Search options (Page 1 of 2)

Part of the way I always describe this show to my friends is that I mention how you guys got started, all working in the effects industry. What about a name that references that?

Rendering Discussion
Post Rendering Conversation

Even when you're not talking about a movie in real time you're usually still talking about a movie that's already been made. When of picture's been locked, when the render is finished, what conversation can still go on? The kind you guys have.

Just checking, you guys are aware They Might Be Giants did an album called "Apollo 18" and didn't want to drag their names through the mud by associating it with this dumb movie, right?

The lyrics to "The Statue Got Me High" do seem appropriate though.

"The statue made me die/
It took my hand it killed me and it turned me to the sky"

http://youtu.be/mrc9siok3IU

So that's why they call him "The Amazing."

"Hey, Mike, did you see Ark?" I couldn't stop laughing.

These shows are fun. My one complaint about length is that I think the focus on making them multiples of thirty minutes is misplaced.

On a side note, this is one of the few episodes I've listened to, and I've heard every DiF, while sitting at my computer. I finally found a replacement for the job that paid my bills for the past few years, where the only good thing was that I could listen to podcasts (and sometimes hide in the back and leave comments from my phone). Then a couple weeks ago, my new job decided they couldn't pay me any more, so I'm pulling a Stephen King. I'm at the desk writing from 9 to 5. I have money until I don't have money, and when people pay me for writing, I get further from needing a "real" job again.

Today was listening to podcasts while designing the cover of the book I started four years ago, and even I say damn, Trey. You crazy.

Not to derail the discussion, but you guys brought up Star Wars as the one example of copyright forgiveness, and I wanna mention zombies real quick.

When vampires hit it big in popular culture with Dracula, that was a specific story that someone owned the rights to, so people had to respect that. Nosferatu is basically the same story, but they changed just enough not to get sued. Zombies never went through that. Night of the Living Dead was accidentally in the public domain from day one, so there was no reason for people not to rip off the idea and do whatever they wanted with it. Some of that stuff stuck, but the whole thing was kinda chaotic and leaderless, like the zombies themselves.

I'm working on a book right now, to be released under creative commons, that presents zombies in part of it as a kind of victory for creative freedom, because they evolved without creative limits the way Internet memes do today.

Is it a coincidence you guys post this right before Plinkett posts his review? Hmm?

It was a roque mallet in the novel. Just a nitpick. When we did our stage version of The Shining last year, the character of Steven King was narrating and complained that any idiot can pick up an axe, and he was a genius for researching roque. Haha.

We did the whole show for laughs. In addition to playing the bartender, they slipped a giant foam costume over my head so I could stand behind the woman playing Danny and play Tony the giant finger. Imagine that.

I loved these books as a kid. They've continued to influence my sense of humor about the world to this day, and I carry the memory of them with me everywhere. On my phone, the little device I keep in my pocket from which I can access the largely apocryphal (or at least wildly inaccurate) knowledge of the internet, I have on the front in large friendly letters the words "Don't Panic." The devices that science fiction let us dream of for all those years are real, and people can use them to follow Charlie Sheen from anywhere. That's progress.

I'm fine with there not being a really big successful movie version of this story, because the things that make it so great require thought and intelligence to understand, and any version that would find mainstream success wouldn't ask people to imagine "a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."

The fact that this film is largely forgotten means knowing who Zaphod Beeblebrox is still kinda speaks to someone's character, which means writing his name in on the ballot for city council is still funny.

This is a bit of a retcon, but I interpret the end of the film as the character comic to believe in the supernatural. When he packs the gun, he talks about how he doesn't believe any of that stuff, but rather than being a skeptic at the end, he has to accept that these aren't just artifacts in some temple with booby traps, this is something real, a radio for talking to god. It's a character arc that takes a character from thinking he can overcome anything with brute force to a climax where he admits his own powerlessness, a strange choice and one that would never get made today.

Jeez, is McG really talking about doing 2 more of these? It's basically a prequel trilogy, since we already know how the whole thing turns out. Have we not learned our lesson on that one? Or, if they mess with causality to make some kind of "point" which this team wouldn't understand anyway, they destroy the whole inevitability paradox that made the original story so interesting. They're literally using time travel to go back in time and kill their own drama before it was ever born.

If this is the same writer as Surrogates, I have the terrible fear that he thinks these movies are actually brilliant and even worse, that there are producers out there who believe him.

Here, I had an idea while listening to the podcast. What they should have done is rip off the structure of the first movies, not the individual moments. In the story of the life of Kyle Reese, the terminators come out of nowhere and basically conquer the human race before they can mobilize. Reese doesn't know how to defend himself yet, but a mysterious figure appears to protect him. Go ahead and say "Come with me if you want to live," but this guy's kinda talking about himself, because the protector this time is John Connor.

Now we have character conflict, because he knows this is his dad, but he doesn't know how to tell him. Maybe Kyle's fifteen or something at this point, and who wants to saddle someone with that kind of information when they're just coming to grips with the fact that the world has been taken over by an army of evil robots.

Reese is frightened the same way Sarah was in the beginning. John is clearly crazy. Even regular gun-toting survivalists aren't known for their emotional stability, but getting raised from a baby not only to prepare for the apocalypse but then to become the savior of humanity can mess with your head. On the other hand, circumstances are starting to prove this particular nutjob absolutely right in his insanity. In the choice between dying at the hands of unstoppable killer robots and trusting a guy who just says he wants to help, Kyle starts to lean closer and closer to the man we met in the original movie. Not only that, he starts to see this older, protective, hyper-masculine badass like a father figure of his own.

What's he going to do when he finds out about their real relationship? Is that before or after John gives him that picture of his mother? We never knew how much information Kyle had before he went back, and we had no idea what kind of bond had ever formed between the two men. Seems like a pretty complex relationship to explore.

At the same time the familiar story beats of growing emotional connection during the escape from danger are repeating themselves like some kind of causality loop, the backdrop this time is totally different. The cops, for example, aren't dismissive of "cybernetic exoskeletons" when the evidence is walking the streets of LA shooting people with lasers and stepping on their skulls, if there are even any cops even left. Maybe the resistance is already a real thing, living in whatever hideouts they can find, scavenging resources and trying to unite as many survivors as they have contact with so that maybe someday there could be hope to rebuild the decimated human race.

Introduce to that scenario the first robots in rubber masks. We know what's coming. John knows it, but how can he that information out? What kind of confusion would that cause? How do we get to that triumphant third act, charging over the fields of our own dead to storm the gates of the MCP, the moment of victory we've been imagining since 1984, when we don't even know who's on our side?

There's four years of Battlestar Galactica to steal what works and avoid what doesn't about this setting, and with a new aspect of the paradox we already know and love, you're not invalidating or overwriting the preceding chapters, just exploring their implications the way that T2 kind of did and Aliens got exactly right. Who wrote those again? I'd vote for following in those footsteps for this project.