The opportunity to be rid of him even sooner should have been taken by the casting director.
This was not a casting decision, it was a marketing decision. I'm sure Warner (distributer) paid George (with whom they have a long history) a lot of money for what was a few days work. His name sells tickets. Remember, the second word is "business."
I do, too. But not together, and definitely not in this movie.
Oddly enough, Neil deGrasse Tyson -- of all people -- did not find the numerous scientific inaccuracies all that objectionable. I guess if you can blind yourself to the premises of any drama, it can turn out to be entertaining. I'm just not capable of turning off my critical mind, I suppose.
-Phil
The movie was well received by those I know who work in space related fields.
The various online interviews of NASA employees including a number of astronauts also show that it was well received.
Oh my! I just watched Gravity. U n b e l i e v a b l e !
I will say that the last two or three minutes were very believable. Aside from that the extent of the technical inaccuracies is astounding. I'm not going to even bother trying to list them they are so numerous. It's only replay value will be to point and laugh at the stupid stuff I missed the first time through. ...and I like Clooney and Bullock.
Not trying to bait you or anyone but I would like to see listed the tech bloopers that everyone is upset about...I thought the movie was well within the bounds of reality.
FWIW...after I saw it I Googled for the mistakes...and found that there were few if any...it seems more of some people not liking the actors/actresses in the movie than the movie itself.
I guess I will wade into this. I saw Gravity with my father, who has made a mini-hobby of seeing 3D FX movies since my mother died just after Christmas 2012. He's a Ph.D. physicist and I work with industrial control systems. And despite its many technical flaws, we both liked it. Maybe not to the point of watching it again, but definitely as a must-see recommendation.
I took it as being set in a slightly alternate universe where all the countries had deliberately placed their major stations in similar orbits to provide for this very possibility. For the most part it's not really a story about space tech, despite the role space tech plays; it's a story about life and death and redemption and rebirth. We are forgiving of Westerns where the guns do impossible things and car chase movies where the cars do impossible things. I found Gravity forgivable in the same vein, because its departures from reality were not random but all pushed either a national inclusiveness or the narrative of Sandra Bullock's character.
Incidentally, it's worth considering that Bullock's character died when she opened the air valve in the Soyuz, and the rest of the movie is a death rattle in her head.
Not trying to bait you or anyone but I would like to see listed the tech bloopers that everyone is upset about...I thought the movie was well within the bounds of reality.
Not a lot really, most of it is easy to ignore in light of how entertaining and enjoyable the movie is.
Try Googling: gravity movie technical errors
"Pacific Rim" makes any movie look fabulous. I tried watching the DVD and I couldn't even finish watching it. And I like robots! It looked mildly interesting in the early trailers. Guess I should have checked the reviews before watching.
"Pacific Rim" makes any movie look fabulous. I tried watching the DVD and I couldn't even finish watching it. And I like robots! It looked mildly interesting in the early trailers. Guess I should have checked the reviews before watching.
It's not worth worrying about, seriously.
Orbital inclinations and what "real" astronauts wear inside their spacesuits mostly. Yeah, it's "technically incorrect", but really?
Just enjoy the movie, it's not about space anyway, that's just where it happens.
You didn't notice that it was going to be about 30 storey tall robots wrestling Godzilla-sized alien monsters? Obviously the best it was ever going to be was real-life anime, kind of the way Speed Racer was a real-life version of that cartoon. In that respect Pacific Rim succeeded brilliantly. But yeah, it's not exactly Colossus: The Forbin Project.
LOL... I just read a review that said that George Clooney was introduced in a recent award ceremony for Gravity as preferring to drift off into outer space than to date a female near his own age. .... ah yes, Hollywood.
What worries me is that I find a very strong thematic corellation between successful blockbusters and the kind of solutions that people attempt to apply in their lives.
Do remember "Dirity Harry" and 'Go ahead, make my day.' or "StarWar" when everyone was muttering 'May the force be with you.'?
We may just be the sum total of whatever movie successfully soaks our sub-conscious this year.
Meanwhile back in old Kaohsiung, I just picked up a copy of 'War and Peace" starring Henry Fonda and Natile Wood. Tolstoy is an old favority, but the book is so darned long. I'll try to read along in Chinese subtitles to the English audio.
Haven't gone to a movie theater for well over five years.
Just resaw Gravity in its 3D version...well worth the effort.
FWIW..the only flaw I would call is when the lone American survivor is using the different control panels of the Russian and Chinese spacecraft...with the different Russian and Chinese legends...from experience I can tell you that the different languages and layouts would be a significant challenge to accomplishing successful operation.
Just resaw Gravity in its 3D version...well worth the effort.
FWIW..the only flaw I would call is when the lone American survivor is using the different control panels of the Russian and Chinese spacecraft...with the different Russian and Chinese legends...from experience I can tell you that the different languages and layouts would be a significant challenge to accomplishing successful operation.
No, Jean Luc can drive Romulan ships! Chinese? Russian? Should be a piece of cake!
No, Jean Luc can drive Romulan ships! Chinese? Russian? Should be a piece of cake!
LOL..I noticed that too.
I figure that I can give the ST writers a pass...that in the future ST characters will be multilingual.
FWIW..that little fact that ST characters can communicate with almost all species they meet has been a big thorny issue in reality..very interesting reading.
Try reading this book..it will make your head hurt. ;<)
FWIW..that little fact that ST characters can communicate with almost all species they meet has been a big thorny issue in reality
Actually not so much. Like the transporter, the universal translator was hand-waved into the series bible mainly to keep the action flowing. I think the justification for it wasn't metaphysical or psychic, but based on the notion that all language is based on a "universal grammar" and that, as is theoretically true of computer languages, there is a 1:1 correspondence between the features of all languages which could be sniffed out with some samples to examine by a suitably clever computer. This is of course not as practical as they make it look on screen, but then neither is a transporter without a receiving booth. All of this is discussed at some length by David Gerrold in his behind the scenes books about TOS.
The scene in Gravity is hand-waved away as the Chinese craft being based on Soyuz technology, which even if it is doesn't mean the RE-ENTER button is going to be in the same place. Anyway, I favor the interpretation that she was actually eaten by a giant squid after landing in the lake and never made it to the shore.
The scene in Gravity is hand-waved away as the Chinese craft being based on Soyuz technology, which even if it is doesn't mean the RE-ENTER button is going to be in the same place. Anyway, I favor the interpretation that she was actually eaten by a giant squid after landing in the lake and never made it to the shore.
Hey, you could have given us a **SPOILER ALERT** !
OK, never mind, from most of the reviews, it sounds spoiled from the start.
I confess to really only watching it for the special effects. And Sandra Bullock... I may be easily pleased, but I'm just immensely happy that Hollywood has finally accepted that it's possible that the average USA audience can finally grasp the idea that there's no sound in space. That little fact caused me many a grumble throughout my childhood and teen sci-fi watching days. There should be NO SOUND when the big ship explodes - nor should there be big clouds of orange/yellow/brown flames rising UP from the site of the explosion... no oxygen for incomplete combustion, no air and gravity for convection.
OK, never mind, from most of the reviews, it sounds spoiled from the start.
As a SAG/AFTRA member I didn't have to pay to see Gravity, and boy am I happy that was the case; I was cheering for the space debris to wipe of everybody five minutes into the movie....
After reading this thread and being 5 months into my free trial of cable TV I have arrived at these conclusions.
The entertainment industry has a very little respect for the intelligence of their audience and a tenuous grasp of reality as far as science is concerned.
There is very little imagination and creativity left in the industry. It seems like 99.99% of what comes along is recycled television programs, recycled movies, recycled comic books, recycled fairy tales, and of course “reality” programming.
Newton Norman Minow a former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission referred to television as a "vast wasteland" in one of his speeches. I think he was an optimist.
I am currently in the fifth month of a six month free trial of cable TV, and will be returning their cable box shortly. There are many better things to do with the money and time than watch TV. For the occasional time when I need some entertainment to unwind I will be watching a movie or TV show on Netflix.
... I am currently in the fifth month of a six month free trial of cable TV, and will be returning their cable box shortly. There are many better things to do with the money and time than watch TV. For the occasional time when I need some entertainment to unwind I will be watching a movie or TV show on Netflix.
Right there with you. If I could actually pick up my local stations with an antenna I'd ditch cable instantly. Netflix gives me about 80% of what I watch. BBC gives me another 10%, and PBS another 5%. American TV has apparently gone after the lowest common denominator in the most aggressive manner possible, and I think it has an effect of bringing that lowest common denominator even lower over time. I think we're in a race to the bottom.
....... American TV has apparently gone after the lowest common denominator in the most aggressive manner possible, and I think it has an effect of bringing that lowest common denominator even lower over time. I think we're in a race to the bottom.
Couldn't agree more. On top of that we end up paying twice for whatever we watch. First we pay the cable providers for the connection, and then we pay by putting up with 20 minutes of loud, obnoxious, asinine, and less than honest commercials for every 40 minutes of programming. Most definitely NOT good value for time and money spent.
There is very little imagination and creativity left in the industry.
As a member of that community I disagree with the statement -- when used in a broad stroke as you have. Pop into any Starbucks in my neighborhood and you'll meet incredibly imaginative and talented writers, producers, directors, and dare I say, actors.
What happens is the studio system: a good script gets massaged into an intolerable mess through committees (Kevin Smith does a great bit on this in one of his specials). The problem with these studio committees became so bad that the Writer's Guild updated it's contracts that force the studios/producers to pay writers for every one of these meetings (they didn't in the past). Writers with a bit of clout have been known to take their name off a script because it has become so bludgeoned.
Sadly, there are a lot of people that didn't come up through the movie and television system that are now running studios -- these people don't understand the creative process as well as they should, and think that they can apply tactics from other industries to guarantee success (there is never any guarantee when it comes to art).
Despite all that, I will be watching the Oscars tonight (which take place about four miles from my home) and continuing to dream of the day I can make a post in these forums suggesting everyone watch for me on the red carpet!
Kwinn: Agreed - Not sure how old you are, but I remember when the big selling point of cable was... NO COMMERCIALS! Now we pay for cable AND get commercials.
JonnyMac: I think the OUTPUT that we get en masse from the industry as targeted to the mass audience has little creativity and imagination - but not at the level of the trenches, where you (and I for a while) worked. There is indeed enormous imagination, talent and creativity out there, but the industry that harnesses - and subjugates - that talent and creativity, has determined that the US Audience has the IQ of a banana and the attention span of a gnat with ADHD. And while they may be right to some degree, I also think that they may have contributed to that situation as well.
"Reality TV" is a prime example - a concerted effort seems to be underway to find the most unbelievably messed up families and relationships, then put them in situations whereby producers "stir the pot" by making suggestions off-screen that produce various forms of - usually negative - drama. And the American Audience eats it up. It seems like there is a sick appetite for this kind of corrosive vomit and the advertisers pay.
Meanwhile, there are amazing ideas, truly talented folks out there, struggling to make their mark in a country that doesn't recognize talent, ridicules wisdom and intelligence, and mistakes consensus for fact. They'd rather watch three complete morons fight over which one was drunk enough to father someone's kid and not remember it the night before they were arrested for check fraud from writing a refund for their welfare overdraft......
OK, I'm done ranting.... Time to watch the Oscars... then back to BBC where they still make television that expects the audience to think a bit.
What JonnyMac Said. When the production crew took over our building to film the auto shop scene for The Final Destination I was struck by how talented every one of the hundreds of people swarming our place were. They were all top pros in their fields, ranging from costuming to computer and network wrangling. They were also incredibly nice. Their presence made it impossible for us to conduct our own business for that week so the production crew treated us as honorary crew members -- we ate the catered food, watched the shoot from the sidelines, and got impromptu lessons in the etiquette and technology of film. The amount of money being spent was mind-boggling, and there was no skimping on top pay for talent. That the end result was a scene that didn't really work that well in a very disappointing movie was ... fascinating.
JonnyMac; You are right, and I apologize for using such broad strokes. I know there are a lot of very talented and creative people in the industry. I had one as a neighbour for a few years, and he certainly was not lacking in those areas. What I should have posted is that the end result we see show very little if any signs of imagination or creativity.
Funny thing is, as I was writing that post I was thinking that one of the few areas that still showed a great deal of imagination and creativity was the costuming and special effects for fantasy and science fiction programming that you have posted on the forums.
Xanatos; I'm old enough to have retired last year if I could stand the boredom. As I recall it, the selling point of cable in the Toronto area was excellent reception and more channels, not lack of commercials. Only the premium channels had no commercials.
kwinn said: As I recall it, the selling point of cable in the Toronto area was excellent reception and more channels, not lack of commercials. Only the premium channels had no commercials.
When I lived in Ohio I used to occasionally perform some computer repairs at a local cable head and on the first visit was very surprised to see banks and banks of video cartridge players, each one loaded with commercials. Each player was precisely timed to to kill the off-air commercials and replace it with one recorded and paid for by a different company. They did not kill all the off air commercials, just the ones they were able to sell but it still provided a hefty revenue stream for the cable company. I became good friends with the station engineer and learned quite a bit about Cable Television. They even had a full time video editor who would clean up partial frames from their satellite feeds so that customers wouldn't see their pictures jump when that feed was placed on the cable later in the day. Also managed to watch quite a few premium movies there since each cable channel had two monitors, one for the actual feed signal and the other for the on cable signal. I'm sure by now they have figured a way of squeezing some of their local commercials onto the premium feeds.
Comments
Some people think there is a loving God who will take care of them, others think that Stalin was a good guy,
It's hopeless.
Anything that comes out of Hollywood should be taken as entertainment. Sometimes it actually is,
This was not a casting decision, it was a marketing decision. I'm sure Warner (distributer) paid George (with whom they have a long history) a lot of money for what was a few days work. His name sells tickets. Remember, the second word is "business."
Here in the NZ the best flavour is Hokey Pokey (subjective) though the Vanilla is the most popular. Probably beause you can sauce it.
And we come second to the USA in consumption.
The movie was well received by those I know who work in space related fields.
The various online interviews of NASA employees including a number of astronauts also show that it was well received.
Saw that one...life imitates art.
Not trying to bait you or anyone but I would like to see listed the tech bloopers that everyone is upset about...I thought the movie was well within the bounds of reality.
FWIW...after I saw it I Googled for the mistakes...and found that there were few if any...it seems more of some people not liking the actors/actresses in the movie than the movie itself.
I took it as being set in a slightly alternate universe where all the countries had deliberately placed their major stations in similar orbits to provide for this very possibility. For the most part it's not really a story about space tech, despite the role space tech plays; it's a story about life and death and redemption and rebirth. We are forgiving of Westerns where the guns do impossible things and car chase movies where the cars do impossible things. I found Gravity forgivable in the same vein, because its departures from reality were not random but all pushed either a national inclusiveness or the narrative of Sandra Bullock's character.
Incidentally, it's worth considering that Bullock's character died when she opened the air valve in the Soyuz, and the rest of the movie is a death rattle in her head.
Not a lot really, most of it is easy to ignore in light of how entertaining and enjoyable the movie is.
Try Googling: gravity movie technical errors
Here's one link:
Gravity Fact Check: What the Season’s Big Movie Gets Wrong
http://science.time.com/2013/10/01/what-gravity-gets-right-and-wrong-about-space/
I don't know, the users of IMDB give it a:
Pacific Rim
2013 Film
7.2/10-IMDb
3.5/5 stars
This may mean internet movie rating are as reliable as Abe Lincoln quotes about the Internet!
Someday....
Someday soon hopefully. ;<)
Orbital inclinations and what "real" astronauts wear inside their spacesuits mostly. Yeah, it's "technically incorrect", but really?
Just enjoy the movie, it's not about space anyway, that's just where it happens.
You didn't notice that it was going to be about 30 storey tall robots wrestling Godzilla-sized alien monsters? Obviously the best it was ever going to be was real-life anime, kind of the way Speed Racer was a real-life version of that cartoon. In that respect Pacific Rim succeeded brilliantly. But yeah, it's not exactly Colossus: The Forbin Project.
What worries me is that I find a very strong thematic corellation between successful blockbusters and the kind of solutions that people attempt to apply in their lives.
Do remember "Dirity Harry" and 'Go ahead, make my day.' or "StarWar" when everyone was muttering 'May the force be with you.'?
We may just be the sum total of whatever movie successfully soaks our sub-conscious this year.
Meanwhile back in old Kaohsiung, I just picked up a copy of 'War and Peace" starring Henry Fonda and Natile Wood. Tolstoy is an old favority, but the book is so darned long. I'll try to read along in Chinese subtitles to the English audio.
Haven't gone to a movie theater for well over five years.
FWIW..the only flaw I would call is when the lone American survivor is using the different control panels of the Russian and Chinese spacecraft...with the different Russian and Chinese legends...from experience I can tell you that the different languages and layouts would be a significant challenge to accomplishing successful operation.
No, Jean Luc can drive Romulan ships! Chinese? Russian? Should be a piece of cake!
LOL..I noticed that too.
I figure that I can give the ST writers a pass...that in the future ST characters will be multilingual.
FWIW..that little fact that ST characters can communicate with almost all species they meet has been a big thorny issue in reality..very interesting reading.
Try reading this book..it will make your head hurt. ;<)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Metaphysics-Star-Trek-Series/dp/0465091245
Actually not so much. Like the transporter, the universal translator was hand-waved into the series bible mainly to keep the action flowing. I think the justification for it wasn't metaphysical or psychic, but based on the notion that all language is based on a "universal grammar" and that, as is theoretically true of computer languages, there is a 1:1 correspondence between the features of all languages which could be sniffed out with some samples to examine by a suitably clever computer. This is of course not as practical as they make it look on screen, but then neither is a transporter without a receiving booth. All of this is discussed at some length by David Gerrold in his behind the scenes books about TOS.
The scene in Gravity is hand-waved away as the Chinese craft being based on Soyuz technology, which even if it is doesn't mean the RE-ENTER button is going to be in the same place. Anyway, I favor the interpretation that she was actually eaten by a giant squid after landing in the lake and never made it to the shore.
Hey, you could have given us a **SPOILER ALERT** !
OK, never mind, from most of the reviews, it sounds spoiled from the start.
I'm picky like that.
As a SAG/AFTRA member I didn't have to pay to see Gravity, and boy am I happy that was the case; I was cheering for the space debris to wipe of everybody five minutes into the movie....
The entertainment industry has a very little respect for the intelligence of their audience and a tenuous grasp of reality as far as science is concerned.
There is very little imagination and creativity left in the industry. It seems like 99.99% of what comes along is recycled television programs, recycled movies, recycled comic books, recycled fairy tales, and of course “reality” programming.
Newton Norman Minow a former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission referred to television as a "vast wasteland" in one of his speeches. I think he was an optimist.
I am currently in the fifth month of a six month free trial of cable TV, and will be returning their cable box shortly. There are many better things to do with the money and time than watch TV. For the occasional time when I need some entertainment to unwind I will be watching a movie or TV show on Netflix.
Right there with you. If I could actually pick up my local stations with an antenna I'd ditch cable instantly. Netflix gives me about 80% of what I watch. BBC gives me another 10%, and PBS another 5%. American TV has apparently gone after the lowest common denominator in the most aggressive manner possible, and I think it has an effect of bringing that lowest common denominator even lower over time. I think we're in a race to the bottom.
Couldn't agree more. On top of that we end up paying twice for whatever we watch. First we pay the cable providers for the connection, and then we pay by putting up with 20 minutes of loud, obnoxious, asinine, and less than honest commercials for every 40 minutes of programming. Most definitely NOT good value for time and money spent.
As a member of that community I disagree with the statement -- when used in a broad stroke as you have. Pop into any Starbucks in my neighborhood and you'll meet incredibly imaginative and talented writers, producers, directors, and dare I say, actors.
What happens is the studio system: a good script gets massaged into an intolerable mess through committees (Kevin Smith does a great bit on this in one of his specials). The problem with these studio committees became so bad that the Writer's Guild updated it's contracts that force the studios/producers to pay writers for every one of these meetings (they didn't in the past). Writers with a bit of clout have been known to take their name off a script because it has become so bludgeoned.
Sadly, there are a lot of people that didn't come up through the movie and television system that are now running studios -- these people don't understand the creative process as well as they should, and think that they can apply tactics from other industries to guarantee success (there is never any guarantee when it comes to art).
Despite all that, I will be watching the Oscars tonight (which take place about four miles from my home) and continuing to dream of the day I can make a post in these forums suggesting everyone watch for me on the red carpet!
JonnyMac: I think the OUTPUT that we get en masse from the industry as targeted to the mass audience has little creativity and imagination - but not at the level of the trenches, where you (and I for a while) worked. There is indeed enormous imagination, talent and creativity out there, but the industry that harnesses - and subjugates - that talent and creativity, has determined that the US Audience has the IQ of a banana and the attention span of a gnat with ADHD. And while they may be right to some degree, I also think that they may have contributed to that situation as well.
"Reality TV" is a prime example - a concerted effort seems to be underway to find the most unbelievably messed up families and relationships, then put them in situations whereby producers "stir the pot" by making suggestions off-screen that produce various forms of - usually negative - drama. And the American Audience eats it up. It seems like there is a sick appetite for this kind of corrosive vomit and the advertisers pay.
Meanwhile, there are amazing ideas, truly talented folks out there, struggling to make their mark in a country that doesn't recognize talent, ridicules wisdom and intelligence, and mistakes consensus for fact. They'd rather watch three complete morons fight over which one was drunk enough to father someone's kid and not remember it the night before they were arrested for check fraud from writing a refund for their welfare overdraft......
OK, I'm done ranting.... Time to watch the Oscars... then back to BBC where they still make television that expects the audience to think a bit.
Funny thing is, as I was writing that post I was thinking that one of the few areas that still showed a great deal of imagination and creativity was the costuming and special effects for fantasy and science fiction programming that you have posted on the forums.
Xanatos; I'm old enough to have retired last year if I could stand the boredom. As I recall it, the selling point of cable in the Toronto area was excellent reception and more channels, not lack of commercials. Only the premium channels had no commercials.
When I lived in Ohio I used to occasionally perform some computer repairs at a local cable head and on the first visit was very surprised to see banks and banks of video cartridge players, each one loaded with commercials. Each player was precisely timed to to kill the off-air commercials and replace it with one recorded and paid for by a different company. They did not kill all the off air commercials, just the ones they were able to sell but it still provided a hefty revenue stream for the cable company. I became good friends with the station engineer and learned quite a bit about Cable Television. They even had a full time video editor who would clean up partial frames from their satellite feeds so that customers wouldn't see their pictures jump when that feed was placed on the cable later in the day. Also managed to watch quite a few premium movies there since each cable channel had two monitors, one for the actual feed signal and the other for the on cable signal. I'm sure by now they have figured a way of squeezing some of their local commercials onto the premium feeds.