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News Briefs 16-12-2009

What’s a skeptic? Read today’s news, and you’ll be even more confused…

Thanks Kat.

Quote of the Day:

[S]keptics must set aside the conceit that our goal is a cultural revolution or the dawning of a new Enlightenment. That concept resonates with me as powerfully as it does with anyone, but it is a dream with a bitter price: exhaustion and disappointment. After decades of labor, the horizon is just as far away as ever.

Daniel Loxton

Editor
  1. Why many people believe in AGW
    A lot of people believe in AGW because they like the remedies recommended – more controlled societies, less individialism.

    A few scientists are convinced, but nobody (including the convinced scientists) actually can predict the climate. If you don’t understand something analytically, you build simulations.

  2. Dark Materials

    Studio bosses have shelved plans to film the final two instalments of His Dark Materials, despite the success of the first movie, The Golden Compass, two years ago.

    WHAT success? As I remember it, the movie fared poorly in the box office, and DVD sales were meager as well.

    I saw the movie, and I thought it was pretty dull; I didn’t read the DM trilogy, but from what I gathered from comments, one of the reasons the movie was a bomb was PRECISELY because it diluted most of the controversial subjects in order to ‘appease’ the sensibilities of some groups.

    IMO, the director has no one to blame but himself.

    1. The Subtle Knife of Hollywood studio politics
      [quote=red pill junkie]
      IMO, the director has no one to blame but himself.[/quote]

      Don’t blame Chris Weitz. His original script is online somewhere, and it’s very faithful to the book. But the studio (New Line) had other ideas, and because he wasn’t a big-name director, Weitz had to bend. In fact, considering the pressure Weitz was barraged with, it’s a miracle he made the movie at all. Read the books, Miguel, you’ll enjoy them — although the first two never match the brilliance of the first, and Pullman gets (ironically) preachy about atheism and science in the second.

      And I feel unloved — I’m missing for two weeks, and not a single post asking where I am?

      1. I don’t agree…
        Sorry Rick —Um, it *is* Rick, right? it’s been a while ;)— but IMO part of the director’s role is to know how to cope with the studio’s demands, and when to stay your ground to defend the work’s integrity —it’s more than shouting “action!”, you know? 😛

        If he felt the studio was compromising the quality of the movie, then he should have quit. It has happened before; and in the end the ones who suffered the most are the fans of the trilogy —or maybe they’re better off now, because if the other two were going to be as inssufferable as the first, then it’s something the world of Cinema didn’t need.

        BTW, I bought the first book and gave it to my nephew last Xmas. But the lazy dumbass inherited his mother’s distate for books, and after 12 months he’s still in chapter 3 or something :-/ I could ask to borrow the book from him, but I bought it in Spanish, and I don’t like reading translations if I can read the original.

        1. books
          That reminds me, we should market a new kind of e-book.

          A simple box with a glass window, and you stick the paper book in there. Then we need an electric gizmo to turn the pages. Tell the kids it’s the new virtual book rendering from Apple, they will buy it.

        2. Armoured polar bears
          [quote=RPJ]…it’s more than shouting “action!”, you know?
          [/quote]

          Yes. I do know, thanks. 😉

          I followed the pre-production pretty closely, both through Weitz and Pullman, and sorry to say but you’re wrong mate. Weitz stuck with it because he’d rather give it his best shot than quit and see New Line hire a talentless mindless drone (Paul W S Anderson for example) — the film would have been even worse. So he salvaged as much dignity from the material as he could. Good on him. Weitz said:

          It was an utter violation of my status as a director and the worst thing that has happened to me professionally … I was treated badly, it was almost like they never read the books. They seemed frightened of offending the right.” Out of loyalty to the cast and crew, Weitz said he “bit through my tongue” when Compass was released.

          And here’s something I agree with having read both Weitz’s original script that was butchered by New Line, and Tom Stoppard’s effort:

          Like many fans, we’d always assumed that Stoppard’s draft must have been a work of genius, and that his replacement by Weitz surely doomed the project. Much to our surprise, upon reading the screenplays, we’re wrong. Had Stoppard’s screenplay been filmed, the movie would have been ponderous, a bit dull, and far too long. Weitz’s original script was actually great and makes us sad about the movie that could have been.

          One thing the movie got right — Lee Scoresby. Absolutely perfect casting with Sam Elliott, he was fantastic. Unfortunately, Nicole Kidman did nothing for Mrs Coulter (even though Pullman liked her being cast), and Daniel Craig didn’t have the fire and ice Lord Asriel demanded — I think Kidman and Craig were cast because they had a contract with New Line, they’ve been in a few films together now. If I got to cast Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter, it would be Clive Owen and Catherine Zeta Jones.

          Anyways, it’s all done and dusted (pun intended), what’s done is done. It’s a good thing they’re not making any more Harry Potter wannabes, for two reasons: the second book is pretty dull and the third only recaptures a smidge of the first book’s magic; and the actress who played Lyra would be 16 by now (she was 11 going on 12 in the books, according to Pullman). It’s bad enough seeing Harry Potter look like a 30-year-old…

          1. Good choices

            If I got to cast Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter, it would be Clive Owen and Catherine Zeta Jones.

            Ah, good choices there. What if, right?

            And in the end, you hit the nail in the head. The REAL reason that movie was a failure was because every studio wanted to recreate the success of Harry Potter. And New Line wanted to bag another $ucce$$ful fantasy trilogy. So everybody in Hollywood was rushing to buy any movie rights of whatever successful children books they could find. They saturated the market during those years —Spiderwick anyone?— and the public got bored.

            IMHO, the director should have waited 5 years. And Pullman should have tried to have more control with the script changes; so that should be a lesson to anyone trying to bring a successful novel to the big screen.

            If you’re going to make a movie based on chocolate cake, you cannot end up with coconut just because you didn’t want to hurt the people who don’t like chocolate. You either stick to chocolate or you should ask WHY you want to make this movie in the first place.

  3. P.Z. Meyers vs. Randi
    I find it amusing to watch P.Z.’s minions take a left turn on Randi when it suits them. This is the same guy that they supported fully…when it suited them. And I don’t mean the argumnent or the point but supporting or attacking his character as part of their arguments. Oh well, just something to chuckle over.

    1. Randi buffet

      And the children begin eating the parent…

      So confusing to read comments of the “dude’s no scientist!” type aimed at the Amazing one in a skeptic forum.

      Maybe Randi sees a case for the GW skeptics because he has an inherent revulsion for anything that has the potential to manifest the traits of a religious movement.

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