Dude, Miyazaki didn't "rape" his own manga for the anime. He didn't even have most of it written at the time he made the movie, so when it came time to end it, he had to throw something together. In fact, even he wasn't necessarily too happy about how it turned out, but it caused him to put more serious thought into the whole thing and thus write the remainder of the manga to suit his thoughts better.
Now if you're talking rape, you're talking what the American dubbers did when they turned it into Warriors of the Wind. That's why it's taken this long for any Miyazaki stuff to make it over here at all. --
It would sort of have to have extra scenes, as the movie as I watched it in the theater felt a lot like it had scenes missing.
That aside, the D&D movie really wasn't that bad. As someone on SFFnet put it, it has great actors, pretty good CGI, but a poor script--but fortunately the actors were by and large able to rise above the script. I enjoyed it; the gamers I saw it with seemed to as well, for the most part. But then, there's no accounting for tastes. --
Sure, they were around before Tiny Toons. But who knew about them before Tiny Toons? The people I learned about them from learned about them via Tiny Toons. --
I've only read a chapter or so of it, but I watched the Nova presentation (click here for transcript or here to find it in PBS's online shop for $19.95 on VHS) and plan to get around to it sooner or later. For the truly geeky, it is also available for Palm or WinCE via Peanut Press.
My father, a clockmaker himself, enjoyed the book enough that he immediately had me look up Dava Sobell's address via an Internet phone book, just so he could thank her for it directly. This startled me at the time, because I had no idea he knew such a thing was possible.:)
I haven't seen the A&E version yet, but it stars Jeremy Irons so it must be good. I mean, how could a movie starring Jeremy Irons be bad? --
Re:based on the NOVA episode
on
Longitude
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· Score: 1
Are you trolling? You seem to have cause and effect reversed; the NOVA episode was based on the book, not the other way around. --
When I had a Palm, I decided to try out some keyboards. First I got the GoType, but only tried it out for five minutes before I realized it simply wouldn't do. Way too tiny for my 100wpm typing speed. Whenever I tried typing fast, I'd end up hitting the wrong keys.
Next I tried the Happy Hacker Cradle. It worked well enough for what it did, save that even the quietest keyboard I could find for it was just too loud (as well as a bit bulky). I wrote an article about my experiences with it.
After I sold the Palm and cradle to a friend, I finally got my first Stowaway. I accidentally boogered up the latch on it on the first one I got, and had to send it in for an RMA, but the one I got since then works great! It's full-sized, portable, just the neatest little thing . . . and it was actually designed by a media major, like myself. I wrote an article about the Stowaway, too. --
Okay, I've checked out MP3 Mystic and save for a few annoying glitches, which I'm corresponding with the coder to get fixed, it works really well. (But if you think I'm gonna give you the URL to try my server, you're off your nut.:) --
Actually, it does seem to. It's not that you have a 25-CD limit, it's that you have a 250-song limit. After checking into the site, on which I have about 49 CDs, I've found that about half of the tracks I have there are locked, seemingly at random. In other words, I only have 250 tracks I can play, and I didn't get to decide which ones. --
Has anyone yet written a package to make it easier for the technically semi-inept to set up their own MP3-streaming service? I know about Shoutcast and Icecast, but they both require access to the local player on your own box to control the tunes. Is there some system that allows control by remote (for Windows and/or Linux, since I dual-boot)? --
Also note that there is a Stainless Steel Rat movie in the offing. That's the good news. The bad news is that it will be directed by Jan "Speed" "Speed 2" de Bont. Scifi.com has the scoop here and later here. --
For that matter, crime is an accepted fundamental part of our life--or at least our history. You're taught about it in school, how a bunch of terrorist revolutionaries seceded from their mother country over political issues. The Civil War? Heck no, the Revolutionary one.
Besides, it's a matter of degree. I don't think anybody would be lauding a book by a mass murderer, but this is a book about a clever fellow, the dashing rapscallion who never committed a violent crime. That's a very popular heroic archetype in our culture, going all the way back to the aforementioned Robin Hood, continuing with works like The Scarlet Pimpernel, Raffles, Arsene Lupin, Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat, and so on.
Heck, go all the way back to ancient Greek mythology and you'll find plenty of tales of clever tricksters who won the day through their trickery. Odysseus was a favorite character of this type. (Such cleverness was even more valued among the ancient Greeks than it is today, according to my Greek ancient history teacher. He said that as a coming-of-age ritual, a Greek lad was required to steal one of his neighbor's sheep.)
And when you think about it, even Jesus and his Apostles were regarded as dangerous revolutionaries by the authorities of their day. Paul once had to escape a city in a manner worthy of a thief, being lowered over the city walls in a basket. --
Well, one of the problems might be Manga Video's lackluster and rather inconsistent dub. The voice acting in the original Japanese version is a lot less over-the-top and cheesy (though admittedly the English version did get better as it went on).
As for what did it for me . . . well, aside from the utterly incredible symphonic score, it was largely the nature of the story. Like some of the best epics of science fiction (like Babylon Five), the story starts out with what seems like a relatively simple good guys versus bad guys scenario. You think you know who the good guys are. You think you know who the bad guys are. Then as the story progresses, revelations occur and flashbacks have additional footage/memories appear that cast events in an entirely different light. By the end of the sixth episode, even the people who thought they were the main villains of the piece don't know what's going on or who's pulling their strings. I need to dig up the last episode eventually so I can see how it all turned out.
And as an added extra, there are the GinRei OAVs--pretty hard to find outside of Japan save by fansub, since they were never translated by Manga Video. Indeed, they would probably be hard to translate, as a lot of them depend on in-jokes and references to other anime that Americans outside the fandom arena might not "get." (For instance, the writer/director of Giant Robo was also the fellow who created Gigantor, and the original Gigantor robot makes an unexpected cameo appearance in the second GinRei OAV. (The first one is silly; the second one is utterly over-the-top zany. Not to be missed.) --
As an aside, I've found that there are some folks on EBay offering a Chinese all-regional DVD set of Giant Robo with English subtitles (pirated, of course), for about $60 or so plus $20 or so to ship it from Hong Kong. If I didn't have this money problem right now, I'd be ordering it. The dub just doesn't do it for me. --
Ummm . . . no. Anime is a medium, not a genre. All the titles you named are from remarkably different genres. Comedic suspense, political "hard" SF, farther-out SF, fantasy, all sorts of things. Which isn't to say they're not good (the ones on the list that I've seen are fantastic), but a genre has to do with what kind of story something tells, not what country it's from.
That being said, here's one that's not on DVD yet (except in Japan)--Giant Robo. Possibly the best giant robot anime ever made, Mangavid says it'll probably be a year or so before they get around to releasing it on DVD. Darnit. Dub job semi-sucks at the start but gets better; score is in-frigging-credible. Kind of like a cross between the symphonic orchestration of Star Wars with the martial-Japanese rhythms and cadences from Bionic Commando--and a version of Dies Irae to boot. Don't miss it. --
My TV set has a video-in, but it's a TVCR--you know, one of those little all-in-one units that looks like a TV set with a videocassette slot in it?
I run my TV picture from my Netstream decoder card to it, and when I want to watch movies on TV and I'm running from my Windows partition, there's no problem, that's just fine--I use Remote Selector to turn Macrovision off.
Sadly, there's no Linux equivalent Macrovision disabler--so when I use the Netstream Linux drivers, I get Macrovision. And to add insult to injury, the Linux "miniviewer" program--which lets you play the DVDs to your X session, in which I could watch them unmessedup--does not work for me. So in Linux, I can only watch unMacrovised movies--my Hong Kong imports and the special-edition films from MGM/UA, which does not seem to encode its movies that way. --
ObMacross Plus: Don't they know that if they start testing unmanned fighters, they run the risk of having them taken over by insane virturoid idol singers? --
The kind of archive site I would like to see would be in the form of read-only nntp servers. Then people could access them with whatever newsreader interface they liked. To keep there from being too many articles at once for a newsreader to keep up with, call the servers news1991.deja.com, news1992.deja.com, or whatever, and stick just content from the one year on them. Or maybe use one server and rename each group 1991.news.group.name, or news.group.name.1991, etc.
It'd be a damn sight easier to use than what Deja has now. --
I think it's dumb that King expects us to pay for different editions. But there is a certain amount of precedent.
There is also a certain amount of precedent for pay-once, download-as-often-as-you-like, given that this is how many commercial e-book sites (Peanut Press, Alexlit, Mind's Eye, Fictionwise, etc.) operate. Once you've bought it, you can download it as often as you like, in as many formats as you like.
Frankly, I think King's set his e-book up to fail, with unrealistic expectations. --
Slashdot Mirror
Now if you're talking rape, you're talking what the American dubbers did when they turned it into Warriors of the Wind. That's why it's taken this long for any Miyazaki stuff to make it over here at all.
--
The capsule for those who don't wish to click through: great DVD, great features (which other anime translators could learn from), great movie.
--
That aside, the D&D movie really wasn't that bad. As someone on SFFnet put it, it has great actors, pretty good CGI, but a poor script--but fortunately the actors were by and large able to rise above the script. I enjoyed it; the gamers I saw it with seemed to as well, for the most part. But then, there's no accounting for tastes.
--
Why is the world in love again? Why are we marching hand in hand? Why are the ocean levels rising up?
--
Sure, they were around before Tiny Toons. But who knew about them before Tiny Toons? The people I learned about them from learned about them via Tiny Toons.
--
My father, a clockmaker himself, enjoyed the book enough that he immediately had me look up Dava Sobell's address via an Internet phone book, just so he could thank her for it directly. This startled me at the time, because I had no idea he knew such a thing was possible. :)
I haven't seen the A&E version yet, but it stars Jeremy Irons so it must be good. I mean, how could a movie starring Jeremy Irons be bad?
--
Are you trolling? You seem to have cause and effect reversed; the NOVA episode was based on the book, not the other way around.
--
Next I tried the Happy Hacker Cradle. It worked well enough for what it did, save that even the quietest keyboard I could find for it was just too loud (as well as a bit bulky). I wrote an article about my experiences with it.
After I sold the Palm and cradle to a friend, I finally got my first Stowaway. I accidentally boogered up the latch on it on the first one I got, and had to send it in for an RMA, but the one I got since then works great! It's full-sized, portable, just the neatest little thing . . . and it was actually designed by a media major, like myself. I wrote an article about the Stowaway, too.
--
Okay, I've checked out MP3 Mystic and save for a few annoying glitches, which I'm corresponding with the coder to get fixed, it works really well. (But if you think I'm gonna give you the URL to try my server, you're off your nut. :)
--
Actually, it does seem to. It's not that you have a 25-CD limit, it's that you have a 250-song limit. After checking into the site, on which I have about 49 CDs, I've found that about half of the tracks I have there are locked, seemingly at random. In other words, I only have 250 tracks I can play, and I didn't get to decide which ones.
--
Has anyone yet written a package to make it easier for the technically semi-inept to set up their own MP3-streaming service? I know about Shoutcast and Icecast, but they both require access to the local player on your own box to control the tunes. Is there some system that allows control by remote (for Windows and/or Linux, since I dual-boot)?
--
Also note that there is a Stainless Steel Rat movie in the offing. That's the good news. The bad news is that it will be directed by Jan "Speed" "Speed 2" de Bont. Scifi.com has the scoop here and later here.
--
Ever read any Robin Hood?
For that matter, crime is an accepted fundamental part of our life--or at least our history. You're taught about it in school, how a bunch of terrorist revolutionaries seceded from their mother country over political issues. The Civil War? Heck no, the Revolutionary one.
Besides, it's a matter of degree. I don't think anybody would be lauding a book by a mass murderer, but this is a book about a clever fellow, the dashing rapscallion who never committed a violent crime. That's a very popular heroic archetype in our culture, going all the way back to the aforementioned Robin Hood, continuing with works like The Scarlet Pimpernel, Raffles, Arsene Lupin , Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat, and so on.
Heck, go all the way back to ancient Greek mythology and you'll find plenty of tales of clever tricksters who won the day through their trickery. Odysseus was a favorite character of this type. (Such cleverness was even more valued among the ancient Greeks than it is today, according to my Greek ancient history teacher. He said that as a coming-of-age ritual, a Greek lad was required to steal one of his neighbor's sheep.)
And when you think about it, even Jesus and his Apostles were regarded as dangerous revolutionaries by the authorities of their day. Paul once had to escape a city in a manner worthy of a thief, being lowered over the city walls in a basket.
--
As for what did it for me . . . well, aside from the utterly incredible symphonic score, it was largely the nature of the story. Like some of the best epics of science fiction (like Babylon Five), the story starts out with what seems like a relatively simple good guys versus bad guys scenario. You think you know who the good guys are. You think you know who the bad guys are. Then as the story progresses, revelations occur and flashbacks have additional footage/memories appear that cast events in an entirely different light. By the end of the sixth episode, even the people who thought they were the main villains of the piece don't know what's going on or who's pulling their strings. I need to dig up the last episode eventually so I can see how it all turned out.
And as an added extra, there are the GinRei OAVs--pretty hard to find outside of Japan save by fansub, since they were never translated by Manga Video. Indeed, they would probably be hard to translate, as a lot of them depend on in-jokes and references to other anime that Americans outside the fandom arena might not "get." (For instance, the writer/director of Giant Robo was also the fellow who created Gigantor, and the original Gigantor robot makes an unexpected cameo appearance in the second GinRei OAV. (The first one is silly; the second one is utterly over-the-top zany. Not to be missed.)
--
As an aside, I've found that there are some folks on EBay offering a Chinese all-regional DVD set of Giant Robo with English subtitles (pirated, of course), for about $60 or so plus $20 or so to ship it from Hong Kong. If I didn't have this money problem right now, I'd be ordering it. The dub just doesn't do it for me.
--
That being said, here's one that's not on DVD yet (except in Japan)--Giant Robo. Possibly the best giant robot anime ever made, Mangavid says it'll probably be a year or so before they get around to releasing it on DVD. Darnit. Dub job semi-sucks at the start but gets better; score is in-frigging-credible. Kind of like a cross between the symphonic orchestration of Star Wars with the martial-Japanese rhythms and cadences from Bionic Commando--and a version of Dies Irae to boot. Don't miss it.
--
I run my TV picture from my Netstream decoder card to it, and when I want to watch movies on TV and I'm running from my Windows partition, there's no problem, that's just fine--I use Remote Selector to turn Macrovision off.
Sadly, there's no Linux equivalent Macrovision disabler--so when I use the Netstream Linux drivers, I get Macrovision. And to add insult to injury, the Linux "miniviewer" program--which lets you play the DVDs to your X session, in which I could watch them unmessedup--does not work for me. So in Linux, I can only watch unMacrovised movies--my Hong Kong imports and the special-edition films from MGM/UA, which does not seem to encode its movies that way.
--
ObMacross Plus: Don't they know that if they start testing unmanned fighters, they run the risk of having them taken over by insane virturoid idol singers?
--
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Had to be said.
--
It'd be a damn sight easier to use than what Deja has now.
--
There's a good bit of speculation on this theme in the Annals of the Heechee series by Fred Pohl.
--
What I wonder is whether the planet might exhibit the same behavior as the rogue planet in Charles Sheffield's McAndrews stories.
--
(As if he's ever needed an excuse...)
--
I believe that InstallBuddy can convert PDFs, though I haven't personally tried it yet.
--
Frankly, I think King's set his e-book up to fail, with unrealistic expectations.
--