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It's three in the morning in Florida. You work in a nunnery? I like the fact that the Crucible-class incorporates the engine nozzles from the original 1977 Imperator destroyer. While their placement makes them seem slightly exposed and vulnerable, they do look...thrusty.
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
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posted
People still give this many fucques about Star Wars?
-------------------- ".mirrorS arE morE fuN thaN televisioN" - TEH PNIK FLAMIGNO
Registered: Nov 1999
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Hey! I had pneumonia! But yeah, it's a nice distraction, with diligent voice actors, and the multitude of new ships are very nice. Also, there's a new movie coming out in 2015, imho.
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quote:Originally posted by Cartman: People still give this many fucques about Star Wars?
I am actually excited for each new episode...whereas, by contrast, I doubt I'll bother wasting my time on a second JJTrek movie.
quote: It's three in the morning in Florida. You work in a nunnery? I like the fact that the Crucible-class incorporates the engine nozzles from the original 1977 Imperator destroyer. While their placement makes them seem slightly exposed and vulnerable, they do look...thrusty.
Things like engines being expose or half a ship's mass being attached by a twiggy think bit of hull dont seem major obstacles to ship design in the SW universe. Good eye on the engine nozzles though- I missed that. Huh. You're a pretty hardcore SW fan- I never knew.
Also, here in Florida, we have no Nunneries- I can not recall ever seeing a nun in real life, to be honest. Maybe it's the heat- that habit would be murder in 90 degrees and 80% humidity.
I spend my nights shoveling coal into the great furnaces of the stars, keeping them lit, being paid in the occasional wishes of children and the lovestruck. Meh. It came with insurance.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:whereas, by contrast, I doubt I'll bother wasting my time on a second JJTrek movie.
Come now, Jason. It's sci-fi, it's Trek, it's got ships! You have a duty to your peers. Give it a chance. I retried Clone Wars and my face didn't melt. You'll do fine. Just do what I did with CW: ignore prickly prejudice against the writers' entrenched tropes and conventions (40% of CW-episodes are about someone getting kidnapped Scooby Doo-style) and any eventual predictability (Hm, all the people involved in this duel are in Episode 3, so what could happen?), and just allow yourself to experience the show/movie/book on its own terms.
When I studied cinema arts in uni, we got to watch many silent movies. Us second-year students sometimes sat in awe at some of the spectacular stunts and ingenious special effects of the era, while the first-year student teenagers sat and snickered derisively at the "silly men jumping around in high-speed" and the corny wording of the dialogue cards. Keep an open mind. (Oh, and if you haven't yet, catch Scorsese's "Hugo Cabret", it's an affectionate love letter to early cinema. And Ben Kingsley rules)
Also, the "all or nothing" approach to movie reviewing doesn't do anyone any favors. That's sithpublican thinking. For instance, while I didn't like "Chronicles of Riddick" even a third as much as "Pitch Black", I still appreciated the new locations, armor and weapons, even if the rest was a bit stale. But Colm Feore always delivers. Yay Canada.
In Star Trek (2009), the best moment in the entire movie, for me, is those few seconds when an ensign gets sucked out through the bulkhead of the USS Kelvin, bouncing off of one of the phaser mounts to her death. Tragic, beautiful and a novel approach, all at once. Despite not being shown in 3D, that shot had more visual depth and atmosphere than any action shot in any Trek movie or episode I've ever seen. Most beautiful, and most horrible way to die, bizarre combo. They actually are trying to do stuff that hasn't been done before in Trek, visually and stylistically. And that sequence made the movie for me.
Besides, avoiding a work means barring oneself from any future discussion of it. Criticizing a work one hasn't seen or read is to forfeit by default. That's boring.
Anyway, that's not at all what I wanted to talk about, but give me the benefit of the doubt.
I do like Star Wars minutiae and ship class genealogy, ever since 1993 and Lawrence Holland's "TIE Fighter". For instance, I've never heard anyone else comment on the slightly suspicious layout of General Grievous' personal flagship, the Providence class "Invisible Hand", as compared to the imperial Loronar Strike Cruiser. I think it's kind of a "Akira Class/NX-01" relationship. Actually, even closer than that, since this isn't even flipped, just tricked out with different jewelry.
Watched Clone Wars 3-10 "Heroes on Both Sides" yesterday. Yet another new pretty ship, no idea as to name:
Any ideas? Seems Corellian but could just as well be Kuat.
Also of note, the transport shuttle used by the separatist politician, Padme, and Ahsoka was another H-2 Exec Shuttle, red this time.
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That's the Gozanti cruiser. Nick Sagan of SSM makes an amazing kit of that. The Invisible Hand looks like a wingless, eyeless cartoon woodpecker from the front, that other design looks more like a dogfish to me.
As to NuTrek, I dont know...giving more money to that seems like rewarding bad work. Yes, the effects were nice, if extremele unlike anything Star Trek- much more ike the NUBSG with the goddamn shakeycam "you are there" nonsense that I despise...and of course, LENS FLARE.
Nice ship designs that JJ then decided to super-size into idiocy...
I'll likely watch it as a bootleg, but unless I'm roling to the movies with a certain snarky girl, I'll pass...speaking on whic, you mentioned Chronicles of Riddick, which I had a GREAT time making fun of with that same girl (well, woman, she's 30 this year). That movie is SO BAD- so predictable that we called every scene 10 minutes before it happened and she called the knife would be used to kill the main bad guy -I noticed it was a catalog available Gil Hibben knife, just like Shinzon's was. Who makes the decision to buy something from Atlanta Cutlery and put it p before millions of viewers as something unique? Assinine.
Riddick and Trek both have something in common though-both waste Karl Urban's acting talents on rubbish roles....and according to his IMDB profile, he's in another Riddick movie which is in post productin.
Time for a new agent, Karl. Seriously.
Still, he's in Dredd, so I gotta give him props (annd my money). I really want to see that movie!
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Hey, I find Urban's McCoy to be spot on with DeForest Kelly's. Very convincing. But, then again, I'm apparently in the minority that actually liked the movie in the first place...
-------------------- I haul cardboard and cardboard accessories
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I liked Urban's performance in Trek- I find he's the shining light in many bad movies- That Riddic movie for example. It was like he just wanted to act the hell out of his character and the script was calling for him to be a dumb sack of meat.
In Trek he was spot on and then...wasted in the second half of the movie. (His IMDB page actuallylists him as Bones instead of "Doctor McCoy" which I find grating.) He managed the role without making it a parody (like Pegg Did) or an inpersonation... But the movie still sucked.
Love him in the LOTR movies- I hope some day that helmet he wore comes up for auction- that was badass, what with the horsey on the front and all. Just sayin. HIs bit about how the Hobbits really should not be in the battle was a great scene- it showcased how even a two minute scene with no action can be so memorable.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Indeed. And funny you should mention Lord of the Rings, because when I rolled with the Minas Tirith forums for Tolkien discussion there was this clout of high-horse "purists" who let details like "Farmer Maggot growing maize in the Shire and not corn grain" overshadow the long list of successful book-to-movie scene transfers (Rivendell, Rohan, Mordor, Isengard). Their scorn of "moviephiles" of all stripes almost rivaled McCarthy-era anticommunism.
I myself have an extremely hard time with Pirates of the Caribbean for a number of reasons, but I have huge respect for Geoffrey Rush and Bill Nighy, and Rob Marshall has a good portfolio, so I can't just write it all off because of Depp's planet-crushing vanity.
Hell, a few weeks ago Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in the episode "Going Native", buried the axe with Ben Affleck, after ten years of relentless hating on him, because they really did like Argo and had to give credit where it's due.
Anyway, the prevailing message is "make love, not war". Being critical is good, as long as you leave room for discussion, but finding saving graces in perceived flawed works is an extremely grateful skill for cinema, literature and life. Even more, it can be a useful tool for self-observation.
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Trye, true...good points. If you realy want to love on the NuTrek's good points, check out Drexler's site- all the ship geekery you can want on trek is there for the drooling. I stopped saving all the images after a while though- it was like a part-time job.
Meanwhile, if you're looking to have a nice desk type model, my pal Nick Sagan makes all kinds of crazy Warsie models- his Gozanti Cruiser (the ship shown in the last set of images you linked) is lovely and his 1:350th Skipray Blastboat is flippn' awesome!
I know we're all "ship guys" and he makes some killer ships- you may recall I model in small scales like 2500th, well the SW equivalent is 1/2256th, so it's in scale with the Revell Venator class kit- Nick's got some goodies in taht scale coming out that I'm excited about- including that Gozanti cruiser- which is crazy tiny, but still perfectly detailed as it's "grown" from his digital file instead of being made by hand.
Nim, I know you're watching stuff in order but DAMN- you need to go to Starwars.com and watch the last two episodes with the younglings building their lightsabers! I recall you dig that technology aspect and this is a showcase of how it's done and the materials used, etc. The episodes wont blow anything for what you've got to catch up on either.
You get to see a LOT more of that Crucible transport too! It's much smaller than I first thought! I'm guessing it's about 90 meters long, tops. The bridge of it resembles a large Millenium Falcon cockpit and is centered at the fore... You can clearly see where a turret would go at the center of the ship. It's got three escape pods on each side and two docking hatches. Very much a Correllian design.
I also love that it's not white! the tan color is appealing to me- not something we've seen on Jedi ships before.
There's also an incredible looking teacher droid taht's over a thousand years old (without any wiping or anything so it's fully sentient, wonderfully voiced by David Tennant )- and the interaction shows how Jedi have a respect for droid life that the rest of the galaxy does not...or at least they do for some droids. It also shows that becoming a Padawan is usually a process that a youngling has to achieve- not just a given like how Anakin became Obi wan's padawan.
Anyway, there's a Season Five trailer from Comicon that shows us some spoiler type shots that dont really spoil anything- and something I've wanted to happen since the series began is gong to be shown...Sideous throws down on some poor sap! [IMG] http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/i/2012/08/24/clone-wars-4.jpg[/IMG]
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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I am a very big fan of David Tennant, I still like his Doctor the most, this was very good news. And I do like lightsaber designs and construction, the aesthetics of shape and function can carry just as much "sexiness" as an inspired ship design, in my opinion.
I am very tempted to take you up on that, as I am trying not to hurry through the episodes (when they are a finite commodity), and would take a while to reach the most recent ones.
A Sidious-encounter would be very desireable indeed. I'll stay away from any trailers or pics, though, I love getting it fresh. Watching the trailer for the new "Evil Dead" remake was a bad decision, they stuffed every cool reimagining of every iconic scene in the trailer, leaving almost nothing unseen for the movie. I think I'll have had time to forget the bits before seeing it, though.
That Crucible just gets better. And those engines look beefier than I first thought. Very balanced and tasteful design.
I don't think I would have money for a custom-built ship model right now, but if I did, I would like to one day have a 5-6 inch model of the corellian YU-410, for a story I've been kicking around in my head. After a long search, I've discovered it's the smallest ship that can carry a fighter in its holds, without resorting to outboard "parasite" hull clamps.
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In the third part of that storyline with the younglings and their lghtsabers we get to see a few really come together- without spoiling story particulars, there's a lovely one with a wooden outer sheath that's a wookie's saber and it's just so damn classy!
We also learn that Venator class starships have MASSIVE and lovely to watch self-destructs to prevent their being captured...something I've always wondered about. I'd assume the Seperatist starships have something simmular which can be set.
And Cody's armor now sports something new onit's back, but it's purpose is unclear. That's just a tech observation, not relavant to the story which includes pirates, drinking, a mystery race which has "uses" for Jedi corpses, acrobats, lightsaber constructions, more drinking, General Grievius, a truly horrible death for a clone, the Crucible making an emergency landing (which is still pretty sexy), a big mix of characters from different species (a Dug character that speaks english!) Twilik sexual inuendo, a GREAT joke by Hondo and oh yes, a godamn traveling circus!
Catch up quick so we can do weekly episode synopsis and conversations!
That freighter design you linked is pretty cool, but I prefer the Solar Flare version Corellian design- like the falcon but with different engines and longer mandibles at the front- and the mandibles have a large, rectangular cargo pod between them which, back when I played the RPG, held my character's short-nosed Z-95 with it's specialty wings retracted and folded up like a BLackburn Buckaneer's. The idea being that if the shit hit the fan, he could climb in from the freighter and the front of the cargo pod would open, launching the fighter on a mag-rail where the engines would ignite and the wings fold out... Not something that could be put back in while in space though and the sizes probably dont work but what the hell, it was an RPG from back when that meant people sitting around a table having fun.
I'll check the Youtube link later and post on it- I'm at work (on break).
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YOu were looking at the Wolkpack armor before- I was re-watching the slaver episodes and man, you're going to become a big fan of the Wolfpack's leader when that trilogy of episodes is complete! No punches are pulled on the bad guys in those episodes- and even Obi Wan does something that's...well, it's definitely NOT the Jedi way!
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Glad to see I am not alone in enjoying TCW. I just wish I had more time to really analyze it a la http://nolettershome.info ... but I'll manage.
For awhile the Twilight caused me consternation despite my inability to dislike it on account of its off-axis thruster... the ships of the canon, as I recalled, all pretty much were inline, center-of-mass designs. But with the Nebulon and especially the AoTC refugee transport having high-riding engines, I got over it.
TCW, being part of the Lucas canon rather than 'merely' part of the EU, has been especially enjoyable for me. A lot of EU-philes have loathed it for trampling on EU material but you have to watch it as if only the films and such exist.
It will be interesting to see how 7-9 fit.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
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More future-Star Wars news: not only have they pegged Michael ("Little Miss Sunshine") Arndt as writer for Episode 7, they got Lawrence Kasdan, who needs no introduction, and Simon Kinberg (X-Men: First Class) for episode 8 and 9. I'd say that's good news.
As for Clone Wars, I'm through most of season 4, got some episode comments and some more ship notes.
First off, I liked this little nod to KotOR-mandies in the episode "Wookie Hunt", while showing off Trandoshan hunting trophies.
About that story, and CW-Trandoshans in general, it's sad that they made them bilingual, alternating between their hissing guttural reptile speech and then diluting it with corny, macho Klingon-sounding english. Taking a cue from Bossk in TESB, they would've been much more scary if only hissing in native tongue, like they did in the KotOR games. No subtitles, you'd have to make conjecture of their motives from their actions. Even more alien and unknowable. Ah well.
That episode gave another show of the Halo, bounty hunter Sugi's SS-54 assault ship. I'm starting to really like it. The engines are very big targets, of course, but anything with tiltmotors is a very welcome addition to CW.
I loved R2 and Threepio's two episodes. R2 is racking up a pretty sizeable body count by now, and Threepio's attempt at instituting democracy on the Gulliver-planet was cute, then horrible and funny.
I really like Commander Rex' new helmet design, a perfect combo of the first clone-visor and the vintage stormtrooper muzzle. The aesthetic blend feels natural, a match made in heaven.
The slaver episodes were pretty good, Kenobi did get to play rough, and the Zygerrian ships were nice. More tiltmotors still.
I've just finished the four-episode "Palpatine kidnapping" story, it felt like a thrust back to the worst parts of season 1. Dooku has no reason to kidnap his boss Palpatine, and if they truly wanted to, Palps could just walk out the door and onto a Dooku-hired ship, then claim "I'm kidnapped". The convoluted and unnecessary circus Dooku actually came up with was exactly why I stopped watching Clone Wars the first time around. Insulting the intelligence of the viewer.
I hoped the plot would have some other, deeper layer, but no, Dooku just wants to waste millions of credits in resources, prance about and have yet another pointless and predictable saber fight, then escape on a chopper ladder and gloat, even though he's the biggest loser there, having gained nothing, the entire operation a complete and utter failure. An operation which he had no motive to want to carry out. Also, Palpatine could've just as soon died in that shield reactor explosion. As it was, he blew up juuust hard enough to become unconscious. The script is worse than Ducktales.
I see from the wiki that a "Brent Friedman" was the writer for those four episodes, and his name appears nowhere else. Thank goodness.
In the episode prior to this, Katee Sackhoff calls Ahsoka skinny and smacks her on the rump. The bizarre hilarity of it almost makes up for all the crap in the proceeding four eps. Almost.
Then comes "Bounty", which shows just how night-and-day these episodes can be, depending on writer, director and cast. Simon Pegg as Dengar, new cool characters (Latts Razzi, Highsinger), an interesting plot, and a very pretty sky elevator. More of this. More of all of that.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$poilers "Revenge" and "Brothers": pure gold. I never knew Clancy Brown was the voice of Opress. Talking snake funny. Sam Witwer's Darth Maul is spot on, from the one line spoken by Peter Serafinowicz in TPM. Quad-fight aboard the freighter was geniously choreographed, they even had Maul do some genuine Wushu-style acrobatics and attack chains. Some of the finest animation I've ever seen. It's great that they still work to harness this style of rendering and don't just cheat and resort to simplistic motion-capture, like in the 2004 Appleseed-movie.
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