Great article, io9!
I'm a musician, so it's really nice to see something dealing with music here that goes beyond "greatest bands in sci-fi movies," etc. Most of the above is freshman-level music theory, but it's a *good* thing that someone is discussing the mechanics of music rather than simply giving an opinion on something.
Soundtrack composition is an especially challenging field. Since musical evaluation is intensely personal and subjective, it takes a very talented and insightful composer to translate what a director wants the audience to experience from a scene. I can't imagine having to do what McCreary does as original as he is (John Williams, not so much ...).
The Doctor Who theme uses similar intervals - octave, fifth, fourth - just in slightly different ways than the melodies above. The first and third notes of the melody (doo-WEE-ooo) are an octave apart (just as the 1st and 6th notes of the Star Wars theme), and the bass line (dum-dum-dum-dum) minus the walk-up notes are a perfect fourth apart, like the "oom-pah, oom-pah" in the tuba part of a march.
Subtly, the DW melody is centered around a note that's a perfect 5th above the note that the bass line keeps returning to. They move around and are syncopated too fast for the interval to produce the sonorous sound of a perfect fifth (guitarists call it a "power chord") until the very end of the theme, but it provides a similar open effect. If you could hear the theme very slowly (and played by brass instruments), you'd start to hear some tonal similarities to the pieces above.
Wow .. a 28-day year? I'll bet stargazing is interesting from that vantage point.
They already aired the pilot (?) for 'Touch' and it was fairly good. Definitely has a larger kind of next-evolutionary-phase thing going on, along with its 'Twilight Zone'-y premise. My main criticism is that Kiefer seems to be still playing Jack Bauer.
And, if I'm not mistaken, the "El Contador" episode of 'Archer' aired last week, so it's either a different ep, or this week's ep is a rerun.
Anyone know where it can be found now?
I *loved* the BWAAAAHM in Inception, but it was a cliche by the time the movie left theaters; now everyone's using it ...
I think the frustration is for origin stories altogether. Most people already know these stories, and don't want to waste another two hours seeing it dramatized AGAIN when there are SO many other stories that can be told. It worked to do an origin story in 'Batman Begins', mainly because no one had really dramatized all that led Wayne to become Batman before -- and even then, the movie had a complex story to tell on top of that.
Personally, I liked what they did in 'The Incredible Hulk': we see the Banner's gamma radiation exposure in a title sequence montage, and we get pieces of that story throughout the film. We didn't need to see Banner and Betsy dating, General Ross hating his daughter's boyfriend, plotting with military contractors to hide the real purpose of the experiment, then Bruce becoming the Hulk and nearly killing Betsy, and so on. It's enough to know that it happened, and to tell a new story that depends on knowing only the necessary bits of that background.
Even though it wasn't as good as 'Hulk', Bryan Singer also did an origin montage in 'Superman Returns', leaving the bulk of the film to tell a different story; that was one of the few parts of that movie I felt worked.
It's okay, but it's hard to dance to, and goes off the rails a little around the 14:55:23 mark.
Sulu on the bridge of the Enterprise D? On Deep Space Nine?
THIS IS NOT CONTINUITYARGHBLEARCGH!
THIS IS NOT CONTINUITYARGHBLEARCGH!
"So the idea that corporations and stuff won't exist even 200 or so years after first contact seems sort of naive."
Actually, it would be wise, rather than naive, to put corporations in Trek. (After all, don't the tech manuals cite corporations that manufacture the Enterprises' warp nacelles?)
What's naive is that it's a central conceit of Federation society that there's not money in the future, something coincidentally told by two Enterprise captains to two people they met in the past. Now, I don't know what kind of quantum logicbabble one would invent to describe how corporations would exist *qua* corporations in a world with no money, but the notion that these people can flit about the galaxy in warp-speed starships, have artificial gravity, holodecks, ray guns, teleporters, and universal translators *without* a monetary basis of trade *is* naive.
Corporations and profit-generating businesses, and thus a thriving capitalist or semi-capitalist economy, would *have* to exist to produce practically everything that Starfleet uses. (And I don't mean the actually naive characterization of capitalism via the Ferengi -- who, incidentally, are more racist in concept than Jar Jar Binks ever could have been.) It's as fantastic as warp speed or teleportation to believe that anyone would make, for instance, corridor carpeting out of the sheer joy of textile science with no expectation of monetary reward; especially given that there aren't enough mundane products -- uniforms, control panel coverings, light bulbs (or whatever they use), space toilets, seat cushions, etc. -- for more than a handful of contractors to manufacture.
0.0001% of the Federation population would have not even meaningful work, while the rest went totally unemployed, to tend to their little herb gardens and learn to play the pan flute in blissfully ignorant hippie poverty ... riiiiiiight ...
Actually, it would be wise, rather than naive, to put corporations in Trek. (After all, don't the tech manuals cite corporations that manufacture the Enterprises' warp nacelles?)
What's naive is that it's a central conceit of Federation society that there's not money in the future, something coincidentally told by two Enterprise captains to two people they met in the past. Now, I don't know what kind of quantum logicbabble one would invent to describe how corporations would exist *qua* corporations in a world with no money, but the notion that these people can flit about the galaxy in warp-speed starships, have artificial gravity, holodecks, ray guns, teleporters, and universal translators *without* a monetary basis of trade *is* naive.
Corporations and profit-generating businesses, and thus a thriving capitalist or semi-capitalist economy, would *have* to exist to produce practically everything that Starfleet uses. (And I don't mean the actually naive characterization of capitalism via the Ferengi -- who, incidentally, are more racist in concept than Jar Jar Binks ever could have been.) It's as fantastic as warp speed or teleportation to believe that anyone would make, for instance, corridor carpeting out of the sheer joy of textile science with no expectation of monetary reward; especially given that there aren't enough mundane products -- uniforms, control panel coverings, light bulbs (or whatever they use), space toilets, seat cushions, etc. -- for more than a handful of contractors to manufacture.
0.0001% of the Federation population would have not even meaningful work, while the rest went totally unemployed, to tend to their little herb gardens and learn to play the pan flute in blissfully ignorant hippie poverty ... riiiiiiight ...
Rourke was on Letterman to promote the film -- he basically admitted to phoning in the role (no, REALLY!?), only reading the parts of the script with his lines in it, and not seeing the movie when it came out; all while, it appeared, mildly drunk.
Too bad the Vulcan lute (or is it "lyre"?) isn't a real instrument; I'd have some fun learning to play it!
I'm all for cheesy Corman-esque sexploitation flicks, but WOW that video was excruciating.
I was avowed to quit T:MD if this episode didn't do anything for me, and it really didn't until the incinerators showed up. That got me off the chair; a good sign that there's some value in this story.
Not sure what to think of the rest of it yet. Seems there's a lot of filler scenes that have little to do with figuring out who's behind this all and what their goals are.
I'm not buying that the Big Evil Plot is just some scumbag corporation looking to make trillions on medicating people indefinitely. If you had the power to make people immortal, wouldn't you use it on yourself and not on everyone else? What purpose is served by making everyone immortal, then incinerating people that should be dead? Why not just let them die? Dunno; maybe there's something deeper happening. I'll stick around.
Still, Gwen's ANNOYING.
Not sure what to think of the rest of it yet. Seems there's a lot of filler scenes that have little to do with figuring out who's behind this all and what their goals are.
I'm not buying that the Big Evil Plot is just some scumbag corporation looking to make trillions on medicating people indefinitely. If you had the power to make people immortal, wouldn't you use it on yourself and not on everyone else? What purpose is served by making everyone immortal, then incinerating people that should be dead? Why not just let them die? Dunno; maybe there's something deeper happening. I'll stick around.
Still, Gwen's ANNOYING.
I'm of the opinion that the world needs WAY more movies starring naked space vampires.
There's nothing about that phrase I don't like.
There's nothing about that phrase I don't like.
I'll be in my bunk.
How did we know? Three reasons:
(A) Everyone said "Shutter Island messes with your head," so going into it you've got another layer of suspended disbelief.
(B) Everyone's got to put in a Surprising Twist these days. When your movie is about an asylum, then there's a good chance you'll be going with "protagonist isn't who he thinks he is, and is probably an inmate there."
(C) We've seen it all, and there's just too little originality left to explore in a single film. The whole "Lost" thing was surprising because it jumped past resolving *years* of clues and analysis regarding the island to a far larger context for it all. "Battlestar" had invented a larger context, but forgot about it until the end, then made up something that fit the facts ... some of them, anyway. I don't care if you're Copolla or not, you can't do that very well in 2 hours, especially after all the fake-outs, it-was-all-a-dream cop outs, and a million other twist endings we've seen.
Heck, the most surprising way I've seen a movie deal with its big reveal was to REFUSE to actually reveal the truth: "Inception".
(A) Everyone said "Shutter Island messes with your head," so going into it you've got another layer of suspended disbelief.
(B) Everyone's got to put in a Surprising Twist these days. When your movie is about an asylum, then there's a good chance you'll be going with "protagonist isn't who he thinks he is, and is probably an inmate there."
(C) We've seen it all, and there's just too little originality left to explore in a single film. The whole "Lost" thing was surprising because it jumped past resolving *years* of clues and analysis regarding the island to a far larger context for it all. "Battlestar" had invented a larger context, but forgot about it until the end, then made up something that fit the facts ... some of them, anyway. I don't care if you're Copolla or not, you can't do that very well in 2 hours, especially after all the fake-outs, it-was-all-a-dream cop outs, and a million other twist endings we've seen.
Heck, the most surprising way I've seen a movie deal with its big reveal was to REFUSE to actually reveal the truth: "Inception".
Actually, the whole Earth reveal was pretty confusing by the end. The Temple on Kobol showed them the constellations as seen from *this* Earth, not the Earth of the Thirteenth Tribe. Huh? How did people on Kobol 3,000 years ago know to build that Temple, let alone why, let alone what the constellations look like from a planet -- the wrong one -- thousands of light years away?
Agreed -- this is adorable.
Though how they ignored K-9 as Snoopy escapes me.
Though how they ignored K-9 as Snoopy escapes me.
Excellent!
It took me a while to get into Matt Smith, but I like him now. Same with Tennant before, and I still wish Eccleston had stuck around another season.
Now bring back Sally Sparrow! And Martha Jones! And Jenny (AKA the Doctor's Daughter)! And, sure, I'll take another ride with Wilf, too.
It took me a while to get into Matt Smith, but I like him now. Same with Tennant before, and I still wish Eccleston had stuck around another season.
Now bring back Sally Sparrow! And Martha Jones! And Jenny (AKA the Doctor's Daughter)! And, sure, I'll take another ride with Wilf, too.
