Dilandu
I'm dissatisfied, which means, I exist.
Yep, thought the same thing; the remote-controlled drones and missiles are obviously allowed (cue hunter-seeker) in Dune universe. So there is no problem with using lasgun-equipped drones.
Star Wars, Star Trek and other Sci-Fi
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Chris Foss's take on 'The Fighting Temeraire'
Rhinocrates
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The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled...My own headcanon about the Dune is, that Butlerian Jihad was actually a great farce performed by Thinking Machines to get rid of foolish human commands and their petty wishes.
Essentially, Imperium is a giant human zoo, most likely well-guarded by Thinking Machines from any outside threat.
jeffb
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If you assume that their "family atomics", 10,000+ years in the future, still rely on the same fission fusion mechanism that we use now.
jeffb
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Biological components? Use the amplified output of an actual dragonfly brain to drive the wing positioning system?
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My first thought was that those things would make helicopters appear to be as smooth as a maglev in a vacuum.
Dilandu
I'm dissatisfied, which means, I exist.
For dragonfly-sized ornithopter it would work. For anything bigger - no. Square-cube law forbade large-scale dragonfly from flying.
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Oh for the days of professional film writing rather than what we have now where every Tom, Dick & Harry on You Tube thinks they can regale everyone with what they think is wrong with everything in film. Unfortunately nearly everyone I had time for in this area is now either dead or retired, the perils of getting older. The kind of film writers I am thinking of wouldn’t be caught dead on something like You Tube. I do follow a couple of critics on YT but that’s different from what we have here.
You know, I'd rather have professional film writers writing *films* than to gatekeep fans on YouTube. If so many modern movies didn't actually suck so hard, there wouldn't be such a market for YouTubers trash talking modern films. Instead we've got what are essentially jumped-up Twitterattis writing Star Trek, and the results are often abominable.
And as a point of order, every Tom, Dick and Harry *can* regale everyone with what they think is wrong about *anything.* Unless Tom, Dick and Harry live in West Taiwan...
The Drinker is an idiot with displays of bad hygiene, bad taste, bad language and general bad behavior.
Like as in FOREVER, the old guard gets old and dies, which means their replacements need to be waiting in the wings. Would you hand off a multi-million dollar piece of equipment to amateurs if you were a properly trained naval officer? Of course not. Yet the Hollywood trade publications are obsessed more lately with putting people's sexual orientations on display and less about actual movie and TV reporting. For a while, publications like Variety would quote some Hollywood exec after a movie tanked as blaming the failure on the script. "We paid a million dollars for the script." So what? Movies are pre-screened to a group of * average * moviegoers. That's why you would read about this or that movie being delayed because certain scenes the audience did not like were being reshot. "We paid a billion dollars for the script." would not solve the problem of bad scripts being made into bad movies.
Then there are the Producers who bankroll movies. They ** own ** the movie. Without their money, movies would not get made. So, on occasion, they make bad suggestions. Bad because their knowledge of filmmaking is based on their own experiences of watching movies and little else. So, one or more can demand scene changes or other changes in a more or less arbitrary way, based on their own tastes and limited experience. However, that said, good, meaning worth watching movies do get made. How is that possible? Those who know how to tell interesting, compelling stories are consulted. Someone records their insights. It happens in other industries where those with decades of experience put their thoughts and approaches onto video for future generations. This applies to Campbell's soup as well as Hollywood. But since storytelling needs to be taught over and over, there are very few "90 day wonders" who come onto the scene fully equipped to tell good stories. Like other jobs that advertise "experience required," it is best to get input at all stages of production by a few veterans. It is easier to correct the growth of a tree when it's young than later.
Youtube is a self-aggrandizement outlet for some and a place where amateurs can pretend they are professionals because they can proclaim: "I'm on Youtube." Yeah. So? Access to Youtube or anything else online means nothing if it's amateur work. As long as those posting realize this, they're fine. They can improve, but that improvement is not something they can guess at or pull out of the ether. Good storytelling is a skill - a craft - that can be taught. It will never be the province of amateurs who delude themselves into thinking they are pros because they posted something here or there.
And money has always been the bottom line in Hollywood. So if they are letting amateurs run the show for a while and audiences still show up, they will continue to do that. Should audiences start rejecting junk in significant numbers, they will go back to making the good stuff - which they have a long history of doing.
Like as in FOREVER, the old guard gets old and dies, which means their replacements need to be waiting in the wings. Would you hand off a multi-million dollar piece of equipment to amateurs if you were a properly trained naval officer? Of course not. Yet the Hollywood trade publications are obsessed more lately with putting people's sexual orientations on display and less about actual movie and TV reporting. For a while, publications like Variety would quote some Hollywood exec after a movie tanked as blaming the failure on the script. "We paid a million dollars for the script." So what? Movies are pre-screened to a group of * average * moviegoers. That's why you would read about this or that movie being delayed because certain scenes the audience did not like were being reshot. "We paid a billion dollars for the script." would not solve the problem of bad scripts being made into bad movies.
Then there are the Producers who bankroll movies. They ** own ** the movie. Without their money, movies would not get made. So, on occasion, they make bad suggestions. Bad because their knowledge of filmmaking is based on their own experiences of watching movies and little else. So, one or more can demand scene changes or other changes in a more or less arbitrary way, based on their own tastes and limited experience. However, that said, good, meaning worth watching movies do get made. How is that possible? Those who know how to tell interesting, compelling stories are consulted. Someone records their insights. It happens in other industries where those with decades of experience put their thoughts and approaches onto video for future generations. This applies to Campbell's soup as well as Hollywood. But since storytelling needs to be taught over and over, there are very few "90 day wonders" who come onto the scene fully equipped to tell good stories. Like other jobs that advertise "experience required," it is best to get input at all stages of production by a few veterans. It is easier to correct the growth of a tree when it's young than later.
Youtube is a self-aggrandizement outlet for some and a place where amateurs can pretend they are professionals because they can proclaim: "I'm on Youtube." Yeah. So? Access to Youtube or anything else online means nothing if it's amateur work. As long as those posting realize this, they're fine. They can improve, but that improvement is not something they can guess at or pull out of the ether. Good storytelling is a skill - a craft - that can be taught. It will never be the province of amateurs who delude themselves into thinking they are pros because they posted something here or there.
And money has always been the bottom line in Hollywood. So if they are letting amateurs run the show for a while and audiences still show up, they will continue to do that. Should audiences start rejecting junk in significant numbers, they will go back to making the good stuff - which they have a long history of doing.
I'll just add this note about comic books and games. The recent obsession with stupid company names followed by stupid character/game names. So, whrtypb [the company] just releases The Vertsner to the trade. I read the hobby/game/comic book trade press almost daily and the only anti-creativity I see is based on the stupid. How many sales are lost because some average retailer, or some average mom, can't find the game becuse they can't spell it, much less pronounce it? But if those companies think they are ** inventing the (fake) future ** they can go ahead. Until they run out of money.
Yeah, so? The thing is... he's not *wrong.* As I'm sure you've watched the video before you commented on it, can you point to how his comparison of Kirk's aging crisis in ST2 to Kirk's "aging" crisis in STID is wrong? How is he wrong to point out how in old Trek there was clearly a respect for the chain of command and proper bridge decorum, while in STD it's pure chaos? This comes down to "professional" writers. being talentless hacks, while complete amateurs on YouTube can spot the problem.
No, he's not wrong but the word "children" is. Young people get put in all the time. Just because they're young should mean nothing, but their obvious lack of knowing how to tell good stories is THE problem. Oh, I just got out of film school with a degree or I belong to the Writers Guild, means what? Or, my uncle got me in. Professional means ready to do professional work. The company I work for does not hire people who cannot show professional quality art and writing.
Anyone can be a critic, even an articulate critic. And you don't need to add photos of you with a bottle of booze pressed to your lips to do it. The Drinker is insightful, and points out the key things wrong with a lot of what Hollywood's been doing lately. As you might realize from that, I've watched more than a few Drinker reviews/commentaries. I just edit out all the crap and tasteless references (har har - har, har, har) that are part of his schtick. He could use a bit of that "proper bridge decorum" you refer to.
So, the people in charge in Hollywood are doing what? Turning a blind eye to all this? I mean anything that affects their bottom line matters. They won't be moved until the threat level reaches a certain point. That's all I'm saying. If people will buy tickets for mediocrity or just plain bad, why should they care?
I'm sure the "talentless hacks" are about exactly that, so, Who hires them? And why?
At the retirement party of Hollywood Professionals:
"I'd like to close by saying I want to thank all my friends and colleagues in the industry for a legacy that will stand the test of time. I am thankful for all of the awards but I am also thankful for everyone who was involved in doing good work. Lastly, I want to thank all of the moviegoers over the years. Without them, none of us would have had jobs doing this. Being a plumber never interested me."
Moderator: Does anyone have any questions for our esteemed guest?
Yes. Can you tell us who will carry on our work?
"Well, talentless hacks, of course."
"I'd like to close by saying I want to thank all my friends and colleagues in the industry for a legacy that will stand the test of time. I am thankful for all of the awards but I am also thankful for everyone who was involved in doing good work. Lastly, I want to thank all of the moviegoers over the years. Without them, none of us would have had jobs doing this. Being a plumber never interested me."
Moderator: Does anyone have any questions for our esteemed guest?
Yes. Can you tell us who will carry on our work?
"Well, talentless hacks, of course."
jeffb
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I meant using a dragonfly brain as a sort of dragonfly-by-wire processor to take pilot inputs and convert them to wing positions.
shin_getter
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What I am saying that talented and motivated can produce a workable product mostly by themselves with improved tools. What I am not saying is that any one can do it. What this means is reduce barrier to entry by the said capable people born in the wrong place without the right friends. Now small scale projects are indeed limited in many ways, but can generate products of sufficient quality especially when aimed a narrow niches which is growing as fraction of media consumed.
From my perspective, you are probably not deep within some fandoms.
Strong Fans are not normal people. They don't have much life experience, is not top tier in imagination and is abnormally obsessive. Entire genres and franchises taken over by its own fans grow ever more obscure and weird (from an outside perspective). Medias become increasingly self referential will the implicit assumption that the viewer has consumed hundreds of hours of other related materials to understand the context.
The end point is in jokes and 4th wall games together with narrative that does not make sense in a stand alone story but one that makes sense in the insular meta scale.
Now as an animeposter, I have seen how an 'artform' have evolve outside the normie space. Entire shows about cramming in jokes from other stories and nothing else. Entire show not about organic stories (like hero's journey, growth, relationships) but about manipulating story elements like with things like "fake rival character gets shipped off", "prequal main character steal the main char role 'drama'", "make the self insert char the villain", "Classical ship wars pwnt by out of nowhere 4th option~", "play the 'wrong BGM' for events" and so on.
The core of escapist fantasy enjoyers also lead story down strange path that could not be pursued by "normal" people. There are franchise of planetary war taken over to serve as backdrop for homosexual 'romance.' There are characters whose defining feature is as absurd as "having infinite money, with an AI to spend money faster" with an money spent tally shown at the end of each episode. Oh then there is 'settling' sperg debates over 'vehicle A is better than vehicle B' by means of writing the sequel or the supplementary material.
There is no bottom to arbitrary measured 'quality' that people will make and consume, there is only size of addressable demographic, exhaustion of novelty and "whose porn is this for."
------
You need someone with greater independence then either fans or suits for true, broad reaching stories.
The error is thinking that chaos is a bad thing, as opposed to identifying who is it that want this? Given that people still watch it, some people may not mind or event want this.
People generally do not watch to learn how things work, there are vastly better ways for that. Instead people watch for emotional payoff. From personal introspection, watching incompetence is fun as "tool for self rationalization of displaced feeling of hatred." Just pattern match those you don't like with buffoons on the screen and you feel better about the jealousy.
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D
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Wait, are we slagging off Into Darkness? Coz I can do that all day. A Venusian day. I mean it's not the lowest ebb, that's a Borg Cube being dragged down by a flower (what the bleeping bleep bleep was that?!! Bleeping bleeps) but it is not a good film. If you can beam from Earth to Qo'noS then isn't Undiscovered Country overly long?
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Behind The Scenes of Blade Runner: Black Lotus:
View: https://youtu.be/fTmWJjyI0Mc
Official Trailer 3:
View: https://youtu.be/HNeO3nw-uFk
Official Trailer 3:
Media is not consumed. It is either watched with sound, or listened to.
"What I am saying that talented and motivated can produce a workable product mostly by themselves with improved tools. What I am not saying is that any one can do it. What this means is reduce barrier to entry by the said capable people born in the wrong place without the right friends. Now small scale projects are indeed limited in many ways, but can generate products of sufficient quality especially when aimed a narrow niches which is growing as fraction of media consumed."
You will need to back up your claims. So far, they read as assumptions only. "people born in the wrong place" means what? "without the right friends" means what? So far, all of that reads like fiction or imaginative speculation.
"What I am saying that talented and motivated can produce a workable product mostly by themselves with improved tools. What I am not saying is that any one can do it. What this means is reduce barrier to entry by the said capable people born in the wrong place without the right friends. Now small scale projects are indeed limited in many ways, but can generate products of sufficient quality especially when aimed a narrow niches which is growing as fraction of media consumed."
You will need to back up your claims. So far, they read as assumptions only. "people born in the wrong place" means what? "without the right friends" means what? So far, all of that reads like fiction or imaginative speculation.
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It's a terrible film that craps all over Trek. And it was one of the first in a long line of bad movies that tried a new strategy: gaslight the fans. Before the movie came out, a *lot* of people speculated that Bennedict Cumberbatch was playing Khan. JJ Abrams, though, denied it categorically. Straight-up lied. This happened again with SPECTRE when people realized that what's-his-name was going to play Blofeld, and were told categorically that that was wrong. And then again when people realized that Ghostbusters 2016 was going to be insulting unfunny garbage, and were told in no uncertain terms that they were not only wrong, but were bad bad people for even considering the possibility.
Cumberbatch playing a Sikh didn't make a lick of sense... here was a case of actual "whitewashing." But a single line could have saved that: Khan complains about having been found and used by Admiral Robocop. The writers could have eaily added one more line about how AdmirRobo had even surgically altered his appearance. But nope, we're just supposed to accept that the whitest of white guys is Khan. Sigh.
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I absolutely love Tony Roberts’ work - but puzzled and disappointed that he’s never had a book of his work released.
As Mars should have been…Venus with jungles and (Harryhausen) dinos…craggy lunar landscapes…A 1960s artwork stunner, this time by Mel Hunter, depicting the pre-Mariner IV version of Mars...
D
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That's a simple case of what happens when starship Captains don't get their morning coffee.
Indeed.
Come on Paramount/CBS/whatever, give the fans what they want. Self-Sealing Stem-Bolts: The Movie!
The Fesarius, ageing flagship of the First Federation, is dying. She is using her prodigious tractor power, straining to prevent a magnetar from colliding with a dark matter noodle, an event that would produce a gravimetric shockwave of nightmarish proportion and doom several nearby colony worlds of both the First Federation & the Federation. The effort is causing her various segments to start to break away from each other.
Nearby is the equally ageing USS Eosphorus, an old Ptolemy class tug reactivated after the Martian tragedy. Aboard is Miles Edward O'Brien, catching a ride home to Earth from the symposium on Psi Octanis and his daughter, Molly, worried for her father after the recent loss of her mother and along for moral support. Also aboard, 2 kilotons of self-sealing stem-bolts. Can this duo use these little engineering miracles to keep the Fesarius from tearing herself apart and save millions of lives?
Yes, I am bored.
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Someone who feels the need to make himself look like a tramp to get his point across is not someone I can really be bothered to waste my time on.
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D
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^A more picturesque Starship(1984)
I'm sure Mr. Chaplin and Ms. Elvira will be crushed.
And I bet this one won't really float yer boat:
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Give the fans what they want? I doubt Hollywood executives are reading this.
I've decided to part ways with the Drinker after his movies written by children commentary. I'm sure if I asked him directly, I'd hear something like the following. [add Scottish accent] "Why do I behave like I do? Don't know. Hey, you should watch my latest. It's got new inappropriate photos and more of the bad language you don't like."
A comparison to Chaplin? Seriously?
Elvira ???
I've decided to part ways with the Drinker after his movies written by children commentary. I'm sure if I asked him directly, I'd hear something like the following. [add Scottish accent] "Why do I behave like I do? Don't know. Hey, you should watch my latest. It's got new inappropriate photos and more of the bad language you don't like."
A comparison to Chaplin? Seriously?
Elvira ???
Rhinocrates
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Half hour featurette on the sound design for Dune.
I liked the idea that the worms can travel through the sand by liquefaction - that is, vibrating the sand so that it behaves like a liquid. It's a real phenomenon and a good reason why you don't want to be in a building on silty or reclaimed land in an earthquake.
Fun fact: two the ancestral Bene Gesserit voices are Marianne Faithfull and Ellen Dubin (if you watched Lexx, you'll know her as Gigerota).
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L2MzJKWAuQ
I liked the idea that the worms can travel through the sand by liquefaction - that is, vibrating the sand so that it behaves like a liquid. It's a real phenomenon and a good reason why you don't want to be in a building on silty or reclaimed land in an earthquake.
Fun fact: two the ancestral Bene Gesserit voices are Marianne Faithfull and Ellen Dubin (if you watched Lexx, you'll know her as Gigerota).
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I had never heard of him. Thank you for doing this. What is that…trimming?
Rhinocrates
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British sf artist. Features prominently in Stewart Cowley's Terran Trade Authority books along with the likes of Jim Burns and Peter Elson.
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The best SF cover art tells a story, as this selection by Bruce Pennington, Peter Elson , Chris Moore & Christopher Foss shows...
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