MENDEZ: That’s why I mentioned the word in the press conference, “regeneration†rather than “evolving,†because I feel it is like, you know, we have Doctor Who…there’s a geek answer…we have Doctor Who and I was brought up on the idea of Doctor Who, who at the end of his final episode, he dissolves and a new actor pops up and he regenerates and it’s a whole other character: sometimes it’s an old man, sometimes it’s a young man, but he just changes. I’ve always loved that idea.
The interesting thing here is that unlike other characters, both Bond and The Doctor are actually different in each regeneration. I mean, we’ve had multiple franchises for Batman, Spiderman, and Superman, but none of them really offer a really different take on their titular characters. Bond actually changes quite a bit between incarnations, with Moore being more reserved, Connery being more charming, and Craig being more conflicted. Of course not as much as The Doctor, but the idea is interesting.
I’ve always thought Obama had a bit of that Spock Cool about him – that classic photo of Nimoy and his Buick somehow encapsulated the character better than any on set. Spock's Car
and of course, now in the “Alternate Reality” Spock and Uhura are getting it on. So there’s cosmic resonance.
ok, this is just stunning, and completely changes my assessment of Pixar’s new film Brave, in both plot and in tone:
My earlier complaint that Brave was going to be just another Princess movie was taken up by Erik over at Forbes, who rightly pointed out that there doesn’t seem to be any love interest in the movie, and the trailer above confirms that the plot is definitely not a standard Disney formula.
In fact, as Nordling at AICN remarks, it’s actually got a much more Miyazaki vibe. Maybe it’s all a matter of the trailer editing process, the different emphasis for Japanese vs American audiences, and choice of music. But the movie looks more like Princess Mononoke or the (non-Miyakazi, but Miyazaki-esque) Secret of Kells.
There was never a chance i wouldn’t faithfully see Brave just like I see everything by Pixar, but the trailer above has me substantially mollified. Maybe the earlier trailer was just aimed at the Disney demographic that expects the formulaic plot, as a kind of lure. There’s a reason that appreciation of anime hasn’t gone mainstream in the US and why Ponyo didn’t garner the respect it should have.
To return to Erik’s response to my earlier post though, he’s right that Brave is a Pixar film more than a Disney one. This is a 3D animation film with Lasseter et al running the show, not something out of the old animation studios (though I was quite impressed with Princess and the Frog). My complaints centered on the Disney Princess franchise, of which Rapunzel from Tangled is the sole 3D member – the rest are all pure animation. Thematically, Rapunzel fits – her old dream of seeing the lantern lights fulfilled, her new dream is her man, as per her own literal confession. And the theme of escape is there, which the first trailer from Brave certainly overplayed.
The key complaint I have though remains, and Erik’s post doesn’t really address it. Where are the male role models for young boys? In UP, the main characters are an old man desperate for sentiment and loss, and a young kid who’s basically a round goofball. The animal sidekicks have more personality than the boy does. Moving, yes. Beautiful, yes. But it doesn’t address the void I perceive (though still, a masterpiece on its own merits, in its own category).
Toy Story was about friendship rather than romantic love; Finding Nemo explored the relationship between father and son; The Incredibles dealt with the sometimes-rocky travails of having a family, and of finding great things even in the mundane; Monsters Inc. was about friendship in the workplace and the fear of the other
All true, but again, none of these provided a role model for a young boy dreaming of adventure and finding his place in the world. These are all movies about adult relationships and family, they look inward rather than interact with the outer world.
Maybe I’m not articulating what I am looking for properly.. I certainly am NOT asking for more testosterone or railing against a proliferation of wimposity or anything like that. What I want in a nutshell is to see characters in Disney animation that a boy can relate to with the same part of the brain that I as an adult relate to when I see a character like John Crighton, or Han Solo, or Samwise Gamgee. These archetypes appear in other media, there’s no shortage in our culture of them, but they don’t seem to have penetrated children’s animation yet.
I’m an unabashed fan of mahou shojou as a genre in anime, but in American animation the trope of the oppressed girl who takes control of her own destiny has been done to death:
Ariel: follows her heart for true love despite overbearing father (and saves the day)
Belle: follows her heart for true love despite overbearing society (and lifts the curse)
Jasmine: follows her heart for true love despite overbearing law (and kicks some ass)
Pocahontas: follows her heart to save her people despite overbearing Clash of Civilizations (and gets the guy)
Mulan: follows her heart to save China despite overbearing culture (and gets the guy)
meanwhile, how do the Boys of Disney/Pixar fare?
Aladdin: lies about who he is, chases the girl, marries into royalty
Nemo: gets lost
Monsters Inc. and the Toy Story franchises meanwhile aren’t about boys at all – every character is basically an adult. It’s like a fantasy analogue to The Office.
The only two recent Disney stories with any real meaningful characters in them for boys are in Lion King and Brother Bear, and in both cases these are more about society and responsibility rather than any message about finding your own path. Cars doesn’t count, because it’s not about an ordinary “boy” it’s about Michael Freakin’ Jordan (note to storytellers: a superstar celebrity athlete has advantages that regular boys do not).
Ok, Ratatouille was sort of about that, but since it revolved around RATS and FOOD the message was kind of lost, especially since the boy in question had a rat (literally) pulling his strings (literally). And the boy in The Incredibles did have to come to terms with being Super but he had like 5 minutes of screen time, half of which was the admittedly awesome running-on-water-chuckle-in-amazement bit. Pinocchio was about the last movie from Disney that I can think of that had any kind of self-reliance and follow-dreams message, but that was decades ago.
And now we have Brave, Disney/Pixar’s latest:
The funny thing is that there’s all this antipathy towards Disney’s treatment of girls as forcing them into some kind of unhealthy self-image. I don’t see it at all, and believe me as the father of two young girls I am hyper-sensitive to it.
I’d just like to see a movie from Disney/Pixar for once where the main character is a young boy, who follows his heart and defies his own society and culture, and achieves something more than just mere personal happiness, but actually makes a difference.
So, it’s actually a thing – called ALON. It’s not so much a metal as an aluminum-based ceramic called aluminum oxynitride, but the point is, it’s aluminum, and it’s transparent:
there be no whales here
and this stuff is strong – 1.6″ is enough to stop a .50 AP bullet that easily passes through twice that thickness of laminated glass armor:
aye, ol’ Scott woulda been proud. And just for old times’ sake:
Let’s take this opportunity to correct a misconception: they did NOT use transparent aluminum for the whale tank. They traded the “matrix” for it to the engineer at the large plate glass manufacturing place in exchange for enough conventional plate to build the tank. Which was a lot.
It looks like VLC media player will soon support encrypted Blu-rayplayback. This seems relevant to the discussion started by Pete and continued by J (hardware) and Steven (software). I’d just like to add that AnyDVD HD should be legal to own in the US as far as I know, since it allows you to backup discs you already own. I should get around to doing exactly that, in fact, because all our Disney DVDs are getting scratched to heck.
Actually, its probably illegal to download a torrent of a DVD you already own but is too scratched to view, and using the torrent to burn a new DVD copy. But it shouldn’t be, which is why I return to my rant about DRM and the huge wasted opportunity that was SOPA activism.
Speaking of SOPA – great article at Big Think going against the grain, titled “Hooray for SOPA!”. I think it’s a great point to make, especially about how small content producers get screwed by piracy – just look at the state of plagiarism on Amazon’s kindle store. And also an Ars article about the recent takedown of filesharing site Megaupload, asking “if we can take down Megaupload under existing US law, why do we need SOPA?” (Ars is more diplomatic. My answer: because SOPA was never about domestic infringing sites, and thus was never a threat). Mark also had kind words for my earlier screed, and I wholeheartedly endorse his archived post about DRM and Intellectual Property – a must-read.
Google's doodle for SOPA Dayanyone else see any irony in this? Google.com, Wikipedia.org, WordPress.org, and hundreds of other websites large and small are going all-out against SOPA. Google has the logo censored by a black bar, and Wikipedia is actually offline. Lots of other sites and blogs are following their example. The idea is to symbolically register dissent against censorship by using self-censorship.
When you click the link from Google’s homepage, you are taken to a cool infographic which states:
Fighting online piracy is important. The most effective way to shut down pirate websites is through targeted legislation that cuts off their funding. There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs.
I think I disagree with all three statements – first, fighting online piracy is NOT important. Piracy will always exist and will always stay a step ahead of measures to prevent it. In fact those measures ultimately end up facilitating casual piracy – look at Napster, deCSS, and now Bitorrent. All were solutions designed to evade piracy and which in the end ultimately made even more piracy possible.
Second, the LAST thing we need is “targeted legislation” that “shuts down funding” for websites of any type. Besides OBVIOUSLY being a First Amendment issue, such legislation would represent a precedent far more damaging and capable of leading to true censorship than SOPA (which is targeted at foreign websites and DNS).
Finally, while I agree we don’t want to force American blogs or websites to censor themselves, the implication is that SOPA would do this, which it does not do. SOPA is explicitly targeted at foreign websites. US-based websites (and this includes all .org and .net domains as well) are not affected by SOPA at all.
I’m a big supporter of network neutrality (unless the network operators are willing to forgo their government subsidies), but what we have here is basically SOPA Theater (analogous to the Security Theater we have for airline travel).
Looks like the DNS provisions in SOPA are getting pulled, and the House is delaying action on the bill until February, so it’s gratifying to see that the activism had an effect. However, that activism would have been put to better use to educate people about why DRM is harmful, why piracy should be fought not with law but with smarter pro-consumer marketing by content owners (lowered prices, more options for digital distribution, removal of DRM, fair use, and ubiquitous time-shifting). Look at the ridiculous limitations on Hulu Plus – even if you’re a paid subscriber, some shows won’t air episodes until the week after, old episodes are not always available, some episodes can only be watched on the computer and are restricted from mobile devices. These are utterly arbitrary limitations on watching content that just drive people into the pirates’ arms.
All that priceless real estate on Google and Wikipedia could have been used to educate millions of people about these issues, and instead it is mostly wasted on a pointless battle that’s already won. The real battle is being lost.
Addendum: Color me skeptical of Google’s commitment to free speech, by the way. Here’s a question for them: If SOPA were to pass, would they comply with takedown requests that don’t meet the safe-harbor provisions of the DMCA? (The argument is that SOPA would lower the bar for claiming infringement, but that’s vague in the bill). Would Google fight SOPA and be willing to go to court if their users were unfairly targeted, say for example by using a snippet of copyrighted music in a personal Youtube video? (the stark scenario that Tom’s Hardware painted last week)
And incidentally also reveals that the science writers on Big Bang Theory really are on top of the game. Sheldon’s snort of derision here is utterly justified.
“I’m listening. Amuse me.”
I really need to start watching the show. Hulu or Netflixable, I assume…
