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| 25 new of 304 responses total. |
slynne
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response 175 of 304:
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May 20 15:08 UTC 2002 |
resp:162 - heh. One of my co-workers really loves it when people clap
and cheer at movies too for just the reasons you have described. I
think that is why I dont like it. I dont mind sharing my thoughts and
feeling about a movie with those I choose to go with but I dont
particularly want to share my opinions with everyone else who happens
to be in the theater. It doesnt bother me to hear people laughing or
crying while I am in a movie. But applause and cheering? It makes me
miss dialog (which I hate) and just kind of bugs me. I guess I dont
care about what people I dont know think of a movie. Luckily, there is
a solution for this. My co-worker (who likes all the hype and cheering
and whatnot) went and saw Star Wars on opening night in a theater full
of big Star Wars fans who cheered and hooted and hollered and whatever.
She had a blast! I will see Star Wars in a week or so, maybe on a
weekday morning even. Probably I will go alone. It will be nice and
quiet...just how I like it.
In live theater, I still dont care a whole lot about sharing my
feelings about the performance with others in the audience but I think
the performers deserve the feedback.
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gull
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response 176 of 304:
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May 20 15:13 UTC 2002 |
Re #173: I swear those scenes were in at least one Laserdisc release,
because I saw them and I never saw the movie in the theater.
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flem
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response 177 of 304:
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May 20 15:24 UTC 2002 |
I see Rane's point about how they could be more clever with their lightsabers.
In one of the few non-canon star wars universe novels I've read, a Jedi at
one point throws his lightsaber at a group of enemies and uses the force to
control it from a distance. In Ep. 2, in the battle droid factory scene, I
noticed something that looked a lot like a light saber blade attached to one
of the machines, being used for cutting something.
Ep. 2 sucked less than I expected. I still think the quality is lower than
any of the original trilogy, but it's far less painful than 1.
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scott
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response 178 of 304:
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May 20 16:27 UTC 2002 |
Light sabers work the way they do for the following reason: It's what works
in a movie.
Color: Of course the bad guys have red! It's an aggressive color, while the
good guys have blue or green.
Physics: The audience is much happier that light sabers fight just like real
swords; it's easier to understand the action. A fight with light sabers that
passed through each other would be incredibly boring. With sabers that
deflect each other you get those great close-ups where the fighters are
clenched together and grimacing into each other's faces. Plus you can have
a really cool noise when the beams are touching.
I don't recall ever seeing Luke building a light saber, although it has been
a few years since I saw the original release of ESB. As a tech geek I would
have remembered such a scene, though. Maybe I can satisfy both sides: Perhaps
there *was* a big light saber factory, but Annikin/Vader wipes it out in the
upcoming Ep III. Therefore Luke had to make his own, using spare parts bought
at a ham convention or something.
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jp2
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response 179 of 304:
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May 20 16:41 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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gull
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response 180 of 304:
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May 20 18:07 UTC 2002 |
Re #178: It's pretty brief -- mostly you see him closing a cover on the side
of the handgrip. The book spent a little more time on it, I think.
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jaklumen
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response 181 of 304:
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May 21 02:47 UTC 2002 |
To be honestly fair to the Phantom Menace, I don't think how many
people realized what a MASSIVE impact the Amidala costumes had on the
fashion world for a little while. Vogue had a few of them recreated
within its pages, and styles inspired by the costumes hit the runway
for a while. But of course, I don't think many here even followed
that..
I also think Episode I really attracted more women viewers for that
very reason.
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gull
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response 182 of 304:
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May 21 12:34 UTC 2002 |
The Phashion Menace?
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scott
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response 183 of 304:
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May 21 12:44 UTC 2002 |
Huh. I don't recall seeing any girls on the street with that goofy kabuki
makeup Amidala wore as queen.
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viper2
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response 184 of 304:
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May 21 13:42 UTC 2002 |
But if you went to any cons the year after you noticed that all of the
sudden (i'd guess) at least 50% of the women were dressed as Amidala at
some point during the con.
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orinoco
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response 185 of 304:
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May 21 13:57 UTC 2002 |
Runway fashion has pretty much nothing to do with what people actually wear.
It's not surprising that Amidala-style clothes didn't make it out into the
real worldd.
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jaklumen
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response 186 of 304:
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May 21 20:43 UTC 2002 |
Well, yes, but I can see resp:184 and I remember Amidala and Maul
costumes were a big deal at Halloween time.
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jazz
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response 187 of 304:
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May 21 22:40 UTC 2002 |
I'd guess that Darth Vader knew Luke had constructed a new lightsabre
because they weren't exactly sold on QVC in the Empire, and therefore, he
would have had to built or acquired one.
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bru
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response 188 of 304:
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May 22 03:02 UTC 2002 |
Maybe I am wrong about being able to control the length of a laser. They
showed a program on futuristic weapons, and they talked about focusing a laser
to a specific depth. They then proceeded to show a test where they used a
massive laser to cut only 3/4 of an inch into a sheet of plexiglass. I don't
know what method they used, but it appeared to create a cut into the plexi
only 3/4 of an inch in depth.
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jep
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response 189 of 304:
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May 22 03:35 UTC 2002 |
Bruce, they used lasers for surgery. Also manufacturing of many
things, including computer chips. They can control the length of a
laser beam pretty accurately. It's not like a flashlight.
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mdw
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response 190 of 304:
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May 22 06:48 UTC 2002 |
Actually, length-wise, it's exactly like a flash-light. In both cases,
light proceeds indefinitely until it reaches a barrier, which may then
either refract, refract, or absorb the light. The main difference with
the flash light is it's not monochromatic, so it spreads much more
easily. What they do for lasers in surgery is to control, very
precisely, just how much light is emitted, which in turn allows them to
control the amount of energy emitted, the amount of tissue cut away.
For some uses of laser treatment, multiple beams of light may be focused
on a single spot, such that the one spot receives a given clinical dose
of light, while other parts in the way receive only a sub-clinical dose
and are not as badly affected. In neither of these cases, does light
behave at all like the "light" saber.
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jep
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response 191 of 304:
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May 22 15:36 UTC 2002 |
Some day I'll learn about my limits, such as when I don't know
something. Thanks, Marcus.
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rcurl
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response 192 of 304:
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May 22 21:48 UTC 2002 |
The laser beam does not spread because it is monochromatic, but because
it is coherent. There is not reasonne could not have a multi-frequency
laser beam.
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senna
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response 193 of 304:
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May 22 22:12 UTC 2002 |
What an interesting piece of drift.
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drew
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response 194 of 304:
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May 22 23:04 UTC 2002 |
Re #153:
Check out Item 62 in the SciFi conference, where I explain what's wrong
with spaceship movement not only in these but other movies as well.
Actually, a few non-standard additions to the technology, such as
hyperdrives, are acceptable. But they ought to be as few as possible and still
have the plot work. Compare Niven and Pournell, _The Mote In God's Eye_, a
space opera-like novel dealing with first contact with aliens. Two
extra-scientific devices are added to make the story possible, namely an
energy absorbing field and a faster than light drive. However, everything else
in the novel is either current or extrapolatable tech; the ships move as
spacecraft would, along orbital trajectories and|or with as much time spent
accelerating *away* from the destination as toward it; and even the Drive and
Field have limitations tied to known physical laws.
Even a fantasy needs some foundation of realism on which to build the rest
of the universe. The _Wars_ movies are, after all, presented in a dramatic
manner as opposed to being the movie _Spaceballs_. To tell a good dramatic
story, one should *try to fool somebody*. Make the story plausible by making
its elements and details as realistic as possible.
I contend that this would have been possible, with but a few changes
(along with perhaps a few hours of filming in the Vomit Comet), in the Star
Wars series of movies. Babylon 5 managed somewhat with its space combat,
though it still lacked an accurate depiction of scale.
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mdw
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response 195 of 304:
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May 23 00:24 UTC 2002 |
First definition I found of "coherent light" is "light which is of the
same requency and vibrating in phase". I seem to recall lasers that
produced either polarized or non-polarized light, but I'm not up enough
on my optics to remember much more than that. There are "white light"
lasers -- these lase at several different fixed frequencies
simultaneously. I suspect the light spreads more than light from a
monochromatic laser would, but less than light from an incadescent
light.
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rcurl
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response 196 of 304:
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May 24 01:50 UTC 2002 |
No, mixed-frequency laser beams do not spread. The different frequencies
do not interact except in a nonlinear medium. Itis the "in phase" part
of coherent that makes this work. You can get mixed frequency laser
beams from some generators (tricky) or simply mix different colors in
(linear) prisms.
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gull
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response 197 of 304:
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May 24 13:01 UTC 2002 |
Diode laser beams spread quite a bit. Are they not coherent?
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rcurl
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response 198 of 304:
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May 24 21:09 UTC 2002 |
They are mechanically very imperfect. It takes gas lasers with (very
expensive) mirrors, and near perfect alignments, to obtain optimal
coherence. A diode laser is a miserable approximation to these (but
still, very useful).
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senna
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response 199 of 304:
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May 25 07:53 UTC 2002 |
I caught Insomnia tonight as part of my Showcase twinbill evening that kept
me away from TNG reruns all evening.
This is a good movie, loaded with psychological intensity and a haunting
portrayal of a man without sleep. The lack of sleep, in particular, is
compelling to me in its accurate depiction of the effects sleeplessness has
on a person. I've been there way more than I'd care to think about, and it
was true-to-life without being ostentatious. Besides, it's hardly Pacino's
only obstacle in the film.
For a while I thought that this movie was breaking one of my pet-peeve rules,
which is a rule against starting a movie with one problem, and then in
midstream blow it up into something much larger. This movie avoids that issue
by making the difficulty that appears in midstream the *entire basis of
conflict* for the rest of the movie. The initial problem is essentially
solved halfway through, and the midstream plot turn is the sole source of
trouble for the rest of the movie. Sort of. Watch it, you'll see what I
mean.
The Robin Williams-Al Pacino matchup was a major selling point of this movie,
particularly in the advertising. If you go in expecting a Face/Off style
balance act, you're in for a disappointment--this movie is actually about Al
Pacino, and Williams' role, while large and significant, is not meant to be
an equal counterpart role to Pacino's. I like this, because it clearly
indicates that the role was not written for Williams, and it gives him room
to do some fine work with it. I still think Robin Williams is the most
*underrated* actor of the generation, because he combines one of the most
brilliant comic talents of all time with Oscar-Caliber dramatic skill, and
still people prefer to talk about Jim Carrey. Williams is certainly not a
good guy in this movie, but he's not just a hell-bent-for-evil bad guy,
either--he manipulates, but he is also fallible and occasionally fearful.
Remember Dennis Hopper's virtually all-knowing villain from Speed? Williams
is far more sublime.
Pacino is obviously the feature, and he does a terrific job by keeping his
voice down (mostly). There are a number of complex things happening to
Pacino's character, and he needs to be capable of complex reactions to his
environment. The result is magnificent. Consider a scene mid-way through
the film, for example, where he takes the best friend of the murder victim
out for a drive. Already days short on sleep, he holds a pleasant-to-edgy
conversation with the girl, nearly gets them both killed, and then brilliantly
requests and receives the information he wants from the girl like the seasoned
pro the audience knows him to be. There is a legitimate argument to be made
for an Oscar nomination, and with Pacino's pedigree I would not be surprised
to see him come next spring.
Lastly, I'd like to discuss the setting a bit. Rarely does the setting of
a movie have any real impact on the plot anymore, except for the size of the
building that Ahnuld blows up. This movie takes place entirely in the
little-used space of Alaska, powerfully introduced as the movie opens with
a plane ride over a glacier. The film never forgets to tell us where it is,
regularly showing an SUV driving on a two-lane road--with huge mountains,
isolated lakes, and steep canyons as the dominant backdrops. There's reason
involved, of course, as the midnight sun destroys Pacino's sleep and drives
him as the movie goes along. It is refreshing to have a thriller take place
entirely in daylight, though, and nothing is lost.
One minor nit: This movie was, unfortunately, filmed mostly in British
Columbia. You won't notice it often, but it is pretty careless when they show
exterior building shots, with perfectly happy green trees sitting comfortably
in the shade--where they would never grow in Alaska, since they would *always*
be shaded by either the building or a good chunk of planet earth in the
Wintertime. Not enough to take away from the movie, though, which is entirely
worth seeing.
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