By some strange fate, I have been re-watching B5 pretty much non-stop for the past week. Burning through Season 4 at the moment.
I find the rise of the fascist state one of the stronger themes in B5; those that do not understand history, etc. I think of B5 as a warning, an object lesson in how a free society can be subverted. Hard to watch Fox news or listen to the Tea Party without thinking of B5. How do YOU feel about this bit of history repeating itself, and do you think we can beat it?
The amount of data you use and the number of windows open is directly proportional to the number of screens you have. ( Not that all of it is useful or needed.)
If the space is there, we fill it up. It is like the tantalizing lure of a flat horizontal surface in my house; it must have something resting on it or it is "empty."
Back in the days of "Open Windows" we just used to switch between screens (something still pretty common in unix today). We could create as much real estate as we wanted, all of it on one monitor.
Having that wealth, I really never used more than four screens at a time. Anything more and I just got lost.
While I ENJOY having two screens, if the work needed to be done and all I had was a VT100, it would do.
Last June I taught a game design class to kids 11-13. As a way of talking about branching,I introduced them to Zork I. After the initial "where are the pictures" response, the kids dived right in. They'd never seen a natural language parser before. They'd never had to map anything out. They never had the machine talk back to them or crack wise when they typed something inane. They were hooked.
While "Zork Fever" only lasted a few days, the experience opened up a whole new world of interaction for the kids. After that, they went back to the online game where among the choice of weapons they could use was a toilet, which they could use to beat their prey to a bloody pulp.
The observation that language is in a constant state of change is true. What is so interesting about the way language is changing today is the speed and the direction. Language is a direct reflection of how fast things change. Language is, in part, the way we describe that change.
Change, as noted by "Future Shock" and several more reputable sources, has accelerated in the past fifty years at breakneck speed. Discussions of our inability as people to absorb all of this change have led to the by now familiar "Singularity" discussions. If even a fraction of this is true, it would stand to reason that language and its use would be one of the first place this all manifests.
I am less interested in protecting the "King's English" than I am with the ability of one generation to communicate with the next in a complex and meaningful way. There is plenty of well written discourse on the Internet. I do not see that declining. The ghettoization of language as a marketing tool worries me a bit more, since it is sold as a generational identity.
My conversations with people in their early twenties shows me they are just as bright and articulate as anyone. Their opinions on language are much different. One of my favorites is the compression of language and meaning in rap music. Rap is a great place to look at the elasticity of language. Aside from the "bitches and ho's " rhetoric, which is the low end of that artform, there is clear and skillful use of language, rhythm and tone at work.
The other movement in language is the migration to visual rather than verbal communication. Language is no longer just about words. Image has changed the way we speak, the way we communicate, the way we articualte. The "comic-book" culture may not be a bad thing. The issue is not about comics- this is a medium that has a powerful and complex ability to communicate. The issue is that it is used mostly to communicate sex and power fantasies. However, I find it interesting that Dan Clowes now has a weekly comic that runs in the New York Times Magazine.
There is some virtue to being a "keeper of the flame" as far a literature is concerned. But television, movies and the internet are changing the concepts of literature. In the 21st century, is a good library just books, or does it include DVDs and CDs as well?
Part of the issue might have to do with the definition of language. If we insist on sticking to the definition where language is exclusively the written word, then language indeed might be in trouble, but not for the reasons mentioned.
I have high hopes that the Spaceship One technology will continue to evolve so that I can commence my plans for my retirement job- low orbit salvage and junk collection. This fulfills my boyhood dream of getting into space and it should pay pretty well in the next ten or twenty years. I'm not particularly worried that others will steal this idea- clearly there is enough junk out there for everyone.
The capacity and speed issues are wonderful. But how stable is the medium? Magnetic media was good for five years minimum. DVDs are good for about twenty before delamination issues threaten the data. In truth there is no stable medium for data. Paper has a better longevity. The best longevity is still clay tablets, but not very practical for the volume of data we need to secure.
Having dealt with data retention for a good 20 years now, I am concerned that whenever there is news of a breakthrough in storage media, it is all about capacity and speed and nothing is said about stability and longevity.
It's great to know how fast the car will go and how much you can haul, but when will the wheels fall off?
How much critical data from our era will acutally survive? I know, how much of it SHOULD survive? That is a different issue, one also faced by data archivists. Let's leave that one alone for now. The burning issue for me is, if I WANT it to survive 200 years, is there a storage medium I can use to insure that? Or do I just make sure there is a clean printout that I seal in a zip lock bag. ( almost joking here...)
For those of us who lived in Colorado in the Seventies, this has a strangely familiar ring to it.
Last time, however, the oil shale harvesting soultion involved microwaving the rock to heat it up. Interested to know what the "heaters" referred to in the article would be. In addition to heating the rock, it would have killed everything living in the soil.
Oil shale sucked up a lot of venture capital and delivered very little last time there was an oil shortage. But it promised millions of barrels of oil. So what is the difference this time?
While this will all but eliminate the distributors from the motion picture industry, the bigger picture (sorry) might also cut out movie theatres entirely. The number of home theatres increases each year. How long will it take the Neanderthals in the industry to realize that they can sell their product directly to the customer, cutting out all the overhead and middlefolk? That might include DVD production as well.
Some people like to go to movie theatres. I don't think they will die any time soon. But people are getting used to purchasing product directly via cable. There is a lot of money sitting on the table if the industry can get past themselves to get to it.
I been reading this guy for a long time and enjoying
most of his work.
For the sheer depth of imagination, "The Diamnond
Age" is still the best extrapolation of what
nanotech might grow up to be. The concept of the
"matter compiler" in itself is remarkable.
Writing as Stephen Bury, "The Cobweb" is great
political fiction about Washington, Iraq and the
general bravery of the common American citizen.
Everyone knows "Snow Crash." Next to Gibson's
"Neuromancer," it is the classic cyberpunk
novel.
"Cryptonomicon" fascinated me because in addition
to being a polemic about encryption technology,
when it was published it intentionally broke the
encryption tech laws it was challenging because it
had an algorithim in the book that could be considered a "munition" if exported abroad.
The Baroque Cycle, I must admit, scares me. I have
been in discussion for months with a fellow
Stephenson fan who has plowed through both volumes. He reports the kind of frustration and
fascination echoed in this discussion thread.
Seems like Neal has fallen in love with his own
voice and could use a good editor. I may change
my mind when I actually read them, but there were
signs of this tendency in "Cryptonomicron," ie
the infamous Penthouse Forum letter that went on
for days. Let's here it for fishnet stockings and
antique furniture.
I'm sure it is just a coincidence and there is nothing to be read into the plot twist in "Matrix Reloaded" that the prophecy is just another control tool for the machines.
Someone using what you love and believe as a means of controlling your behavior?
Hmmm. Sounds a lot like the Replublican Party's media machine to me. We are good. They are evil. Our leaders are protecting us. We are the greatest civilization in history. If you don't believe this you are a traitor. etc, etc
How many generations of this are YOU willing to put up with?
The Replublican Party PR Machine
Has You...wake up, Neo...
Several years ago, Bill Joy wrote an article in "Wired" called "The Future Doesn't Need You." In it he outlined what he thought were the three biggest areas of ethical ambiguity:
Because he quoted the Unabomber in the article, that is all anyone ever talked about and his very valid ethical concerns were swept away by media hype. If your relative is teaching a class, this article might be useful.
Given the current concern/scare tactics regarding "weapons of mass destruction" Joy's piece is as relevant now as the day he wrote it.
This was a stunning film. Based on biographic work ( although the author obviously did not die), this film is an unflinching look at Japan during and after the Second World War. I rank it with Kurosawa's 'Doseskaden" as a classic for understanding just how profoundly shattered the Japanese were by the war. It was not just a military defeat, but the end of an era, the end of a way of living. History is not always written by the winners. And when it isn't the lessons are profound.
Anger and Scorn in Early GIbson
on
Pattern Recognition
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
While I am looking forward to reading "Pattern Recognition," I am not surprised at the direction of Gibson's work. I always felt that Gibson grabbed the tiger by the tail with "Neuromancer" and he has been searching for that tiger ever since.
What really powers "Neuromancer" is Gibson's rage and scorn. Those of you who happened to pick up the audio book version of "Neuromancer," narrated by Gibson himself know what I'm talking about. The audio book is a treat, almost making Gibson himself a character.
As we get older, sustaining that kind of rage is not an easy thing to do. Gibson has more going for him than attitude. With his later books I think he has started to forsake the "Neuromancer" tiger and just go hunting for new game.
The best example of this I remember from years ago was a story about how Robert Heinlein predicted the use of the valveless pump. This same pump was later developed by NASA and found a "secondary" use in heart surgery. That pump saved Heinlein's life.
There are different rules for reviewing Star Trek and Star Wars movies than there are with straight films. Each franchise has its own built in audience who will see it regardless of critics. Each one has its own sensabilities that is has developed throught the life of the previous entries. The expectations are different; easier in some ways to fulfill, hampered by precedence in others.
I tend to view each of them as a new chapter in the
genre. As such, "Nemesis" is not as bad as some of the Treck films ( why DOES God need a starship) nor as good as the best of them. It IS a bit long in the tooth. There are reasons that this is the last TNG adventure. Berman has gone to the well one last time and the bucket is about half full.
As another episode in the series, Nemesis is OK. It was an enjoyable afternoon at the bargain matinee. There is no real new ground broken here except for one spoiler that I will not reveal. But it is a good time.
In short, those of the "faithful" who want another hit of the franchise should have fun, those who are looking for great cimema should see something else.
Just finished my marathon of the Tarkovsky version
of Solaris, the current Clooney version and the
book.
I think the Tarkovsky version is more visually
lyrical than the Cameron/Soderberg production.
I think the newer film has a "cleaner" story line.
I think both films leave all the money on the table
when is comes to what Lem was interested in talking
about.
While both movies give lip service to the idea that we as humans may not be ready or even have the capacity for relating to non human intelligence, once the lines have been said, the theme is not explored very deeply. Ironically, by running to the love story, they both prove Lem's point. We can't begin to grasp what alien contact might really be like, but we DO know about love and failure and the desire for redemption. It is safer (more marketable) ground.
Both films cave in at the end, although I think Tarkovsky gives us the more startling visual/conceptual ending of the two films. Neither has the courage to leave Kelvin on the station as Lem does,hoping for more "horrible miracles."
Neither film takes much trouble to discuss that in that universe, people have been trying to make contact with Solaris for over 100 years. Neither film deals with Kelvin's speculation that consciousness as we know it may just be emerging for the Solaris entity and that humanity has been trying to contact a galactic infant. Or that the appearance of an infant may in fact be a vaster intelligence who is just starting to figure out how
to talk to humans.
My thumbnail review to friends about Solaris is that it is difficult to make an intellectual film in a era that is so hostile to intellectual ideas.
Both Tarkovsky and to a greater extent Soderberg lose courage. Given the subject matter, as beautiful as both films are, they are both disappointing.
Interesting question...
There are several folks out there who have written
or are currently writing interesting SF. Some of them
are people like China Mieville and Pat Cadigan, as two recent examples.
There are two major dilemmas for SF writers today in my opinion. The first is a reflection of the state of the publishing industry in general. Everything has been consolidated to a few major publishers who view shelf space and "product" similar to fresh fruit. Books now have a real shelf life and they are moved off the shelves pretty rapidly. This is even true in many used bookstores.
What this leads to is the franchise novels, ie book 8 of the Goombah Universe or whatever. Notice how many slashdotters referred to their favorite franchise world even though the question was about the genre? The Star Wars Universe etc are known commdities and therefore presold to a good percentage of SF readers. But what about the single volumes, those gems that do not belong to a series?
They keep getting harder to find ( but they are out there...)
The second dilemma for SF has to do with how the explosion of real science has rendered "the future" strangely antique. How do SF writers today synthesize the current breakthroughs into the same kind of thought provoking work that their predecessors did? It is a harder task now. Even the "Cyberpunk" work seems oddly naive now. SF writing requires a lot more HOMEWORK now than ever before. Not a lot of the industry hacks are up to it.
I've sen "Spirited Away" on a large screen twice now.
The film is so rich that, like all good art, it gets better with more study. Beyond the story,
the incidental artwork in so many of the scenes is breath taking. I am looking forward to the DVD so I can actually freeze frames and just look more closely at the landscapes, the interior sets, the tapestries, etc.
My feeling is that Disney is completely outclassed by this work. They [Disney] are intellectualy bankrupt. If they can use their influence and ample cash reserves to promote something of this quality, I am all for it. My only hope is they do not lock the artist up in a Disney contract for a string of pictures that reflects their dead end concepts of
"product."
A clear example of this "opportunity" is the Jackie
Chan deal. His Disney funded movies are TERRIBLE! They all have that lame "written by committee running a formula" feel.
If they want to promote the work, fine. If they need to CONTROL FUTURE CONTENT, we could be screwed.
Slashdot Mirror
By some strange fate, I have been re-watching B5 pretty much non-stop for the past week. Burning through Season 4 at the moment. I find the rise of the fascist state one of the stronger themes in B5; those that do not understand history, etc. I think of B5 as a warning, an object lesson in how a free society can be subverted. Hard to watch Fox news or listen to the Tea Party without thinking of B5. How do YOU feel about this bit of history repeating itself, and do you think we can beat it?
The amount of data you use and the number of windows open is directly proportional to the number of screens you have. ( Not that all of it is useful or needed.) If the space is there, we fill it up. It is like the tantalizing lure of a flat horizontal surface in my house; it must have something resting on it or it is "empty." Back in the days of "Open Windows" we just used to switch between screens (something still pretty common in unix today). We could create as much real estate as we wanted, all of it on one monitor. Having that wealth, I really never used more than four screens at a time. Anything more and I just got lost. While I ENJOY having two screens, if the work needed to be done and all I had was a VT100, it would do.
Last June I taught a game design class to kids 11-13. As a way of talking about branching,I introduced them to Zork I. After the initial "where are the pictures" response, the kids dived right in. They'd never seen a natural language parser before. They'd never had to map anything out. They never had the machine talk back to them or crack wise when they typed something inane. They were hooked.
While "Zork Fever" only lasted a few days, the experience opened up a whole new world of interaction for the kids. After that, they went back to the online game where among the choice of weapons they could use was a toilet, which they could use to beat their prey to a bloody pulp.
Ah well...
In an earlier post I cited Dan Clowes NY Times Magazine comic strip. It is in fact authored by Chris Ware. Apologies.
The observation that language is in a constant state of change is true. What is so interesting about the way language is changing today is the speed and the direction. Language is a direct reflection of how fast things change. Language is, in part, the way we describe that change.
Change, as noted by "Future Shock" and several more reputable sources, has accelerated in the past fifty years at breakneck speed. Discussions of our inability as people to absorb all of this change have led to the by now familiar "Singularity" discussions. If even a fraction of this is true, it would stand to reason that language and its use would be one of the first place this all manifests.
I am less interested in protecting the "King's English" than I am with the ability of one generation to communicate with the next in a complex and meaningful way. There is plenty of well written discourse on the Internet. I do not see that declining. The ghettoization of language as a marketing tool worries me a bit more, since it is sold as a generational identity.
My conversations with people in their early twenties shows me they are just as bright and articulate as anyone. Their opinions on language are much different. One of my favorites is the compression of language and meaning in rap music. Rap is a great place to look at the elasticity of language. Aside from the "bitches and ho's " rhetoric, which is the low end of that artform, there is clear and skillful use of language, rhythm and tone at work.
The other movement in language is the migration to visual rather than verbal communication. Language is no longer just about words. Image has changed the way we speak, the way we communicate, the way we articualte. The "comic-book" culture may not be a bad thing. The issue is not about comics- this is a medium that has a powerful and complex ability to communicate. The issue is that it is used mostly to communicate sex and power fantasies. However, I find it interesting that Dan Clowes now has a weekly comic that runs in the New York Times Magazine.
There is some virtue to being a "keeper of the flame" as far a literature is concerned. But television, movies and the internet are changing the concepts of literature. In the 21st century, is a good library just books, or does it include DVDs and CDs as well?
Part of the issue might have to do with the definition of language. If we insist on sticking to the definition where language is exclusively the written word, then language indeed might be in trouble, but not for the reasons mentioned.
I have high hopes that the Spaceship One technology will continue to evolve so that I can commence my plans for my retirement job- low orbit salvage and junk collection. This fulfills my boyhood dream of getting into space and it should pay pretty well in the next ten or twenty years. I'm not particularly worried that others will steal this idea- clearly there is enough junk out there for everyone.
The capacity and speed issues are wonderful. But how stable is the medium? Magnetic media was good for five years minimum. DVDs are good for about twenty before delamination issues threaten the data. In truth there is no stable medium for data. Paper has a better longevity. The best longevity is still clay tablets, but not very practical for the volume of data we need to secure.
Having dealt with data retention for a good 20 years now, I am concerned that whenever there is news of a breakthrough in storage media, it is all about capacity and speed and nothing is said about stability and longevity.
It's great to know how fast the car will go and how much you can haul, but when will the wheels fall off?
How much critical data from our era will acutally survive? I know, how much of it SHOULD survive? That is a different issue, one also faced by data archivists. Let's leave that one alone for now. The burning issue for me is, if I WANT it to survive 200 years, is there a storage medium I can use to insure that? Or do I just make sure there is a clean printout that I seal in a zip lock bag. ( almost joking here...)
For those of us who lived in Colorado in the
Seventies, this has a strangely familiar ring
to it.
Last time, however, the oil shale harvesting
soultion involved microwaving the rock to heat
it up. Interested to know what the "heaters"
referred to in the article would be. In addition
to heating the rock, it would have killed everything
living in the soil.
Oil shale sucked up a lot of venture capital and
delivered very little last time there was an oil
shortage. But it promised millions of barrels of
oil. So what is the difference this time?
While this will all but eliminate the distributors from the motion picture industry, the bigger picture (sorry) might also cut out movie theatres entirely. The number of home theatres increases each year. How long will it take the Neanderthals in the industry to realize that they can sell their product directly to the customer, cutting out all the overhead and middlefolk? That might include DVD production as well.
Some people like to go to movie theatres. I don't think they will die any time soon. But people are getting used to purchasing product directly via cable. There is a lot of money sitting on the table if the industry can get past themselves to get to it.
I been reading this guy for a long time and enjoying most of his work. For the sheer depth of imagination, "The Diamnond Age" is still the best extrapolation of what nanotech might grow up to be. The concept of the "matter compiler" in itself is remarkable. Writing as Stephen Bury, "The Cobweb" is great political fiction about Washington, Iraq and the general bravery of the common American citizen. Everyone knows "Snow Crash." Next to Gibson's "Neuromancer," it is the classic cyberpunk novel. "Cryptonomicon" fascinated me because in addition to being a polemic about encryption technology, when it was published it intentionally broke the encryption tech laws it was challenging because it had an algorithim in the book that could be considered a "munition" if exported abroad. The Baroque Cycle, I must admit, scares me. I have been in discussion for months with a fellow Stephenson fan who has plowed through both volumes. He reports the kind of frustration and fascination echoed in this discussion thread. Seems like Neal has fallen in love with his own voice and could use a good editor. I may change my mind when I actually read them, but there were signs of this tendency in "Cryptonomicron," ie the infamous Penthouse Forum letter that went on for days. Let's here it for fishnet stockings and antique furniture.
I'm sure it is just a coincidence and there is nothing to be read into the plot twist in "Matrix Reloaded" that the prophecy is just another control tool for the machines.
...wake up, Neo...
Someone using what you love and believe as a means of controlling your behavior?
Hmmm. Sounds a lot like the Replublican Party's media machine to me. We are good. They are evil.
Our leaders are protecting us. We are the greatest civilization in history. If you don't believe this
you are a traitor. etc, etc
How many generations of this are YOU willing to put up with?
The Replublican Party PR Machine
Has You
Several years ago, Bill Joy wrote an article in
"Wired" called "The Future Doesn't Need You." In it
he outlined what he thought were the three biggest
areas of ethical ambiguity:
1> Artificial Intelligence
2> Nanotechnology
3> Bioengineering
Because he quoted the Unabomber in the article, that is all anyone ever talked about and his very valid ethical concerns were swept away by media hype. If your relative is teaching a class, this article might be useful.
Given the current concern/scare tactics regarding
"weapons of mass destruction" Joy's piece is as
relevant now as the day he wrote it.
This was a stunning film. Based on biographic work ( although the author obviously did not die), this film is an unflinching look at Japan during and after the Second World War. I rank it with Kurosawa's 'Doseskaden" as a classic for understanding just how profoundly shattered the Japanese were by the war. It was not just a military defeat, but the end of an era, the end of a way of living. History is not always written by the winners. And when it isn't the lessons are profound.
While I am looking forward to reading "Pattern Recognition," I am not surprised at the direction of Gibson's work. I always felt that Gibson grabbed the tiger by the tail with "Neuromancer" and he has been searching for that tiger ever since. What really powers "Neuromancer" is Gibson's rage and scorn. Those of you who happened to pick up the audio book version of "Neuromancer," narrated by Gibson himself know what I'm talking about. The audio book is a treat, almost making Gibson himself a character. As we get older, sustaining that kind of rage is not an easy thing to do. Gibson has more going for him than attitude. With his later books I think he has started to forsake the "Neuromancer" tiger and just go hunting for new game.
The best example of this I remember from years ago was a story about how Robert Heinlein predicted the use of the valveless pump. This same pump was later developed by NASA and found a "secondary" use in heart surgery. That pump saved Heinlein's life.
There are different rules for reviewing Star Trek and Star Wars movies than there are with straight films. Each franchise has its own built in audience who will see it regardless of critics. Each one has its own sensabilities that is has developed throught the life of the previous entries. The expectations are different; easier in some ways to fulfill, hampered by precedence in others. I tend to view each of them as a new chapter in the genre. As such, "Nemesis" is not as bad as some of the Treck films ( why DOES God need a starship) nor as good as the best of them. It IS a bit long in the tooth. There are reasons that this is the last TNG adventure. Berman has gone to the well one last time and the bucket is about half full. As another episode in the series, Nemesis is OK. It was an enjoyable afternoon at the bargain matinee. There is no real new ground broken here except for one spoiler that I will not reveal. But it is a good time. In short, those of the "faithful" who want another hit of the franchise should have fun, those who are looking for great cimema should see something else.
Just finished my marathon of the Tarkovsky version of Solaris, the current Clooney version and the book. I think the Tarkovsky version is more visually lyrical than the Cameron/Soderberg production. I think the newer film has a "cleaner" story line. I think both films leave all the money on the table when is comes to what Lem was interested in talking about. While both movies give lip service to the idea that we as humans may not be ready or even have the capacity for relating to non human intelligence, once the lines have been said, the theme is not explored very deeply. Ironically, by running to the love story, they both prove Lem's point. We can't begin to grasp what alien contact might really be like, but we DO know about love and failure and the desire for redemption. It is safer (more marketable) ground. Both films cave in at the end, although I think Tarkovsky gives us the more startling visual/conceptual ending of the two films. Neither has the courage to leave Kelvin on the station as Lem does,hoping for more "horrible miracles." Neither film takes much trouble to discuss that in that universe, people have been trying to make contact with Solaris for over 100 years. Neither film deals with Kelvin's speculation that consciousness as we know it may just be emerging for the Solaris entity and that humanity has been trying to contact a galactic infant. Or that the appearance of an infant may in fact be a vaster intelligence who is just starting to figure out how to talk to humans. My thumbnail review to friends about Solaris is that it is difficult to make an intellectual film in a era that is so hostile to intellectual ideas. Both Tarkovsky and to a greater extent Soderberg lose courage. Given the subject matter, as beautiful as both films are, they are both disappointing.
Interesting question... There are several folks out there who have written or are currently writing interesting SF. Some of them are people like China Mieville and Pat Cadigan, as two recent examples. There are two major dilemmas for SF writers today in my opinion. The first is a reflection of the state of the publishing industry in general. Everything has been consolidated to a few major publishers who view shelf space and "product" similar to fresh fruit. Books now have a real shelf life and they are moved off the shelves pretty rapidly. This is even true in many used bookstores. What this leads to is the franchise novels, ie book 8 of the Goombah Universe or whatever. Notice how many slashdotters referred to their favorite franchise world even though the question was about the genre? The Star Wars Universe etc are known commdities and therefore presold to a good percentage of SF readers. But what about the single volumes, those gems that do not belong to a series? They keep getting harder to find ( but they are out there...) The second dilemma for SF has to do with how the explosion of real science has rendered "the future" strangely antique. How do SF writers today synthesize the current breakthroughs into the same kind of thought provoking work that their predecessors did? It is a harder task now. Even the "Cyberpunk" work seems oddly naive now. SF writing requires a lot more HOMEWORK now than ever before. Not a lot of the industry hacks are up to it.
I've sen "Spirited Away" on a large screen twice now. The film is so rich that, like all good art, it gets better with more study. Beyond the story, the incidental artwork in so many of the scenes is breath taking. I am looking forward to the DVD so I can actually freeze frames and just look more closely at the landscapes, the interior sets, the tapestries, etc. My feeling is that Disney is completely outclassed by this work. They [Disney] are intellectualy bankrupt. If they can use their influence and ample cash reserves to promote something of this quality, I am all for it. My only hope is they do not lock the artist up in a Disney contract for a string of pictures that reflects their dead end concepts of "product." A clear example of this "opportunity" is the Jackie Chan deal. His Disney funded movies are TERRIBLE! They all have that lame "written by committee running a formula" feel. If they want to promote the work, fine. If they need to CONTROL FUTURE CONTENT, we could be screwed.