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Post by Anders on Feb 22, 2009 0:01:16 GMT -8
I have a hard time understanding why the Godfather movies are considered so great. Sure, they're good movies, but I must be missing what it is that's so amazing. Not to derail or anything.  |
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Post by K-Box on Feb 22, 2009 2:41:32 GMT -8
I have a hard time understanding why the Godfather movies are considered so great. Sure, they're good movies, but I must be missing what it is that's so amazing. Not to derail or anything. I have to confess, how you feel about The Godfather is how I feel about Casablanca, a competent enough film that leaves me cold. I suspect that a lot of it has to do with the fact that The Godfather managed to bring a truly operatic sense of storytelling to a story that is so uniquely American - yes, a lot of it owes to its Italian roots, but ironically enough, that's precisely what makes it so American, because in a dark and twisted way, the Corleones are really the ultimate American immigrant "success story." You don't really have any other countries out there who define their own cultural identities so heavily on being made up of an entire population of first, second, third and umpteenth-generation immigrants. What royalty once was to the epic tales of the UK lands and Europe, so now has the Mafia become to 20th century (and beyond) America. Fuse that "only in America" context with an operatic sense of storytelling that had previously been associated almost exclusively with European cultures and settings, and then give it a cast of characters who are as archetypical as any ever seen onscreen - just about EVERY family has a Sonny and a Fredo, at least - and to my mind, you've got something genuinely epic and resonant. Plus, back before he turned to shit, Coppola could craft a memorable goddamned scene. There's a reason why there have been so many homages to, and parodies of, moments like the horse's head in the bed, Sonny getting shot with approximately sleventy baskrillion bullets, Moe Greene taking a bullet in the eye, Kay witnessing Michael being greeted as "Don Corleone," Hyman Roth giving the "This is the business we've chosen" speech, Michael giving Fredo the reverse-Judas Kiss in Cuba, and Fredo saying his "Hail Mary" on the boat before Al Neri shoots him. |
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Post by jensaltmann on Feb 22, 2009 5:16:42 GMT -8
I have a hard time understanding why the Godfather movies are considered so great. Sure, they're good movies, but I must be missing what it is that's so amazing. Not to derail or anything. I have to confess, how you feel about The Godfather is how I feel about Casablanca, a competent enough film that leaves me cold. I feel that way about the Oddfather movies and Casablanca. |
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Post by jensaltmann on Feb 22, 2009 5:22:37 GMT -8
What royalty once was to the epic tales of the UK lands and Europe, so now has the Mafia become to 20th century (and beyond) America. How do you figure that? The "beyond" part, I mean. The almost mythic glorification of organised crime is something that happens only in the US and maybe Italy. (Leaving aside the Japanese and their attitudes towards the Yakuza.) The only country that produces movies that make the Mafia look glamorous are the US. (Again, leaving Japan and the Yakuza out of it.) Any Mafia movie made outside of the US (even Italy) show them as thugs who need to be taken out. It frequently makes me wonder to which extent the Mafia controls Hollywood. |
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Feb 22, 2009 10:16:37 GMT -8
What royalty once was to the epic tales of the UK lands and Europe, so now has the Mafia become to 20th century (and beyond) America. How do you figure that? The "beyond" part, I mean. I think by "beyond" he meant "Beyond the 20th Century", as in, the 21st, in which America still has a fascination with the Mafia. |
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Post by K-Box on Feb 22, 2009 11:09:16 GMT -8
Michael interpreted my statement correctly. |
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Post by K-Box on Mar 2, 2009 23:17:26 GMT -8
New showrunner, new Doctor, new companion, new TARDIS interior: Telegraph.co.uk - Dr Who Tardis to get interior makeover
The intergalactic vehicle will continue to look like a 1960s police box from the outside but the interior is being given a complete overhaul before its newest occupant, the actor Matt Smith, takes over as the Time Lord from David Tennant.
The current stark domed interior is to be given a radical new look on the suggestion of Stephen Moffat, the new executive producer, the Daily Mirror reported.
A source at the BBC was quoted as telling the newspaper: "It will be the most high-tech, intricate Tardis ever." Unlike a lot of Classic Who fans, I actually quite liked the Bryan Hitch redesign of the TARDIS interior. Both its organic architecture and its cobbled-together technology corresponded closely with plenty of established on-air canon about the TARDIS being a) a living being in its own right and b) well past its warranty expiration date. The TARDIS piloted by the Ninth and Tenth Doctors was both a biological entity and a patched-up relic, and that was absolutely appropriate to all of its incarnations (yes, in its own way, the TARDIS has obviously regenerated, too). That being said? Bring on the new, high-tech TARDIS. It amuses me to no end to see the NuWho fans losing their minds over this change. I've been through the sparsely furnished, sterile laboratory TARDIS, the antique wood panel TARDIS, the steampunk Gothic cathedral TARDIS and the glowing coral forest TARDIS, so yeah, I'm ready for a state-of-the-art, super-intricate TARDIS. Why not? That being said, let's pay tribute to the current TARDIS interior, as well as perhaps the most familiar of the previous TARDIS interiors, with some fan art. First up, I found this very well done tweak of the Classic Who retro-futuristic TARDIS interior by doing a Google Image search for "TARDIS interior," but unfortunately, the site I found it on didn't credit it to an artist, so I can't attribute this fine work to the person who created it (if that happens to be you, or someone you know, please let me know): What the original series set might have looked like, if its budget had been bigger ...This one, though, I CAN cite a source for; Promus-Kaa on deviantART, who produced this beautifully brain-breaking look at the current TARDIS interior:  Read the source page for the footnotes on all the little details in this complex canvas. |
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Post by paulpogue on Mar 3, 2009 10:46:34 GMT -8
"It amuses me to no end to see the NuWho fans losing their minds over this change. "
This is why I stay off most fan forums. The idea that there are people who go wacky over THIS is borderline insane. People! Nonstop change is what the show is all ABOUT! Like you said, there's been about a half dozen distinctive variations of the TARDIS, and usually a couple of subvariants within those as well!
These are probably the same people who only watched the show for Billie Piper.
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Post by jessebaker on Mar 18, 2009 0:09:20 GMT -8
I finally got my copy of the "Trial of the Time Lord" DVD set and watching the bonus features, it makes me wonder what it would have been like to have had the internet back in the dark days of the Colin Baker era of "Doctor Who". Between the battle between the fans and the BBC over the potential of the show being cancelled, the war that broke out over the ending controversy regarding the arc/season, the death of and the reversal of said death of Peri, the firing of Colin Baker, and the fans generally calling for JNT's head, it makes me wonder what fans would have been saying had the internet been around and in full force for all of this.
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Post by jensaltmann on Mar 24, 2009 9:21:51 GMT -8
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Post by K-Box on Mar 30, 2009 16:45:26 GMT -8
So, DC Comics has long since expanded the concept of the Green Lantern Corps into an entire color-coded emotional spectrum of Lantern Corps, with Red Lanterns representing rage, Orange Lanterns associated with avarice, Yellow Lanterns fueled by fear, Green Lanterns powered by willpower, Blue Lanterns drawing on hope, Indigo Lanterns dispensing compassion, and Violet Lanterns embodying love.
So, there are seven separate Lantern Corps, and there have been 10 different incarnations of Doctor Who to date (in recognized television canon, anyway), so I started to wonder, because I'm a nerd, which Doctors would be best suited to each Lantern Corps? Working my way backwards, here's what I've concluded:
Tenth Doctor = Blue Lantern of Hope. The Blue Lanterns exist to inspire others, which has been a theme of the Tenth Doctor since well before Martha Jones turned him into such a meme that he became Tinkerbell!Jesus just by virtue of the Earth's population praying to him.
Ninth Doctor = Red Lantern of Rage. The Red Lanterns become savage as a result of their Power Rings not only constantly feeding their hatred and pain, but also replacing their hearts, literally, with their own energy. This seems like an uncomfortably appropriate fit for the Ninth Doctor, who tortured a captive Dalek, and seemed to feed off his own anger.
Eighth Doctor = Violet Lantern of Love. Who better to be a Violet Lantern than the Eighth Doctor, who fell in love with everything and everyone around him, from his own shoes to the companion he'd just met? Especially since Eight and Grace were the first Doctor/companion pairing in the character's history to be portrayed explicitly as a romantic couple?
Seventh Doctor = Yellow Lantern of Fear. Like Sinestro, the Yellow Lanterns don't surrender to their own fears, but instead play upon the fears of their opponents, and draw strength from those. For as much of a Chaplin-esque (or should I say Troughton-esque) comic figure as the Seventh Doctor acted like at times, his capacity for viciously vindictive, yet coldly controlled, master-level manipulation was nothing short of terrifying to his enemies.
Fifth Doctor = Indigo Lantern of Compassion. The Indigo Lanterns are largely neutral, tending to the injured on all sides of conflicts, and seem devoted to spreading goodwill. Likewise, the Fifth Doctor was perhaps the most collaborative and cooperation-oriented - and in some ways, the most vulnerable and accessible - of all the Doctors (at least in the original series).
Third Doctor = Green Lantern of Willpower. Hal Jordan was the greatest of all the Green Lanterns, and he personified the square-jawed, barrel-chested, straight-arrow, forthright, does-what's-right-without-question Silver Age Superhero, with a will of iron and (almost) no fear. Aside from the Third Doctor's more flamboyant wardrobe and more liberal politics, this describes him nearly perfectly, too, especially since, in spite of his stubborn and outspoken differences of opinion with the Brigadier, Three was the only Doctor who was enough of a team player to join the ranks of the Justice League U.N.I.T.
First Doctor = Orange Lantern of Avarice. This one makes a lot more sense when you realize that the First Doctor was the Scrooge McDuck of the Doctors; he was a cranky, stingy old man who was too greedy to freely share his adventures with any more younger companions than he absolutely had to. The TARDIS was One's equivalent of Scrooge's Money Bin, and he was even more annoyed by Barbara and Ian being in his happy place, and touching all of his hoarded stuff, than Scrooge was toward his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie's intrusions.
... And yes, I left out Two, Four and Six, but quite frankly, I have no clue how to classify them. My gut-level instinct would be to connect Two to either hope or compassion, and Six's temper-tantrums would lend themselves more toward rage than anything else, but I can't even imagine reducing the full spectrum of Four's WTF to any one emotional color, unless Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver create the Ultraviolet Lantern Corps of Tricksters, or something.
And your thoughts?
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Post by K-Box on Apr 1, 2009 14:44:12 GMT -8
Photos shot on location show Bernard Cribbins (WILF!!!) filming scenes with David Tennant, so draw your own conclusions on that score. And from the same io9 article (WARNING: SPOILERS FOR LOTS OF DIFFERENT FRANCHISES THERE) which links to those pics comes the following text: Also, rumor has it that season five will include absolutely nothing from the Russell T. Davies era - meaning no old companions, no Captain Jack, no other holdovers. But Sarah Jane Smith may turn up, as soon as the first episode, along with another familiar face from the 1970s. (Could it be connected to this silly report that Tom Baker is coming back with Elisabeth Sladen?) Also, Matt Smith's Doctor will need to use the TARDIS to help with his regeneration, and will have to rediscover himself all over again. And his new TARDIS set will be two to three times as large as the old one. All of this stuff should be accompanied with several salt mines worth of salt, of course. IF this is true, my money is on the "familiar face" being the Brig. He's already been reintroduced to the audience on The Sarah Jane Adventures, and he's long overdue to make his return to Doctor Who proper. It also makes sense from the perspective of cyclical history, not only because Sarah Jane and the Brig already experienced one of the Doctor's regenerations together, but also because, when Tom Baker regenerated into Peter Davison, John Nathan-Turner asked Lis Sladen to return to the show as Sarah Jane, to serve as a sort of "transitional companion," and if there's one thing we know about Steven Moffat, it's that he's a big fan of the Peter Davison era of the show, so he might be trying to do for Matt Smith what John Nathan-Turner couldn't do for Peter Davison. I HEARTILY ENDORSE TURNING THE SHOW INTO THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF SARAH JANE, ALISTAIR AND THEIR ADOPTED AGELESS ALIEN SON |
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Post by K-Box on Apr 1, 2009 15:04:54 GMT -8
PLANET OF THE DEAD TRAILER:
As a fellow Whovian observed, it looks like a mix of "Smith & Jones" and "Midnight."
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Post by paulpogue on Apr 1, 2009 19:10:45 GMT -8
Wilf, eh? Iiiinteresting.
I hope that the Brig is the classic character in question -- not only would it make perfect sense, it would bring Nicholas Courtney's onscreen Doctor-meetings to a total of 9 out of 11 if he gets to interact with both Tennant and Smith.
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Post by K-Box on Apr 5, 2009 18:01:50 GMT -8
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