Part Close Encounters in the wonder of its visuals;
Part A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick) in its pessimism of human nature;
Part 2001 in its glacial pacing and technology plot;
Part Hook and E.T. in its gushy family sentimentalism with otherworlders.
Naturally, Kubrick and Spielberg don't mix well, so AI sort of splices these together end to end.
Did I enjoy it? Yes. Do I recommend it? Yes, if you like said movies. I really enjoyed Jude Law as a robotic gigolo.
The computer science part of me screamed the whole way though... basic CS punches huge plot holes. The biggest is this: the linchpin of the entire plot is that the robotic boy can never stop loving and longing for its "mother" owner, despite being destined to outlive her. This is absurd -- not being able to reboot
his software, or at least reinstall it, is really contrived.
But the photography and special effects are amazing, especially in the hands of Spielberg's admirable ability to have the effects serve the plot and not the other way around.
And if you have any doubt in your mind that John Williams is the most versatile composer working today, this movie will put them to rest. Line up the soundtracks to "Star Wars," "Schindler's List," "Saving Private Ryan," "Seven Years in Tibet, and "AI" and you'll see what I mean.
A final spoiler note: Despite what critics and IMDB commenters say, I'm absolutely against the notion that the beings at the end are aliens. They may be shaped like the "Close Encounters" creatures, but please! "Artificial Intelligence" is the name of the friggin' movie.
An automatic fail-safe function restarts the server in the event of the operating system crashing. It comes fully configured as a Linux/Apache server...
I'm sure the Slashdot crowd is going to love that.
I believe this idea was explored in the Michael Douglas thriller The Game, in which -- in one of the indistinguishable layers of reality and truth, anyway -- a psychologist gives said Douglas many hours of physiological and psychological exams for the surreptitious purpose of successfully guessing all of his passwords.
I was quoting an American pop song "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette. The lyrics go like this: "An old man turned ninety-eight / He won the lottery and died the next day / It's a black fly in your chardonnay / It's a death row pardon two minutes too late / Isn't it ironic... don't you think"
English pundits were all over the song for again perverting the meaning of "irony" into meaning "unlucky," as you say. Why "again"? Because the first, real definition is nothing more than this: saying what you don't mean.
The first perversion, the American popularization of irony, is nicely summarized by the American Heritage Dictionary:
Usage Note: The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be
described as simply "coincidental" or "improbable," in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78
percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence "In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she
met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York." Some Panelists noted that this particular usage might
be acceptable if Susie had in fact moved to California in order to find a husband, in which case the story could be taken as
exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence
"Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the
hottest items in the stalls of the market," where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency.
I think it's a little ironic that today we talk about bringing Shrek and Final Fantasy to the desktop when just yesterday a slew of 4's and 5's affirmed that, beneath raw power, there is art in computer graphics.
Believe me, there is a lot of artistic skill that goes into making animation like that, from storyboarding to complicated modeling and animating to directorial talent and writing ability.
Just because Avid-style editing has been brought to the desktop, doesn't mean what you see on iFilm is as good as what you see in theaters. Most of the time it isn't. It's all about the talent, not the tools.
Case in point: Robert Rodriguez, who scraped together only $7,000 to become one of Hollywood's hot young directors. For those who don't know about him, his latest film was the hit Spy Kids.
Since when is the number of lines of code proportional to the quality of the software? If Red Hat 7.1 has 30 million lines of code over 6.2's 17 million, does that mean the product is 76% better? Is the code getting more sloppy as more programmers get involved? I feel like counsel is leading the witness for the author to say 7.1 has "60% more effort" under the COCOMO model. Kernel programmers, weigh in!
A group of archiving experts got together at some point (I'm not sure of the details) and decided that film is the safest archive format.
Even assuming that magnetic tapes, organically decomposing CDRs and other digital storage media will last into the next century, can we count on having the legacy equipment to read them? That's the advantage of storing an image on pure celluloid.
Cheer all you want about saving money with digital cameras -- but let's see how that floppy disk holds up to my photo albums in 100 years.
Ads may not mean to sway your opinion on a buy-by-buy basis. They also want to push their brand name into your psyche. If you have never needed to send flowers online before, you're more likely to skip the comparative shopping and go with 1800FLOWERS.com the day you do, since they've been associating their name with the market for years (while you thought you didn't care).
Frankly, nobody is. And that isn't Microsoft's
fault, any more than it was Michael Jordan's fault that nobody could take him one-on-one or Mozart's fault that he was surrounded by Salieris.
Katz didn't go much into Moulin Rouge, which I saw last week at the Ziegfeld (in NYC limited release). It was definitely worth the admission, but be warned that you will have to see the movie on its own terms. Back in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, once you accepted a world where people can jump and fly at will, you could immerse yourself in it and really enjoy yourself. Here, you have to resign yourself to a portrayal of the famous 1900 Paris nightclub Moulin Rouge that is laden with music from the rest of the 20th century -- everything from Kidman trying to upstage Marilyn Monroe's Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend to The Sound of Music and pop hits from the 70s and 80s. Some of the tie-ins -- like when the manager of the night club sings Like a Virgin to explain to the evil investor why starlet Satine (Kidman) won't sleep with him -- seem a bit contrived. But elsewhere, the fusion works, and some scenes had me laughing harder than I've ever laughed in a theater in my life (literally).
Satine falls in love with Ewan MacGregor's character (the force must be with him) as his bohemian team writes and produces a theatrical production for the nightclub. Obvious parallels are drawn between the Kidman-MacGregor relationship and the one within the play, and I sometimes felt the movie borrowed too liberally from Shakespeare in Love. But if enjoyed that movie and are in the mood for an unusual, decade-hopping circus of a film, look no further.
However, do not see this movie if you want to keep up with the progress of computer animation. I have no clue what Katz meant when he said Moulin Rouge is 90% CG -- it isn't even close. Many of the master shots of Paris are CG, or at least models motion-blurred by CG, but definitely see Shrek instead for that kind of volume. Maybe he left after the effects-laden opening. But the best thing I can say along those lines is that the effects here serve the plot and the style. They are a tool for the director (Baz Luhrmann), who uses them when he needs them, and not for the sake of using them.
Moulin Rouge is dazzling fun, but you may want to bring some dramamaine.
Even more common is the mistake of saying no less than four when you mean no fewer than four.
Proper grammar really matters in the job world. You may have perfect syntax in C++, Java and XML, but misusing words like it's, their/they're, to/too and than/then can quickly make you look like an idiot.
I think that everyone should get a copy of the Bedford Handbook or at least bookmark the online version. Also, put any writing awards and recognitions you've received on your resume.
how is this different from any other marketing information gathering device (for sale databases, grocery store name here cards, etc)
everyone is watching what their buyers are purchasing.. Most grocery stores don't tell you that they are going to do that when you sign up for their
"savings cards", how is what Amazon doing any different?
In grocery store discount cards, you are selling your privacy. You choose to let them track what you buy, when, in what quantities, with what other products, etc. in return for savings.
The stores are required by law to say what they are going to do. It's in the fine print of the application -- just most people don't read the fine print, or understand what it means.
Amazon, however collected information "secretly", without the consent of the customers and offering no such savings in return for such consent.
The rhetoric of the article kind of got on my nerves... BOW!! BOP!! BAM!! MICROSOFT IS BACK IN THE MATCH!!! and so forth.
--------------------------------
Re:Why were characters always "possessed"?
on
Voyager Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
How many times did Data act irrationally, only to find out that something had taken him over
Same with the Doctor, humans w/ mind control, etc. One of my least favorite plot devices. I finally decided that Star Trek fulfilling its role as a reflection of the American scene, where nobody takes responsibility for their own actions.
How many episodes don't end with specially engineered nanoprobes, or shield modulation, or a special retro-virus designed by the doctor, or some such nonsense solving the problem.
A lot of episodes end like that, which is why I concluded that tech-driven Voyager isn't as good as TNG, which did it less frequently. Even when they did use tech, they often used it with a strategy we can all understand and apply.
However, I disagree that tech deus ex machina is inherent to all sci-fi. Just because something is set in a sci-fi universe, doesn't mean a sudden invention has to resolve all the character conflicts.
For example, Darth Vader lies in the arms of Luke Skywalker after (spoiler!!) throwing the Emperor into the Death Star pit.
He says, "Luke... help me take this mask off."
Luke says "But you'll die."
Since it's character-driven sci-fi, Vader simply says "Nothing can stop that now. Let me look on you with my own eyes."
It it were Star Trek, Vader would have said: "Maybe if you tried recalibrating my helmet's obtronic resequencer to generate an isometric pulse, it'll restore your crushed lung with a isomorphic replacement."
Slashdot Mirror
What I didn't like about the ending was the way it played like a King's Quest (or other Sierra) game. Let me illustrate:
Uber-robot: "What we need to resurrect your mother is some sort of physical artifact, like a bone fragment, or a blood sample..."
Hmm.
Click on "Inventory."
Open the "Teddy" folder.
Yep, that lock of hair we got back in Scene 49 is still there.
Click on it. The cursor turns into a little lock-of-hair icon.
Click on the uber-robot.
Uber-robot: "Yes, this will do nicely! Now you can live happily ever after."
Still a good movie though.
However, if you haven't gone and seen it yet, leave when the narrator kicks in.
The narrator starts off the movie.
How can I best summarize AI?
Part Close Encounters in the wonder of its visuals;
Part A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick) in its pessimism of human nature;
Part 2001 in its glacial pacing and technology plot;
Part Hook and E.T. in its gushy family sentimentalism with otherworlders.
Naturally, Kubrick and Spielberg don't mix well, so AI sort of splices these together end to end.
Did I enjoy it? Yes. Do I recommend it? Yes, if you like said movies. I really enjoyed Jude Law as a robotic gigolo.
The computer science part of me screamed the whole way though... basic CS punches huge plot holes. The biggest is this: the linchpin of the entire plot is that the robotic boy can never stop loving and longing for its "mother" owner, despite being destined to outlive her. This is absurd -- not being able to reboot his software, or at least reinstall it, is really contrived.
But the photography and special effects are amazing, especially in the hands of Spielberg's admirable ability to have the effects serve the plot and not the other way around.
And if you have any doubt in your mind that John Williams is the most versatile composer working today, this movie will put them to rest. Line up the soundtracks to "Star Wars," "Schindler's List," "Saving Private Ryan," "Seven Years in Tibet, and "AI" and you'll see what I mean.
A final spoiler note: Despite what critics and IMDB commenters say, I'm absolutely against the notion that the beings at the end are aliens. They may be shaped like the "Close Encounters" creatures, but please! "Artificial Intelligence" is the name of the friggin' movie.
An automatic fail-safe function restarts the server in the event of the operating system crashing. It comes fully configured as a Linux/Apache server...
I'm sure the Slashdot crowd is going to love that.
I believe this idea was explored in the Michael Douglas thriller The Game, in which -- in one of the indistinguishable layers of reality and truth, anyway -- a psychologist gives said Douglas many hours of physiological and psychological exams for the surreptitious purpose of successfully guessing all of his passwords.
If you ever wondered what the .cx in "goatse.cx" stood for, now you know.
I guess the Australian space agency got the idea after they got mooned a bunch of times.
The article didn't imply what I objected to, but I thoguht b0ris (the poster and summarizer) did.
I was being facetious with the title.
I was quoting an American pop song "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette. The lyrics go like this: "An old man turned ninety-eight / He won the lottery and died the next day / It's a black fly in your chardonnay / It's a death row pardon two minutes too late / Isn't it ironic... don't you think"
English pundits were all over the song for again perverting the meaning of "irony" into meaning "unlucky," as you say. Why "again"? Because the first, real definition is nothing more than this: saying what you don't mean.
The first perversion, the American popularization of irony, is nicely summarized by the American Heritage Dictionary:
Usage Note: The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply "coincidental" or "improbable," in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence "In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York." Some Panelists noted that this particular usage might be acceptable if Susie had in fact moved to California in order to find a husband, in which case the story could be taken as exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence "Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market," where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency.
I think it's a little ironic that today we talk about bringing Shrek and Final Fantasy to the desktop when just yesterday a slew of 4's and 5's affirmed that, beneath raw power, there is art in computer graphics.
Believe me, there is a lot of artistic skill that goes into making animation like that, from storyboarding to complicated modeling and animating to directorial talent and writing ability.
Just because Avid-style editing has been brought to the desktop, doesn't mean what you see on iFilm is as good as what you see in theaters. Most of the time it isn't. It's all about the talent, not the tools.
Case in point: Robert Rodriguez, who scraped together only $7,000 to become one of Hollywood's hot young directors. For those who don't know about him, his latest film was the hit Spy Kids.
Since when is the number of lines of code proportional to the quality of the software? If Red Hat 7.1 has 30 million lines of code over 6.2's 17 million, does that mean the product is 76% better? Is the code getting more sloppy as more programmers get involved? I feel like counsel is leading the witness for the author to say 7.1 has "60% more effort" under the COCOMO model. Kernel programmers, weigh in!
Yes, CDRs use some sort of organic compound with a shelf life of only ten years (far short of aluminum).
I always make a backup CDR for every one I burn -- and it's a good thing, too. The oldest ones (3 years) are already failing.
--------------------------------
A group of archiving experts got together at some point (I'm not sure of the details) and decided that film is the safest archive format.
Even assuming that magnetic tapes, organically decomposing CDRs and other digital storage media will last into the next century, can we count on having the legacy equipment to read them? That's the advantage of storing an image on pure celluloid.
Cheer all you want about saving money with digital cameras -- but let's see how that floppy disk holds up to my photo albums in 100 years.
--------------------------------
Well, the proof is in the pudding, Dubya .. are you ready to practice what you preach?
That's a common misuse-- "the proof is in the pudding" makes no sense at all.
The phrase is supposed to be, "the proof of the pudding is in the tasting."
--------------------------------
Ads may not mean to sway your opinion on a buy-by-buy basis. They also want to push their brand name into your psyche. If you have never needed to send flowers online before, you're more likely to skip the comparative shopping and go with 1800FLOWERS.com the day you do, since they've been associating their name with the market for years (while you thought you didn't care).
--------------------------------
You're right... he mailed me back. He actually visiting my home town in September. Thanks!
--------------------------------
I guess the Y2K bug was a hoax too, since there wasn't any apocolypse. Not even a downed power plant or a stock market crash.
A very profitable hoax, though! Oh, to know COBOL...
--------------------------------
I was best friends with an Oskar Sandberg all through elementary school, before he went back to Sweden (his father's a diplomat).
I've only seen him once since, on a trip to Scandinavia.
Either a small world or a very common name (though switchboard comes up empty). Oscar: If "Red Diamond" means anything to you, email me!
--------------------------------
Frankly, nobody is. And that isn't Microsoft's fault, any more than it was Michael Jordan's fault that nobody could take him one-on-one or Mozart's fault that he was surrounded by Salieris.
Yeah, we show up in the darndest places.
--------------------------------
Katz didn't go much into Moulin Rouge, which I saw last week at the Ziegfeld (in NYC limited release). It was definitely worth the admission, but be warned that you will have to see the movie on its own terms. Back in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, once you accepted a world where people can jump and fly at will, you could immerse yourself in it and really enjoy yourself. Here, you have to resign yourself to a portrayal of the famous 1900 Paris nightclub Moulin Rouge that is laden with music from the rest of the 20th century -- everything from Kidman trying to upstage Marilyn Monroe's Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend to The Sound of Music and pop hits from the 70s and 80s. Some of the tie-ins -- like when the manager of the night club sings Like a Virgin to explain to the evil investor why starlet Satine (Kidman) won't sleep with him -- seem a bit contrived. But elsewhere, the fusion works, and some scenes had me laughing harder than I've ever laughed in a theater in my life (literally).
Satine falls in love with Ewan MacGregor's character (the force must be with him) as his bohemian team writes and produces a theatrical production for the nightclub. Obvious parallels are drawn between the Kidman-MacGregor relationship and the one within the play, and I sometimes felt the movie borrowed too liberally from Shakespeare in Love. But if enjoyed that movie and are in the mood for an unusual, decade-hopping circus of a film, look no further.
However, do not see this movie if you want to keep up with the progress of computer animation. I have no clue what Katz meant when he said Moulin Rouge is 90% CG -- it isn't even close. Many of the master shots of Paris are CG, or at least models motion-blurred by CG, but definitely see Shrek instead for that kind of volume. Maybe he left after the effects-laden opening. But the best thing I can say along those lines is that the effects here serve the plot and the style. They are a tool for the director (Baz Luhrmann), who uses them when he needs them, and not for the sake of using them.
Moulin Rouge is dazzling fun, but you may want to bring some dramamaine.
--------------------------------
Even more common is the mistake of saying no less than four when you mean no fewer than four.
Proper grammar really matters in the job world. You may have perfect syntax in C++, Java and XML, but misusing words like it's, their/they're, to/too and than/then can quickly make you look like an idiot.
I think that everyone should get a copy of the Bedford Handbook or at least bookmark the online version. Also, put any writing awards and recognitions you've received on your resume.
--------------------------------
how is this different from any other marketing information gathering device (for sale databases, grocery store name here cards, etc) everyone is watching what their buyers are purchasing.. Most grocery stores don't tell you that they are going to do that when you sign up for their "savings cards", how is what Amazon doing any different?
In grocery store discount cards, you are selling your privacy. You choose to let them track what you buy, when, in what quantities, with what other products, etc. in return for savings.
The stores are required by law to say what they are going to do. It's in the fine print of the application -- just most people don't read the fine print, or understand what it means.
Amazon, however collected information "secretly", without the consent of the customers and offering no such savings in return for such consent.
--------------------------------
Did I read that right, Haley Joel Osment is going to pilot the spacecraft??
--------------------------------
Wow, and just a little while ago we were talking about Microsoft going under withing six months.
The rhetoric of the article kind of got on my nerves... BOW!! BOP!! BAM!! MICROSOFT IS BACK IN THE MATCH!!! and so forth.
--------------------------------
How many times did Data act irrationally, only to find out that something had taken him over
Same with the Doctor, humans w/ mind control, etc. One of my least favorite plot devices. I finally decided that Star Trek fulfilling its role as a reflection of the American scene, where nobody takes responsibility for their own actions.
--------------------------------
How many episodes don't end with specially engineered nanoprobes, or shield modulation, or a special retro-virus designed by the doctor, or some such nonsense solving the problem.
A lot of episodes end like that, which is why I concluded that tech-driven Voyager isn't as good as TNG, which did it less frequently. Even when they did use tech, they often used it with a strategy we can all understand and apply.
However, I disagree that tech deus ex machina is inherent to all sci-fi. Just because something is set in a sci-fi universe, doesn't mean a sudden invention has to resolve all the character conflicts.
For example, Darth Vader lies in the arms of Luke Skywalker after (spoiler!!) throwing the Emperor into the Death Star pit.
He says, "Luke... help me take this mask off."
Luke says "But you'll die."
Since it's character-driven sci-fi, Vader simply says "Nothing can stop that now. Let me look on you with my own eyes."
It it were Star Trek, Vader would have said: "Maybe if you tried recalibrating my helmet's obtronic resequencer to generate an isometric pulse, it'll restore your crushed lung with a isomorphic replacement."
--------------------------------