Posts by JackElder
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This is priceless - you can see it, but only in 3D? Totalitarianism ain't what it used to be.
As a means of making sure that it's only being seen by those rich enough not to interpret it as a call to arms, it's fairly effective. The Imax in Shanghai has put the ticket prices for 3D sessions up to RMB200. The average wage for an urban worker is around RMB275 per week (source).
Socialism with Chinese characteristics: not so much quashing dissent, as overpricing it.
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I'm assuming this isn't a joke: China bans Avatar.
The move comes amid government anxiety that many Chinese are making a link between the plight of the film's Na’vi, who face being displaced form their homeland, and that of those in China who are subject to often brutal evictions by property developers.
It's not a full ban - 3D cinemas are still allowed to show it. But that's a pretty effective ban from anywhere other than major cities.
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To step aside from Avatar for a second: anyone else notice that District 9 won a Critics' Choice award?
For "Best Make-Up".
Either the critics are making a powerful artistic statement about how these days motion-capture CG is essentially a form of makeup technique... or they didn't realise that the aliens in D9 are totally CG.
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To call Atwood a Sci-Fi author is to ignore most of her work.
What about calling her an author who has written some science fiction, then?
Speculative Fiction is a useful category for works like ...
...anything that "people who don't read science fiction" like.
I guess that my problem is just that it's so easy for an attempt to classify work to become a tool to pigeonhole it; and from there, to dismiss it. As mentioned, I think that the categories for literature are basically arbitrary and based on marketing - which is why it's so very, very easy to come up with examples of grey areas where it's neither one damn t'ing nor t'other.
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And JS&MN is quite clearly fantasy by any definition of the genre.
The only real definition the genre has is "we'll file this where we think it's most likely to sell." This is the reason why, for instance, Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt" was published in several editions, to appeal to both readers familiar with his sci-fi and readers who would never buy a sci-fi book in their lives. It's also why Margaret Atwood's work never gets classified as sci-fi, despite often fitting any content-based criteria (anyone want to argue that "Oryx and Crake" wasn't sci-fi? On any grounds other than "But it's Margaret Atwood and she's not one of those sci-fi authors!"?).
Personal bugbear of mine. I think a lot of people ignore excellent literature because it's tarred with the sci-fi/fantasy brush, and people often haven't really understood Sturgeon's Law.
Unfortunately, I'm about three Terry Pratchett books behind. Must get to a bookshop after I move house. I believe someone upthread mentioned a visit by Pratchett to NZ in the early 90s; this was probably related to DisContinuity, a convention up in Auckland in 92, which I attended as a callow youth specifically to meet the man in question. Ah, memories.
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the cops have many greater priorities, like murder and bicycle theft, and never quite get around to enforcing that law.
I, personally, would like to put my hand up and say that I would be happy for a surprisingly large range of substances to be legalised if it freed up police resources to cut down the rate of bicycle theft.
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Nice chaps, although I wouldn't have picked that they'd become Underworld.
I always thought that the real power behind Underworld's throne was Darren Emerson. Before he joined, they were wandering in the vague pop wilderness. After he left, they got lost in doof doof land. But while he was there, they made some of the most beautiful dance music I've ever heard. I remember hearing "mmm skyscraper i love you" and "cowgirl" back in '94, and just being blown away by the subtlety and poetry of it all, as well as how beautifully it could take the roof off at a party. Dubnobasswithmyheadman is still the one album that I would press upon strangers if provoked.
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I first heard Blue Monday somewhere around 1996-97. I was in my early 20s. It blew my head off, and it's still my favourite song. Suddenly a lot of the music I really loved made sense to me: I could see where it'd come from.
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01010111011010000110000101101100011001010010000001001111011010010110110000100000011010010111001100100000011000010010000001010000011011000110111101101110011010110110010101110010
Steady on, sir, there's no call for that kind of language.
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my husband is in charge of the iPod
Yeah, be careful about this. For our first child, we spent the final weeks in burning up a set of CDs for the birth experience. My wife's fond goal was to have the baby born to the sound of The Darkness- specifically, the song "Get Your Hands Off Of My Woman, Motherfucker". You can take the girl out of West Auckland... But in the end, it came down to an emergency C-section, so we were stuck with the surgical team's choice of music.
Dido.
Bloody Dido. Honestly! That's the NHS for you.