Friday Ephemera
The fierce and mighty warriors of professional wrestling. (h/t, Obnoxio) || According to the ladies at Marie Claire, this is now a thing. || Tortoise teamwork. || How do machines learn? Or, the thrill of algorithms. || Siberian farm cats. || The frugal Mrs Thatcher. || Heist. || Hard, harder, hardest. || “Comprised of ten organs covering nine metres, this is one of the most complicated systems in the body.” || Just type stuff. || Cats’ eyes. || Christmas spirit. || Classy as all hell. (h/t, Julia) || Auld Lang Syne interactive music box. || Where railways are. || You are still allowed to swear in Rochdale. || Vintage jackhammer restoration. || The dog copes remarkably well. || Seven wonders in 360. || More tiny worlds. || And finally, in shiny, revamped product news, you want one and you know it.
Good point, Pogonip. I think it’s time to admit that there are only three Star Wars movies. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. If Lucas himself couldn’t recapture what made them great two decades later, what makes anyone think Disney can now?
I almost made my peace with the prequels, but in the end decided, ”Ah, screw it”. I just don’t care about anything since Return of the Jedi any more. Because it’s not about a “universe” or a “lore”; all that kind of talk misses the point by a mile. It’s about a great cast, a terrific story, and some of the best effects designers who ever lived coming together at a particular moment in time to make three bloody great movies.
I think the point about Star Wars is that it’s for kids. I was a kid when I saw the three first movies. My kids thought the next three were fine where from an adult’s point of view they had nothing to recommend them. But my mum took me to see the originals and I take my kids to see the new ones.
I did enjoy Rogue One and felt it was most like “my” Star Wars. There were many moments of blinding stupidity and industrial design that made no sense in any sensible universe but that’s Star Wars.
The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were a bit of a trial to sit through. My 11 year old walked out complaining of all the things that didn’t make sense and the 6 year old thought it was too long (correct) and boring (also correct). The 14 year old shrugged his shoulders, and my daughter skipped it altogether.
So I don’t know who Disney is pitching these movies at.
From reading the reviews I get the impression they are pitching the movies to feminists.
I was 17 when the original Star Wars came out. No one had ever seen anything like it. It was glorious. #2 was even better; #3 was OK. They should have stopped right there.
make sure to talk to your toddlers about fascism.
The best line is “Among these cartoons’ many critics exists a subgroup of parents who are OK with some degree of autocracy and Manichean dualistic politics but just wish they would be presented with more nuance.”
1. By “many critics” I assume she means a subset of a handful of cranks
2. They’re ok with Manichaean dualism where everything is either black or white but only if it has more nuance so everything isn’t either black or white.
Sargon has some quality commentary on The Last Snowflake
Ehn, not really, because . . .
I gave up on Star Wars after ploughing through Rogue One, on TV, in the vain hope of being entertained. Dear God, it was dull.
I had a look at The Next Fiasco. It’s even worse than that last attempt.
It. Is. really. really. really. really. bad.
I do grant that Sargon does have points he’s trying to make, but the reality that he can’t overcome is that the Disney video game designers actually just haven’t given him enough to complain about on a political level.
Looking at TNF, what is even more obvious this time around is that the game designers didn’t even attend any movie production meetings whatsoever. What too clearly happened instead is that the game designers started with a scattering of playing piece characters, outlined a collection of maze puzzles with shooting for the game players to work their way through, then handed off the game design with one short memo that stated more or less:
Take this and pop in that dialogue and script format stuff that you little movie people do. Hurry it up because we’ve already started building the video game extensions and we need the faces of whatever trivial actors you hire so that we can finish the last bits.
At least with this being from Disney, I rather expect that the cast and production staff checks are quite cashable . . . . and that’s pretty much the one—presumed—good point.
Guess which instituition of higher indocrination is back in the news?
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/christie-blatchford-pay-raise-for-women-at-wilfrid-laurier-creates-new-inequity-for-men
On bad box office.
Pennsylvania woman receives $ 284 Billion electric bill.
Power company admits amount is in error (by exactly 9 orders of magnitude.)
Company spokesman wins Gold Medal for this statement, and I quote:
“We appreciate the customer’s willingness to reach out to us about the mistake.”
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/12/24/pennsylvania-woman-stunned-by-284-billion-electric-bill.html
I once got hit with something like $200 in fees because the bank put a check through twice. The snippy Customer Service Representative said, “Well, you really should keep enough money in your account to cover the occasional error.” I said “ What if it was a $2,000 error? Or $200,000?” “Oh, we’d catch that right away.” “So why can’t you catch a $200 error right away?” “Well, that’s such a small amount…”
Not to me it ain’t, bitch. After researching who to threaten the bank with, which in those days involved going to the library, they gave me back all but $50.
And people wonder why, despite 50 years of propaganda, millennials aren’t thrilled with laissez faire. It’s because each parent and grandparent has at least one story like this.
“And people wonder why, despite 50 years of propaganda, millennials aren’t thrilled with laissez faire.”
They get far more propaganda about the wonders of socialism–whose manifest failures they seem to be largely unaware of.