NeverarGreat

DuracellEnergizer said:

CatBus said:

I really disagree with that analysis. During Watergate, 2/3 of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee voted against all impeachment charges. And that’s after there was an actual audio recording of the President committing the crimes he was charged with. Direct evidence like that is very rare, even in normal criminal cases–usually convictions hinge upon a pile-up of circumstantial evidence that can’t be explained away by any other plausible scenario (i.e. “beyond reasonable doubt”). That’s much more likely to be the case here.

So if the case against Trump never gets as bulletproof as the case against Nixon, I’d say well over 2/3 of the Republican members of the relevant committees will avoid taking any action at all. Which is more than enough to ensure nothing happens. And Republicans won’t see any blowback regardless of how big the scandal becomes. As long as Trump’s approval stays above ~32%, they keep the Senate–with no real risk of losing it until 2022. The House is theirs until 2022 even if voters overwhelmingly prefer Democrats–and it’ll likely remain theirs after 2022 if they keep control of the redistricting process. What other changes may happen to our election system before 2022 is also worth considering.

If the scandals keep going at their current rate (major scandal every 12 hours or so, no actual video footage of Trump eating the puppy, just twelve witnesses), I think we’re looking at a second Trump term. That’s not doomed.

I think there are some additional factors to take into consideration here. One of them is that Trump has already made quite a few enemies in Congress, and he’s proving to be an embarrassment in terms of policy. Nixon was at least a savvy politician. There is also the matter of the crime. The Russia collusion has the potential to be much bigger than Watergate, if any hard evidence surfaces. Of course, there has been an erosion of values in Congress leading them to look the other way even when faced with wrongdoing, so perhaps these factors cancel out. But I don’t think that he is in a better position than Nixon at this point in his presidency.

Although ‘a mixed bag’ sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. For example, if a promotional image for a television show starred Michelle Yeoh but also looks like it was greenscreened despite being apparently shot on location.
-Lemony Snicket, The Ersatz Elevator

DuracellEnergizer said:

SilverWook said:

Seriously? Sequel in name only, or is anyone from the first one involved? And what movies did they steal footage and music from this time?

It’s an official sequel, but they had a budget this time, so they didn’t have to pilfer better movies for SFX and music. Yet in spire of that, it’s actually worse than the original.

Here’s the trailer.

Sometimes a bigger budget elevates a so-bad-it’s-good movie to the level of it’s-just-bad. That happened with the latest movie I made with my friends.

I think subtlety is a valiant expectation for the posters on this thread.

The sequels went more heavily into the ‘cool’ greens than the first film, so it was a deliberate creative decision going forward (and seemingly, going back). http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/the-matrix-visual-comparison.html

The way I interpret the color shift from the first to the second film is that in the first one, the Matrix seems real from Neo’s point of view up until the end where he sees the green code running through the walls. The later films would then be heavily green because Neo sees that world as a computer simulation and his worldview has biased itself towards Zion and away from the Matrix.

Looking at the 35mm scan, there are many scenes that are still too yellow, and in particular the skin tones tend towards yellow even in the Nebuchadnezzar. Some scenes in the Matrix have a subtle green tint particularly in later scenes, but it’s far more subtle than even the DVD. I think this is accurate despite the uneven grading of this particular print, since I don’t see much evidence of the greenish-brown tint so prevalent in the DVD. “Deliberate Creative Decisions” were made for both the DVD and Blu-ray.

Indeed, the attempt to remove all the green was really just for fun, but there is some purpose in that all indications are that the green tint in the original Matrix film was more subtle than later installments, and the Blu-ray absolutely overdid this. So the actual look would be between this and the Blu-ray.

I just used online screencaps for this comparison, so hopefully the blu-ray will have more shadow detail.

The Oracle scene, and really any scene that was supposed to have strong greens in the original photography, was unduly affected.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/209795
I’ve managed to refine the grade somewhat, so the Oracle scene isn’t quite so red. here is what it looks like throughout:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/209792
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/209793
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/209794


JEDIT: Further tweaking gets it closer to the source image:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/209827

The issue was that when I applied it to almost any other scenes, it was too much. The second one looks more natural for more scenes.

SilverWook said:

NeverarGreat said:

My mother and grandmother both saw a UFO in West Virginia when my mother was very small, and they both still remember it. They were walking down the street one afternoon and a bright light seemed to follow them, and when they stopped at the corner and turned onto another street the light did a 90 degree turn as well. They started to get scared and run, and the light followed them, apparently disappearing before they reached home. Neither of them has any idea what it could have been.

That sounds a bit like ball lightning, which is pretty freaky and rare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

It could have been that, though they are specific in that it did a 90 degree turn and followed them up the road. Perhaps it was following the power lines.

In my Star Wars project I was able to use some of the color (chroma) of 35mm sources overlaid on the blu-ray, but this requires almost frame by frame image registration to prevent misalignment due to the natural gate weave of the film. I would not recommend mixing and matching luma between sources because humans can much more easily detect luma than they can chroma, and the alignment would have to be perfect.

The channel mixer is a powerful tool, and I used that in conjunction with a curves adjustment to remove the green tint in the Blu-ray: (from the Matrix 53mm thread) http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/209768

My guidelines for channel mixer use are to leave the ‘constant’ values at 0, and make sure that each of the 3 channels equals 100.

Here’s a version with just a hint of the green remaining:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/209768

Just something I mocked up for fun from a previous image:

http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/209738/picture:1
This is using the same settings:

However, the scenes not set in the matrix don’t fare so well. This is probably what the film looked like before the green tint.

There are two opposing narratives concerning the firing of Comey. The Democrats claim that he fired him because he was worried that the investigation would find evidence of his collusion with Russia. The Republicans claim that he fired Comey because of various and changing reasons concerning Comey’s job performance.

I don’t find either narrative to be convincing, for several reasons.

With regards to the Democratic narrative, Trump seems all too calm (for someone who is usually animated) to be fearful of impeachment. His interviews show a man as casual with the truth as he ever was on the campaign trail, a man who should surely be more guarded in his answers if he thought that he was guilty. His tweet, that Comey should be fearful of ‘tapes’ existing of their meetings in the White House, would be childish and thuggish intimidation if it was meant in all seriousness. However, Trump may be continuing some form of personal joke in the vein of Obama wiretapping Trump Tower. In other words, ‘you’d better hope that Obama didn’t wiretap us both, or your previous boss may be in a lot of trouble’ (JEDIT: What Catbus said). This seems like the type of moronic trolling that Trump is accustomed to, and the fact that he doesn’t spell this out is potential evidence that he is slyly pushing the Democrats’ buttons at the same time as he is speaking to Comey and his base.

With regards to the Republican narrative, this was too abrupt a firing to be merely a further ‘draining of the swamp’. His attempts to spin this as such are transparent. He is clearly acting to put the chill on the Russia investigation, and he is genuinely surprised that the Democratic establishment would be angry at this, since he so blindly assumes that he is innocent. How could it be problematic to fire the man in charge of the Russia investigation if he isn’t under suspicion? He wants Russia as a friend and so he doesn’t consider that this investigation is relevant to his administration at all. This is why he abruptly fired Comey. He’s the decider, and to have an independent lawman who won’t kiss his ring is beyond offensive. I believe that Trump was acting very much as his role on The Apprentice in firing Comey, and didn’t care that it may be seen as improper.

This is an unprecedented event in our nation’s history, and a foreboding one. Trump clearly doesn’t care about democratic norms or even pretending to act like anything other than a glorified mob-boss. He thinks that he’s fabulously smart and politically savvy, and though he is neither of these things, he does have the lizardlike sense of how to manipulate large groups of people. Case in point, he did little to erode his previous support (the polls are basically unchanged in this regard), and he also made the Democratic establishment and media overreact by acting in ways that looked from their perspective like he was guilty as sin. Taking the cynical approach - and I hope I’m wrong about this - this looks like a win for him. Of course, it’s devastating for norms, democracy, bipartisanship, and anything other than Donald J Trump.

TV’s Frink said:

Octorox said:

I absolutely wouldn’t want to see Porkins go either but I like where sansuni is coming from.

Behind?

Sounds like someone needs to pick up their visual scanning.

I didn’t actually notice the jump cut until it was pointed out in this thread, and since the individual asked for it to be taken out and I was already reverting other 2011 R2 changes, I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to revert this one to the 2004 broadcast version as well.

As for the sabers, the film sources that I was rotoscoping by hand had a great deal of color grain that could only be partially removed before the image quality was too greatly affected. In terms of luminosity, if you examine the Blu-ray the cores of the sabers are blown out, so they had to be reduced some way or another. Finally, the more desaturated color is representative of the original film as opposed to the saturated color used in all the other films, and I wanted to preserve this since I quite like it. 😃

Since my mom was too young to be drinking, I’m sure that’s what it was. 😉

More here:
https://goldseven.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/the-force-its-calling-to-you/

There wasn’t anything but the video to respond to, other than your opinion. I apologize if you got the impression it was directed at you.

She handled it as well as could be expected, but her defense was an ad hominem, and I thought I’d point that out.

I was referring to Sarah Sanders making a Tu Quoque fallacy with regards to the reporter’s questions.

Jetrell Fo said:

“You Want To Create A False Narrative” Sarah Sanders Destroys Reporter Over Trump Firing James Comey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaEUC1wrFrg

I think Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders is my new hero.

Specifically:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=star wars unaltered trilogy

Some info on when people have searched for ‘Star Wars unaltered trilogy’.
In short, there were small spikes in 2006 and 2011, then people cared a whole lot right when TFA came out, then cared a bit less when Rogue One came out.

So I’d say it’s obviously a good idea to create a stir when it coincides with a major movie release or a blu-ray/4K release of the OT.

SilverWook said:

Aliens could also be so advanced, the way they communicate is way beyond anything we’ve even thought of yet. It would be like trying to pick up color tv signals on an AM radio.
They also could be so far above us, we’re not considered worth talking to, if they notice us at all.

This is my suspicion. I think that many species either leapfrog over long-distance electromagnetic communication for more advanced science, or they are ‘tuned in’ to something more like telepathy. But that would get into philosophical theory of mind, and this is a UFO thread 😉

Don’t worry about it, at the end of the day everything’s an aesthetic choice and I’ve found that any number of different gradings can look good for a shot. Eventually you just have to choose one and stick to it 😉