Past, Present and Future

[--Pete]

Hi,

Blue/Butter Pecan Ice cream/Moon River/Robert Redford/Camelot/1960 Cadillac conv.

Blue is good on blonds. I prefer yellow for bikinis on brunettes. Butter Pecan Ice Cream, yum! But strawberry or blueberry, freshly made in season? And so forth. My favorite anything depends on my mood and desire at any time.

True movies seldom IF ever live up to the book.

Very true. Most good books would make movies that are many hours long. The mini-series is a much better venue. But the movie should be a Reader's Digest Condensed version or, at the very least least, a Classics Illustrated rendition of the book. If the basic premise is changed, if the character of the protagonist or antagonist is changed, if essential plot elements are removed (or, worse, added) then the movie is not a true retelling of the book. And to promote it as such is dishonest and irritating. The movie, judged as a movie, may be great, but it is false and false offends me.

Now, I'm not saying that one work should not inspire others. One of my favorite (hehe) examples of this is RAH's Starship Troopers inspiring Haldeman's The Forever War leading to Card's Ender's Game (the short story, not the novel and definitely not the series). The pro-military, anti-military, and humanistic viewpoints of those three pieces complement each other and give a thoughtful reader much to contemplate. What I do not like is the making of Starship Troopers into a third rate movie where all that is deep and interesting in the novel is thrown out.

Truly creative people are often influenced by their predecessors, but do not need to plagiarize them. If a concept sparks an idea, then follow the idea and give credit to the original. But I often suspect that truly creative people are killed on sight in the movie industry.

. . . I "Hate" for the lack of a better word RAP music.

I refuse to accept RAP as music. It is, at best, free verse accompanied with a beat. More often, it is just a subset of CRAP.

. . . although I must admit the rating for most of the movies @ Nexflix do reflect my own choice of movies.

Yeah, me too.

YES please manipulate my emotions that is the reason I'm watching a movie to get my emotions stimulated.

There is a difference between 'stimulated' and 'manipulated'. When you stimulate my emotions, you make me feel what I feel. When you manipulate my emotions, you try to make me feel what you want me to feel. Knowing the difference, feeling the difference, and resisting the difference helps to make one a better judge of movies and of used car salesmen.

They were exploding gas containers, plus the gas in the other cars caused a massive fireball that engulfed the lower part of the ferry , . .

Even worse. Gas doesn't explode, gas burns. Only if you mix the gas with a lot of air (but not too much) will you get an explosion. That's why carburetors and fuel injectors have to be so precise. Besides, I seem to remember the mention of PETN in the babble that passed for dialog. If the idea is that the PETN was used to explode the glass containers, thereby dispersing the gas and igniting it, then that works, but it would only yield a very low level detonation. It would cause a big fire on the car deck, but the pressure wave would not have caused much damage. A fuel oil-fertilizer bomb that would fit the back of that truck would work. However, it, in all probability, would have ripped the ferry in half (remember Oklahoma City). Besides, no such type bomb was mentioned, IIRC.

IF the door was open leading to the engine room then I would think that the Explosion pushes Out in all directions to include down a hallway or stairwell, . . .

Nope, doesn't work that way. Believe me, I've modeled, witnessed, and instrumented enough explosions to know. An explosion in the open (which is basically what this was) sends out a spherical shock wave. If you think of that on a molecular level, it's just the air and other material being pushed outward from the center of the explosion. Now think of it as baseballs going straight down a hall. If there's a door open into the hall, what would make a baseball curve ninety degrees and go into the door?

. . . IF not it was a great visual effect.

And that, my friend, is much of the crux of my problem. I've seen great visual effects. Rainbows and sunsets and waterfalls. A small puffy cloud from above with the Vietnamese forest as its background. Five hundred pounds of explosives taking out a bunker and a foot long steel rod penetrating four inches of cold rolled armor. OK, I didn't really 'see' those last two, they were way too fast. But I was present, and saw the results. Most movie visual effects leave me cold. Especially all the overused ones.

. . . however the geek in the movie did explained being able to travel back in time to view events by folding a sheet of Paper so that the two ends were closer together . . .

How does that 'explain' anything? There's the famous story of someone (often cited as Einstein) asked to describe how radio works to his grandmother. He replies "Well, telegraphy is like a cat. You pull its tail in New York and it meows in San Francisco. Radio is like that, but without the cat." The explanation in the movie is like that. It really explains nothing. They just used more technobable in the film. Now Stargate did it right. Inexplicable alien technology -- no attempt to BS the audience, just a little 'wink wink nudge nudge' and a mutual agreement to suspend disbelief for the duration. But just 'suspend', not 'hang, draw, and quarter.'

Pete would you prefer a time machine with a Trottle you push foward or backward to time travel or this movie's version of time travel?

I'd prefer a time machine written by someone who actually understood the concept of narration, plot, characterization. Filmed by someone who would rather entertain me with a story than amaze me with effects. Someone who would permit me to feel rather than try to force feelings on me. As to the time machine, then either make it plausible or leave it unexplained. But don't piss in my ear and tell me it's raining.;)

Like I said, it's a good action flick. But if you buy into their premise, then what's the use? *All* futures happen. No one is saved in the futures where the bomb goes off, no one dies in the ones where it doesn't. It's worse than predestination -- nothing you do matters because everything *will* happen. For every 'future' where you save the girl, there's one where you don't. And if any of that is true, then just which past are you looking at and going to?

--Pete