tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post2618904970007114335..comments2024-03-27T08:49:38.786-03:00Comments on Siskoid's Blog of Geekery: This Week in Geek (9-15/11/15)Siskoidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08266365376486695812noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-57683597509222173692015-11-17T16:37:06.168-04:002015-11-17T16:37:06.168-04:00The infocom Game....
I haven't played it since...The infocom Game....<br />I haven't played it since... oh,1988? Intelligence wasn't so much the answer as intelligence gathering... back in those days you had to talk with your friends who had talked with theirs and heard a rumour that a friend of theirs had discovered some random object did something unexpected when you did some sort of random thing with another random object. You could make one or two of those discoveries yourself and send 'em back down the grapevine to join the rest...<br />There wasn't much "intuitive" play to it, but it made you feel awfully clever even if you cheated.<br /><br />"Those stupid doors": If these are the big doors out onto Magrathea it's no biggie, the game ends at that point with the promise of a part two which never happened.Brendoonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10913031340103600964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-3650004743527637802015-11-16T08:52:06.829-04:002015-11-16T08:52:06.829-04:00Brendan: Oh wow, nice. When I get the time (I'...Brendan: Oh wow, nice. When I get the time (I'm late on my Big Finish listening), I might just have to look for those. As for the Infocom game, I'm still stuck trying to open those stupid doors, but I just can't prove my intelligence!<br /><br />London: Yes, Ninja even listens to his own soundtrack during the film. Like I said, if you're not South African, you probably don't know these artists, so it's just thick accents and fashion nightmares and you don't get the reference.Siskoidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08266365376486695812noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-61702836044256387132015-11-16T07:46:26.983-04:002015-11-16T07:46:26.983-04:00Yes that's certainly the problem. Edges enhanc...Yes that's certainly the problem. Edges enhanced, annoying frame rates, impossible depth perceptions. It just looks wrong to me. I can't stand it.<br /><br />Note: I don't have 20/20 vision either. Wearing glasses does flatten out details somewhat. Maybe that's part of it.Siskoidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08266365376486695812noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-1113452165127555172015-11-16T07:27:30.048-04:002015-11-16T07:27:30.048-04:00"As for Blu-Ray, I just can't stand to hi...<i>"As for Blu-Ray, I just can't stand to high-def images that are crisper than my own normal vision"</i><br /><br />Not to question you, but whaaaaaaaaat? The resolution of your own eyes is always going to be higher than "hi-def" (and cinema showings will be higher res than 1080p anyway).<br /><br />Have you got overly aggressive "image enhancement" going on on your TV? I've been to peoples house where they have the contrast set on "dynamic", they have "edge enhancement" and everything else turned on and it makes things super artificial looking. It's why I got one of Panasonics last plasmas before they stopped making them... I found plasmas much better than LCDs at making things look natural.LiamKavhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01996095233681105682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-48571459307590715442015-11-16T03:30:17.000-04:002015-11-16T03:30:17.000-04:00As I understand it those characters in Chappie are...As I understand it those characters in Chappie aren't non-professional actors, they're South African gangster rappers. Not exploitation of naive people, more like the way rappers used to get cast in American "street" dramas.LondonKdShttp://londonkds.dreamwidth.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-73723438808900097412015-11-16T01:14:45.541-04:002015-11-16T01:14:45.541-04:00Ahhh! The Hitchhik game. Loved that.
I guess what ...Ahhh! The Hitchhik game. Loved that.<br />I guess what we're seeing in the Hitchhik (H2G2G) movie is Douglas Adams (DNA) with a whole lot of writing discipline enforced. That was always his strength and weakness: he was an Anarchist when it came to writing. This meant he was able to add a ton of exciting foreshadowing in the books and Radio show (like in Lucas' Star Wars & Empire)as he felt like it BUT THEN failed to deliver on the promises... (Lucas kinda delivered but I'd rather he didn't)...because a whim took the story in a different direction. That's what made the books great, they were unpredictable and every turn was fresh (like life!).<br />By the way, if you recall there was a commercial 3LP set of the first 6 hitchhik radio episodes... completely rewritten, tidied up and re-recorded with the same cast, released in the early 80's.<br />It was better than those episodes because the time restraint was removed from the project, total perfection. Because these chaps went broke wihtout paying DNA the royalties due him, the masters went into ownership limbo and were never heard again. HOWEVER, I bought the tapes during the original release and later had them digitised. If you ever have the luck of finding them online they're copies of this very digitisation! Mail me if you want 'em, they're jolly good.Brendoonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10913031340103600964noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-9831411869298179092015-11-15T14:44:45.803-04:002015-11-15T14:44:45.803-04:00Snell: Douglas Adams himself worked on the movie s...Snell: Douglas Adams himself worked on the movie script and felt it was the best way to do the story as a film. I don't disagree, but it's a little formulaic. As for Blu-Ray, I just can't stand to high-def images that are crisper than my own normal vision. That's not how movies look in theaters either. I used to rate extras as extremely important to my movie-to-own experience, but not as much anymore. Still, it stings when a low-budget indie has a better package than a big budget hit. Pretty clear they aren't giving me a choice of format, but actually pushing one format over another.<br /><br />Anon: So your complaint about GofG is the complain I had about Spectre, except I think Guardians did have choices that needed to be made because the characters weren't a team or altruistic to begin with (as opposed to Bond who was always going to try to stop Spectre). The choices are about relationships and morality. And characters do make choices occasionally. Drax has the agency to lure Ronan to Knowhere, throwing a wrench in the works, for example.Siskoidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08266365376486695812noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-15018101652077255092015-11-15T10:46:44.750-04:002015-11-15T10:46:44.750-04:00I was "there", so to speak, when Gamora ...I was "there", so to speak, when Gamora first appeared in comics (Adam Warlock / Pip / the Magus), so I was plenty disappointed by her handling in "Guardians of the Galaxy". It's a part of her character that she was damaged by Thanos and others, but that never stopped her from being proactive; and I don't recall her ever having interest in romance (i.e., even being potentially won over by Starlord's dance moves).<br /><br />The biggest flaw in "Guardians of the Galaxy", I felt, was that it was a plot where our heroes had little control over what they did; they kept going from one thing to the next because every other choice was death. With the exception of deciding to help Xandar, it was all like a D&D campaign where there are always moving walls that push you from one room to the next.<br /><br />But the other biggest flaw in "Guardians of the Galaxy" was our lead's character arc. Not every movie requires one, but I think this movie wanted one, and didn't quite deliver. The best way I've heard it described is, decide how the hero is screwing up his own life, and let the course of events help him overcome that self-defeating tendency. We ALMOST got that but they didn't quite pull it off: Starlord was pretty unable to cope with the loss of his mom (presumably how he is screwing up his life) and I never got the sense that he came up with any sort of answer -- say, by being the man his mom would be proud of, he's carrying on for her.<br /><br />Maybe I'm just mad that Chris Pratt isn't Andy Dwyer / Burt Macklin / Johnny Karate any longer. That was the role Chris Pratt was meant to play.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-83450500524036550722015-11-15T09:34:48.522-04:002015-11-15T09:34:48.522-04:00PS--you've got to bite the bullet and make the...PS--you've got to bite the bullet and make the upgrade to Blu-ray, if for no other reason so you can get beyond the "bare-bones bonus features" DVDs seem relegated to these days.snellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06181997862745538999noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-60857133905624451522015-11-15T09:32:03.566-04:002015-11-15T09:32:03.566-04:00I'll just say that the decision to turn Hitchh...I'll just say that the decision to turn Hitchhiker's Guide into a romance where Arthur wins Trillian shows how limited the filmmakers' understanding of their source material was.<br /><br />As for SPECTRE, yeah, it's not bad, but sometime the sense of disappointment can be hard to shrug off, when you were expecting more on the level of Skyfall.snellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06181997862745538999noreply@blogger.com