But look... ANH hooked a lot of kids, and in the first 45 minutes, a bunch of rebel defenders got killed by storm troopers, darth vader lifted a guy up by his neck and snapped it, and Luke's family got killed. And there were no muppets!
You can still make a movie that kids will like without becoming juvenile a la Disney. George Lucas just decided to go the Disney route. Notice the contrast between ANH and TPM... both appealed to children, but only one was excessively mired in juvenility.
I liked Episode One. However, in mediating our expectations, we are told that we should remember that Episode One is "only a movie." If it was "only a movie", it would have been great! However, it is "not quite a movie." Things it functions well as:
a) Commercial for action figures b) Commercial for the upcoming Nintendo pod-racing game c) VR Star-Tours-type ride at disney land d) Teaser for Episodes Two and Three
Episode One is all these things, but it's less than a movie. If it had come out in '86, it would have been an interesting addition to the saga. However, after 16 years, I was hoping for a good, self-contained movie, and I couldn't help but think that all I got was "a special-effects extravaganza based on the Star Wars mythology." But perhaps this is just a slow puitch to generate merchandising revenue to finance Episodes Two and Three.
In any case, I am certainly going to see it again.:) And I still prefer the SW universe to the Star Trek Universe.:)
Ha ha. Very funny. The test of a true troll on a slashdot forum is the "Anonymous Coward" tagline. No one who _actually_ believed something as silly as what you wrote would have hid behind an AC identity.
Do you actually believe that Lucas can't control the hype? Dude, he gave an interview in Wired magazine, and he appeared on the cover... what was he expecting if not hype?
Plus, we had all the commercials for the special edition, Vader appearing in an Energizer Bunny commercial, toys being sold at 12:01 AM, etc.
Yes, much of the hype is fan generated, but Lucas is milking it for all it's worth and he knows exactly what he's doing. Sometimes I wonder if he only started complaining about the hype when the reviews came back tepid.
Star Wars was not a movie "discovered" by "movie lovers" as Jon Katz claims. It was very popular among the geek and children segment, but most "film weenies" regard Star Wars as a lame "plebian" film. While I find the SW trilogy more "fulfilling" than other supposedly "less superficial" films of the 1970s, Star Wars takes a lot of the blame for inspiring such travesties as Independence Day, Starship Troopers, and other manifestations of lameness. The "movie establishment" most certainly did not like star wars. The people who gave it good reviews were the "mainstream" press and "popular" reviewers, rather than professional film people at the time.
-Dean
Re:Lucas is to movies as Gates is to software
on
More Star Wars Hype
·
· Score: 1
You know, I _like_ watching must-anticipated movies on opening night. It's great-- the audience is enthusiastic, it's fun to see all those people waiting with me, and yes, I get to say, "I was there when IT came out." The cost? About an hour and a half of my time standing in line (the theatre I went to was a bit off the beaten track). Sounds like a decent tradeoff to me. Surely it will be more worthwhile and lining up outside CompUSA at midnight to buy Windows 95.
My "conspiracy theory" is that Lucas suddenly "declared" that Episode One was a "childrens' movie" when he realized that the fans who were children when the first trilogy came out would be disappointed. I'm unclear whether he had this idea in mind when he wrote it, or he realized what he had done only after the fact. My guess is the latter. Though the fact that he cast a 9 year old in one of the lead parts worries me that he was trying to make a character that children could "relate to."
I think it's a damage-control spin in preparation for any up-coming backlashes... obviously, the hype that Lucas is complaining about is all of his own doing-- talking about the Campellian archetypes and his desire to make "modern myths", etc.
To think that I am beginning to worry whether my baby sister-- who just turned 13-- might be TOO OLD for Episode One is a really disturbing thought.
Yes, I remember finding Jedi thrilling and slowing learning to appreciate ESB for the great movie that it was, and spending spring break one year watching the trilogy time and time again. I still sometimes get chills when I see Lando disguised in Jabba's palace.
But I can't help but wonder if George Lucas's current "backtracking" regarding the hype is a result of the fact that he realizes that perhaps he made a slight misstep. I mean, only a month ago he was on the cover of _Wired_. What was he expecting regarding hype?
Perhaps the previews made the movie look darker than it really will be, but the problems people are mentioning about it are now all becoming clearer, in retrospect-- a 9 year old in the lead part, Jar-Jar sounding suspiciously similar to Elmo from Sesame St., etc. I'm beginning to think that George Lucas has realized, now that the movie is finished, that this isn't the "mythic epic space opera" that he intended it to be and is trying to re-package it as a "childrens' movie... fun for the whole family!"
It's the influence of having young children, I tell you! If only Lucas's children had already been grown up by the late 90's, this wouldn't have been a problem!:) Perhaps while he was writing, he subconsciously didn't want to make anything that would frighten or bother them, and then when Episode One was completed, he realized that he had to repackage the hype.
Well, maybe Episode One will be "candy", and then Episodes Two and Three will be better.
Wow... The article wasn't self-righteous,namby-pamby,and actually took the testimonies of those who were closest to the issue and made those testimonies the focus.
I'm glad I don'tautomatically filter out Jon Katz articles, because this one was worth reading...
I don't know of anyone who even knows the _current_ name of the LCS building, or almost any other MIT Building, except the Green Building. They all are named after _someone_, but the only people who know their names are the people who they're named after. We've got a Guggenheim Building and a Dorrance Building, but noone knows where they are, besides Guggenheim and Dorrance themselves.:)
Now, LCS is housed in NE43... in a couple of years, it will be housed in Building 32 (or something). Maybe it'll be named the Stata Complex,or the Gates building, or whatever, but Gates and Stata will be the only people who will remember that.:)
Me? I'm in building E15... I think it's the Wiesner Center or something...
Didn't realize that Slashdot filed it under "humor." After being fooled by the guy who submitted the Petreley article, I thought Slashdot got fooled again.
I've noticed over the past couple of days that Slashdot seems to be getting fooled into thinking that these stories are serious. Nick Petreley's APril fools Infoworld column was listed on Slashdot for about 10 mins before being pulled, and now this one comes up.
I think that the Slashdot contributors are engaging in some post-April Fools Day revenge for collaborating with Segfault, UserFriendly, and BeDope.
This was truly one of the few bright spots in the website-closing April Fools Joke.
I feel ambivalent about it, however, because I can't help but think that Jon Katz simply felt that this was another great opportunity for self-promotion that he couldn't pass up.
This is the written version of "slapstick humor" that Americans are so fond of.
There's no punchline, it's not witty or entertaining, but it bears a resemblence to the Three Stooges poking each other in the eyes. Some people find this funny. I hope it entertained the owners of UserFriendly, segfault, and the other one whose name escapes me right now.
Better April Fools jokes: The BBC's documentary on the "Italian Spagetti Harvest" Taco Bell's Purchase of the Libery Bell The exchange of comic strip artists on comics pages in 1997
This whole thing just goes to prove that too many computer people, even the ones who stage practical jokes, have no real sense of humor.
The most humourous thing in this whole ordeal has been the article in the Register.
Frankly, I find the site owners of segfault.org and userfriendly.org to be completely humourless. This whole thing wasn't even vaguely entertaining to me. (even though i just heard about it today)
Sorry, guys... try again next time. Frankly, if someone is going to go through the time and effort of making an April Fools Joke, _I want to be entertained_. This joke did nothing but entertain the creators of it. Big deal.
The Jon Katz satire was quite awesome, however.
-Dean
I don't understand why she was having problems
on
Slate Takes on Linux
·
· Score: 1
It makes me wonder what CD-ROM she was using. The only thing Ifigure is that she was using an extremely obscure SCSI card with her CD-ROM, or perhaps the 2.0.34 kernel (though she said she was using RedHat 5.2).
I've installed Linux on several different machines, all independent of each other, with varying types of hardware, and I was always able to get past that initial step.
-Dean
Why MST3K must be saved
on
Saving MST3K
·
· Score: 1
MST3K must reamin on the air so that we can look forward to watching it feature "Starship Troopers" and "Titanic" in their future episodes. These are 2 movies that almost appear made with the intent of appearing on MST3K.
I have a Palm Pilot, and I am beginning to envy the WinCE machines. I wish that 3Com would start licensing the Palm OS to others so that there would be plenty of different vendors trying to add various new gadgets and competing to build a better and more interesting machine. I _like_ that the Pilot does what I need it to, and no more, but I wouldn't mind seeing other companies experimenting with possibilities.
I don't think 3Com can compete over the long term with dozens of other companies trying to create their own WinCE PDAs.
>But enough of all that....what I can't understand >is why people are so AGAINST anyone even trying >to update to digital. Wouldn't you even want to >look at it? Is your mind so closed?
Premature adoption of a technology will result in being stuck with an inferior standard.
Digitalization is inherently _lossy_. It takes a digital "sample" of what appears and then reconstructs the image using the data available from the sample. Now, this is great for mass duplication, copying, and transmission over long distances for analog data whose quality isn't that important. However, when one is trying to duplicate real music and real scenes of the real world, you need a sampling rate high enough that the human eye and ear can't detect the "loss" involved by digitalization. And this is an extremely high sample rate.
And, let's face it, given the choice between the _right_ technology, and the trendy, buzzowrd-laden, but slightly inferior technology, which is going to be chosen, right?:) All we're saying is that digital film _right now_ isn't going to be as good as the real thing. Digital just for the sake of it is not great.
However, I did hear that a group of people compared an HDTV movie projected onto a screen with a film projection movie that was fresh out of the cannister (ie, no stretching, scratching, or fading from the projector bulb), and the HDTV projection image won out hands down. So I have no doubt that digital movies will eventually be "all that". On the other hand, I suspect that digital movies _now_ will simply be a way for distributors and movie theatres to cut down on cost while giving us a product that simply isn't as great.
But, what the heck? I know that I'll probably head to the closest city to see the all-digital projected version of Episode One.:)
The simple fact is that we experience life in Analog, not moderated through a digital sample that gets decoded back again.
The LP fanatics may sound kooky, but they are really onto something when they say that CDs can't really imitate the sound quality of an analog recording, and we won't be until DVD audio discs become available (which have 24 bit sampling, instead of the 16 bit sampling on CDs).
Now, actually, I've heard that the high-end digital film displays are said to be better than than even a film fresh out of the canister, but somehow I think we'll only get the low end stuff in theatres for the immediate future. Digital transmission and display only becomes a good imitation of film when the sample rate of the digital is so high that you can no longer notice it.
Actually, the special effects were ok, about minimum what i'd expect for a hyped sci-fi movie.
However, the writing, story, and acting were _much_ better than Starship Troopers. This was Starship Troopers with a smaller budget.
I didn't come out of Wing Commander thinking to myself "My, what a waste of a movie", and that's a lot better than what I can saw for a lot of other sci-fi movies I've seen. Maybe if they make another Wing Commander movie, they'll get it right.
Also, I must add that the budget for Wing Commander was only $27 million.... it can perform in a mediocre fashion and still not be too bad.
Any article in a mainstream publication that makes fawning references to Ayn Rand and still attempts to portray itself as serious needs to be taken out and shot.:) If I hadn't already thought the article was silly already, that was about what finally did it for me.
I think most people, including the one writing the above review, get too caught up in the special effects of Saving private Ryan. It would have been a great movie even withough the effects or even if it had tamer battle sequences. Now, I haven't seen "Happiness", but "Saving Private Ryan" is certainly one of the best movies I have ever seen, and you're making a mistake if you think it is a special effects movie or if you think people liked it just for the special effects.
Slashdot Mirror
But look... ANH hooked a lot of kids, and in the first 45 minutes, a bunch of rebel defenders got killed by storm troopers, darth vader lifted a guy up by his neck and snapped it, and Luke's family got killed. And there were no muppets!
You can still make a movie that kids will like without becoming juvenile a la Disney. George Lucas just decided to go the Disney route. Notice the contrast between ANH and TPM... both appealed to children, but only one was excessively mired in juvenility.
-Dean
I liked Episode One. However, in mediating our expectations, we are told that we should remember that Episode One is "only a movie." If it was "only a movie", it would have been great! However, it is "not quite a movie." Things it functions well as:
:) And I still prefer the SW universe to the Star Trek Universe. :)
a) Commercial for action figures
b) Commercial for the upcoming Nintendo pod-racing game
c) VR Star-Tours-type ride at disney land
d) Teaser for Episodes Two and Three
Episode One is all these things, but it's less than a movie. If it had come out in '86, it would have been an interesting addition to the saga. However, after 16 years, I was hoping for a good, self-contained movie, and I couldn't help but think that all I got was "a special-effects extravaganza based on the Star Wars mythology." But perhaps this is just a slow puitch to generate merchandising revenue to finance Episodes Two and Three.
In any case, I am certainly going to see it again.
-Dean
Ha ha. Very funny.
The test of a true troll on a slashdot forum is the "Anonymous Coward" tagline. No one who _actually_ believed something as silly as what you wrote would have hid behind an AC identity.
Please find some other way to amuse yourself.
-Dean
Do you actually believe that Lucas can't control the hype? Dude, he gave an interview in Wired magazine, and he appeared on the cover... what was he expecting if not hype?
Plus, we had all the commercials for the special edition, Vader appearing in an Energizer Bunny commercial, toys being sold at 12:01 AM, etc.
Yes, much of the hype is fan generated, but Lucas is milking it for all it's worth and he knows exactly what he's doing. Sometimes I wonder if he only started complaining about the hype when the reviews came back tepid.
-Dean
Star Wars was not a movie "discovered" by "movie lovers" as Jon Katz claims. It was very popular among the geek and children segment, but most "film weenies" regard Star Wars as a lame "plebian" film. While I find the SW trilogy more "fulfilling" than other supposedly "less superficial" films of the 1970s, Star Wars takes a lot of the blame for inspiring such travesties as Independence Day, Starship Troopers, and other manifestations of lameness. The "movie establishment" most certainly did not like star wars. The people who gave it good reviews were the "mainstream" press and "popular" reviewers, rather than professional film people at the time.
-Dean
You know, I _like_ watching must-anticipated movies on opening night. It's great-- the audience is enthusiastic, it's fun to see all those people waiting with me, and yes, I get to say, "I was there when IT came out." The cost? About an hour and a half of my time standing in line (the theatre I went to was a bit off the beaten track). Sounds like a decent tradeoff to me. Surely it will be more worthwhile and lining up outside CompUSA at midnight to buy Windows 95.
-Dean
My "conspiracy theory" is that Lucas suddenly "declared" that Episode One was a "childrens' movie" when he realized that the fans who were children when the first trilogy came out would be disappointed. I'm unclear whether he had this idea in mind when he wrote it, or he realized what he had done only after the fact. My guess is the latter. Though the fact that he cast a 9 year old in one of the lead parts worries me that he was trying to make a character that children could "relate to."
I think it's a damage-control spin in preparation for any up-coming backlashes... obviously, the hype that Lucas is complaining about is all of his own doing-- talking about the Campellian archetypes and his desire to make "modern myths", etc.
To think that I am beginning to worry whether my baby sister-- who just turned 13-- might be TOO OLD for Episode One is a really disturbing thought.
-Dean
Yes, I remember finding Jedi thrilling and slowing learning to appreciate ESB for the great movie that it was, and spending spring break one year watching the trilogy time and time again. I still sometimes get chills when I see Lando disguised in Jabba's palace.
:) Perhaps while he was writing, he subconsciously didn't want to make anything that would frighten or bother them, and then when Episode One was completed, he realized that he had to repackage the hype.
But I can't help but wonder if George Lucas's current "backtracking" regarding the hype is a result of the fact that he realizes that perhaps he made a slight misstep. I mean, only a month ago he was on the cover of _Wired_. What was he expecting regarding hype?
Perhaps the previews made the movie look darker than it really will be, but the problems people are mentioning about it are now all becoming clearer, in retrospect-- a 9 year old in the lead part, Jar-Jar sounding suspiciously similar to Elmo from Sesame St., etc. I'm beginning to think that George Lucas has realized, now that the movie is finished, that this isn't the "mythic epic space opera" that he intended it to be and is trying to re-package it as a "childrens' movie... fun for the whole family!"
It's the influence of having young children, I tell you! If only Lucas's children had already been grown up by the late 90's, this wouldn't have been a problem!
Well, maybe Episode One will be "candy", and then Episodes Two and Three will be better.
-Dean
Wow... The article wasn't self-righteous,namby-pamby,and actually took the testimonies of those who were closest to the issue and made those testimonies the focus.
I'm glad I don'tautomatically filter out Jon Katz articles, because this one was worth reading...
-Dean
I don't know of anyone who even knows the _current_ name of the LCS building, or almost any other MIT Building, except the Green Building. They all are named after _someone_, but the only people who know their names are the people who they're named after. We've got a Guggenheim Building and a Dorrance Building, but noone knows where they are, besides Guggenheim and Dorrance themselves. :)
:)
Now, LCS is housed in NE43... in a couple of years, it will be housed in Building 32 (or something). Maybe it'll be named the Stata Complex,or the Gates building, or whatever, but Gates and Stata will be the only people who will remember that.
Me? I'm in building E15... I think it's the Wiesner Center or something...
-Dean
Didn't realize that Slashdot filed it under "humor." After being fooled by the guy who submitted the Petreley article, I thought Slashdot got fooled again.
I've noticed over the past couple of days that Slashdot seems to be getting fooled into thinking that these stories are serious. Nick Petreley's APril fools Infoworld column was listed on Slashdot for about 10 mins before being pulled, and now this one comes up.
I think that the Slashdot contributors are engaging in some post-April Fools Day revenge for collaborating with Segfault, UserFriendly, and BeDope.
-Dean
This was truly one of the few bright spots in the website-closing April Fools Joke.
I feel ambivalent about it, however, because I can't help but think that Jon Katz simply felt that this was another great opportunity for self-promotion that he couldn't pass up.
-Dean
This is the written version of "slapstick humor" that Americans are so fond of.
There's no punchline, it's not witty or entertaining, but it bears a resemblence to the Three Stooges poking each other in the eyes. Some people find this funny. I hope it entertained the owners of UserFriendly, segfault, and the other one whose name escapes me right now.
Better April Fools jokes:
The BBC's documentary on the "Italian Spagetti Harvest"
Taco Bell's Purchase of the Libery Bell
The exchange of comic strip artists on comics pages in 1997
This whole thing just goes to prove that too many computer people, even the ones who stage practical jokes, have no real sense of humor.
Better luck next time.
-Dean
The most humourous thing in this whole ordeal has been the article in the Register.
Frankly, I find the site owners of segfault.org and userfriendly.org to be completely humourless. This whole thing wasn't even vaguely entertaining to me. (even though i just heard about it today)
Sorry, guys... try again next time. Frankly, if someone is going to go through the time and effort of making an April Fools Joke, _I want to be entertained_. This joke did nothing but entertain the creators of it. Big deal.
The Jon Katz satire was quite awesome, however.
-Dean
It makes me wonder what CD-ROM she was using. The only thing Ifigure is that she was using an extremely obscure SCSI card with her CD-ROM, or perhaps the 2.0.34 kernel (though she said she was using RedHat 5.2).
I've installed Linux on several different machines, all independent of each other, with varying types of hardware, and I was always able to get past that initial step.
-Dean
MST3K must reamin on the air so that we can look forward to watching it feature "Starship Troopers" and "Titanic" in their future episodes. These are 2 movies that almost appear made with the intent of appearing on MST3K.
-Dean
I have a Palm Pilot, and I am beginning to envy the WinCE machines. I wish that 3Com would start licensing the Palm OS to others so that there would be plenty of different vendors trying to add various new gadgets and competing to build a better and more interesting machine. I _like_ that the Pilot does what I need it to, and no more, but I wouldn't mind seeing other companies experimenting with possibilities.
I don't think 3Com can compete over the long term with dozens of other companies trying to create their own WinCE PDAs.
-Dean
>But enough of all that....what I can't understand >is why people are so AGAINST anyone even trying >to update to digital. Wouldn't you even want to >look at it? Is your mind so closed?
:) All we're saying is that digital film _right now_ isn't going to be as good as the real thing. Digital just for the sake of it is not great.
:)
Premature adoption of a technology will result in being stuck with an inferior standard.
Digitalization is inherently _lossy_. It takes a digital "sample" of what appears and then reconstructs the image using the data available from the sample. Now, this is great for mass duplication, copying, and transmission over long distances for analog data whose quality isn't that important. However, when one is trying to duplicate real music and real scenes of the real world, you need a sampling rate high enough that the human eye and ear can't detect the "loss" involved by digitalization. And this is an extremely high sample rate.
And, let's face it, given the choice between the _right_ technology, and the trendy, buzzowrd-laden, but slightly inferior technology, which is going to be chosen, right?
However, I did hear that a group of people compared an HDTV movie projected onto a screen with a film projection movie that was fresh out of the cannister (ie, no stretching, scratching, or fading from the projector bulb), and the HDTV projection image won out hands down. So I have no doubt that digital movies will eventually be "all that". On the other hand, I suspect that digital movies _now_ will simply be a way for distributors and movie theatres to cut down on cost while giving us a product that simply isn't as great.
But, what the heck? I know that I'll probably head to the closest city to see the all-digital projected version of Episode One.
-Dean
This is the Nicholas Negroponte syndrome. :)
The simple fact is that we experience life in Analog, not moderated through a digital sample that gets decoded back again.
The LP fanatics may sound kooky, but they are really onto something when they say that CDs can't really imitate the sound quality of an analog recording, and we won't be until DVD audio discs become available (which have 24 bit sampling, instead of the 16 bit sampling on CDs).
Now, actually, I've heard that the high-end digital film displays are said to be better than than even a film fresh out of the canister, but somehow I think we'll only get the low end stuff in theatres for the immediate future. Digital transmission and display only becomes a good imitation of film when the sample rate of the digital is so high that you can no longer notice it.
-Dean
Actually, the special effects were ok, about minimum what i'd expect for a hyped sci-fi movie.
However, the writing, story, and acting were _much_ better than Starship Troopers. This was Starship Troopers with a smaller budget.
I didn't come out of Wing Commander thinking to myself "My, what a waste of a movie", and that's a lot better than what I can saw for a lot of other sci-fi movies I've seen. Maybe if they make another Wing Commander movie, they'll get it right.
Also, I must add that the budget for Wing Commander was only $27 million.... it can perform in a mediocre fashion and still not be too bad.
-Dean
Any article in a mainstream publication that makes fawning references to Ayn Rand and still attempts to portray itself as serious needs to be taken out and shot. :) If I hadn't already thought the article was silly already, that was about what finally did it for me.
-Dean
I think most people, including the one writing the above review, get too caught up in the special effects of Saving private Ryan. It would have been a great movie even withough the effects or even if it had tamer battle sequences. Now, I haven't seen "Happiness", but "Saving Private Ryan" is certainly one of the best movies I have ever seen, and you're making a mistake if you think it is a special effects movie or if you think people liked it just for the special effects.
-Dean