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ow excited I was to open yesterday's [newsletter] and see that there was to be a production of Earthsea on—and to look up and see that it started in 15 minutes! Off to the den to turn on the television for the first time in months with something I actually wanted to see.
What a huge, wasted disappointment, again. And again the next night for the second episode. It just isn't worthwhile turning on the TV anymore at all—a deeply involving tale I have loved reading repeatedly has been turned into a slash-and-fight [flick] over the power to rule a simple and beautiful country (world, actually) by power-mad conniving warriors who fail to appreciate something better left the way it was, with intrigue and poisoning and a near-total lack of magic and wonder—with the exception of a few who think their local boy is crazy to want to become like those wandering weirdos, whom they respect without appreciation.
It seems the producers sought out some kind of lowest common denominator of a subplot to make their little drama and steal a title from a quality classic, to sell advertising to stupid tube drones, as usual.
I shall not go on, as it is beneath the effort of describing how poor and low it is, with the exceptions only of some talented actors, new and old, wasting their efforts trying to make this worth the time and a $2 VHS tape, only to disappoint us again.
I shall go back to my books and reread it to refresh my sense of literature, and remind myself to not bother to turn on the TV in search of inspiration and wonder, nothing there but action and hatred. ...
Idealistic but disappointed,
Lou Judson
inaudio(at)pacbell.net
have been watching the miniseries Legend of Earthsea and have enjoyed it a great deal. However, I am very displeased with the amount of commercials that [the SCI FI Channel has] embedded with this program. I understand that commercials are how [SCI FI is] able to provide this programming, yet I feel that adding an additional two commercial breaks per hour is taking advantage of the viewers. I would be interested in any insight that you can provide.
Anthony Hatley
thatley(at)excite.com
his was not the Earthsea trilogy that I read. I am surprised [SCI FI] got the author's permission for this travesty of an adaptation. What happened to the boat Lookfar? All the months and years Ged traveled Earthsea to firstly run from and then banish the Gebbeth? What happened to the gates at the isle of the dead and the finding of the lost king? What was the whole love interest crap you people threw in? Where are all the masters of Roke? Master Summoner, patterner, namer, doorkeeper? Major characters in the books I read and hardly touched on in the bastardization of these classic novels. My only hope is that when someone decides to [do a] remake, they follow Peter Jackson's example and not [SCI FI's]!
Lenny G. Ancona
lennyga(at)optonline.net
hank you for referencing my Web site ornithopter.org in your article "Captaining the Skies":
In the article, [Wil McCarthy] wrote: "If Toporov and his pictures are to be believed, the vehicle is purely muscle-powered, takes off vertically, can achieve horizontal flight at speeds up to 50 kilometers per hour and has since been surpassed by even better designs."
I would like to clarify, based on my understanding, that Toporov never claimed his ornithopter Giordano could take off vertically. Rather, that is a problem he is working on currently, and I do not know that he has built any successful manned ornithopter since Giordano.
Thank you for noting this information.
Nathan Chronister
nathan(at)ornithopter.org
Columnist Wil McCarthy responds:
I'm happy to let Mr. Chronister's comments run sans rebuttal. The Web page in question is a rough machine translation from the Russian, and has been variously interpreted and commented on by a lot of different people. There's no independent confirmation that the vehicle flies at all, which is why I was careful to say "If Toporov and his pictures are to be believed ..." In fact, based on some of the photos I suspect the vehicle may be an entomopter (rocking wing) rather than an ornithopter (flapping wing) design. Any hard data on this project would be most welcome.
Also, regarding "Nanotechnology and a Hammer," several readers have commented on my statement, "as the voltage decreases the current ... has to increase." And they're right: This is only true if we assume a constant wattage for the vehicle's electrical system (not unreasonable,
since it contains DC-DC converters). If constant resistance is assumed instead, then Ohm's law applies, and a drop in voltage should produce a proportional drop in current. In all likelihood, neither assumption is entirely correct, although determining which one is closer sounds like
an excellent reader exercise.
Best,
Wil
read the news today, oh boy. The movie adaption of His Dark Materials is to be altered so that it doesn't risk upsetting the Christian right in the U.S. Just the thought fills me with a mixture of sadness and scorn. How long will the majority of folk allow these people to get away with telling everyone else how to think? Isn't that what the Taliban did? They also claimed to be expressing the will of God/Allah, while repressing anyone who dared to disagree with their skewed interpretation of religion.
New Line Cinema's concern that His Dark Materials' perceived anti-religiosity might make "it an inviable project financially" is twaddle. They don't seem to have considered the millions of people, in the U.S. and the wider world, who actually bought the books. The same people are, in my estimation, a lot less likely to go and see the movie—or buy the DVD and other merchandising—if the end product has had its central theme eviscerated. All New Line will accomplish by bowing to fundamentalist censorship is the alienation of their target audience!
What will the Christian Taliban want next, I wonder? Shall unbelievers be required to surrender and burn books by Phillip Pullman? How about the author himself? Just as Salman Rushdie was targeted by Islamic fundamentalisits, will Pullman be threatened by Christian extremists? That is the road we're on, if New Line and other companies don't find some intestinal fortitude.
Nathan Brazil
nathanbrazil(at)freeuk.com
K, I will admit to Troy Truax and Chuck Craig ("Trek Prices Artificially Beamed Up" and "Sci-Fi DVDs Cost Double Mainstream," respectively), that there are series out there that are selling for much less than the original series DVDs. Prices are high, and some can't justify paying $100 for a season. But let us consider a few more things, shall we?
The series aired in the late '60s—a time when there was no digital film, no digital audio, no digital anything in the movie/television industry. All 79 episodes have been re-mastered for this new digital age—5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Digital Surround. You have new digital transfers of the episodes (which some say show the imperfections), but the color is vibrant and stunning. And let's not forget the new bonus featurettes—the birth of the series feature, the Shatner interview, the Nimoy interview, the Kirk, Spock, Bones Trio piece, Nichelle Nichols piece, Walter Koenig's piece, George Takei's Sulu piece, etc., etc., etc. These are all things that have to be produced more than 30 years after the fact. (And if they aren't new, you aren't going to be satisfied, yes?)
Now, I can do math as well, and $300 divided by 79 episodes is just over $3.75/episode. Yes, it can't compare to $1/episode for something like Smallville or Friends. But considering the amount of work that has to be done to convert all the Star Trek shows, do the interviews, create the packaging, etc., it may be that they are pricing at cost. (Consider the impact that the "Trials and Tribbleations" episode had, and multiply that work by 79.)
In today's digital, DVD age, all shows are being digitally transferred before airing; the casts are being interviewed in the midst of production of the seasons; on-staff personnel are conducting these interviews within the budgets that the producers have already acquired. Mainstream shows' DVDs are priced lower because all the post-production work is done and it just has to be transferred to a DVD, packaged and sold. (Even Voyager didn't have the luxury of the "series to DVD" months after the season ended.) We are living in a "need it now" society. I just finished watching season three of Alias. The season ended earlier in the year! That is just a testament to the recently realized cost savings by studios and producers of doing it all during the show, not 30 years later.
Considering the impact that Star Trek has had on the genre of science fiction, let alone the world culture, it seems to me that $300 is a small price to pay to have a restored, remastered set of a classic series.
I confess—I haven't bought the original series set(s). But I just don't have the space. But when I can find the room, it will adorn my shelves. ...
Jonathan Grove
jgrove(at)weymouthdesign.com
lease help save Babylon 5!
As a popular and powerful science-fiction entity that has, in the past, supported Babylon 5, I'm writing this in hopes of getting the news out. The Babylon 5 movie, The Memory of Shadows, is currently in preproduction in England. The only issue? Warner Brothers is seeking Hollywood "it" people to replace the television cast. While I understand the need for this for certain television shows (i.e. Bewitched, Dragnet, The Dukes of Hazzard), Babylon 5 reached the end of its run in the late 1990s. Fans are outraged, and talks of boycotting the project are traveling across the Internet like wildfire.
Please take a moment to consider publicizing this information. Help us save one of the most beloved science-fiction stories of all time.
Thank you for your time. The fans have faith that your establishment will take this seriously and hear our cries.
Sincerely,
Stephanie Smith
MsMyth71(at)aol.com
finally saw the DVD of one of the all time classic SF films, THX 1138. I first saw the film on TV in the 1970s, and it was burned into my brain—so cold, so minimal—and it was huge influence on me. I was worried when I discovered that George Lucas had done a new version of the film for DVD, adding new shots and effects, but I decided to try to approach this new version with as much objectivity as I could muster.
As I watched the director's cut I couldn't get over how the new shots that have been included don't seem to add very much to the film and in many cases seemed quite at odds with the original. Early on in the film, THX is seen watching an erotic dancer via holographic TV. In the original, he just sat there, zoned out and drugged up, then casually switched the TV away from the erotica to another channel that was a cop beating a prisoner over and over. In the new version, Lucas has added some sort of machine that drops down from the roof and pleasures THX. Aside from the fact that the machine looks like a Star Wars droid, it changes the whole nature of the scene from one of dejected and disinterested voyeurism to something akin to Internet cyber sex. Was that what Lucas was thinking of back in 1970?
There are also a host of new and expanded backgrounds that turn what was a modest-budgeted-but brilliantly-realized film into something with a much larger scale. Some of these shots are OK, others are very intrusive. One whole new scene features the cop robots in what looks like a changing room, and then there is the big escape-by-car scene that's been altered so it now resembles the Star Wars: Episode I race. One of the most bizarre and unnecessary changes is the inclusion of what looks like mutated monkeys in place of the original hairy dwarves who appeared at the end of the original film.
I was listening to part of the director's commentary, and Lucas said that the film was an exercise in "abstract filmmaking," but there is now so much literalism in the new effects that whatever ambiguity existed in the film—and to my mind the film's key achievement—all that has been lost. Lucas also says that the big twist in the film is the revelation that the whole story takes place underground. The new shots of the big underground city with its highways, trains and lifts that appear early on seems to completely destroy this key revelation. There is no wonder at the end at all.
One moment in the new version of the film really illustrates that point that Lucas has wrecked what was once his masterpiece. In the original version SEN has taken a train to the end of the line. He gets out and wanders around, walks to the end of a dark tunnel and sees a hole in the ground. Looking down, he sees a shower of sparks from someone working off-camera. There is a loud clanging noise, and SEN becomes frightened and runs back to the train just in time to go back to the city. SEN was so far outside his comfort zone and so conditioned to life in the future city that when faced with the unfamiliar surroundings, he ran in terror. The new version is almost the
same, except that, after he has looked into the hole, SEN sees a huge mutant scorpion walking past his shoe. He runs back to the train. What's changed is the literal-minded Lucas—why is SEN afraid? Not because of something going on his mind, but because he's seen a monster! Run!
Then there is the realization that the new DVD version has the same running time as the original. What's happened is that the extended duration of shots in the original editing has been sacrificed for quicker cuts and more FX. My question is to ask why Lucas did this? It may be, like his tinkering with the Star Wars films, he's decided retrospectively that he can now achieve what he intended. That may be, but in the case of THX 1138, he's basically scribbled all over his greatest work, reducing it from a majestic, incredible film of mood and depth, to a cartoon rather like the clip from Flash Gordon that opens the film.
The infuriating part of this is that it didn't have to be this way. If this had been a three-DVD version instead of a double with the original film, plus the new version and the extras disc, I would have happily forked out the cash. But instead Lucas has decided for us.
Andrew Frost
tezby(at)hotmail.com
was watching a few weeks ago a special episode of Nova that dealt with the possible first contact between human and alien life. The question is: Can acclaimed films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Carl Sagan's Contact prove worthy of preparing us for this day when it finally comes? The Martians in the War of the Worlds were nonhumanoid (as depicted in the original film version), which made them startlingly realistic enough. If Mr. Spielberg can prove his potential for great science fiction with his remake, which reunites him with Tom Cruise (Minority Report) and Dakota Fanning (Taken), it will probably be the crowning glory of his career for this century.
I agree that the Martians in the remake should again be as nonhumanoid as possible. The brilliant director's own visions of aliens are usually identifiable. Like most fictional aliens, E.T. possessed an almost infantlike visage that was certainly identifiable with the children he befriended. The aliens in both Close Encounters and Taken, which have been referred to as "the grays," are based on reports that inspire these stories as with Chris Carter's stories for The X-Files. We may have become used to sufficiently humanoid aliens in Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Andromeda and Doctor Who. Perhaps Mr. Spielberg's War of the Worlds shall do for our imaginations and expectations what H.G. Wells' original concept did with its first film adaptation over 50 years ago. I expect it to be a success, and the future of science fiction could probably be forever changed all over again.
Michael Anthony Basil
mike.basil(at)sympatico.ca
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