I think in the case of TPM it simply became evident how unoriginal a filmmaker George Lucas really is. I believe him when he says he didn't intentionally put any racial stereotypes in there. He just ripped off a host of other movies tht did use racial stereotypes. Yes, there's Watto, although most people seem to see him as a stereotypical Jew. There's the Trade Federation representatives, who could be Japanese out of a WWII era movie. There's what's-his-name: the Latino-type pod racer whom Anakin beats, who could have been out of a '70's era detective TV show like Baretta. And let's not forget the wise, old martial arts masters of the Jedi Council, from any one of a number of Hong Kong action movies.
There's nary an original feature in the entire movie.
The good/bad polarity of light/dark sides of the force was absolute, easy enough for all us 4 year olds to understand at the time.
Or even us 13 year olds. But it wasn't just the kids who were taken in. Sober, serious, adult critics were almost uniform in their praise. Harlan Ellison's was the sole, lonely critical voice to be raised against it, and even in his case his point wasn't so much that it sucked, but just that it wasn't quite as good as everyone else was saying. I suspect that even Lucas was surprised at the critics' reaction, but he knew good luck when he saw it and ran with it. Can't blame him for that, but I can blame him for pretending to have made something profound.
Luke's eligibility: There was always his sister. And didn't Yoda have to be talked into training him? My point was really about how quickly Luke learned what he did (from ESB: "But I've learned so much!"), picking up in days or hours what was supposed to take years. If he was an extrordinary genius it's not remarked on except in a general way, and not by anyone who was actually teaching him.
Dialog: It need not be about romance, but it would be nice if you could repeat any of the lines without wincing, or if there weren't so many situations where you knew what a character was going to say before he opened his mouth.
Acting: You're forgetting Christopher Lee. But you're also confusing star power with quality acting. A "star" might be a comptetent actor, but that need not be so if he or she has other appealing qualities. And there are plenty of extremely fine actors who will never be stars, relegated to "character" roles precisely because they're so good at portraying various types. I consider Mark Hamill the worst thing about Star Wars because, with the central role in the series, he had neither acting skill nor (ultimately) star quality. I remember when Hamill was the celebrity guest on the Muppet Show. He had absolutely no talent that could entertain in a variety show setting. They wound up making that the main point of most of the jokes in the episode. Hamill does a lot of voice work now, and that seems to be his niche. Luke Skywalker was more than he could handle.
I cut Lucas no slack for going where the money is. Surely he, if anyone, could afford art for art's sake. The movie was going to be hugely profitable with or without merchandizing. He might as well have made it a good one.
After many years of watching bits and pieces of all the movies but TPM over the years, I've come to the conclusion that Star Wars sucked ass all along but is so constructed that it's difficult to notice.
Lucas was a devotee of Joseph Campbell, the late comparative mythologist, and he used Campbell's work as a paint-by-number set for generating the plot of the first movie, by his own admission even if not in so many words. (By "first movie" I mean the first one that was actually made, now called Episode 4 but originally called just "Star Wars".) It's filled with motifs we expect to see in great stories, so our minds naturally associate it with being a great story. Aided by the admittedly competent cinematography, we are presented with the semblence or illusion of a good movie. This blinds us to the plot holes, the shallow characterization, the cliched dialog, and the shoddy acting that it typical of the series.
Plot Holes: Try, for example, to reconcile the timeline of ANH with what is now known to be required for even the beginning of Jedi training. Luke can't have had time to learn much on Tattooine, and he only has the time during the trip to Aldaraan for serious instruction. How long does this take? There's nothing in the movie to suggest that more than a day or two passes in transit, possibly less. And Luke's starting out as a teenager, when even Anakin at 8 (or is it 10? I forget) is thought by Yoda to be too old to begin.
Shallow Characterization: All the characters are very close to their archetypes. There are many assumptions we therefore automatically make about them, and Lucas doesn't have to do very much work at all to make them "pass" for deep ones. And he doesn't.
Cliched Dialog:"I can't believe he's gone." (Luke about Obi-Wan. He'd known him, what, a week or less?) "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." (Han about the Jedi. Substitute the appropriate weaponry and it could have come from a spaghetti western.) "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." (Leia to Tarkin. How many times has the plucky revolutionary said something similar to the dictator in numerous other settings?) Et cetera.
Shoddy acting: Alec Guinness' opinions on this are well known, but even so he and the other few competent actors deliver even the most hideously bad lines in a credible manner. Unfortunately, they don't have enough screen time to make much of a difference. Seen Mark Hamill in anything lately? There's a reason for that. He was bad enough in ANH, but he really showed he didn't have it in RoJ. When he tries to sound mystical he sounds stoned. For serenity we get vacancy. Instead of firm resolve we get a sort of vague assurance. Man he was bad. Carrie Fisher wasn't much better in the first movie, but at least she improved in the craft after a few years. Harrison Ford might have been good enough, but he failed to rise to the level of genius it would have taken to break Han out of the "rogue with a good heart underneath it all" mold.
If after thinking about it all in these terms I had any doubt about the quality of the story, I simply have to think about TPM. If Lucas ever had it, he's lost it. There just isn't any enthusiasm left any more. He should have been thinking of the people who'd been waiting almost 20 years for that film, not the 10 year olds the promotional tie-ins were designed for.
Or maybe he was, and this was the best he could do. Oh well. It could have been a lot better.
A new hope, Empire Strikes back, Return of the Jedi, would sound just as corny if we heard them for the first time
today.
<GEEZER>
"A New Hope" did sound corny when I heard it for the first time. "Star Wars", which was simply the name of the movie when it was first released, was much better -- but you kids wouldn't remember that. "Episode IV" raised many hopes that were eventually presumed to be false, as everyone had pretty much discounted the possibility of a prequel when 5 years or so passed and Lucas had seemingly gone on to other things.
Of course, when the prequel finally came out, many people wished it hadn't, or that it had been done much, much differently. Lucas could not possibly have made the Star Wars franchise into the success it is had he actually started with TPM.
</GEEZER>
Make sure you're not thinking of Frederick Pohl. "Pohl" is a surname, "Poul" is a Scandanavian first name. They're somewhat different writers, but often confused for some reason.
11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,
14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
Emphasis mine. I don't know about the forehead thing, but I'm sure "Six hundred threescore and six" has got to be in the Windows Registry somewhere!
Re:Art Bell is a racist who hates Filipinos
on
Pillars Underwater
·
· Score: 1
This rumor has been floating around the Internet for a few years now. Surely it ought to be obvious that it's a hoax. A man with the opinions Art Bell supposedly holds would hardly marry a Filipina, which he has in fact done. The rumor has been refuted repeatedly, and the Filipino publication that recently repeated it without checking their facts first is falling over backwards trying to retract it so as to avoid a defamation lawsuit. (They have in fact published two separate retractions.) A summary of the full story is here: http://www.artbell.com/filipino.html
To the pinhead moderator: -1: Overrated, possibly. But "Redundant"? Who else made this comment before I did?
Re:Mysterious first chapter...
on
Lord of Light
·
· Score: 2
The colony ship carried a very technically competent crew of mostly American or NW European extraction (the chaplain was Christian with an anglo-saxon name, Captain Jan Olvegg was maybe Dutch, and Sam Kalkin certainly seems American), and a large cargo of Hindu Indians with apparently no technical knowledge at all.
There is absolutely nothing in the book to support this interpretation. Sam states explicitly when speaking to Kali about midway through the book that the current low-tech human inhabitants of the planet are the descendants of themselves, by which he meant the original colonists, or the "First" as they were called. Those of the First who were still living, if not gods of the Celestial City, were "prince[s] among men," as Hawkana declares. The racial stock of the humans on the planet would thus have been a blend of the races represented by the First. What this was exactly is impossible to determine since we aren't generally told the gods' original names and their current bodies have been sujbected to extensive genetic engineering. The names we are told are "Jan Olvegg" (Norweigian, not Dutch), "Renfrew" (no given surname, but Germanic I think), "Sam" (actually Hebrew in origin, so he could be from almost anywhere, by intent I imagine) and a run-of-the mill (to American ears) female name that escapes me for the moment, but who was incarnated as Brahma at the beginning of the story. This is pretty inconclusive about the what the racial mix of the First was supposed to have been. It's hinted that the use of Hinduism was inspired by the name of their ship, The Star of India.
And where the hell are you getting "Sam Kalkin" from? Kalkin was the name of Sam's Aspect, borrowed from Hinduism like the others. In this case it's the name of a future avatar of Vishnu. His real name was Sam; we aren't told his original surname.
It ought to have been clear to the attentive reader that most of the gods were not all that technically competent. The vast majority of their most effective weaponry was designed and built by a single individual, Yama, and his loss crippled them. The City was designed by Vishnu, and Sam seems to have been a fairly competent engineer in his day. Other than that, the gods didn't look to be any more competent than the average inhabitants of any technically advanced culture who are well able to operate the sophisticated machinery around them but who have only the dimmest understanding of how it all works. How many Americans are able to repair their own TVs? Microwave ovens? Automobiles? Toasters?
As I remember it (and I admit it's been a decade and a half since I read it), there are no native inhabitants on the planet... the inhabitants are the colonists and the rulers are the crew. The colonists were in cold storage or some such, and when the ship arrived the crew who ran the ship made themselves gods and the colonists (when they took them out of cold storage) their subjects.
Speciesist. The Rakshasa, demons, "the Glow", and other energy beings were the native inhabitants of the planet. Physical body or no, they had feelings too, you know! The human colonists either destroyed them, imprisoned them, or drove them into hiding. That sounds pretty subjugated to me.
The ordinary human inhabitants of the planet are referred to more than once as the descendents of the original colonists, whether or not they were the crew. We actually meet only two characters positively identified as crew members: the captain Jan Olvegg, and the chaplain Nirriti. The rest of the gods and "First" are simply those who arrived on the ship Star of India, whether crew or not, or their near descendents. Their descendents at greater remove were relegated to a more primitive existence outside the Celestial City, to which they can aspire by building up enough "karma." Cold storage is never mentioned.
Two different Campbells. The Campbell you're thinking of was John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding (now Analog) and author, commonly called the father of modern science fiction. He died in 1971. The Campbell we're talking about is an academician, a well-known scholar in comparative mythology, who died in 1987.
Campbell was one of the world's foremost scholars on mythology before he died a few years ago and his books are definitely worth a read, even if they are a bit dry at times. In them he often talks about the re-use of old stories and myths in newer works, and I think this would certainly apply to LOL, along with other works, like Star Wars.
It had better apply to Star Wars. Lucas used Campbell's work as the outlines of a paint-by-number set to construct the story. That's probably why it resonates so well with so many people despite it's numerous -- and to an objective observer, possibly fatal -- flaws. The motifs are ones we are accustomed to see as the framework of a great myth, so we're inclined to see Star Wars that way even though it is patently not such.
I can't say I was ever a great admirer of Campbell. I never got through any of his books because they annoyed me so much. He seemed so focused on what he saw as the basic equivalence of mythic motifs across cultures that he often seemed to miss the things that made the legends essentially unique. It's undeniably true that there seems to be a limited palette of mythic motifs (and Campbell was hardly the first to notice this either; check out Jung sometime) but IMO each culture used that palette to paint very different pictures.
No doubt this was a reflection of Campbell's own personality more than anything else. I watched a couple of the Bill Moyers interviews. I have never in my life seen someone so acquainted with so many stories who nevertheless seemed to miss the point of so many of them, and then to suck the soul out of them in the telling. He managed to make every single story he related boring as hell, and nothing the producers of the show did by way of illustration or background music could make them interesting again.
ObZelazny: Yes, Lord of Light was one of his best.
The applications were listed in chronological order. E-mail predated Usenet (which, as I'm sure someone in this discussion must have pointed out, was not originally carried over the Internet) which predated the Web.
Salvidor Dali never imatated the masters, he was always trying to get people to notice him and believe he was crazy.
He did that too, but he also began by following accepted schools of art. His earliest work is alternately Impressionist or Cubist for the most part, and "Basket of Bread" (1926) is a still life very much in the old style although still unmistakably Daliesque. Here is a gallery of Dali's paintings, and I recommend you check out the earliest pieces. Even at the age of 6, he was strongly Impressionist.
Elephant feces are a valid medium for fine art, but computer graphics aren't? Hmph!
I think you're just running into resistance against a new medium. New media, and the new art forms that inevitably accompany it, always encounter resistance from the art establishment.
Salvador Dali once said something like, "Whatever you do, begin by painting like the old masters. After that, no one will ever question what you do." An astute observation (and an approach that worked for him; he began his career as an Impressionist) but like any brilliant insight it's obvious in retrospect. If computer graphics are not yet a medium for fine art, it's mostly because there are no established artists who say it is. It's easy for critics to dismiss any new movement composed soley of newcomers to the art world; it's more difficult to do so when it's participated in by artists who are more well-known and respected. I think you will need to gain acceptance for yourself first, by working in more traditional media. Once you're already known for your fine art, it will be presumed that anything you create is also fine art. That will be the time to introduce computer graphics into your corpus of work.
Most places in the US, cable companies are local monopolies and are not required at this time to make their infrastructure available to any outside ISPs. Is it the same in Canada? Could Judge Reade have simply gone to another broadband provider, or was Rogers the only possible source?
This suit really isn't as frivolous as some here are making it out to be. Regardless of what the contract says, there are certain minimum warranties required by law, and certainly a company should be held accountable to a degree for the claims it makes about itself in its advertising. Presumably she knows the law in this situation and believes she has a good case.
Clearly, Rogers could have avoided this simply by providing the support they promised they would in their marketing literature. Even if they lose, they're getting off cheap compared to the cost of actually hiring enough support operators.
In a forum such as this where everyone likes to rabbit on endlessly about their Constitutional rights, what the Constitution says, how much they wish their legislators/executives/judges would read the Constitution for a change, et cetera ad nauseam, it would behoove the Slashdot editors to do some basic fact checking on submitted stories.
The story asserted, "Fortunately, the courts found it violated both the First and Fourteenth Amendments (protection of interstate commerce, in case you were wondering). No direct reference was given. But on the page referenced by the single link supplied, one may arrive here, where one can read, "Tarnow also agreed with the ACLU that Public Act 33 violates the Commerce clause of the Constitution because it would
unjustly regulate interstate commerce and regulate conduct that occurs outside of Michigan."
So what's the problem? It's that the 14th Amendment has nothing whatsoever to to with interstate commerce! I think some Americans occasionally forget that there was an original document to which the Amendments applied, and that is where the "Commerce Clause" is to be found. Article 1, Section 8 explicitly grants the Congress the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes..." The 14th Amendment has mostly to do with mopping up after the Civil War, but the clause most applicable today enforces the equal protection of the laws to all citizens. It's an immensely important Amendment -- but it has nothing to do with this case.
No American who thinks this a minor or unimportant matter has any business prattling on about his "rights", when he plainly has either not read the document that protects them, has not understood it, or both.
I was going to comment in more detail, but why bother? Julian Dibbell quite adroily summarized most of the anti-Tolkien vitriol spewed out over the decades by an outraged community of self-absorbed literary masturbators. He even did his best to sound as if some of the "thoughts" he expressed were his own. But all this has been dealt with (or, rather, sponged off) at length elsewhere, by better writers than me, and anyone who's interested has probably read it already.
He got the voices speak in riddles, he got the eye as black as coal,
He got a suitcase covered with rattlesnake hide, and he stands right in the road.
You got to hidey-hide, you got to jump up run away;
You got to hidey-hidey-hide, the Old Man is down the road.
That sounds like the old one-eyed trickster/sorcerer/carrion god to me!
This was a pretty uninformative review, and it may have been better done by someone who wasn't a self-described fanboy. I suppose if you're already a Gaiman fan you're already lining up to buy the book, but for my part it said nothing that makes me want to do the same. I read Sandman, which was superb as comic books go, but which sucked as literature. (The series had an ending which wasn't so much foreshadowed as telegraphed, and it took a 20 or so issue story arc to get there. The substandard art for that arc didn't help matters.) I read Good Omens because of Pratchett's name on the cover, and frankly, without his clearly discernable contribution I would have considered it not worth the read.
I shouldn't reply to an obvious troll, but I'm being obtuse today.
Maybe someone needs to explain to RMS that not all recipes are available to public inspection. See: Coca-Cola formula, KFC seven herbs and spices formula.
And can you get Coke, or "Kentucky Fried Chicken" anywhere other than from the companies that own the recipies? Can you make them yourself? Can you improve on them if you don't find them satisfactory? No?
You've actually made RMS's point quite succinctly. Closed software is like buying prepared food made to a secret recipie. Free software is like cooking for yourself -- it's a bit more work, but it's a whole hell of a lot cheaper, and generally tastes better and is better for you.
He went on to describe three additional freedoms which distinguish Free from proprietary software: the right to change software to suit
user needs; to redistribute the software; and to publish improved versions.
But then it takes away the right to keep the changes to yourself. So much for freedom.
This is just false. There is no language in the GNU GPL requiring you to distrubute modifications to GPLed software. It only imposes conditions that must be met were you to distribute it. You don't want to share your changes? Don't! It's that simple.
Did he also happen to cite the fact that so many of these companies are going tits up lately?
I said, "I hope it's just an artifact of how they selected scenes for the trailer." And in my earlier post, I said, "Fortunately, he's surrounded by enough truly great talent that he doesn't have to carry the movie." If I don't like the movie -- which is going to be a clear and present danger with any attempt to put Lord of the Rings on film, especially for those of us old enough to remember the acute disappointment of the Bakshi movie -- it will be most likely because of the script or something Peter Jackson has done, not the acting.
I'll admit I was predisposed to find Wood inadequate to the task, mostly based on an interview with him I read online last year and cannot now locate. In it he described his view of the Frodo. It was an almost complete misreading. Not only was it very superficial, but those traits he did observe he misunderstood. My hope is that by working with the brilliant actors who were cast alongside him, he'd pick up a bit more depth. Not a hint of that shows in the trailer, but then, as I said (three times now) they trailer may or may not be giving an accurate idea of how he will play him.
Do you really want someone older who insists on
bringing his own persona and element to the role and over acting it?
That's not what a more experienced actor would do. Are you saying that's how Ian McKellan is playing Gandalf? Doesn't look like it to me -- the man has incredible range. He's not even recognizable as the same actor from his Richard III a few years ago. Of course, you wouldn't want someone quite that old to play Frodo, just someone experienced enough to be able to play him believably.
What I want is an actor who understands the part. It's plain that Wood doesn't. Wide-eyed? Sometimes, sure, especially at first. But in every single scene? As is is, "overacting" is just how I'd describe what Wood has done with this part. He looks as if he's done a miserable job. I hope it's just an artifact of how they selected scenes for the trailer.
Slashdot Mirror
There's nary an original feature in the entire movie.
Or even us 13 year olds. But it wasn't just the kids who were taken in. Sober, serious, adult critics were almost uniform in their praise. Harlan Ellison's was the sole, lonely critical voice to be raised against it, and even in his case his point wasn't so much that it sucked, but just that it wasn't quite as good as everyone else was saying. I suspect that even Lucas was surprised at the critics' reaction, but he knew good luck when he saw it and ran with it. Can't blame him for that, but I can blame him for pretending to have made something profound.
Dialog: It need not be about romance, but it would be nice if you could repeat any of the lines without wincing, or if there weren't so many situations where you knew what a character was going to say before he opened his mouth.
Acting: You're forgetting Christopher Lee. But you're also confusing star power with quality acting. A "star" might be a comptetent actor, but that need not be so if he or she has other appealing qualities. And there are plenty of extremely fine actors who will never be stars, relegated to "character" roles precisely because they're so good at portraying various types. I consider Mark Hamill the worst thing about Star Wars because, with the central role in the series, he had neither acting skill nor (ultimately) star quality. I remember when Hamill was the celebrity guest on the Muppet Show. He had absolutely no talent that could entertain in a variety show setting. They wound up making that the main point of most of the jokes in the episode. Hamill does a lot of voice work now, and that seems to be his niche. Luke Skywalker was more than he could handle.
I cut Lucas no slack for going where the money is. Surely he, if anyone, could afford art for art's sake. The movie was going to be hugely profitable with or without merchandizing. He might as well have made it a good one.
Lucas was a devotee of Joseph Campbell, the late comparative mythologist, and he used Campbell's work as a paint-by-number set for generating the plot of the first movie, by his own admission even if not in so many words. (By "first movie" I mean the first one that was actually made, now called Episode 4 but originally called just "Star Wars".) It's filled with motifs we expect to see in great stories, so our minds naturally associate it with being a great story. Aided by the admittedly competent cinematography, we are presented with the semblence or illusion of a good movie. This blinds us to the plot holes, the shallow characterization, the cliched dialog, and the shoddy acting that it typical of the series.
Plot Holes: Try, for example, to reconcile the timeline of ANH with what is now known to be required for even the beginning of Jedi training. Luke can't have had time to learn much on Tattooine, and he only has the time during the trip to Aldaraan for serious instruction. How long does this take? There's nothing in the movie to suggest that more than a day or two passes in transit, possibly less. And Luke's starting out as a teenager, when even Anakin at 8 (or is it 10? I forget) is thought by Yoda to be too old to begin.
Shallow Characterization: All the characters are very close to their archetypes. There are many assumptions we therefore automatically make about them, and Lucas doesn't have to do very much work at all to make them "pass" for deep ones. And he doesn't.
Cliched Dialog:"I can't believe he's gone." (Luke about Obi-Wan. He'd known him, what, a week or less?) "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." (Han about the Jedi. Substitute the appropriate weaponry and it could have come from a spaghetti western.) "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." (Leia to Tarkin. How many times has the plucky revolutionary said something similar to the dictator in numerous other settings?) Et cetera.
Shoddy acting: Alec Guinness' opinions on this are well known, but even so he and the other few competent actors deliver even the most hideously bad lines in a credible manner. Unfortunately, they don't have enough screen time to make much of a difference. Seen Mark Hamill in anything lately? There's a reason for that. He was bad enough in ANH, but he really showed he didn't have it in RoJ. When he tries to sound mystical he sounds stoned. For serenity we get vacancy. Instead of firm resolve we get a sort of vague assurance. Man he was bad. Carrie Fisher wasn't much better in the first movie, but at least she improved in the craft after a few years. Harrison Ford might have been good enough, but he failed to rise to the level of genius it would have taken to break Han out of the "rogue with a good heart underneath it all" mold.
If after thinking about it all in these terms I had any doubt about the quality of the story, I simply have to think about TPM. If Lucas ever had it, he's lost it. There just isn't any enthusiasm left any more. He should have been thinking of the people who'd been waiting almost 20 years for that film, not the 10 year olds the promotional tie-ins were designed for.
Or maybe he was, and this was the best he could do. Oh well. It could have been a lot better.
<GEEZER> "A New Hope" did sound corny when I heard it for the first time. "Star Wars", which was simply the name of the movie when it was first released, was much better -- but you kids wouldn't remember that. "Episode IV" raised many hopes that were eventually presumed to be false, as everyone had pretty much discounted the possibility of a prequel when 5 years or so passed and Lucas had seemingly gone on to other things.
Of course, when the prequel finally came out, many people wished it hadn't, or that it had been done much, much differently. Lucas could not possibly have made the Star Wars franchise into the success it is had he actually started with TPM. </GEEZER>
Make sure you're not thinking of Frederick Pohl. "Pohl" is a surname, "Poul" is a Scandanavian first name. They're somewhat different writers, but often confused for some reason.
To wit:
Emphasis mine. I don't know about the forehead thing, but I'm sure "Six hundred threescore and six" has got to be in the Windows Registry somewhere!This rumor has been floating around the Internet for a few years now. Surely it ought to be obvious that it's a hoax. A man with the opinions Art Bell supposedly holds would hardly marry a Filipina, which he has in fact done. The rumor has been refuted repeatedly, and the Filipino publication that recently repeated it without checking their facts first is falling over backwards trying to retract it so as to avoid a defamation lawsuit. (They have in fact published two separate retractions.) A summary of the full story is here: http://www.artbell.com/filipino.html To the pinhead moderator: -1: Overrated, possibly. But "Redundant"? Who else made this comment before I did?
I wonder what Art Bell will make of this?
There is absolutely nothing in the book to support this interpretation. Sam states explicitly when speaking to Kali about midway through the book that the current low-tech human inhabitants of the planet are the descendants of themselves, by which he meant the original colonists, or the "First" as they were called. Those of the First who were still living, if not gods of the Celestial City, were "prince[s] among men," as Hawkana declares. The racial stock of the humans on the planet would thus have been a blend of the races represented by the First. What this was exactly is impossible to determine since we aren't generally told the gods' original names and their current bodies have been sujbected to extensive genetic engineering. The names we are told are "Jan Olvegg" (Norweigian, not Dutch), "Renfrew" (no given surname, but Germanic I think), "Sam" (actually Hebrew in origin, so he could be from almost anywhere, by intent I imagine) and a run-of-the mill (to American ears) female name that escapes me for the moment, but who was incarnated as Brahma at the beginning of the story. This is pretty inconclusive about the what the racial mix of the First was supposed to have been. It's hinted that the use of Hinduism was inspired by the name of their ship, The Star of India.
And where the hell are you getting "Sam Kalkin" from? Kalkin was the name of Sam's Aspect, borrowed from Hinduism like the others. In this case it's the name of a future avatar of Vishnu. His real name was Sam; we aren't told his original surname.
It ought to have been clear to the attentive reader that most of the gods were not all that technically competent. The vast majority of their most effective weaponry was designed and built by a single individual, Yama, and his loss crippled them. The City was designed by Vishnu, and Sam seems to have been a fairly competent engineer in his day. Other than that, the gods didn't look to be any more competent than the average inhabitants of any technically advanced culture who are well able to operate the sophisticated machinery around them but who have only the dimmest understanding of how it all works. How many Americans are able to repair their own TVs? Microwave ovens? Automobiles? Toasters?
Speciesist. The Rakshasa, demons, "the Glow", and other energy beings were the native inhabitants of the planet. Physical body or no, they had feelings too, you know! The human colonists either destroyed them, imprisoned them, or drove them into hiding. That sounds pretty subjugated to me.
The ordinary human inhabitants of the planet are referred to more than once as the descendents of the original colonists, whether or not they were the crew. We actually meet only two characters positively identified as crew members: the captain Jan Olvegg, and the chaplain Nirriti. The rest of the gods and "First" are simply those who arrived on the ship Star of India, whether crew or not, or their near descendents. Their descendents at greater remove were relegated to a more primitive existence outside the Celestial City, to which they can aspire by building up enough "karma." Cold storage is never mentioned.
Not that I've reread it recently or anything....
Two different Campbells. The Campbell you're thinking of was John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding (now Analog) and author, commonly called the father of modern science fiction. He died in 1971. The Campbell we're talking about is an academician, a well-known scholar in comparative mythology, who died in 1987.
It had better apply to Star Wars. Lucas used Campbell's work as the outlines of a paint-by-number set to construct the story. That's probably why it resonates so well with so many people despite it's numerous -- and to an objective observer, possibly fatal -- flaws. The motifs are ones we are accustomed to see as the framework of a great myth, so we're inclined to see Star Wars that way even though it is patently not such.
I can't say I was ever a great admirer of Campbell. I never got through any of his books because they annoyed me so much. He seemed so focused on what he saw as the basic equivalence of mythic motifs across cultures that he often seemed to miss the things that made the legends essentially unique. It's undeniably true that there seems to be a limited palette of mythic motifs (and Campbell was hardly the first to notice this either; check out Jung sometime) but IMO each culture used that palette to paint very different pictures.
No doubt this was a reflection of Campbell's own personality more than anything else. I watched a couple of the Bill Moyers interviews. I have never in my life seen someone so acquainted with so many stories who nevertheless seemed to miss the point of so many of them, and then to suck the soul out of them in the telling. He managed to make every single story he related boring as hell, and nothing the producers of the show did by way of illustration or background music could make them interesting again.
ObZelazny: Yes, Lord of Light was one of his best.
The applications were listed in chronological order. E-mail predated Usenet (which, as I'm sure someone in this discussion must have pointed out, was not originally carried over the Internet) which predated the Web.
He did that too, but he also began by following accepted schools of art. His earliest work is alternately Impressionist or Cubist for the most part, and "Basket of Bread" (1926) is a still life very much in the old style although still unmistakably Daliesque. Here is a gallery of Dali's paintings, and I recommend you check out the earliest pieces. Even at the age of 6, he was strongly Impressionist.
I think you're just running into resistance against a new medium. New media, and the new art forms that inevitably accompany it, always encounter resistance from the art establishment.
Salvador Dali once said something like, "Whatever you do, begin by painting like the old masters. After that, no one will ever question what you do." An astute observation (and an approach that worked for him; he began his career as an Impressionist) but like any brilliant insight it's obvious in retrospect. If computer graphics are not yet a medium for fine art, it's mostly because there are no established artists who say it is. It's easy for critics to dismiss any new movement composed soley of newcomers to the art world; it's more difficult to do so when it's participated in by artists who are more well-known and respected. I think you will need to gain acceptance for yourself first, by working in more traditional media. Once you're already known for your fine art, it will be presumed that anything you create is also fine art. That will be the time to introduce computer graphics into your corpus of work.
This suit really isn't as frivolous as some here are making it out to be. Regardless of what the contract says, there are certain minimum warranties required by law, and certainly a company should be held accountable to a degree for the claims it makes about itself in its advertising. Presumably she knows the law in this situation and believes she has a good case.
Clearly, Rogers could have avoided this simply by providing the support they promised they would in their marketing literature. Even if they lose, they're getting off cheap compared to the cost of actually hiring enough support operators.
Ye! Utuvienyes! Lo, here is a scion of the eldest of trees! But whence comes it here? For it is itself not more than three summers old.
The story asserted, "Fortunately, the courts found it violated both the First and Fourteenth Amendments (protection of interstate commerce, in case you were wondering). No direct reference was given. But on the page referenced by the single link supplied, one may arrive here, where one can read, "Tarnow also agreed with the ACLU that Public Act 33 violates the Commerce clause of the Constitution because it would unjustly regulate interstate commerce and regulate conduct that occurs outside of Michigan."
So what's the problem? It's that the 14th Amendment has nothing whatsoever to to with interstate commerce! I think some Americans occasionally forget that there was an original document to which the Amendments applied, and that is where the "Commerce Clause" is to be found. Article 1, Section 8 explicitly grants the Congress the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes..." The 14th Amendment has mostly to do with mopping up after the Civil War, but the clause most applicable today enforces the equal protection of the laws to all citizens. It's an immensely important Amendment -- but it has nothing to do with this case.
No American who thinks this a minor or unimportant matter has any business prattling on about his "rights", when he plainly has either not read the document that protects them, has not understood it, or both.
I was going to comment in more detail, but why bother? Julian Dibbell quite adroily summarized most of the anti-Tolkien vitriol spewed out over the decades by an outraged community of self-absorbed literary masturbators. He even did his best to sound as if some of the "thoughts" he expressed were his own. But all this has been dealt with (or, rather, sponged off) at length elsewhere, by better writers than me, and anyone who's interested has probably read it already.
This was a pretty uninformative review, and it may have been better done by someone who wasn't a self-described fanboy. I suppose if you're already a Gaiman fan you're already lining up to buy the book, but for my part it said nothing that makes me want to do the same. I read Sandman, which was superb as comic books go, but which sucked as literature. (The series had an ending which wasn't so much foreshadowed as telegraphed, and it took a 20 or so issue story arc to get there. The substandard art for that arc didn't help matters.) I read Good Omens because of Pratchett's name on the cover, and frankly, without his clearly discernable contribution I would have considered it not worth the read.
So why should I read this?
Maybe someone needs to explain to RMS that not all recipes are available to public inspection. See: Coca-Cola formula, KFC seven herbs and spices formula.
And can you get Coke, or "Kentucky Fried Chicken" anywhere other than from the companies that own the recipies? Can you make them yourself? Can you improve on them if you don't find them satisfactory? No?
You've actually made RMS's point quite succinctly. Closed software is like buying prepared food made to a secret recipie. Free software is like cooking for yourself -- it's a bit more work, but it's a whole hell of a lot cheaper, and generally tastes better and is better for you.
But then it takes away the right to keep the changes to yourself. So much for freedom.This is just false. There is no language in the GNU GPL requiring you to distrubute modifications to GPLed software. It only imposes conditions that must be met were you to distribute it. You don't want to share your changes? Don't! It's that simple.
Did he also happen to cite the fact that so many of these companies are going tits up lately?
What, like IBM?
Doofus.
I said, "I hope it's just an artifact of how they selected scenes for the trailer." And in my earlier post, I said, "Fortunately, he's surrounded by enough truly great talent that he doesn't have to carry the movie." If I don't like the movie -- which is going to be a clear and present danger with any attempt to put Lord of the Rings on film, especially for those of us old enough to remember the acute disappointment of the Bakshi movie -- it will be most likely because of the script or something Peter Jackson has done, not the acting.
I'll admit I was predisposed to find Wood inadequate to the task, mostly based on an interview with him I read online last year and cannot now locate. In it he described his view of the Frodo. It was an almost complete misreading. Not only was it very superficial, but those traits he did observe he misunderstood. My hope is that by working with the brilliant actors who were cast alongside him, he'd pick up a bit more depth. Not a hint of that shows in the trailer, but then, as I said (three times now) they trailer may or may not be giving an accurate idea of how he will play him.
That's not what a more experienced actor would do. Are you saying that's how Ian McKellan is playing Gandalf? Doesn't look like it to me -- the man has incredible range. He's not even recognizable as the same actor from his Richard III a few years ago. Of course, you wouldn't want someone quite that old to play Frodo, just someone experienced enough to be able to play him believably.
What I want is an actor who understands the part. It's plain that Wood doesn't. Wide-eyed? Sometimes, sure, especially at first. But in every single scene? As is is, "overacting" is just how I'd describe what Wood has done with this part. He looks as if he's done a miserable job. I hope it's just an artifact of how they selected scenes for the trailer.