ORIGINAL screenplays: [...] The Incredibles (Yep, Pixar does the same film over and over - ALL ANIMATION! I mean, come on!) Kill Bill, Vol 2 (The best samauri movie made in 20 years. And wha!?!?!? It was American?) Spiderman 2 (MAYBE 1978's Superman was an equal. MAYBE. I personally thought Spiderman 2 was better. But this is without question at least ONE of the greatest super hero movies ever made. Took the genre to new levels that perhaps ALL future superhero movies will be judged against. And FYI, before you say so, a "sequel" does not connotate unoriginalness. Empire Stikes Back and Godfather 2 both took the same characters and presented them in a new light to be wonderfully entertaining).
There is something wrong with your mind, maybe you're cafeine deprived.
The sequel to the adaptation to a comic book... as an example of originality? How can you even think that?
You're not listing original movies, you're listing movies you liked it seems. Enjoyment is not directly proportional to originality.
Again: It's an adaptation of stories that have been told and retold, made and remade for decades. It might be well done, it might even be great, but its NOT ORIGINAL.
Main Entry2: original Function: adjective 1 : of, relating to, or constituting an origin or beginning : INITIAL 2 a : not secondary, derivative, or imitative b : being the first instance or source from which a copy, reproduction, or translation is or can be made 3 : independent and creative in thought or action : INVENTIVE synonym see NEW
Kill Bill is derivative, Incredibles is derivative. Good, but not original.
I loved Incredibles, it's the best movie I've seen all year, but it is not original. It is inventive, but it's made from the recycled parts of decades of superhero stories. I can say a million good things about it, I can't honestly say that it is original.
But, even though we've known this for a very long time (gyroscopes have been around for centuries,) we have yet to incorporate it into a station's design.
Yeah, what's up with that? I remember the Disney-animated NASA movies from the 50's showing a perfectly reasonable tore-shaped design and a plane-like shuttle. It took them 20 years to get the plane, they never even tried to do the fake-gravity station.
I took the "darkness" referenced there to be deployments of the black smoke.
Agreed.
I don't recall mention of the parts of the flying machine being mentioned, and I may have adapted the radio play mentioning the Martians learning to fly into it. This on-line copy may be of useful reference to work this out.
Thanks for the link, I got this from it:
Across the pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great flying-machine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when decay and death arrested them. Death had come not a day too soon. At the sound of a cawing overhead I looked up at the huge fighting-machine that would fight no more for ever, at the tattered red shreds of flesh that dripped down upon the overturned seats on the summit of Primrose Hill.
[skip to the epilogue]
I learned nothing fresh except that already in one week the examination of the Martian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the article assured me what I did not believe at the time, that the "Secret of Flying" was discovered.
And I found the script of the radio show, here's the part about the martian aeroplane devellopment:
PROF. PIERSON
Have you seen any... Martians? STRANGER
Naah. They've gone over to New York. At night the sky is alive with their lights. Just as if people were still livin' in it. By daylight you can't see them. Five days ago a couple of them carried somethin' big across the flats from the airport. I think they're learning how to fly. PROF. PIERSON
Fly? STRANGER
Yeah, fly.
Obviously, this is after the martians observed military bombers in action, so I can see how you'd end up with the impression that they got the tech from us, and not the other way around as it was in the book.
We've got all the long-term data we need on the effects of weightlessness. It's bad and we should avoid it.
So it's neat that we have a platform on which to experiment further and try out countermeasures. Avoid it... sheesh. Scurvy is bad, we should avoid it, let's not sail out anymore! I don't like that attitude.
The book did have a reference to the Martians developing a flying machine after studying ours
No: The other way around. The book explains that humanity got heavier-than-air flying machine technology from studying the martian designs. The martians had flying machines on mars, but they needed to adapt them to earth's higher gravity and denser atmosphere, they were experimenting on their imported, modified flying-machine technology when the microbe killed them all off.
The book also mentioned the food the Martians had brought with them to feed on during the trip to Earth. One could take it as a description of the typical grey aliens of modern myth, but the intent was that there was human life on Mars upon which the Martians also fed.
Grey aliens? WTF? The narrator clearly explains that these are humans adapted to martian G and Atmo: Wretches, mistreated on mars, and unable to adjust to earth. The martians were harvesting terrestrial humans for their blood to replace these "snacks". In fact, he speculates that the blob martians were evolutionary descendants of the human martians, and that this is probably the reason for their dependance on human blood.
May I recommend that you watch "The terror of tiny town? An hour long, black and white, musical western with an all midget cast! Midgets on ponies roping calves and calling them cows... nothing beats that!
There's an Oompa Loompa in the trailer, he's the lil' orange dude playing keyboards about 1/3 of the way in, right before the jungle-Wonka bit, when "clever and so smart" is heard in the song.
this movie doesn't look like it will shape up to capture the 'feel' of the book either. The book was always goofy but with an edge of sinister that you just couldn't grasp.
I am unfamiliar with the book, and the original movie for that matter, but that trailer has creepy, sinister tones.
The grin, the giant wasp thingy that almost gets him, the "it's a small world after all"-like animatronic doll...
I wasn't exited about this movie before, not having any nostalgia about the original(s), and being somewhat suspicious after the horrible Planet of the Apes, but this trailer gave me a "ooh! Wacky, creepy fun!" feel that makes me want to be in july already.
Now, forget about Apes, and think "Mars Attacks". THAT is goofy with an edge of sinister, sir. If anyone can do kid-creepy, Burton can.
Does anyone else look at Depp and think, "Oh God, that's Michael Jackson!" Brings an extra level of creepiness, donchathink?
Funny enough, a chick recently dragged me to see "Finding Neverland" where Depp plays the author of Peter Pan, and the Michael Jackson parralel is... obvious, very, very obvious. Part creepy, part "maybe he didn't abuse those kids after all".
Does anyone remember Planet of the Apes? The original is a classic, and Burton's remake was one of the most memorable stinkers in recent movie history.
The Planet of the Apes "reimagining" was craptacular indeed, but it wasn't a "Burton movie". It was a studio movie, with a big name director. There is a difference. I can't tell how much of the crap was inserted forcibly by the execs and how much was due to Burton being drunk off his ass, but it stank of marketing drone influence.
If you haven't realised how badly the owners of the Apes franchise are willing to screw it up for marketing reasons, look at the DVD's cover art. The punch of the damn movie is ON THE FREAKING COVER! Yeah, everyone knows by now right? Pop culture has told everyone that "The maniacs! They blew it up!", but what about the kids? Why make it IMPOSSIBLE for the new, naive humans of the world to enjoy the movie and be surprised by that decrepit statue at the end? Don't blame Burton too much, he's only partially responsible. Blame the franchise holders, they aren't taking good care of it.
The original Willy Wonka was a perfectly excellent film and I see no need to ruin it with a remake. Same with War of the Worlds. Whatever happened to original scripts?
Original scripts? Both "original" movies were adaptations from books!
And as for the "perfectly excellent" war of the worlds: No. I want to see tripod walkers dammit! Not some generic flying *yawn* saucers. Tripods!
Before you can send people to Mars, you need to figure out stuff the hard way, like, can we run out of food despite our incredible planning skills? Turns out you can.
The space station is an ungoing experiment in space station maintenance and astronaut survival. The results are interresting, we sure seem to have a lot to say about them around here. : )
How does that FUD constitute propoganda any less than the Chinese variety?
If you've been adequatly indoctrinated, you are blind to the propaganda you have assimilated.
The most effective propaganda is insidious, it's the propaganda that is not a stand alone statement, but something pervasive that is included into so many unrellated pieces of information that it becomes ubiquitous, to the point where you can't see the forest of propaganda for the trees it's made of.
Like having Saddam Hussein become the pop culture icon of Evil Incarnate. For years, in countless movies and TV shows, to the point where seing his face produces a feeling of irrational hatred in a large portion of the population. That kind of propaganda (how many of the soldiers in Iraq have seen Saddam as the bad guy in movies for as long as they can remember? Lots would be my guess). Or my personnal favourite: Adding "and the American Way!" to the list of things Superman fights a nevernding battle for. Before 1942, he simply fought for "truth and justice".
Banning worldviews that differ from that of the state is a crude way to go at it, but sometimes crude methods are the ones that work best for a given purpose. If no Chinese growing up ever see a map that has Taiwan as a separate entity, they'll reject as absurd any map they see later on that does.
The real misnomer here is calling China's current economic condition "capitalism" when in reality, it's heavily state-influenced mercantilism. Most of the economic development in China is taking place under the auspices of large, centralised concerns with close relationships with the government, not as the result of the network effects of a free society of individuals and voluntary communities pursuing their own aims.
A form of fascism then?
Main Entry: fascism Pronunciation: 'fa-"shi-z&m also 'fa-"si- Function: noun Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces 1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
Interresting post, however, if I may make the following comment on your style:
The main song sung during the protests was "The Internationale"
I had to read that sentence 3 or 4 times before I stopped trying to interpret "main song sung" as a chinese name. It's trivial, and somewhat silly, but it made that paragraph much harder to understand than it should have been : )
If these are the valid reasons, could someone please explain why America is not at war with China?
Because you forget the unspoken checklist:
( ) Has gigantic oil reserves. ( ) Its leader has been used as a villain in movies for years. ( ) Has a weakened national defense, making it easy prey. ( ) Has been inspected and proven free of actual weapons of mass destructions. ( ) Its generals are easy to bribe, will surrender without too much trouble. ( ) Can be used as a strategic military foothold in the region.
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ORIGINAL screenplays:
[...]
The Incredibles (Yep, Pixar does the same film over and over - ALL ANIMATION! I mean, come on!)
Kill Bill, Vol 2 (The best samauri movie made in 20 years. And wha!?!?!? It was American?)
Spiderman 2 (MAYBE 1978's Superman was an equal. MAYBE. I personally thought Spiderman 2 was better. But this is without question at least ONE of the greatest super hero movies ever made. Took the genre to new levels that perhaps ALL future superhero movies will be judged against. And FYI, before you say so, a "sequel" does not connotate unoriginalness. Empire Stikes Back and Godfather 2 both took the same characters and presented them in a new light to be wonderfully entertaining).
There is something wrong with your mind, maybe you're cafeine deprived.
The sequel to the adaptation to a comic book... as an example of originality?
How can you even think that?
You're not listing original movies, you're listing movies you liked it seems. Enjoyment is not directly proportional to originality.
Again: It's an adaptation of stories that have been told and retold, made and remade for decades. It might be well done, it might even be great, but its NOT ORIGINAL.
Main Entry2: original
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or constituting an origin or beginning : INITIAL
2 a : not secondary, derivative, or imitative b : being the first instance or source from which a copy, reproduction, or translation is or can be made
3 : independent and creative in thought or action : INVENTIVE
synonym see NEW
Kill Bill is derivative, Incredibles is derivative. Good, but not original.
I loved Incredibles, it's the best movie I've seen all year, but it is not original. It is inventive, but it's made from the recycled parts of decades of superhero stories. I can say a million good things about it, I can't honestly say that it is original.
But, even though we've known this for a very long time (gyroscopes have been around for centuries,) we have yet to incorporate it into a station's design.
Yeah, what's up with that? I remember the Disney-animated NASA movies from the 50's showing a perfectly reasonable tore-shaped design and a plane-like shuttle.
It took them 20 years to get the plane, they never even tried to do the fake-gravity station.
Agreed.
I don't recall mention of the parts of the flying machine being mentioned, and I may have adapted the radio play mentioning the Martians learning to fly into it. This on-line copy may be of useful reference to work this out.
Thanks for the link, I got this from it:
And I found the script of the radio show, here's the part about the martian aeroplane devellopment:
Obviously, this is after the martians observed military bombers in action, so I can see how you'd end up with the impression that they got the tech from us, and not the other way around as it was in the book.
We've got all the long-term data we need on the effects of weightlessness. It's bad and we should avoid it.
So it's neat that we have a platform on which to experiment further and try out countermeasures.
Avoid it... sheesh. Scurvy is bad, we should avoid it, let's not sail out anymore! I don't like that attitude.
Batman
Batman 2
Sleepy Hollow
Nightmare Before Christmas
Ed Wood
Mars Attacks
The book did have a reference to the Martians developing a flying machine after studying ours
No: The other way around. The book explains that humanity got heavier-than-air flying machine technology from studying the martian designs.
The martians had flying machines on mars, but they needed to adapt them to earth's higher gravity and denser atmosphere, they were experimenting on their imported, modified flying-machine technology when the microbe killed them all off.
The book also mentioned the food the Martians had brought with them to feed on during the trip to Earth. One could take it as a description of the typical grey aliens of modern myth, but the intent was that there was human life on Mars upon which the Martians also fed.
Grey aliens? WTF?
The narrator clearly explains that these are humans adapted to martian G and Atmo: Wretches, mistreated on mars, and unable to adjust to earth. The martians were harvesting terrestrial humans for their blood to replace these "snacks".
In fact, he speculates that the blob martians were evolutionary descendants of the human martians, and that this is probably the reason for their dependance on human blood.
I think you need to reread it : )
Honestly what movie with midgets doesn't rock?
Ah, a kindred spirit : )
May I recommend that you watch "The terror of tiny town? An hour long, black and white, musical western with an all midget cast!
Midgets on ponies roping calves and calling them cows... nothing beats that!
There's an Oompa Loompa in the trailer, he's the lil' orange dude playing keyboards about 1/3 of the way in, right before the jungle-Wonka bit, when "clever and so smart" is heard in the song.
this movie doesn't look like it will shape up to capture the 'feel' of the book either. The book was always goofy but with an edge of sinister that you just couldn't grasp.
I am unfamiliar with the book, and the original movie for that matter, but that trailer has creepy, sinister tones.
The grin, the giant wasp thingy that almost gets him, the "it's a small world after all"-like animatronic doll...
I wasn't exited about this movie before, not having any nostalgia about the original(s), and being somewhat suspicious after the horrible Planet of the Apes, but this trailer gave me a "ooh! Wacky, creepy fun!" feel that makes me want to be in july already.
Now, forget about Apes, and think "Mars Attacks". THAT is goofy with an edge of sinister, sir.
If anyone can do kid-creepy, Burton can.
I think we can cover most of these issues with the decades of experience we've had with nuclear submarines.
Weightlessness...
No thanks, I like my screen resolution the way it is.
The "large" link is sufficient.
Damn fake full screens, screwing up my carefully placed desktop icons...
Does anyone else look at Depp and think, "Oh God, that's Michael Jackson!"
Brings an extra level of creepiness, donchathink?
Funny enough, a chick recently dragged me to see "Finding Neverland" where Depp plays the author of Peter Pan, and the Michael Jackson parralel is... obvious, very, very obvious.
Part creepy, part "maybe he didn't abuse those kids after all".
P.S. For a chick flick, it was pretty good.
Does anyone remember Planet of the Apes? The original is a classic, and Burton's remake was one of the most memorable stinkers in recent movie history.
The Planet of the Apes "reimagining" was craptacular indeed, but it wasn't a "Burton movie".
It was a studio movie, with a big name director. There is a difference. I can't tell how much of the crap was inserted forcibly by the execs and how much was due to Burton being drunk off his ass, but it stank of marketing drone influence.
If you haven't realised how badly the owners of the Apes franchise are willing to screw it up for marketing reasons, look at the DVD's cover art. The punch of the damn movie is ON THE FREAKING COVER! Yeah, everyone knows by now right? Pop culture has told everyone that "The maniacs! They blew it up!", but what about the kids? Why make it IMPOSSIBLE for the new, naive humans of the world to enjoy the movie and be surprised by that decrepit statue at the end?
Don't blame Burton too much, he's only partially responsible. Blame the franchise holders, they aren't taking good care of it.
The original Willy Wonka was a perfectly excellent film and I see no need to ruin it with a remake. Same with War of the Worlds.
Whatever happened to original scripts?
Original scripts?
Both "original" movies were adaptations from books!
And as for the "perfectly excellent" war of the worlds: No. I want to see tripod walkers dammit! Not some generic flying *yawn* saucers. Tripods!
Depp looks a little blazed in that trailer. Does Wonka own a giant chocolate bong now?
;-)
He's a candy magnate, he knows that munchies account for a large part of his business
a multi-billion-dollar Astronaut Habitrail.
Before you can send people to Mars, you need to figure out stuff the hard way, like, can we run out of food despite our incredible planning skills? Turns out you can.
The space station is an ungoing experiment in space station maintenance and astronaut survival. The results are interresting, we sure seem to have a lot to say about them around here. : )
Problem with dictionary.com is it's a very poor dictionary
.wav of the pronounciation! I love it.
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm
Webster's is the best. You get definition, etymology, and they even have
Go ahead and contribute to the wiktionary.
Klingon? Jive? 1337 5P34K? Pig Latin?
From TFA: Any language can be added anytime.
I can't wait for the Smurf to English dictionary...
: )
i think the idea is to consolodate those down into one so you can use one site as apposed to three or how ever many you happen to use
For crying out loud, the man gave you 3 direct links to dictionaries! : )
occasionally still referred to as Lexscape by some marketroids at A Certain Very Big And Very Evil Corporation
Lexcorp?
How does that FUD constitute propoganda any less than the Chinese variety?
If you've been adequatly indoctrinated, you are blind to the propaganda you have assimilated.
The most effective propaganda is insidious, it's the propaganda that is not a stand alone statement, but something pervasive that is included into so many unrellated pieces of information that it becomes ubiquitous, to the point where you can't see the forest of propaganda for the trees it's made of.
Like having Saddam Hussein become the pop culture icon of Evil Incarnate. For years, in countless movies and TV shows, to the point where seing his face produces a feeling of irrational hatred in a large portion of the population. That kind of propaganda (how many of the soldiers in Iraq have seen Saddam as the bad guy in movies for as long as they can remember? Lots would be my guess).
Or my personnal favourite: Adding "and the American Way!" to the list of things Superman fights a nevernding battle for. Before 1942, he simply fought for "truth and justice".
Banning worldviews that differ from that of the state is a crude way to go at it, but sometimes crude methods are the ones that work best for a given purpose. If no Chinese growing up ever see a map that has Taiwan as a separate entity, they'll reject as absurd any map they see later on that does.
The real misnomer here is calling China's current economic condition "capitalism" when in reality, it's heavily state-influenced mercantilism. Most of the economic development in China is taking place under the auspices of large, centralised concerns with close relationships with the government, not as the result of the network effects of a free society of individuals and voluntary communities pursuing their own aims.
A form of fascism then?
Main Entry: fascism
Pronunciation: 'fa-"shi-z&m also 'fa-"si-
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
Sounds a lot like today's China if you ask me...
Interresting post, however, if I may make the following comment on your style:
The main song sung during the protests was "The Internationale"
I had to read that sentence 3 or 4 times before I stopped trying to interpret "main song sung" as a chinese name.
It's trivial, and somewhat silly, but it made that paragraph much harder to understand than it should have been : )
If these are the valid reasons, could someone please explain why America is not at war with China?
Because you forget the unspoken checklist:
( ) Has gigantic oil reserves.
( ) Its leader has been used as a villain in movies for years.
( ) Has a weakened national defense, making it easy prey.
( ) Has been inspected and proven free of actual weapons of mass destructions.
( ) Its generals are easy to bribe, will surrender without too much trouble.
( ) Can be used as a strategic military foothold in the region.