relative to their respective markets). Is it worth the effort to un-box them, or should I wait another decade to see if my kids get interested? Thanks.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
I *don't* download a heck of a lot of trailers to being with, but...
Kudos to the guys who set that site up. For the first time I can remember getting the file downloaded wasn't a royal pain.
Click through, and the save as box pops up... No embedded crap, etc... Bravo!
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Heh, well... I can tell you my idea of it and the perception of the shift that many feel is occuring due to "progress". Traditional family values is really just a stupid catch phrase. What is really meant are good family values, but that starts an entire other argument that implies that more progressive or less church oriented households are somehow less than good. In my interpretation is means having a good and solid core in your life. I don't care where you derive this core from but it has to be there. You have to stand for right and wrong and teach these values to your family. You have to represent these things to properly teach your children. You should sit down with your family every week and get to know them. You should do the right thing and not create a troublesome environment at home. As a parent, YOU should be raising your children. For me and my wife that means one of us stays home so our kids know who we are growing up and aren't raised as latch key children because the family thought working two jobs to "provide" for their family was the way to go. Ss on and so forth. Many go to religion to help define their core beliefs and values. It is values like this that many feel progress erodes. These strong family values concepts just get lumped into the Traditional Family Values phrase.
To recap: strong marriges and choosing a partner for life. Raising your children and having a direct influence in their life and instilling your value system on them and not letting them pick up whatever is out there. I don't know if you have kids or have thought about it, but this truly is a different time. The amount of media bombardment children are exposed to is astonishing. It is up to the parents to help their children cope with and understand all they are exposed to. Really, the world kids grow up in now is faster and less innocent than the one I grew up in in the 80s and 90s. The age groups that are targeted by certain types of advertising are getting younger and younger. Without good parents there to help their children understand the world around them it can do some real damage. I know I grew up playing video games like mortal kombat and watching R rated movies and I don't feel that was negative. My parents made sure I was mature enough to understand what I was doing and how this affected me as an individual. I wasn't just given free reign on these things. There is also the Internet and other places where many parents don't know how to properly monitor and assist their children. Its a lot and I really feel that many parents just don't keep up. Many see this as erosion due to progress. I see it as lazy parenting with some speeding of up society getting thrown in there that could be viewed as a negative influence. More on the lazy parents than progress, but it all factors in.
Anyhow, doing what you believe is right, even if it is hard and requires sacrifice. Teaching your children these concepts. So, that is what it means to most slightly left, slightly right, or in the middle families that I know of. We are talking averge middle to upper class families in a major metro city in the deep south. Not your country bumpkins that still get pissy about the Georgia state flag. ALl of this for someone who is just looking for an argument anyhow. Believe what you will but don't pretend like its getting easier to raise children and keep a family toghether in modern American society. Its getting harder and the world around us is moving faster and becoming more and more connected for better or for worse and we all have to keep up.
Both sides like to think they stand on the moral high ground. Who is actually standing on it is anyones guess. For me it is simple: I don't care. I will do what I think is right and try and associate with other families that have the same general value systems I do and that is that. It's basic human nature.
Jeremy
Every time a trailer or something comes out for anything related to nerd-dom we get the flood of inevitable 'OMGZORS TEH DASTROYED THE COMIC.' It's a movie, a mainstream movie, with famous actors and actresses who have a career afterwards. It will be seen by many, many people. I never read the V comic and I'm sure it's excellent but if they made movies that were exactly like the comics all of you people rave about, the movies would get such high content ratings and such poor press they would make about zero dollars. Au revoir, movies based on comics and welcome back to sappy romantic comedies with Jennifer Lopez. Let's be happy movies are being made about things we care about at ALL and stop wishing they included the scene where the hero gets high on crack and rapes the girl with a razor blade strap-on or something.
The main difference was that under Stalin you had a higher chance to be killed if you were close to him, than you had under Hitler.
Well, your odds still sucked under Hitler. Ask Ernst Roehm.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
In another 50 years they'll probably have achieved they're goal of being nothing more than a well marketed image of two opposing points of view while both parties continue to expand upon their only remaining policy: Feeding at the public trough via an ever expanding Federal government. In the meantime I'm sure they'll continue to argue bitterly and promote divsion in every media form available so that no one will notice that it's mostly bluster without substance, and that enriching themselves and their contributors is about the only action they ever really take.
Huh. Could have fooled me---I was pretty certain that their eventual goal would be nothging more than a well-marketed image of two opposing points of view, which, in reality, represent a single remaining true policy: Impoverishing the public to feed their wealthy friends, and using the ever-growing power of the state to make serfs of us all in the service of corporate power.
Ayep.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Well, shit. I'm going to hold on to any possible chance that he's being unreasonably curmudgeonly. Any... possible... chance. Any chance that this line will not be in the movie:
V: "This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vangquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.
The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V."
Evey: Are you like, a crazy-person?
I shall wait until Roger Ebert provides his... verdict.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Your information on gender issues is fairly informative, however you are starting with one incorrect assumption.
Specifically, the case being argued here.
There are no reliable reports anywhere that Larry Wachowski ever had a sex change, and in all recent publications, he continues to be known as "Larry" not "Linda."
All this came about when, during an ugly divorce proceeding, he was dating a professional dominatrix. Shortly afterwards, he began to appear in public with pierced ears, plucked eyebrows, and rather feminine-looking clothing.
Anybody who googles with the "safe" filter turned off knows that humiliation is a huge part of the dominatrix/submissive relationship, and that "forced" public crossdressing is often part of the kink. Odds are, that was probably what was going on at the time.
In the wake of Larry appearing in public looking somewhat girly, several rumors began to crop up that he was a transexual, and the gossip columns of papers all over the country began printing claims that he was planning on having a sex-change operation and changing his name to "Linda."
If you do a quick search of the Internet, you will find a dramatic lack of stories dated any later than last Spring which say anything about it. This is because the rumored sex change was probably never anything more than a rumor.
So while I applaud you for trying to promote understanding and tolerance, please don't perpetuate false gossip about people while doing so.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
1984 is a vision of an authoritarian future
Not to nitpick on your fine post, but it has been explained a thousand times:
1984 was a very thinly disguised vision of an authoritarian present.
Orwell was refering to Stalinist URSS, in 1948. Wink, wink.
This is really obvious to anyone who knows a little about the period, but most people still think 1984 was some kind of dark SF. The reason why, I cannot grasp.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
and foolish moderators too - you'd think you were in iraq or something.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The main difference was that under Stalin you had a higher chance to be killed if you were close to him, than you had under Hitler.
That was the most succint illustration I've seen to date.
Kudos!
Carlos Cesar
Well, my reply is a few days late, but just in case anyone is reading this...
The only multichannel formats understood by home theater receivers nowadays are Dobly Digital (AC3) and DTS. When you playback that AAC file, it gets decoded by your computer into the 6 different tracks. The digital output from your soundcard is only stereo PCM, so it gets downmixed to that, and you get the stereo signal into the receiver.
The only way to get the full surround signal is to use 6 analog connections into your receiver (5.1 input). I also think a nVidia chipset had the capability of encoding AC3 in real time so that also would be an option, but it is not produced anymore. I think it was called Soundstorm.
So in summary, if you want surround sound from your PC into your home theater, you need a six channel input in your receiver and the proper connections from the soundcard.
Right, just like the People's Democratic Republic of Korea is a democracy.
Oh, wait...
[On topic: High Definition 1900x1000 ish trailer is downloadable at 140mb, this is larger than my screen rez right now, just want to see how it runs ]
Although two towers didn't crash down in the UK, the Brits are still a tad more level headed and stiff upper lip, cup of tea? what?
You know. So I guess this will be annotated 'stet'. If you didn't get it, I mean, they will not change it, and not 'to show the terrorists they didn't win' but because we just don't do things like that...Don't mention the war! I mentione dit once, but I think I got away with it!
We have a whole holiday over here about the first terrorist plot, in 1605, where Mr Guy Fawkes (playing himself) not content with getting a penny every time he wheeled himself out in a wheel barrow (a tradition held strong today) decides to blow up the houses of parliment with gunpowder! (two other supporting members helped him, they are still at large, scotland yard have releases security camera pictures showing them carrying barrels)
However, scotland yard, using code breaking and wire taps, and Cantennas to sniff his WiFi access, were able to thwart the plan, and steal their iPods of them.
That is what wikipedia says, I hope someone hasn't been tampering with history!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com