The first time I saw someone creating a spray paint "artwork" I was amazed. I thought the guy doing it had created his own style. He was doing a scene in outer space with a couple planet and using magazine pages to create textures.

Then I saw it everywhere. Then I thought less of the "art" form.

A couple of nerd notes from me, please!

1. Superman and Lois copulated at the end of Superman II, but maybe that was only in the Richard Donner cut.

2. If memory serves didn't Superman return (in Superman Returns) in a crystal vessel? Is so he probably left in it, so the lack of the yellow sun wouldn't harm him in outer space.

3. When I was in film school the directing majors in my class had a phone in conversation with Robert Wise. Wise directed the first Star Trek (Star Trek the Motion Picture). Yes, it's slow. But, according to him, his point was that at that time in 1979 there wasn't a lot of big budget films that showed ships in space, so the long shots of the Enterprise were awe-inducing for the time.

4. Upon first viewing of Superman Returns, yes, I thought it was boring. I'm more of a Marvel fan anyways, but years later I picked it up on Blu-Ray and watched it again knowing ahead of time that the plot was slow. I don't believe there are huge plot holes. Also the story gets better once you drop your expectations for a "kick ass" comic book action-fest. The storytelling is well paced and interesting. It's not Dark Knight, but it's still good filmmaking. It's not brainless crap like Ghost Rider or the regrettable Daredevil.

5. WHAT THE FUCK IS KEVIN SMITH WEARING?! Long shorts down to his ankles and a fucking trenchcoat? He's wearing Juggalo attire. He looks ridiculous.

6. Red Dead Redemption is awesome. I don't care if that has nothing to do with this.

My two cents.

I think both sides in this argument have fair points. Yes, all movies are derivative at some level. But not to this degree.

Also, I don't think Star Wars and the Matrix are that comparable. Sure, you could say Tatooine is like the real world, and space is like the Matrix. But that's kind of tenuous. It's not like outer space was a secret to Luke. They both fight a controlling, evil empire, but that plot point exists in half of action / epic movies. As a plot device, attacking evil empires works much better than attacking orphanages.

Also, if you look at the list of "7 types of plots", Matrix is man versus machine while Star wars is man versus man. Luke's life is heavily influenced by a mysterious father figure whose path he seeks to follow and whose (supposed) death he seeks to revenge. Neo's father plays no roll. Neo is saved by Trinity's love, Luke has no romantic interest. Who is the Han Solo figure in the Matrix?

Yes, they're similar at the one sentence level -- young warrior joins band of freedom fighters to destroy evil empire. That level of similarity can be found for any movie. For Avatar, you can instead write eight sentences, like in this trailer.

Young warrior leaves home for an alien, barely colonized new world inhabited by strange natives with a tenuous peace. The new world holds great spoils sought by the colonists. Meanwhile, the daughter of the native chief has an arranged marriage with a serious, stoic, well respected warrior of the tribe but she is not enthusiastic about this marriage. The young warrior and the native daughter meet and the warrior comes to appreciate the native point of view and way of life. The young warrior and the heroine consult with a sentient tree spirit. The young warrior and the chief's daughters form a close relationship that makes the betrothed mate jealous. The young warrior falls out of favor with the natives and barely escapes execution because of an attack from the colonists. Ultimately, there is a show down between the colonists and the natives, and the young warrior decides to aid the natives.

There are, of course, differences, especially with the ultimate resolution. In Pocahontas
1) There is less of a blood bath in the end.
2) The warrior leaves back to his old world at the end
3) The riches of the new world did not actually exist.
4) There is no "Avatar" element -- John doesn't pretend to be a native.
5) John wasn't specifically tasked to infiltrate the native community.

edit: I suppose this infamous image highlights the similarities better than I did:
http://www.black-and-right.com/wp-content/uploads/Pocahontas-to-Avatar.jpg

>> ^NordlichReiter:
I saw the preview for this on District 9 I think?
Dude goes to outer space and gets dementia.
Why the fuck would you be doing that to the moon? It is a vital piece of our happy little fluke of a system we have here.
Article on the moon, and if it were gone plus a few other things. written "by Neil F. Comins, University of Maine" - Quoted from the article.
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/33/moon2.html

This was a brilliant film, but yeah quite predictable to me.

But to nordlich: Eh? We're doing that to earth, mate.. mining it, etc. If we found an easily harvestable and extremely efficient energy source on the moon, we'd mine that instead.

I saw the preview for this on District 9 I think?

Dude goes to outer space and gets dementia.

Why the fuck would you be doing that to the moon? It is a vital piece of our happy little fluke* of a system we have here.

Article on the moon, and if it were gone plus a few other things. written "by Neil F. Comins, University of Maine" - Quoted from the article.
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/33/moon2.html

Tags for this video have been changed from 'bill, nye, greatest, discoveries, babylon, greek' to 'bill, nye, greatest, discoveries, Babylonian, Greek, German, Jewish, outer space' - edited by choggie

Everything needs to be imagined before it can become reality, and these ideas are actually way beyond science fiction even now because they are being pursued actively with existing technology and sound scientific principles.

Surely it will be very difficult, but before dismissing these ideas, consider how much has changed in the last 100 years. Someone born in 1898 who lived 100 years would have gone from a pre-lightbulb world to seeing it in widespread use, survived two world wars, seen the development of air travel, radar, the harnessing of nuclear power, landing on the MOON (!!), regular travel to outer space via the space shuttle, the building of several space stations, the development of every modern cancer therapy, cloning, sequencing of the human genome, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Ultrasound, Xray tomography, computers going from nothing to ubiquitous use, the explosion of the internet, cell phones, and a kajillion other major advances I don't have time to list right now.

If nothing else, this series of videos serves to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers, but all indications are that the RATE of change is INCREASING. Why? Because better technology helps us do more, FASTER. Not to mention there are MORE humans able to do MORE, FASTER, thanks to new technology.

I could easily see this technology in use in 40 years, and while I wouldn't invest as a venture capitalist at this point, research funding agencies are wise to fund this research as it will spur advancements in material science, electronics, computers & AI, and engineering even if we don't have a 3D Sex Bot by 2050.

I sort of want to parody this video where all the missionary work everyone complains about suddenly disappears. Then all the people in the video start dying of horrible diseases from the dirty water, or starving to death because they don't know how to properly irrigate their fields...

I like the comparison to overzealous vegans... this whole thing is getting old. Yes, people lobby for religious interests. There's also a meat lobby. Leave me alone, I won't sign your petition, and I don't have any money. To Dawkins and the rest, the public trust pays you to research biology, not pontificate on teapots from outer-space.

The reason nonbelievers don't organize is because we all have different political priorities. Why would you organize if you don't want the same things?

I noticed someone mentioned Ben Stein's movie about Intelligent Design. I watched it via Netflix because I'ms till interested in reading or hearing an opposing scientific theory to Evolution. But once again I was disappointed as the movie didn't even try to give an opposing theory, it just boiled down to 'dna is more complex then outer space, therefor its too complex to have occurred naturally, it MUST have been designed!'


I might actually give ID a seconds thought if someone, anyone, would actually give me a THEORY OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN. But no, it's all 'this is why Evolution ISN'T true' but nothing on why ID is, beyond of course 'because god made it.'

50 year-old TNT. Maybe I'm misinformed, but I understand that's supposed to be very volatile. That's amazing.

Either way, Cambodia.. O' Cambodia. I looked up the URL at the end of the video and was very disappointed:

"He wrote and directed the offbeat 1991 comedy Rubin and Ed, in which Crispin Glover and Howard Hesseman wander the desert looking for a suitable place to bury a frozen cat... He also wrote and directed Plan 10 from Outer Space."




Yeesh.

Yeah, but make sure we teach the kids about a benevolent cannibalistic zombie from outer-space who's father is the sole reason America exists. Dumbfuck. I think the thing I hate most about Fox is that when someone is making a good counter-argument, the host just talks over them to muddle what they are saying.

it's so fucking *terrible I kinda like it. it's like the musical equivalent of Plan 9 From Outer Space.

From: http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm

Transcript:

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.

I am delighted to be here, and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation¹s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man¹s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Thank you.

Killer Ball Sacks from Outer Space!

He greets his father with his hands up
Rehabilitated slightly, glad to be the mans child
The world is different since he seen it last
Outta jail been seven years and he's happy that he's free at last
All he had was his mother's letters
Now he's mobile and he's gotta make a changed and make it for the better
But he's black so he's got one strike against him
And he's young plus he came up in the system
But he's smart and he's finally makin' eighteen
And his goal's to get on top and try to stay clean
So he's callin' up his homie who done came up
Livin' lavish now they dealin' wit' the same stuff
And had that attitude that who he was was worth man
And with that fucked up attitude he killed his first man
Now its different he done did dirt
And realized killin' men meant comin' up
But it still hurt
And can't nobody change this
It's 1994 and we up against the same shit
I never understood why
I could never see a man cry
Until I see a man die

Imagine life at its full peak
Then imagine lyin' dead in the arms of your enemy
Imagine peace on this earth where there's no grief
Imagine grief on this earth where there's no peace
Everybody's got a different way of endin' it
And when your number comes for souls then they send it in
Now your time has arrived for your final test
(I see the fear in your eyes and in your final breath)
How much longer will it be 'till its all done?
Total darkness at ease be it all one
I watch him dying when he dies, let us celibrate
You took his life but your memory you'll never take
You'll be headed to another place
And the life you used to live will reflect in your momma's face
I still gotta' wonder why
I never seen a man cry
Untill I seen a man die

I hear you breathin' but your heart no longer sounds strong
But you're kinda scared of diein' so you hold on
And you keep on blackin' out and your pulse is low
Stop tryin' to fight the reap but just relax and let it go
Because theres no way you can fight it but you'll still try
And you can try it till you fight it but you'll still die
Your spirit leaves your body and your mind clears
The rigimore starts to set now you're outta' here
You start your journey into outer space
You see yourself in the light but you still feelin' outta' place
So you're standin' in the tunnel of eternal life
And you see the ones you never learned to love in life
Make the choice let it go and you can back it up
If you ain't at peace with God you need to patch it up
But if you're ready close your eyes and we can set it free
There lies a man not scared to die may he rest in peace
I still got to wonder why
I never seen a man cry
'Till I seen that man die