Cutting one seven-minute Saruman scene means there's 2 hours and 53 minutes of other material that they felt was better, more interesting, and more germane to the story.
So I think there's plenty left over to get excited about.
It sounds like what you DO want is to read the books again and not see a movie adaptation.
Watch the Faramir scenes in the extended edition and it will explain much about his character and why he acts the way he does (plus they temper it a great deal from the theatrical version). The commentary by the writers / director also explains why they made the changes they did, which is pretty simple stuff: what works in a novel doesn't always work on film.
Philippa Boyens points out in an interview that the book version of Faramir, who essentially "abducts" them, offers them some tea, and says "Oh I'll help you, on your way then!" is fine for the medium in which it originated, but does nothing for tension on film and is a bit of a bore. And I tend to agree.
Plus I think it will make him a more interesting character by giving him some mistakes to redeem himself from, rather than being as pure as the wind-driven snow from the get-go. Much like I think Aragorn is made more interesting by adding some self-doubt.
I didn't think Screamers was all that good. Frankly, I think there's enough material in there to make for another film that would be faithful to "The Second Variety" and be completely different from "Screamers."
Unfortunately, I think the tendency is to take PKD's ideas and pump them full of action, which has worked out fairly well in the past, but I'd like to see just one PKD story interpreted in the kind of quiet, thoughtful way that his stories are presented.
GATTACA has proven that science fiction can be done well without blazing guns and exploding buses, so I know they can treat PKD right and still make money. I'd love to see it just once, and there is no shortage of PKD stories out there ripe for the picking.
These guys should interview one of the guys at my workplace. He is over 50, married with a full-grown son, and is one of the most hardcore gamers I have ever seen. He has a house full of consoles, many of which I've never even heard of, and has "war stories" dating back to before I, as a considerably younger gamer, even HAD video games. And needless to say his reflexes, interest, etc. have not waned one bit. He's awesome, and could likely kick my ass at just about any game of my choosing.
In fact, where I work, most of the people there are older than I am (I'm 30), and they're almost all hardcore gamers. The one twenty-something guy that just started is actually the worst gamer of the lot, and regularly gets razzed by the rest of the crew. So I really don't think age enters into it as much as the article may be implying.
And, interestingly enough, there's only one guy there who's NOT married or with girlfriend. So much for that stereotype, too.
But then you're not going to see any of these guys playing the latest Sonic game or Crash Bandicoot or anything either, so...
So let me guess, instead of Clippy you have a little bouncing yellow smiley face that keeps darting in and changing the numbers on all your Excel documents?
Won't someone think of the bandwidth
on
Superball!
·
· Score: 4, Funny
So, 135 MB video files ready to download...
Trying to use up the remainder of that research grant I see.
Funny, I didn't even get as far as making fun of the MSN Newsbot news, because on one side of the page I get:
Don't have a.NET Passport? To continue, you need to sign in with a Microsoft(R).NET Passport.
And then on the other side of the page is:
.NET Passport Unavailable at This Site
The.NET Passport service is currently unavailable at this Web site for one of these reasons: blah blah further useless error messages.
This is truly awesome.
"Hi, welcome to MSN Newsbot. Before actually reading any news, you'll have to register a passport, and create a username, and log in, and give us a valid email address... oh, and by the way, you can't actually do any of these things. Thanks for visiting MSN Newsbot!!"
I think I'll stick with Google News, thanks all the same. It uses the revolutionary "click the link that says 'News' and you get news" technology.
What a lucky break, I've been wondering where on God's green earth I can find me some Billy Ray Cyrus, Duelin' Banjos Play the "Lion King" Theme and Now That's What I Call Music Oh God Please Stop MXCVIII.
Now the only question is whether or not the Web site will blast obnoxious audio at you on full volume, like they do in the actual stores.
According to the FAQ, OAP will eventually be able to 'Read your favourite news web pages or blogs aloud to you.' A personal droid that reads Slashdot aloud to you -- what more could you ask for?"
(A girlfriend?)
Now that's a little mean-spirited. Link to the story, praise the guy for putting together a perfectly interesting project, and then backhand him for (presumably) not having a girlfriend. Not only is it extremely hackneyed, it's kind of an undeserved slap in the face.
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Mocking the Hand that Feeds Us!
Uh Clem. a former Belkin wireless router user, was perplexed to find machines on his network redirected to an ad for Belkin's new parental control system, following a software update.
The guy's name is "Uh Clem"?!
Man, he must have taken some ribbing in grade school. For a second I thought this article had been written by ignorant hayseeds from (insert state of choice here). "Uhhhh, Clem, the router t'ain't workin'."
You're a lightweight. I'm waiting until the sun is a burned-out husk so I can pick the last DVD edition civilization ever turned out from the ashen ruins of its dead cities.
I just felt as great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Star Wars fans cried out in protest, and then suddenly stopped whining about "when is the Star Wars OT DVD coming out?"
Ahhh.
Now if only Lucas would truly take advantage of the DVD format and include both the original and "Special Editions" on the discs. But I'm not idealistic enough to actually hope for that.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you SUV fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in an SUV (Vortec 4800 V8 engine with 285 horsepower) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to create a level 17 solar flare. 20 minutes. At home, on my Volkswagen Bug running diesel, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this SUV, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various SUVs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a SUV that has run faster than its Rice-grinder counterpart, despite the SUVs' faster chip architecture. My six-disc in-dash CD changer and Bose speaker system runs faster than this 285 horsepower machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the SUV is a superior machine.
SUV addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a SUV over other faster, cheaper, more stable vehicles.
I agree, I'm running ZoneAlarm personally. I've heard good and bad about it, but I tested it for a couple months and it seemed to work for me, so I kept it. My log of intrusion attempts at work is surprisingly large.
(I learned the hard way -- had to get a trojan on my machine before realizing, oops, need a firewall.)
Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but I'm running NAV 2004 and not only do I not have banner blocking, but there is certainly nothing in the options to enable or disable it, nor is there any mention of it in the options anywhere that I can find.
Makes me curious if there was another version of the program featuring banner-blocking after I purchased mine -- which would of course be typical.
Slashdot Mirror
Cutting one seven-minute Saruman scene means there's 2 hours and 53 minutes of other material that they felt was better, more interesting, and more germane to the story.
So I think there's plenty left over to get excited about.
It sounds like what you DO want is to read the books again and not see a movie adaptation.
Watch the Faramir scenes in the extended edition and it will explain much about his character and why he acts the way he does (plus they temper it a great deal from the theatrical version). The commentary by the writers / director also explains why they made the changes they did, which is pretty simple stuff: what works in a novel doesn't always work on film.
Philippa Boyens points out in an interview that the book version of Faramir, who essentially "abducts" them, offers them some tea, and says "Oh I'll help you, on your way then!" is fine for the medium in which it originated, but does nothing for tension on film and is a bit of a bore. And I tend to agree.
Plus I think it will make him a more interesting character by giving him some mistakes to redeem himself from, rather than being as pure as the wind-driven snow from the get-go. Much like I think Aragorn is made more interesting by adding some self-doubt.
Tax dollars well spent.
I didn't think Screamers was all that good. Frankly, I think there's enough material in there to make for another film that would be faithful to "The Second Variety" and be completely different from "Screamers."
Unfortunately, I think the tendency is to take PKD's ideas and pump them full of action, which has worked out fairly well in the past, but I'd like to see just one PKD story interpreted in the kind of quiet, thoughtful way that his stories are presented.
GATTACA has proven that science fiction can be done well without blazing guns and exploding buses, so I know they can treat PKD right and still make money. I'd love to see it just once, and there is no shortage of PKD stories out there ripe for the picking.
Please, 30 is not "old" by any means.
These guys should interview one of the guys at my workplace. He is over 50, married with a full-grown son, and is one of the most hardcore gamers I have ever seen. He has a house full of consoles, many of which I've never even heard of, and has "war stories" dating back to before I, as a considerably younger gamer, even HAD video games. And needless to say his reflexes, interest, etc. have not waned one bit. He's awesome, and could likely kick my ass at just about any game of my choosing.
In fact, where I work, most of the people there are older than I am (I'm 30), and they're almost all hardcore gamers. The one twenty-something guy that just started is actually the worst gamer of the lot, and regularly gets razzed by the rest of the crew. So I really don't think age enters into it as much as the article may be implying.
And, interestingly enough, there's only one guy there who's NOT married or with girlfriend. So much for that stereotype, too.
But then you're not going to see any of these guys playing the latest Sonic game or Crash Bandicoot or anything either, so...
So let me guess, instead of Clippy you have a little bouncing yellow smiley face that keeps darting in and changing the numbers on all your Excel documents?
So, 135 MB video files ready to download...
Trying to use up the remainder of that research grant I see.
You forgot the rest...
8. ISP tells you to call Qwest (or whomever provides your DSL lines). 9. Call Qwest's number, 10. start over from step 4.
No, I work tech support for an ISP, believe me when I say, you're hardly the only one with the ISP on speed dial.
Don't have a .NET Passport? To continue, you need to sign in with a Microsoft(R) .NET Passport.
And then on the other side of the page is:
The .NET Passport service is currently unavailable at this Web site for one of these reasons: blah blah further useless error messages.
This is truly awesome.
"Hi, welcome to MSN Newsbot. Before actually reading any news, you'll have to register a passport, and create a username, and log in, and give us a valid email address... oh, and by the way, you can't actually do any of these things. Thanks for visiting MSN Newsbot!!"
I think I'll stick with Google News, thanks all the same. It uses the revolutionary "click the link that says 'News' and you get news" technology.
"Hey, spam is undermining the usefulness of email as a communications tool. What can we possibly do about this problem?"
"Uhhh, start charging money for it."
Yeah, brilliant.
Oh that's just the latest NIN video, tell her to stop napping in front of the TV.
What a lucky break, I've been wondering where on God's green earth I can find me some Billy Ray Cyrus, Duelin' Banjos Play the "Lion King" Theme and Now That's What I Call Music Oh God Please Stop MXCVIII.
Now the only question is whether or not the Web site will blast obnoxious audio at you on full volume, like they do in the actual stores.
You could always buy this and rip it...
According to the FAQ, OAP will eventually be able to 'Read your favourite news web pages or blogs aloud to you.' A personal droid that reads Slashdot aloud to you -- what more could you ask for?"
(A girlfriend?)
Now that's a little mean-spirited. Link to the story, praise the guy for putting together a perfectly interesting project, and then backhand him for (presumably) not having a girlfriend. Not only is it extremely hackneyed, it's kind of an undeserved slap in the face.
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Mocking the Hand that Feeds Us!
Watch it? How about reading the book instead. It's better. Uses less bandwidth. And you (probably) won't go to jail for it.
Umm, shouldn't we read the actual bill, first?
I see you're new here.
Uh Clem. a former Belkin wireless router user, was perplexed to find machines on his network redirected to an ad for Belkin's new parental control system, following a software update.
The guy's name is "Uh Clem"?!
Man, he must have taken some ribbing in grade school. For a second I thought this article had been written by ignorant hayseeds from (insert state of choice here). "Uhhhh, Clem, the router t'ain't workin'."
You're a lightweight. I'm waiting until the sun is a burned-out husk so I can pick the last DVD edition civilization ever turned out from the ashen ruins of its dead cities.
It's the only way to be sure.
I just felt as great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Star Wars fans cried out in protest, and then suddenly stopped whining about "when is the Star Wars OT DVD coming out?"
Ahhh.
Now if only Lucas would truly take advantage of the DVD format and include both the original and "Special Editions" on the discs. But I'm not idealistic enough to actually hope for that.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you SUV fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in an SUV (Vortec 4800 V8 engine with 285 horsepower) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to create a level 17 solar flare. 20 minutes. At home, on my Volkswagen Bug running diesel, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this SUV, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various SUVs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a SUV that has run faster than its Rice-grinder counterpart, despite the SUVs' faster chip architecture. My six-disc in-dash CD changer and Bose speaker system runs faster than this 285 horsepower machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the SUV is a superior machine.
SUV addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a SUV over other faster, cheaper, more stable vehicles.
I recommend starting work on a time machine so you can head back to 1991.
perform an offline dictionary attack
What, you sneak up behind the sysadmin and brain him with a copy of Webster's?
I agree, I'm running ZoneAlarm personally. I've heard good and bad about it, but I tested it for a couple months and it seemed to work for me, so I kept it. My log of intrusion attempts at work is surprisingly large.
(I learned the hard way -- had to get a trojan on my machine before realizing, oops, need a firewall.)
Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but I'm running NAV 2004 and not only do I not have banner blocking, but there is certainly nothing in the options to enable or disable it, nor is there any mention of it in the options anywhere that I can find.
Makes me curious if there was another version of the program featuring banner-blocking after I purchased mine -- which would of course be typical.