frythefly

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  1. Worlds of IF December 1958 at archive.org
  2. Re Intentional posthumous releases: In 2015 Margaret Atwood was the first author to submit a book to the Future Library Project. Her novel Scribbler Moon will be released in 2114. A limited edition of all submitte books will be printed on paper sourced from trees planted in 2014.
  3. This Franz Xaver Messerschmidt sculpture from around 1770 is called The Grumpy Old Soldier and he does squint menacingly, i think. But who knows what Messerschmidt had in mind with.
  4. Which Trump clone are we talking about? Truump or Truuump? Re Gaming history: I came across this video of Peter Cushing painting miniatures and setting up a war game according to the rules in H.G. Wells' Little Wars "A Game for Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl [ ] who likes boys' games and books":
  5. When you were talking about C.P.U. Bach, i remembered a robot news related story: If There Was A Turing Test For Music Artificial Intelligence, 'Kulitta' Might Pass It. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=66&v=VXo-4wOb_vo Added cosmic confluence: Donya Quick also uses a Korg nanocontrol.
  6. Marker: There is a great and affordable collection of some of Marker's work available in the UK. Nouvelle vague in general: In November Arrow will release a limited 16 disc Jacques Rivette Blu-Ray collection including both cuts of Out 1. *drool*
  7. Re Videoball, Rocket League: Haven't finished the podcast, so i don't know if it came up, but Tim Rogers (Videoball) reviewed the sport of soccer for kotaku: http://kotaku.com/soccer-the-kotaku-review-1595223097 Great piece. Linked in the review is a video of an Idiecade talk Rogers and Bennett Foddy gave in which they rank the best designed sports (games): GiantBomb has had their San Francisco team play against their New York team in two great videos: http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/us-vs-them-rocket-league/2300-10502/ and http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/us-vs-them-rocket-league-rematch/2300-10542/ The comeback of team New York in the second video is amazing. If like me you like a good underdog story, you will love this.
  8. Aside: The Fleischers did dabble in more 'mature' animation. In their Out of the Inkwell series of experimental shorts they used Max Fleischer's invention of rotoscoping to great effect. I like this passage from Modelling. Max Fleischer plays himself and draws Koko the Clown. Koko complains: "Why don'tcha use fresh ink when you draw me? I've got no more pep than a snail under ether." He yawns in a janky motion. Fleischer commands: "No stalling now ~~ brace up ~~ show some life!" And indeed he does: https://youtu.be/3AtEeQQp0Fg?t=55s Animation related: When Jake spoke about his expectations/hopes for VR - "put me inside a sweet of a sweet neon light show" - Norman McLaren came to mind: And especially: Btw: All parts of McLaren's introduction to animation - Animated Motion - can be found on the National Film Board of Canada site. Part 1: https://www.nfb.ca/film/animated_motion_part_1
  9. re your last paragraph: Jake brought up human represantation. In narrative films this representation is heightened. In some early silent cinemas more, e.g. german expressionism and russian montage, than in others, e.g. japanese shomin-geki and Josef von Sternbergs films. But in documentary films, even in the earliest ones, humans are humans. Like in this trip down San Francisco's Market Street in 1906: The Miles Brothers put a camera in front of a cable car and let it run. But can you compare this undoubtedly fascinating time capsule to a narrative film or game? I don't know. re your second paragraph: Sometime in the 1950s historically informed performances of 'early' music really took off. When I watch a movie at home i always wonder if the experience would have been better had i watched in a theater. When I play a game on an emulator i always wonder if the experience would have been better had i played it on the original hardware. Last fall I finally saw a silent movie in a movie theater with live piano accompaniment. Although the crowd was sparse and the movie not that good, it felt right. What could historically informed performance mean in context of games?
  10. I am like the baffled friend Sean mentioned: Why are people buying this. Do they think that sounds good? Maybe major labels', A movie studios' and AAA game devs' ad campaigns do work after all. When I first saw the final box art for Far Cry 4 I was reminded of a recent entry to the Guiness book of world records: A part of the Far Cry 4 ad campaign: A Ubisoft podcast hosted by community devs Kim and Ari with guests script writer Liz Albl and co lead writer Li Kuo. Strong female characters. Wise and traditionalist natives.
  11. Probably a lobby card: Re Image restoration: Pauline Stakelon, who restored The Goldbergs for a DVD set, wrote A Case for Imperfection: Confessions of a Digital Restoration Artist. She specifically means the imperfections of kinescopes: Of the 71 extant episodes of The Goldbergs only the complete last season is available as 35mm film, the remaining episodes exist only as kinescopes. Somewhat related: Nick Pinkerton's argument for the imperfections of film versus the perfect digital image. Related: The Minnesotan Muller Family Theatres prepare a 70mm copy of Interstellar for projection:
  12. @ Films, China, censorship, Theme Parks In the Silent Film era it was not unusual for there being several versions of a film: "There were no good duplicate materials available yet, and only if one had several negatives was it possible to produce a large number of copies, or export negatives, from which, in turn, foreign distributors could make their copies. These original negatives, shot parallel, originated from several cameras that were placed side by side during shooting, or were a montage produced from a number of different takes of the same shot that were at best on the same artistic level, but never totally identical, of course." (Source pdf) For Fritz Lang's Metropolis, to which this quotation refers, there was a german and an international version as well as a copy for Paramount, the US-american distributor. Until this day distributors and goverments are unfortunately able to create "country specific" versions of films. Recent-ish examples: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Blissfully Yours was cut from 125 to 110 minutes in his native Thailand due to nudity and sex scenes. Harvey Weinstein, the US distributor for Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer, wanted to cut 20 minutes from the original and add a monologue at the end that ties up lose ends. Bong was able to prevent this from happening. In 2010 Jafar Panahi received a 20 year ban from making films from the Iranian government. Since then he has released two (fantastic) feature films by smuggling them out of Iran on USB sticks. Panahi's situation is similar to the independent film scene in China, where there are official and unofficial or legal and illegal films, as Karin Chien from DGenerate Films puts it in this great documentary on the subject: " " Jia Zhangke's first three feature films qualify as underground according to this definition. They, like Weerasethakul's and Panahi's films, ran at film festivals abroad, but were illegal in China. It's surprising then, that Jia's first state approved feature, 2004's The World, was approved in the first place, because it is as critical about current day China as his previous works. It depicts the life of young a young couple, Tao and Taisheng, working at Beijing World Park "which recreates world landmarks at reduced scales for Chinese tourists". The film explores, in Baudrillard's words, the 'masking and denaturation of a profound reality' to which Anita referred to: Tao wants to see the real world, but is trapped inside this scaled down version of the real thing. @Zelda The Giant Bomb guys recently played some CD-i games. Amongst them Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Most people (me included) probably know them for their outlandish cutscenes and not for their gameplay. I was quite surprised that in Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon you, as the title suggests, play as Zelda. From wiki: "Reversing the traditional Link-saves-Zelda plotline, Wand of Gamelon stars Zelda as she adventures to rescue Link and her father the king who have not returned from their quest." In the third Zelda game for the CD-i, Zelda's Adventure, you also play as Zelda. Again from wiki: "Gannon has kidnapped Link and stolen the seven celestial signs, creating an "Age of Darkness" in the kingdom of Tolemac. Princess Zelda is recruited by the court astrologer Gaspra (played by Mark Andrade) to collect the signs to defeat Ganon and save Link."