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News Briefs 21-08-2007

Rain here today. It’s been so long, such a beautiful sound…

Thanks Kat and Ross.

Quote of the Day:

The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.

William James

Editor
  1. We are the Blade Runner generation
    Does this mean that 30 years from now, I’m FINALLY going to have my very own cibernetic DARYL HANNAH?

    COOOOL!!!!!!!!! 😉

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

    1. Dick
      Red, you really got to aim higher, man.
      Joking over, I’m glad people are beginning to see Dick as a genius. He’s my favourite SF writer – I especially like his short stories. No nonsense tales which tell eternal stories – usually about paranoia.
      That’s one of the secrets of a great, long lasting writer – tales that can apply any time, anyhere.

      I’m fanatical about moderation

      Anthony North

      1. some future
        Do you remember how mean and violent Darryl Hannah as in that movie? No thanks, I don’t need a woman who tries to kill me.

        Another dramatic effect that I thought was a little weak in the movie was setting it in Los Angeles, and it is dark and raining all day and all night. Ok, I can go with the dark part at night. Sure it is a way of makeing everything seem dreary and pessimistic. But still, I think it’s a little weak as a mechanism. Not very inventive.

        —-
        You can observe a lot, just by watching. (Yogi Berra)

        1. almost prophetic!!!
          Yeah, I remember watching that movie so long ago and thinking “why is it ALWAYS raining??”

          Now I know why: Here in Mexico city it’s been raining DAILY this whole year.

          And it may be that it’s always dark because of the pollution. I read they have days in modern Beijing where people can’t see what lies 300 ft. ahead of them!

          But it won’t be a truly Blade Runner future if we don’t have those awesome flying police vehicles with those recording voices telling “MOVE ON… MOVE ON… MOVE ON”

          With one of those, I could certainly stand the rain 😉

          Jokes aside, it’s obvious that in that distopian society, almost all the people left on Earth are the low class scum that can’t afford to leave the planet and start over on the “New Frontier”. There’s no middle class, and in that sense the movie nailed it too.

          —–
          It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
          It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

          Red Pill Junkie

          1. nails
            I think the movie was just distopian as a premise, and a lot of the other stuff didn’t fit in with that. Or were made to fit for no good reason.

            There is an emphasis on foreigners. Chinese people show up in unsympathetic roles. German is spoken by a few negative characters.

            And of course, the artificial people are the ultimate foreigners. Darryl Hannah, the beautiful innocent girl who tries to kill the hero after a few minutes.

            Rutger Hauer, the scarily intelligent guy (he wins the chess match against his creator). With a sort of German feel to it (Hauer is Dutch). And of course extremely strong and violent.

            The movie is full of stereotypes, negative about everyone foreign. Pretty much negative about everything. That it not the mark of an intelligent movie.

            Aside from that, I don’t like the lighting. There is not enough of it.

            —-
            You can observe a lot, just by watching. (Yogi Berra)

          2. fear of “the other”
            Yeah, you’re right. The movie probably reflects the director’s fear that globalization would turn into a very ugly and “dilluted” culture with a mish-mash of languages and races: the most evident the lingo Edward James Olmos’ character speaks (and Deckart pretends not to understand).
            In the end it is ironic that this dilluted society still struggles to mantain the ultimate prejudice: fear against the androids man created in his image.

            But you have to agree that, because of the dark quality of the movie, the moment Hauer appears with a dove in his hand, and releases it as he exhales his last breath, and it flies to the bright sun, it’s got great impact.

            “It’s a terrible thing living with fear…
            That’s what it is to be a SLAVE.”

            And in the end I feel the real hero of the movie is not Harrison Ford (how could he be? he’s a cold-blooded murderer of women, his only moment of decency when he decides to spare the life of Sean Young, but even that is not selfless since he loves her) but Rutger Hauer, who learns the value of human life just moments before he looses his own. So, does that make him… human?

            PS: Daryl Hannah can try KILLING ME everyday of the week, too 🙂

            —–
            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

          3. two minds
            It seems that the movie could be of two minds about some things. I don’t like the distopian (or dystopian? how do you spell that?) mindset, it will just confirm many people’s belief that the future is bleak, and that the “other people” are to blame for a lot of it.

            Maybe the final scene is something a little bit other than revealing the hero. Maybe it says that the ruthless dominating intelligent violent bad guy (Hauer), has a reason for acting as he did, and he has an innocent soul.

            Whatever the intended meaning, I don’t think the director really knew at the time what exactly the movie was saying.

            Which leads me to another book (the movies were a weak interpretation) – Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem. Nobody can figure it out, although it is very powerful. Lem never said what the meaning was. I think he didn’t know it himself.

            Unrelated, did you see my question about the ray tracing tool? do you know it is any good?

            —-
            You can observe a lot, just by watching. (Yogi Berra)

          4. POV Ray
            I had seen it mentioned is some discussion groups, and from what I see in their Hall of Fame, it sure looks like a really powerful tool for 3D images (Wow).

            It seems it is based on Ray-tracing techniques, which is a computar method to try to simmulate how light and reflections acts between objects by calculating the path of the rays of light that end up in your camera view after they hit on the objects of the scene (a backward approach from what happen in real life, but more manageable by processors). The higher the number of light rays the higher the accuracy of your reflections or radiosity effects (how the color of the surfaces affect the color of the objects near them, think of a red sofa that “paints” a white wall pinkish if light bounces from it) Aaaand the higher the time you will wait for your rendering to come out (and the less hours of sleep you’ll get!!).

            It seems like a good option, although I don’t think I would personally feel comfortable with such a script-oriented interface. I need icons and viewports man! 😉 I need my tools to rotate my objects, to move them, to preview them, etc. 3D Max has a standard renderer that handles ray-tracing and radiosity but it’s not so effective with effects like caustic reflections (those funky light effects you see on a table if light hits a glass vase full of water). For those things Max has another feature called Mental Ray, but on the other hand Mental Ray doesn’t handle ray-tracing…

            But hey! that’s me. You on the other hand could probably use this POV program and do some pretty amazing stuff. And maybe you could end up doing some cool UFO hoax flicks and sell them to Greg 😉

            —–
            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

          5. but getting back to subject… of THE OTHER
            Reading the Philp K. Dick article linked, I found this:

            “Dick’s early history is at once tormented, hustling, and oddly lit by the bright California sunshine of the late fifties. Born in 1928, he had a twin, a sister named Jane, who died when she was only a month old; like Elvis Presley, who also had a twin sibling who died, Dick seems to have been haunted for the rest of his life by his missing Other”

            —–
            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

          6. other “Others”
            There is an old movie “Ice Cold In Alex”

            It’s a WW2 movie, about some lost British soldiers trying to make it through the desert sands, escaping the Germans, hoping to reach Alexandria. And have an ice cold beer. One of the guys is supposedly South African, and nobody trusts him. But they have to cooperate, otherwise they can’t survive.

            Close to the end it is revealed that the “South African” is actually a German soldier. In the version I saw (more than 30 years ago), the ending is that the British commander in control say to the German guy (approximately), our guys are on the right, your guys are on the left. good luck I let you go.

            Just another example of movies and stories, where the “Other” turns out to be one of us.

            —-
            You can observe a lot, just by watching. (Yogi Berra)

          7. Talking objects
            Hi Red,
            We haven’t got the talking flying cars yet, but in the UK there’s a trial going on with talking lamp posts. With a camera on them, they look out for people doing something wrong. Then they tell them off.

            I’m fanatical about moderation

            Anthony North

          8. Ice Cold in Alex
            Damn, my above comment came on out of sequence. Oh well, you can work it out.

            Hi Earthling,
            The John Mills version of Ice Cold in Alex has the ‘South African’ as a German spy. They find this out. When they get to the beer, the Brit officer calls the MPs, then pulls off the guy’s South African dog tag. He can then pass as just a solider rather than a spy, thus saving him from the firing squad.
            The beer is real. In the old film you can see the word Heineken on the glass. That company actually used footage in an ad a few years ago.

            The balanced adult retains an inner child

            Anthony North

          9. freaky!
            As long as they stick to “tell people off”, and not “blow them off” like in that movie THE END OF VIOLENCE…

            —–
            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

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