Father Xmas

I watched it in the 60s and 70s (when I was 7-9) because I didn't like Mom's General Hospital or One Life to Live. I mean this show had monsters which were cool.

[rant]

And yes, camp is intentional. I know that the cynical dark nature attitudes of today, when shined on the TV shows of past eras makes their concepts seemingly incredulous. You had Police who cared about the general public and treated everyone fairly, you had Doctors who cared about all their patients as individuals and you had lawyers who were willing to put their reputations on the line for their clients. It's obvious that the shows creators must be trying for under the radar satire so lets bring it above board 30 years later when we make the movie.

We all know that really doesn't happen.

Back then, TV show budgets were tiny. Do you know why we have so many damn "reality" shows today? Because compared to scripted dramas, they are relatively cheap to make. Why? Because we want our scripted dramas to be nearly the same quality as movies, same quality sets, effects, general production values, etc. We want car chases and aliens and grandiose outdoor sets. And with the advent of HDTV, they need to be even higher quality than what could be passed off in the days of 704x480 interlaced. You can't build it out of rough plywood with a few coats of paint.

So yes we declare old or foreign TV as "campy" since we can tell the sets are cardboard and we can see the wires holding up the cape. It wasn't intentional, it's just what they could do with the budget.

[/rant]

Surprised that nobody posted the Season 7 Trailer for Doctor Who yet.

I saw the trailer before The Hunger Games.

Sadly Johnny Depp/Tim Burton has become best known for Depp's "odd" characters and Burton's dark esthetic.

Their decision to play it as a "culture shock" comedy as oppose to the Gothic horror elements of the original annoys me simply because it's become common place to take a 70s/80s/90s TV series and make a campy comedy out of them. Just as only board games and children's TV series from that era can be made into enormous budget action films (Battleship was other trailer shown before The Hunger Games).

Spoilers ahead, movie and novel.







In the novel Haymitch pounded into them before Peeta's confession on stage to always be seen side by side, holding hands if possible. The movie made it more like most of it was Peeta's doing with Haymitch jumping on the idea later.

The Katniss falling for Peeta while in the cave nursing him back to health felt too rushed in the movie. Also I'm wondering if the change from a syringe to a balm for the medicine to save Peeta was due to the MPAA ratings board (kids injecting other kids is bad).

In the book, Peeta barely survived, eventually losing his injured leg and had it replaced with an artificial one. It was a scene in the book when Peeta was rushed to surgery and as Katniss was taken away it showed how much Katniss had grown attached to Peeta. Her rejection of him on the way home in the novel seemed more like her trying to put the games behind her and trying to convince herself that her feelings for him were of course fake, nothing more. It still crushed Peeta, changing the entire dynamic between them in the last 10 pages.

Lastly the amount of blood is really trivial in the film. Anyone who ever received a cut to the scalp knows how bad it can look and how bloody it can be. In the movie Katniss's scalp cut had less blood than your average non anime nose bleed. In the book it flowed enough to blind her in one eye until she was able to bandage it (it reopened later along with Peeta's leg wound during the final battle).

They skipped a whole number of aliments during her time alone including the initial dehydration, the lose of hearing in one ear and they seriously toned down the hallucinations from the wasp poison (which would have easily made it an R). And the mutant wolf attack at the end was quite different from the novel (novel had a very disturbing twist with the mutts).

I get the reasons for some of these changes. First, it had to be a PG-13 and sadly that eliminates some content altogether (nudity) and of course quite a bit of violence in a movie about teenage trial by combat. Other changes because we couldn't listen into Katniss's thoughts as she figured out the supplies were mined so they had to make it obvious to the movie goer that there were mines around the supplies.

Second, as I pointed out earlier that this movie made more money in one weekend than any of Lionsgate's previous films in their entire run. Therefore it's not surprising that the budget was quite low for a blockbuster, under $100 million. This means they really couldn't go wild with the digital effects. The Capital was mostly digital matte. They only had few internal/external sets other than filming in the forest. In the book the interviews were done on a stage large enough to have all 24 tributes on stage at once, allowing for a cut to Katness for all to see when Peeta did his confession. Little things like that showed how frugal they were with the budget.

Well looks like they got to the Oniwaban arc (Gatling gun/Megumi story) as well as the earlier Jinei arc so they should have enough action.

You may have better luck getting help from the Mac Users section of the forum.

As with everything, it depends on the quality of the driver.

OpenGL existed long before Direct3D and it took until DirectX 9 to catch up to the 2D/3D feature set of OpenGL. That's one of the reasons id used it since QuakeGL.

nVidia embraced OpenGL during nVidia's earliest days, back when 3dfx Voodoo cards were all the rage, with complete drivers. ATI on the other hand only had enough OpenGL support to run GLQuake, Quake II or whatever the current id 3D engine needed, which is why it was called a miniport driver.

If you are this paranoid, then use the official NCSoft support off of the COH website.

Yes they moved the power pools to level 4, overhauled the order of powers in the travel power pools (also added one more power in each) and they also lowered the level for APP/PPP to 35 from 41. They did this when Issue 21/Freedom was released.

Also were you around for the Fitness for All change back in Issue 19? All four Fitness powers are now available as inherent at Level 2. Old characters that took some will need to respec to get them all.

Going to need all of those reports, not just what you think we need.

Well lump sum is only $341 million and you will lose around half of that to taxes. Otherwise it's 26 payments of roughly $18 million a year before taxes.

Well saw it tonight. Shaky cam was a way to both hide the "teen on teen" murder as well as hide the likely lack of fighting skills among the actors. Probably actually cheaper to depend on shaky cam than put the principle tribute actors through stunt fighting boot camp.

I was more curious how they were going to take a novel that is entirely in first person with a lot of internal dialog and turn it into a movie. The additional scenes of District 12 and 11, of Gale, of the game's Truman Show like control room as well as President Snow was more about laying the groundwork for Catching Fire.

The one snarky comment that popped into my head was near the end of the movie when the gamemasters first accelerated "sunset" before releasing the mutts. Peeta asked Katniss why and nearly blurted out "so we can't see the CGI critter too clearly".

I was actually disappointed that they didn't show Peeta being crushed when Katniss tells him that it was all an act during the games. I found that the second most emotional scene in the novel, Rue's death being the first.

Actually I would like to take Steelclaw's suggestions one step further and have them available through a bank of vending machines that could be located in each zone.

Include the sounds of either a bill feeder/coin sorter followed buy a whirring motor driving the spiral and ending in a thunk of something dropping into the pick up tray and tada, baseball bat or smoke grenades or revolver or etc. Have random minions run up to them periodically, fiddle with them and then run off wielding one of the weapons you can get.

And don't forget to check the wiki, ParagonWiki.

They had Lion-o's rival hostage, so his judgement is clouded. She simply clarified it.

As for the Thundertank, I think the original still exists as part of this new model, tucked underneath and between the paws of this hulked up version.

No it doesn't, only purchased points count toward the token.

I craft them and add them to my AR character's golf bag of weapons she pulls out of hammerspace.

Minor note, the film made more money over the weekend than any other Lionsgate film made over their entire run.

And it wasn't even in 3D! Not that it won't matter for much longer.

This really should be in the Suggestions section, other than explaining the problem you see.

So did anyone catch this CGI movie that fits into the original Ben 10 continuity (Ben and Gwen being 10)? Thoughts?

I like how they got all the VAs back to do their rolls. Overall it was good, CGI a little simple (Ben's cow lick looked more like cat ears) but it's reasonable for a TV budget.

Ben 10:UA - 1st of a 2 part episode of the group fighting Cthulhu like being.

Thundercats - Panthro's first set of robot arms, high comedy. Also hate the Plastic-Man type arms. New enemies are OK and the whole brother betrayed side story is going to be annoying to some degree.

Green Lantern - Great, now they have a part hot girl robot - part hot girl construct AI as a fourth member. Next week Hal plays Kirk.

Young Justice - More reveals, more graying up members of the team. Obvious lead in to who's new in the JL and who joins the rookie league.

Oh and for those who miss them, all four repeat on Sunday in the same 9-11am EDT time slot on CN.

I saw this article on it which includes the ticket price, $188 USD.

I actually enjoyed that trailer. My memories of the Stooges are fuzzy over time but it did remind me a lot of their standard antics. Still the orphanage needs money to stay open has been done before, hence my earlier The Three Stooges does The Blues Brothers remark.

No matter, GPU number doesn't directly relate to the relative performance anyways.

GTX 480/470/465 used the GF100
GTX 580/570/560Ti448 used the GF110
GTX 680 uses the GK104

GTX 460 used the GF104
GTX 560/560Ti used the GF114

Also generally the higher the number, the slower the GPU. The GF119 powers the GT 520. Actually it's more probable that higher the number simply means a later design in the GPU family but nearly all later GPU designs are about downsizing the original GPU of the series for lower end cards.

Battle Royal doesn't try to dress up the fight as entertainment, it's merely a punishment and warning from those who are in power. Also the "contest" has a fix time limit. All the participants are from the same school class, thus at least knowing one another to various degrees. The class is chosen randomly from the entire republic.

The Hunger Games is also a punishment and warning from the existing government, the contestants learn of each others skills as well as endearing themselves to the viewers, who are encouraged to help their favorite through gifts. The game itself has no fixed time limit, it ends when only one remains (usually). Also most of the participants do not know each other before the event and can vary widely in age, 12-18. There is very much a class disparity theme between the ultra rich who run the games and everyone else who are forced to provide the participants.