V, like the original Matrix, is a story written by another author (or authors, David Lloyd and Alan Moore), so that is firm basis for you to be optimistic about the upcoming Wachowski film.
However, I have to say I liked Reloaded better than the original Matrix, no point getting into individual plot elements about it, or to get into Revolutions either, but here are a few reasons:
- The Wachowskis are incredible visual directors, case in point being the highway chase sequence, which not only managed to avoid all the trappings that have made this type of scene a dreaded cliché, but actually reinvented the "visual language" of the chase, much like, in their own day, Bullit, The French Connection, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Terminator 2. Also keep in mind the fight with a thousand Smiths, which reinvented the fight sequence.
- The story of the original Matrix was nothing new to most fans of sci-fi, as the concept of the Matrix goes back to the nightmare fiction of Harlan Ellison, think along the lines of "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" (BTW, the original Terminator is dedicated "to Harlan Ellison"), with elements of Philip K Dick and anime, among many others. All this is excellent, but the movie dipped sharply for me when they turned Schwartzenegger in the cop-filled lobby. Matrix Reloaded avoided the Schwartzenegger Cliché altogether.
- Did the obtuse plot points of Reloaded confound your expectations? Well then, you were feeling the exact same thing that Neo was, so the Wachowskis effectively put the public in Neo's shoes. The Matrix was NOT what you expected or hoped it would be. Neo himself was NOT what you expected or hoped he would be. These plot twists were decidedly dark and uncommercial. And extremely fresh to boot, as most of them I had never come across before, and I bet most people, even avid sci-fi fans, also hadn't.
I do have to say that I disliked the cliffhanger ending of Reloaded, felt it was gimmicky, but that's about it.
I'm not saying I loved one and hated the rest or anything like that, as I greatly appreciated all three films, which are cerebral blockbusters, a rare creature indeed.
They're going to have to also put a pretty good wine cellar on that spacecraft. I can visualize an angry Astronaut 1, sitting at the dinner table in front of his Chateaubriand, glaring at hungover Astronaut 2 while angrily barking the question "Any wine left?", just about a month before they get to Mars. Space madness indeed.
Meanwhile, Astronaut 3 will have to be keeping an eye on the History Eraser Button.
Mmmmm...chicken pot pie...chocolate covered raisins...glazed ham!
And if they happen to be Taikonauts: "Honey, this chicken kung pow is...(drum roll)...OUT OF THIS WORLD!!!"
Sound like something Dark Helmet may have said in the movie Spaceballs, but I haven't seen it in such a long time I can't remember. But I do remember this:
I can see that. Before Vader, there was a tyranny of the bureaucratic Light Side of the Force, as when the old fogies of the Establishment (Yoda, Windu) complain about the 'arrogance' of the younger generation, and assuming that the prophecy was about their own glorious perpetuation. Typical. Sounds like the right time to wipe the slate clean.
Hey, you know what, that's called 'thinking outside of the box', and I quite like the idea. I would've never thought of it.
One qualm, however: how could anybody who watches the series for the first time, in that order, possibly concentrate on a pod race while Han Solo is frozen in carbonite? Or that father figure Kenobi lied to Luke (Ben, why didn't you tell me)?
My thoughts are that your sequence is the correct one for the already initiated, because the first-time viewer will want to immediately pop number 6 into the tray.
There are even more wookies in Timothy Zahn's trilogy Dark Force Rising. The wookies are alive and well and doing the nasty on Kashyyk, so don't worry, everything's funky.
Actually, the best hiding spot for a Sith Lord would be under the very noses of the Jedi, as his presence would not be felt under the overwhelming 'noise' of the Light Side.
Example: Yoda could hide away in Dagobah because there was a cave ripe with the Dark Side nearby, remember (a dead Dark Jedi lay there); from overhead, both cancelled each other out, thus Yoda was undetectable. I expect Kenobi had a similar arrangement in Tatooine, as in ANH Vader did not detect him on the planet, but immediately sensed his presence on the Death Star.
As a bonus to Palpatine, a Sith Lord's presence close to Jedi HQ would diminish the strenght of the Light Side, just a little bit. Remember Mace Windu's comments to Yoda on AOTC, how could they not detect the creation of a clone army?
Another excellent example is Asimov's Foundation series, which painted itself into the very same corner as Star Wars. The order in which Foundation plays chronologically:
1. All of the robot novels.
2. Prelude to Foundation.
3. Forward the Foundation. Then, the outsourced novels:
4. Foundation's fear.
5. Foundation and chaos.
6. Foundation's triumph. Only now do we come to the original trilogy:
7. Foundation.
8. Foundation and empire.
9. Second Foundation. Finally, the sequels:
10. Foundation's edge.
11. Foundation and Earth.
But it would be sacrilege to do it that way, spoiling absolutely all the nifty twists, and Asimov was a master yarn twister. The correct order is the one in which they were written:
1. The original Foundation trilogy.
2. The robot novels (The caves of steel, The naked sun).
3. The Foundation sequels.
4. The robot sequels (Robots of dawn, Robots and empire).
5. Prelude to Foundation.
6. Forward the Foundation.
7. The outsourced novels.
This is the way I did it, and enjoyed them no end. However, a friend of mine told me he read one of the Foundation books, and that it was just OK. Which one? Prelude to Foundation. I cringed and winced.
And hey, just when is Foundation making it to the big screen? The time is RIPE.
Finally, FWIT, my favourite Narnia book is A Boy and His Horse.
Remember Attack of the Clones. Jango Fett's ship, the Slave I, had a built in hyperdrive. Sure, Slave I was much bulkier than the Jedi fighter, but it maneouvered quite nicely in the pinch, and was equipped with an impressive array of weaponry.
Also, in the original trilogy, empire technology was pretty much a centralized deal, whereas in the prequels every Tom, Dick and Harry planetary system had their own spaceship designs. In one of those countless systems, a miniaturized hyperdrive was bound to develop.
In a way, Slave I and the Millennium Falcon serve as technological 'missing links', as the next evolutionary step in regards to size was the fighter with hyperdrive.
But let's all please overlook the fact that the republic had existed for thousands of years, and just when the Sith began to rule the galaxy, up pops this little ace up the sleeve, right into the hands of the rebellion. (a nod and a wink)
I use two kinds of aftershave lotion: Frankincense, Myrrh... THREE kinds of aftershave lotion: Frankincense, Myrrh, San... FOUR kinds of aftershave lotion: Frankincense...
- Aftershave? Certainly sir, walk this way, please. - If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need aftershave.
They didn't see it coming? Incredible. If anybody should be aware of how large and devoted the cult of the Python is, it should be the Python itself.
At the very least, they should have taken their cue from the success of reconfiguring old ABBA songs and calling it "Mamma Mia", or the Queen musical for that matter. But what does it matter to them, really, considering they all made a considerable fortune in post-Python careers: John Cleese made corporate training videos, Michael Palin had his BBC travelling series, Terry Jones is a successfull author, Terry Gilliam is a prominent film director, and Eric has this. Graham Chapman doesn't count, as he has wrung the curtain and joined the choir invisible, he is an ex-Graham.
For detecting what was staring at him in the face for years, Eric Idle deserves all of the following prizes: a punch in the throat, a kick in the kneecap, a dagger up the step, and a blow on the head.
It is highly unlikely that a project like this could have been carried to completion in Germany at the time, just because of external factors, let alone the technical difficulties of building the first atomic bomb from scratch.
The american team of physicists could work in complete isolation in the heart of New Mexico's high desert. The United States was not being subjected to the intense bombardment that Germany was at that same time. Project Manhattan did not have to rely on crippled factories to deliver their raw materials, nor suffer the time-consuming blows of having their infrastructure (road, rail, water, electricity and the like) destroyed and hastily rebuilt and destroyed and hastily rebuilt, ad nauseam.
Also, let us not forget the exodus of many of the greatest scientific minds from Europe to the United States, during the years leading up to war. If the nazi government could have kept its fascist zeal (intolerance and persecution) in check, they might have kept many of those minds, and in that parallel universe, I speculate that NEITHER side would have been able to bring about the atomic bomb (see the previous paragraph).
Not Necessarily the News!!! It's been over a decade since I forgot that I'd forgotten that show! Fridays is probably tattooed on my mind because of the Andy Kaufmann guest appearances, plus the fact that Rich Hall was also a member of the regular cast.
Snigglets (words that should be in the dictionary but aren't) were invented by comedian Rich Hall. I believe he came up with the idea on the ABC comedy show Fridays (a sort of copycat SNL), then wrote a couple of books on the subject.
I like the term he came up with for people who use the express lane at the supermarket, while carrying one or more items above the limit - expressholes.
First off, I'd like to say WARNING: BIG SPOILERS AHEAD.
I read Heart Of Darkness recently, and I thought it started very well, then slowed down considerably, but picked up momentum and ended with a great big bang, and is of great interest at least for the way the story plays out, as opposed to Apocalypse Now:
1. Kurtz is RESCUED by Charlie Marlow (the protagonist) from the natives that worship him and keep him captive. Kurtz is not a monster in the book, just a powerfully charismatic man in the wrong place at the wrong time, making a lot of company (ivory merchants) bigwigs uncomfortable. 2. Kurtz is terribly ill, and dies on the boat on the way back from the deep Congo. His last words? You guessed it: "The horror, the horror". 3. When Marlow returns to Brussels, he visits Kurtz's grief-stricken GIRLFRIEND, and she asks him what Kurtz's last words were. Marlow lies and tells her: "The last words he pronounced were - your name". That's a pretty damn good ending.
Curiously, Kurtz's girlfriend remains nameless throughout the story.
Which begs the question: when is that first-person Pac-Man coming out?
Picture yourself inside the maze, the yellow upper lip moving up and down on the bottom of the screen, you turn a corner and Yikes! A raspberry colored ghost is coming at you! You turn around and Yikes! Blueberry ghost was behind you all the time! Quick! Hard left!
All the while, of course, there is a tiny bird's eye view of the maze on the left of the screen, but you lost sight of it in your greedy appetite for for the banana.
Somebody's missing out on a fortune by not having come out with this.
I don't see the need to change the name, as Puck could be some sort of hockey reference, what with the main character eating pucks up and down the maze.
A couple of years back, there was a new guy at work who, when in idle mode, just stood there staring at some point beyond a speck in the wall, with his mouth hanging open. It took co-workers all of one day to coin the guy a nickname: you guessed it, Pac-Man.
Hmmmm. Harkening back to the old days, I'm trying to remember PG movies that would be PG-13 or even R nowadays. Here's a few:
Airplane! (brief frontal boob flash).
Logan's Run (brief profile boob flash).
Arthur (profane language).
A Bridge Too Far (the Saving Private Ryan of its day).
Excalibur (nudity, sexual situations).
Patton (a persistent barrage of profane language).
Ragtime (prolonged topless scene with Elizabeth McGovern).
Then there's the strange case of Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout, which, despite having prolonged scenes of full frontal nudity (a skinny dipping Jenny Agutter), was embraced by an american christian coalition for family values, who recommended that the whole family should see it. The film's R rating was downgraded to a GP rating, which stands for General Public, the modern equivalent of G!
Finally, if memory serves, the first PG-13 film was Red Dawn.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, mod parent up to 5, great work.
V, like the original Matrix, is a story written by another author (or authors, David Lloyd and Alan Moore), so that is firm basis for you to be optimistic about the upcoming Wachowski film.
However, I have to say I liked Reloaded better than the original Matrix, no point getting into individual plot elements about it, or to get into Revolutions either, but here are a few reasons:
- The Wachowskis are incredible visual directors, case in point being the highway chase sequence, which not only managed to avoid all the trappings that have made this type of scene a dreaded cliché, but actually reinvented the "visual language" of the chase, much like, in their own day, Bullit, The French Connection, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Terminator 2. Also keep in mind the fight with a thousand Smiths, which reinvented the fight sequence.
- The story of the original Matrix was nothing new to most fans of sci-fi, as the concept of the Matrix goes back to the nightmare fiction of Harlan Ellison, think along the lines of "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" (BTW, the original Terminator is dedicated "to Harlan Ellison"), with elements of Philip K Dick and anime, among many others. All this is excellent, but the movie dipped sharply for me when they turned Schwartzenegger in the cop-filled lobby. Matrix Reloaded avoided the Schwartzenegger Cliché altogether.
- Did the obtuse plot points of Reloaded confound your expectations? Well then, you were feeling the exact same thing that Neo was, so the Wachowskis effectively put the public in Neo's shoes. The Matrix was NOT what you expected or hoped it would be. Neo himself was NOT what you expected or hoped he would be. These plot twists were decidedly dark and uncommercial. And extremely fresh to boot, as most of them I had never come across before, and I bet most people, even avid sci-fi fans, also hadn't.
I do have to say that I disliked the cliffhanger ending of Reloaded, felt it was gimmicky, but that's about it.
I'm not saying I loved one and hated the rest or anything like that, as I greatly appreciated all three films, which are cerebral blockbusters, a rare creature indeed.
You could also replace the toast with a corn tortilla, with excellent results.
Hey, how come when I filled out my college apps I couldn't check 'French'?
6 7,00.html
Check again, they might have changed it to 'Freedom', although even that senator has changed his tune: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,14915
They're going to have to also put a pretty good wine cellar on that spacecraft. I can visualize an angry Astronaut 1, sitting at the dinner table in front of his Chateaubriand, glaring at hungover Astronaut 2 while angrily barking the question "Any wine left?", just about a month before they get to Mars. Space madness indeed.
Meanwhile, Astronaut 3 will have to be keeping an eye on the History Eraser Button.
Mmmmm...chicken pot pie...chocolate covered raisins...glazed ham!
And if they happen to be Taikonauts: "Honey, this chicken kung pow is...(drum roll)...OUT OF THIS WORLD!!!"
Sound like something Dark Helmet may have said in the movie Spaceballs, but I haven't seen it in such a long time I can't remember. But I do remember this:
I see your schwartz is as big as mine.
If we're going to start with the Python references, well then, so be it.
The correct order in which to watch the Star Wars series is 4, 5, 6...NO, ONE!
And what else, other than a duck, floats in water? A Jedi!!!
On second thought, let's not go to Coruscant, it is a silly place.
I can see that. Before Vader, there was a tyranny of the bureaucratic Light Side of the Force, as when the old fogies of the Establishment (Yoda, Windu) complain about the 'arrogance' of the younger generation, and assuming that the prophecy was about their own glorious perpetuation. Typical. Sounds like the right time to wipe the slate clean.
4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6.
Hey, you know what, that's called 'thinking outside of the box', and I quite like the idea. I would've never thought of it.
One qualm, however: how could anybody who watches the series for the first time, in that order, possibly concentrate on a pod race while Han Solo is frozen in carbonite? Or that father figure Kenobi lied to Luke (Ben, why didn't you tell me)?
My thoughts are that your sequence is the correct one for the already initiated, because the first-time viewer will want to immediately pop number 6 into the tray.
There are even more wookies in Timothy Zahn's trilogy Dark Force Rising. The wookies are alive and well and doing the nasty on Kashyyk, so don't worry, everything's funky.
Actually, the best hiding spot for a Sith Lord would be under the very noses of the Jedi, as his presence would not be felt under the overwhelming 'noise' of the Light Side.
Example: Yoda could hide away in Dagobah because there was a cave ripe with the Dark Side nearby, remember (a dead Dark Jedi lay there); from overhead, both cancelled each other out, thus Yoda was undetectable. I expect Kenobi had a similar arrangement in Tatooine, as in ANH Vader did not detect him on the planet, but immediately sensed his presence on the Death Star.
As a bonus to Palpatine, a Sith Lord's presence close to Jedi HQ would diminish the strenght of the Light Side, just a little bit. Remember Mace Windu's comments to Yoda on AOTC, how could they not detect the creation of a clone army?
Extremely ballsy and clever, that Palpatine.
Another excellent example is Asimov's Foundation series, which painted itself into the very same corner as Star Wars. The order in which Foundation plays chronologically:
1. All of the robot novels.
2. Prelude to Foundation.
3. Forward the Foundation.
Then, the outsourced novels:
4. Foundation's fear.
5. Foundation and chaos.
6. Foundation's triumph.
Only now do we come to the original trilogy:
7. Foundation.
8. Foundation and empire.
9. Second Foundation.
Finally, the sequels:
10. Foundation's edge.
11. Foundation and Earth.
But it would be sacrilege to do it that way, spoiling absolutely all the nifty twists, and Asimov was a master yarn twister. The correct order is the one in which they were written:
1. The original Foundation trilogy.
2. The robot novels (The caves of steel, The naked sun).
3. The Foundation sequels.
4. The robot sequels (Robots of dawn, Robots and empire).
5. Prelude to Foundation.
6. Forward the Foundation.
7. The outsourced novels.
This is the way I did it, and enjoyed them no end. However, a friend of mine told me he read one of the Foundation books, and that it was just OK. Which one? Prelude to Foundation. I cringed and winced.
And hey, just when is Foundation making it to the big screen? The time is RIPE.
Finally, FWIT, my favourite Narnia book is A Boy and His Horse.
Remember Attack of the Clones. Jango Fett's ship, the Slave I, had a built in hyperdrive. Sure, Slave I was much bulkier than the Jedi fighter, but it maneouvered quite nicely in the pinch, and was equipped with an impressive array of weaponry.
Also, in the original trilogy, empire technology was pretty much a centralized deal, whereas in the prequels every Tom, Dick and Harry planetary system had their own spaceship designs. In one of those countless systems, a miniaturized hyperdrive was bound to develop.
In a way, Slave I and the Millennium Falcon serve as technological 'missing links', as the next evolutionary step in regards to size was the fighter with hyperdrive.
But let's all please overlook the fact that the republic had existed for thousands of years, and just when the Sith began to rule the galaxy, up pops this little ace up the sleeve, right into the hands of the rebellion. (a nod and a wink)
I use two kinds of aftershave lotion:
Frankincense, Myrrh...
THREE kinds of aftershave lotion:
Frankincense, Myrrh, San...
FOUR kinds of aftershave lotion: Frankincense...
- Aftershave? Certainly sir, walk this way, please.
- If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need aftershave.
They didn't see it coming? Incredible. If anybody should be aware of how large and devoted the cult of the Python is, it should be the Python itself.
At the very least, they should have taken their cue from the success of reconfiguring old ABBA songs and calling it "Mamma Mia", or the Queen musical for that matter. But what does it matter to them, really, considering they all made a considerable fortune in post-Python careers:
John Cleese made corporate training videos, Michael Palin had his BBC travelling series, Terry Jones is a successfull author, Terry Gilliam is a prominent film director, and Eric has this. Graham Chapman doesn't count, as he has wrung the curtain and joined the choir invisible, he is an ex-Graham.
For detecting what was staring at him in the face for years, Eric Idle deserves all of the following prizes: a punch in the throat, a kick in the kneecap, a dagger up the step, and a blow on the head.
"Henri Bergson"
And what an eccentric performance it was. Tim is the sorcerer who continuously discharges flames.
Ni
...so the ancient bear turned to the ancient bunny and asked: "Do you have problems with ancient shit sticking to your ancient fur?"...
It is highly unlikely that a project like this could have been carried to completion in Germany at the time, just because of external factors, let alone the technical difficulties of building the first atomic bomb from scratch.
The american team of physicists could work in complete isolation in the heart of New Mexico's high desert. The United States was not being subjected to the intense bombardment that Germany was at that same time. Project Manhattan did not have to rely on crippled factories to deliver their raw materials, nor suffer the time-consuming blows of having their infrastructure (road, rail, water, electricity and the like) destroyed and hastily rebuilt and destroyed and hastily rebuilt, ad nauseam.
Also, let us not forget the exodus of many of the greatest scientific minds from Europe to the United States, during the years leading up to war.
If the nazi government could have kept its fascist zeal (intolerance and persecution) in check, they might have kept many of those minds, and in that parallel universe, I speculate that NEITHER side would have been able to bring about the atomic bomb (see the previous paragraph).
Indiana Jones Reloaded.
Indiana Jones Beyond the Thunderdome.
The Passion of the Indiana Jones.
Indiana Jones: A Space Odyssey.
Indiana Jones: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.
The Star Wars holiday special doesn't count...
Oh man, that was a knee-slapper. If I had mod points, I would gladly sacrifice one in the name of Funny.
Not Necessarily the News!!! It's been over a decade since I forgot that I'd forgotten that show! Fridays is probably tattooed on my mind because of the Andy Kaufmann guest appearances, plus the fact that Rich Hall was also a member of the regular cast.
Thanks for clearing that up.
http://www.ziplink.net/~wood/funny/snigglets.html
Snigglets (words that should be in the dictionary but aren't) were invented by comedian Rich Hall. I believe he came up with the idea on the ABC comedy show Fridays (a sort of copycat SNL), then wrote a couple of books on the subject.
I like the term he came up with for people who use the express lane at the supermarket, while carrying one or more items above the limit - expressholes.
First off, I'd like to say WARNING: BIG SPOILERS AHEAD.
I read Heart Of Darkness recently, and I thought it started very well, then slowed down considerably, but picked up momentum and ended with a great big bang, and is of great interest at least for the way the story plays out, as opposed to Apocalypse Now:
1. Kurtz is RESCUED by Charlie Marlow (the protagonist) from the natives that worship him and keep him captive. Kurtz is not a monster in the book, just a powerfully charismatic man in the wrong place at the wrong time, making a lot of company (ivory merchants) bigwigs uncomfortable.
2. Kurtz is terribly ill, and dies on the boat on the way back from the deep Congo. His last words? You guessed it: "The horror, the horror".
3. When Marlow returns to Brussels, he visits Kurtz's grief-stricken GIRLFRIEND, and she asks him what Kurtz's last words were. Marlow lies and tells her: "The last words he pronounced were - your name". That's a pretty damn good ending.
Curiously, Kurtz's girlfriend remains nameless throughout the story.
Which begs the question: when is that first-person Pac-Man coming out?
Picture yourself inside the maze, the yellow upper lip moving up and down on the bottom of the screen, you turn a corner and Yikes! A raspberry colored ghost is coming at you! You turn around and Yikes! Blueberry ghost was behind you all the time! Quick! Hard left!
All the while, of course, there is a tiny bird's eye view of the maze on the left of the screen, but you lost sight of it in your greedy appetite for for the banana.
Somebody's missing out on a fortune by not having come out with this.
I don't see the need to change the name, as Puck could be some sort of hockey reference, what with the main character eating pucks up and down the maze.
A couple of years back, there was a new guy at work who, when in idle mode, just stood there staring at some point beyond a speck in the wall, with his mouth hanging open. It took co-workers all of one day to coin the guy a nickname: you guessed it, Pac-Man.
Hmmmm. Harkening back to the old days, I'm trying to remember PG movies that would be PG-13 or even R nowadays. Here's a few:
Airplane! (brief frontal boob flash).
Logan's Run (brief profile boob flash).
Arthur (profane language).
A Bridge Too Far (the Saving Private Ryan of its day).
Excalibur (nudity, sexual situations).
Patton (a persistent barrage of profane language).
Ragtime (prolonged topless scene with Elizabeth McGovern).
Then there's the strange case of Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout, which, despite having prolonged scenes of full frontal nudity (a skinny dipping Jenny Agutter), was embraced by an american christian coalition for family values, who recommended that the whole family should see it. The film's R rating was downgraded to a GP rating, which stands for General Public, the modern equivalent of G!
Finally, if memory serves, the first PG-13 film was Red Dawn.