Amen to that. All the music I buy is on CD precisely because I can do what I want with it.
These figures just confirm that record companies are producing less music per given period. So people most likely have less choice. Certainly most of the music I listen too doesn't make it to the top 40.
I think theres the additional factor of so many other mediums available. DVDs and games (consoles especially) have been a growing market. These are taking a larger chunk of my entertainment budget for sure.
As many have noted here, people work and live at the level they want. If they are at least happy then thats enough. I make no judgement.
Achievement comes at many levels. The more of the world I see, the more I see the structures and systems, (social, ethical, governmental, etc). The challenge is hacking or understanding them in the same way I do with computers.
My kids give me the greatest enjoyment as its a constant mental battle to hopefully channel them in the right directions. Parenthood is the hardest thing I've done and the best thing I've done so far.
I'd add that GL has become obsessed with the tools and technology rather than the basic directing skills.
His approach seems to be to hire actors, throw them together without any direction and use what comes out. Which is fine on a normal movie but with a green screen digitally composed film there are very few cues and references.
GL is revolutionising the medium but he's not at all interested in Star Wars other then as a convenient method / cash cow to drive the technology.
It shows in how he's geared it to the widest audience. Hence robbing it of any relevance.
I admire George Lucas's achievements. I just can love the current trilogy. Even ROTJ is so so.
Lets see where he goes from here. Whether he can make good on his claims. Following the way Speilberg has in his last few films.
There is in fact a campact flash wireless 802.11b card available now from Sandisk. It includes 128Mb memory as well.
However I think its more for a pdas rather than a camera to send photos. But the idea is sound, especially for studio photography to get infinite storage.
Which is all well and good. However unless Card puts up his own money for a stake, his input won't necessarily mean alot.
Unless the author, director, producers & studios are on the same wavelength, the movie won't necessarily be true to the book. This was the rare case with Lord of the Rings (which did suffer some tweaking).
Next consider I, Robot (based on the preview). I have respect for Alex Proyas and the design looks terrific. However the preview makes it look like another standard technology amuck plot mixed with some Will Smith action / comedy.
I appreciate the need for some modification of books to hit the cinema, but science fiction seems to suffer the most mangling. Usually being forced into the action film genre (whether appropriate or not).
War of the Worlds may actually be appropriate for the times if done properly. But given Tom Cruise's involvement I don't see that happening.
Thats certainly the case in Australia. For a long time, the labels have turned a blind eye to copying even for personal use.
Certainly you can start your own business or hit your favourite search engine for companies that already do sell music online without restriction i.e. magnatune.com, mp3.com.au or emusic.com. Note I've not used any of these companies.
That was my immediate thoughts after hearing the news. The very fact that Novell need a lifeline means that pressure will be on SUSE to perform financially.
Redhat's withdrawal from the general desktop distribution shows that it isn't necessarily a profitable proposition. The Fedora project seems a good alternative to Redhat's own fully funded version but it will require solid community backing to survive.
I see no problem with this, since we've benefitted from Redhat providing low cost / free support for quite awhile. Backing Fedora ensures a solid system for all of us and we get a say in what goes into it.
Open source and business doesn't seem to work well together when the business is depending on revenues from it. Current SUSE management have nurtured their company and been careful about finances it seems. Will Novell be the same ?
In the case of AOTC, they are going back to the original video since there is no negative.
I would imagine that the working and final resolution in AOTC would be lower since so much of the movie involved digital sets and large amounts of compositing.
The thing to remember with regard to Cerebus is that its been written over the span of quite a few years.
The style, consistency and mood of the writing varies considerably. The current stories are very different to the early works. The early stuff featured heavy fantasy parodies and then branched into biting political / religious satire.
The current Dave Sim storylines may be applying the same satire to the whole men / women / relationships debate. However it's bored me to tears but can be of interest to those who like esoteric dissertations about men and women from the Dave Sim standpoint.
The problem for me is that most of it is couched so highly and the supporting articles by Dave express views as grotesque as 1 week old road kill to me.
The art certainly goes from strength to strength.
I very much enjoyed the early to mid storylines. Thats something like the first 4 to 5 phone books from memory. The Jaka Story and Returning Home series are too drawn out and slow to interest me at all.
Its hard to tell if Dave is just writing different perspectives or he actually believes what he is writing and expressing his views.
For the casual reader, I would say get the first few phone books rather than the later.
Dave and Gerhard are achieving an admirable goal nonetheless of selfpublishing a 300 issue opus.
Its true the Star Wars movies are throwbacks to old movie serials and B grade science fiction.
Its fine to say that something is targetted for kids but pandering especially to kids is a sure sign of putting them off. Kids are quite sophisticated and aware. I just have to look at my son to see that and he's only a toddler.
Its this all consuming pandering that urks me. Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back have next to none of it. The stories and characters stood by themselves and delivered greatly.
On this count, Pixar are batting a thousand. Toy Story 1 and 2, Bug's Life. Good children's stories are universal.
Return of the Jedi and the new trilogy changed when they were designed to appeal. How else do we get characters like the ewoks and Jar Jar ?
True George Lucas is in the unenviable position of pleasing no one, no matter what he does. He is however in the position to do what he pleases. He's certainly pioneering new film techniques and production. I somehow think that Star Wars has become a convenient cover to do this.
Star Wars has become a part of world mythology and the fans have expectations. I didn't expect all that much from Episode 1 but was still disappointed.
For me, Star Wars has gone from a cherished memory to just another franchise. Its this that upsets me.
Boy I'm glad I splurged on the deluxe boxed laserdisc set of the original movies.
Commercial RDBMS should be robust, configurable and scalable. These large scale databases provide options and capabilities beyond what is available as open source as far as I know, such as data partitioning, blobs, roll back recovery, tuning, large volume sizes.
From a personal work view, I want to deliver apps without having to debug and fix problems with my toolset. I acknowledge that there will always be bugs and fixes aren't always timely. However if there are problems these are handled by the software company providing the tools.
My view is horses for courses. If the app is only storing information for simple to moderately complex retrieval and manipulations then open source is possible since its at that level. For heavy duty database work, commercial RDBMs are currently the way to go.
I do agree that the type of games seems to have stagnated. There hasn't been any blockbuster games that are a totally new genre. Everything has been variations or cross breeding of styles.
However thats not to say that entertaining or good games haven't come out. In my opinion, good / popular games boil down to gameplay. The technology could be older but if the gameplay isn't there than games generally aren't as popular.
Technology provides better tools to create games. However good gameplay and balance keeps people entertained. For example, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3. UT had more gameplay and options such as cooperative deathmatch and well balanced varieties of weapons. Q3 had less multiplay options but was graphically much prettier. In my view UT wins with round, even with the Team Arena pack which was a little too late.
This is taking nothing away from John Carmack, who to me is a coding god. Id appears to have dropped the ball a little on making use of the graphics engines that he's provided.
Starcraft wasn't original but it had 3 solidly developed races that were carefully balanced but with very different play styles and capabilities. I could never get into TA because the units were all too much alike capabilities wise and I found the graphics uninspired. Starcraft kept me coming back for more.
Unfortunately my twitch reflexes aren't up to scratch so first person shooters arean't as much fun for me. I do appreciate the technical aspects and its drive for better graphics hardware / software.
To me, gameplay is the thing.
Andrew.
I especially loved the "computer graphics" done for the guide in the old BBC series. Everyone was dead sure it was done with computers. The BBC found it cheaper to do it with normal artwork !
I do agree with you in the majority of cases. I tend to steer clear of long series. After awhile I loose focus trying to remember all the past details and I just don't have the time to devote to reading lengthy series. Probably my loss.
However I must say that Ender's Shadow is the rare exception. The followup Ender books were very different in style & direction. The last one completely lost me.
For a long time I lamented that Ender's Game was a one off. But Ender's Shadow showed that the Scott Card just didn't choose to write that way until revisiting the series with the Shadow books.
Heartening to hear there are more in line.
George Lucas has always done what he wanted. Even back to the days of American Graffiti. He's never really been in tune with what people want. Star Wars would never have existed if he was.
After the first 2 films, he took control of everything. Which is his perogative but he lost all the strong collaboration in doing so.
Add to this, his total use of untried digital photography and things are bound to come a little unstuck. He'll get a finished product but don't expect it to be great.
Note that us foreigners don't get a look in as Blizzard decided to do an exclusive deal with Electronics Boutique, so exclusive that its Australian branch could not get copies of the collected edition.
I had an order through Chips and Bits website but they did not receive any due to this exclusive deal.
I would have ordered from EB's site if they had a sensible shipping rate to Australia, $50US flat rate granted this is probably per shipment.
Yeesh. Guess I'll settle for the standard edition. Once again the rest of the world comes off second best to the US.
I concur. The crux of the problem is that web based applications are just that, applications like any computer application. So all the good program development and design principles apply.
A good developer can produce good, useable and efficient applications regardless of the medium i.e. client / server, web based - intra / extranet. The main problem comes when developers aren't exposed to good practices, techniques and methodologies. These can either be taught or learnt from experience. This is also an ongoing task.
I don't consider formal education a sign of a good developer but it does mean they have been exposed to good practices. The really good university educated people I've met or worked with have consistently blown me away.
I've met people from both sides of the draw and either can be as good. The most difficult thing is if a developer ceases to learn / strive either through ego (I'm shithot!) or through laziness / ineptidude.
The main danger is when you get yahoo cowboys who come in bang out a mess that may do the job now but can't scale or be easily upgraded. All too often management don't understand this or understand the difference in philosophy.
Web sites and applications are not a separate entity to general applications, they are one and the same. The skills required are slightly different but the core knowledge / principles are the same.
I respect George Lucas for being able to parlay his work into a major industry / franchise. He was a trailblazer and still is, in terms of movie making technology i.e. special effects, digital movie making.
However his current work lacks good storytelling. A good plot / characters will naturally appeal to a large audience. I'm not asking for depth here, like American Beauty. A solid plot to hook you in. The Matrix had a pretty standard plot but a good enough one to hold all the rest together.
All too often this is forgotten and the audience ends up with special effects replacing plot. How many times have you come out of a theatre going, "Crap story but what about those effects !".
Additionally audiences are much more sophisticated than during the 70s. In this I think he greatly underestimates his audience. Even for kids, his claimed prime target for TPM. Toy Story, Toy Story II, A Bug's Life, Alladin, all are children's films but have plots and story elements that interest everyone.
To be fair, Star Wars has been elevated to myth and GL has a very tall order to live up to. Its all too easy to disappoint. Not to mention having to fund the next two films.
In terms of merchandising, vote with your dollars. I'm holding out for the DVD and thats what I'm going to buy.
Myth should hold for everyone, not just kids. Does Greek or Roman mythology aim at kids alone ? Myths are resonant stories and ideas that hold true for everyone, regardless of age.
I think its good that George stuck to his guns and produced the movie he wanted to see. The problem is that he isn't in sync with his audience.
In my mind, Star Wars was a bit of a fluke in that it came out at the right time and captured people's imaginations. Alot of good people worked on Star Wars, yet George claims all the credit.
I think that Ralph MacQuarrie had alot to do with the visual style. His storyboards are dynamic and interesting. True George set the tone but the storyboards are the inspiration.
Empire worked because George took a step back and allowed a talented writer and a talented director run with the ball.
Jedi wasn't nearly as good as George stepped in and override alot of people from what I'm told. Granted its his playpen, however his vision tends to make things bland in aiming for the common denominator or aimed at marketting of some kind.
My thoughts are that kids today are alot more sophisticated and worldly than George thinks.
Essential to any enjoyable movie is a strong story. This usually involves characters and situations that draw you in and maintain your interest in some way.
You don't even have to especially like them.
Where Episode I fails is that its really a number of set pieces loosely tied together by some common characters. There really isn't anything compelling.
The bad guys (Malorians ?) were just too comical to consider a menace. They might have been true to old style serial villains but still.
Each set piece was impressively realised. The pod race and the Jedi duel were terrific but these don't make for a movie you remember 20 years down the track.
The Toy Story movies are a great example of a solid story that kids and adults can enjoy. The writers aren't pandering to kids. The basic plot drives the movie and draws an audience in.
I think your generalising on that last point about taking the special effects out of every movie made in the last 5 years and leaving some boring movies. Just to name a few, Trainspotting, Usual Suspects, Donnie Brasco, Swingers, Boogie Nights, Austin Powers I / II, Toy Story I / II, Bug's Life, Alladin.
Just a few thoughts.
Re:sweet & how Id make the money
on
No Next Q3Test
·
· Score: 1
The real money is in licencing the Quake graphics engine. Can you say Half Life, Sin. Most deals include a percentage of sales as well as an upfront cost.
A good graphics engine can be used to produce eveything from 3rd person adventures, i.e. Hexen II to real time strategy such as Golgotha.
So rather then reinvent the wheel, alot of development groups will jumpstart by purchasing an engine and its library.
That's not to say that you can't develop a stinker anyway. Nothing will replace a good story and solid play balance.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen to that. All the music I buy is on CD precisely because I can do what I want with it.
These figures just confirm that record companies are producing less music per given period. So people most likely have less choice. Certainly most of the music I listen too doesn't make it to the top 40.
I think theres the additional factor of so many other mediums available. DVDs and games (consoles especially) have been a growing market. These are taking a larger chunk of my entertainment budget for sure.
As many have noted here, people work and live at the level they want. If they are at least happy then thats enough. I make no judgement.
Achievement comes at many levels. The more of the world I see, the more I see the structures and systems, (social, ethical, governmental, etc). The challenge is hacking or understanding them in the same way I do with computers.
My kids give me the greatest enjoyment as its a constant mental battle to hopefully channel them in the right directions. Parenthood is the hardest thing I've done and the best thing I've done so far.
To each his own I guess.
Totally agreed.
I'd add that GL has become obsessed with the tools and technology rather than the basic directing skills.
His approach seems to be to hire actors, throw them together without any direction and use what comes out. Which is fine on a normal movie but with a green screen digitally composed film there are very few cues and references.
GL is revolutionising the medium but he's not at all interested in Star Wars other then as a convenient method / cash cow to drive the technology.
It shows in how he's geared it to the widest audience. Hence robbing it of any relevance.
I admire George Lucas's achievements. I just can love the current trilogy. Even ROTJ is so so.
Lets see where he goes from here. Whether he can make good on his claims. Following the way Speilberg has in his last few films.
There is in fact a campact flash wireless 802.11b card available now from Sandisk. It includes 128Mb memory as well.
However I think its more for a pdas rather than a camera to send photos. But the idea is sound, especially for studio photography to get infinite storage.
Which is all well and good. However unless Card puts up his own money for a stake, his input won't necessarily mean alot.
Unless the author, director, producers & studios are on the same wavelength, the movie won't necessarily be true to the book. This was the rare case with Lord of the Rings (which did suffer some tweaking).
Next consider I, Robot (based on the preview). I have respect for Alex Proyas and the design looks terrific. However the preview makes it look like another standard technology amuck plot mixed with some Will Smith action / comedy.
I appreciate the need for some modification of books to hit the cinema, but science fiction seems to suffer the most mangling. Usually being forced into the action film genre (whether appropriate or not).
War of the Worlds may actually be appropriate for the times if done properly. But given Tom Cruise's involvement I don't see that happening.
Fine and well that they are switching to G5s but are they switching to Cinema Displays as well ?
What I understand is that its still difficult to colour match on LCDs versus CRTs. But this may be more for print rather than video.
Thats certainly the case in Australia. For a long time, the labels have turned a blind eye to copying even for personal use.
Certainly you can start your own business or hit your favourite search engine for companies that already do sell music online without restriction i.e. magnatune.com, mp3.com.au or emusic.com. Note I've not used any of these companies.
That was my immediate thoughts after hearing the news. The very fact that Novell need a lifeline means that pressure will be on SUSE to perform financially.
Redhat's withdrawal from the general desktop distribution shows that it isn't necessarily a profitable proposition. The Fedora project seems a good alternative to Redhat's own fully funded version but it will require solid community backing to survive.
I see no problem with this, since we've benefitted from Redhat providing low cost / free support for quite awhile. Backing Fedora ensures a solid system for all of us and we get a say in what goes into it.
Open source and business doesn't seem to work well together when the business is depending on revenues from it. Current SUSE management have nurtured their company and been careful about finances it seems. Will Novell be the same ?
Better yet either confiscate everyone's phones before going into the movie or installing phone jammers in the cinema !!
Unfortunately Benelong is a very conservative Liberal seat. John Howard as prime minister would not risk being based in a marginal seat.
I've lived in Ryde for well on 7 years and my vote has meant nothing.
The best bet is to make alot of noise and protest over this. John Howard is vainly hoping to curry favour with the US. Its scarey.
In the case of AOTC, they are going back to the original video since there is no negative.
I would imagine that the working and final resolution in AOTC would be lower since so much of the movie involved digital sets and large amounts of compositing.
Andrew
The thing to remember with regard to Cerebus is that its been written over the span of quite a few years.
The style, consistency and mood of the writing varies considerably. The current stories are very different to the early works. The early stuff featured heavy fantasy parodies and then branched into biting political / religious satire.
The current Dave Sim storylines may be applying the same satire to the whole men / women / relationships debate. However it's bored me to tears but can be of interest to those who like esoteric dissertations about men and women from the Dave Sim standpoint.
The problem for me is that most of it is couched so highly and the supporting articles by Dave express views as grotesque as 1 week old road kill to me.
The art certainly goes from strength to strength.
I very much enjoyed the early to mid storylines. Thats something like the first 4 to 5 phone books from memory. The Jaka Story and Returning Home series are too drawn out and slow to interest me at all.
Its hard to tell if Dave is just writing different perspectives or he actually believes what he is writing and expressing his views.
For the casual reader, I would say get the first few phone books rather than the later.
Dave and Gerhard are achieving an admirable goal nonetheless of selfpublishing a 300 issue opus.
Just my few cents worth.
Andrew.
Its true the Star Wars movies are throwbacks to old movie serials and B grade science fiction.
Its fine to say that something is targetted for kids but pandering especially to kids is a sure sign of putting them off. Kids are quite sophisticated and aware. I just have to look at my son to see that and he's only a toddler.
Its this all consuming pandering that urks me. Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back have next to none of it. The stories and characters stood by themselves and delivered greatly.
On this count, Pixar are batting a thousand. Toy Story 1 and 2, Bug's Life. Good children's stories are universal.
Return of the Jedi and the new trilogy changed when they were designed to appeal. How else do we get characters like the ewoks and Jar Jar ?
True George Lucas is in the unenviable position of pleasing no one, no matter what he does. He is however in the position to do what he pleases. He's certainly pioneering new film techniques and production. I somehow think that Star Wars has become a convenient cover to do this.
Star Wars has become a part of world mythology and the fans have expectations. I didn't expect all that much from Episode 1 but was still disappointed.
For me, Star Wars has gone from a cherished memory to just another franchise. Its this that upsets me.
Boy I'm glad I splurged on the deluxe boxed laserdisc set of the original movies.
Andrew.
I concur with this.
Commercial RDBMS should be robust, configurable and scalable. These large scale databases provide options and capabilities beyond what is available as open source as far as I know, such as data partitioning, blobs, roll back recovery, tuning, large volume sizes.
From a personal work view, I want to deliver apps without having to debug and fix problems with my toolset. I acknowledge that there will always be bugs and fixes aren't always timely. However if there are problems these are handled by the software company providing the tools.
My view is horses for courses. If the app is only storing information for simple to moderately complex retrieval and manipulations then open source is possible since its at that level. For heavy duty database work, commercial RDBMs are currently the way to go.
Let the flaming begin.
I do agree that the type of games seems to have stagnated. There hasn't been any blockbuster games that are a totally new genre. Everything has been variations or cross breeding of styles. However thats not to say that entertaining or good games haven't come out. In my opinion, good / popular games boil down to gameplay. The technology could be older but if the gameplay isn't there than games generally aren't as popular. Technology provides better tools to create games. However good gameplay and balance keeps people entertained. For example, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3. UT had more gameplay and options such as cooperative deathmatch and well balanced varieties of weapons. Q3 had less multiplay options but was graphically much prettier. In my view UT wins with round, even with the Team Arena pack which was a little too late. This is taking nothing away from John Carmack, who to me is a coding god. Id appears to have dropped the ball a little on making use of the graphics engines that he's provided. Starcraft wasn't original but it had 3 solidly developed races that were carefully balanced but with very different play styles and capabilities. I could never get into TA because the units were all too much alike capabilities wise and I found the graphics uninspired. Starcraft kept me coming back for more. Unfortunately my twitch reflexes aren't up to scratch so first person shooters arean't as much fun for me. I do appreciate the technical aspects and its drive for better graphics hardware / software. To me, gameplay is the thing. Andrew.
I especially loved the "computer graphics" done for the guide in the old BBC series. Everyone was dead sure it was done with computers. The BBC found it cheaper to do it with normal artwork !
I do agree with you in the majority of cases. I tend to steer clear of long series. After awhile I loose focus trying to remember all the past details and I just don't have the time to devote to reading lengthy series. Probably my loss. However I must say that Ender's Shadow is the rare exception. The followup Ender books were very different in style & direction. The last one completely lost me. For a long time I lamented that Ender's Game was a one off. But Ender's Shadow showed that the Scott Card just didn't choose to write that way until revisiting the series with the Shadow books. Heartening to hear there are more in line.
George Lucas has always done what he wanted. Even back to the days of American Graffiti. He's never really been in tune with what people want. Star Wars would never have existed if he was.
After the first 2 films, he took control of everything. Which is his perogative but he lost all the strong collaboration in doing so.
Add to this, his total use of untried digital photography and things are bound to come a little unstuck. He'll get a finished product but don't expect it to be great.
Note that us foreigners don't get a look in as Blizzard decided to do an exclusive deal with Electronics Boutique, so exclusive that its Australian branch could not get copies of the collected edition.
I had an order through Chips and Bits website but they did not receive any due to this exclusive deal.
I would have ordered from EB's site if they had a sensible shipping rate to Australia, $50US flat rate granted this is probably per shipment.
Yeesh. Guess I'll settle for the standard edition. Once again the rest of the world comes off second best to the US.
Rant over.
I concur. The crux of the problem is that web based applications are just that, applications like any computer application. So all the good program development and design principles apply.
A good developer can produce good, useable and efficient applications regardless of the medium i.e. client / server, web based - intra / extranet. The main problem comes when developers aren't exposed to good practices, techniques and methodologies. These can either be taught or learnt from experience. This is also an ongoing task.
I don't consider formal education a sign of a good developer but it does mean they have been exposed to good practices. The really good university educated people I've met or worked with have consistently blown me away.
I've met people from both sides of the draw and either can be as good. The most difficult thing is if a developer ceases to learn / strive either through ego (I'm shithot!) or through laziness / ineptidude.
The main danger is when you get yahoo cowboys who come in bang out a mess that may do the job now but can't scale or be easily upgraded. All too often management don't understand this or understand the difference in philosophy.
Web sites and applications are not a separate entity to general applications, they are one and the same. The skills required are slightly different but the core knowledge / principles are the same.
'Nuff said.
I respect George Lucas for being able to parlay his work into a major industry / franchise. He was a trailblazer and still is, in terms of movie making technology i.e. special effects, digital movie making.
However his current work lacks good storytelling. A good plot / characters will naturally appeal to a large audience. I'm not asking for depth here, like American Beauty. A solid plot to hook you in. The Matrix had a pretty standard plot but a good enough one to hold all the rest together.
All too often this is forgotten and the audience ends up with special effects replacing plot. How many times have you come out of a theatre going, "Crap story but what about those effects !".
Additionally audiences are much more sophisticated than during the 70s. In this I think he greatly underestimates his audience. Even for kids, his claimed prime target for TPM.
Toy Story, Toy Story II, A Bug's Life, Alladin, all are children's films but have plots and story elements that interest everyone.
To be fair, Star Wars has been elevated to myth and GL has a very tall order to live up to. Its all too easy to disappoint. Not to mention having to fund the next two films.
In terms of merchandising, vote with your dollars. I'm holding out for the DVD and thats what I'm going to buy.
'Nuff said.
Myth should hold for everyone, not just kids. Does Greek or Roman mythology aim at kids alone ? Myths are resonant stories and ideas that hold true for everyone, regardless of age.
I think its good that George stuck to his guns and produced the movie he wanted to see. The problem is that he isn't in sync with his audience.
In my mind, Star Wars was a bit of a fluke in that it came out at the right time and captured people's imaginations. Alot of good people worked on Star Wars, yet George claims all the credit.
I think that Ralph MacQuarrie had alot to do with the visual style. His storyboards are dynamic and interesting. True George set the tone but the storyboards are the inspiration.
Empire worked because George took a step back and allowed a talented writer and a talented director run with the ball.
Jedi wasn't nearly as good as George stepped in and override alot of people from what I'm told. Granted its his playpen, however his vision tends to make things bland in aiming for the common denominator or aimed at marketting of some kind.
My thoughts are that kids today are alot more sophisticated and worldly than George thinks.
Essential to any enjoyable movie is a strong story. This usually involves characters and situations that draw you in and maintain your interest in some way.
You don't even have to especially like them.
Where Episode I fails is that its really a number of set pieces loosely tied together by some common characters. There really isn't anything compelling.
The bad guys (Malorians ?) were just too comical to consider a menace. They might have been true to old style serial villains but still.
Each set piece was impressively realised. The pod race and the Jedi duel were terrific but these don't make for a movie you remember 20 years down the track.
The Toy Story movies are a great example of a solid story that kids and adults can enjoy. The writers aren't pandering to kids. The basic plot drives the movie and draws an audience in.
I think your generalising on that last point about taking the special effects out of every movie made in the last 5 years and leaving some boring movies. Just to name a few, Trainspotting, Usual Suspects, Donnie Brasco, Swingers, Boogie Nights, Austin Powers I / II, Toy Story I / II, Bug's Life, Alladin.
Just a few thoughts.
The real money is in licencing the Quake graphics engine. Can you say Half Life, Sin. Most deals include a percentage of sales as well as an upfront cost.
A good graphics engine can be used to produce eveything from 3rd person adventures, i.e. Hexen II to real time strategy such as Golgotha.
So rather then reinvent the wheel, alot of development groups will jumpstart by purchasing an engine and its library.
That's not to say that you can't develop a stinker anyway. Nothing will replace a good story and solid play balance.
Definitely have to commiserate with you.
I think William Gibson's books are terrific.
However Johnny Mnemonic was awesomely bad. Just no sort of pacing or visual story telling.
We've yet to see New Rose Hotel. Apparently it doesn't have much tech in it. I've heard varying reviews as to how good it is.
I haven't seen alot of this director's work but music videos are not a great foundation for movie work. The sensibilities are very different.
I just have misgivings. Good luck to him anyway.
The Matrix didn't have a great story but it told it well. Certainly went for the coolness factor and landed that big time.
I'd like to see that vision but with more thought.
Trust people to mess up something natural. I like a mix of dark and white meat.
I can just imagine going to the supermarket and having to choose from a zillion different genetically bred chickens.
Make mine a low cal, high fibre, caffinated drum stick !!!!