Re:Negative review, but not (intentional) flamebai
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LOTR: The Two Towers
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· Score: 2
Pardon me, but I really don't understand the point of your comment - my goal in using a dismissive tone in regards to the term "canon" was to point out the futility of maintaining pure fidelity to textual canon when translating (virtually any) text to another medium.
Apparently this wasn't clear, and came across as flamebait. Whoops...
That being said, Duchamp's work was intended to be a attack on the existing artistic establishment; say whatever you will about Jackson's film (I'm not going to demand that you like it, just strongly defend my own opinion), but no one can reasonably believe that his goal is to undermine people's love of Tolkien's books. If his work fails, it fails; but it's certainly not coming from malicious, or even mocking, intent.
> Gimili:... he is the butt of endless short-jokes etc.... There's just no validity to him.
I think this is rather a case of Tolkien writing Gimli's character in ways that work with more gravity in a textual, vs. visual context. I giggle at the thought of the blurring speed necessary for Gimli's little legs to keep his pace up with Legolas's and Aragorn's; as I stated in another post, I think the director made the decision to make the humor deliberate, rather than have a laughable visual. This is similar territory to the removal of the broken-sword of Narsil scene in FOTR - a man drawing a broken sword is gonna look goofy unless you're in the room with him and he's far taller and scarier than you are.
That said, I would've liked to see more gravity for Gimli; on the other hand, I don't think any other character could've both provided comic relief _and_ been convincing in battle at the same time, and I'm overall glad for the comic relief.
> Frodo and Sam:... > Why are they in that city? Osgiliath was Faramir's next destination in the novels (after meeting Frodo & Sam), so this is less of a departure than it may seem. Personally, I was glad to see some of the border conflict with Mordor visualized (it's all offscreen in the books).
> Why does Frodo need to go and try and surrender himself to the ringwraith? Why did we need to see Sam doing his running, diving, savior thing?
The point was to provide a visual dramatic climax to Frodo's struggle with the ring (his fears of becoming like Gollum, of failure in the quest, the despair instilled in him by the ring) within this movie, while also proving Sam's role in the story. Frodo doesn't wish to see Gondor consumed by the ring, so in his despair he comes to close to giving up entirely - Sam rescues him from this. Considering that Frodo's confrontation with the wraith actually has valid, complex dramatic underpinnings I wouldn't call it "holywood crap" - it's certainly not as if he was running in front of an explosion.
OTOH, perhaps it wasn't as well acted as I think it was; I'd be interested in hearing what people who haven't read the novels think of that sequence.
> Why did we need to turn Faramir in to an exact clone of his brother, Boromir...OK, so not a lot happens with them, that translates well to the screen
You just answered your own question; I can't imagine a worse way to undermine the drama of a debate between Faramir and Frodo than to cut between that and Helm's Deep; or a worse way to undermine the action of Helm's Deep, for that matter (the entmoot barely managed to balance out is leisurely pace with amazing visuals). The other choice would've to make the meeting so short as to seem superfluous, and Faramir an unrealistic goody-two-shoes.
> Speaking of holywood crap - Aragorn: Why did he need to fall off that cliff?... He's not Kevin Costner...It's just cheesy holywood, mid movie, something dramatic needs to happen here, crap.
Movies have different pacing needs than books; I don't exactly hear you complaining about the warg battle that preceded the fall. The battle and fall provided the oomph needed after a long series of dialog scenes, thus making the audience more accepting of a calm interlude to explore Aragorn and Arwen's relationship in depths only hinted at in the first movie. Which, BTW, also provides thae audience an update on what the elves are up to (something Tolkien leaves up in the air for all of TTT and most of ROTK, which simply wouldn't work in visual medium).
And I don't know what you're talking about IRT Kevin Costner and cliffs, but then I'm sensible enough to avoid his films.;)
> Eowyn and Arwen:...we end up with stupid scenes like the cliff fall in order to give her something to do now we've given away what she's supposed to be doing.
IIRC Eowyn does amazingly little in the original text of TTT (more than Arwen, but that's not saying much); while I would have preferred to hear more of her cage speech with Aragorn, I don't see that as vital to this movie. Being that this is the 2nd of 3 films I'm OK with giving the benefit of the doubt that she is being introduced here, in order to develop her (along with Faramir) more in ROTK, when her actions actually have a greater bearing on the story.
> Ninja Ents... The Ents redirected the River Isen after smashing most of Isengard and realizing that they couldn't break into Orthanc, and so decided to put out the flaming pits. That's all canon.
I'd like to see more criticism of the new/changed sequences of this film based on the dramatic issues; the sense I get from the comments is that people disliked the scenes based on unfamiliarity, but then stopped thinking critically otherwise. Perhaps I'm completely wrong, but I'd appreciate more critique of what was on the screen, versus what people were hoping would be up there.
> It just sucks that what was a fanboy franchise... seems to have turned around and chased holywood style that it never needed
Just to clarify, I'd like to see comments from a visual storytelling perspective that describe why the changes were bad/unscuessful; trying to judge something based on where it lies on an axis between "fanboy frasnchise" and "holywood" (a choice between evils if there ever was one) is a terribly simple-minded way to approach any film.
Re:Negative review, but not (intentional) flamebai
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LOTR: The Two Towers
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· Score: 5, Insightful
One thing that fans of the book should keep in mind going into this movie is that different generations will visualize the movie in differenet ways; people who read the Bridge of Khazad-Dum sequence in the 60s tend to have a much less visually apocalyptic "mental imagery" of the scene than its presentation in Peter Jackson's film. Meanwhile, younger readers raised in a environment containing much more visually dynamic storytelling were far less startled - they visualized something much more akin to Jackson's visual intensity.
My large point is that there's little purpose to getting worked up about visual interpretations that don't necessarily match ones expectations; no one has the "one true interpretation" of any reasonably complex novel. Many, many things come down to taste, and this is only greatly complicated by adding a translation to another medium.
Having said that, I feel ornery enough to contradict most everything you list to complain about.
- Gandalf literally exorcises Saruman from possession of Theoden...[rather] than subduing Grima
Jackson has to demonstrate the connection between Grima and Saruman visually; this accomplishes that. The presentation may have been over-the-top, but a long back-and-forth between two old men while Grima squirms would have had less visual impact and lost the Saruman connection.
- Faramir, a noble and wise character in the book, is here really no different than Boromir.
While it is true that there are some drastic changes to Faramir character in TTT, I enjoyed the conflation of Faramir's return to Osgiliath with the Ringbearer's quest (which isn't all that huge a departure from the text, BTW - the Forbidden Pool is quite close to Osgiliath). The confrontation with the wraith provides a visual dramatization of Frodo's plight, Sam's bravery (heretofore not well shown) and convinces Faramir _not_ to take the ring. The closer-to-canon-alternative would have been to have a drawn-out debate between Faramir and Frodo that, which would have to be intercut with Helm's Deep and thus destroy the pacing/tone of both sequences (imagine intercutting between the Council of Elrond and the Tomb of Balin battle - blech). Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if Faramir's character comes into his nobility and bravery in the next film (consider the drawn-out character arc being applied to Aragorn, and my next reply).
- Theoden is much less heroic at Helm's Deep and has to be coaxed into doing anything (usually by Aragorn).... Like Faramir, he is a watered-down version of Tolkien's character...every other heroic character from the book had to be emasculated in order to make Aragorn look good.
You may notice that Jackson, by having Theoden show hesitation and doubt, has constructed a more psychologically realistic (i.e. believable) character than Tolkien did (in the books, both Aragorn and Theoden make life-altering changes in the space of a chapter and are never shown displaying doubt or hesitation thereafter - this ain't gonna work on screen, where dramatically static figures are dull unless they're engaged in battle... but I guess you think Legolas was "just perfect" and not at all dull?).
Anyway, Aragorn is shown despairing, frustrated, and scaring the crap out of the Rohan refugees while Theoden is shown trying to do his best under impossible circumstances, not always making the best decisions, and struggling with the results - this sounds like paralleled human dramas to me.
Also, to contradict your idea that Aragorn is being shown off to his best advantage and others downgraded, I would say that Theoden actually got the best dramatic notes in the film (next to Gollum) - at Theodred's grave, and while Hama suiting him up in armor.
- Gimli is reduced to bumbling comic relief except for... patented "me unscathed against 3-million baddies" fights.
I do agree that Gimli could've used more gravity (hopefully with the Halls of the Dead sequence in ROTK)..., but I also recall the comic relief during Tolkien's Helm Deep sequence came from Gimli - wheee, canon! And in a book, one does not notice the ridiculousness of a dwarf maintaining top speed running alongside two full-sized people. I think the choiuce was "laugh at" or "laugh with" the movie, and Jackson chose "laugh with".
As for the "me unscathed against millions" fights... did you not read the book? Any warrior in any battle taking down forty-plus enemy warriors in one-on-one combat is superhuman, period.
- New subplot with dog riders attacking the people of Rohan en route to Helm's deep, Aragorn's "death" and Arwen's (apparent) decision not to stay with him.
Oh no, another departure from "canon"! The flashback/connection scenes are used to develop the Aragorn/Arwen relationship and make the mortal/immortal choice plain to those who never read the novel (this was only hinted at in Jackson's FOTR), and thus shed more light on Aragorn's inner conflicts. This also adds interest to his relationship with Arwen, something almost entirely lacking in the Tolkien's original text (until you read the appendices - which were the inspiration for those flashbacks, BTW).
As for the Wargs, sure they're a plot device... but dammit, that was a great battle scene and helped the pace of the movie, while setting up character development. Not too shabby, I think.
- Elves show up to announce their alliance with the humans and save the day at Helm's Deep (????)
Oh no, another departure from "canon"! There are several ideas underlying this change:
a) that Arwen knows what is happening with Aragorn (re: the kiss at the riverbank), and is trying to help b) to keep the elves from coming across as uncaring, aloof cowards (running to Valinor...).
This way, they are shown to be involved with the conflict , rather than simply fleeing the conflict (which would be a perfectly reasonable conclusion, otherwise).
- The women and children of Rohan are kept in Helm's deep instead of another keep in the mountains...
Having the women/children at the Deep provided:
a) a greater, more immediate sense of danger; crude, but still a smart decision. b) the opportunity to show Theoden conscripting young men into the war, thus underlining Tolkien's theme of the horrors of war, a good reality check to help balance out the glamor of the battle sequences.
- Ents have to be tricked by Pippin to decide to to do anything about Saruman. Why? Pippin and Merry get their moments of glory later on. Was PJ just impatient?
The movie's way uses visual drama to show the betrayal of the ents; the other way invlves lots of swaying and Hoom-hooominh. I wonder which will work better in a visual medium? (speaking of which, Merry and Pippin were still rather too passive in this film).
- No Shelob
This is in the next movie, and was announced about ten months ago in an interview, and repeated ad nauseum everywhere on the 'Net. next!
- Gandalf does not confront Saruman / receive the Palantir
Given that none of the Fellowship has actually begun riding to Gondor at film's end (a departure from canon that you failed to note, along with the absence of the Huorns at the Deep), both of these could be shifted to occur at the beginning of the next film. Neither was necessary to demonstrate the defeat of Saruman or of the Uruk-Hai at Helm's Deep.
Sorry for the flamey bits of my response, but I do get the impression that your criticism focused on the changes to the text vs. whether underlying themes and tone of Tolkien's work was violated. You begin to make some good points, and I'd be interested in seeing those elaborated upon.
Just a rhetorical question, not a direct reply to your post, or realy the post that you are replying to.
Is is possible that this interest in complete audio "clarity" (i.e. removing all distortion) is misguided in the first place? (I distinguish "complete clarity" - the apparent end goal of digital audio - from "apparent clarity", which I'd define as the level that we've had with analog tape (studio) and vinyl since the 60's, if not the 50's.)
I am seriously interested in this question; my reasoning is as follows:
In the universe I live in, there's _plenty_ of misc. noise going on around me _all_the_time_ (at the moment I can hear the fan of my computer, the ventilation system, the cars outside, some wind, a little rain on the road, some electrical hum, and the noises I make breathing, shifting, and typing).
In order to avoid as much of this noise as possible, one must more or less lock oneself in a recording studio (shielded ventilation, sound-proofing, headphones, etc.). These environments are great for recording in, but this is because they are in no way like real life environments; in fact, they are very unlike real life environments, and thus (for most people) rather uncomfortable compared to real environments. (Just ask anyone stuck in an inside office with no windows or ventilation.)
What concerns me is that the goal of perfect audio clarity seems to me to have the implicit side-goal of reproducing the audio sterility of the recording studio along with the musical (or other) sounds that we want to hear. This environmental "non-sound" (though "extremely low noise" might be a better way to put it) is increasingly apparent in pop recording, esp. with the popularity of using mixing and misc. effects to create sounds that are simply not performable in the real world, even if they are originally based on (pieced-together) recordings of real instruments/people. The pieced-together nature of this work, esp. when designed to have some resemblance to recordings of live performances, tends to become more apparent the greater the "clarity" of the audio reproduction.
Because of this, I wonder if the distortion/warmth/whatever you want to call it of analog audio may smooth the path between the underlying sterility of studio-created recordings and the noisy environments (disregarding the most isolated and expensive of audiophile set-ups) that is our typical experience of music, whether it be at home, in the car, in a park on a boom box or walkman, inside a store, at a rock show, in a place of worship, or in a grandly appointed concert hall.
Another way to put this is to ask whether engineering the reproduction of perfectly "clear" audio may be incidentally depriving that audio of some natural "timbre" that we expect of sounds produced/performed in real world environments.
And if this is the case, do the imperfections of analog-reproduced audio perhaps act as a some sort of substitue "timbre", therby enabling the sounds that they "distort" to be perceived as more a part of our surroundings, and therefore more familiar and welcome?
(A perhaps interesting side question is to ask whether the advent of "perfectly clear" audio may result in increasing efforts to "dirty up" recordings in order to remove a listener-alienating aural sterility; I've already heard anecdotes to this effect, but I don't follow the audio industry closely enough to distinguish B.S. from actual common practice)
sounds like you may have some bad RAM issues; OS X's more advanced virtual memory system is rather more sensitive to issues with cheap RAM; these often manifest as kernel panics, etc. replacement with higher-quality RAM has been "miraculously clearing up these issues".
before dismissing this post, please check out the variety of user experiences re: this issue in this this report.
also, I have to object to the (immediate) parent post's tone; berating the person experiencing the frustration is unhelpful, to say the least...
Why does your Priceline bob-head look so strange?
on
Ask William Shatner
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· Score: 2
really now, this thadoesn't look like you at any age...
Re:Dumb Question.
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Film Gimp
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· Score: 2, Interesting
That's the first time that I've heard this explained for non-pros in any sort of sensible way (and I read a good number of digital video/FX magazines). Good job!
Bletchley Park was a wartime, conceived-from-the-beginning-as-secret operation; "public relations" was _not_ even remotely part of their work. Furthermore, most of the workers at BP were not appraised of the "big picture", they only knew about the segments that _they_ worked on. This was the case even amongst higher-ups within the given divisions.
The moon launch and landing, OTOH, was an internationally-publicized event that was witnessed from all over the entire planet (what, you think the Soviets and everyone else weren't watching?), and involved at least an order of magnitude more workers, a majority of whom would have easy access to verifying the actuality of the mission, and were not operating under the conditions of secrecy imposed at BP in any way whatsoever.
therefore, you are not comparing apples and apples, or even apples and oranges; you are comparing apples and dump trucks.
Gotta disagree with you on a bunch of these points... > Putting the elf on the horse with Frodo: a) Equestrian types complaining about horses under the influence of thousand-year-old mystic spirits... should learn to suspend their disbelief; why wouldn't these horses be enchanted in special, performance-enhancing ways? Or is Mordor above the use of magic steroids?;)
b) putting someone else on the horse with Frodo Actually, this works to enhance the tension regarding whether or not Frodo will take the ring at the Council. If he had already shown that degree of courage (at the river), then the moment of taking ont he burden of the ring would be less dramatic. It's all about visually-depicting drama, which is very different from verbally-depicted drama.
> the movie ends differently than the book does. NOOOOOOOO!! I believe the prior comment referred to the FOTR movie, which took its ending from the beginning of TTT. We dont know exactly how ROTK (or TTT!) will end yet - because it's not out yet! sure, PJ said that the Scouring won't happen, but that doesn't eliminate Frodo going to the Havens (which to my mind is more important to the themes you mention than the Scouring).
> But the change Saruman as well. This is pretty stupid. Actually, this simplifies the newbie audience's understanding of the villains in a very useful way; Saruman = a big henchman + Sauron is the biggest villain. Having them in opposition to one another would very confusing, esp. as Sauron's influence is only shown indirectly (through his minions) in the Third Age - he's never actually in the same scene! Whether this works can be disagreed with, but it's certainly not an unmotivated, useless change.
> The worse change is Aragon. The film variety is a complete wimp next to the book. In the book we are able to learn a _lot_ of backstory on Aragorn via stories, _many_ dialogue asides, and also the appendices. For the movie, they moved this character arc (of taking on the role of king, which in the book was more or less determined at the Council of Elrond, with everything else filled in later via dialogue) into the story that they could show (movies that show = good movies; movies that tell = dull movies.). So... look for Aragorn to "grow" into his destined role as king.
> Ents are also annoyed that the they saved the day in the _Two_Towers_ but got less than a second in the trailer. Hope you're being facetious with this one - the ents are going to be the big visual surprise for those who know about them, and a complete surprise for those who don't! That's why it's a trailer, vs. a "sampler".
While I agree that the experience of the movie doesn't match up to reading the books (or listening the audio adaptations - yes, I own all of them... so I'm pretty out there, even if I can't speak Quenya), neither do I think they should be approached in the same way.
I feel that Tolkien's primary writing interests (i.e. the kinds of passages that he enjoyed writing the most, vs. the ideas that he was most interested in conveying) were pastoral and historical, vs. spectacle.
Referring to his "on fairy stories" essay (sorry, don't have it in front of me), he describes one of his favorite effects as evoking the sense of something without filling in all the details (which would reduce it to the mundane). In fact, if there is anything that I find stingy abut Tolkien's writing, it is his brevity of description in the (for lack of a better term) action/otherwise-awe-inspiring sequences (on the plus side, this leaves one hungry for more).
Movies, OTOH, are a much more visceral and literal medium - and lend themselves directly to spectacle in a way that books never do - so I see it as a natural change for the films to focus on the visually awe-inspiring end of things, vs. encompassing the (almost never-ending) detail of the novels, much of which doesn't lend itself to a visual presentation.
So, while I'd certainly sit through a 45-hour, page-faithful version of LOTR, I'd also have to admit that it would almost inevitably make lousy viewing!:)
Anyway, I enjoyed the fast pacing of FOTR; I thought it helped lend a urgency to the film that would have evaporated were they spending too much - or any! - time sitting around discussing Beren and Luthien.
Actually, you're half right; Tolkien's British publisher insisted on breaking up his 6 "book", 1 volume work into 3 smaller volumes of 2 books each (due to a paper shortage), which compelled Tolkien to come up with new titles (as the original 6 "book" titles didn't apply broadly enough to the new groupings - TTT was originally "The Treason of Isengard" and "The Ring Goes South", IIRC).
In his letters Tolkien discusses his dissatisfaction with the title (though he came up with it), and vacillates as to exactly which two towers are referred to (!). Other towers he referrs to include Minas Morgul, and even Minas Tirith (although IMHO the last would only really be approp. for ROTK). I believe that Minas Morgul itself is described as having two towers on either side of its gates as well...
Anyway, I'm happy with it being ambiguous - but as far as the promos go, it makes sense to "nail this down" to shut down the ridiculous WTC connections.
And yes, you are correct, I don't have a girlfriend.;)
I agree - this is a real accomplishment in terms of pioneering a new development methodologies, esp. considering how geared the typical CS mindset is completely focused on absolutely predictable results.
I enjoy reading up on (some branches) of AI, and the most interesting advances (IMHO) in the last few years have been coming from the specific application end, i.e. video games and this... on the pure research end I'm still most interested in the work done by Douglas Hofstdater at U Indiana, but the work being done for games and movies really digs into on the important, but unsexy issues like "how the hell do we actually work with this stuff to get stuff done??". Sure, they've got a conceptually simple goal (make crowds fight!), but this is a case where the devil is in the details, but there are a billion details and the details are all that matters.
Anyway, it's great to see that they've made strides in making this sort of non-deterministic (kinda-misapplied-term) functionality usable by normal humans.
Besides, I'm freaking out at the idea of seeing 10,000 orcs (and the article mentions that there will be 100,000 fighters in one of the ROTK battles - yeep!)
Purchase some of the servers used to render the CGI in the first LOTR movie here.
Own a geeky piece of history!
Damn you to the pits of Mordor!
I just bought 4 (more!) TTT action figures this evening, and thought that my geek-collector mania had hit a new low - and now I see this... this server... this precious server, yes... yes, yes my precious... precious, yes, mine, all of it, mine!...
no that there weren't a few interesting things mentioned in the article.
- being able to move the mouse pointer between computers (assuming these are separate computers, not just multiple monitors); I assume this indicates some sort of network-transpart clipboard (and that the user is signed onto both computers). cool, that.
- the larger, semi-circle screen - mostly for the cool wraparound aspect (semi-inevitable considering increasingly thin monitors and e-paper (somewhere) down the line, though).
Otherwise, it sounds like they're just hashing out more variations of video/audio conferencing - whoop-de-whoo.
There seems to be a problem of understanding the _purpose_ of business communication, vs. just the _forms_ of communication. Video and audio voicemail are high-bandwidth, low content, and do little to guide the sender towards composing a coherent message. When using text, OTOH, we are often forced to skip the details and focus on the meat of what we intend to say.
However, neither of these formats truly _aids_ us in the actual composition of our thoughts - one can easily compose a syntactically perfect text message with zero content - and this is even easier in audio/video formats.
A spreadsheet and a database are useful in that they assist use in ordering large amounts of quanitative data; unfortunately, we have few tools that assist us in bridging the gap between quantiative data and qualitative data, in other words, making our intent clear while exposing the reasoning behind it.
Step-by-step-"Wizards" are a (mostly) futile stab in the general direction of this, tending to assume a very rigid result (as well as presuming that we know the final format of the ends result from the start!); what we need instead are tools that allow us to begin very broadly, and then assist us in narrowing our concepts down until we have a clear set of assumptions, observations, related analysis, and conclusions.
Yes, there are many _people_ who are good at this, and there are processes for _teaching_ people to be good at this, but we don't (yet) have automated tools that are good with helping people accomplish this.
And until someone manages to construct the fundemental versions of those tools, we'll have to deal with new versions of tools that make it easier to transfer nonsense back-and-forth, vs. actually developing, refining, and communicating ideas. Anything less than this is just another improved method to pretend that we're in the same room with someone who's not.
Or, God forbid, another variation on Powerpoint (shudder).
Argh! The parent post wasn't offtopic, it was one of the first to point out the error! (since fixed, thanks to this and related posts!)
I'm not annoyed because of the (insignificant) loss of a karma point, but because of the spastic moderation "methods" practiced by some users of this site.
No one should be _punished_ for helping the editors do their jobs!
...of censoring films, I have little problem with this "in concept", as it is voluntary on the part of the renter.
In practice, however, I get a sinking feeling in my belly at the idea that censored versions of "cultural works" (movies, books, whatever) will be going into wide distribution (not sure how wide, but certainly wider than it currently is should this be judged a legal practice). this uneasiness is compounded by the realization that community pressure will push people towards only renting from the "nice store" that doesn't push "dirty movies" (yes I'm caricaturing, but social pressures _do_ work this way).
I would much prefer that the original version of the movie be distributed on DVD, along with a DVD playlist that can be used to playback a "niche audience" version (similar to "play widescreen/fullscreen").
I see this as actually being a significant enough market that some sort of modified DVD player that accepts a separate CD (containing one or many "alternate cut" playlists for a film) could be a strong seller, with several bonuses:
variable cuts could be made for different community standards (some people don't like sex in movies, some don't like violence. some don't like both, some are OK with both, but hate the dirty words. this system could serve all of these groups without having to dub multiple copies for each audience, or use complex controls (and no, it is not reasonable to ask someone to update a text-based config file in order to watch a movie. sheesh.)
the "closeted" uncensored-movie viwer (living in areas where the censored store is the only video outlet) could watch their PG+ fare with impunity
the studios can't claim distribution-based copyright infringment, and (once more) the original cut option is still there...
unlike the 100 posts discussing how one could do this using DeCSS + misc. linux utilities, this could be watched on a home entertainment system without having to deal with the fershluggin' computer.
no generation-loss transfer issues
As far as this case goes (IANAL etc. etc.), I see the achilles heel as being the cooperative ownership aspect. That seems to fall right in the zone of judicial judgment (please correct me if I'm off), and the entertainment industry has all those scary lawyers who know exactly which judges to push the case in front of, not to mention plenty of other dirty tricks.
(In short, both sides suck, and everyone should listen to me.)
It's a rather fawning bit, but this seems to me to be one of the rare interviews in which the director isn't just puffing up his work, but actually discussing it.
Besides, this movie looks to be that good. I grabbed a VCD bootleg of this in Taiwan many moons ago, and despite the crappy transfer quality + lack of dubbing/subtitles, I watched the entire first half before I began to feel lost (stopped after that so that I could enjoy the movie in its full-fledged form more). Miyazaki is a fine, fine visual storyteller, and by all accounts so far, the dub (lead by John Lassetter of Pixar fame) is an achievement in of itself.
While I appreciate your high-mindedness, I would be terribly upset to live in a world where people didn't hold strong opinions, and express them with equal vigor.
Certainly, David Brin may lose some audience members who are offended by the release of his unfettered opinion into the terrifying wilds of the public mind - however, I much prefer this approach to the the ice-cream smooth "personas" taken on by the majority of public figures.
Could Brin's tone have cleaned up his tone a bit? Sure, but he was clearly aiming for casual, non-academic tone - he wished to engage with other SF fans on a personal level, while applying his professional expertise. By taking on a casual tone, he would avoid the pedantic sensibility that he railed against in his essay. So what that he talked some shit - if you were offended, I'm sure you're not the audience he was trying to persuade.
As for me, I find his willingness to call it as he sees it refreshing, esp. when the other choice is to pretend that he and all other professional SF authors/writes/directors/etc. (incl. Lucas) are members of a secret elite who may never be seen to comment on each other in public outside of making simple reassuring and supportive grunts.
So many "public figures" are afraid to have opinions - there's a real difference between acting civility and avoiding conversation entirely. In a choice between narcissistic self-involvement and engagement with the outside world, I find the public figures who are willing to engage in an actual conversation with the public to be far more compelling than, oh, for example... George Lucas. (sorry, that was low. but fun and appropriate.)
OTOH, I will allow that it is certainly possible to take this approach to far as well - for an example of this, check out Harlan Ellison. However, IMHO Brin has _plenty_ of karma left to burn before he goes from "opinionated" to "crank".
Sheesh, does noone here appreciates the value of rivalry and competition?;)
Musicians, authors, artists, etc. are all on some level entertainers - there's a long long long historical record of rivalries between poets, painters, musicians, etc. Check out what Byron wrote about his contemporaries- or better yet, what the wrote about him!
More recently, the Oasis/Blur rivalry between Blur + Oasis was an _obsessive_ topic in the UK music scene for _years_.
This sort of rivalry can be genuinely productive, by making both sides work harder to top the other. "Competition" is a concept you might read up on...
Certainly, if MJ said "Bon Jovi sucks" we'd go "Dumbass". Then again, MJ and Bon Jovi travel in _very_ different musical circles - their music isn't expected to influence each other, let along compete in the marketplace. Perhaps if he had something relevant to say then it would be worth listening. The fact that he most likely doesn't says more about the division between genres in the current music market than it does about his right to comment on the work of other musicians.
Brin, on the other hand, is an acclaimed SF author, and Star Wars is an SF phenomenon (movies, books, etc.). This is his ballpark! This is is area of expertise! He's not only expected, but practically _required_ to have an opinion on Star Wars! Does he have to publish his opinion, no...
But guess what? By publishing his opinion he can provide entertainment and insight to others, and add to conversation of ideas in his chosen field of practice.
In this case it is hopeless that Lucas will actually listen to another human being, but that in no way deprives Brin of his right to call "foul!" on something he sees as polluting the marketplace he works within.
It's silly to respond at this point, but I'm surfing my old comments looking for interesting replies. This one seemed to call out for some response.
While I could argue the "work for hire" (i.e. ownership of the negatives) issue until I'm blue in the face (in short: as much as customers may argue otherwise, work-for-hire transactions are not the default - I own the rights to work unless you pay more.), I'll instead focus on one particular aspect of this transaction that makes me see the groom/photo hirer as being negligent.
Photography _as_a_medium_ are inherently about reproduction; you hang the prints, not the (original) negative. When someone hires a pro photographer, the expectation is _always_ that the pro photgrapher will handle the developing and printing, because they have thje closest knowledge of the film used, conditions of the shoot, etc. Even if they are outsourcing the actual reproduction, they are definitely providing careful instruction to the developer house. It's a severe oversimplification to assume that a pro photog is only useful for the (very involved) job of getting the shots. Developing and reproduction are equally important.
Therefore, the fact that the hirer of the photog didn't get the detailed info about cost of prints/digital files/etc. - i.e., the actual end product of the business transactions - makes me see that they simply were naive about the process.
And there's nothing morally wrong about naievete (although it can be costly). However, I object to the righteous tone taken by the author, who seems mostly interested in justifying his naive assumptions.
You may argue that it's the wedding photographer's job to provide maximum information about her rates, etc... but one can't catch everything, and I rather doubt that the photographer was cavenly plotting to "screw the couple over".
In other words, though there may be some merit to his larger argument re: digital photography lowering the costs of reproductions, this does not mean that he wasn't stupid in his own case.
It's OK for fans of a genre/author to comment, but not other people who also work in the same field?
I can understand the "conflict of interest" argument re: making a living out of making things/making a living out of critiqueing the made things", but you appear to be basing this on the idea of "bad taste".
I think this is the sort of thing that should happend much more often - it's also the sort of thing that gets little publicity, as it's not in the distributor's (movies, TV, books, etc.) financial interest for the audience to feel conflicted about buying into X.
Critics tends to be "3rd-parties" to provide a comfortable layer preventing the audience from feeling conflicted about what they are interested in seeing.
Here's exactly the sort of thing that studios hate: "I like Director A + Director B; A trashed B's last movie - am I allowed to like them both anymore??!!" Very junior high.
Adults can be more sophisticated about their patronage choices... but XXX made how many hundred million?
I mean, shouldnt a critique of the movie be out, say, within a month or two of the movie being released??
You're right - the millions of words that have been written on films (and don't forget TV!) should be thrown out immediately. Someone better tell my former film history professors to ditch their current projects, too. Sure they'll be crushed, but once I explain that those movies aren't shiny & new, I'm sure they'll move on to new careers.
While we're at it, let's ignore all cultural products that are more than a few weeks old - reflection (and especially re-consideration) is always bad, bad bad! And the concept that the passage of time can enable objectivity and new perspectives - that's all hogwash!
(Boy, this would have made my art history courses at school so much easier!)
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Pardon me, but I really don't understand the point of your comment - my goal in using a dismissive tone in regards to the term "canon" was to point out the futility of maintaining pure fidelity to textual canon when translating (virtually any) text to another medium.
Apparently this wasn't clear, and came across as flamebait. Whoops...
That being said, Duchamp's work was intended to be a attack on the existing artistic establishment; say whatever you will about Jackson's film (I'm not going to demand that you like it, just strongly defend my own opinion), but no one can reasonably believe that his goal is to undermine people's love of Tolkien's books. If his work fails, it fails; but it's certainly not coming from malicious, or even mocking, intent.
> Gimili: ... he is the butt of endless short-jokes etc.... There's just no validity to him.
...
;)
...we end up with stupid scenes like the cliff fall in order to give her something to do now we've given away what she's supposed to be doing.
I think this is rather a case of Tolkien writing Gimli's character in ways that work with more gravity in a textual, vs. visual context. I giggle at the thought of the blurring speed necessary for Gimli's little legs to keep his pace up with Legolas's and Aragorn's; as I stated in another post, I think the director made the decision to make the humor deliberate, rather than have a laughable visual. This is similar territory to the removal of the broken-sword of Narsil scene in FOTR - a man drawing a broken sword is gonna look goofy unless you're in the room with him and he's far taller and scarier than you are.
That said, I would've liked to see more gravity for Gimli; on the other hand, I don't think any other character could've both provided comic relief _and_ been convincing in battle at the same time, and I'm overall glad for the comic relief.
> Frodo and Sam:
> Why are they in that city?
Osgiliath was Faramir's next destination in the novels (after meeting Frodo & Sam), so this is less of a departure than it may seem. Personally, I was glad to see some of the border conflict with Mordor visualized (it's all offscreen in the books).
> Why does Frodo need to go and try and surrender himself to the ringwraith? Why did we need to see Sam doing his running, diving, savior thing?
The point was to provide a visual dramatic climax to Frodo's struggle with the ring (his fears of becoming like Gollum, of failure in the quest, the despair instilled in him by the ring) within this movie, while also proving Sam's role in the story. Frodo doesn't wish to see Gondor consumed by the ring, so in his despair he comes to close to giving up entirely - Sam rescues him from this. Considering that Frodo's confrontation with the wraith actually has valid, complex dramatic underpinnings I wouldn't call it "holywood crap" - it's certainly not as if he was running in front of an explosion.
OTOH, perhaps it wasn't as well acted as I think it was; I'd be interested in hearing what people who haven't read the novels think of that sequence.
> Why did we need to turn Faramir in to an exact clone of his brother, Boromir...OK, so not a lot happens with them, that translates well to the screen
You just answered your own question; I can't imagine a worse way to undermine the drama of a debate between Faramir and Frodo than to cut between that and Helm's Deep; or a worse way to undermine the action of Helm's Deep, for that matter (the entmoot barely managed to balance out is leisurely pace with amazing visuals). The other choice would've to make the meeting so short as to seem superfluous, and Faramir an unrealistic goody-two-shoes.
> Speaking of holywood crap - Aragorn: Why did he need to fall off that cliff?... He's not Kevin Costner...It's just cheesy holywood, mid movie, something dramatic needs to happen here, crap.
Movies have different pacing needs than books; I don't exactly hear you complaining about the warg battle that preceded the fall. The battle and fall provided the oomph needed after a long series of dialog scenes, thus making the audience more accepting of a calm interlude to explore Aragorn and Arwen's relationship in depths only hinted at in the first movie. Which, BTW, also provides thae audience an update on what the elves are up to (something Tolkien leaves up in the air for all of TTT and most of ROTK, which simply wouldn't work in visual medium).
And I don't know what you're talking about IRT Kevin Costner and cliffs, but then I'm sensible enough to avoid his films.
> Eowyn and Arwen:
IIRC Eowyn does amazingly little in the original text of TTT (more than Arwen, but that's not saying much); while I would have preferred to hear more of her cage speech with Aragorn, I don't see that as vital to this movie. Being that this is the 2nd of 3 films I'm OK with giving the benefit of the doubt that she is being introduced here, in order to develop her (along with Faramir) more in ROTK, when her actions actually have a greater bearing on the story.
> Ninja Ents...
The Ents redirected the River Isen after smashing most of Isengard and realizing that they couldn't break into Orthanc, and so decided to put out the flaming pits. That's all canon.
I'd like to see more criticism of the new/changed sequences of this film based on the dramatic issues; the sense I get from the comments is that people disliked the scenes based on unfamiliarity, but then stopped thinking critically otherwise. Perhaps I'm completely wrong, but I'd appreciate more critique of what was on the screen, versus what people were hoping would be up there.
> It just sucks that what was a fanboy franchise... seems to have turned around and chased holywood style that it never needed
Just to clarify, I'd like to see comments from a visual storytelling perspective that describe why the changes were bad/unscuessful; trying to judge something based on where it lies on an axis between "fanboy frasnchise" and "holywood" (a choice between evils if there ever was one) is a terribly simple-minded way to approach any film.
One thing that fans of the book should keep in mind going into this movie is that different generations will visualize the movie in differenet ways; people who read the Bridge of Khazad-Dum sequence in the 60s tend to have a much less visually apocalyptic "mental imagery" of the scene than its presentation in Peter Jackson's film. Meanwhile, younger readers raised in a environment containing much more visually dynamic storytelling were far less startled - they visualized something much more akin to Jackson's visual intensity.
... patented "me unscathed against 3-million baddies" fights.
My large point is that there's little purpose to getting worked up about visual interpretations that don't necessarily match ones expectations; no one has the "one true interpretation" of any reasonably complex novel. Many, many things come down to taste, and this is only greatly complicated by adding a translation to another medium.
Having said that, I feel ornery enough to contradict most everything you list to complain about.
- Gandalf literally exorcises Saruman from possession of Theoden...[rather] than subduing Grima
Jackson has to demonstrate the connection between Grima and Saruman visually; this accomplishes that. The presentation may have been over-the-top, but a long back-and-forth between two old men while Grima squirms would have had less visual impact and lost the Saruman connection.
- Faramir, a noble and wise character in the book, is here really no different than Boromir.
While it is true that there are some drastic changes to Faramir character in TTT, I enjoyed the conflation of Faramir's return to Osgiliath with the Ringbearer's quest (which isn't all that huge a departure from the text, BTW - the Forbidden Pool is quite close to Osgiliath). The confrontation with the wraith provides a visual dramatization of Frodo's plight, Sam's bravery (heretofore not well shown) and convinces Faramir _not_ to take the ring. The closer-to-canon-alternative would have been to have a drawn-out debate between Faramir and Frodo that, which would have to be intercut with Helm's Deep and thus destroy the pacing/tone of both sequences (imagine intercutting between the Council of Elrond and the Tomb of Balin battle - blech). Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if Faramir's character comes into his nobility and bravery in the next film (consider the drawn-out character arc being applied to Aragorn, and my next reply).
- Theoden is much less heroic at Helm's Deep and has to be coaxed into doing anything (usually by Aragorn).... Like Faramir, he is a watered-down version of Tolkien's character...every other heroic character from the book had to be emasculated in order to make Aragorn look good.
You may notice that Jackson, by having Theoden show hesitation and doubt, has constructed a more psychologically realistic (i.e. believable) character than Tolkien did (in the books, both Aragorn and Theoden make life-altering changes in the space of a chapter and are never shown displaying doubt or hesitation thereafter - this ain't gonna work on screen, where dramatically static figures are dull unless they're engaged in battle... but I guess you think Legolas was "just perfect" and not at all dull?).
Anyway, Aragorn is shown despairing, frustrated, and scaring the crap out of the Rohan refugees while Theoden is shown trying to do his best under impossible circumstances, not always making the best decisions, and struggling with the results - this sounds like paralleled human dramas to me.
Also, to contradict your idea that Aragorn is being shown off to his best advantage and others downgraded, I would say that Theoden actually got the best dramatic notes in the film (next to Gollum) - at Theodred's grave, and while Hama suiting him up in armor.
- Gimli is reduced to bumbling comic relief except for
I do agree that Gimli could've used more gravity (hopefully with the Halls of the Dead sequence in ROTK)..., but I also recall the comic relief during Tolkien's Helm Deep sequence came from Gimli - wheee, canon! And in a book, one does not notice the ridiculousness of a dwarf maintaining top speed running alongside two full-sized people. I think the choiuce was "laugh at" or "laugh with" the movie, and Jackson chose "laugh with".
As for the "me unscathed against millions" fights... did you not read the book? Any warrior in any battle taking down forty-plus enemy warriors in one-on-one combat is superhuman, period.
- New subplot with dog riders attacking the people of Rohan en route to Helm's deep, Aragorn's "death" and Arwen's (apparent) decision not to stay with him.
Oh no, another departure from "canon"! The flashback/connection scenes are used to develop the Aragorn/Arwen relationship and make the mortal/immortal choice plain to those who never read the novel (this was only hinted at in Jackson's FOTR), and thus shed more light on Aragorn's inner conflicts. This also adds interest to his relationship with Arwen, something almost entirely lacking in the Tolkien's original text (until you read the appendices - which were the inspiration for those flashbacks, BTW).
As for the Wargs, sure they're a plot device... but dammit, that was a great battle scene and helped the pace of the movie, while setting up character development. Not too shabby, I think.
- Elves show up to announce their alliance with the humans and save the day at Helm's Deep (????)
Oh no, another departure from "canon"! There are several ideas underlying this change:
a) that Arwen knows what is happening with Aragorn (re: the kiss at the riverbank), and is trying to help
b) to keep the elves from coming across as uncaring, aloof cowards (running to Valinor...).
This way, they are shown to be involved with the conflict , rather than simply fleeing the conflict (which would be a perfectly reasonable conclusion, otherwise).
- The women and children of Rohan are kept in Helm's deep instead of another keep in the mountains...
Having the women/children at the Deep provided:
a) a greater, more immediate sense of danger; crude, but still a smart decision.
b) the opportunity to show Theoden conscripting young men into the war, thus underlining Tolkien's theme of the horrors of war, a good reality check to help balance out the glamor of the battle sequences.
- Ents have to be tricked by Pippin to decide to to do anything about Saruman. Why? Pippin and Merry get their moments of glory later on. Was PJ just impatient?
The movie's way uses visual drama to show the betrayal of the ents; the other way invlves lots of swaying and Hoom-hooominh. I wonder which will work better in a visual medium? (speaking of which, Merry and Pippin were still rather too passive in this film).
- No Shelob
This is in the next movie, and was announced about ten months ago in an interview, and repeated ad nauseum everywhere on the 'Net. next!
- Gandalf does not confront Saruman / receive the Palantir
Given that none of the Fellowship has actually begun riding to Gondor at film's end (a departure from canon that you failed to note, along with the absence of the Huorns at the Deep), both of these could be shifted to occur at the beginning of the next film. Neither was necessary to demonstrate the defeat of Saruman or of the Uruk-Hai at Helm's Deep.
Sorry for the flamey bits of my response, but I do get the impression that your criticism focused on the changes to the text vs. whether underlying themes and tone of Tolkien's work was violated. You begin to make some good points, and I'd be interested in seeing those elaborated upon.
Just a rhetorical question, not a direct reply to your post, or realy the post that you are replying to.
Is is possible that this interest in complete audio "clarity" (i.e. removing all distortion) is misguided in the first place? (I distinguish "complete clarity" - the apparent end goal of digital audio - from "apparent clarity", which I'd define as the level that we've had with analog tape (studio) and vinyl since the 60's, if not the 50's.)
I am seriously interested in this question; my reasoning is as follows:
In the universe I live in, there's _plenty_ of misc. noise going on around me _all_the_time_ (at the moment I can hear the fan of my computer, the ventilation system, the cars outside, some wind, a little rain on the road, some electrical hum, and the noises I make breathing, shifting, and typing).
In order to avoid as much of this noise as possible, one must more or less lock oneself in a recording studio (shielded ventilation, sound-proofing, headphones, etc.). These environments are great for recording in, but this is because they are in no way like real life environments; in fact, they are very unlike real life environments, and thus (for most people) rather uncomfortable compared to real environments. (Just ask anyone stuck in an inside office with no windows or ventilation.)
What concerns me is that the goal of perfect audio clarity seems to me to have the implicit side-goal of reproducing the audio sterility of the recording studio along with the musical (or other) sounds that we want to hear. This environmental "non-sound" (though "extremely low noise" might be a better way to put it) is increasingly apparent in pop recording, esp. with the popularity of using mixing and misc. effects to create sounds that are simply not performable in the real world, even if they are originally based on (pieced-together) recordings of real instruments/people. The pieced-together nature of this work, esp. when designed to have some resemblance to recordings of live performances, tends to become more apparent the greater the "clarity" of the audio reproduction.
Because of this, I wonder if the distortion/warmth/whatever you want to call it of analog audio may smooth the path between the underlying sterility of studio-created recordings and the noisy environments (disregarding the most isolated and expensive of audiophile set-ups) that is our typical experience of music, whether it be at home, in the car, in a park on a boom box or walkman, inside a store, at a rock show, in a place of worship, or in a grandly appointed concert hall.
Another way to put this is to ask whether engineering the reproduction of perfectly "clear" audio may be incidentally depriving that audio of some natural "timbre" that we expect of sounds produced/performed in real world environments.
And if this is the case, do the imperfections of analog-reproduced audio perhaps act as a some sort of substitue "timbre", therby enabling the sounds that they "distort" to be perceived as more a part of our surroundings, and therefore more familiar and welcome?
(A perhaps interesting side question is to ask whether the advent of "perfectly clear" audio may result in increasing efforts to "dirty up" recordings in order to remove a listener-alienating aural sterility; I've already heard anecdotes to this effect, but I don't follow the audio industry closely enough to distinguish B.S. from actual common practice)
sounds like you may have some bad RAM issues; OS X's more advanced virtual memory system is rather more sensitive to issues with cheap RAM; these often manifest as kernel panics, etc. replacement with higher-quality RAM has been "miraculously clearing up these issues".
before dismissing this post, please check out the variety of user experiences re: this issue in this this report.
also, I have to object to the (immediate) parent post's tone; berating the person experiencing the frustration is unhelpful, to say the least...
really now, this thadoesn't look like you at any age...
That's the first time that I've heard this explained for non-pros in any sort of sensible way (and I read a good number of digital video/FX magazines). Good job!
This is a deeply silly comparison to make.
Bletchley Park was a wartime, conceived-from-the-beginning-as-secret operation; "public relations" was _not_ even remotely part of their work. Furthermore, most of the workers at BP were not appraised of the "big picture", they only knew about the segments that _they_ worked on. This was the case even amongst higher-ups within the given divisions.
The moon launch and landing, OTOH, was an internationally-publicized event that was witnessed from all over the entire planet (what, you think the Soviets and everyone else weren't watching?), and involved at least an order of magnitude more workers, a majority of whom would have easy access to verifying the actuality of the mission, and were not operating under the conditions of secrecy imposed at BP in any way whatsoever.
therefore, you are not comparing apples and apples, or even apples and oranges; you are comparing apples and dump trucks.
Gotta disagree with you on a bunch of these points... ;)
> Putting the elf on the horse with Frodo:
a) Equestrian types complaining about horses under the influence of thousand-year-old mystic spirits... should learn to suspend their disbelief; why wouldn't these horses be enchanted in special, performance-enhancing ways? Or is Mordor above the use of magic steroids?
b) putting someone else on the horse with Frodo
Actually, this works to enhance the tension regarding whether or not Frodo will take the ring at the Council. If he had already shown that degree of courage (at the river), then the moment of taking ont he burden of the ring would be less dramatic. It's all about visually-depicting drama, which is very different from verbally-depicted drama.
> the movie ends differently than the book does. NOOOOOOOO!!
I believe the prior comment referred to the FOTR movie, which took its ending from the beginning of TTT. We dont know exactly how ROTK (or TTT!) will end yet - because it's not out yet! sure, PJ said that the Scouring won't happen, but that doesn't eliminate Frodo going to the Havens (which to my mind is more important to the themes you mention than the Scouring).
> But the change Saruman as well. This is pretty stupid.
Actually, this simplifies the newbie audience's understanding of the villains in a very useful way; Saruman = a big henchman + Sauron is the biggest villain. Having them in opposition to one another would very confusing, esp. as Sauron's influence is only shown indirectly (through his minions) in the Third Age - he's never actually in the same scene! Whether this works can be disagreed with, but it's certainly not an unmotivated, useless change.
> The worse change is Aragon. The film variety is a complete wimp next to the book.
In the book we are able to learn a _lot_ of backstory on Aragorn via stories, _many_ dialogue asides, and also the appendices. For the movie, they moved this character arc (of taking on the role of king, which in the book was more or less determined at the Council of Elrond, with everything else filled in later via dialogue) into the story that they could show (movies that show = good movies; movies that tell = dull movies.). So... look for Aragorn to "grow" into his destined role as king.
> Ents are also annoyed that the they saved the day in the _Two_Towers_ but got less than a second in the trailer.
Hope you're being facetious with this one - the ents are going to be the big visual surprise for those who know about them, and a complete surprise for those who don't! That's why it's a trailer, vs. a "sampler".
arggh, should be getting work done...
While I agree that the experience of the movie doesn't match up to reading the books (or listening the audio adaptations - yes, I own all of them... so I'm pretty out there, even if I can't speak Quenya), neither do I think they should be approached in the same way.
:)
I feel that Tolkien's primary writing interests (i.e. the kinds of passages that he enjoyed writing the most, vs. the ideas that he was most interested in conveying) were pastoral and historical, vs. spectacle.
Referring to his "on fairy stories" essay (sorry, don't have it in front of me), he describes one of his favorite effects as evoking the sense of something without filling in all the details (which would reduce it to the mundane). In fact, if there is anything that I find stingy abut Tolkien's writing, it is his brevity of description in the (for lack of a better term) action/otherwise-awe-inspiring sequences (on the plus side, this leaves one hungry for more).
Movies, OTOH, are a much more visceral and literal medium - and lend themselves directly to spectacle in a way that books never do - so I see it as a natural change for the films to focus on the visually awe-inspiring end of things, vs. encompassing the (almost never-ending) detail of the novels, much of which doesn't lend itself to a visual presentation.
So, while I'd certainly sit through a 45-hour, page-faithful version of LOTR, I'd also have to admit that it would almost inevitably make lousy viewing!
Anyway, I enjoyed the fast pacing of FOTR; I thought it helped lend a urgency to the film that would have evaporated were they spending too much - or any! - time sitting around discussing Beren and Luthien.
Actually, you're half right; Tolkien's British publisher insisted on breaking up his 6 "book", 1 volume work into 3 smaller volumes of 2 books each (due to a paper shortage), which compelled Tolkien to come up with new titles (as the original 6 "book" titles didn't apply broadly enough to the new groupings - TTT was originally "The Treason of Isengard" and "The Ring Goes South", IIRC).
;)
In his letters Tolkien discusses his dissatisfaction with the title (though he came up with it), and vacillates as to exactly which two towers are referred to (!). Other towers he referrs to include Minas Morgul, and even Minas Tirith (although IMHO the last would only really be approp. for ROTK). I believe that Minas Morgul itself is described as having two towers on either side of its gates as well...
Anyway, I'm happy with it being ambiguous - but as far as the promos go, it makes sense to "nail this down" to shut down the ridiculous WTC connections.
And yes, you are correct, I don't have a girlfriend.
I agree - this is a real accomplishment in terms of pioneering a new development methodologies, esp. considering how geared the typical CS mindset is completely focused on absolutely predictable results.
I enjoy reading up on (some branches) of AI, and the most interesting advances (IMHO) in the last few years have been coming from the specific application end, i.e. video games and this... on the pure research end I'm still most interested in the work done by Douglas Hofstdater at U Indiana, but the work being done for games and movies really digs into on the important, but unsexy issues like "how the hell do we actually work with this stuff to get stuff done??". Sure, they've got a conceptually simple goal (make crowds fight!), but this is a case where the devil is in the details, but there are a billion details and the details are all that matters.
Anyway, it's great to see that they've made strides in making this sort of non-deterministic (kinda-misapplied-term) functionality usable by normal humans.
Besides, I'm freaking out at the idea of seeing 10,000 orcs (and the article mentions that there will be 100,000 fighters in one of the ROTK battles - yeep!)
Purchase some of the servers used to render the CGI in the first LOTR movie here .
Own a geeky piece of history!
Damn you to the pits of Mordor!
I just bought 4 (more!) TTT action figures this evening, and thought that my geek-collector mania had hit a new low - and now I see this... this server... this precious server, yes... yes, yes my precious... precious, yes, mine, all of it, mine!...
no that there weren't a few interesting things mentioned in the article.
- being able to move the mouse pointer between computers (assuming these are separate computers, not just multiple monitors); I assume this indicates some sort of network-transpart clipboard (and that the user is signed onto both computers). cool, that.
- the larger, semi-circle screen - mostly for the cool wraparound aspect (semi-inevitable considering increasingly thin monitors and e-paper (somewhere) down the line, though).
Otherwise, it sounds like they're just hashing out more variations of video/audio conferencing - whoop-de-whoo.
There seems to be a problem of understanding the _purpose_ of business communication, vs. just the _forms_ of communication. Video and audio voicemail are high-bandwidth, low content, and do little to guide the sender towards composing a coherent message. When using text, OTOH, we are often forced to skip the details and focus on the meat of what we intend to say.
However, neither of these formats truly _aids_ us in the actual composition of our thoughts - one can easily compose a syntactically perfect text message with zero content - and this is even easier in audio/video formats.
A spreadsheet and a database are useful in that they assist use in ordering large amounts of quanitative data; unfortunately, we have few tools that assist us in bridging the gap between quantiative data and qualitative data, in other words, making our intent clear while exposing the reasoning behind it.
Step-by-step-"Wizards" are a (mostly) futile stab in the general direction of this, tending to assume a very rigid result (as well as presuming that we know the final format of the ends result from the start!); what we need instead are tools that allow us to begin very broadly, and then assist us in narrowing our concepts down until we have a clear set of assumptions, observations, related analysis, and conclusions.
Yes, there are many _people_ who are good at this, and there are processes for _teaching_ people to be good at this, but we don't (yet) have automated tools that are good with helping people accomplish this.
And until someone manages to construct the fundemental versions of those tools, we'll have to deal with new versions of tools that make it easier to transfer nonsense back-and-forth, vs. actually developing, refining, and communicating ideas. Anything less than this is just another improved method to pretend that we're in the same room with someone who's not.
Or, God forbid, another variation on Powerpoint (shudder).
Argh! The parent post wasn't offtopic, it was one of the first to point out the error! (since fixed, thanks to this and related posts!)
I'm not annoyed because of the (insignificant) loss of a karma point, but because of the spastic moderation "methods" practiced by some users of this site.
No one should be _punished_ for helping the editors do their jobs!
the second question has been combined with the end of the first answer. grrr!
/. just moving to XHTML 2.0 already? ;)
Or is
In practice, however, I get a sinking feeling in my belly at the idea that censored versions of "cultural works" (movies, books, whatever) will be going into wide distribution (not sure how wide, but certainly wider than it currently is should this be judged a legal practice). this uneasiness is compounded by the realization that community pressure will push people towards only renting from the "nice store" that doesn't push "dirty movies" (yes I'm caricaturing, but social pressures _do_ work this way).
I would much prefer that the original version of the movie be distributed on DVD, along with a DVD playlist that can be used to playback a "niche audience" version (similar to "play widescreen/fullscreen").
I see this as actually being a significant enough market that some sort of modified DVD player that accepts a separate CD (containing one or many "alternate cut" playlists for a film) could be a strong seller, with several bonuses:
As far as this case goes (IANAL etc. etc.), I see the achilles heel as being the cooperative ownership aspect. That seems to fall right in the zone of judicial judgment (please correct me if I'm off), and the entertainment industry has all those scary lawyers who know exactly which judges to push the case in front of, not to mention plenty of other dirty tricks.
(In short, both sides suck, and everyone should listen to me.)
..which includes a brief interview with Miyazaki.
Here 'tis.
It's a rather fawning bit, but this seems to me to be one of the rare interviews in which the director isn't just puffing up his work, but actually discussing it.
Besides, this movie looks to be that good. I grabbed a VCD bootleg of this in Taiwan many moons ago, and despite the crappy transfer quality + lack of dubbing/subtitles, I watched the entire first half before I began to feel lost (stopped after that so that I could enjoy the movie in its full-fledged form more). Miyazaki is a fine, fine visual storyteller, and by all accounts so far, the dub (lead by John Lassetter of Pixar fame) is an achievement in of itself.
thanks for the reply - sorry about the offtopic mod.
I'll check out Conan again ASAP, thanks!
kudos for referencing the 3-inch bee guy. (I figure he comes from the same part of the world as the guy with the bullet-proof legs :) )
For varying reasons I stopped watching Conan (after being an avid viewer) about a year ago - would it be worth my time to start watching again?
While I appreciate your high-mindedness, I would be terribly upset to live in a world where people didn't hold strong opinions, and express them with equal vigor.
Certainly, David Brin may lose some audience members who are offended by the release of his unfettered opinion into the terrifying wilds of the public mind - however, I much prefer this approach to the the ice-cream smooth "personas" taken on by the majority of public figures.
Could Brin's tone have cleaned up his tone a bit? Sure, but he was clearly aiming for casual, non-academic tone - he wished to engage with other SF fans on a personal level, while applying his professional expertise. By taking on a casual tone, he would avoid the pedantic sensibility that he railed against in his essay. So what that he talked some shit - if you were offended, I'm sure you're not the audience he was trying to persuade.
As for me, I find his willingness to call it as he sees it refreshing, esp. when the other choice is to pretend that he and all other professional SF authors/writes/directors/etc. (incl. Lucas) are members of a secret elite who may never be seen to comment on each other in public outside of making simple reassuring and supportive grunts.
So many "public figures" are afraid to have opinions - there's a real difference between acting civility and avoiding conversation entirely. In a choice between narcissistic self-involvement and engagement with the outside world, I find the public figures who are willing to engage in an actual conversation with the public to be far more compelling than, oh, for example... George Lucas. (sorry, that was low. but fun and appropriate.)
OTOH, I will allow that it is certainly possible to take this approach to far as well - for an example of this, check out Harlan Ellison. However, IMHO Brin has _plenty_ of karma left to burn before he goes from "opinionated" to "crank".
Sheesh, does noone here appreciates the value of rivalry and competition? ;)
Musicians, authors, artists, etc. are all on some level entertainers - there's a long long long historical record of rivalries between poets, painters, musicians, etc. Check out what Byron wrote about his contemporaries- or better yet, what the wrote about him!
More recently, the Oasis/Blur rivalry between Blur + Oasis was an _obsessive_ topic in the UK music scene for _years_.
This sort of rivalry can be genuinely productive, by making both sides work harder to top the other. "Competition" is a concept you might read up on...
Certainly, if MJ said "Bon Jovi sucks" we'd go "Dumbass". Then again, MJ and Bon Jovi travel in _very_ different musical circles - their music isn't expected to influence each other, let along compete in the marketplace. Perhaps if he had something relevant to say then it would be worth listening. The fact that he most likely doesn't says more about the division between genres in the current music market than it does about his right to comment on the work of other musicians.
Brin, on the other hand, is an acclaimed SF author, and Star Wars is an SF phenomenon (movies, books, etc.). This is his ballpark! This is is area of expertise! He's not only expected, but practically _required_ to have an opinion on Star Wars! Does he have to publish his opinion, no...
But guess what? By publishing his opinion he can provide entertainment and insight to others, and add to conversation of ideas in his chosen field of practice.
In this case it is hopeless that Lucas will actually listen to another human being, but that in no way deprives Brin of his right to call "foul!" on something he sees as polluting the marketplace he works within.
Whooops, guess I let myself get trolled. Alas...
It's silly to respond at this point, but I'm surfing my old comments looking for interesting replies. This one seemed to call out for some response.
While I could argue the "work for hire" (i.e. ownership of the negatives) issue until I'm blue in the face (in short: as much as customers may argue otherwise, work-for-hire transactions are not the default - I own the rights to work unless you pay more.), I'll instead focus on one particular aspect of this transaction that makes me see the groom/photo hirer as being negligent.
Photography _as_a_medium_ are inherently about reproduction; you hang the prints, not the (original) negative. When someone hires a pro photographer, the expectation is _always_ that the pro photgrapher will handle the developing and printing, because they have thje closest knowledge of the film used, conditions of the shoot, etc. Even if they are outsourcing the actual reproduction, they are definitely providing careful instruction to the developer house. It's a severe oversimplification to assume that a pro photog is only useful for the (very involved) job of getting the shots. Developing and reproduction are equally important.
Therefore, the fact that the hirer of the photog didn't get the detailed info about cost of prints/digital files/etc. - i.e., the actual end product of the business transactions - makes me see that they simply were naive about the process.
And there's nothing morally wrong about naievete (although it can be costly). However, I object to the righteous tone taken by the author, who seems mostly interested in justifying his naive assumptions.
You may argue that it's the wedding photographer's
job to provide maximum information about her rates, etc... but one can't catch everything, and I rather doubt that the photographer was cavenly plotting to "screw the couple over".
In other words, though there may be some merit to his larger argument re: digital photography lowering the costs of reproductions, this does not mean that he wasn't stupid in his own case.
It's OK for fans of a genre/author to comment, but not other people who also work in the same field?
I can understand the "conflict of interest" argument re: making a living out of making things/making a living out of critiqueing the made things", but you appear to be basing this on the idea of "bad taste".
I think this is the sort of thing that should happend much more often - it's also the sort of thing that gets little publicity, as it's not in the distributor's (movies, TV, books, etc.) financial interest for the audience to feel conflicted about buying into X.
Critics tends to be "3rd-parties" to provide a comfortable layer preventing the audience from feeling conflicted about what they are interested in seeing.
Here's exactly the sort of thing that studios hate: "I like Director A + Director B; A trashed B's last movie - am I allowed to like them both anymore??!!" Very junior high.
Adults can be more sophisticated about their patronage choices... but XXX made how many hundred million?
Its a smidge late isnt it??
I mean, shouldnt a critique of the movie be out, say, within a month or two of the movie being released??
You're right - the millions of words that have been written on films (and don't forget TV!) should be thrown out immediately. Someone better tell my former film history professors to ditch their current projects, too. Sure they'll be crushed, but once I explain that those movies aren't shiny & new, I'm sure they'll move on to new careers.
While we're at it, let's ignore all cultural products that are more than a few weeks old - reflection (and especially re-consideration) is always bad, bad bad! And the concept that the passage of time can enable objectivity and new perspectives - that's all hogwash!
(Boy, this would have made my art history courses at school so much easier!)