Ever hired someone at a job that you regretted afterward, but couldn’t find it in your heart to fire them until they royally fucked up?
Woof. Chest cold/flu thing/ebola still receding. Hoped to go to work Wednesday, no dice – after ten minutes on my feet I was dizzy and unable to hold down coffee. With any luck, I SHOULD be able to get to work Thursday, and I’m there as you read this.
One of these days I’ll get my wish to have my brain put into a robot body. One of these days. Flegh.
Did finally get to see Ender’s Game, the movie. I was pretty surprised – for once, Hollywood didn’t totally bone the pooch on transcribing a book (and a sci-fi classic from my teen years, at that) onto the big screen. I can’t think of anything they left out or fucked up royally. That puts Ender’s Game 10,000 points above The Hobbit movies that Jackson is wanking around on.
Speaking of Sci Fi, I would love to have one of these.
Um, if you think that Hollywood did a good job on the Ender’s Game movie and didn’t leave out anything major you must have had more cough syrup than is really healthy. Even considered as a stand alone with no relation to the book it’s mediocre at best.
They condensed it, sure, and they did a bit of finagling… but they kept the Ender plotline relatively pure. Cutting Demosthenes and Locke, and the whole macropolitical side was shitty, but it couldn’t have fit in a movie.
A miniseries, however…. 😀
agreed. I have read the entire series, including the short stories and the Ender’s shadow series.
It was an okay adaption. Really didn’t like how they glossed over the “Launchie” stigma. And the fact that Bean became nothing more then a plucky sidekick. Also they changed a bit what happened to Bonzo.
Yeah- not killing Bonzo was a bit weak.
There’s got to be one of those Murphy-type Laws: “Any book made into a movie will be considered a botched abortion by at least one person. No movie will ever be universally agreed to be a ‘good translation’ of the book.” 🙂
One movie was better than the book by a huge margin: ‘Jaws’. The Benchley book was just terrible – Brody’s wife cheating with Hooper, who was such an arse that you’re glad when the shark kills him. The movie? Better in every way.
Ditto 2001. Didn’t help that it was written AFTER the movie.
Ok, aside from making Ender a teenager…
Granted, but I’d rather see a teen who could act instead of Anikin the Mannequin from Phantom Menace quality talent.
I’d rather Anakin from TPM than Anakin from AOTC/ROTS. Jake Lloyd wasn’t good, but at least he was a better actor than Hayden Christensen. (Especially if his age is taken into account.)
Oooh, that’s a toughie. Annoying child actor vs wooden faced cockwomble. Both hampered, of course, by Lucas dialogue at its worst.
But does it fire 10mm explosive-tip case less standard light-armor-piercing round?
I don’t care. I want one. Looks kind of heavy and awkward too. Still want one. Too bad I can’t get one. Stupid NFA.
The ammo counter is what impresses me most. That’s one of those features that has always been “hah hah, silly movies and video games, it doesn’t work like that in real life!” To see it actually exist and work is amazing to me.
It does occur to me that it could very easily be a 10mm cartridge. (Obviously not caseless, though.) With a rate of fire like that, my wallet would hope it’s 9mm, though.
The ammo counter impressed me too, although I was a little disappointed that the magazine capacity was only 50 rounds instead of 95.
And with that rate of fire, my wallet would hope it was an airsoft rifle. And even then it would give a mighty wheeze of indignation.
You can get one if you can finagle an M-16 with an underslung Remington MCS 870.
Now once they get it to load some kind of grenade instead of shotgun shells, I’m totally in
12 gauge Frag rounds (those are real right? or just video games?)
“Ever hired someone at a job that you regretted afterward, but couldn’t find it in your heart to fire them until they royally fucked up?”
Yep. I forget his name. The last words I ever said to him were, “You know, all of my other employees want to kill you and hide the body parts so they’ll never be found. It might be in your best interests if you just found another job somewhere else. Possibly in another city, even.”
Hey, it was a book store. Do you have ANY idea how many book store employees are capable of cold, calculated murder? Too many. I may have saved his life. Especially since I was the one who wanted to hurt him the most. Work is NOT the place to “explore your feelings” or “experiment with your spirituality”. Gah. WORK. Stock my shelves! Sell my shit! WORK, damn you!
Where’s my whip?
“Experiment with your spirituality”? “Explore your feelings”? At work? REALLY? Now I kind of want to strangle him, and I’ve probably never even met him.
Yeah, if you hadn’t gotten him to leave, you probably would’ve had a case of “police reported a dozen cheerful bystanders, yet nobody claimed to have seen who did it.” (Proper attribution: I stole that from xkcd.)
Capable of it, and capable of going through a lot of reference material to work out in advance how to get away with it!
Needed more Battle School. But yeah, as an adaptation from a book, I’ve seen worse.
Haven’t read or seen Ender’s Game… unfortunately I have seen Starship Troopers… give me the book, I need to go smack someone with it… repeatedly…
Could be worse. Could be Battlefield Earth. (Which I’ve never seen, nor read.)
Eh. I haven’t seen the movie, but Battlefield Earth was at best mediocre. Good technique-wise, terrible content-wise, and also three smallish books crammed into one large one. Starship Troopers was a good book that was murdered in every way for the movie.
I wanted to like Starship Troopers. I really, really, wanted to like it. I love the concept, and having never read the book, I had no preconceived notions about what is should be. Watching it was like nails on a chalkboard though. The movie seemed like nothing but bad acting on top of bad directing, and the special effects guys did everything they could to save it.
Ultimately, it was like building a house out of shit bricks then putting nice siding on it. Yeah, it was nice to look at, but ultimately, it was still a large pile of shit.
If you had read the book, it’s be even worse.
The anime/cartoon adaptations in the same universe seem to be alright, FYI. I don’t know what it is but most sci-fi ends up being shitty if live acted, even the old star wars suck when critically watched.
There is no such thing as a bad Heinlein book, even the juveniles. There may be concepts and philosophies you strongly disagree with, but that doesn’t make the book bad.
Charles Manson stole a lot of his cult BS from Stranger in a Strange Land. I always thought of it as an anti-religion book, or more exact an anti-organized religion book.
Have to say that Puppet Masters was the rare good adaptation of RAH’s work.
I enjoyed Starship Troopers, both the book and the movie. To keep my head from exploding, I consider them basically unrelated. The book is an interesting exploration of a soldier’s mindset, the movie is a big colorful series of things going boom.
To be fair, I also love Dune in both versions, too. My level of taste may need addressing.
I once read a very believable theory that the Starship Troopers movie was actually a propaganda film set in the same universe as the book.
I choose to believe it, just because I hope its right.
That’s… fantastic.
Eh, not quite. My understanding is that Paul Verhoeven looked at the setting, which has nearly free markets, but restricts the vote and any government positions, including the entire justice system, to veterans (ie, those who risk their lives for the people; usually in the armed forces, but if nothing else is physically possible, then as experimental vaccine test subjects). He said, “No universal franchise? Why, they must be fascist nazis!” And he proceeded to make a Nazi propaganda film, using such elements of the war story, which was a relatively minor part of the book, as appealed to him. Never mind that the National Socialist German Workers Party was in fact socialist through and through (as was Mussolini’s Fascist Party).
After I saw it, I concluded that the ending was tacked on after initial screenings resulted in such comments as “The last time I saw anything that bad, it was an Army recruiting film”
According to a friend of my father, the key to killing colds like that is drinking alcohol in very large quantities. Alcohol being an antiseptic, you flood your system with it, thereby creating a hostile environment, and it kills the germs. Think of it like chemotherapy for colds.
Yes, he was serious.
From my observations, I don’t know if it actually worked, or if he was just too drunk to care that he was sick. Either way, he’s been doing that for 30-40 years and swears by it.
I agree. My remedy is to make a big mug (16+ oz.) of strong tea, then add at least 3 oz. of rum. And if it doesn’t cure you, you pretty much don’t give a shit anyway.
My grandfather’s boss (1940s) used to lace his coffee with insecticide under a similar theory — germs are called “bugs,” aren’t they?
Nah. I’m with Mr. Grant. The best solution for a common cold is permanent full-body cybernetic enhancement.
Hot water, rum, lemon juice and black pepper mixed to taste. Followed by as much black tea with honey as you can drink.
I did once discover a sandwich and a half into lunch that my sliced turkey was 6 months past the expiration date. Decided that 2 shots of everclear from 40mm grenade casings was probably sufficiently toxic that I’d be marginally better off than the e. coli.
seemed to have worked.
I don’t know where you got 40MM grenade casings (Army?) but those would be the most epic shot glasses ever.
Navy. Our CO loved throwing ordinance downrange, and replaced our normal .50BMG mounts with dual mounts to accommodate both. Simultaneously.
She said please?
Pulse Rifle is great…… Has anyone built an “Incinerator” yet?
If anyone makes a film version of “Armour” and feths it up I will hunt them down……. With a spoon