OK, it is entirely possible that that is some pop culture reference that I am totally missing.
But if it isn't... that is, methinks, a mean and borderline offensive thing to say. I know the head librarian at my high school is a brilliant man; somewhat gruff, but intelligent and helpful. The staff also includes women of varying ethnicity and gender. And none of them are mean. I'm going to pretend I didn't read the "Jewish" bit.
Like I said... I could be entirely missing the hypothetical pop culture referential humor here, in which case you may as well ignore me. Which you might do anyway.
There was so much potential for a good explanation... but instead, whoever was writing at the time decided to just blame it all on god. Well. Talk about deus ex machina...
It's really a poorly phrased sentence that they use. The impression I got was either real actors in a CG world or else entirely CG with "real" voice actors. Though I don't think a computer voice actor would work... I'm sure we've all used simpletext, yes?;-)
Does anybody else remember the computer game? I never played it, but I heard it was good?
Aieee... a friend of mine had it on his Mac. Being a stickler for accuracy in such thigns, I hated it, but I can't speak to its merits as a game.
Basically, they went through the whole series and took every aspect which lent itself most to a computer game and put it in one game.
Memorable experiences include getting eaten by biots, shocked by electric fences, eaten by other biots, being puzzled by this weird bird creature that should've been one of the flyers from the books but looked like a biot, getting eaten by more biots, and, um, I think I got eaten by biots at one point.
Yes yes. A fan of Known Space myself, I recall dicussing this with a fellow Ringworld fan a while back. Ringworld has sooo much potential for good visuals. Even if only the puppeteers were done right, it would be good. The idea of a world in which the horizon disapperas up in the distance, in which night becomes day like that, a world hundreds of million sof times larger than Earth.... Done right, it would be pretty impressive.
One thing I remember seeing was a website which was a collection of detailed renderings this guy had done of the Ringworld's surface, from various heights, orbits, etc.
Anyway. You're right; Ringworld would be a cool movie the same way Rendezvous would. Heh, you ever play the computer game? I found it recently and installed it on my 486... aieee, wretched thing. I can't get past the rishathra bit...
Rendezvous may be one of my favorite SF books ever. The imagery (which might turn out really well in a movie), the mystery, the adventure... damn, the man can write. The sequels, however, are most disappointing. While there are interesting concepts - like the octospiders - the rest of the saga as a whole is an unpleasant read. The mystery is essentially shattered, and not, in my opinion, very well. I think it has something to do with Gentry Lee's involvement. My theory is that Arthur C Clarke writes a good SF novel and gives the manuscript to Gentry Lee, who takes out all the best parts and puts in weird sex. String, mysterious powder, and a man "screaming like a jungle animal" have no place in a series with such a spectacular beginning. (also see Cradle for this phenomenon)
I think Rendezvous will translate well into cinema. It was very much, to me, a book about this one concept, about the author's vision. That is a thing which can do well as a movie. Some authors have most of their strength in the writing itself (Terry Pratchett comes to mind), and those authors' books would make inferior movies. But Rendezvous With Rama is all about the alien spaceship... and that chilling final line.
I just hope they don't try to make any book-based sequels...
PS: Clarke's Imperial Earth is also a fascinating read. You'll be playing with those little puzzle pieces for days...
All that is needed is a simple pencil, piece of paper and a bunch of people to count the votes.
One truly hopes that that is sarcasm. As a good little minion of the US media, I followed the shenanigans in Florida rather cloesly, and it took a loooong time to hadncount all those votes. There has to be something mechanical in that along the way. This is a big country.
I concur that a Microsoft+Dell+Whomever solution would be a bad idea; aside from Microsoft's renowned apparent disregard for quality control, I don't think that cutting edge technology is the best thing to apply here. Simplicity, but mechanical simplicity.
What we need is something that is reliable, efficient, simple, and which raises no questions about voter intent.
Now we get to sit back and just have some comic-book superhero action.
I see. Certainly, that seemed to be the main "gimmick" of The Matrix.
I don't at all think that entertainment has to be an intellectual pursuit. If I did, I wouldn't watch Bond movies.:) Certainly, The Matrix did a good job of establishing a world with story potential. As long as they don't try to link it too closely to The Matrix, a sequel should be okay. I just wouldn't rush out to see it, that's all.
This seems to be on of two ways that SF is done in cinema these days: either superhero-style, or horror-style. I find it disappointing, but I guess nothing else is really likely to draw in the crowds.
My high school has a good-sized TV studio that is used both by various TV production classes and our very own Blair Network Communications. Anyway, we just got a whole mess of new G4 computers with DVD-RAM drives to replace the old linear editors. Apparently, they have been a boon to all involved. I'm not involved with TV production much (more of a newspaper man myself), but numerous of my acquiantances are, and these are very nice machines. They do tend to heat up the editing suites quite a bit, but they editing much easier and more efficient.
Annyway, all the cameras the studio has are still cassette recorders. Some people use digital cameras, but no matter what, you invariably have to hook your camera up to a firewire adapter and dump everything to a DVD-RAM before you can use it. If we got DVD-RAM cameras... well, I'm sure they'd love it.
Prequels, eh? Well, the universe does have a bit of story potential... but it seemed to me that the main gimmick of the movie was the wall-running and the abundance of firearms. I would concur that there is little that could be added.
I guess Michelle Yeoh's best reference right now is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but I finally saw Tomorrow Never Dies last night and she was quite impressive there as well.
Um. Matrix sequels? Not necessary, methinks. It seems that The Matrix has a sort of pseudocult folllowing, and that's probably who the sequels are aimed at. It was a fun movie, but I don't really have any burning desire to see a sequel.
Re:IMHO, not Strangelove at all
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'Thirteen Days'
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I would concur with that. It was just some similarities I noticed. Thirteen Days also packed a bit more of a punch when it comes to on-the-edge-of-your-seat. I wonder if the two are mutually exclusive... probably not.
-J
Re:POV (mine and the movie's)
on
'Thirteen Days'
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· Score: 1
Yah, I recall all of those as well. Methinks I phrased it badly. What I meant was that we never saw, for instance, Kruschev writing that letter, or the Politbureau(sp?) debating a course of action, or even the crew of the Russian ships. There was no insight into their true actions, motivations, intentions, etc. All we had was the fairly blind fumblings of the Americans. It's kind of like the scenario JFK describes in The Guns of August.
Katz seems rather enamored of those big explosions.... But did the nuke sequences (especially at the beginning) remind anyone else of Dr. Strangelove?
Hehe, different ending entirely, but a whole lot of parallels, such as the U2 that gets lost in Russia and especially the line: "There's always some idiot who doesn't get the signal" or some such.
Maybe the coolest nuke was toward the end, when it turns into a sunrise.
Actually, what I found most compelling about the movie was the sense of near-omniscience it had. Sequences at the White House, underwater, aboard a US ship, in a U2 spyplane, in Cuba, were all presented with equal clarity and effectiveness. And yet, the "menace" that was the Soviet Union was conveyed just as effectively, perhaps by the fact that we never saw any Russians (aside from glimpses of missile crews).
The whole Boston accent thing was kinda creepy, especially when Bobby Kennedy's occasionally faded into a british one.:)
Intriguing... I missed that episode and was unable to catch it in repeats. But I'm sure ill have plenty of time before they stop doing Voyager reruns...:)
Well, there was another post referring to a Niven story, but that pretty much describes the state of Terran society over a certain temporal period about which many Niven stories were written. "Patchwork Woman" was a good one, but the whole Flatlander (adventures of Gil "The Arm" Hamilton) collection talks about things like organleggers.
Also excellent (and entirely irrelevant to the discussion) is the set of assorted short stories by Niven that, as a whole, chronicle the devleopment of an instantaneous transport technology (transfer booths). The man's good, real good.
Wow. My thanks for this - I had not heard a word of it. It is a compelling and shocking tale. It doesn't look like he was even a violent kid. It says he "enjoyed being different," but hells, I enjoy being different (though not radically so, I suppose), and nobody at my school mistakes me for the potentially violent type. I really have to wonder about places where this sort of thing can take place. That sounds like - and no offense intended here - a rather screwed-up community. The paranoia and overreaction is mystifying.
How can this happen? It's digusting.
Also distubing is the group of bullies who were apparently harassing this poor guy. Had they nothing better to do than spend their time poisoning his pets, egging his house, vandalizing his family's cars? This is really disgusting, and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more press.
I think you're right. I believe it was cut from the final movie, but I remember seeing somewhere photos of Kirk in this funky black padded suit and helmet with a parachute. It was pretty cool.
I think this was in a "making-of" book or book section, or something of that nature... Anyway, it is a very Star Trek sport.
You see, this is the second time in this week that I have been able to relate a/. comment to this book I read a while ago, Wyrm by Mark Fabi. It's set in the days leading up to 01.01.00, and it has an interesting premise. Part of it is a vast, complex, "AI" who is sort of born out of unified processing on the internet. It's basically an accident.
Like some of the other stuff in the book, it's somewhat... far-fetched. But that's OK, because it's still a great book.;)
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OK, it is entirely possible that that is some pop culture reference that I am totally missing.
But if it isn't... that is, methinks, a mean and borderline offensive thing to say. I know the head librarian at my high school is a brilliant man; somewhat gruff, but intelligent and helpful. The staff also includes women of varying ethnicity and gender. And none of them are mean.
I'm going to pretend I didn't read the "Jewish" bit.
Like I said... I could be entirely missing the hypothetical pop culture referential humor here, in which case you may as well ignore me. Which you might do anyway.
-J
Exactly as I said.
There was so much potential for a good explanation... but instead, whoever was writing at the time decided to just blame it all on god. Well. Talk about deus ex machina...
-J
Hehe, excellently put.
-J
It's really a poorly phrased sentence that they use. The impression I got was either real actors in a CG world or else entirely CG with "real" voice actors. Though I don't think a computer voice actor would work... I'm sure we've all used simpletext, yes? ;-)
-J
Does anybody else remember the computer game? I never played it, but I heard it was good?
Aieee... a friend of mine had it on his Mac. Being a stickler for accuracy in such thigns, I hated it, but I can't speak to its merits as a game.
Basically, they went through the whole series and took every aspect which lent itself most to a computer game and put it in one game.
Memorable experiences include getting eaten by biots, shocked by electric fences, eaten by other biots, being puzzled by this weird bird creature that should've been one of the flyers from the books but looked like a biot, getting eaten by more biots, and, um, I think I got eaten by biots at one point.
-J
Yes yes. A fan of Known Space myself, I recall dicussing this with a fellow Ringworld fan a while back. Ringworld has sooo much potential for good visuals. Even if only the puppeteers were done right, it would be good. The idea of a world in which the horizon disapperas up in the distance, in which night becomes day like that, a world hundreds of million sof times larger than Earth.... Done right, it would be pretty impressive.
One thing I remember seeing was a website which was a collection of detailed renderings this guy had done of the Ringworld's surface, from various heights, orbits, etc.
Anyway. You're right; Ringworld would be a cool movie the same way Rendezvous would.
Heh, you ever play the computer game? I found it recently and installed it on my 486... aieee, wretched thing. I can't get past the rishathra bit...
-J
*gleeful cackles*
Rendezvous may be one of my favorite SF books ever. The imagery (which might turn out really well in a movie), the mystery, the adventure... damn, the man can write.
The sequels, however, are most disappointing. While there are interesting concepts - like the octospiders - the rest of the saga as a whole is an unpleasant read. The mystery is essentially shattered, and not, in my opinion, very well. I think it has something to do with Gentry Lee's involvement. My theory is that Arthur C Clarke writes a good SF novel and gives the manuscript to Gentry Lee, who takes out all the best parts and puts in weird sex. String, mysterious powder, and a man "screaming like a jungle animal" have no place in a series with such a spectacular beginning. (also see Cradle for this phenomenon)
I think Rendezvous will translate well into cinema. It was very much, to me, a book about this one concept, about the author's vision. That is a thing which can do well as a movie. Some authors have most of their strength in the writing itself (Terry Pratchett comes to mind), and those authors' books would make inferior movies. But Rendezvous With Rama is all about the alien spaceship... and that chilling final line.
I just hope they don't try to make any book-based sequels...
PS: Clarke's Imperial Earth is also a fascinating read. You'll be playing with those little puzzle pieces for days...
-J
All that is needed is a simple pencil, piece of paper and a bunch of people to count the votes.
One truly hopes that that is sarcasm. As a good little minion of the US media, I followed the shenanigans in Florida rather cloesly, and it took a loooong time to hadncount all those votes. There has to be something mechanical in that along the way. This is a big country.
I concur that a Microsoft+Dell+Whomever solution would be a bad idea; aside from Microsoft's renowned apparent disregard for quality control, I don't think that cutting edge technology is the best thing to apply here. Simplicity, but mechanical simplicity.
What we need is something that is reliable, efficient, simple, and which raises no questions about voter intent.
-J
Now we get to sit back and just have some comic-book superhero action.
:)
I see. Certainly, that seemed to be the main "gimmick" of The Matrix.
I don't at all think that entertainment has to be an intellectual pursuit. If I did, I wouldn't watch Bond movies.
Certainly, The Matrix did a good job of establishing a world with story potential. As long as they don't try to link it too closely to The Matrix, a sequel should be okay. I just wouldn't rush out to see it, that's all.
This seems to be on of two ways that SF is done in cinema these days: either superhero-style, or horror-style. I find it disappointing, but I guess nothing else is really likely to draw in the crowds.
-J
My high school has a good-sized TV studio that is used both by various TV production classes and our very own Blair Network Communications. Anyway, we just got a whole mess of new G4 computers with DVD-RAM drives to replace the old linear editors. Apparently, they have been a boon to all involved. I'm not involved with TV production much (more of a newspaper man myself), but numerous of my acquiantances are, and these are very nice machines. They do tend to heat up the editing suites quite a bit, but they editing much easier and more efficient.
Annyway, all the cameras the studio has are still cassette recorders. Some people use digital cameras, but no matter what, you invariably have to hook your camera up to a firewire adapter and dump everything to a DVD-RAM before you can use it. If we got DVD-RAM cameras... well, I'm sure they'd love it.
-J
I can recomend "The Heroic Trio" as well.
My thanks.
Prequels, eh? Well, the universe does have a bit of story potential... but it seemed to me that the main gimmick of the movie was the wall-running and the abundance of firearms. I would concur that there is little that could be added.
-J
I guess Michelle Yeoh's best reference right now is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but I finally saw Tomorrow Never Dies last night and she was quite impressive there as well.
Um. Matrix sequels? Not necessary, methinks. It seems that The Matrix has a sort of pseudocult folllowing, and that's probably who the sequels are aimed at. It was a fun movie, but I don't really have any burning desire to see a sequel.
-J
See my reply to a similar post.
-J
I would concur with that. It was just some similarities I noticed. Thirteen Days also packed a bit more of a punch when it comes to on-the-edge-of-your-seat. I wonder if the two are mutually exclusive... probably not.
-J
Yah, I recall all of those as well. Methinks I phrased it badly. What I meant was that we never saw, for instance, Kruschev writing that letter, or the Politbureau(sp?) debating a course of action, or even the crew of the Russian ships. There was no insight into their true actions, motivations, intentions, etc. All we had was the fairly blind fumblings of the Americans.
It's kind of like the scenario JFK describes in The Guns of August.
-J
Katz seems rather enamored of those big explosions.... But did the nuke sequences (especially at the beginning) remind anyone else of Dr. Strangelove?
Hehe, different ending entirely, but a whole lot of parallels, such as the U2 that gets lost in Russia and especially the line: "There's always some idiot who doesn't get the signal" or some such.
Maybe the coolest nuke was toward the end, when it turns into a sunrise.
-J
Actually, what I found most compelling about the movie was the sense of near-omniscience it had. Sequences at the White House, underwater, aboard a US ship, in a U2 spyplane, in Cuba, were all presented with equal clarity and effectiveness. And yet, the "menace" that was the Soviet Union was conveyed just as effectively, perhaps by the fact that we never saw any Russians (aside from glimpses of missile crews).
:)
The whole Boston accent thing was kinda creepy, especially when Bobby Kennedy's occasionally faded into a british one.
And I saw the LotR trailer. Niiiice.
-J
Intriguing... I missed that episode and was unable to catch it in repeats. But I'm sure ill have plenty of time before they stop doing Voyager reruns... :)
-J
...an environment dominated by perverts, sociopaths, lunatics, and teenage boys.
You know, there are those stereotype-adherents who would argue that there is a great deal of redundancy in that statement.
Being, technically, a teenage boy, I wouldn't, but something about that phrase struck me as slightly amusing.
-J
Well, there was another post referring to a Niven story, but that pretty much describes the state of Terran society over a certain temporal period about which many Niven stories were written. "Patchwork Woman" was a good one, but the whole Flatlander (adventures of Gil "The Arm" Hamilton) collection talks about things like organleggers.
Also excellent (and entirely irrelevant to the discussion) is the set of assorted short stories by Niven that, as a whole, chronicle the devleopment of an instantaneous transport technology (transfer booths). The man's good, real good.
-J
Wow. My thanks for this - I had not heard a word of it. It is a compelling and shocking tale. It doesn't look like he was even a violent kid. It says he "enjoyed being different," but hells, I enjoy being different (though not radically so, I suppose), and nobody at my school mistakes me for the potentially violent type. I really have to wonder about places where this sort of thing can take place. That sounds like - and no offense intended here - a rather screwed-up community. The paranoia and overreaction is mystifying.
How can this happen? It's digusting.
Also distubing is the group of bullies who were apparently harassing this poor guy. Had they nothing better to do than spend their time poisoning his pets, egging his house, vandalizing his family's cars? This is really disgusting, and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more press.
-J
I think you're right. I believe it was cut from the final movie, but I remember seeing somewhere photos of Kirk in this funky black padded suit and helmet with a parachute. It was pretty cool.
I think this was in a "making-of" book or book section, or something of that nature... Anyway, it is a very Star Trek sport.
-J
Sorry - I missed the word "Generations" in the original post. My bad, as it were.
But [s]he was right... it was certainly supposed to be in the movie.
-J
Whoa there, comrade. Generations was a movie. Biiiig difference. :)
-J
Wow, I read one book, and....
/. comment to this book I read a while ago, Wyrm by Mark Fabi. It's set in the days leading up to 01.01.00, and it has an interesting premise. Part of it is a vast, complex, "AI" who is sort of born out of unified processing on the internet. It's basically an accident.
;)
You see, this is the second time in this week that I have been able to relate a
Like some of the other stuff in the book, it's somewhat... far-fetched. But that's OK, because it's still a great book.
-J