Chindie

The projector idea will be an example of a company patenting something to prevent anyone else doing it any time soon. Won't have much to do with Durango at all imo.

The name didn't help - I don't think anyone really knows for sure why they thought it was a good idea to drop the 'of Mars' part of the name, other than perhaps Hollywood has been burned by Mars so many times now they got the fear of using it in the title, or they felt the sci-fi aspect might put off people. The film actually ends with a caption 'John Carter of Mars', with a nice logo. Disney didn't have a clue how to market the film in all honesty. They wanted/hoped it could be this generations Star Wars (interestingly the series that has pinched most of the original books' ideas and style), and then appeared to go '**** if we know, sod it'.

If you don't expect a masterpiece and aren't terribly invested in the Alien universe, it's a decent watch. It's greatest success is how it looks - it's stunning beginning to end. Thats about it though. It's absolutely riddled with flaws and problems and plot holes and crap dialogue and absurd scenes and bad acting. When I saw it at the cinema a couple of scenes that are supposed to be horrific, or encourage empathy with a character, had people laugh at the unintentional hilarity of it all, because of how badly the scenes were done. It's also clearly been hideously badly edited, hence there being half an hour of cut scenes apparently on the home release.

There's a lot of talk of, at the very least, the bluray having about 30 minutes of deleted scenes. No word if it's been recut with them in... but I'd figure not. After all, Ridley Scott doesn't do Directors Cuts (), because the Directors Cut is the one he puts in the cinema. And Prometheus was exactly the vision he wanted when it was released in the cinema (), and hadn't been cut to ribbons at all (). Not that an extended cut is saving it, mind. . I still liked it but it's a mess and a disappointment, shouldn't even be uttered in the same breath as the film it's allegedly a prequel to.

Need to find a career first I guess...

The headache is caused by your brain trying to reconcile what it believes it's seeing, and what it's actually seeing. It's not helped by the fact that the effect is never perfect. Dredd's 3D has been getting some plaudits from people who don't like it - I think this might mostly be down to the slo-mo sequences, which because of their slow movement and apparently striking/interesting/beautiful subject matter (even the gore), grab you and allows the effect to work at it's best. 3D gets blown away when things are expected to move quickly.

I've mentioned this a few times on here, but I suppose this is the thread for it. Ever since I was a kid I've had dreams, usually about fairly mundane things but occasionally about minor things related to bigger deals, that then occur and I get struck by an enormous sense of deja vu and then remember having had the dream it featured in. The example I always remember was from when I was at secondary school. I had a dream about walking home, or really just a snatch of a minute long part of my route. I walked past a yellow car parked up, and a bloke walked towards and then past me as I went past the car. Thats all. I remembered the snippet when I woke up because it was so vivid, I was even able to tell what my feelings where as I walked past the car in the dream. I then largely forgot about it and then, lo and behold, I've walked home and gone past the yellow and had the bloke go in the other direction past me and felt the same feeling and so on, and had the feeling of deja vu strike me immediately afterwards. I had it happen just the other day actually, watching TV whilst a conversation was going on about something. I remembered the TV programme and the conversation that had gone on at the same time. Very weird. As for normal dreams I tend to have a lot that I believe anyone who believed there was something in dream analysis would say said I suffered from anxiety, lack of trust and confidence, and worried a lot. Which would be fairly accurate I guess.

**** hell, I don't hate Coldplay like many do (I maintain their first 2 albums are good if hardly amazing/innovative/particularly worthy listens) but this is terrible. Every song they did after those 2 albums was awful and nobodies told them, and they sound terrible. I also question the decision to turn this closing ceremony into a single band's gig at all...

Thank you Peter. Interesting. I'm still not prepared to say it's definitely an example of state agency but thank you.

Agreeing to disagree would be a good idea for the thread as a whole but it would require one side of the debate to concede a point they're not wrong on. Anywho, anyone see the story this week about Christians deciding to take their case to European Court of Human Rights over alleged discrimination? Interesting read.

German WW2 tech was way ahead of it's time pretty much across the board, even if, like in the case of Me262, their reach outstretched their grasp (a number of Germany's flagship tanks during period, particularly the Tiger tanks, were incredible feats of engineering but the weight so much and tolerances so small they ended up being, particularly the Tiger 2, fairly unreliable. Meanwhile the Russians bang out T-34s that the German's took the piss out of for being ugly and apparently poorly made, driven straight out of the factory to battle, but turn out to be one of the most successful tanks ever). The Germans actually invented the assault rifle, the Sturmgewehr 44 (which looks rather like the AK47 (and 74), testament to it's influence), but again despite being an incredible and lasting example of design was a pig to manufacture and maintain.

I should be seeing Dredd, all be well, on Tuesday. Really looking forward to it. I've not read anything particularly negative yet, which is a welcome surprise.

Theres not a debate to be had.

You are quite right, but the Meteor's war service was somewhat limited. Likewise, there were Hurricanes around in 1938, and the Gladiators saw action in 1940-41 (Norway and Malta) - and there were prototype jets around in Britain and Germany in the late 30s - but I deliberately chose a year either side to make the point that they were the established main fighters at that stage. Then again... The B-52 Stratofortress: First flight 15 April 1952, still in service! And staying in service until an estimated 2040, at least. An astonishing piece of equipment.

Game and Gamestation were taking preorders of it in store the day after it officially announced - I should know, I put a few through before they made me redundant . We basically got told to suggest a November release back then, I was suggesting to people April 2013 but they didn't seem bothered and just ordered anyway.

Curiousity got the better of me... I bought John Carter. I paid towards making the biggest flop of all time slightly less of a flop. I'll give it this - it's not as terrible as you might expect. And it's pretty. Looking at the film as a purely technical feat it's incredible, the CG is superb, and every shot is achingly good looking. Unfortunately the looks are tempered by everything looking a little... uninspired. Theres nothing about the art direction of the film that strikes you as remarkable, or particularly inspired or unique. The 2 human Martian races are both apparently walking around in hilarious amounts of fake tan (gallons each by the looks of things) and wear very very similar costumes, the only difference is 1 wears red and the other blue, and the first minute of the film tell you the reds are baddies. Oh and theres another mysterious race who are set up as being manipulators and for all intents and purposes magic but you can largely ignore them. The plot is needlessly complicated. Thats not to say you're going to be confused watching it, but the plot has numerous bits and bobs you simply sit there and think 'why wasn't this cut at script editting?' The manipulative race have 1 necessity to the plot - they are in effect the device to get John to Mars. The film pisses about with a completely unnecessary plot line on Earth regarding John dying and (curiously, I've no idea if this plot point is in the books or not) leaving his estate and fortune to (real life writer of the John Carter adventures) Edgar Rice Burroughs, though the film make no attempt to suggest that Edgar goes on to write about John Carter as a chronicle of real events, or if the character is just a nod to people who know he was the author of the original books. This serves next to no purpose in the plot beyond to provide an overly elaborate final twist to the film to enable a sequel, something that could have been far easier and simpler done without the needless plotline. There are 2 or 3 really, really out of place and heavy handed flashbacks to a tragedy in John's life that feel like they've simply been hurled into the film for the sake of it, as there is absolutely no reference to this tragedy to my knowledge in the entire film besides these flashbacks. They didn't need to be there at all, and serve only to be incredibly jarring. The pacing is also all over the shop. It manages to achieve what you'd believe to be impossible actually. It's 2 hour film, has a fair amount of action, and has a quite bad habit of characters coming to conclusions or making choices in the blink of an eye (a couple of examples - John is able to just pluck from thin air as far as I can tell, correctly, that an alien he encounters is an apparently illegitimate daughter of the chief of her tribe. In another moment, he refuses to fight for a tribe and it's chief immediately tells him if he doesn't fight for them his lady friend (who he met literally a minute before) is in danger. He barely has chance to say the word 'danger' before John says he'll fight. This kind of thing happens again and again, you never feel like things are considered by characters, they just know. This isn't helped by the film having absolutely no sense of the passage of time, it feels like John Carters crazy 48 hours), and yet it at times feels ponderous and leaden legged, and feels long. There are silly little things too - John gets to Mars and discovers he has difficultly walking, soon finding out he leap massive distances and punch incredibly hard. The film offers no explanation for this until 10 minutes before the end, by which time you've either worked it out (they use Mars' lower gravity as an excuse to give Carter increased strength) or you simply accepted it and forgot about it. You get a few examples like that - the manipulative baddies are set up throughout the film as, well... manipulative baddies, but then they decide to actually tell you they are manipulative baddies 20 minutes before the end. That this isn't a revelation at all, nor in actuality that important to the plot at all (the film would only require a tiny change to allow these characters to be completely deleted and losing nothing from the rest of the film), is an example of just how dumb a lot of this film is. You also get the feeling that a few of the actors knew they were in a bit of a mess of a film so decided to have a laugh. Every brief scene with James Purefoy doing anything you can almost see the smirk on his face as his mind is going 'Fuuuuuck this thing is going to be a horror show in the box office, lets have a laugh!' It's also sad to say that it suffers for the original material having been such an inspiration for so many film makers. Vast swathes of the film feel like they've been lifted from things like Star Wars, particularly the prequel films, when the opposite is more accurate, and obviously such a comparison isn't a good one. Even with all this, I walked away from the film having enjoyed moments (admittedly sometimes not as the film intends - A major set piece had me smirking as our hero is chained to his doom... but you notice he could easily walk up and pull the chain off it's tether and largely have problem solved. And the film suffers from the worst 'Sci fi /Fantasy naming' convention I can recall, some of the names are exactly what a 6 year old would conjure if you asked him to write a Star Wars knock off). It's not a good film, not by any means. But the thing that strikes me having seen John Carter is, had they not spent the absolutely obscene amounts of money they did on it, and had Disney marketed it better (they threw the thing under a bus before it'd even come out), we wouldn't even have given John Carter a second glance. It'd be considered a naff fairly forgettable tech demo. With better direction, and more work on the script, it might even have managed to be decent. As it is, it's the biggest flop ever.

Peter, could you indulge me a moment? What do you actually believe is going on here? Tell me the narrative you place on these murders, explicitly - who, why. Because I find all these suggestions of shady goings on but without any real overarching implicit narrative incredibly frustrating. For whats it worth, I'd posit this as where I stand with regards these murders - I believe it will be turn out that Mr al-Hilli, in his business dealings at some point in his life, has crossed paths somehow with an individual or group who he has subsequently let down/gone against the wishes off/threatened in some way, and they have chosen to eliminate him either to prevent him becoming troublesome to them, or exact revenge. He will have either borrowed money, or otherwise have had assistance or connection with some form of criminal or otherwise underworld gang (I'm aware to the fact some wag with sardonically quip 'Sounds like a perfect description of any world government to me, Agents killed him clearly!' - I don't think this is the case by any means, not to say that I don't believe governments will turn to murder in some circumstances). They hired someone to kill him, took the opportunity of him going on holiday to do it, followed him to Annecy and saw a moment as they travelled through the forests to kill him. I believe they made some mistakes in the attempt - they felt they'd killed the older daughter (something they may still succeed in doing, she may not recover) and simply missed the younger. The cyclist being killed betrays an opportunism in the murders - had it been a carefully planned rendezvous I believe a number of people would have been involved checking the surrounding area was as clear as they could make it, killing some random bloke as he's on a bike ride is messy. The whole thing is messy - the murders were clearly done by someone with experience of using a firearm but leaving potentially 2 witnesses alive, and killing some other chap, and simply leaving all the evidence there to be found (the murder scene itself, and the caravan), is silly. I don't buy that theres some conspiracy behind this, shady government agents and nods and winks to Mr al-Hilli being possibly involved in hush hush business. Whats your narrative Peter?

I'm sure they got a good rate of APR on that loan shooter.

Depends if that book is a dictionary i guess...

It'll clean your intestines out. And your drains too.

Why does there need to be a why? There isn't a why. It's a question without an answer, because the question is meaningless.

I loved the Really Wild Show as a kid. A sad loss.

Have you not ever watched a police press conference - they always ask questions they could be 99% sure they won't get an answer to.

1. Problem with translation leads to slightly awkward phrasing. 2. Police exceptionally rarely reveal everything about a crime to media immediately. He's basically telling them that he's not at liberty to reveal all the details.

It leads to a tourist sightseeing spot. The road is in a national park. Got a source for that bit about a sightseeing spot, or is that a guess? The first line of this Guardian article, which goes on to note the road attracts tourists for a variety of reasons, most notably walks in the forest. Had I been speculating, I'd have made that clear.