Radiation: Geek, annoyed
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Yes ,an interesting story here. They appeared to be moldering in a back room at the Archive--potentially turning into nitrate soup--until a visiting American archivist chanced upon them.
Oh, I love stories like that. The Film Archive also played a part in the gradual restoration of Metropolis as close to its original glory as it's likely to get.
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Fantastic! Plus anything that helps erase the memory of the Giorgio Moroder/Queen version has to be a good thing.
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Fantastic! Plus anything that helps erase the memory of the Giorgio Moroder/Queen version has to be a good thing.
To give (a little) credit where it's, at least Love To Love You Baby exposed a new audience to the idea that Ridley Scott only steals from the very best. :)
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Environmental problems are one thing, environmental problems destroying a Government in a one party state is a tall order reliant either on military invasion, revolution, coup or natural disaster.
Yes many areas are currently fucked, but the fucked is defuckable. The Chinese seem way ahead of New Zealand in term of technology and understanding of humans' ability to defuck the fucked. to recycle the recyclable. Evident in the use of fucked - absoluteness in this context.
I don't see this Government and it's 200 year plan being destroyed, by coup, revolution, natural disaster or your willpower Islander, for the myriad dissatisfied there are a billion others working hard, making a slow step up the economic ladder. There's no incentive to destroy a Government in these conditions, people are working too damn hard to find the time.
Ultimately, you'll hear very little about the destruction of the Government from within China, not because people are scared. but because there is a widespread understanding that the victor in the destruction of this Government would be the imperialist powers. The western system. The colonial machine. That there are only a handful of countries worldwide that have withstood the swarm of the great white wrath, is all the more reason to cling to this state as a real alternative to homogeneity.
What concerns me, are the the motivations (which I read to be cold war hangovers) for willing the destruction of the Government, which in today's economy would bring an international depression that would make ye olde great depression look like an episode of Fawlty Towers. And would destroy the lives of 100s of million of people. gladularity over others' potential failure is inhuman.
Sure This government puts the ends ahead of the means every time, product over process, quite often to the detriment of contemporary inhabitants. But there is a long term plan, imposed in a cultural discourse that doesn't spare homage to notions of finiteness either in terms of the environment or of time span or of manpower.
The environment is in flux.
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chris, I am aware of that most considerable resource - the people of China. I know about the reafforestation work parties - and the extermination of sparrows (temporary, as it turned out.) Desertification is a huge & continuing problem (it's been around for at least 2 millennia) but if any people are going to solve it...
I think we here can also do much much better: we could factor in
*disasters will happen
*species are relatively fragile (o yes! including our own!)
*a long term view (that is, a bit longer than the term of a government)
- an inter-generational view if you will- is the way to look at our present environmental problems e.g. dairy farming is hugely damaging & problematic, and it is solidly based on the idea that dairy farmers have -almost- unlimited rights, both to using water & polluting water - without actually paying for the damage that affects most other citizens.
Make 'em pay- -
O chris - you're absolutely right -"the environment is in flux."
It always has been. -
Erm undies...my one great indulgence is wearing cotton (or bamboo fibre)produced in circumstances that are not damaging to the environment next to my skin. I do have t-shirts that do not conform to this standard, but my pants - they're cool-
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Thanks for your understanding Islander, sorry to lurch at you like that so often. I'm definitely down with the homeland looking a little further ahead. Particularly concerned about the damage caused by this imported pollution Christopher brought up. Also apologies for the possibly unfounded accusations about your viewpoint for the umpteenth time, I guess you hit a nerve. But that's what nerves are made for. Good luck with the pantaloons.
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Just saw an advert for the very good Generation Kill miniseries, by the makers of The Wire. Coming soon. Well worth watching.
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Just saw an advert for the very good Generation Kill miniseries, by the makers of The Wire. Coming soon. Well worth watching.
Definitely.
And as I noted here, the coming soon bit is the slot The Pacific currently occupies.
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Just saw an advert for the very good Generation Kill miniseries, by the makers of The Wire. Coming soon. Well worth watching.
We'll agree to disagree, but nice to see TVNZ can always find a slot for glossy war-porn. And at this rate, we might just see Treme before 2013...
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we might just see Treme before 2013
My great-auntie in America sent me a VHS of this. I can recommend it.
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We'll agree to disagree, but nice to see TVNZ can always find a slot for glossy war-porn.
I think Generation Kill is as much glossy war porn as The Wire is glossy police porn.
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Actually, I'm not so sure about that. I'd be interested to hear what people think of it after they've seen it - I thought it didn't do some of the obvious things that The Wire did, and that it could in fact be enjoyed as war porn to a certain extent if you were so minded. (I could say why I think that, but it would be spoilerific.)
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OK, well SPOILERS follow then.
I thought the behaviour of the unit commander looking for glorious missions for his troops, the incompetent officer who went crazy at the first sign of trouble, and the attitude and actions of the ordinary soldiers drew on similar themes to the wire.
It didn't really have "the other side" like The Wire did, though I can see why that would be more difficult.
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That last thing you said - that's the crux of it I think. "More difficult" is not an excuse I find especially compelling.
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Actually, I'm not so sure about that. I'd be interested to hear what people think of it after they've seen it - I thought it didn't do some of the obvious things that The Wire did, and that it could in fact be enjoyed as war porn to a certain extent if you were so minded.
Sure -- and I think Kathryn Bigelow has a interesting response to the charge that, not only in The Hurt Locker but her genre films, that she "glamorises" violence. If she pretended she doesn't find war, violence and death as fascinating as it is repulsive (and at least try to explore the contradictions) then she's being far from honest with herself, or anyone else.
It didn't really have "the other side" like The Wire did, though I can see why that would be more difficult.
I think you've just put your finger on what niggles me about The Pacific and Band of Brothers. I'm not that bent about both shows being "Ameri-centric" (for want of a better term) given the source materials and who produced and paid for both productions. But it does have the rather tiresome air of the rest of the human race barely existing, except as passive by-standers while the United States single-handedly won the Second World War once again. You can respect the gargantuan amounts of time, money and skill expended, but still feel it didn't have to be quite so myopic.
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I think here it's different though, because of... the last thing that Kyle said. Which was almost the whole point of The Wire. (Incidentally, the Wire has plenty of cool gangsterism as well. It is not something that has to be wholly problematic in itself.)
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That last thing you said - that's the crux of it I think. "More difficult" is not an excuse I find especially compelling.
Yeah. I'm not sure if that has to do with the original source material as compared to the TV shows - I haven't read the originals. But Generation Kill was probably a fair reflection of what an embedded journalist would have seen - the inside of the US army, but not the inside of the Iraqi army/people. Perhaps the reporter that spent a year with the Baltimore Police provided a lot more on the criminals etc?
It certainly would be easier as the producer and writer of a TV show to go learn about the Baltimore drug trade (still going strong) than about what life was like for Iraqi people during a war that has supposedly already finished. Certainly you couldn't go observe Iraq now and say "well it was like that during the invasion", because a bunch of things have changed significantly for good and bad.
While recognising the criticism, I still thought it was good, without being as great as The Wire. I certainly didn't see it as war porn.
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Yeah. I'm not sure if that has to do with the original source material as compared to the TV shows - I haven't read the originals
It's faithful to the originals. But hey, they chose their source. They could just as easily have chosen a different one, or integrated it somewhat. As it is, it's a study on the plight of the American marine, and that is not quite comparable to some of the things that The wire tried to do. I liked it, mind, it was very good drama and some of the themes were treated quite beautifully.
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Oh, you people, with your proper criticisms based on actual reasoning. For some reason I've watched two episodes of Generation Kill and never finished it. (This is what happens when you get distracted by Rock of Love Bus, kids. Be warned.) But Generation Kill does not have Wendell Pierce in it. It is therefore obviously going to be a lesser work than The Wire as far as I'm concerned. Treme, on the other hand, has plenty of Bunk (except Bunk is named Antoine and is a horn player).
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Yes, but does Rock of Love Bus have Wendell Pierce in it?
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3410,
I thought [Generation Kill] didn't do some of the obvious things
I thought it was eventually not a success, since they were unable to use THE most obvious dramatic device - which really would've given it resonance - because it was based on a true story.
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Yes, but does Rock of Love Bus have Wendell Pierce in it?
The Bunk would have driven the Rock of Love Bus.
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