All of the documentation (and then some) that comes printed with the boxed version of RH is available for free online. Granted, it's not the same as a paper manual but since you mentioned quality, they're really excellent.
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/
Disclaimer: I work for RedHat, but the first thing that turned me on to RH as a distribution was the documentation.
I would tend to agree with the above. With all of the made-up words in the Harry Potter books I would think they would be easier to translate. I mean, if a word isn't from any particular language in the first place, why translate it?
The same could be said for someone doing a remake of 2001 wherein HAL presents itself via a holographic bikini-girl avatar and suddenly wants to know more of this human thing called 'love'.
Doesn't mean there's nothing to be dissapointed in.
It's not back to the future, but remember the scene in Ferris Beuler's Day Off, when Ferris is describing his friend and says 'if you put a piece of cole in his ass, in a few weeks you'd have a diamond' (great line, imho). Well, the tv edit changed the line to 'if you put a piece of cole in his hand, in a few weeks you'd have a diamond'.
I don't understand why the other person who replied thought of your post as trolling. I would suggest seeing the movie before getting spoilers, as well, but if you want 'em that's your business.
Basically, no, Saruman does not get killed in TTT, but I have heardd pretty good assurances that RoTK will not have the scourging of the shire in it. I also know that Saruman will have a different death than in the book (if you look around, there is a leaked publicity photo that gives away some of the details).
whatever my feelings on the rest of your comment, I must say this:
And in any case, since when does entertaining, well-written (if I may say so) flamebait _not_ get modded up on/. ?
...touche'. =:)
Re:Negative review, but not (intentional) flamebai
on
LOTR: The Two Towers
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· Score: 2
So again, sorry to come across as so dismissive of your reaction, yet I had a very different experience with the film than you did. I hope that the next film (if you choose to see it) satisfies some of your concerns with Faramir (and know that I'll also be disappointed if he gets short shrift in ROTK)
First, I really appreciate the civility of your reply. Second, we (well, I, I'll ask her when she gets up=:) will still be in line for the RoTK and finally, regarding the inappropriateness of the dialogue. I'll just say that I wish I could have had a crack at condensing Faramir's dialogues into a shorter but still believable form. I still don't see why it could be done. I mean, is there no implicit (why must everything be explicit?) sense of tension in the power Faramir holds over the fate of the ring? I would have loved the movie scene where he holds the ring on the end of his sword so much more if it had been used as a way set a tense mood for the rest of the scene as written. I guess the short version of my point is this: There must have been a way to both shorten/liven the scene and still let Faramir's descision to let the ring go be his own, as a result of his character. Both Gandalf and Galadriel's temptations took less than 2 minutes each, after all.
A lot of people have had this reaction. I clarify our feelings a bit more in this post.
Re:Negative review, but not (intentional) flamebai
on
LOTR: The Two Towers
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· Score: 2
I've said in other places that the things that REALLY upset me were the treatments of Gimli and Faramir's characters. For the rest, the question was less 'how dare you?' than 'why the heck did you?'.
You make some good points in defense of these, though I don't buy all of your explainations for their nescessity or advantage.
For example, having Galdalf vs Saruman instead of Grima (who was indeed but a worm compared to Gandalf). First, wouldn't Grima being subdued in an instant by a flash of light from the cieling reasonably demonstrate (for those who had missed it in the Balrog fight) that Gandalf is even more of a badass now than before? As for a confrontation with Saruman, what about Orthanc? Even if don't get to it in this movie, it will be in the next. Besides, I can't imagine viewers who hadn't read the books leaving the theater wishing Gandalf had exherted more dominance over Saruman for lack of this scene.
And yet, had it been the only change I wouldn't have minded much. You'll notice that I only mentioned this changed in an appendix, as it were, to my main post.
Ditto with most of the other, non-character changes. As for the ones I really did take exception to, an excellent defense of Theoden, which I feel adresses your comments well, has already been posted, so I'll just link to it
Likewise, I've already posted my thoughts about Faramir in a grandchild of this post and someone else has already replied with another good argument against changing him, echoing what is still my argument against most of the changes: they were unnescesary and inferior. Sam's bravery is demonstrated to anyone paying attention by his presense in the story at all. It doesn't require the destruction of Faramir's character. Sam is the motivation behind the ring-bearer and yet, not being the bearer himself, he has even less reason to stick with it than Frodo. And really, doesn't the 'Samwise the Brave' comment at the end do plenty towards bolstering that perception? As for interrupting the flow of the battle at Helm's deep, fine, alter the continuity. Put it somewhere else. They did their version of Faramir's scenes without interrupting the battle, so why not Tolkien's? Too long? Hey, ditch the useless werg battle (really, I can go 20 minutes without a fight scene. Trust me) and you've got all the time that you need.
And there's one more thing that I would very much like to adress before I'm done: Your flippant replies to my last three bullets (Shelob, et al) conveniently overlook the fact that I very clearly acknowleged the possibility of those scenes being moved to the beginning of the second movie. You even point out other deviations from 'canon' that I 'forgot'. Of course I didn't forget that the Huorns were at Helm's deep, I just didn't think that their absense took much from the story since they mostly stay in forests blocking the Uruk-Hai retreat IIRC. Yes, I would rather have had them than random elf batallions, but here you have again overlooked something I made a big point of at the top of my post. I'm ok with nescesary or trivial changes to the story. It's when you start telling a different story with radically, meaningfully, detrimentally different characters that I draw the line and say 'write your own damn script and don't leave generations of non-readers with this as their idea of The Two Towers'.
Re:Negative review, but not (intentional) flamebai
on
LOTR: The Two Towers
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· Score: 2
The reason she (and I) was so upset was not the elves showing up. In particular it was the treatment of Faramir's character, but not in the sense that you might think. It was NOT a matter of "how could they do that to 'my' Faramir". The character Tolkien created was one of the most impressive figures of the whole trilogy for both of us. Reading it as a teenager, he was the model of wisdom, temperance and simply having one's head screwed on straight for my wife. When I read it, much later in life, he was a character for whom I found that I had a deep respect for, much more than any of the other larger-than-life characters.
...and on film he's no different from Boromir. All that made the character respectible, all that made us want people to see that character: gone. And why? Does Jackson, like the grandparent's poster, really think so little of the audience that we just couldn't handle some actual intelligent dialogue on the subject instead of having dragons swoop in to make the descision for him? Is temperance too boring nowadays?
Perhaps we were upset in some sense because we took it personally, but it was indignation at Jackson thinking that it needed to be changed, not that he dared to change anything at all. And the primary reason for our feelings was still something else. It was regret that most of the world's Faramir is now Boromir II who wants to take the ring back to Gondor. Tolkien created something great and the movie that was supposed to bring it to a bigger audience nullified it instead. I have said before and I will say again that I am not dogmatic about 'canon'. I would have been OK with a lot of the additions (As I was with the first movie) were it not for their cumulative affect on the movie. But when one adapts "The Two Towers", or any other work, to film I think one has a responsibility to retain certain qualities, otherwise why not just write your own damn story? You don't write 'Ghandi' the movie and have him go around kung-fu fighting, you don't make '2001' and give HAL an emotion chip and you don't make intelligent characters into asses because you don't think your audience can handle it.
Negative review, but not (intentional) flamebait.
on
LOTR: The Two Towers
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Originally posted to IMDB LOTR Message Board: I have been really, honestly surprised by the number of positive reviews that this film has been getting. Not because I think it's a bad film (though even in that respect I think it pales in comparison to the first movie), but because after a more-or-less true retelling of "Fellowship.." it was a lousy adaptation. Below is my review of the movie. Please read it BEFORE writing me off as just another ringnut who can't stand the slightest deviation from the book. And I wonder: does _anyone_ else feel the same way that I did?
------------ A few disclaimers:
First, I have enormous respect for the effect of Tolkien's work despite the fact that, to be honest, his writing style doesn't do much for me.
Second, I loved the first movie. It really brought the book to life for me. The changes PJ made were forgivable because, like having Arwen save Frodo instead of another elf (really just a cheap way to get Liv Tyler more screentime), they didn't particularly alter the plot or the nature of the characters.
Third, I was annoyed with people who slammed the first movie for whatever little quibble they could come up with. I wanted these movies to be great and get no satisfaction out of reporting otherwise.
But with this second installment it seems that Jackson and co have decided to throw Tolkien's book out the window in favor of their own screenwriters in far more detrimental ways than before. Again, I am not one of those "it differed from the book by a sentence and is therefore crap" people. But there are limits to how much one can change before such changes become audacious and it matters whether or not the changes are improvements. In interviews, Peter Jackson has acknowledged that he thought the books were too "dense" and that they needed to be "simplified" for the average person who was unfamiliar with Tolkien. In the same interview, his justification for all this is that "there is a lot of money at stake here". So much for PJ being our savior from the Hollywood infection.
The sad part is that his 'simplifications' don't even work. During the beginning of the movie, I was trying to watch it as someone who had never read the book (which was not so difficult as it had been some time since I had) and was already disappointed. Characters are introduced too quickly, plotlines are rushed... and the changes this time around are far from trivial.
-- SPOILERS BELOW --
Of my wife and I's three favorite characters, only Eowyn, who is actually played quite well, is spared. Poor Gimli has been reduced to comic relief and does little more than fall off horses, be the subject of height jokes and axe people in the groin (yes, the film actually sinks this low). But Faramir fares worst. Apparently the average, non-tolkien-reading person off the street can't grapple with a concept as complex as a man who shows the wisdom to, unlike his brother, see the ring for what it is and not try to take it. No, in this version we are given the 'simplified' Faramir, who does try to take the ring and deliver it to his father as a gift (how is the story improved by this?). It takes a close call with a Nazgul (another event that never appears in the book) and Samwise spelling it out to him for the 'simplified' Faramir to actually let the ringbearer go. Simplified, or just plain simpleton? The worst part is that this change does absolutely NOTHING for the plot! Sam and Frodo still end up parting ways with Faramir and Faramir is still on his way to defend Gondor. The only difference is that anyone who has read the book and loved the character of Faramir is now disgusted with what we've been given instead.
I said that was the worst part. Actually, I lied. The worst part is that there are numerous scenes like this. A completely new, ill-contrived subplot involving Aragorn and Arwen wastes time by doing nothing but giving yet more screentime (now in a story that the character isn't even meant to appear in) to a Mabeline-laden Liv Tyler and then taking us back to exactly where we started (unless PJ ends up messing with the characters in even more tasteless ways in the next film). The 'simplified' ents, rather than noticing that a huge chunk of their forest has been hewn down, initially refuse to take part and have to be manipulated by Pippin into going to Isengard before doing anything about it. The 'simplified' Gollum/Smeagol doesn't just have conversations with himself, he uses cartoonish visual devices like peeking from behind alternating sides of a tree in order to help the poor, stupid (but lucrative) audience keep up with which side is talking. Sadly, I could go on.
I felt alienated and even betrayed by this movie. It would have been much better if the first film had been lousy, or at least not so true to the book. At the time, I wasn't expecting much else. But now I feel like after being led to expect a true-ish adaptation I have instead been handed something more Jackson than Tolkien. When I first read The Two Towers, I longed to see the battle of Helm's Deep on screen. When I saw Jackson's "Fellowship.." I had faith that it could really happen. Never in my wildest imaginings would I have expected to be contemplating leaving the theater in the middle of it. The thought actually crossed my mind that 'maybe the whole thing is really just a dream from which I'll wake up and then go see the real movie'. My wife, who is the real Tolkien fan of the family and had just finished re-reading the book, was left literally in tears.
For those who are interested, below is the most complete list of major (ie not just nitpicking about lines added or sideways glances omitted) changes that we could put together. And again, it wouldn't matter so much if every single one of them weren't, in my opinion, either unnecessary or simply inferior to their counterparts in the book. The fact that, because of the popularity of these movies, the Jackson versions of these characters and events will for many people become "The Two Towers" more than the Tolkien versions only adds insult to injury.
- Gandalf literally exorcises Saruman from possession of Theoden. Why is banging Theoden's head against his chair so much more dramatic than subduing Grima who, in the book was the one through which Saruman exerted control. - Faramir, a noble and wise character in the book, is here really no different than Boromir. The only thing that differentiates them is luck. Unlike Boromir, Faramir gets ahold of himself when he still has time to do something about it. - Theoden is much less heroic at Helm's Deep and has to be coaxed into doing anything (usually by Aragorn). Like Faramir, he is a watered-down version of Tolkien's character, as though Jackson felt that every other heroic character from the book had to be emasculated in order to make Aragorn look good. - Gimli is reduced to bumbling comic relief except for one added-in scene where he joins Aragorn for one of his patented "me unscathed against 3-million baddies" fights. Only this one is even LESS believable than those in the first movie (which due to the excellent fight choreography I could actually suspend disbelief for) - New subplot with dog riders attacking the people of Rohan en route to Helm's deep, Aragorn's "death" and Arwen's (apparent) decision not to stay with him. - Elves show up to announce their alliance with the humans and save the day at Helm's Deep (????) - The women and children of Rohan are kept in Helm's deep instead of another keep in the mountains, apparently for no other reason than to give us lots and lots (and lots) of shots of women and children crying during the fight. Eowyn is therefore there at the battle, but neither fighting nor having been given stewardship over her people. - Ents have to be tricked by Pippin to decide to to do anything about Saruman. Why? Pippin and Merry get their moments of glory later on. Was PJ just impatient? - No Shelob * - Gandalf does not confront Saruman (he's never even at Isengard) * - Gandalf and co never receive the Palantir from Orthanc (black, spherical seer stone thing) *
* = this may just have been moved to the beginning of the third movie, but as it is, we only get through half the book.
I have become a big fan of my webhost, phpwebhosting.com. $10us/month gets you a Linux shell, 250megs of space, your own cgi-bin, php, perl, ruby, c/c++, etc. (no embedded perl or ruby yet, though). Your own mysql db (with more by request) which you can mess with either using the cli util via ssh or with phpmysql web interface. Their tech support has always been fast and helpful. I'd highly recommend them. And no, I don't work for them either. But they've been hosting my site for about a year now with no problems whatsoever.
There was also an` article a while ago (sorry, too lazy to link it) about some new fad in spam that involved using windows messenger (ie the 'net send' command) to send spam.
"But until a large percentage of the population gets shot by a sniper by the name of Joe Smith who lives at 555 Some Street... a large percentage of the population hasn't gotten shot by a sniper by the name of Joe Smith who lives at 555 Some Street..."
If the exploit is there, it should be public. How else will anyone who is reasonably concerned defend themselves if information about their pottential situation is kept a secret?
The fault I find with your analogy is that I don't think it describes the posting of an exploit. How is saying 'people are being shot by a sniper by the name of Joe Smith who lives at 555 Some Street' so different from saying 'people are having X, Y and Z done to their systems by a security hole in IE that resides in the handling of javascript on malicious sites'? In both cases, relevant information, and nothing more, is being offered. Posting an exploit is more like saying 'people are being killed by a sniper. He or she operates something like this... <click> BANG!".
In 99.9% of cases, a working exploit is simply not nescessary to defend against a security hole. I mean, what would be the difference between someone explaining in detail what the problem is (and what options lay open to you for fixing it) and someone handing you the source for an exploit? There's only one that I can think of: in the latter case if you are irresponsible you can turn around and use that exploit agaist others. Exploits do not patch security holes. At best they're a sort of extortion used to get lazy software companies off their a$$es and write patches but they do nothing constructive in themselves.
As for the exploit already being out in the wild, if the white-hats aren't going to use it and all other relevant info can be disseminated without providing an exploit, then all Bugtraq did was spread the exploit to less cluefull black-hats.
But until a large percentage of the population gets screwed royally by a security hole... a large percentage of the population hasn't gotten screwed royally by a security hole!
Don't get me wrong, MS should be faster to patch their security holes, but where are your priorities? If you were confronted by someone who had just lost a bunch of important data because of this exploit, do you really think they'd be impressed if you said "But I was trying to make a very important point to Microsoft!".
The brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) is still alive, as is Anthony Ainley, who played the Tom Baker era Master (please please please let them not use that wretched Master from the Fox movie). Will they have K9? I guess he's still alive, too. =:) As for the Chamelon Circuit, they fixed it for a while when they were trying to keep the show afloat amid a string of crapass episiodes during the Colin Baker era. But the TARDIS being anything but a blue police callbox just didn't sit well with DW fandom. </patheticfanboy>
On a personal note, I'm glad they're using Paul McGann. I loved Tom Baker as much as most other people, but lets face it, he's ooooooold. Did you see him in Dungeons and Dragons? If not, don't. the rest of that movie is not worth the effort, but he just couldn't play the Doctor anymore. And I will say right now that as lame as the Fox movie was, Paul McGann's Doctor was fantastic. He really captured the character and I can't wait to see him again.
I'm surprised I'm the only person so far to take issue with MendaX's other statement, about the first two Dune books being the only good ones. Granted, the first is (IMO) the best of the series, but I would also put God Emperor (the fourth book) not too far below it.
Am I the only one who followed the link to see what people can see about you online and was a bit unimpressed?
I mean, ok, they can tell if I have javascript turned on. ...and?
Really, the only even remotely sensitive piece of information is my IP and if I am really worried that I'm doing something that people will actually want to TRACK ME DOWN for by subpoenaing my ISP to see who was on IP x at time y, then I should be worried. But if what I'm worried about is personal info being sold or traded for demographics, ads, etc, this means nothing. All a proxy would do is keep the webmaster of sites I visit from being able to count the number of unique IPs that hit them, which is annoying for them, but does nothing for me.
In other words, the reason that spyware is bad is because it gives away *more* than the basic, useless information that you can get using javascript (oh no, the cops know my screen resolution!). If you avoid spyware in general and are not doing anything that would warrant (literally) your ISP being questioned, WTF is the point of doing everything through an anonymizer as the EFF seems to be advocating? Am I just missing something here?
I've been fearing this day for a long time now. I never used Napster or Kaazaa or any of those other tools. I've always used Audiogalaxy. The Linux version of Satelite has no spyware and the AG service was great for finding really rare stuff. My wife and I have about 16gigs of mp3s. We own about 80% of that music. The rest is all rare and hard to find stuff. When my wife got into anime music, which can only be found at certain stores around here and then only as expensive imports, she found a ton of it on AG. It opened up a whole new world of music and, guess what, prompted us to purchase several of those expensive imports that we wouldn't have even thought about getting before we heard anything from it. When I got nostalgic for my punk rock days I looked up all the old bands that I used to listen to, great bands that never hit the bigtime by any stretch of the imagination, like Crimpshrine and J-Church. They were all there. You cannot get this stuff legfitimately anymore.
Now, because of a bunch of faulty assumtions and greed on the RIAA's part, that's going to go away. I had thought AG might have been able to stay below the RIAA's radar, but apparently not. Today is a really pissy day for me.
Slashdot Mirror
All of the documentation (and then some) that comes printed with the boxed version of RH is available for free online. Granted, it's not the same as a paper manual but since you mentioned quality, they're really excellent.
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/
Disclaimer: I work for RedHat, but the first thing that turned me on to RH as a distribution was the documentation.
I would tend to agree with the above. With all of the made-up words in the Harry Potter books I would think they would be easier to translate. I mean, if a word isn't from any particular language in the first place, why translate it?
Why did you have to remind me of that movie??
Now I have to go kill myself again (not that it's a bad movie, that's just the affect GOTF has on me).
Now everyone, let's all gather in television's warming, glowing, warming glow.
And now, it's the 10th anual Tony awars!!
Urge to kill... riiisiiing..
The same could be said for someone doing a remake of 2001 wherein HAL presents itself via a holographic bikini-girl avatar and suddenly wants to know more of this human thing called 'love'.
Doesn't mean there's nothing to be dissapointed in.
It's not back to the future, but remember the scene in Ferris Beuler's Day Off, when Ferris is describing his friend and says 'if you put a piece of cole in his ass, in a few weeks you'd have a diamond' (great line, imho). Well, the tv edit changed the line to 'if you put a piece of cole in his hand, in a few weeks you'd have a diamond'.
Sigh.
I don't understand why the other person who replied thought of your post as trolling. I would suggest seeing the movie before getting spoilers, as well, but if you want 'em that's your business.
Basically, no, Saruman does not get killed in TTT, but I have heardd pretty good assurances that RoTK will not have the scourging of the shire in it. I also know that Saruman will have a different death than in the book (if you look around, there is a leaked publicity photo that gives away some of the details).
So again, sorry to come across as so dismissive of your reaction, yet I had a very different experience with the film than you did. I hope that the next film (if you choose to see it) satisfies some of your concerns with Faramir (and know that I'll also be disappointed if he gets short shrift in ROTK)
First, I really appreciate the civility of your reply. Second, we (well, I, I'll ask her when she gets up=:) will still be in line for the RoTK and finally, regarding the inappropriateness of the dialogue. I'll just say that I wish I could have had a crack at condensing Faramir's dialogues into a shorter but still believable form. I still don't see why it could be done. I mean, is there no implicit (why must everything be explicit?) sense of tension in the power Faramir holds over the fate of the ring? I would have loved the movie scene where he holds the ring on the end of his sword so much more if it had been used as a way set a tense mood for the rest of the scene as written. I guess the short version of my point is this: There must have been a way to both shorten/liven the scene and still let Faramir's descision to let the ring go be his own, as a result of his character. Both Gandalf and Galadriel's temptations took less than 2 minutes each, after all.
A lot of people have had this reaction. I clarify our feelings a bit more in
this post.
I've said in other places that the things that REALLY upset me were the treatments of Gimli and Faramir's characters. For the rest, the question was less 'how dare you?' than 'why the heck did you?'.
You make some good points in defense of these, though I don't buy all of your explainations for their nescessity or advantage.
For example, having Galdalf vs Saruman instead of Grima (who was indeed but a worm compared to Gandalf). First, wouldn't Grima being subdued in an instant by a flash of light from the cieling reasonably demonstrate (for those who had missed it in the Balrog fight) that Gandalf is even more of a badass now than before? As for a confrontation with Saruman, what about Orthanc? Even if don't get to it in this movie, it will be in the next. Besides, I can't imagine viewers who hadn't read the books leaving the theater wishing Gandalf had exherted more dominance over Saruman for lack of this scene.
And yet, had it been the only change I wouldn't have minded much. You'll notice that I only mentioned this changed in an appendix, as it were, to my main post.
Ditto with most of the other, non-character changes. As for the ones I really did take exception to, an excellent defense of Theoden, which I feel adresses your comments well, has already been posted, so I'll just
link to it
Likewise, I've already posted my thoughts about Faramir in a
grandchild of this post and someone else has already replied with
another good argument against changing him, echoing what is still my argument against most of the changes: they were unnescesary and inferior. Sam's bravery is demonstrated to anyone paying attention by his presense in the story at all. It doesn't require the destruction of Faramir's character. Sam is the motivation behind the ring-bearer and yet, not being the bearer himself, he has even less reason to stick with it than Frodo. And really, doesn't the 'Samwise the Brave' comment at the end do plenty towards bolstering that perception? As for interrupting the flow of the battle at Helm's deep, fine, alter the continuity. Put it somewhere else. They did their version of Faramir's scenes without interrupting the battle, so why not Tolkien's? Too long? Hey, ditch the useless werg battle (really, I can go 20 minutes without a fight scene. Trust me) and you've got all the time that you need.
And there's one more thing that I would very much like to adress before I'm done: Your flippant replies to my last three bullets (Shelob, et al) conveniently overlook the fact that I very clearly acknowleged the possibility of those scenes being moved to the beginning of the second movie. You even point out other deviations from 'canon' that I 'forgot'. Of course I didn't forget that the Huorns were at Helm's deep, I just didn't think that their absense took much from the story since they mostly stay in forests blocking the Uruk-Hai retreat IIRC. Yes, I would rather have had them than random elf batallions, but here you have again overlooked something I made a big point of at the top of my post. I'm ok with nescesary or trivial changes to the story. It's when you start telling a different story with radically, meaningfully, detrimentally different characters that I draw the line and say 'write your own damn script and don't leave generations of non-readers with this as their idea of The Two Towers'.
Thanks. =:)
The reason she (and I) was so upset was not the elves showing up. In particular it was the treatment of Faramir's character, but not in the sense that you might think. It was NOT a matter of "how could they do that to 'my' Faramir". The character Tolkien created was one of the most impressive figures of the whole trilogy for both of us. Reading it as a teenager, he was the model of wisdom, temperance and simply having one's head screwed on straight for my wife. When I read it, much later in life, he was a character for whom I found that I had a deep respect for, much more than any of the other larger-than-life characters.
...and on film he's no different from Boromir. All that made the character respectible, all that made us want people to see that character: gone. And why? Does Jackson, like the grandparent's poster, really think so little of the audience that we just couldn't handle some actual intelligent dialogue on the subject instead of having dragons swoop in to make the descision for him? Is temperance too boring nowadays?
Perhaps we were upset in some sense because we took it personally, but it was indignation at Jackson thinking that it needed to be changed, not that he dared to change anything at all. And the primary reason for our feelings was still something else. It was regret that most of the world's Faramir is now Boromir II who wants to take the ring back to Gondor. Tolkien created something great and the movie that was supposed to bring it to a bigger audience nullified it instead. I have said before and I will say again that I am not dogmatic about 'canon'. I would have been OK with a lot of the additions (As I was with the first movie) were it not for their cumulative affect on the movie. But when one adapts "The Two Towers", or any other work, to film I think one has a responsibility to retain certain qualities, otherwise why not just write your own damn story? You don't write 'Ghandi' the movie and have him go around kung-fu fighting, you don't make '2001' and give HAL an emotion chip and you don't make intelligent characters into asses because you don't think your audience can handle it.
Originally posted to IMDB LOTR Message Board:
I have been really, honestly surprised by the number of positive reviews that this film has been getting. Not because I think it's a bad film (though even in that respect I think it pales in comparison to the first movie), but because after a more-or-less true retelling of "Fellowship.." it was a lousy adaptation. Below is my review of the movie. Please read it BEFORE writing me off as just another ringnut who can't stand the slightest deviation from the book. And I wonder: does _anyone_ else feel the same way that I did?
------------
A few disclaimers:
First, I have enormous respect for the effect of Tolkien's work despite the fact that, to be honest, his writing style doesn't do much for me.
Second, I loved the first movie. It really brought the book to life for me. The changes PJ made were forgivable because, like having Arwen save Frodo instead of another elf (really just a cheap way to get Liv Tyler more screentime), they didn't particularly alter the plot or the nature of the characters.
Third, I was annoyed with people who slammed the first movie for whatever little quibble they could come up with. I wanted these movies to be great and get no satisfaction out of reporting otherwise.
But with this second installment it seems that Jackson and co have decided to throw Tolkien's book out the window in favor of their own screenwriters in far more detrimental ways than before. Again, I am not one of those "it differed from the book by a sentence and is therefore crap" people. But there are limits to how much one can change before such changes become audacious and it matters whether or not the changes are improvements. In interviews, Peter Jackson has acknowledged that he thought the books were too "dense" and that they needed to be "simplified" for the average person who was unfamiliar with Tolkien. In the same interview, his justification for all this is that "there is a lot of money at stake here". So much for PJ being our savior from the Hollywood infection.
The sad part is that his 'simplifications' don't even work. During the beginning of the movie, I was trying to watch it as someone who had never read the book (which was not so difficult as it had been some time since I had) and was already disappointed. Characters are introduced too quickly, plotlines are rushed... and the changes this time around are far from trivial.
-- SPOILERS BELOW --
Of my wife and I's three favorite characters, only Eowyn, who is actually played quite well, is spared. Poor Gimli has been reduced to comic relief and does little more than fall off horses, be the subject of height jokes and axe people in the groin (yes, the film actually sinks this low). But Faramir fares worst. Apparently the average, non-tolkien-reading person off the street can't grapple with a concept as complex as a man who shows the wisdom to, unlike his brother, see the ring for what it is and not try to take it. No, in this version we are given the 'simplified' Faramir, who does try to take the ring and deliver it to his father as a gift (how is the story improved by this?). It takes a close call with a Nazgul (another event that never appears in the book) and Samwise spelling it out to him for the 'simplified' Faramir to actually let the ringbearer go. Simplified, or just plain simpleton? The worst part is that this change does absolutely NOTHING for the plot! Sam and Frodo still end up parting ways with Faramir and Faramir is still on his way to defend Gondor. The only difference is that anyone who has read the book and loved the character of Faramir is now disgusted with what we've been given instead.
I said that was the worst part. Actually, I lied. The worst part is that there are numerous scenes like this. A completely new, ill-contrived subplot involving Aragorn and Arwen wastes time by doing nothing but giving yet more screentime (now in a story that the character isn't even meant to appear in) to a Mabeline-laden Liv Tyler and then taking us back to exactly where we started (unless PJ ends up messing with the characters in even more tasteless ways in the next film). The 'simplified' ents, rather than noticing that a huge chunk of their forest has been hewn down, initially refuse to take part and have to be manipulated by Pippin into going to Isengard before doing anything about it. The 'simplified' Gollum/Smeagol doesn't just have conversations with himself, he uses cartoonish visual devices like peeking from behind alternating sides of a tree in order to help the poor, stupid (but lucrative) audience keep up with which side is talking. Sadly, I could go on.
I felt alienated and even betrayed by this movie. It would have been much better if the first film had been lousy, or at least not so true to the book. At the time, I wasn't expecting much else. But now I feel like after being led to expect a true-ish adaptation I have instead been handed something more Jackson than Tolkien. When I first read The Two Towers, I longed to see the battle of Helm's Deep on screen. When I saw Jackson's "Fellowship.." I had faith that it could really happen. Never in my wildest imaginings would I have expected to be contemplating leaving the theater in the middle of it. The thought actually crossed my mind that 'maybe the whole thing is really just a dream from which I'll wake up and then go see the real movie'. My wife, who is the real Tolkien fan of the family and had just finished re-reading the book, was left literally in tears.
For those who are interested, below is the most complete list of major (ie not just nitpicking about lines added or sideways glances omitted) changes that we could put together. And again, it wouldn't matter so much if every single one of them weren't, in my opinion, either unnecessary or simply inferior to their counterparts in the book. The fact that, because of the popularity of these movies, the Jackson versions of these characters and events will for many people become "The Two Towers" more than the Tolkien versions only adds insult to injury.
- Gandalf literally exorcises Saruman from possession of Theoden. Why is banging Theoden's head against his chair so much more dramatic than subduing Grima who, in the book was the one through which Saruman exerted control.
- Faramir, a noble and wise character in the book, is here really no different than Boromir. The only thing that differentiates them is luck. Unlike Boromir, Faramir gets ahold of himself when he still has time to do something about it.
- Theoden is much less heroic at Helm's Deep and has to be coaxed into doing anything (usually by Aragorn). Like Faramir, he is a watered-down version of Tolkien's character, as though Jackson felt that every other heroic character from the book had to be emasculated in order to make Aragorn look good.
- Gimli is reduced to bumbling comic relief except for one added-in scene where he joins Aragorn for one of his patented "me unscathed against 3-million baddies" fights. Only this one is even LESS believable than those in the first movie (which due to the excellent fight choreography I could actually suspend disbelief for)
- New subplot with dog riders attacking the people of Rohan en route to Helm's deep, Aragorn's "death" and Arwen's (apparent) decision not to stay with him.
- Elves show up to announce their alliance with the humans and save the day at Helm's Deep (????)
- The women and children of Rohan are kept in Helm's deep instead of another keep in the mountains, apparently for no other reason than to give us lots and lots (and lots) of shots of women and children crying during the fight. Eowyn is therefore there at the battle, but neither fighting nor having been given stewardship over her people.
- Ents have to be tricked by Pippin to decide to to do anything about Saruman. Why? Pippin and Merry get their moments of glory later on. Was PJ just impatient?
- No Shelob *
- Gandalf does not confront Saruman (he's never even at Isengard) *
- Gandalf and co never receive the Palantir from Orthanc (black, spherical seer stone thing) *
* = this may just have been moved to the beginning of the third movie, but as it is, we only get through half the book.
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There was also an` article a while ago (sorry, too lazy to link it) about some new fad in spam that involved using windows messenger (ie the 'net send' command) to send spam.
If the exploit is there, it should be public. How else will anyone who is reasonably concerned defend themselves if information about their pottential situation is kept a secret?
The fault I find with your analogy is that I don't think it describes the posting of an exploit. How is saying 'people are being shot by a sniper by the name of Joe Smith who lives at 555 Some Street' so different from saying 'people are having X, Y and Z done to their systems by a security hole in IE that resides in the handling of javascript on malicious sites'? In both cases, relevant information, and nothing more, is being offered. Posting an exploit is more like saying 'people are being killed by a sniper. He or she operates something like this... <click> BANG!".
In 99.9% of cases, a working exploit is simply not nescessary to defend against a security hole. I mean, what would be the difference between someone explaining in detail what the problem is (and what options lay open to you for fixing it) and someone handing you the source for an exploit? There's only one that I can think of: in the latter case if you are irresponsible you can turn around and use that exploit agaist others. Exploits do not patch security holes. At best they're a sort of extortion used to get lazy software companies off their a$$es and write patches but they do nothing constructive in themselves.
As for the exploit already being out in the wild, if the white-hats aren't going to use it and all other relevant info can be disseminated without providing an exploit, then all Bugtraq did was spread the exploit to less cluefull black-hats.
What, you don't know how to compare version numbers???????
Umm...
But until a large percentage of the population gets screwed royally by a security hole... a large percentage of the population hasn't gotten screwed royally by a security hole!
Don't get me wrong, MS should be faster to patch their security holes, but where are your priorities? If you were confronted by someone who had just lost a bunch of important data because of this exploit, do you really think they'd be impressed if you said "But I was trying to make a very important point to Microsoft!".
The brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) is still alive, as is Anthony Ainley, who played the Tom Baker era Master (please please please let them not use that wretched Master from the Fox movie). Will they have K9? I guess he's still alive, too. =:) As for the Chamelon Circuit, they fixed it for a while when they were trying to keep the show afloat amid a string of crapass episiodes during the Colin Baker era. But the TARDIS being anything but a blue police callbox just didn't sit well with DW fandom.
</patheticfanboy>
On a personal note, I'm glad they're using Paul McGann. I loved Tom Baker as much as most other people, but lets face it, he's ooooooold. Did you see him in Dungeons and Dragons? If not, don't. the rest of that movie is not worth the effort, but he just couldn't play the Doctor anymore. And I will say right now that as lame as the Fox movie was, Paul McGann's Doctor was fantastic. He really captured the character and I can't wait to see him again.
I'm surprised I'm the only person so far to take issue with MendaX's other statement, about the first two Dune books being the only good ones. Granted, the first is (IMO) the best of the series, but I would also put God Emperor (the fourth book) not too far below it.
Think of it! Someday we'll be able to warez Jack Valenti himself off of gnutella! =:)
Ok, did anybody else read that as 'robocop 2002' and cringe?
Am I the only one who followed the link to see what people can see about you online and was a bit unimpressed?
...and?
I mean, ok, they can tell if I have javascript turned on.
Really, the only even remotely sensitive piece of information is my IP and if I am really worried that I'm doing something that people will actually want to TRACK ME DOWN for by subpoenaing my ISP to see who was on IP x at time y, then I should be worried. But if what I'm worried about is personal info being sold or traded for demographics, ads, etc, this means nothing. All a proxy would do is keep the webmaster of sites I visit from being able to count the number of unique IPs that hit them, which is annoying for them, but does nothing for me.
In other words, the reason that spyware is bad is because it gives away *more* than the basic, useless information that you can get using javascript (oh no, the cops know my screen resolution!). If you avoid spyware in general and are not doing anything that would warrant (literally) your ISP being questioned, WTF is the point of doing everything through an anonymizer as the EFF seems to be advocating? Am I just missing something here?
I've been fearing this day for a long time now. I never used Napster or Kaazaa or any of those other tools. I've always used Audiogalaxy. The Linux version of Satelite has no spyware and the AG service was great for finding really rare stuff. My wife and I have about 16gigs of mp3s. We own about 80% of that music. The rest is all rare and hard to find stuff. When my wife got into anime music, which can only be found at certain stores around here and then only as expensive imports, she found a ton of it on AG. It opened up a whole new world of music and, guess what, prompted us to purchase several of those expensive imports that we wouldn't have even thought about getting before we heard anything from it. When I got nostalgic for my punk rock days I looked up all the old bands that I used to listen to, great bands that never hit the bigtime by any stretch of the imagination, like Crimpshrine and J-Church. They were all there. You cannot get this stuff legfitimately anymore.
Now, because of a bunch of faulty assumtions and greed on the RIAA's part, that's going to go away. I had thought AG might have been able to stay below the RIAA's radar, but apparently not. Today is a really pissy day for me.