Doesn't anyone read anymore? See "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by... wait for it... Eric Raymond. Available online. Basic routing protocols DO route around damage - how about READING about RIP and BGP?
Dude, those days are long gone. It's been a long time since simple routers could avoid high-level-sponsored censorship. That works well for individual nodes that might be taken down or compromised, but not now where a small handful of companies control enough major peering points that government-mandated censorship would be ineffective. You might even think that being in another country would save you, but the US has enough treaties with with other partners (both in exporting US-style content restrictions and in importing censorship from abroad) that you may escape from one censorship scheme to settle into another. And more repressive regimes have shown that despite Internet lore, government-mandated censorship can be extremely effective.
Best of all, all you have to do is find a few recalcitrant providers who don't follow the scheme, litigate them into the ground, and everyone else falls into line.
I have a very well-outfitted home theater. I still like watching movies in a "real" theater because the viewing experience, especially with a good audience, can still blow away sitting at home. The picture is usually better, the sound is much, much better (and you don't have to worry about annoying the neighbors), and being with an appreciative audience is just a better watching experience.
I don't go to the multiplex, though. I don't go to the theaters where people talk and text through the movie. I don't go to the theaters with the sticky floors (no food or drinks allowed, which is just fine). Yeah, it's more a specialty theater. They're out there.
I suppose I'm a little different. I really liked Moulin Rouge, but strongly dislike Chicago.
Does anyone believe Transformers was sci-fi?
Yes, most people would say Transformers was Science Fiction. Sci-fi doesn't need to be set in the future, nor does it need to be "hard sci-fi." It's a pretty broad category type.
And while I would heap tons of awards on the Producers with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, I wouldn't say it was a musical, since it only had two songs -- Springtime for Hitler and Prisoners of Love. Sure, they were great songs, but I don't think that's what makes a musical!
While I'm not surprised saying people who say that he is/wants to be, I'm hugely bothered by all the liberals who are upset that he's not.
I think it comes down to Bush envy. Sure, the left detested Bush, but the guy pushed stuff through regardless of whether the other party liked it or hated it. Bush acted like a King, and yes, he got away with that. Now the Left is bitter because they can say it's not fair because the other guy could do it, and they can't.
That statement is almost too ignorant to rebut. Bush went into office with a booming economy and a balanced budget and left office after the worst economic crash since 1929
The fact of the matter is that the President does not really have THAT much power over the economy. It's not fair to put the lion's share of the blame on Bush for the crash, nor is it fair to put the blame on Obama because happy days aren't here again.
Our problem is that was a real war, with a real end point. The "War on Terror," like the "War on Drugs" or "War on " is a fictional war, an endless struggle with no possible successful resolution. Terrorism is a concept, a way of fighting, thus it is impossible to definitively defeat. You can force another country to surrender, but terrorism itself will never end. So those liberties that are "scaled back" on the war on terror are not temporary suspensions, they are permanent losses.
They'll just fuck it up. In 2002, for example, the Richard Gere musical Chicago won best picture. It was the second year in a row that a musical won best picture.
A Beautiful Mind was a musical? How did I miss that?
For the record I have no problems when musicals win Best Picture, just as long as they're not crap musicals. Like Chicago.
LOTR:FOTR was snubbed. It was by far the best of the 3 movies but didn't get much come Oscar time. The film studio therefore campaigned hard *cough* bribed *cough cough* for more notice and got it for ROTK
One thing worth noticing is that the Oscars frequently award people who had previously been snubbed (even if that creates a snub that has to be corrected in future oscars).
You are right about "campaigning," but it gets a lot more complicated than simple bribery. Harvey Weinstein is famous for his incredible campaigning, party hosting, and arm twisting which resulted in some of his sub-par movies getting Best Picture. His reputation by now is pretty tarnished, so he doesn't hold the same sway he used to..
Tolkien certainly had a dislike for the physical effects of the Industrial Revolution upon rural life, but science fiction doesn't rely (thought often features) the pillaging of the countryside.
Man is an outsider goes to a new area with a group of people who trust him. Man meets up with a chick in new area who he connects with and a culture he feels like he is less of an outsider in. Man finds the group that he was with are actually doing bad things to the new group he likes. Man Burns the Candle at the both ends for a bit. One side and/or the other find out about him. Man gets separated from both groups. Man chooses which side he should be on. Man kicks the butt of the opposing side.
Please do not break down movies in this fashion. EVERY SINGLE MOVIE can be oversimplified as such to make it sound childish. Every one. I'm not saying Avatar was Best Picture quality (meh, it wasn't), but I've seen this done for movies of all types, and it always does a disservice to the actual movie.
I accidentally misposted this in response to someone else above. Sorry!
AND if there was a Sci Fi, I mean SyFy category, you just KNOW that Twilight would be raking in the awards.
Doubtful! I mean, does anyone actually like Twilight? I've yet to meet a single person who did besides 14-year-old girls (a sadly powerful demographic), and there aren't too many of them in the Academy voting block. This isn't the MTV movie awards, fortunately.
Look at how many winners weren't released in the couple of months leading up to the awards[...] eg. Look at how many winners weren't released in the couple of months leading up to the awards, it's close to zero
If we're talking Best Picture nominees:
Moneyball: September 2011. Tree of Life: May 2011. The Help: August 2011. Midnight in Paris: July 2011. Hugo: November 2011. The Artist: Jan 2012 (that's when it got its wide release.. its limited release came back in November). War Horse: December 2011. The Descendants: December 2011. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: December 2011.
There's a decent spread. Is it likely that one of the November/December releases is going to win this year? Yes it is, because those films were better. The studios don't let the smaller, usually more well-made movies out during the summer where they'll get crushed by summer movies. People don't go to the movies as much in Jan/Feb or Sep/Oct, so those are the months when studios dump films that they're contractually obligated to release but are likely to suck. So you have two main periods in the year that are good for movies: the summer months when the young-uns are likely to be out of school and able to see movies on the weekdays, and the end-of-year holidays.
In previous years there were some pretty fantastic geek-oriented films that would have been good choices for Best Picture, but I'm hard-pressed to think of any this year. Not even Harry Potter. Though hell, it was probably better than The Help. I definitely thought it was better than the horrible Tree of Life, but critics disagree with me..
Longer version: If we start down the 'categories' road then everybody will want one.
I agree, and what's more, the Best Animated Feature category should not have been created. Unlike what the general public might have heard, it was created as a ghetto with the intention that animated movies would no longer be eligible for Best Picture (Beauty and the Beast's nominations sent shockwaves of anger through the acting branch, the largest voting block of the academy). Over a decade later and Toy Story 3 was nominated, but the talk was that it could "settle" for Best Animated Film.
If ever there was a Sci-Fi category, it would doom the chances of a science fiction film ever being considered for Best Picture.
AND if there was a Sci Fi, I mean SyFy category, you just KNOW that Twilight would be raking in the awards.
Doubtful! I mean, does anyone actually like Twilight? I've yet to meet a single person who did besides 14-year-old girls (a sadly powerful demographic), and there aren't too many of them in the Academy voting block. This isn't the MTV movie awards, fortunately.
Boy you entirely missed the point with Gandalf. Tolkien's world is very religious, though it's mostly hinted at. That Gandalf had been walking Middle Earth for two thousand years by the time of the events of the Lord of the Rings should have been the first clue that he wasn't a man. Even mortals have spirits in that world which persist, though they are almost never let back like Gandalf was. But Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron, their type are seen being destroyed and reforming over time -- Sauron is "destroyed" at the flashback which starts the films, and yet he'd returned by the events of the Ring.
Bullshit - Will Smith, Executive Producer. He didn't just "act the part given to him", he was involved in ruining it and defining his own part.
I'd love to know how much Will Smith was involved (honestly). "Executive Producer" is a very vague term in Hollywood that means almost anything. Steven Spielberg was the executive producer on Poltergeist and he partially directed it behind the scenes. Harvey Weinstein was an executive producer on the Lord of the Rings and all he did was pass on the movie and sell the rights to New Line. It's a title that can literally mean any level of involvement.
The non-executive producers are usually the ones calling the hiring/writing shots, and I can't really blame their hiring choices either. Alex Proyas directed it, and his previous two major movies were at The Crow, which was nice, and the brilliant Dark City. Yeah, I would have given him a shot too. Writer Akiva Goldsman had just gotten a Best Screenplay Oscar, so would you expect that he'd mess it up? In hindsight... yes, they all messed it up, but going into the project, these guys seemed like good bets to visualize a sci-fi story. Granted, co-screenwriter Jeff Vintar's previous project was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within so maybe that was a red flag, but otherwise...
#1 - you need to let the explosions and CGI take a back seat. That's one of the major things in LOTR that worked: the CGI didn't make Gollum, it just made Gollum possible - Gollum was totally the acting work of Andy Serkis (especially the schizophrenia scene!).
Not entirely. That was the film's publicity message, because they wanted to push for Serkis to get a best actor nomination. But we've seen over and over again that if you just try "performance capture," it's always missing something. The very best CG-character-in-live-action performances (like Gollum) have been old-school character animation interpretations of live actors' work. If you just do a just do an actor capture and call it a day, the results (as they are in most movies) are abysmal. But animators take special care with facial expressions and hand gestures, and I assure you a massive amount of post-production effort went into making the Gollum character work.
You need good animators, and you need to not be afraid to use them. But actors tend to hate animators, so they don't want anything overlaid on their poorly-captured performance.
I literally can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. For what it's worth, Russia's internet is likely even free-er than America's for the time being.
It's "free" as long as what you want to do is not in the interest of Western nations. At that point the Russian government will look the other way as long as they don't get too much blowback from it.
Just like Ron Paul, who popularity seems to be massive and growing
That has always been an illusion. Ron Paul's supporters are very vocal and supportive. No one gets excited about Romney. No one. But Ron Paul? He has a small number of folks who really agree with him. Most voters do not agree with the details of his political positions, but I'll admire him for sticking to his guns and being willing to say politically unpopular things.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but I think the OP was right.
Doesn't anyone read anymore? See "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by ... wait for it ... Eric Raymond. Available online. Basic routing protocols DO route around damage - how about READING about RIP and BGP?
Dude, those days are long gone. It's been a long time since simple routers could avoid high-level-sponsored censorship. That works well for individual nodes that might be taken down or compromised, but not now where a small handful of companies control enough major peering points that government-mandated censorship would be ineffective. You might even think that being in another country would save you, but the US has enough treaties with with other partners (both in exporting US-style content restrictions and in importing censorship from abroad) that you may escape from one censorship scheme to settle into another. And more repressive regimes have shown that despite Internet lore, government-mandated censorship can be extremely effective.
Best of all, all you have to do is find a few recalcitrant providers who don't follow the scheme, litigate them into the ground, and everyone else falls into line.
Guess you don't have a 60" HIgh Def TV,
I have a very well-outfitted home theater. I still like watching movies in a "real" theater because the viewing experience, especially with a good audience, can still blow away sitting at home. The picture is usually better, the sound is much, much better (and you don't have to worry about annoying the neighbors), and being with an appreciative audience is just a better watching experience.
I don't go to the multiplex, though. I don't go to the theaters where people talk and text through the movie. I don't go to the theaters with the sticky floors (no food or drinks allowed, which is just fine). Yeah, it's more a specialty theater. They're out there.
I suppose I'm a little different. I really liked Moulin Rouge, but strongly dislike Chicago.
Does anyone believe Transformers was sci-fi?
Yes, most people would say Transformers was Science Fiction. Sci-fi doesn't need to be set in the future, nor does it need to be "hard sci-fi." It's a pretty broad category type.
And while I would heap tons of awards on the Producers with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, I wouldn't say it was a musical, since it only had two songs -- Springtime for Hitler and Prisoners of Love. Sure, they were great songs, but I don't think that's what makes a musical!
Obama is president, not king.
While I'm not surprised saying people who say that he is/wants to be, I'm hugely bothered by all the liberals who are upset that he's not.
I think it comes down to Bush envy. Sure, the left detested Bush, but the guy pushed stuff through regardless of whether the other party liked it or hated it. Bush acted like a King, and yes, he got away with that. Now the Left is bitter because they can say it's not fair because the other guy could do it, and they can't.
That statement is almost too ignorant to rebut. Bush went into office with a booming economy and a balanced budget and left office after the worst economic crash since 1929
The fact of the matter is that the President does not really have THAT much power over the economy. It's not fair to put the lion's share of the blame on Bush for the crash, nor is it fair to put the blame on Obama because happy days aren't here again.
The point being, it was reinstated after the war.
Our problem is that was a real war, with a real end point. The "War on Terror," like the "War on Drugs" or "War on " is a fictional war, an endless struggle with no possible successful resolution. Terrorism is a concept, a way of fighting, thus it is impossible to definitively defeat. You can force another country to surrender, but terrorism itself will never end. So those liberties that are "scaled back" on the war on terror are not temporary suspensions, they are permanent losses.
They'll just fuck it up. In 2002, for example, the Richard Gere musical Chicago won best picture. It was the second year in a row that a musical won best picture.
A Beautiful Mind was a musical? How did I miss that?
For the record I have no problems when musicals win Best Picture, just as long as they're not crap musicals. Like Chicago.
Indie frequently pays off, just not to the people who made the movie.
"The Academy" has said that? Do you have a citation?
Agree fully. Science Fiction isn't a genre like comedy, drama, musical, horror, action, etc. SF is more like a setting (time/place).
It is more like a setting, but frequently these SF movies are -about- the setting, and not any character or plot points.
2001 was a fine movie, but I'd say the Lion in Winter was the true snub that year.
LOTR:FOTR was snubbed. It was by far the best of the 3 movies but didn't get much come Oscar time. The film studio therefore campaigned hard *cough* bribed *cough cough* for more notice and got it for ROTK
One thing worth noticing is that the Oscars frequently award people who had previously been snubbed (even if that creates a snub that has to be corrected in future oscars).
You are right about "campaigning," but it gets a lot more complicated than simple bribery. Harvey Weinstein is famous for his incredible campaigning, party hosting, and arm twisting which resulted in some of his sub-par movies getting Best Picture. His reputation by now is pretty tarnished, so he doesn't hold the same sway he used to..
Tolkien certainly had a dislike for the physical effects of the Industrial Revolution upon rural life, but science fiction doesn't rely (thought often features) the pillaging of the countryside.
Man is an outsider goes to a new area with a group of people who trust him.
Man meets up with a chick in new area who he connects with and a culture he feels like he is less of an outsider in.
Man finds the group that he was with are actually doing bad things to the new group he likes.
Man Burns the Candle at the both ends for a bit.
One side and/or the other find out about him.
Man gets separated from both groups.
Man chooses which side he should be on.
Man kicks the butt of the opposing side.
Please do not break down movies in this fashion. EVERY SINGLE MOVIE can be oversimplified as such to make it sound childish. Every one. I'm not saying Avatar was Best Picture quality (meh, it wasn't), but I've seen this done for movies of all types, and it always does a disservice to the actual movie.
I accidentally misposted this in response to someone else above. Sorry!
AND if there was a Sci Fi, I mean SyFy category, you just KNOW that Twilight would be raking in the awards.
Doubtful! I mean, does anyone actually like Twilight? I've yet to meet a single person who did besides 14-year-old girls (a sadly powerful demographic), and there aren't too many of them in the Academy voting block. This isn't the MTV movie awards, fortunately.
Whoops, that second quote should have gone down to the poster below you.
Look at how many winners weren't released in the couple of months leading up to the awards[...] eg. Look at how many winners weren't released in the couple of months leading up to the awards, it's close to zero
If we're talking Best Picture nominees:
Moneyball: September 2011.
Tree of Life: May 2011.
The Help: August 2011.
Midnight in Paris: July 2011.
Hugo: November 2011.
The Artist: Jan 2012 (that's when it got its wide release.. its limited release came back in November).
War Horse: December 2011.
The Descendants: December 2011.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: December 2011.
There's a decent spread. Is it likely that one of the November/December releases is going to win this year? Yes it is, because those films were better. The studios don't let the smaller, usually more well-made movies out during the summer where they'll get crushed by summer movies. People don't go to the movies as much in Jan/Feb or Sep/Oct, so those are the months when studios dump films that they're contractually obligated to release but are likely to suck. So you have two main periods in the year that are good for movies: the summer months when the young-uns are likely to be out of school and able to see movies on the weekdays, and the end-of-year holidays.
In previous years there were some pretty fantastic geek-oriented films that would have been good choices for Best Picture, but I'm hard-pressed to think of any this year. Not even Harry Potter. Though hell, it was probably better than The Help. I definitely thought it was better than the horrible Tree of Life, but critics disagree with me..
Longer version: If we start down the 'categories' road then everybody will want one.
I agree, and what's more, the Best Animated Feature category should not have been created. Unlike what the general public might have heard, it was created as a ghetto with the intention that animated movies would no longer be eligible for Best Picture (Beauty and the Beast's nominations sent shockwaves of anger through the acting branch, the largest voting block of the academy). Over a decade later and Toy Story 3 was nominated, but the talk was that it could "settle" for Best Animated Film.
If ever there was a Sci-Fi category, it would doom the chances of a science fiction film ever being considered for Best Picture.
AND if there was a Sci Fi, I mean SyFy category, you just KNOW that Twilight would be raking in the awards.
Doubtful! I mean, does anyone actually like Twilight? I've yet to meet a single person who did besides 14-year-old girls (a sadly powerful demographic), and there aren't too many of them in the Academy voting block. This isn't the MTV movie awards, fortunately.
Boy you entirely missed the point with Gandalf. Tolkien's world is very religious, though it's mostly hinted at. That Gandalf had been walking Middle Earth for two thousand years by the time of the events of the Lord of the Rings should have been the first clue that he wasn't a man. Even mortals have spirits in that world which persist, though they are almost never let back like Gandalf was. But Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron, their type are seen being destroyed and reforming over time -- Sauron is "destroyed" at the flashback which starts the films, and yet he'd returned by the events of the Ring.
Oh dear god NO!!!!
Are you freaking kidding me? Emmerich doing Foundation?
WTF!??!?!?!!?
Who the HELL would let that man get the rights to it?
You just ruined my whole frigging day.
Whomever owned the rights and wanted to sell them for a lot of money?
Emmerich makes movies that make money.
Bullshit - Will Smith, Executive Producer. He didn't just "act the part given to him", he was involved in ruining it and defining his own part.
I'd love to know how much Will Smith was involved (honestly). "Executive Producer" is a very vague term in Hollywood that means almost anything. Steven Spielberg was the executive producer on Poltergeist and he partially directed it behind the scenes. Harvey Weinstein was an executive producer on the Lord of the Rings and all he did was pass on the movie and sell the rights to New Line. It's a title that can literally mean any level of involvement.
The non-executive producers are usually the ones calling the hiring/writing shots, and I can't really blame their hiring choices either. Alex Proyas directed it, and his previous two major movies were at The Crow, which was nice, and the brilliant Dark City. Yeah, I would have given him a shot too. Writer Akiva Goldsman had just gotten a Best Screenplay Oscar, so would you expect that he'd mess it up? In hindsight... yes, they all messed it up, but going into the project, these guys seemed like good bets to visualize a sci-fi story. Granted, co-screenwriter Jeff Vintar's previous project was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within so maybe that was a red flag, but otherwise...
#1 - you need to let the explosions and CGI take a back seat. That's one of the major things in LOTR that worked: the CGI didn't make Gollum, it just made Gollum possible - Gollum was totally the acting work of Andy Serkis (especially the schizophrenia scene!).
Not entirely. That was the film's publicity message, because they wanted to push for Serkis to get a best actor nomination. But we've seen over and over again that if you just try "performance capture," it's always missing something. The very best CG-character-in-live-action performances (like Gollum) have been old-school character animation interpretations of live actors' work. If you just do a just do an actor capture and call it a day, the results (as they are in most movies) are abysmal. But animators take special care with facial expressions and hand gestures, and I assure you a massive amount of post-production effort went into making the Gollum character work.
You need good animators, and you need to not be afraid to use them. But actors tend to hate animators, so they don't want anything overlaid on their poorly-captured performance.
get back to me when we call in air strikes on the occupy movement
As long as their are strikes, why does it matter if they're air or ground based?
I literally can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. For what it's worth, Russia's internet is likely even free-er than America's for the time being.
It's "free" as long as what you want to do is not in the interest of Western nations. At that point the Russian government will look the other way as long as they don't get too much blowback from it.
Just like Ron Paul, who popularity seems to be massive and growing
That has always been an illusion. Ron Paul's supporters are very vocal and supportive. No one gets excited about Romney. No one. But Ron Paul? He has a small number of folks who really agree with him. Most voters do not agree with the details of his political positions, but I'll admire him for sticking to his guns and being willing to say politically unpopular things.
You also get countries like Iran which are "democracies" in name only.