Avatar is primed to leave a huge dent in the notions that motion capture films equate to soulless, dead-eyed characters, that sci-fi films must consist of pop music soundtracks and giant, clashing robots to have broad appeal, and that big screen fantasy lands have to be anchored in familiar, Earth-like places to yield heartfelt audience investment.
Roger Ebert on his Sun-Times blog:
]]>“Avatar” creates a new world from scratch, and, as Lucas did in “Star Wars,” fills it with such countless minute details that it doesn’t seem artificial. Well it does, but it’s as real as a fantasy can seem, if you see what I mean. The creatures of this planetary forest are many-toothed and preposterous, but not the grotesque artifices of so many monster movies. Their battles seem sincere and earnest, and not the banging of pots and pans as in “Transformers 2.”
Cue the crazy:
they are transferring your account from Blizzard incorporated in California to Blizzard incorporated in Oregon Such a transfer across state lines CANNOT be required and is a federal crime.
No indication whether this is a deliberate troll or not, but it’s hardly more nonsensical than the allegedly ‘legitimate’ complaints about the migration. The good news is that there is a slim chance these chicken littles might actually follow through on their threats for once, and leave the game.
Update: Blizzard has made it official, and provided a focal point for the madness. Thanks Blizzard. Thizzard.
Update 2: It’s an assault on personal liberty.
]]>]]>Yes: the Referendum gets unattractively self-righteous and judgmental. Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others’ as selfish or pathological or wrong. So it’s easy to overlook that hidden beneath all this smug certainty is a poignant insecurity, and thenaked 3 A.M. terror of regret.
What is Mr. Beck hiding?
]]>“But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think are lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”
via @glinner.
]]>From all the people, of every gender, race, or creed, tired of films transparently developed to address a demographic:
You seem to know what you’re doing. Please keep doing what you’re doing.
Thank you.
]]>Never have I felt more justified in my decision to f* off and be somewhere else when this series - the series I’ve followed since I was two years old - finally dies. This isn’t Doctor Who. It isn’t even sophisticated enough to qualify as fan-fic.
Lawrence Miles weighs in on “Planet of the Dead”. See, this is why I have been and will continue to hold my tongue over the new Star Trek movie. I would sound batshit insane and any rational person would ask the question: Why do you even care anymore? So the series has moved on and rightly or wrongly it no longer represents what it once did to you.
But eh, crazy is still fun to read.
]]>Really. It’s old.
]]>The first of these changes is the rotating slideshow of images on the front page, highlighting my various projects. As I complete more of my project pages, writing at least one interesting thing about each project, I’ll add them into the rotation as well. I deal with pictures, so perhaps I should be showing them off more often.
More coming soon…
]]>UPDATE: People can be so boring. A common complaint from fundies with regards to many movies (especially science-fiction) is that they do not portray a world in subservience to a higher power. That is, these people demand that their view of the universe be reflected in all areas of life, fictional creations included. For people to complain simply about the inclusion of supernaturalism in BSG is hypocrisy. Boring “Internet Atheist” hypocrisy.
MORE: A response:
]]>Whilst reflecting this morning upon the absolutely and exhilaratingly satisfying conclusion to one of the greatest television series of all time, I found myself mulling over the very issue you singled out. It’s strange that I, as an atheist, accept BSG’s heavy spiritualist slant with such enthusiasm. I guess it’s all in the way they handle it: their approach is unwaveringly agnostic - they refuse to categorise or define the higher power which guides the characters through their journey, a truly refreshing attitude to behold when contrasted with common real-world views on religion.
What it comes down to is the show’s creators have crafted a universe in which the existence of a higher power is virtually undeniable, but have done so with such guile, intellect and pathos that where you in the shoes of these characters, even the hardiest of non-believers would be forced to see the truth permeating all the events which brought you to where you are.
“No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list.”
I don’t know about that. From earlier in the article:
“The list itself should concern every Australian - although plenty of the material is unsavoury or even illegal, the presence of sites like YouTube, MySpace, gambling or even Christian sites on the list raises a lot of questions,” [Colin Jacobs, EFA] said.
Cue bleating insistence from Conroy that by the time the list affects all of Australia it will be pruned to only the kiddie porn they insist the list is for, and won’t also block sites that are objectionable to the moralist assholes who have sway with the stuffed shirts who run the country.
I suppose I’m not interested in “cyber safety” though. Partly because anyone using the word “cyber” should not be trusted. Mostly however it’s because I don’t think the Internet should be made kid-safe at the sake of adult freedom. If parents don’t want their kids to see “bad” content, parents can supervise their children.
This program is not about “cyber safety” however. It can’t be, because it does not limit access to the objectionable content. It is about the Labor Party buying the votes of lazy, paranoid parents who are convinced that the world is out to corrupt their sweet, innocent little lambs of god. And if the last election went the other way, it would be about the Liberal Party doing the same. They’re all a bunch of morally corrupt whores.
Except for Nick Xenophon. Turns out the only person I voted for at the last election might not actually have shit for brains. For now.
]]>UPDATE: I’m hearing now that while most of the movie was shot on the F23, a small amount was shot on the smaller EX1. Cool.
]]>It occurs to me however that as someone who types words into a computer that are then published to a (somewhat) public-facing website, I am obligated to offer up a set of features I hope to see included in 3.0, and to then assert my imagined authority by calling them “predictions” instead of “wild guesses I just extracted from where I keep my poop”. So here’s one thing I’d like to see in iPhone OS 3.0:
Voiceover.
]]>Robert Mugabe is reported to own long-lost episodes of Doctor Who.
The President of Zimbabwe apparently possesses tapes of some early episodes of the science fiction series that could be thirty or forty years old, according to The Sun.
The Sun wouldn’t make something like this up would they?
]]>I’ll post something of a post-mortem shortly.
]]>Actually there could be a couple of things going on here. The NSW MfP’s argument is that since these games don’t carry any classification, selling them is illegal. I looked it up in the OFLC database, and these games are indeed unclassified. The relevant industry association contends that since the games have no single-player component, classification is not required. These are the basic facts of the situation, and they’re undisputed.
The argument for not classifying these games (which I agree with) is that since all online interactions depend upon the unpredictable behaviour of other players, classifying a game based upon all possible activities in the game would be unfeasible. At the very least, all games which included unrestricted text chat could be held liable for the behaviour of filthy government ministers and their disgusting elf fetish. The model the ESRB in the US follows is that while the scripted, single-player components of games are rated, online interactions are not, for the mentioned reasons.
An optimistic assessment of this fiasco is that by calling for retailers to be reported for selling these items, the NSW Minister for Police is doing a sensible thing, essentially calling for reform of federal classification laws. This reform is desperately needed. Much as I’d like to think highly of our leaders (well not specifically my leaders - I’m a South Australian and this asshole is in New South Wales), I don’t find this plausible.
MMOs have been on sale in this country for a very long time now. Warcraft, the biggest game of the genre, went on sale here in late 2004. Warhammer Online went on sale late 2008, and that game runs servers in this country. I don’t think EA (or their local surrogates) would invest in that infrastructure without checking to see whether they were entering into a criminal enterprise.
No, what I think is going on here is misguided moralism. Game retailers are not breaking the law, and I expect any pending lawsuits to prove this. Well unless we get similarly misguided moralists as judges in those cases. So I guess we’re fucked. What I see going on here is the same reactionary nonsense that went on 30 years ago over Dungeons & Dragons. Misguided moralists pissed off not by a minor legal quibble, but by the general content of these games and the continued misconception that - like cartoons and comic books - “games are for kids”.
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