Gaffer Tape

Mike O said:

SilverWook said:

This has been a bit of a trend with music for a while. I was pretty annoyed when some tracks from the Tron Legacy soundtrack were not on the CD. They were only on Itunes, or a limited edition 2 disc set overseas that became Ebay fodder. I want the whole damn score, dammit!

Clearly, someone at Paramount have been hitting the Romulan ale to come up with a greedy, asinine idea like this, and piss off the fans.

What I find especially peculiar about it is that you'd think they'd be doing the opposite. Not only is physical media the collector's market, but it's also more expensive. Wouldn't they want to put the extra stuff there to offer more incentive?

If I had to wager a guess it's because the profit margin on digital media is much higher.  Once the product is made, there's no production cost.  They want people to jump ship to digital media, so they're offering that medium the incentive.

Hahaha, it's all so true!  But I did especially love the, "And go ahead and pick up some humpback whales.  That'll save you a lot of trouble."

Well, actually, in ST09, I got the impression they made Kirk and Spock central, with heaping helpings of Scotty because he's Simon Pegg and Uhura because she takes her clothes off with everyone else secondary.

But while Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were central, the stories I've read usually involve Shatner petitioning to take away the moments the other characters had for himself.  Or that a shot would be set-up to highlight a certain actor, Shatner would pull the director aside, and when they came back, it was Shatner being focused on.  Now, I'm not sure how true that is, but I did recently notice a striking difference between the earliest episodes and everything that came after.  If you look at episodes like "The Man Trap," "Charlie X," and "The Naked Time," you'll see lots of scenes that focus on the other characters and shipboard life.  Scenes without Shatner.  But very quickly, those fade away.  Now whether that's Shatner's fault or just a shift in focus by the writers or network, I don't know.

Shatner has bear hands?  Holy crap!  I never noticed.

But, yeah, I've read Shatner's book, as well as Takei's and Doohan's.  I read Shatner's first, and I do agree it legitimately seems like he was just completely unaware of how he came across to his co-stars.  And it makes sense that Nimoy and Kelley were his friends.  Kelley's character had really good standing, and he was usually pretty magnanimous about his role in the spotlight being often eclipsed by the other two, and Nimoy's character's popularity rivaled even Kirk's, so he was in no position to feel overshadowed.

The thing is, when I read the latter two autobiographies, I expected quite a bit more detail about Shatner's faults.  I'm not saying I wanted a bash fest over him, but I did expect to come out of them knowing exactly why the rest of the cast harbored such enmity towards him.  Sadly, I never really felt I learned that in as much detail as I liked.  I think Takei and Doohan were really pulling punches, really trying to come across as professional.  In the case of Takei's, it felt like, "Well, you know, Bill was doing that stuff that you all know Bill does.  You don't really need me to explain it to you, right?"  And in Doohan's, he flat out says, "I don't like Bill," but he too doesn't go into much detail as to why that is.

There are a few good examples in Takei's book, though, like what was supposed to be the Captain Sulu scene in TWOK.  That Shatner just didn't seem interested in doing the scene and really just phoned it in because it wasn't about him, and it really offended Takei.

doubleofive said:

 

Johnny Ringo said:

If you wore a red shirt and lived to tell us about it then you did it wrong.

Engineers have a proven track record of survival.

 

Tell that to the guy who tried to unplug the M5.

So over the past two days I have been bitched out by my ex for no good reason, was publicly embarrassed by my stage manager in front of my ex, accidentally ate meat, and broke my phone.  It's only Wednesday, but I'm calling it:  worst.  week.  ever.

Well, good for them!  That confuses me, though, because I thought the whole reason he and Marcia adopted in the first place was because he was sterile...

Haha, I know.  Isn't that awesome?  All this time I thought I'd been living in some crazy bizarro world were people thought terrible, brainless movies were good.  This actually validates my faith in the human race a little bit.

Yeah, I agree with Tobar.  Alternate realities/reboots or just vastly different eras.  The casual movie-goer doesn't know the difference.  All they know is that it's two completely different sets of characters with next to nothing in common.  They might as well be two completely different universes, so it's really the exact same thing.  After all, Anakin Solo was supposedly killed off because they were afraid people would confuse him for Anakin Skywalker in the prequels...

Okay.  Now this is a thread I can get behind.  Let me just break out the old printer, and I'll be in my bunk...

Yeah, "washi" is a type of "I" commonly used by old men.

Thank you for having a DBD marathon.  I'm hoping the final part of this arc will be finished either today or tomorrow (probably tomorrow).

That is an awesome idea.  Personally, though, I would have put O'Brien with the DS9 cast instead of the TNG cast, but maybe that's just me.

EDIT:  Also, they included Leslie from TOS but skipped over Wesley Crusher entirely?  That's just cold.  And they have Ilia but not Decker?  And no Ezri Dax either?  Harumph.  I smell favoritism.

Sigh, because, and I hate to have to say this, as far as I see it, none of those words are meant to offend, even when they are used to describe the subjects you speak of.  "Mentally retarded," used in that fashion, for example, is a fairly recent invention, and was created to be a more sensitive, politically correct way of referring to people with mental handicaps.  An existing word, "retard," was used specifically because of its neutrality.  And it was chosen to replace its predecessors, such as moron and idiot, which were also originally chosen as clinical terms, because they had passed through the vernacular and picked up to be used as insults.  But as far as I see it, there is no way for that not to happen.  Yeah, "retarded" is now being seen as a derogatory term, precisely the opposite of what it was meant to be.  So it will be replaced with a new, even more sensitive word... which, in a few generations' time, will also be seen as incredibly insensitive and will be replaced and so on and so forth because it describes an unenviable position in which to be in life.

So bring me an example of someone using those terms to hurt other people, and I'll be right behind you saying that's insensitive and cruel.  But it makes me more than a little worried that we've become so fearful that anything that even sounds like something that can be used to be offensive should be encouraged to be banned from use.  Insert your own slippery slope argument here, but that's terrifyingly intolerant to me.  I'm terrified of this burgeoning world that looks more at the potential for incriminating word choice over actual context.  It reminds me of that hullabaloo from a few years ago over the word "niggardly" because it just happens to sound like a really bad word.

I'm not trying to be insensitive, Frink, because I know these issues are personal to you, but I just can't get behind limiting legitimate uses of words with broad, far-reaching definitions just because they have been applied in certain contexts as a shorthand to sensitive subjects.  So, yeah, other words could work as well, but so do these.  Honestly, it's as if someone in a science fiction movie said, "In order to solve the problem, we must bombard it with microwaves," only for someone to chime in, "Why do you want to throw that black box in the kitchen at it?"

TV's Frink said:

He said both abortion AND miscarriage.  I reserve my right to be offended.

Didn't notice the other one.  So I can agree with you on that.

Using terns like abortion, rape, or retarded in these situations is offensive regardless.  It's a fucking movie.

However, I can't agree with you on that.  There is nothing inherently offensive about any of those words.  In certain contexts?  Certainly, emphatically so.  But just taking those words at their literal meanings at face value?  No.  And there's also nothing about any of those words that cannot apply in a valid sense to a movie.

"Kirk's character arc was aborted to make room for more action."

"The high-profile director raped the studio of all of its assets for his dream project so that no equipment was left for the first-time director to make his film."

"The villain's demonstration of his sadistic nature was retarded by the director's choice to show him in a more sympathetic light."

Now, maybe DE meant to use those words in a legitimate sense, or maybe he used them as slurs.  I don't know.  Miscarriage, too, is a word that has other contexts than in reproduction, but, as I said, it does seem to be an unfortunate choice to put abortion and miscarriage back to back.

Well, strictly speaking, when you abort something, you don't necessarily have to be talking about babies, just like when you rape something, you don't necessarily have to be taking advantage of someone sexually, and when something is retarded, it doesn't necessarily refer to a human with a mental handicap.  Those terms do have broader meanings than are used in popular culture.

No, that's a movie too unintelligent to have overtones.  Or undertones.  Or any tones other than, "Let's blow stuff up!  Whoo-whee!"

CP3S said:

For one you're making references to one of the shittiest shows on television, I don't think too many people around here watch that kind of tripe.

I am 100% clueless as to what you are trying to say as well.

Hey!  I love The Big Bang Theory!

DuracellEnergizer said:

 

bkev said:

Got to Season 3 of DS9. This is where the fun begins/it grows the beard.

I'm halfway through Season 6, and - IMO - the beard has definately developed a lot of gray at this point. I don't think I'm going to stick around to watch it turn white with "Tears of the Prophets" and Season 7.

 

I think season 6 is one of its best, and, despite some definite missteps in season 7, it's still overall pretty strong (remember that TNG had lost quite a bit of its sheen by season 7 as well) with some really good episodes ("The Siege of AR-558" and "It's Only a Paper Moon" spring immediately to mind, and "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" is perhaps my favorite guilty pleasure) and an amazing 10 episode arc to conclude the series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7t20Am3I1s

RE:  twister111

There, there.  If it makes you feel any better, you can watch a new episode of my Dragon Ball Dissection series later this afternoon! =P

Warbler said:

still don't understand it, but thankyou for your sympathies. 

I had to go back and look because I honestly didn't get it at first either, but it would appear that, as people were talking about things sex was good for, you happened to chime in saying you missed your dog.  I believe that's where the unintentional humor comes from.  But you have my sympathies as well.  My standard poodle, Dax, was not an addition to my life I planned on having and actually kinda got stuck with me through unusual circumstances, but, like any good buddy cop movie, by the end of the story, we're inseparable.  I can't imagine life without her now, so I'm very sorry your time with your dog has come to an end.

I don't really see how that's really a problem in the examples you listed.  If the in-film subtitles are burned in to the film, and the foreign-translated subtitles for non-native viewers are generated in the matte... boom!  You have everything.

Also, even if it was a piece of media that didn't have a matte (was the same ratio as the television), it's really not that hard to read subtitles over subtitles.  I've had several experiences like that with foreign language media, and it's never been a problem.

I also disagree with your sentiment that home video shouldn't strive to be as close to the theatrical experience as possible.  I mean, hell, isn't that part of the reason this site exists?

ALSO... just saw a clip from The Director's Edition, and the subtitles appear perfectly fine there.  Certainly not some player-generated, pixellated crap.

TV's Frink said:

I like subs in the matte.  Easier to read.

I don't mind subs in the matte if they're the hearing impaired or whatever subtitles.  But if they're part of the movie, like alien languages in Star Wars or Star Trek or the Sicilian in The Godfather films, they need to be in the damned movie!

Would you mind PM-ing me as well?  I'd also love to hear that.