Dispose of this thread carefully after opening to avoid mercury contamination. Be grateful for its added lumens!
In movie news, we’ve got sci-fi historical revisionist faux horror-documentary Apollo 18 (as if that genre didn’t have enough entries already), flashback-laden espionage thriller indie darling The Debt (gah, enough with these already!), and I think that’s it.
Netflix’s plan to parcel out its mailing and streaming services may have hit a snag with the surprise announcement that Starz is canceling their partnership. George Lucas re-re-released the original episodes of Star Wars with even more changes, to overwhelming critical disdain. And speaking of revisions of beloved characters, DC kicked off its universal reboot this week, too.
Hey guys? Remember me, your ol' pal Print Media? How's it going?
Anything we missed? (Yeah, it’s a very meta week for news; I’ve got nothing clever) Sound off in the comments, for this is your … Open Thread.
Re: Star Wars on Blu Ray and George Lucas’s constant tinkering, we all know that the only way to put an end to this madness is to pick up George Lucas and throw him down the Death Star shaft. I mean, not buy the damn things so LucasFilm is financially hurt by this.
So what do we think the odds of that happening are?
Also, obligatory. “I have altered the film. Pray I don’t alter it further.”
None. It’s one of those things a lot of fans will bitchbitchbitch, moanmoanmoan about, but then, ultimately, also fork out the cash for. I’m sure some will refuse, but not enough to really change Lucas’s narcissism.
My position on this is that Lucas can tweak all he wants, but he should also make the original versions available. People would buy them! The fact that he won’t release them on Blu-Ray means his stubbornness surpasses his greed, which is alarming.
Lucas = Darth Narcissus
I’m sure it will come, just a certain amount of time after the SE Blu-Rays and the 3D editions. So, you’ll probably be long gone by then.
I think the un-altered Blu-Rays will be available by Christmas. I distinctly remember when the original trilogy was first released on DVD and the fandom cried out in anger over Lucas’s tinkering, but then got what they wanted via a release of each film’s original version.
Having grown-up on the 90s VHS box-set edition of the original trilogy I am used to the updated versions and don’t have an issue with those versions moving to Blu-Ray. However, the additional changes seem a bit excessive.
When Lucas released the original versions on DVD, they weren’t as good quality as the bastardized versions. From wikipedia, ‘Controversy surrounded the release because the unaltered versions were from the 1993 non-anamorphic Laserdisc masters, and were not retransferred with modern video standards.’
I suspect he might do the same for Blu-ray, since he prefers the newer versions, and might not want to spend the time to bother cleaning up the older versions. It would make for possibly the most pointless release on Blu-ray.
I’m not sure it’s actually POSSIBLE to do a rerelease of the original versions at this point – I believe Lucas actually recut the original negatives for the 1997 special editions. http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html
from what i’ve heard, the video floating around that shows vader yell “no” twice is not an official vid…it’s just one some dude made himself. but lucasfilm did release a statement saying vader says “no.” i guess what i’m saying is it might not be as bad as the video you’ve probably seen. but that doesn’t mean it’ll be any good.
i’m glad i don’t own a blu-ray player.
I actually heard the intent is to try and create more continuity with the prequel trilogy by making the scene where he screams right after becoming Darth Vader more like foreshadow if you watch the movies according to the timeline and not release date. “NO!” and, “NO!”
I did rather enjoy the, “DO NOT WANT!” meme, though. Maybe that’ll come back now.
It does seem that way. At least this one makes narrative sense – whereas you can argue either way on Hayden instead of Sebastian as the ghost and obviously, the most flagrant problem being Han Shot First.
But, I stand as a person who believes the original special editions (i.e. the twentieth anniversary, gold-packaged) are better than the theatrical releases, if one overlooks Han and Greedo – you’ve got actual Jabba, more shots of Bespin, Victory Celebration which is a million times better than Yub Nub, more A-wingy fireworks, the shot of Coruscant…
“Actual Jabba” – do you mean the CGI Jabba who talks to Han for a bit in Ep. 4? I didn’t think that scene added anything: it rehashed dialogue that we’d just heard in the Greedo scene 30 seconds before.
Yeah, but the scene was already there with a guy in furs also supposedly Jabba the Hutt. So, the scene might be stupid, but it’s less stupid in the SE.
I have to go with Timothy, there. Not all of Lucas’s changes were ridiculous or superfluous, but that one, at least, enhanced the scene quite a lot.
no debate here on intent. the problem was the ep. iii “no.” think of how much more powerful that scene would have been had it simply ended after he force-kicked the hell out of that room.
the “no” is akin to the “i miss (love?) you….so mmmmuuuuchhhh” when anakin buries his mother in ep. ii. the look on his face is enough to know already what he eventually (and needlessly) says. it’s unnecessary, and overdone.
the “no” in ep. iii weakens the scene and the character. the “no” in ep. iv will more than likely do the same. hell, with the shots of vader when luke is getting fried we can damn near see the agony on his face under the mask. we don’t need to hear it at the same time! you know: the old “actions…words” cliche.
that said, the rumor that ewoks will blink makes a load of sense.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution came out last week. I held off buying it, because I was uneasy about the new developer, but it’s getting pretty fantastic reviews. I gave in and bought it yesterday. Anybody play it yet?
Also, this happened: http://gizmodo.com/5833787/my-brief-okcupid-affair-with-a-world-champion-magic-the-gathering-player
By coincidence, last weekend I was listening to the Inglourious Basterds/online dating podcast on a roadtrip. Any thoughts on the initial article, the subsequent internet reaction, and the moral of the story for online dating?
I heard about the MTG incident from a friend that haunts reddit a lot, but I hadn’t read her thing until now. I have to admit, she’s right that people are shallow, but her posting the whole thing online didn’t seem necessary. If nerdery isn’t her thing (although the blog is on gizmodo for crying out loud…), that’s fine, but her point that no online profile could give ALL information works against her, too. It’s not like she’d say, “I don’t want to date any nerds or geeks,” on her own profile- which, then, would likely have stopped Mr. Finkel from messaging her in the first place. She feels wronged, even lied to, for his omission, but so was he for hers. I wouldn’t say she’s a total raging a**hole, but she’s misrepresenting what he didn’t say while ignoring what she didn’t herself. What she fails to recognize is that profile online is like the first conversation when you’ve first met someone. So just as how you’re selective of what you say when you meet someone face-to-face that you’ve never had contact with before, so too are people with their profiles. But that’s not out of a sinister desire to deceive, as she insinuates with a hammer of subtlety, so much as a defensive avoidance and fear of rejection. And he told her on the first date, after all, which I’d say is pretty forthcoming.
As for how the internet exploded, the gals fangirlling at him are likely just as shallow as she is; but the visceral campaigns against her are shallow, too. Really, I don’t think anybody comes out looking like a Saint.
But I guess the moral of the story is that, indeed, people are shallow, and while I personally would LOVE to date a dude I could play MTG with, she obviously feels exactly the opposite. Everyone has different “deal-breakers” and “deal-makers,” and how deep or shallow they are is in the eye of the beholder. So long as you find someone swimming in the same depth as you, there’s nothing to worry about.
I think that it’s extremely bad form to go on a date and then blog about it in a public forum, using identifying details. Like, for instance, NAMES. Call me old fashioned, but I think people have the right to a little courtesy and privacy.
Ugh, I didn’t even want to really tackle that aspect of the whole thing. Although, this is Overthinkingit…
So then what were her motivations? Her making absolutely no attempts to protect his anonymity and, in fact, willfully and deliberately divulging it, has to be calculated and serve a purpose. So while she passes it off as a pseudo-advice column, meant for the potential future victims of this kind of terrible deception and false advertisement; her pointing out his name and such makes me think she’s trying to “get back” at him, so to speak. She may have felt so genuinely duped that she wanted some form of retribution- and her most readily available distributor of that is the internet. So she went there and publicly decried this guy for what she perceived as a duplicitous profile. She all but labels him as untrustworthy (“weaseled”), but who would trust someone that would do what she has done, after all? She is not getting any Brownie Points from me. A public attack like that against someone is not a turn-on, for romance or any other kind of relationship.
And here’s the thing, she had a semi-popular blog before this whole thing even happened. She knew her readers would see it. So she wrote it intending it to be prolific. Now, again, she could try and pass it off as attempting to get the word about internet creepers out as fast and far as possible. But I don’t think her motivations were nearly that altruistic. Oh sure, she wanted it to get out there, but she wanted it to get out there so everybody would know how this guy had offended her and he deserved to be ostracized for it by the Court of (Internet) Public Opinion.* There was at least a small part of her that wanted to see him suffer and be ridiculed. She wanted vindication for feeling so off-put, so she was vindictive in her actions.
Now, let me be clear, I don’t think he actually did anything wrong. And maybe I’m being just as shallow and judgy as she’s being accused of. Because I’d like to think she didn’t completely “get” what she was doing. I’d like to think she wasn’t being deliberately spiteful, that perhaps it was her subconscious taking control. I mean, I think most people have done something they regretted later because they were hurt and didn’t think about the whole domino train they’d start to toppling over by doing it. But it’s rather difficult to believe that.
*Sidenote: Idea for a spinoff series- Night Court: C.I.P.O. Unit. Although “Court of Internet Public Opinion” is kind of uncomfortable to say, physically. Mayhap Court of Public Internet Opinion, but then you don’t get that easily said acronym. Toss up, really.
I have to admit that when I first read it, I felt really defensive, to the point where I had to walk away from the keyboard to cool off and think about it. Which wasn’t really that logical – I don’t personally play Magic, and though I have other nerdly pursuits, it’s not like I was going to go date this woman. And either way, you’re allowed to have whatever dealbreakers you want in a relationship – I doubt the piece would have gotten the same reaction if she had gone on a date with Aaron Rodgers and been turned off by the fact he doesn’t know what Luke’s call sign is in A New Hope. I guess it was because the piece felt like it was bashing nerddom in general, and it freaks me out that women I date could be laughing about me behind my back.
The REAL dick move is revealing his name. It doesn’t sound like he was that bad of a guy (though a show about Jeffrey Dahmer doesn’t strike me as a great first date). If it weren’t for the fact that he was a high-level Magic player, it’s not even a good story! “I went on a date with a guy, he turned out to be a nerd, and I’m not into that.” The whole thing is strangely vindictive.
As for whether or not you’re obligated to put this kind of stuff in an online dating profile, you’re right, there’s a limited amount of space in which to express yourself. It’s just not possible to put down everything you do. And in particular, when you’re on a dating site the number of options available to you seems effectively infinite. It’s really easy to find something you don’t like about a given profile and just move on. If you go on a date with someone and find that you really click, that they’re smart and funny and there’s strong mutual attraction, I just don’t see the fundamental difference between “oh, and I also play Magic on the weekends with my buddies” and “I play poker every Wednesday night” or “I play basketball at the gym every week”.
Agreed, 100%. And also about feeling defensive- it did feel like she was bashing nerdery/ nerddom in all its forms, and, well, duh, I’m a nerd, so yeah.
And yeah, she’s allowed to be shallow (again, she’s right, everybody is, to an extend), but she shouldn’t be shallow in public like that whilst decrying the person by name. See my response to Belinkie (I must have been working on it as you posted yours).
I’ve been reading about English libel law recently (we want to tell some fun anecdotes about academics on my podcast, and that’s a bit of a risky business), of which the strict definition is: “if you lower someone’s standing in the eyes of his or her peers” in any written, recorded or broadcast media.
Being named very specifically is the sort of thing a British blogger would be very wary of doing. I’m not sure this could be argued to be in the public interest. He could apply for an injunction, or even sue her for damages if a few poker or Magic players gave him stick for the article.
(This may a commentary on the tough libel laws than the blog. But I have used the blog to suggest that geek culture is increasingly accepted compared to ten or twenty years ago, but there remains a strange minor prejudice against it).
Now that’s tough. Has he been criticized? If anybody has been “lowered in the eyes of their peers,” it’s her, given the vitriol that is out there, basically stuff like, “I hope you die!” and, “Ur teh wurst persun in teh wrld!” Finkel, meanwhile, has been practically canonized by his “peers,” i.e. all of nerddom. So would she be able to counter-sue or get it dismissed on the grounds that it brought him positive publicity? Or would it count simply because his identity and involvement in the incident were made so public?
::insert lame joke about Law&Order: UK here::
Some call the Special Scrumping Unit!
I don’t know about Magic, but I do know about Cricket, and in Cricket an important tactic is sledging – i.e. to psychologically put off your opponent between balls. No doubt some form appears in baseball. Does such a thing happen in Magic tournaments? Might a few jokes about this girl so publically trying to get him turn up, even though in more general circumstances the Magic community might band together?
The main defence for libel is that the statement must have truth, lack of malice and be in the public interest. So even if the stuff is true, the malice element would be hard to prove.
Having said all this, the definition of peers is the same as for a jury – i.e. not Magic players, but the general public (officially ‘right-thinking members of society’, whatever that means), so if the article was taken without the defensive comments, I’d say it counted as libellous.
This peers definition makes me nervous about some of the stuff I want to do on my podcast, because I quipped ‘nothing we could say about X could lower his standing amongst his peers’ but when his peers count as the general public, it really would.
Well, I have only participated in one tournament, and that was a thing hosted and sponsored by the local comic store, so I don’t know how translatable the behavior there was to the bigger, national tournaments. The atmosphere there, though, was kind of… stern… and I don’t think there were any quibs or insults for psyching out opponents. I get the feeling, actually, that if anybody did it there, they would have been totally ostracized. I’d like to think that participants in MTG tournies would be really congenial and nice to each other, but I imagine some of them probably are at least really sore winners or losers. But I still find the verbal swordplay kind of unrealistic- it doesn’t happen in poker tournies (that I’ve seen, anyway), for example, but who knows? If anything did happen, it may be before or after, as in the time they’re kind of mulling about between rounds. Would that make it count, then?
Hah, she may be trying to swing it as truth and public interest, yeah, but I agree, the malice thing would be rather difficult to prove lacking in the post.
As for the definition of “peers,” that does make it a bit more difficult. It makes me wonder if there are some grownups that never grew up and still possess the jocks v. nerds mentality and would make fun of the guy for doing geeky stuff. If so, then yes, she made him look bad “in front of his peers.”
@Tim, I have no doubt that messing with your opponents comes into play at any high-level competition. There’s a reason the visitors’ locker room at the University of Iowa’s football stadium is painted pink.
Are a lot of people actually prosecuted under the UK libel law? I would think that proving malice, or lack thereof, is difficult. But under that law, if someone put up a website saying “My husband cheated on me”, would it be libel (provided he really did cheat)? It’s the truth; it would definitely lower his standing among his peers. Is it malicious?
I’ve also read about South Korea’s proposed cyber defamation law, which I think is a response to cyber bullying and several high profile celebrity suicides. Apparently, it would allow police to crack down on negative comments, even without reports from victims (how they would find these, I don’t know. Maybe they’ll just have a junior officer trolling Twitter at all times). That seems like a step too far for a modern country to take.
@Howard, yes, tonnes, especially as you, being from another country, can sue someone from another country, in London, provided the material is available online.
The burden of proof is on the defendant in private cases regarding malice as well as truth and also – ‘Furthermore, to collect compensatory damages, a public official or public figure must prove actual malice (knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth). A private individual must only prove negligence (not using due care) to collect compensatory damages.’
I haven’t heard about cyber defamation, but it might depend on how far their defamation laws go at the moment as to whether it’s a good idea. We’ve definitely had problems even in my small city with cyberbullying and suicide, and certainly I believe there should be some powers to address that.
I went and saw that film The Debt today. I’m okay with a regular “flashback-laden espionage thriller”. But here’s a potentially controversial line of thinking for you. Have we not already reached the point where making a holocaust movie is lazy? It doesn’t take any work at all for the audience to be sympathetic to your hero (oh, a Mossad agent looking for a Nazi? Yay Mossad agent!). It also doesn’t take any work for the audience to be against your villain (a Nazi? Kill him!). Jews vs Germans has pretty much become a cliche, and Hollywood’s love of telling the same stories over and over again is starting to have diminishing returns. Long story short, The Debt was an interesting movie. But I bet it would have been even more interesting with a more obscure historical context, whose sides needed to be hashed out in situ.
I saw The Debt, too. A lot of interesting things going in that movie, but I thought it was stretching too much by the end and was hurt by a messy ending.
(No spoilers for The Debt in the comment)
As for your question on whether or not making a holocaust movie is lazy, in the case of The Debt, I’ll say no, straight up. At a base level, the story and its twists were original enough for me; that, combined with the added dimension of Israeli politics is more than enough to clear the writers/filmmakers of any charges of being “lazy,” even if it gets a lot of its emotional resonance from the Holocaust. It doesn’t get *all* of it from the Holocaust, though. To be overly reductive, if the actors delivered all of their lines in monotone and had blank stares on their face while in a Holocaust-themed movie, then there’d be audience connection. There had to be some work involved to make the audience sympathetic to the heroes and antagonistic to the villain.
(Insert joke about Sam Worthington’s monotone delivery and blank stare. Ha! Seriously, though, he wasn’t too bad in this. I’d say he did a decent job.)
Would it have had that same resonance were it devoid of the Holocaust theme? Probably not, but I don’t think that’s a fair criticism to level agains this movie. At this point, the WWII/Holocaust story is so deeply embedded into our culture that you can’t fault storytellers just for their use of it. Think about all the mythmaking and storytelling that resulted from the Peloponnesian War.
All this being said, I think we can still say that there are “lazy” ways of using WWII/The Holocaust in fiction. I can’t cite any off the top of my head, but I’m sure they’re out there. And more importantly, the more years we put in between us and WWII, the less relevant and resonating these movies will be. And if history tells us anything, I’m afraid we’ll have another calamitous event on the scale of WWII that will then take its place as the all-powerful myth and story generator. Then we can complain about writers lazily recycling the stories of the zombie/global warming/nuclear holocaust.
I’m picturing radioactive zombies in flip-flops and tank tops.
I agree with you that the movie had a lot going for it, and dealt with Israeli issues in a clever way. But consider the (barely a spoiler alert) early scene where she is in the stirrups and we first meet the doctor. He seems like a nice enough old man, nothing to fear. Yet there’s a huge amount of tension in the room, because we know he’s a Nazi war criminal. We were already against him sight unseen. So even though he seems harmless, we know that there is something black inside him, just waiting to come out, and this is totally due to the historical context. It would take hours to build this sort of audience empathy using traditional methods. But all it takes here is a picture of a guy in a Nazi uniform.
Maybe calling it “lazy” is the wrong way to say it, because that has really negative connotations. It’s not like the writers chose to make the characters Mossad agents because they didn’t feel like writing a good story.
I think you’re onto something. There’s a difference between a lazy story and… something else. But what could it be?
How about “clear”?
While a lazy plot could be clear, a clear plot doesn’t necessarily have to be lazy.
Take one of my favorites, Gladiator. It has a rather clear plot/story, but it’s by no means lazy. It’s obvious who the good and bad guys are and how you want things to turn out, but it’s well-written and -acted enough that you’re still emotionally invested and feel tense or at ease at all of the appropriate times. This is not the result of “lazy” writing at all.
Whereas, say, a comedy can rely on nothing but cheap potty and sex jokes the whole time, rehashing the same gag over and over again. While it could be pretty clear what’s going on (say, a guy is on a date and trying to impress the girl, but he keeps running into his pervy friends or something), reusing the same trope would make it lazy, imo.
Just throwing that out there. I’m sure other words are better. Hm…
I just noticed that the title of the main index page is “Overthinking It | Movies, TV, Music, and Popular Culture… taken way too seriously.” Why no mention of the undeserved level of scrutiny?
Also, I just looked at the source code for the home page. Cheers to your ASCII art!
You are the second reader ever to notice and contact us about it. The first one was an email. Now I guess the cat’s out of the bag…
Was the ad with the lady in the bikini put there on purpose, i.e. to highlight the sexualization and the objectification of women among comic book makers and the comic book paradigm?
Or am I just overthinking Overthinking It?
(Oh, and there’s a bird in the upper-left corner, too! I wonder…)