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Post by Gilberto on Jan 8, 2011 13:56:41 GMT -5
Sean and Greg talk TRON 2, the upcoming Green Lantern and Thor movies, what's wrong with Superman, the future of the X-Men and Transformers, and how the Hugh Jackman film Real Steel is a modern redo of the Stuart Gordon classic Robot Jox. Oh yeah, we're back... traffic.libsyn.com/darkcrazy/TVAMD_TRON.mp3 |
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Post by lynn on Jan 9, 2011 1:08:37 GMT -5
Talk about being busy Sean, you sure cobbled this one together hastily! I agree, TVAMD is definately back with this episode, which features a welcome return to the lengthy Gilbert rant accompanied by a rising score. Nicely done. Also some good solid movie talk in there.
For those who may be concerned I'm not in Queensland, although the flooding has been over major areas of NSW also in the past weeks it hasn't affected me materially, apart from having to cross some dodgy washed out roads and float over some parts of the Liverpool plains at Christmas.
Good start to the new year boys!
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Post by Gilberto on Jan 9, 2011 9:26:07 GMT -5
I'm glad you're okay over there.
I'm also glad to be back ranting and talking movies, so hopefully we'll have another fine year of audio episodes and video specials. Hope everybody has fun!
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Post by drivebyluna on Jan 9, 2011 13:52:33 GMT -5
I also got worried because you said that your car stalled out so I thought maybe you had to drive through the flood.
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Post by lynn on Jan 9, 2011 17:03:28 GMT -5
Thanks for all the concern! The car did stall, but typically it did fine going through a foot or so of water through some floods but give it a hot day and a hill climb and it blew a gasket. It's Australia, if it's not flooding it's so hot your car catches fire by itself.
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Esteban
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I AM THE KING OF MACROCRANIA
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Post by Esteban on Jan 23, 2011 15:46:26 GMT -5
Bill's Clark Kent/Superman speech in Kill Bill II struck people as profound because it was a great character moment for Bill. I don't know if anyone was really convinced based on Bill's argument that Clark Kent is a critique of humanity but it did give a glimpse into the twisted way Bill saw the world. It reflected Bill's own supreme arrogance and low opinion of humanity that he thought Superman would think that way. It made Bill a relatable character and said a lot about his motivations. I think Superman isn't easy to care about as a character and he's boring in a lot of respects but at the time it was the only interesting thing anyone had said about Superman in years (regardless of its validity as a character study).
One of two things I didn't understand about Tron:Legacy is why the bad guys didn't immediately download Flynn's disk once they had it. I saw it floating in that holder thing and assumed it had been copied immediately-this is some kind of computer world after all. But then when they lose it a chase begins to get it back so I guess things don't work as I expect them to on the grid. The other thing I didn't get is how Clue's grid army was expected to cross over into reality using a porthole that so far had only been shown to be able to transport one person at a time. And on top of that, it was a porthole that was closing. Would it have worked for their big ships? Would their ships have functioned in normal reality? Do physics on the grid and in the real world work the same? I really wasn't convinced that Clue was a credible threat to the outside real life world. Flynn's sacrifice seemed a big waste.
If you do plan on coming down to the Coral Castle area I'd recommend hitting one of Billy Mitchell's restaurants in Hollywood. (Hollywood is in Broward county along with Fort Lauderdale north of Miami-Dade county.) He owns the "Rickey's World Famous Restaurant" chain and he lives down here so sometimes people get to meet him while they eat there. I also found a book the other day called "Ghosts and Mysteries of Broward County" and it tells stories of all sorts of haunted places you could visit if you're into that kind of stuff. One really good story was about an arcade where people report seeing the reflection of a boy in their video game screens as they're playing and when they look around he's not actually there. But his reflection stays on the glass as if he's watching from behind their shoulder. He's memorable because of a huge bloody gash in his face with exposed tissue and all sorts of disgustingness oozing out. I liked the book because it came out fairly recently so the hauntings are current as of 2010.
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Post by lynn on Jan 23, 2011 18:17:33 GMT -5
So you're saying Tron would have gone totally differently if the baddies had have used the most basic piece of computer advice and backed up their files? Nice.
I like how your ghost story works into the topic, with the video game theme and all. It sounds totally creepy. Is there a story as to how he got the gash and why he's at the computer screen? Did a game explode on him while he was playing one day?
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Esteban
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Post by Esteban on Jan 23, 2011 20:10:35 GMT -5
Yeah, I don't understand how in a world where everything is a computer program the programs themselves have no way to instantaneously absorb information. Maybe the disc itself should have been a character, but maybe there's a delineation between raw data and programs and they can't readily interface. I don't know. I never saw the first Tron so I don't know how it all works and I'm still not clear on the value of Flynn's disc and what power it was supposed to have.
The arcade ghost story as related in the book doesn't neatly wrap up with all the details. They only know that at least two people have seen it and the background of the boy is unknown. It's creepy and I'd like to go because it's within a reasonable distance from me but I guess it's scary to contemplate how I'd react if I saw something.
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Post by lynn on Jan 23, 2011 21:41:23 GMT -5
I'd scream and wet my pants if I saw a ghost. I have the same reaction if I see a spider, I stranger popping his head in the window or even a curtain falling off its rod in front of me. I don't know how these ghost whisperers just chat with the ghosts. Especially the gooey dead ones. I don't think I'd be able to look for fear of seeing something. I'm surprised the boy doesn't have a story, must be a young ghost. Most ghosts have about five different versions of their story because people just make stuff up.
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Post by Gilberto on Jan 24, 2011 19:00:37 GMT -5
No point asking Lynn her position on ghost spiders...
It's interesting to hear the perspective of someone who hasn't seen the first TRON, because the device where they are equating the inner workings of a computer to a fantasy world is supposed to be just be accepted by the viewer going in.
They don't explain the value of the laser cannon that digitizes Flynn, but in the first film it's developed to be a means of transporting matter by digitizing it and reconstructing it from the data, so the idea that computer programs can use it to enter the physical universe is consistent with that concept. Maybe Flynn's knowledge is necessary to understand the code required to use the digitizer, but that would require them to study it before using it instead of just mobilizing the army right away. That was just a device to add a suspenseful element to the story, I think.
It's interesting to think of the programs like real computer programs, which are just graphical interfaces built on top of computer code instead of being raw code themselves. That and the accelerated time of the computer world explains why it seems to take forever but actually takes very little time in our world. The opening of the portal is actually a window of time that represents the few seconds required to fire up the cannon and digitize Flynn, which is roughly the average amount of time your computer hangs on the hourglass before performing an operation, so I can believe that. The rest is just them belting out computer lingo to pass Flynn off as some kind of wizard. But wizards are common in the computer world too. The scene where he repairs the girl by re-writing her raw code kind of illustrates that the programs themselves are intermediary and don't have direct control over the data that comprises them, much like we don't directly control our own DNA. But that might be getting too deep into it.
We should totally go to coral castle and the haunted arcade! We should drop you a line if you're that close. Sounds like a fun adventure.
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Esteban
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Post by Esteban on Jan 25, 2011 8:25:34 GMT -5
It's interesting to hear the perspective of someone who hasn't seen the first TRON, because the device where they are equating the inner workings of a computer to a fantasy world is supposed to be just be accepted by the viewer going in. I thought the opening voiceover narration did a great job of explaining the nature of the Grid and setting up the premise, then when we got to see it I just ended up disappointed by how earthly it looked. It was like a scaled down version of normal reality (albeit more poorly lit) with architecture, dance clubs, an organic geography at the fringes of town amd even bodies of water. I was expecting something more surreal and circuity like the first Tron. I didn't see the first Tron but the images I've seen of those bikes looked really unearthly while these of Legacy looked very much real. The more real everything seemed the more I felt like this may as well have been a Micronauts movie instead. They don't explain the value of the laser cannon that digitizes Flynn, but in the first film it's developed to be a means of transporting matter by digitizing it and reconstructing it from the data, so the idea that computer programs can use it to enter the physical universe is consistent with that concept. Maybe Flynn's knowledge is necessary to understand the code required to use the digitizer, but that would require them to study it before using it instead of just mobilizing the army right away. That was just a device to add a suspenseful element to the story, I think. I know I'm jumping in a little late without having seen the first one but a quick explanation of the laser function like you just provided would have been helpful. It was a bit of a tripping up point for me. I can buy the laser but I kept getting thrown by the large size of the army and knowing that the laser on the other side opens up into the tiny cramped basement of an 80s arcade. Had it just been Clue trying to get through I could have gone along with that, but as soon as they showed thousands of troops and giant ships and tanks I wondered how they were going to do it. Had the story progressed with Clue getting through to the user world and then building giant lasers to bring his army over I'd have been cool with that. It would have established him as a great threat to both worlds and made the enormous sacrifice of Flynn's life more necessary. The rest is just them belting out computer lingo to pass Flynn off as some kind of wizard. But wizards are common in the computer world too. The scene where he repairs the girl by re-writing her raw code kind of illustrates that the programs themselves are intermediary and don't have direct control over the data that comprises them, much like we don't directly control our own DNA. But that might be getting too deep into it. I think nowadays we should be able to get deep into movies and not have the structure of these fantasy worlds unravel because they weren't explained well enough. The DNA analogy is probably exactly how it works, given the double helix look of the program code. It's my failing that I didn't catch that given they so clearly alluded to it as being the relationship between program and code. I'm still a little unclear on what made some programs alive and what on the grid was and wasn't a program. I couldn't figure out what made a program sentient-like the bike riders obviously were but the bikes weren't, yet they both exploded into the same glowy shards when they were destroyed. I'm probably not getting in deep enough if I'm not understanding some of these relationships. We should totally go to coral castle and the haunted arcade! We should drop you a line if you're that close. Sounds like a fun adventure. If you do make the big commitment to travel all the way down then I'd be willing to help with pointers on stuff around here to see. Miami and Lauderdale are close enough together with enough to do that a weekend would be totally packed with fun things. I'd definitely want you guys to feel like the journey was worthwhile even if the arcade ghost doesn't show up. |
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Post by Gilberto on Jan 25, 2011 19:36:11 GMT -5
Hmm... All good points.
What's interesting about Clu trying to take an army to the other side is that he doesn't have an inkling (almost said doesn't have a clue) as to what the real world is like. Would have been more fun to let his army through and find the cramped basement and the real world to be a startling disappointment. That could have been a lot more interesting. Your idea of just Clu trying to get through would make more sense; again it seems like the program army idea was a device to build more suspense than was necessary.
Unfortunately they limited Clu's story because they needed to destroy him and Flynn to relieve Jeff Bridges from sequel duties.
You're right about the distinction between the "living" programs and they're non-living counterparts. In the first they had a better concept because the programs were directly related to their creators and that really made the concept work. One of the programmers says that no matter what happens to the company, their soul exists in every program they created and that turns out to be true in the computer world. It's kind of a metaphor for religion in that the philosophy is empty without the input of the people who created it, which is why the users are considered religious figures in the computer world. I didn't realize how much of the nuances were not as apparent in the new movie.
As for the Superman speech in Kill Bill, I'm willing to admit that Tarantino may have intended for it to illustrate Bill's disconnection with humanity. Unfortunately most people seem to have misinterpreted this narrative and taken it at face value, so maybe that's not his fault.
As for coral castle, I'm totally up for it. Supercon is out because it apparently takes place on 4th of July weekend, but we could probably do an off-season tour of weird Florida. We should hook up this year; I really need a new adventure.
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