That is an urban legend [snopes2.com]. Bzzt. Thanks for playing.
Not sure what the urban legend you link to has to do with this study, which the article says was performed at the University of Arizona. Not saying it's not an urban legend, but posting a link to an urban legend that sort of has the same subject matter but not quite doesn't really convince me.
Artists are inspired by previous work - that's part of the creative process. Nothing wrong with it. William Shakespeare "ripped off" all sorts of people. Kurosawa "ripped off" Shakespeake. It's how the arts evolve.
Absolutely! I agree 100%. On the other hand, however, we don't say Kurosawa came up with a genius plot when he based Ran on King Lear. So why do we say Lucas is the master myth maker?
So noone has been anticipating Spider-man movie for ten years? So noone was looking forward to seeing this movie? So nobody from the ages of 20-40 grew up reading Spider-Man comic books and really really wanted to see this movie?
You're kind of making my original point for me (that no one was really shocked when Spider-Man did oh, so well.)
On the other hand, though, I don't personally know anyone who read/cared about Spider-Man or even Scooby Doo for that matter, and I'm pretty much dead in the middle of your age range of 20-40.
I would guess anyone who had been waiting for ten years to see a Spider-Man movie is the vast, vast minority of the millions of people who went and saw this movie this weekend. I know a couple people who went and they both said the same thing to me: I always thought Spider-Man was really stupid but I went anyway because I figured it would be a fun movie.
Believe it or not, most people couldn't care less about comic books or cartoons. I'm sure there were a lot of comic book fans in the theaters this weekend, but they and their ticket buying dollars were definitely in the minority.
Truth, some people don't respond well to hype. But most people are pretty stupid and do respond well to hype. The vast sums of money spent by the studios to promote their movies are targetted at those who are sucked in by commercials and websites and Spider-Man Burger King mugs.
Seriously, you guys should be getting money for hyping these films. In a year, when Spider-Man is long forgotten (except for the upcoming sequel!) and everyone is jonesing about Hockey Wonder Twins in Space or some New Great Movie, I suspect we'll be seeing articles about how nothing that came before Hockey Wonder Twins in Space would ever match up! And the storyline of these two loveable twins playing hockey in space is a bombshell for Hollywood! And no one ever expected the movie to do this well! (Yeah, right. When you pay 50 million dollars to hype Spider-Man, here's a hint: Spider-Man is going to do well.)
As far as teaching Lucas new tricks about mythology, didn't he basically rip off the storyline of Star Wars from other places (most notably, Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress) and put it in a sci-fi costume? I think Salon just had a story the other day about how Lucas is hardly a bastion of mythology.
sure it was on peoples computers, but had an opening weekend of 250 million dollars. do you think they could have crammed any more people in to the theaters?
Right, but you have to remember how these people think. They don't pay attention to money actually made or lost, they listen to what they're told about pirating statistics. "Holy crap! The movie industry is losing billions and billions each year!"
So the reason to do it with this movie is because it's huge and popular and maybe some congressmen will have actually heard of it. Try it with something like a little bit lower down the cinematic popularity chain and grumpy old white men are like: What the hell is The Matrix Reloaded?
Hell, could have been made and released by some insider on purpose. What better ammunition to try and get some laws through Congress? "Hell, Senator, that new Star Wars movie was on people's computers before it was even out in the theater! Surely, we need some sort of protection!"
Cool idea, I admit, but video games already help me relax. I wouldn't play them if I felt like it was going to work (hence the reason I wasn't that fond of The Sims).
And yeah, my heart gets going a bit faster when I'm playing games, but isn't that part of relaxing? The enjoyment and the thrill of the game? It seems to me that if you're specifically trying to get a person's heart rate down, won't that just lead to the player either falling asleep or becoming bored by the game?
Hey, I'm glad to see that every aspect of our lives is being given a dollar value, right down to entertainment. If kids want to call in sick to work so they can go see a movie, who cares? It's part of humanity that we occasionally like to goof off and shirk our duties for a couple days a year. I weep for your bottom line, truly. Sniff.
Just a warning: don't ever fall in love, kids. Time spent daydreaming at work about that girl you saw at the grocery store could seriously affect your project being on time. And we all know which is more important.
Creating satire with teeth in a major medium is a fine line to walk. Either you create stuff that totally rocks and nobody will ever see because Fox thinks it's too edgy, or you create stuff that two entities consider funny: Fox and your grandmother.
I think Groening has done a reasonably good job of trying to keep both his audience and the assholes in suits happy. It's not perfect, but nothing is.
I never realized it was possible to easily confuse open source and piracy. One says "take our software--please!" and the other says "take our software and die die die!"
Maybe I just haven't been following these things very closely, but those two things don't seem to be all that similar.
Honestly, I'm not sure why anime is so popular. I enjoyed Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Princess Mononoke, but that's really about it. I've seen a bunch of anime that just kinda makes me wonder what's up. Stuff like Dragonball Z (is that anime? I'm not sure) just leaves me scratching my head.
On the other hand, I have totally fallen in love head over heels with Cowboy Bebop. It has nothing to do with animation, but with great characters, great stories and really cool music. I seriously doubt it could be done effectively live action, which is probably why it's anime, but what a great show.
In short, the anime that I've seen and liked has had everything to do with stories and writing and little to do with the fact that it's animated. Maybe people just prefer a different style of story and are sick of the same stuff that is rehashed by so many live action shows and movies.
In an attempt to figure out if this was a hoax or not, I did a google search on "Corporation of Privacy Officers," which is apparently the organization that is conducting the summit that this was said at. 0 hits on google. Does anyone know if this thing actually exists, and if so, what the heck is it?
I wish Jerkcity would sell stuff. I've thought quite a bit in the past about making my own JC t-shirts, but haven't worked up the gumption to actually do it, yet.
I guess I shouldn't dredge this back up, but the number one reason that I didn't like Alien 3 was because it didn't stay faithful to Aliens at all. Hicks and Newt dying in the first five minutes of Alien 3? Ripley dying in the last five minutes? It completely nullified Aliens. All that running and fighting and trying to get away from LV-426 ended up being for nothing. Hey, if the people who played Hicks and Newt don't want to or can't come back to play them again, that's fine. Find some way around it, I'm not upset that they weren't in this movie. Just that killing everyone off makes a really great movie (Aliens) a complete waste of time as far as the storyline goes.
Okay, after discovering that Joss Whedon and I both feel the same way about Alien: Resurrection, I retract my previous comment.
I wonder then, just what the hell happened to that movie? The director had done good movies before, he went on to do Amelie, which was fantastic, I assumed it had to be the writer. Man.
I guess this isn't the forum for that question, though. Oh, well.
Admittedly, I've never seen Buffy or Angel, or whatever those shows are, but I'm not sure I can ever forgive this guy for Alien Resurrection. Alien 3 pretty much destroyed an otherwise excellent series and then it was followed by something that could have set the series back on track but instead was just... well, most of us saw what it was.
After having played GTA3 for many hours straight, I'm surprised to hear of this (I missed the original article.) Sure, there's some swearing and violence, but it's not really any worse than a lot of other games that are already readily available. Does Australia have a long list of games that are banned, or is this one being set up to make an example, so to speak?
To ensure that the developers truly address the users' issues, Microsoft has even assigned its own people to watch the news groups as spectators and look for any questions that go unanswered. If issues are left unresolved, the "spectators" prod the developers to respond.
Wow, working for them must be just like a non-stop party. "You vill reply to ziss NOW!"
Soon, the Internet will reach its originally intended purpose of allowing people to shop online as quickly and efficiently as possible, and everything else will be outlawed.
Slashdot Mirror
That is an urban legend [snopes2.com]. Bzzt. Thanks for playing.
Not sure what the urban legend you link to has to do with this study, which the article says was performed at the University of Arizona. Not saying it's not an urban legend, but posting a link to an urban legend that sort of has the same subject matter but not quite doesn't really convince me.
Artists are inspired by previous work - that's part of the creative process. Nothing wrong with it. William Shakespeare "ripped off" all sorts of people. Kurosawa "ripped off" Shakespeake. It's how the arts evolve.
Absolutely! I agree 100%. On the other hand, however, we don't say Kurosawa came up with a genius plot when he based Ran on King Lear. So why do we say Lucas is the master myth maker?
So noone has been anticipating Spider-man movie for ten years?
So noone was looking forward to seeing this movie?
So nobody from the ages of 20-40 grew up reading Spider-Man comic books and really really wanted to see this movie?
You're kind of making my original point for me (that no one was really shocked when Spider-Man did oh, so well.)
On the other hand, though, I don't personally know anyone who read/cared about Spider-Man or even Scooby Doo for that matter, and I'm pretty much dead in the middle of your age range of 20-40.
I would guess anyone who had been waiting for ten years to see a Spider-Man movie is the vast, vast minority of the millions of people who went and saw this movie this weekend. I know a couple people who went and they both said the same thing to me: I always thought Spider-Man was really stupid but I went anyway because I figured it would be a fun movie.
Believe it or not, most people couldn't care less about comic books or cartoons. I'm sure there were a lot of comic book fans in the theaters this weekend, but they and their ticket buying dollars were definitely in the minority.
Truth, some people don't respond well to hype. But most people are pretty stupid and do respond well to hype. The vast sums of money spent by the studios to promote their movies are targetted at those who are sucked in by commercials and websites and Spider-Man Burger King mugs.
Seriously, you guys should be getting money for hyping these films. In a year, when Spider-Man is long forgotten (except for the upcoming sequel!) and everyone is jonesing about Hockey Wonder Twins in Space or some New Great Movie, I suspect we'll be seeing articles about how nothing that came before Hockey Wonder Twins in Space would ever match up! And the storyline of these two loveable twins playing hockey in space is a bombshell for Hollywood! And no one ever expected the movie to do this well! (Yeah, right. When you pay 50 million dollars to hype Spider-Man, here's a hint: Spider-Man is going to do well.)
As far as teaching Lucas new tricks about mythology, didn't he basically rip off the storyline of Star Wars from other places (most notably, Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress) and put it in a sci-fi costume? I think Salon just had a story the other day about how Lucas is hardly a bastion of mythology.
sure it was on peoples computers, but had an opening weekend of 250 million dollars. do you think they could have crammed any more people in to the theaters?
Right, but you have to remember how these people think. They don't pay attention to money actually made or lost, they listen to what they're told about pirating statistics. "Holy crap! The movie industry is losing billions and billions each year!"
So the reason to do it with this movie is because it's huge and popular and maybe some congressmen will have actually heard of it. Try it with something like a little bit lower down the cinematic popularity chain and grumpy old white men are like: What the hell is The Matrix Reloaded?
Hell, could have been made and released by some insider on purpose. What better ammunition to try and get some laws through Congress? "Hell, Senator, that new Star Wars movie was on people's computers before it was even out in the theater! Surely, we need some sort of protection!"
Not a conspiracy theory. Just an idea.
Hell, I really want to know what your day job is if playing The Sims is like going to work!
:>
I didn't say it felt like my job, I said it felt like a job!
Cool idea, I admit, but video games already help me relax. I wouldn't play them if I felt like it was going to work (hence the reason I wasn't that fond of The Sims).
And yeah, my heart gets going a bit faster when I'm playing games, but isn't that part of relaxing? The enjoyment and the thrill of the game? It seems to me that if you're specifically trying to get a person's heart rate down, won't that just lead to the player either falling asleep or becoming bored by the game?
Hey, I'm glad to see that every aspect of our lives is being given a dollar value, right down to entertainment. If kids want to call in sick to work so they can go see a movie, who cares? It's part of humanity that we occasionally like to goof off and shirk our duties for a couple days a year. I weep for your bottom line, truly. Sniff.
Just a warning: don't ever fall in love, kids. Time spent daydreaming at work about that girl you saw at the grocery store could seriously affect your project being on time. And we all know which is more important.
Creating satire with teeth in a major medium is a fine line to walk. Either you create stuff that totally rocks and nobody will ever see because Fox thinks it's too edgy, or you create stuff that two entities consider funny: Fox and your grandmother.
I think Groening has done a reasonably good job of trying to keep both his audience and the assholes in suits happy. It's not perfect, but nothing is.
I never realized it was possible to easily confuse open source and piracy. One says "take our software--please!" and the other says "take our software and die die die!"
Maybe I just haven't been following these things very closely, but those two things don't seem to be all that similar.
Honestly, I'm not sure why anime is so popular. I enjoyed Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Princess Mononoke, but that's really about it. I've seen a bunch of anime that just kinda makes me wonder what's up. Stuff like Dragonball Z (is that anime? I'm not sure) just leaves me scratching my head.
On the other hand, I have totally fallen in love head over heels with Cowboy Bebop. It has nothing to do with animation, but with great characters, great stories and really cool music. I seriously doubt it could be done effectively live action, which is probably why it's anime, but what a great show.
In short, the anime that I've seen and liked has had everything to do with stories and writing and little to do with the fact that it's animated. Maybe people just prefer a different style of story and are sick of the same stuff that is rehashed by so many live action shows and movies.
First One To Reply.
In an attempt to figure out if this was a hoax or not, I did a google search on "Corporation of Privacy Officers," which is apparently the organization that is conducting the summit that this was said at. 0 hits on google. Does anyone know if this thing actually exists, and if so, what the heck is it?
Dunno what's wrong with just HTML.
Although, after having read it, I'm starting to wish it was in a proprietary format I couldn't read.
Yeah, thanks for putting standard text into a 500k pdf. Seriously.
I wish Jerkcity would sell stuff. I've thought quite a bit in the past about making my own JC t-shirts, but haven't worked up the gumption to actually do it, yet.
Regardless, if they sold shirts, I'd buy 'em.
I guess I shouldn't dredge this back up, but the number one reason that I didn't like Alien 3 was because it didn't stay faithful to Aliens at all. Hicks and Newt dying in the first five minutes of Alien 3? Ripley dying in the last five minutes? It completely nullified Aliens. All that running and fighting and trying to get away from LV-426 ended up being for nothing. Hey, if the people who played Hicks and Newt don't want to or can't come back to play them again, that's fine. Find some way around it, I'm not upset that they weren't in this movie. Just that killing everyone off makes a really great movie (Aliens) a complete waste of time as far as the storyline goes.
Hmm.
Okay, after discovering that Joss Whedon and I both feel the same way about Alien: Resurrection, I retract my previous comment.
I wonder then, just what the hell happened to that movie? The director had done good movies before, he went on to do Amelie, which was fantastic, I assumed it had to be the writer. Man.
I guess this isn't the forum for that question, though. Oh, well.
Admittedly, I've never seen Buffy or Angel, or whatever those shows are, but I'm not sure I can ever forgive this guy for Alien Resurrection. Alien 3 pretty much destroyed an otherwise excellent series and then it was followed by something that could have set the series back on track but instead was just ... well, most of us saw what it was.
Yech.
After having played GTA3 for many hours straight, I'm surprised to hear of this (I missed the original article.) Sure, there's some swearing and violence, but it's not really any worse than a lot of other games that are already readily available. Does Australia have a long list of games that are banned, or is this one being set up to make an example, so to speak?
To ensure that the developers truly address the users' issues, Microsoft has even assigned its own people to watch the news groups as spectators and look for any questions that go unanswered. If issues are left unresolved, the "spectators" prod the developers to respond.
Wow, working for them must be just like a non-stop party. "You vill reply to ziss NOW!"
Philip K. Dick?
I've only read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but it seems like he was prolific and had a lot of interesting ideas about the future.
Soon, the Internet will reach its originally intended purpose of allowing people to shop online as quickly and efficiently as possible, and everything else will be outlawed.