Friday Ephemera
Convenient. // Three’s a crowd. // Breakdancing trio. // Fantastic foursome. // Ragnarok. Or, Marvel goes Flash Gordon. // The glorious outdoors. (h/t, Ben) // This. (h/t, Julia) // That. (h/t, Obo) // Big cat, scary noise. // “NASA says no humans have ever had sex in space.” // Parenting done well. I do like number one. // Labour of love, or maybe just doing things the hard way. // $6000 “luxury performance” smartphone boasts ruby buttons, on-call round-the-clock concierge, dated software. // Always double-knot, I say. // Warning: disco. // Sshh. I hear something. // Archery made simple. // A brief history of the cardboard box. // Clunk, click. // If they learn to make fire, we’re totally screwed. // And finally, heartwarmingly, dads and daughters: the eternal struggle.
Niven was tame enough, but for cringe-level progressive humanistic angst we had ST: TNG. And I’m sure others.
Known Space was touted as hard SF but seemed more like hard space opera with some physics. (Those physics alone would reform scads of dumb SF film tropes and conventions. And really should.)
Niven’s real art was the sheer scale of the thing. Protector’s timelines, Ringworld’s size (and creator class), the Puppeteer rosette.
But while he wasn’t writing great drama, great drama could be condensed out of plenty of his stories. We’d have the real scifi plus a strong, escapist plot suitable for 150 minutes of engagement, both more intriguing than the fare today.
Your point holds, however. Such relative subtlety would be in a whole ‘nother universe than, for another example, the disaster that was the last Star Trek. (I hope it puts the series out of its misery.
Roddenberry’s social OCD ended up in a Mike Bay-level orgy of headachy CGI.)
Ah-hem
(TBF, it took someone writing an excellent book first)
The Martian was too Hollywoodized. Really bad science too. But yeah, like that but epic, and with the big emotional/awe kick a solo Damon act just cannot do. Polar opposites.
IMHO, Cast Away was a perfect film where it mattered. Why space flicks can’t even consider that, much less approach it, mystifies me.
How to screw up someones childhood memories:
I trust everyone is having an agreeable Easter holiday.
What?
Who thought a wererabbit costume would be “cute”? {o_O}
I think Walt Disney knew what he was doing in making his animal characters hyper-juvenile.
I trust everyone is having an agreeable Easter holiday.
But of course…
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4416996/Cops-hunt-man-shot-killed-man-Facebook-Live.html#ixzz4eVFO3Vj6
Dare we hope for a post on the Battle of Berkeley?
My vague first impression is that it’s looking like escalation towards another iteration of Weimar Germany.
No, not Hitler, not Nazis, those are lazy comparisons that I strive to avoid, but Weimar really does seem to have a resonance. Street violence in the Weimar Republic was so widespread that the centrists there eventually got a paramilitary wing, the Iron Front. (Symbol: three downward-pointing arrows in a circle, sometimes labeled “anti-fascist, anti-socialist, anti-monarchist” or similar parole.)
Theme for a serious space film.
Dare we hope for a post on the Battle of Berkeley?
My vague first impression is that it’s looking like escalation towards another iteration of Weimar Germany.
Nah.
Saturday there were a bunch of marches or rallies or such all over, and all that happened was that everyone quite merely went home afterwards.
Berkeley has merely been getting the Jets and the Sharks demanding a rumble, so all the reporters and other camera wielders have been showing up to record the dance-off . . . and having entirely about as much an impact as any other form of random dinner theatre.