Gui

http://xnebula.blogspot.com/

This group currently works onto Panzer World, but because they also work on Dougram – and give it priority – their progress are very slow

Still better than nothing though...

Watched it yesterday: it is better than the first movie but still inferior to the TV series...

Finished Shin Mazinger Z a few days ago: I'm disappointed, I expected something more faithfull to the original and more epic aswell. Still, it's worth watching if you're a super robots fan

About 9 eps into Shin Mazinger Z: it wasn't bad until around the last couple or episodes; now, it tends to be heavy: hope it'll get better later on...

Indeed:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.d.../201010349/1023

I almost stopped reading when he wrote: "[...] The original story was called "Who Goes There?" It was written by John W. Campbell, Jr., in the late 1930s, and it provided such a strong and scary story that it inspired at least four movie versions before this one: The original THE THING in 1951, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS in 1956 and 1978, ALIEN in 1979, and now John Carpenter's 1982 remake, again called THE THING."

Body Snatchers was an adaptation of Jack Finney's novel Invasion of the body snatchers (he's also listed among the sriptwriters of the movie) and Alien was clearly another interpretation of Dark Star's basic plot, interestingly Carpenter's first movie while I'm at it, both of these having been written by Dan O'Bannon – although Alfred E. Van Vogt won the trial where he claimed that Alien was a rip-off of his novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle (IIRC)

Usually, I don't care about such articles or the errors which may appear in them, and God knows how much there can be some in the majority of them, particularly coming from people who dislike science-fiction, but when a reviewer adopts such a condescendant tone towards a movie and its audience, I just can't resist to put back his nose into his own p00: most of the time, big heads are just that, big. And how can you take seriously a guy who makes such basic mistakes? If he's so knowledgeable, he should have avoided them. Or is it because he didn't do his job seriously? In any case, he's not really worth the time of his reader...

Anyway, and despite the flagrant flaws of some of his works, Carpenter still invented something during his career, and it's particularly visible in Halloween. In such movies, Friday the 13th and Co., usually the victim is showed runing around screaming and then suddenly the killer comes up and slash the guy/girl/whatever in the gorest way possible; this makes the audience passive, because all of this happens far too much fast to give you any possibility to care about any character in the scene. Carpenter, on the other hand, chose to show the victim and the killer in the same picture and during a long moment, the latter following the former in the street, or appearing in his/her back, or any other similar situation; this may look anecdotical but, at least, this makes the audience active: during these few seconds, you care about the victim – or about the killer if you have some psychotical tendancies, nobody's perfect – you're part of the movie, you're inside of it (and in a far more efficient way than Avatar's and its 3D while I'm at it...)

In the Thing, this process is pushed towards its limits, because you never know who is the alien and who is not. Maybe he pushed it too far though because there's a moment where too much tension kills the tension but at least Carpenter tried to expand his experimentation where the majority of directors would have probably followed the simplest manner of filming. While I'm at it, Ridley Scott used the same trick in his Alien, at least in some scenes...

As for characterization, it's interesting to note that Carpenter didn't adopt the usual cliché of the scientists in The Thing: usually, such characters are very rationnal and always cold-headed but he chose to portray them in a very human manner, and right from the begining of the story so that the alien isn't even an explanation for such temperament

So, The Thing, good or bad? Simply in the middle IMO, but tending clearly towards the former...

[...]

by the way, is Viper's Creed any good? i have a copy at home, but i can't seem to be interested enough to watch beyond the intro.

Not really: it starts rather good, then slowly but surely pits down until it becomes barely watchable...

Mecha designs are cool though

Watched Mighty Space Miners yesterday: too bad this was never finished 'cause it was a great start

Yeah, I've read a couple of reviews and they are all pretty negative. Is it really that different from the rest of the Patlabor franchise?

It's not a bad movie, just a bad Patlabor

Actually, it's a Patlabor because there's the Patlabor name written on it, otherwise it could be anything else...

[...]

And then I'll have to get my hands on Patlabor 3 which has never had a region 2 release

[...]

This one will probably disappoint you

http://www.moddb.com/mods/mechwarrior-living-legends

[...]

And for Tezuka awesomeness, go for Giant Robo.

Didn't you mean Yokoyama instead?

Watched Read or Die, the OAV, which I felt was frankly lacking and far too short: it recalled me a lot of Giant Robo the Animation but minus all the strength (no pun intended), the background or the character development of this one

Maybe I'll give a try to the TV series though...

As a kid already, I thought the original sucked big hairy balls, especially in the field of SPFX, and particularly the animation of the kraken; also, the hero looked like a pussy. By far, I prefered the comic adaptation...

At least, this remake looks good

OK, thanks

In the "Macross Frontier Movie" thread, VF5SS wrote this:

[...] there's at least three versions of the original Macross story (TV show, DYRL, and now Macross the First) [...]

What's the latter, Macross the First? Never heard about this...

[...]

Even if you don't like some of the creature designs. I think after you see the film, you will feel different.

What bugs me, personnally, is the main point of the plot: the handicapped soldier accepts the mission because he'll get a new body which will allow him to walk again; it's for the less surprising to see that, in this future, technology allows mankind to journey between the stars but can't heal a simple man of such wounds, all the more as real medicine is always closer of a solution on this point while space travel remains rudimentary if not frankly primitive...

But, yes, this movie looks entertaining. And well done. It at least has these qualities...

Finished Viper's Creed yesterday: it had a good start but failed to keep the pacing and then my interest; I finished it for the sake of it, it's just 12 eps long after all, but I wouldn't recommend it. Mecha designs are cool though...

Keep watching to know the tragedy behind the character of Diana: it'll make you understand why she looks like a compassionate monarch; actually, she didn't have the opportunity to become someone else...

Yes, Coran lived during the Dark History, and fought a war where a Gundam brought chaos into Coran's side, that's why he recognizes the Turn A although I'm not sure it is this Gundam that he fought. As for his crazyness: he simply spent too much time in cold sleep, which is not good for neurons. But he's a very strong character because his personal tragedy holds in that he is outside of his time, yet he has to fight again but in a war which doesn't really concern him: it simply is the only thing he knows...

Diana's tragedy is very similar to Coran's, at least to some extent

OK, I'll give a try to these ones aswell

Thanks for the suggestions

Thanks: I'll give it a try

Ginrai, Gui & co, it's quite easy to start another thread to discuss your totally pointless (from a Battletech perspective) ramblings about who came first, the chicken or the egg starship trooper dissertation.

This thread has been clogged up with way too much crap about law suits and other ramblings and whilst I'm sure you know a lot about the implications of starship troopers and other sci-fi writings in the big picture please take them else where.

You're right: my sincere apologies to everyone

All the more as Ginrai seems to be the sort of guy who doesn't really pay attention to what his interlocutors say, or worse, to what he says himself: this can easily drives insane even the most peaceful of men, particularly on forums...

Parenthesis shut down for me: again, sorry for the "disturbance in the force"

...

What about the Battletech novels? Any interesting stuff?

Only the En Garde : Warrior trilogy is available in my country and I wonder what the specialists in here would recommend as additional readings

There were power armor of sorts in SF literature before Starship Troopers, this is true. Lensman is the earliest example I have been able to find. Lensman, however, pretty much invented the space opera and is a very pulpy brand of sci-fi not very concerned with science or reality. Starship Troopers is one of the early examples of hard sci-fi, and among the first to depict power armor in fetishistic mechanical detail and was a big inspiration for Gundam. The mecha designs for the '70s Japanese reissue of the novel (by Miyatake) were a big selling point to the Japanese audience and that is how they directly inspired the real robot movement. Yes, they didn't get around to doing an anime adaption until much later and it was kind of an interesting failure, but that's hardly an indicator of the book's success in Japan.

If there's a sucky movie adaptation of a book does that suddenly mean the book wasn't popular and didn't sell well? Of course not.

Hard Science Fiction – which founded the period of the genre known as "The Golden Age" – is as old as the very begining of the 40s: it is usually considered to have begun when John Campbell became the editor in chief of Astounding (now Analog), and this happened in 1939 if memory serves. Although Heinlein's very first published story appeared in this magazine, Starship Trooper is younger of about 20 years (1959): this can hardly be considered as "one of the early examples of hard sci-fi", all the more as the following decade was the reign of the New Wave which rejected the paradigms of Hard SF; for more infos, use "Michael Moorcock" and "New Worlds" as keywords...

Otherwise, it's common knowledge in the anime community that the most popular mechas of the 70s was undoubtedly Mazinger Z and Getter Robo, followed by some others which it is unnecessary to name: in any case, none of these mechas were close to or even inspired by Starship Trooper, for obvious reasons. I don't doubt the influence of this novel onto Gundam though, but despite all the love I have for this franchise I can't admit it represents the mecha genre as a whole, all the more as it appeared quite some years after Mazinger and, of course, Tetsujin

Because of all of the above, and particularly the very first paragraph, I think your previous post was unclear at best or frankly wrong at worst: for this reason, I'll keep thinking that the Starship Trooper novel didn't have as much of a success in Japan as you claim, until I'm proven otherwise – and neither the movie or the OAV are supposed to be taken into account in this discussion, for the simple and good reason that both of them appeared only a long time after the mecha genre was clearly and strongly established