426

(373 replies, posted in Off Topic)

pastormacman wrote:

I don't expect it to be enough for you to believe. It can't. You don't know me personally so it's easy to just assume that I'm lying to you. No matter how many stories I bring to you, you will just write them off without even investigating them. You are already preconceived to dismiss my stories so you are not open to even look into their validity. And even if you did, you would still insist that there must be some other explanation because no matter how much evidence is presented, it still wouldn't be proof to you because you've already made up your mind. You will only accept a scientifically measurable data point, and frankly that's a reasonable demand. However, not everything can be measured scientifically. And if your acceptable level of evidence is bound to only what can be perceived and measured by our limited human senses, the your universe is sadly small.

You don't have to be lying. There are a myriad different ways that the hallucinatory brain state of a conversation with another can be induced: dreams, drugs, stroke, epileptic seizure, tumours, trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, genetic predisposition, sleeplessness, etc. The person telling everyone that they had an experience may well have had that experience, but it's only accessible to them and them alone. That's the problem.

As for whose universe is small, it's usually the Abrahamic religions that claim that the universe is just designed and built for humans alone. That it's all about God's plan for us. All those 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars are just decoration.

427

(373 replies, posted in Off Topic)

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (sauce be upon Him) told me in my dream that His Noodleness is the one true deity and all others are false idols.

428

(373 replies, posted in Off Topic)

pastormacman, your argument seems to be based on something very personal, subjective, that you feel internally, but cannot be shared with anyone else. Like a voice e.g. God spoke to me.

It's difficult for atheists to be persuaded by something that is beyond objective verification. If it makes you feel good than fine, but I can't see how a discussion / debate can arise from this line of argument. If person A says God told him to hate Gays, and she over there says God told her to love Gays, then how are we supposed to reconcile disparate claims made privately by personal revelation?

429

(32 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Jimmy B wrote:

It's very noticeable even if you're not looking for it, really.

http://i1251.photobucket.com/albums/hh555/shiftybench/aelehl_zpsaf52c8b0.jpg

Yes, I'm assuming if I had watched it for the first time on VHS in the 90s on a standard TV, I might not have noticed so much, but today in 1080p on a big wide-screen, it's very noticeable - and doesn't really stand the test of time for a fresh viewing. Wires everywhere too.

430

(209 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I'm gonna have a hard time swallowing all those Bible adaptations coming our way in 2014. It'll be depressing if they become huge hits like Passion of the Christ - in which case, we'll get loads of them until they've exhausted every story. Or they could bomb bigtime, and return to their straight-to-video Christian TV niche market.
With Christianity on the wane in the west (even in the USA), it'll be interesting to see the domestic/foreign box-office comparisons.

431

(95 replies, posted in Off Topic)

fireproof78 wrote:

Legolas: Seems to be inserted a little bit too much in this film, and felt a little too much like fan service.

Legolas is the new Boba.

432

(32 replies, posted in Off Topic)

bullet3 wrote:

The other favorite I like is successful face replacement, so you can have stuntmen doing crazy stunts for real and then replace with the real actor when necessary.

I just saw Face / Off for the first time, and with Woo's slo-mo it's nothing but obvious stunt men, so that schlock could have used some actual face replacement (and wire removal).

433

(95 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Another thing that VFX can improve on is blurring the distinction between an outdoor shot and a studio shot pretending to be an outdoor shot. In the Hobbit movies, the forest scenes are all green screen and you can tell. It looks too pretty, too well lit, too art designed. Locations comprised something  like 70% of Fellowship. Now we're down to 10% or so.

434

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Faldor wrote:

What is it with Eva Green and incest?!

What is it with Eva Green and losing her virginity on screen?

435

(2,068 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Saw Womb which was supposed to be a profound meditation on the nature of cloning, but instead tackled the pressing issue of whether Doctor Who would fuck his own mum if she looked like Eva Green.

And the answer is, of course he would.

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/t/456h3.jpg

Yet another example of artsy types ruining science fiction.

436

(209 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Now that we've posted our top #5 of the year, where does 2013 itself rank? One year's top #5 could be another year's discount bin.

Will any of this year's best stand the test of time and have high re-watchability, like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Matrix, Aliens, Lord of the Rings, Dark Knight, et al?

I'd argue that even Gravity, which looks jaw-droppingly awesome in IMAX 3D is not going to be re-watched much because it'll suffer on a smartphone, pad, laptop screen, or even a 55" home theatre system. The story is too weak on its own.

In other words, compared to previous years. 2013 has been a bit bland. And 2014 shapes up to be a repeat. 2015 shows promise.

437

(122 replies, posted in Episodes)

How Copyright Law Gave Us Star Wars. Fan-fiction verus remakes versus having to come up with new material...

http://badassdigest.com/2013/12/29/how- … -star-wars

screwballscramble wrote:

A Roomba that manages stairs... oooh and does dishes too. When will the future happen?!

Hold on, it's coming...

http://gifti.me/i/R6DzFU7.gif

439

(32 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Dorkman wrote:
avatar wrote:

What's left to see?

Restraint.

Nolan is one that doesn't overdo the CG or VFX, so there's restraint there. Can't think of too many others. My favourite use of CG is wire/rig removal.

440

(95 replies, posted in Off Topic)

BigDamnArtist wrote:

I did like the Gimli one though, mostly cause it was a nice bit of humour that wasn't overplayed (read: like almost every other piece of humour attempted in these damn movies)

The editor must have deleted all the fart/burp jokes when PJ wasn't looking.

The claim that 'they can do anything these days' is not quite true.

Quick question - what are still the hardest things left to do in VFX?

Over the last decade, we've seen dramatic improvements in compositing, tracking, sub-surface scattering, photo-real CG character shading, fire & water sims, particle effects, Massive's vast armies etc. Every few months there's some new plug-in.

I nominate two frontiers that VFX houses still have trouble with:

1. Making actors look dramatically younger. We've had brief scenes in X-Men 3 / Last Stand, Benjamin Button, and Tron Legacy, all to varying degrees of success and in all cases, quite stiff (i.e. actors and cameras have to be still). You certainly couldn't do an extended normal action scene like that (it'd be prohibitively expensive). It's not just rotoscoping away winkles, but the entire facial shape changes with age.

2. Low-gravity environments. Apollo 13 and especially Gravity did excellent work with simulating zero-G, but I can't recall any movie successfully doing a sustained low-gravity sequence. Any time anyone goes to Mars, it's just 1:1 Earth Gravity, whereas it should be one-third.

Any other fields that are still beyond the capability of 2013/14 effects? What's left to see?

BigDamnArtist wrote:

Is it just me or does Orlando Bloom have a much more rectangular head than he did in LoTR? He looks like a brick, it's bizarre.

It's over 10 years of ageing. Everyone's face fills out in their 30s. Elijah Wood's face was also completely different to the cherub we saw when filming began in 1999. And there's no way they could have cast Liv Tyler for a cameo without doing motion capture or some expensive Benjamin Button CG to make it mesh. Sad, I know. Gandalf gets away with it a little due to the beard and hair and fake nose, etc.

Moral of the story: don't film prequels more than 10 years later if you want to use the same cast.

Seamless de-ageing, along with low-G planet surfaces, is one of the last realms that VFX still have trouble with.

443

(95 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Doctor Submarine wrote:

It was almost comical how many times he killed the tension of that scene by switching to Kili groaning on a table

That bloody injury went on for ever. First thing that should have been cut. Talk about deflating the mood. Imagine in the Battle of Yavin, they cut to Princess Leia filing her nails because she chipped a nail earlier in the trash compactor.

444

(64 replies, posted in Off Topic)

http://i.imgur.com/TS8KpOJ.jpg

445

(95 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Trey wrote:

Didn't hate it at all, it held my interest the whole time and at least the dwarves didn't do more musical numbers.

Just wait till the extended edition on Blu-Ray. Even the spiders break into song.

446

(95 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Yep - I agree with all that.

As for the Smaug gold-plating set-up, I think Peter Jackson was going for a repeat of the stairs of Khazad-dûm action sequence, which worked in Fellowship. There, the screenplay was just - 'they run down some stairs' and it was turned into this massive set-piece. Here, Jackson has even more money, time and digital toys to play with, with less constraints. So we have to see Thorin dancing on Smaug's snout (just like the equivalent scene in King Kong with the triple t-rex punch-up). Turn everything up to 11. It sure delivers spectacle.

As impressive as Smaug was, Gravity will of course walk away with the VFX awards because it's genuinely something new.

447

(449 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Imagine they re-made Lawrence of Arabia...

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts … 3121682078

448

(64 replies, posted in Episodes)

A lot of effort in this dissection...

449

(95 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Squiggly_P wrote:

Peter Jackson could have filmed himself taking a shit and it would have been better than Prometheus.

Yep. Even a stinky sloppy putrid rancid runny noisy shit would have trumped Prometheus

450

(95 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Zimmer's got a cool composing studio, but anything Zimmer can do, Shore can (try to) one up...