Really, not. Absolutely no interest. Content delivery is where the real interest lies, not yet another painfully expensive change in presentation.
What use 3D when all we have to look at is the same old crapola? Will your viewing experience really be that much elevated watching Lifestyles of Clueless Trust Account Celebutantes in 3D?
Manufacturers need to catch a clue from huge traffic in torrents -- the hot market is in content delivery. Don't talk to me about new methods of presentation until internet jacks on TVs are common and well integrated with reasonably priced services.
My first response was "Everyone, really? I don't have high, medium, or low hopes. I don't need another expensive, stylish fadgadget. Really.
But reading TFA got me thinking... previous tablet offerings have kinda sucked. What I really need is something with netbook capabilities at a netbook price but in tablet form, and I haven't seen anything yet that wasn't half-assed or too expensive or both.
When Apple comes out with a tablet, regardless of what it's like or how much it costs, there will be huge numbers of Apple fanbois lining up overnight to acquire one, which should have the effect of finally waking up interest from other manufacturers, which leads to the possibility that one of them will produce something actually useful at a reasonable price. So it's all good. Go, Apple. Blaze the trail so others can pave it.
> Screeners who miss the contraband (or allow a passenger to exit through an entry way) would be stripped of badges and ids, fired on the spot and escorted outside the airport.
I don't think you can. I'm pretty sure they're Union.
> And you're skipping blu-ray... uh huh. I'll come back to you in a year when you can't even find a non-bluray DVD player on the market any more.
I'm wondering if this will be happening any time soon. I own a Blu-Ray player and a fairly large Sony Bravia, and I honestly can't see any significant visible difference between my blu-ray titles and a reasonably well-mastered DVD. And I'm fairly picky -- I never did go the VHS route, preferring to suffer with Laserdisc until DVD became available. Laserdisc blew VHS away, and DVD was a significant improvement over Laserdisc, but Blu-Ray doesn't seem to give the same quantum improvement over DVD.
But I'm a geek, so I have one. There may be enough geeks to keep the format alive, but certainly not enough for it to take over DVD.
My friend with the 100" front-projection set says there's a significant difference between Blu-Ray and DVD. I bet he's right, on his high-end equipment. But are there enough people with TVs good enough to tell the difference to support the format?
What about Fred and Ethyl Six-Pack, who probably still have a tube set, or just got their first flat panel at Costco but have no idea how to set it up. Do their jaws drop the first time they see the blu-ray version of Bad Boys II? Of course not.
I look forward to the day when Blu-Ray players are available for $34.99 at Wal-Mart, as DVD players are today. Fortunately, our DVDs will still play fine, and there will still be no reason to replace them with their Blu-Ray counterparts.
In the case of 3D TV, if done properly, it could be the quantum leap that HDTV was over NTSC. So.... how long did it take for HDTV to go from concept to generally available? And then, how long did it take to become affordable enough for Fred and Ethyl to consider buying one? I forget, how many converters were sold the year NTSC stopped transmitting?
Personally, I think 3D is an interesting novelty in the theater. I bought the Bravia in 2009, and typically keep my TVs for ten years or more. Let's talk about 3D around 2019, shall we? With the length of time for standards struggles to be resolved and decisions to actually be made, 3D should be just about ready for prime time by then. Or maybe a little later.
This film really revolutionized motion picture technology. Here's hoping that there will eventually be a film using this technology with a plot that hasn't been rehashed to death.
I have come to understand that Cameron had to make the plot generic to appeal to a mass audience and make the big numbers necessary to recoup investment. By all accounts this has been achieved. Hopefully as the price comes down, the technology will become accessible to directors willing to take a chance with a story we haven't seen yet.
When I worked in technical marketing, making low six figures, we wore polo shirts provided by the company that had the product names for which one was responsible stitched above the pocket. If your area of responsibility included several products, you could end up with a closet full of free polo shirts. I wouldn't consider that "fast food-ish". Of course, they were nice, cotton shirts that fit well. I would perhaps feel different if they were 100% polyester or vinyl one-size-fits-all monstrosities like I had to wear as a busboy in college.
As expressed elsewhere, the natives could arguably be called post-technical, having moved on from the obvious use of machines to more organic structures, like the organic world-network and the ability to plug into various wildlife.
The thing is, although we get a few *technical* examples of this in the film, (use of the filaments in the hair to bond with a creature and use it as transportation) the sense of a post-technical people doesn't really come out in the film. It might have, if the writing had been a little deeper.
Which brings us back to the most annoying thing about the plot -- there isn't much of one. It might have been interesting to explore the ancient history of the natives, at least in conversations with the elders, drop hints that they had progressed from machines to organics, compare/contrast against the human tech, and come to the conclusion that the humans were the primitives. This would have been an interesting twist that did not require any changes to what we saw of native culture. But instead we get colorful battles and explosions to little purpose. A technically cutting-edge but ultimately hollow film.
> The question is two-fold: why have a technically sophisticated, anti-technical movie, and why are we drawn to it?
The trivial answer is that anti-tech white-man-guilt pollution-destroying stories are popular right now. They are more likely to garner good reviews and make lots of money so the higher-ups involved can live in huge houses and drive to events in gigantic limos. It's similar to when the abundantly wealthy bemoan that executive salaries are too high. They say it because it's a popular thing to say. And they're pretty confident that the audience won't notice the incongruity.
The question I would ask: Why does such an expensive movie that took so long to make have a shamelessly derivative two-bit plot?
> Seconded -- it actually almost makes me physically ill to think of the fact that Avatar will probably make close to (if not more than) a billion dollars while thousands of brilliant, thoughtful films wallow in obscurity.
Right. Consider this, though: People can demonstrably be drawn to the theater in great numbers to see something revolutionary in special effects. But how do you do it twice? There's already talk that Cameron needs to make another film using this technology in order to recoup the non-recurring cost. If he rehashes another overused script, will people come in sufficient numbers? They've already seen the pretty lights. I suspect the next film will need to have more going for it.
Ok, you're right, it was an actual story. But it was an actual story that I had seen about the same number of times as A Charlie Brown Christmas. I would have much preferred an actual story where I could not predict every important point after the first 15 minutes. That's all I'm saying'. Mind you, Avatar had a better story than Final Fantasy (2001), which was downright offensive. But not a whole lot better.
Yes, Transformers 2 sucketh mightily. On the other hand, in between dry heaves I could watch Megan Fox, which to a small extent made up for the retch-worthy content of the rest of the movie.
And before you speak, yes, Avatar had Zoe Saldana, but really only her voice. Perhaps I should have skipped Avatar and watched Star Trek again.
> Yeah, nobody wants to go to the cinema anymore because of crappy cam torrents.
Right, exactly. And that's why every showing of Avatar was packed, and why Hollywood in general is having a banner year. It's because they all have camcorders pointing at the screen so the rest of us can stay home and... no wait...
I saw the film in 3D, which incidentally is the only way to see it -- accept no substitutes -- and while I was amazed overall at the technology, I was somewhat chagrined at the shockingly pedestrian plot. It's like Cameron spent ten years creating this amazingly detailed world and then couldn't think of a story to tell within it. So he ended up adapting a story that had been told a half dozen times already in the last 20 years, and hoped people would be entranced by the pretty lights and not notice that nothing much was going on.
The film is long, (nearly 3 hours) which is ok -- I like movies that take their time telling a story -- but this particular story could easily have been told in 2 hours or less. There's about 45 extra minutes of "look at these effects, aren't I a great director???" which I guess is understandable considering the time and cost of making the thing. But it gets overwhelming after a time, and to no good purpose.
The film has been called "Fern Gully 3D", "Dances with Smurfs", "Delgo 2.0" and other things, which isn't quite fair, but I really wish, since Cameron was the first with this really unique story-telling technology, that he had thought of a really unique story to tell. I know, Hollywood has lately been the Land of Nothing New, but I had hopes for this one. Oh well. Now that the technology exists, perhaps an interesting film will eventually be made with it.
Sorry, I don't believe that. The only torrents that could possibly be available right now are screeners and camcorder rips. The latter are generally unwatchable and I'm pretty certain Cameron has kept the screeners locked down. It sounds more like you saw an opportunity to rant. But clearly not thunk through all the way.
> The big problem with The Phantom Menace is that it was created with a formula. That may work for a Syfy movie of the week,
I have yet to see a Syfy movie-of-the-week that worked. I think "Alice" made my brain ooze out my ears. I would have said: TPM failed for the same reason that SyFy movies-of-the-week fail.
> But I also bristle at the defense of "Oh, it's not supposed to be good. It's supposed to be for kids!"
My kid hated TPM and had to be bribed into going with me to Eps II and III, which I subsequently had to apologize for. I kept expecting the films to get better, and they never did.
Slashdot Mirror
Really, not. Absolutely no interest. Content delivery is where the real interest lies, not yet another painfully expensive change in presentation.
What use 3D when all we have to look at is the same old crapola? Will your viewing experience really be that much elevated watching Lifestyles of Clueless Trust Account Celebutantes in 3D?
Manufacturers need to catch a clue from huge traffic in torrents -- the hot market is in content delivery. Don't talk to me about new methods of presentation until internet jacks on TVs are common and well integrated with reasonably priced services.
My first response was "Everyone, really? I don't have high, medium, or low hopes. I don't need another expensive, stylish fadgadget. Really.
But reading TFA got me thinking... previous tablet offerings have kinda sucked. What I really need is something with netbook capabilities at a netbook price but in tablet form, and I haven't seen anything yet that wasn't half-assed or too expensive or both.
When Apple comes out with a tablet, regardless of what it's like or how much it costs, there will be huge numbers of Apple fanbois lining up overnight to acquire one, which should have the effect of finally waking up interest from other manufacturers, which leads to the possibility that one of them will produce something actually useful at a reasonable price. So it's all good. Go, Apple. Blaze the trail so others can pave it.
> So there ya go, get started making your own Avatar.
But with a better plot, please.
> Screeners who miss the contraband (or allow a passenger to exit through an entry way) would be stripped of badges and ids, fired on the spot and escorted outside the airport.
I don't think you can. I'm pretty sure they're Union.
> And you're skipping blu-ray... uh huh. I'll come back to you in a year when you can't even find a non-bluray DVD player on the market any more.
I'm wondering if this will be happening any time soon. I own a Blu-Ray player and a fairly large Sony Bravia, and I honestly can't see any significant visible difference between my blu-ray titles and a reasonably well-mastered DVD. And I'm fairly picky -- I never did go the VHS route, preferring to suffer with Laserdisc until DVD became available. Laserdisc blew VHS away, and DVD was a significant improvement over Laserdisc, but Blu-Ray doesn't seem to give the same quantum improvement over DVD.
But I'm a geek, so I have one. There may be enough geeks to keep the format alive, but certainly not enough for it to take over DVD.
My friend with the 100" front-projection set says there's a significant difference between Blu-Ray and DVD. I bet he's right, on his high-end equipment. But are there enough people with TVs good enough to tell the difference to support the format?
What about Fred and Ethyl Six-Pack, who probably still have a tube set, or just got their first flat panel at Costco but have no idea how to set it up. Do their jaws drop the first time they see the blu-ray version of Bad Boys II? Of course not.
I look forward to the day when Blu-Ray players are available for $34.99 at Wal-Mart, as DVD players are today. Fortunately, our DVDs will still play fine, and there will still be no reason to replace them with their Blu-Ray counterparts.
In the case of 3D TV, if done properly, it could be the quantum leap that HDTV was over NTSC. So.... how long did it take for HDTV to go from concept to generally available? And then, how long did it take to become affordable enough for Fred and Ethyl to consider buying one? I forget, how many converters were sold the year NTSC stopped transmitting?
Personally, I think 3D is an interesting novelty in the theater. I bought the Bravia in 2009, and typically keep my TVs for ten years or more. Let's talk about 3D around 2019, shall we? With the length of time for standards struggles to be resolved and decisions to actually be made, 3D should be just about ready for prime time by then. Or maybe a little later.
This film really revolutionized motion picture technology. Here's hoping that there will eventually be a film using this technology with a plot that hasn't been rehashed to death.
I have come to understand that Cameron had to make the plot generic to appeal to a mass audience and make the big numbers necessary to recoup investment. By all accounts this has been achieved. Hopefully as the price comes down, the technology will become accessible to directors willing to take a chance with a story we haven't seen yet.
I'd pretty much consider that a deal breaker.
When I worked in technical marketing, making low six figures, we wore polo shirts provided by the company that had the product names for which one was responsible stitched above the pocket. If your area of responsibility included several products, you could end up with a closet full of free polo shirts. I wouldn't consider that "fast food-ish". Of course, they were nice, cotton shirts that fit well. I would perhaps feel different if they were 100% polyester or vinyl one-size-fits-all monstrosities like I had to wear as a busboy in college.
Free shirts!
I wonder if we can make the apex employment agreement as prolific as the hd-dvd encryption string.
As expressed elsewhere, the natives could arguably be called post-technical, having moved on from the obvious use of machines to more organic structures, like the organic world-network and the ability to plug into various wildlife.
The thing is, although we get a few *technical* examples of this in the film, (use of the filaments in the hair to bond with a creature and use it as transportation) the sense of a post-technical people doesn't really come out in the film. It might have, if the writing had been a little deeper.
Which brings us back to the most annoying thing about the plot -- there isn't much of one. It might have been interesting to explore the ancient history of the natives, at least in conversations with the elders, drop hints that they had progressed from machines to organics, compare/contrast against the human tech, and come to the conclusion that the humans were the primitives. This would have been an interesting twist that did not require any changes to what we saw of native culture. But instead we get colorful battles and explosions to little purpose. A technically cutting-edge but ultimately hollow film.
You're my hero.
> The question is two-fold: why have a technically sophisticated, anti-technical movie, and why are we drawn to it?
The trivial answer is that anti-tech white-man-guilt pollution-destroying stories are popular right now. They are more likely to garner good reviews and make lots of money so the higher-ups involved can live in huge houses and drive to events in gigantic limos. It's similar to when the abundantly wealthy bemoan that executive salaries are too high. They say it because it's a popular thing to say. And they're pretty confident that the audience won't notice the incongruity.
The question I would ask: Why does such an expensive movie that took so long to make have a shamelessly derivative two-bit plot?
I think "white man is evil" was tacked on because they knew it was worth a few more million at the box office from self-hating white men.
> Seconded -- it actually almost makes me physically ill to think of the fact that Avatar will probably make close to (if not more than) a billion dollars while thousands of brilliant, thoughtful films wallow in obscurity.
Right. Consider this, though: People can demonstrably be drawn to the theater in great numbers to see something revolutionary in special effects. But how do you do it twice? There's already talk that Cameron needs to make another film using this technology in order to recoup the non-recurring cost. If he rehashes another overused script, will people come in sufficient numbers? They've already seen the pretty lights. I suspect the next film will need to have more going for it.
But but but... the special effects were really cool! Don't you want to see the pretty lights?? No? Ok then, turn in your geek card.
That's a brilliant analysis. I wish there had been more of that in the film, instead of a rehashed action plot.
Ok, you're right, it was an actual story. But it was an actual story that I had seen about the same number of times as A Charlie Brown Christmas. I would have much preferred an actual story where I could not predict every important point after the first 15 minutes. That's all I'm saying'. Mind you, Avatar had a better story than Final Fantasy (2001), which was downright offensive. But not a whole lot better.
Yes, Transformers 2 sucketh mightily. On the other hand, in between dry heaves I could watch Megan Fox, which to a small extent made up for the retch-worthy content of the rest of the movie.
And before you speak, yes, Avatar had Zoe Saldana, but really only her voice. Perhaps I should have skipped Avatar and watched Star Trek again.
> Yeah, nobody wants to go to the cinema anymore because of crappy cam torrents.
Right, exactly. And that's why every showing of Avatar was packed, and why Hollywood in general is having a banner year. It's because they all have camcorders pointing at the screen so the rest of us can stay home and... no wait...
I saw the film in 3D, which incidentally is the only way to see it -- accept no substitutes -- and while I was amazed overall at the technology, I was somewhat chagrined at the shockingly pedestrian plot. It's like Cameron spent ten years creating this amazingly detailed world and then couldn't think of a story to tell within it. So he ended up adapting a story that had been told a half dozen times already in the last 20 years, and hoped people would be entranced by the pretty lights and not notice that nothing much was going on.
The film is long, (nearly 3 hours) which is ok -- I like movies that take their time telling a story -- but this particular story could easily have been told in 2 hours or less. There's about 45 extra minutes of "look at these effects, aren't I a great director???" which I guess is understandable considering the time and cost of making the thing. But it gets overwhelming after a time, and to no good purpose.
The film has been called "Fern Gully 3D", "Dances with Smurfs", "Delgo 2.0" and other things, which isn't quite fair, but I really wish, since Cameron was the first with this really unique story-telling technology, that he had thought of a really unique story to tell. I know, Hollywood has lately been the Land of Nothing New, but I had hopes for this one. Oh well. Now that the technology exists, perhaps an interesting film will eventually be made with it.
At least it's not The Phantom Menace.
Sorry, I don't believe that. The only torrents that could possibly be available right now are screeners and camcorder rips. The latter are generally unwatchable and I'm pretty certain Cameron has kept the screeners locked down. It sounds more like you saw an opportunity to rant. But clearly not thunk through all the way.
> The big problem with The Phantom Menace is that it was created with a formula. That may work for a Syfy movie of the week,
I have yet to see a Syfy movie-of-the-week that worked. I think "Alice" made my brain ooze out my ears. I would have said: TPM failed for the same reason that SyFy movies-of-the-week fail.
> But I also bristle at the defense of "Oh, it's not supposed to be good. It's supposed to be for kids!"
My kid hated TPM and had to be bribed into going with me to Eps II and III, which I subsequently had to apologize for. I kept expecting the films to get better, and they never did.