24 new of 323 responses total.
This discussion has been moved to Item #1041. Religion plays to emotions. It's arguable that without emotions, much of our society (it's ills and its boons) would not exist. I have never understood the presence of religion and mysticism in Vulcan philosophy, as it's supposedly based entirely on logic (not that it matters, Vulcans being fictional), but I believe that true harmony can only exist with a balance between the emotional and the rational.
The Special Theory of Relativity follows from Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic fields if you insist that they apply in the same form in different inertial coordinates. The intermediate concept was the Lorenz Contractions. The experimental support for this came from the Michelson-Morley experiments. I would say that General Relativity is a Law, if you want to be fussy. However scientists are not hung up with what they call a theory and what they call a law. After all, the existence of atoms is called the Atomic Theory. These are just word games of no significance. Scientists know what the supporting evidence is for their "generalizations", whether called laws or theories. The central scientific quandry currently is reconciling General Relativity and Quantum Theory (which should be called a "law", as it is vastly more precisely confirmed (to something like 11 significant figures) than General Relativity or anything else that is called a "law"). In regard to people having memories from past lives...I go along with Thomas Paine who wrote "Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie?" (from Paine's "Age of Reason", Part I).
Past lives neither require that nature "go out of her course", nor that people who have them are telling lies, if one defines lie as "a statement made with deliberate intent to deceive". It could be (a) that they are mistaken, or that (b) the connection to past lives is a normal part of nature. One would expect nature, by our reasoning, to always "work", but the fact that I am disabled doesn't prove that I don't exist.
Finally saw Harry Potter 3 at the Village Theater in Ann Arbor. Well worth the $3 and the drive from Plymouth. Now will read the book...
Getting back to movies, I saw Vincent Gallo's "THE BROWN BUNNY" over the weekend. Vincent Gallo is a very talented young director who lives here in Brooklyn. He directed the wonderful if quirky "BUFFALO 66" among others. In this movie, he stars as a professional motorcycle racer driving across country from New York to California for a race. He is a lonely introvert haunted by guilt over an old relationship, a guilt which makes it impossible for him to commit to relatonships in the present. So he races motorcycles, a metaphor for racing from his past. The movie is a cross country roadtrip where he is heading home to california and back into his past, and meeting women along the way, whom he wants to be with but can't because of his overwhelming guilt over this past relationship. It leads to where we meet his old girlfriend, Chloe Sevigny, and discover the reasons and source of his guilt. The key scene in the movie is a graphic oral sex scene involving Sevigny and Gallo, and while it sounds er..excessive if you read press reports...the scene is artfully done and key to understanding Gallo's character and the demons he hides within. This is a dark movie about how some people are trapped in the past and can't ever escape it, they can never live in the moment, in the present, because the past is always there. "BROWN BUNNY" is a really good movie, not as good as Gallo's earlier effort, "BUFFALO '66", but Gallo remains one of the best, most cutting edge directors out there working today IMO. Worth seeing.
re #304 Is that the one with John Doe, Iggy, Tim O'Leary, etc?
On Morning Edition today, one of the stories was on film restoration. 'Twas noted that Star Wars was so popular that so many copies were made from the negative that the original is now unusable. There is so much dirt and so many scratches on _every_ frame that restoration is impossible.
Oy.
That's bull. From what I've seen on Bravo and other channels, the original is used only to create a master copy which is used to make distributed copies. Also, if restoration was impossible, that means the DVD set coming out would be pretty crappy, and you know that's not gonna happen.
The DVD set is based on the 1997 release, not on the original one. I still think Lucas has a good copy stashed away somewhere that he'll trot out when it's financially convenient.
I doubt it. He was never really happy with the original outcome, which is why he kept fiddling with it. To go back and re-release the original would be like selling a draft version, in his eyes.
re #310: Consensus opinion seems to be that when George Lucas's artistic integrity has to duke it out with conflicting financial incentives the artistic integrity rarely wins the fight. I believe if there's enough money involved he'll overcome his perfectionist streak.
#311...McNally, that is ridiculous. George Lucas is a billionaire or close to it. Why would he pick financial incentives over artistic integrity when he doesn't need the money? He'll never be able to spend the money he has now in his lifetime. His motivations are artistic, these films are his legacy and he wants both trilogies to fit together so that future generations will see the films as a WHOLE six film arc. So he tampers with the older films to make them fit better. It makes artistic sense.
George Lucas's ten year delay in making the first trilogy
was totally financial. The wife he divorced would have California
'community property' of the intellectual property.
Jedi mind trick. Palpatine could do it. After all, Anakin's
mom was the hottest *woman* (with a speaking part) in Episode I.
Sporting wood at Star Wars is just *wrong*, Tim! ;)
re #312...Lucas busy during the delay between the two trilogies. He was producing the Indiana Jones trilogy. Spielberg directed those movies, but Lucas was the producer in charge of everything and co-scriptwriter. Those movies also made a ton of money. Funny he didn't stop working altogether during his divorce isnt it?
Anakin's mom was the only woman (with a speaking part) in Episode I. (There was a child-queen that had a bigger part).
Interesting, I just read a CNN article about the changes Lucas made for the DVD editions of the first trilogy. It appears that in the Empire Strikes Back, the Emperor is in fact (trivia question!) played by a woman wearing an Emperor mask, with the voice being done by actor Clive Revill. In Return of the Jedi of course, as well as in the first trilogy, the Emperor is played by actor Ian McDiarmid. So now, by the miracle of modern technology, McDiarmid now has the part in Empire Strikes Back. Lucas has also been tinkering with Jabba the Hut, and we get a new, improved, and better Jabba.
Sigh. I liked the original three movies in their original form. I didn't think the gee-whiz special effects were an improvement.
Personally, I would have preferred to get the movies as I saw them originally. Why mess with success?
The song that Sny Snootles does in Jabba's Hut is also different, as is the Ewok Celebration.
You might not have noticed, but the "victory song" from #3 (ROTJ), with the Ewoks and all, which I did think was "funky", was replaced by a different song when episodes 4-6 were re-released prior to episode 1.
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Re resp:320: That was the worst change of all. It doesn't move the plot along and the aliens are about as convincing as Muppets.
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