851

(359 replies, posted in Off Topic)

http://www.superherohype.com/images/stories/2012/December/stid625.jpg

Goddamnit, it looks like they really might be doing the "villain gets captured as part of his master plan" facepalm

852

(359 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I wonder if she's playing a young carol marcus

853

(359 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I want someone to make a hybrid trailer of the Avengers, Dark Knight, Skyfall, Iron Man 3, and this one, to show how they all look to have the exact same story-line.

854

(359 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Its just fundamentally not what I want out of a Star Trek film. One of the only mainstream franchises that bothered to have interesting science fiction ideas and not be just a blow-them-all-up action film, and they've turned it into a blow-them-all-up action film.

It looks cool and really flashy, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it a lot (assuming it isn't riddled with stupid shit like the last one), but it just seems like a bit of wasted potential.

It's tough though, cause I suspect I just instinctively have trouble accepting a young cast. The thing I always loved about Star Trek was the idea of these old-age professionals out of their prime dealing with dangerous situations and having to count on their experience and gut instinct to survive. Same reason I love the Battlestar reboot. When it's a bunch of cocky teenagers, it's a lot harder to root for them.

855

(449 replies, posted in Off Topic)

My point though is that they ARE pandering, just pandering to what is trendy now. Obviously it's only a trailer, but just off that, it looks extremely similar to Dark Knight and Skyfall in terms of a "dark" story setup, and aesthetically it's going for the Mass Effect crowd. A classical "to-the-stars" exploration story would be way more original, ballsy, and novel in today's movie market, but they're playing it safe by going to the action crowd.

Again, nothing necessarily wrong with that if it's a good movie, but we should acknowledge that that's what they're doing.

856

(449 replies, posted in Off Topic)

They would be idiots to pull that in the second movie, we've barely developed the two of them as friends, it would be completely un-earned. Also, while it looks sexy as hell (and less shaky-camy thank god), this looks even less like Star Trek than the reboot was. It just seems so lazy to me to go "ok what's popular now? Dark Knight, and an evil antagonist who's come for revenge, and action and explosions". I get it, you're spending 200 million dollars you gotta play to the market, but I'd be way more stoked about this if they played up the exploration and going where no man has gone before angle....you know..the thing that Star Trek is actually supposed to be about. This looks more like Mass Effect to me than classic Trek.

It looks like a fucking awesome action movie, I just wish it wasn't called Star Trek.

Sam F wrote:
vidina wrote:

Yes, well, my old PC could run 60p just fine.

...Granted, it was 720p, but still. 60 frames per seconds no issues. I fail to see exactly why the digital cinema systems shouldn't be able to handle it.

Of course the hardware has the ability, I think he was just saying there could have been errors made by the IT guys in the setup, bugs in the firmware, etc. You never know. It doesn't seem to be outside the realm of possibility.

Ya, specialty hardware is a really different bag, it's not a matter of raw cpu or anything. I'm saying if it's the kind of thing that they're enabling with a firmware patch, it means the hardware wasn't really planned or tested around doing that kind of playback. I'm talking projector shutters, hardware internals, etc, not necessarily cpu.
A projection system is a rigid and fragile piece of equipment, and it's entirely possible that some theaters will have some issues with it, and even if one isn't obviously glitching out, I'd imagine it's actually pretty difficult to tell if one is displaying the image 100% as intended. What if it's just dropping a frame every now and again? All possibilities, this is why hardware goes through months of testing before it gets released in production. A theater projectionist or hardware expert would know more of course, maybe I'm entirely wrong.

don't rule out the possibility of messed up projection. They're sloppily retro-setting these projectors to start running in 48fps via a firmware update, something they weren't ever really designed to do or tested for.

I would not be shocked if there's some really broken stuff going on, on top of the weirdness with the tech

By all accounts it's making them worse

860

(449 replies, posted in Off Topic)

The teaser for Shane Carruth's new film, Upstream Color
looks no less complicated than Primer

861

(28 replies, posted in Episodes)

Also, if you're a fan of short stories, read Ray Bradbury's R is for Rocket and Isaac Asimov's I Robot.
Seriously some of the best bite-sized sci-fi stories you'll ever read.
R is for Rocket is very varied, but notable for some really groundbreaking stuff like the time travel story A Sound of Thunder, and a really harrowing crash-landing story called The Long Rain.

I Robot is amazing from just an engineering standpoint, because it sets up the totally made up 3 laws of robotics in a way that seems full-proof, then presents like 10 different short stories that show how those laws can break down and a bunch of weird edge-cases that end up happening (I'm convinced Asimov would've made an amazing computer programmer if he was born 50 years later)

Hollywood Gauntlet released an excellent 2.5 hour discussion of it that mirrors most of my own thoughts: http://hollywood-gauntlet.blogspot.com/ … irred.html

863

(473 replies, posted in Episodes)

I sort of agree, because I feel he'd make the same mistake as the prequels and skew it too far towards little kids. On the other hand, even if I haven't enjoyed his movies as a whole since probably War of the Worlds, it has to be said that he can still direct the shit out of a set piece better than almost anyone. Even in Crystal Skull, if you look at the Jungle chase and ignore the shit like the monkeys that I'm convinced Lucas threw in there, the actual blocking and pacing of that chase are excellent, very clear geography, a sense of build with characters jumping all over the place, very dynamic staging, a very rare thing nowadays (Only thing that comes to mind that hits in that zone is the openings of Casino Royale and now Skyfall). And then in Tin Tin, which is also mediocre, there's a kick-ass single-take motorcycle chase and a really cool pirate battle.
So I unquestionably think he's still got it, and with the control that Disney would have over the script, I think it could still be really good.

Either way though, he's flat out said he will never do it, out of loyalty to George, and I don't think he has interest in that universe at this point.

I've been dying to see this since I saw the trailer, heard nothing but good things. Also that clip is outstanding, like an accordian version of the ending of Buckaroo Banzai

no, I don't think the Hobbit will be the thing that does it, but you can bet your ass when Cameron uses it on Avatar 2 and 3, everyone will start doing it (...shudder...)

866

(1,649 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Fact, electric violinists and cellists are always extraordinarily hot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-tUbTU0jIA&t=3m25s

867

(473 replies, posted in Episodes)

Ehh, Kathryn Bigelow is above Star Wars at this point. Post Strange Days I'd have suggested it, but at this point  I prefer that she keeps making great intelligent adult films than doing a toy-extravaganza summer blockbuster. Her style and tone no longer fit that kind of movie, it'd be going backwards for her.

Now David Fincher, who's being rumoured now, would knock it out of the park. Man's a perfectionist and knows the right way to use effects. I'd have said there's no way in hell they'd use him, and that's probably still the case, but he does have a relationship at disney with his 40,000 leagues project, so it's not out of the realm of possibility.

My money says they're gonna play it safe and get Favreau or Vaughn, even though I think that's a lame and not very exciting choice.

Thing is I'm not very excited to see the movie in the first place, so the new technology is actually more of a draw for me personally

I'm definitely going to give HFR a shot so I can at least make an educated opinion on it, but I suspect I will hate it.

Wait a sec, it wasn't actually shot on Imax though, right? It's just being upscaled to the imax screen?

871

(261 replies, posted in Episodes)

I'm out too, this is a bridge that we are clearly not going to cross, as I live in a different universe from you.

872

(261 replies, posted in Episodes)

The soviets had a government funded film and music industry, very different situation.

873

(316 replies, posted in Episodes)

I couldn't be bothered with Lost past season 1. Perfect example of a great setup with no-where to go and no plan how to get there.

BSG, for all it's faults towards the end, did a much better job of making it's overall mythology feel cohesive despite making shit up as they went. I know people really dislike some of the choices in the finale, but those elements are introduced and referenced as early as half-way into season 1, and don't feel as much like left-field wtf moments to me.

I still say the more planning the better, this is one reason Game of Thrones has been so successful so far, they have a multi-year lead on where the story is going and are able to see what works and doesn't work and craft their story arcs around that.

Really curious to see if this makes the top 5 out of the vfx bake-off on the strength of it's practical stunts and rig removal, a la Mission Impossible last year.

875

(261 replies, posted in Episodes)

Once again, physical goods are not digital goods.

As someone in the software industry, I call complete bullshit on that. Just because the means of production have changed, doesn't somehow nullify or invalidate their value. Hundreds/Thousands of people bust their asses for years to deliver a quality program like photoshop or windows or osx or whatever. The fact that the final product is made up of bits instead of atoms has no bearing on it's value, it's value is whatever a user is willing to pay for it, and whatever the creators want to charge for it.