A reminder: the 1/48 scale “Men Into Space” kit that I mastered for Fantastic Plastic is available for purchase.
Fantastic Plastic also has several copies of the SHIELD Helicarrier and Space Station V that I mastered for ’em…
Dec 192016
Dec 192016
Yeesh. It’s been five whole years since I originally posted this:
It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life
Where it is pointed out that the “feel good” Christmas movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” is really more of a story of a man’s fall into madness and misery, where the “happy ending” is just a prelude to an inevitable utter collapse into failure and probably jail time, where the villain of the piece ends up not defeated, but empowered. Where all the Good And Moral People are shown to be one minor twist of fate away from being moral reprobates… and given the inevitable “what happens next” after the credits roll, chances are good that’s where they end up anyway.
In a way it’s similar to the original “Wizard of Oz.” What happens at the end of that? Dorothy finally gets to go home to her family. Huzzah! Her dirt-poor family. Living in a region of Kansas that is so poor they can’t even afford *color.* Where instead she could have lived in the lap of technicolor luxury in Oz, very likely insulated from the poverty and illness and, lets face it, madness that likely will kill Dorothy Gale in relatively short order (assuming, or course, that the whole Oz sequence isn’t a delusion caused by endorphins flooding the grievously and terminally tornado-wounded brain of young Ms. Gale).
Dec 192016
First teaser trailer is out. I… feel nothing. Hmmm. I just hope I don’t find a tortoise on its back out in the desert…
Vangelis isn’t scoring the movie, but it sounds like they used snippets of his work n the trailer.
Did “Blade Runner” really need a sequel? No. But better this than a remake, or, even worse, a remake with SJW-approved casting decisions.
Dec 192016
So I turn on the news channels for some breezy background noise while I work, with the faint possibility of maybe something newsworthy happening. And all they’re droning on about is Trump getting that electoral college vote landslide that the activists have been trying to prevent, an apparent terrorist attack in Germany where a large truck plowed into a crowd at a Christmas fair, and the Russian ambassador to Turkey being assassinated by a Turkish cop. So… a pretty hum-drum day, news-wise.
Loki must be pretty happy about it, though.
Dec 192016
This is an interesting article, not at all filled with craziness:
Rogue scientists revive lost moon photos inside abandoned McDonald’s
It tells the story of how a few people kept data that NASA planned to toss, in the form of old, unreadable videotapes with Lunar Orbiter imagery, and how those tapes were eventually re-read and re-processed to bring out much more data and vastly better imagery… images that rival the best of modern lunar photography.
It is described in greater detail at Wikipedia:
Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project
And the official, though now no longer updated, website of the project:
http://www.moonviews.com/
And at last, the image gallery :
https://loirp.arc.nasa.gov/loirp_gallery/
Note: I keep getting a “high rez files are being migrated to a new repository” message…
Dec 182016
Hmmm…
‘Mr. Robot’ Creator Sam Esmail Developing Miniseries Based on Sci-Fi Classic ‘Metropolis’
The article is essentially devoid of all useful details. No idea when, who, what network, anything. The few snippets available are that the basic idea of the story sounds like that of the original Fritz Lang silent film, and that Esmail isn’t going to start on it until he’s done with “Mr. Robot.” If “Mr. Robot” goes the planned five years, that puts it at least three years out.
That would mean that it wouldn’t be due out until 2019-2020. Which is not that far off from being a full *century* after the original movie was released (1927), and even closer to the date the original movie was set in (2026).
One other detail: they’re apparently looking at a budget of $10 million. Per episode.
Dec 182016
… the dumbest thing you’ll read today.
4 Reasons Demanding ‘Objectivity’ in Social Justice Debates Can Be Oppressive
No, really, the author is serious.
1. Often, Those Who Seem ‘Objective’ Are Actually Just Privileged
2. Everyone Speaks From a Social Position and Has Biases
3. Striving Towards ‘Objectivity’ Is Used to Justify Tone-Policing
And the piece de resistance, the coop de Gracie…
4. Sometimes Emotions Are Just as Important as Facts
Ta-da…
Basically, this mental giants position is that since some people promptly lose their co0ol when their world views are challenged… their world views should not *be* challenged, and losing ones cool is a valid form of debate-winning. Behold:
We need to understand that feelings, lived experiences, and psychology are absolutely important in activism and social justice.After all, social justice is about human experiences. It’s absurd – violent, even – to discuss human experiences while leaving out such an important part of our humanity.
It’s “violent” to discuss experiences rationally.
Well, maybe it’s time to play that game. Clearly the recent election has demonstrated that there is a hunger for turning the social justice warriors playbook against them… Trump didn’t win by being rational, logical or even what you might call “honest.” Instead he won by being petulant, insulting, snide, irrational, easily offended. In other words… he played the game like a social justice warrior.
So, let’s play that game. Whenever someone throws “check your privilege” at you, just remember: “What you call ‘privilege’ is just me being better than you.” Whenever an SJW calls you cisgendered or heteronormative or some such, just point out, with a scornful look and a wagging finger, “tut-tut, I identify as ‘normal,’ thank you very much.” And, where possible, laugh at them. And accuse them of laughter-shaming if they have a problem with it.
Dec 172016
“Hiring a social justice warrior.”
A new day of difficulties.
Dec 172016
Short form: Really Good.
Longer form: it’s a very different Star Wars movie. It is indeed quite it’s own thing; it’s a one-shot, and there will be no sequel to this. And under the circumstances… that’s good and proper. There is no “opening crawl,” it launches right into the show (with a shot of a ship passing over the ring plane of a terrestrial world with a decent set of rings… for those who care, it looks a *lot* like the Asgard from my own yarns). There is no John Williams music, a first for a Star Wars movie. There are no Jedi (unless you count Vader), “force powers” are not employed, there is no “chosen one” or “child of destiny” or any of that sort of crap.
So, some largely spoiler-free observations:
One of the “good guy” characters is, like Han, a straight up murderer. But unlike Han who shot Greedo, in this case, the hero shoots dead a non-bad-guy. It’s a “yeah, I guess that makes sense” in terms of this being a war and espionage situation but still… dayum.
Tarkin appears, thanks to CGI. He *mostly* works. But whoever they got to do Peter Cushings voice… well, I don’t think he was all that close.
Princess Leia is in the movie for precisely the right amount of time.
I *think* they recycled a lot of snippets of X-Wing pilot shots and dialogue from the original Star Wars. There is a substantial space battle at the end featuring a lot of the same rebel fighters that would take on the Death Star a few days/weeks later in Star Wars…
Darth Vader hired Saurons architect.
For nearly forty years there’s been the question of “how could the Empire have been so stupid as to design that flaw into the Death Star,” coupled with “how could the rebels analyze the blueprints and find the flaw *that* *fast.*” Rogue One answers both of these in a perfectly cromulent fashion.
Death Star on full power? Planet goes “bang,” as we’ve seen before, and really not that impressive of a visual, just an explosion. Death Star firing on just one reactor? Freakin’ *spectacular” imagery. Think “best parts of ‘Trinity and Beyond’ on the big screen and on methamphetamines.”
Tarkin doesn’t just cameo, he’s an important character… and he’s the vicious badass he was in “Star Wars” and the supposedly kids show “Rebels” (where he had two of his men beheaded and nuked a communications tower just to shut down a broadcast). Still… “We want to send a message, not a manifesto” is a damn good line.
Speaking of “Rebels,” there are at least three “Easter Eggs” that hearken to “Rebels” and the prior “Clone Wars” shows. Forest Whitakers character Saw Gerrara is taken straight from “Clone Wars.” The main ship “Ghost” from “Rebels” or at least one of the same class, is seen briefly and at some distance in the space battle at the end. And the rebels make good use of a “Hammerhead” cruiser… which is also from “Rebels.”
Best use of kinetic energy as a destructive force so far in “Star Wars.” The rebels shove something into other stuff. Something you really don’t want to get shoved into you.
When you reprogram a droid, sometimes you remove all its filters. And it becomes *awesome.* The droid K-2SO will tell you exactly what it thinks, and then it will shoot you in the head. And it becomes the best character in the movie.
On another matter: I’ve heard people claim that the writers said they’d inserted anti-Trump stuff into the movie. If they did, I sure didn’t catch it. I was expecting some villain to spout something about “making the galaxy great again,” but, nope.
Dec 152016
Russian reality TV show Game2: Winter to ‘allow’ rape and murder in Siberia
Short form: contestants will be dropped off in the wilderness of Siberia for nine months to survive however they can. No film crew, just 2000 cameras dotted around. Committing violent crimes is allowed in the rules, though you might still get arrested.