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wmgan

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Join date
9-May-2006
Last activity
7-May-2011
Posts
282

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Post
#360717
Topic
STAR WARS: EP V &quot;REVISITED EDITION&quot;<strong>ADYWAN</strong> - <strong>12GB 1080p MP4 VERSION AVAILABLE NOW</strong>
Time

Checking this thread for updates has been one of my favorite methods of procrastination since I watched ANH:R, though I haven't felt compelled to post until now.  But having just seen the trailer, I have to say... it looks amazing!  Waiting for the finished product is going to be agonizing.

Adywan, you are a god among fans.

Post
#294808
Topic
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - my fan screenplay
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Take the climax of PoA as an example. Harry's future self saves him from the Dementors, right? Later, time-turning back to the same moment, he is able to cast a full-blown Patronus because he gains confidence from the realization that he has already done it.

But let's forget about that for a moment. He survives the Dementor attack because SOMEONE (he doesn't know who) saves him. He has free will, right? So he can choose to go back or not to go back in time to save Sirius and Buckbeak. But wait a minute -- the person who saved him was actually his future self! So it is INEVITABLE -- PREDESTINED -- whatever you want to call it -- that he has to go back in time. There is no free will in this instance.

You see the problem. He saves himself in the past because he has already done it. It is a circular sort of logic that seems to require an external agent -- destiny or whatever.

And what if he doesn't go back? Does history rewrite itself so that the Dementors drained his soul? (Hey, that's one Horcrux down!) Or perhaps it rewrites itself so that somebody else saved him? Or does the entire world fall into chaos because it is unable to resolve the paradox?
Post
#294780
Topic
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - my fan screenplay
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Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
I've actually been thinking about this, because you made me think about it in a way I hadn't considered before. But ultimately I realized why it wouldn't be able to work. Based on the book (and even more apparent in the movie) is that Rowling's view of a time travel is a fixed timeline, unlike, say, Back to the Future, where you can actually change events. For example, Harry saving himself and Hermione with the Patronus in all instances of that timeline, not just when he went back and did it. If Voldemort could have been stopped that way, then it would have already happened, and it obviously didn't.

More importantly, and probably logistically why no Auror would try it is because it would create a horrible paradox. If they did destroy Voldemort in the past, there would be no reason in the future for them to go back to the past and attempt it, which means that no one would, so Voldemort wouldn't be defeated, etc...


I've also been thinking about this, and it seems to me that the view of time travel you described leads to another huge paradox. If it's true that you can't go back and change something unless your future self already did, that implies that there is only one timeline in existence, and that timeline is predetermined to a huge extent if not entirely. But free will plays such an important role in the series -- just think of how many times Dumbledore tells Harry how important his choices are, and that the prophecy could have swung either way (Harry or Neville) until Voldemort chose to "mark Harry as his equal", etc. These kinds of choices can't logically be freely made in a fixed timeline.
Post
#294551
Topic
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - my fan screenplay
Time
No -- previously I've only written some parodies (like a Star Wars-esque "Episode VI: The Return of Voldemort" -- before HBP came out -- I recently wrote a slightly more refined "3-minute Deathly Hallows ala George Lucas" that I'll put up on my website shortly). And whenever I read a novel, I'm always thinking about how to translate it to the big screen. But this is the first complete screenplay adaptation I've written down. I have a film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera fully fleshed out in my mind that I plan to write down soon (it's more faithful to the novel than any movie or theatrical production I've seen or read about, though I plan to give it more backstory via flashbacks). I might tackle HBP if I have the time though I probably won't because it's not as fun a project as Hallows -- I don't envy Kloves' job of adapting HBP into a movie! It's all flashbacks and has maybe a half hour of plot and action. Another movie adaptation that I've had in my mind is The Dark is Rising -- so imagine my surprise when I heard that was actually going to be made into a movie! The trailer didn't really capture me though, so I don't know if I'll like the final product.
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#294272
Topic
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - my fan screenplay
Time
I have no problem with things getting changed and moved around (as you can see from my own screenplay of Hallows) but I feel there was a lot of information in the novel that (I thought) was important but that the filmmakers didn't even attempt to convey. Also, I think the movie was too short. Both the Azkaban and Phoenix movies could have benefited from an extra 15-30 minutes of clarifying dialogue and other stuff.

In any case, the time travel aspect of Azkaban always bothered me. I think making time travel a possibility in Harry's world was the single worst mistake that Rowling made in the series, because that leads to the question -- why didn't Aurors USE them to stop Voldemort before he gained power? Or, if they were a recent invention and they couldn't go back too far, why not go back and stop Voldemort from coming back in GoF? Etc. etc. I love stories about time travel but only if that's the driving force behind the story (like Back to the Future, Lightning by Dean Koontz, etc.). Otherwise, introducing that factor tends to muddle things up.
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#279820
Topic
Fanfilm contest at atomfilms.com
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Wouldn't it be something if members of this forum got together and made a fan film? Of course, it would probably be impossible to get members together to do any filming, and sending losslessly compressed video files back and forth over the internet is probably not the most efficient way of finishing a film . . . but we definitely have enough talent here to make it happen, if not for the geographical barrier . . .
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#276297
Topic
<strong>The &quot;EditDroid&quot; Trilogy DVD Info and Feedback Thread</strong> (Released)
Time
Did anyone else have a problem with their discs? My computer doesn't seem to recognize Disc 1 at all, and whenever I pop in Disc 4 I get an error message about a program failure (SWVinyl.exe or something like that) -- I haven't tried it with autorun turned off yet. I'll try them again later after a reboot.
Post
#276221
Topic
Proposed project: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV show)
Time
The US release of all Buffy seasons are in fullscreen, in accordance to Joss' wishes. Those were the only versions I had and were familiar with, until curiosity finally got the better of me a couple weeks ago and I ordered the Region 2 version of seasons 4 and 5 during an online sale (which at a discounted price still cost me as much as new R1 sets would have).

Why did Joss want them released in fullscreen? The season 4 episode in which Oz comes back reveals the answer -- near the end, when Oz and Willow embrace in the van, there is an obvious shot continuity "mistake", where one of the characters -- out of frame in the fullscreen version but not in the widescreen one -- leans in to hug the other, and then the camera angle changes to a wider shot and they haven't moved yet. The series was edited with a fullscreen ratio in mind, which is why mistakes like this could occur with things that aren't supposed to be seen on screen.
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#273185
Topic
<strong>The &quot;EditDroid&quot; Trilogy DVD Info and Feedback Thread</strong> (Released)
Time
Originally posted by: bigbaddaddyvader
Mine are very kindly being burned for me next week so I am hoping to have them in the next couple of weeks although I dont want to hassle too much as it was very generously offered to me by email.Thanks again!


Actually, the ones being burned for you are discs of the movies themselves, which was released a long time ago. The discs being discussed are supplementary discs, which most of us don't have yet.