I wonder what role Jeff Bezos played in getting this tripe published in the Washington Post? It’s an article talking about setting up concert halls in space — you know, small cozy venues in which musicians can play, surrounded by vacuum and radiation. It sounds like a gimmicky, expensive conceit, and while I do want to see the arts supported to the same degree as science and technology, this is just a weird idea. We can only keep people alive out there at great expense and great risk, with serious medical issues with long term residence, and this writer thinks it would be great to do one-shot shows in space?
It got me daydreaming about what it might be like to one day watch a live musical performance in space. Not in the void, where sound waves cannot travel, but within built habitats in near-Earth orbit — such as the International Space Station (ISS). Forget U2 in the Las Vegas Sphere. Take me to a real concert in the round, where I can float 360 degrees around the stage, watching a guitarist shred from the perspective of a fly and inventing dance moves that Earth’s gravity would forbid.
It is amusing that she had to make an aside about not doing it in a vacuum — gotta squeeze a little science in there. But this sounds like the worst concert ever, with some vain people floating around trying out their flamboyant, jinky dance moves and trying to put all the attention on themselves. The article is even illustrated with a cartoon of her egotistical fantasy.
That must be extremely strong radiation proof glass around that giant dome. Isn’t it funny how NASA isn’t making space stations or space craft out of it? Also, why is the floating musician wearing a helmet and no one in the audience is? Do they know something the rubes don’t? Maybe it’s a trick to get a bunch of rich parasites into a floating bubble for a thorough irradiation.
But the author thinks this isn’t really a rich person’s idea of a wonderful way to flaunt their wealth. No, us peons who can barely afford a concert on Earth will be able to take advantage of this!
Before you dismiss this as a hallucination, consider that we’re on the cusp of a new era of space travel. Engineer and space architect Ariel Ekblaw, founder of MIT’s Space Exploration Initiative, says that within a decade, a trip off the planet could become as accessible as a first-class airline ticket — and that, in 15 or 20 years, we can expect space hotels in near-Earth orbit. She’s betting on it, having founded a nonprofit to design spherical, modular habitats that can assemble themselves in space so as to be lightweight and compact at launch, much like the James Webb Space Telescope that NASA vaulted into deep space two years ago. “The first era of space travel was about survival,” she told me as I recently toured her lab. “We’re transitioning now to build spaces that are friendlier and more welcoming so that people can thrive in space as opposed to just survive.” There’s no reason, Ekblaw said, that a concert hall can’t be one of those structures.
How many of you routinely buy first-class airline tickets for a quick jaunt to a show? Is Ticketmaster going to be in charge of pricing the seats? After you’ve spent, optimistically, $10,000 on your night in space, are you going to be pleased when Bina Venkataraman floats in front of you, gyrating and wiggling and trying out her dance moves?
At least she’s making some specific predictions. Within 10 years, you’ll be able to buy a ticket to space for a few hundred to thousands of dollars. Within 20 years, there will be “space hotels” in orbit, no doubt to capitalize on the hundreds of thousands of space tourists. You’ll have to let me know if any of that comes true. I rather doubt it.
For a scientific source, she cites Ariel Ekblaw, a smart, creative person who has been promoting theoretical space habitats in collaboration with Blue Origin (there’s a Bezos connection), and the best endorsement the author can get is “there’s no reason a concert hall can’t be one of those structures.” Yeah, I can use my imagination, too, and there’s no reason a giant shark-filled swimming pool can’t be one of my imaginary structures. Sure, why not? We’re not actually building any of that, but maybe someday…
By the way, the nonprofit the author links to is The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, a pie-in-the-sky group that endorses more scientific exploration (good for them!) but is all about deep space, not space hotels in near-Earth orbit, and mainly writes reports and press releases that are sent to congress and to defense contractors. They don’t actually do anything.
While the WaPo laid off 20 journalists and got bought out by Jeff Bezos for $250 million, this is the kind of ascientific PR fluff they publish now…alongside a fine collection of conservative idiots as op-ed writers. It’s a real shame. Maybe they’ll be putting an astrology column on the front page next?
Maybe the dome is made of transparent aluminum.
That’s even dafter than an idea I saw in a training film. An architect proposes a concert hall shaped like a human ear on the grounds that it would guarantee perfect acoustics! But for the vacuum, Stockhausen’s Helikopter-Streichquartett Helikopter-Streichquartett would seem appropriate with one player per helicopter.
The whole idea appears to be lifted from Lois McMaster Bujold’s excellent book Falling Free (the Menchnikov space ballet and orchestra)
Thanks, but no thanks. The Dead concerts I went to at Winterland in the 70s were spacey and floaty enough for me. And, while I’m sure some folks at the those shows might experience nausea as the LSD kicked in, the venue didn’t need a vomit bucket for everyone.
Maybe dust off some of the 1920s concepts for giant transatlantic airliners complete with space for musicians entertaining the passengers.
Igor Silirsky had designed an aircraft 1912 with a balcony for the passengers, and designers were still trying to emulate big ships.
Hugo Junkers even made a drawing for a giant tailless flying wing aircraft.
It would be cool to fly one of those for real, but you would need modern engines. They would have required dozens of the 400-hp engines that were the maximum power the technology of the era could provide.
I think she’s arguing that first-class airline tickets are going to become inaccessible due to income inequality, climate change induced disruptions, and the general collapse of the market economy as monopolization dominates public life. At least, that’s what I got from that sentence.
Fyre Festival in space.
We’re all supposed to have our flying cars by now. A little bit of tweaking to deal with the heat of reentry and we could drive ourselves there.
I don’t really understand this mindset. Aren’t music and dancing good enough already? Who thinks “yes, this music is good, but it could be better if I was weightless, being bombarded with gamma rays and sealed inside a giant metal ball with a recycled atmosphere.”
At that point, it seems more like a fetish than anything else. I’ve never really understood those, either – isn’t sex good enough on its own? Do you really need to involve weird clothes and rubbing up against bicycle racks or whatever?
It’d be endlessly entertaining to see someone trying to play a bowed instrument in null G. No leverage.
And a bonus, watching the frustration of a performance in the horrific acoustics of the ISS. Maybe we can get an added bonus of a 10 Garn performance of space sickness to fully enrich the experience.
A sphere of audience with the musicians in the middle? The acoustics would be terrible. All that meat soaking up the vibrations, giving you a flat, mono-directional sound.
And anyone who thinks freefall would allow astonishing new dance moves doesn’t understand freefall or dancing.
Cartomancer@9: ” I’ve never really understood those, either – isn’t sex good enough on its own? Do you really need to involve weird clothes and rubbing up against bicycle racks or whatever?” As a fetishist myself, I will say that there isn’t anything to understand. Fetishes aren’t really logical. There is an atypical stimulus that makes my brain go “ooooh!” and there is no real explanation as to why.
Strewth @ 11, I dunno, I’d probably enjoy their flailing attempts at zero G dancing. Not so much for artistic flair, but just the comedic value that would likely be then exceeded by my own flailing about.
That is partly true, the part about concerts in Realityland being expensive these days.
A lot of rock concerts have gotten pretty expensive.
The last one I paid for was $90/ticket, for two good Boomer groups in a small venue.
I didn’t think twice about it though.
It isn’t like they or we are going to live all that much longer so why not?
That being said, I went to quite a few outdoor concerts last summer.
Ticket prices were all over the place, from free to $99.
It’s a Daft Punk show.
@ardipithecus, # 8: I’m still waiting for my jetpack.
#3 @ Marcus Ranum
Actually, Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which pre-dates Falling Free, had the plutonium rock band Disaster Area perform in space
“hyper-optimistic space nonsense” is a perfect term. A self contained ecosystem of people fantasizing and others swallowing it whole.
Well, the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has performed Space Oddity in space and the video is pretty cool. Having said that I don’t think a live performance would be as interesting.
Dismissed this as a hallucination. Oh WP, how sad you have become.
Emperor Palpatine liked zero-g space opera.
Yeah, #Bone4Tuna playing your part at all well after enduring the harsh G-force of liftoff, followed by finding yourself in zero-G. (Also, what would the launch do to your instruments?)
Who writes this stuff?!
Did anyone involved consult a musician? Every musician who has ever lived has learned to play their instrument in 1 g. As a percussionist, I can attest to the fact that at least some of us require gravity for our playing. I need gravity to compliment the rebound I get from a mallet striking a bar or a stick striking a drum head. And what of suspended cymbals, gongs, bells, and the like? That’s going to be a mess in 0 g. And as previously mentioned, the acoustics in a small metal chamber are going to suck more than a thousand Hoovers.
I love it (not) when people like this opine on what we’ll see in 10 or 20 years. Every one of them should be forced to read Gerard K. O’Neill’s The High Frontier (written by an actual physicist involved in space science circa late 1970s) and see what he predicted was possible in 20 or 30 years. The only thing that happened was that war hawks co-opted the title to refer to space weaponry.
Forget space symphonies unless they build “space violins” et al.
The pressures involved in getting to the concert space would ruin string instruments.
This is the kind of thing that might happen in one of the Culture novels by Iain Banks.
I’m probably just a spoilsport but if you need to see all angles of that guitar while it’s playing, wouldn’t it be cheaper to film it? I know, then it wouldn’t be the exclusive treat of billionaires with nothing better to do with their billions. The poor we will always have with us and all that. But you know it will never be enough until they figure out a way to piss on us from orbit too.
I think a MAGA rally in a submarine made out of carbon composite and cardboard parked next to the Titanic would be safer.
@wzrd1 & jimf
I play a bowed string instrument (viola.) Just about everything you do is gravity dependent.
As you mentioned, percussion instruments require gravity. Ballet and most kinds of dancing would be impossible without something to push against and gravity.
All I can think of about brass wind instruments is, would the spit-valve work? Where would all the spit go? You couldn’t play a conventional piano—dampers wouldn’t go down. Concert seats would need seat belts.
I’m afraid a space pioneer’s brain can’t imagine the arts—or real life.
All this talk of gravity — bah. Just fake it.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle
[1.] One can, in fact, play music in a vacuum if the piece is John Cage’s 4’33”.
[2.] Jean-Michael Jarre’s ‘Rendezvous Five’ saxophone part was to be recorded on the ISS by astronaut Ron McNair. Tragically, McNair was on Challenger. The solo was recorded instead by Pierre Gossez, on Earth.
Also, Sputnik appears to be aimed at the cellist.
The WaPo turned off comments on that article in record time after about 600 mocking comments.
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for my personal flying car promised in Popular Mechanics at least sixty years ago (and every few years since.)
#3 @ Marcus Ranum
The Menchnikov space ballet and orchestra was in “Diplomatic Immunity”, not “Falling Free”.
christoph @ 15, waiting on a jetpack? I’m waiting on my flying car, given how entertaining the roofing bills would be for people flying about, when they can’t even drive on the fucking ground.
So, just out of curiosity, I Googled the string ‘first class flights to minnesota’ with autolocation enabled.
This was the first result:
Flights to MinnesotaMinneapolis
1 stop · 1d 10h+ from $25,563
Rochester
2 stops · 1d 5h+ from $27,877
[heh]
“Rochester is a town in rural Victoria, Australia. It is located 180 km north of Melbourne with a mixture of rural and semi-rural communities on the northern Campaspe River, between Bendigo and the Murray River port of Echuca. At the 2021 census, Rochester had a population of 3,154.”
Obs, not exactly an unique name.
a concert in space sounds like a Futurama scene,. They should probably be planing on a “Digital DJ” to go with the spaced out theme. Space fantasy from people who know nothing about space.
#6 remyporter
First class tickets should “already” be out of everyone but the absolute richest people’s budgets, but Airlines have spent decades figuring out how to pack people like sardines into increasingly more and more packed spaces, leaving “1st class” in the state that absolute last class would have been in back when they first started letting people on in “classes” in the first place. Much like food, if we actually had to pay what it actually would cost to be “comfortable” on an airplane no one could ever afford it. Kind of reminds me of the insane futuristic ideas for “long distance transport”, back when they imagined travels to mars, or possibly just didn’t think airplanes would ever get faster than the ones driven by propellers – just stuff everyone in a cryo/sleep tube and defrost/wake them when they finally get to their destination…. Ah, the future of airline travel (if they had ever figured out a way to actual do this)…. lol
That these clowns imagine going to space will ever be “cheap” unless/until someone figures out a way to make a) cheaper ways to fuel the ship, and b) better shielding, and/or c) anti-gravity, is utterly out of touch with reality.
@flange #27
Gracefully floating towards the audience in little droplets?
If they’re serious about making this available for normal people, they’ll also have to start considering crowd control. Its difficult to keep the fans back when they can literally float over the heads of the security team.
jimf@22, I recently a comment from someone who thought we’d have O’Neill colonies now if they’d just thrown enough money at the problem.
A big question about space tourism is what will happen when the first fatal accident happens with famous people, who are pretty much the only ones who can currently afford it.
@23. drew : “Forget space symphonies unless they build “space violins” et al. The pressures involved in getting to the concert space would ruin string instruments.”
Does a theremin count?
Also if you have the technology to create such a concet presumably you also have the tech to correct for things like that? Perhaps you could create special instruments in zero-gee or on small astronomical bodies. Trees grown on comets like some SF novels I’ve read.. E.g. Larry Niven’s The Integral Trees ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees )
Also on the SF future music there’s Anne McCaffrey’s Killashandra / Crystal Singer novels, J. Neil Schulman’s The Rainbow Cadenza (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rainbow_Cadenza – okay libertrainan kinda but still..) & Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘The Memory of Whiteness’ among many others.
Remember. Just because something is a wild and imaginative and awe- inspiring vision doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Just becuase there’s a lot of technical problems don’t mean they can’t be overcome.
^ See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Memory_of_Whiteness
So what is wrong with imagining future space concerts with having an SF dream and then trying to work to make them happen in the future exactly?
concert in space?
already got ya:
https://youtu.be/lc8BcBZ0tAI?si=3pV1p37pN-g-7jqE
@5. birgerjohansson : “Igor Silirsky had designed an aircraft 1912 with a balcony for the passengers, and designers were still trying to emulate big ships.”
Balconies kinda work for balloons albeit very small “balconies.” Better for Zeppelins and other airships.. Not so ideal for travelling at heavier than air aircraft veolocities. Technically might work fro chopeprs ( aerial not motorbike variety) albiet would be rather noisy.
FWIW. old sailing ships (galleons) of circa 15th century used to have balconies on their sterns for the Captains etc.. to enjoy thinking ships of the Magellan, Drake, Da Gama, type era.. Vessels like the Golden Hind which began its vioyagfe a sthe Pelican. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Hind
Then there were the vintage cars with sideboard-y whatsamajigits for people to stand on too.. I guess if someone is very proficient, brave and maybe more likely well secured they could play a volin or suchlike whilst traveling on those?
We used to sit in the open doors of Uh-1 Hueys when in the service, sort of like a balcony. Did have to duck incoming once in a while.
So what is wrong with mocking the obvious idiocy of people who clearly have no common sense and no clue what they’re fantasizing about?
StevoR @ 44
My apologies for fumbling the name of Igor Sikorsky (fat fingers meet tiny keyes).
He was an aircraft pioneer. His four-engine Ilja Murometz with a payload of a ton was way ahead of its time (it had a tiny balcony) and inspired the more famous German riesenflugzeug that bombed London in WWI.
In America he made a series of big flying-boats before he solved the tech problems of a practical helicopter (Germany also solved it, but with a different system using overlapping rotors ).
Hey, PZ, I know it’s off topic, but, you will love this article and video:
https://news.yahoo.com/australian-reptile-park-gets-funnel-224400891.html
Muttpupdad @ 45
Did the Army provide safety harnesses? Also, while 7.62×39 bullets were inaccurate at long range, I am told more than one serviceman was killed this way…
@27 Ok Go did a video of people dancing in zero G. So it’s not impossible. I think the radiation and living in a pressure can built by the lowest bidder is more of an issue.
ardipithecus @8
“We’re all supposed to have our flying cars by now”
I’d like to think the actual reason we don’t have flying cars right now is that even the super greedy pie-in-the-sky tech and automobile corporations realize how big of a mistake that is considering how many people badly drive poorly maintained ground cars right now looking at their low fuel gauges thinking they still have enough to get to the next gas station. It’s one thing to stall on the highway. It’s another to stall several hundred feet in the air.
Huh. Quoth Wikipedia:
“Willy Otto Oskar Ley (October 2, 1906 – June 24, 1969) was a German and American science writer and proponent of cryptozoology. The crater Ley on the far side of the Moon is named in his honor.”
Ah. Cryptozoology. Close enough.
@ ^ John Morales : Willy Ley was also an actual rocket scientist who.. :
&
Plus :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Ley
So a lot more than just a cryptozoologist. Ley was also a visionary and someone who also opposed psueduo-science and nazism.
@47. birgerjohansson :
Can relate so much! As folks can probly imagine.
Wikipage FWIW : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sikorsky
See also :
https://sikorskyarchives.com/home/igor-sikorsky/
In addition to :
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/capabilities/sikorsky/sikorsky100.html
@46. Raging Bee :
Mileage on what is “obvious idiocy” and “common sense” varies.
Common sense? Really? What is that and does it apply to reality in say quantum physics or the idea of being able to fly at all as humans or to go to the Moon or land robots on Mars or send them to visit Pluto et cetera?
Who decides what counts as “common sense” or which fantasies or ideas or dreams can be pursued and attempted and worked on or not?
We have different ideas and perspectives on what counts as what here clearly.
[StevoR, I most certainly admire your enthusiasm and your honesty and your wholesomeness]
Willy Ley was also the guy who also wrecked my vision of space science with pointy-nosed finned rockets landing on distant planets and disgorging crews of astronauts in bubble-domed helmets, none of which came true and all of which simplified and romanticized the science. I gobbled up Ley books as a child and only later realized that it was all fantasy bullshit.
Well, Alaskan Air just grounded their fleet of Boeing 737-9 Max aircraft after a balcony window opened in mid-flight.
OK, not really a balcony window, looks like the overwing exist blew open. Strange in a number of ways, given those exits open in and are removed to use. Saw a near-similar failure after an aircraft had windows nearly fail and began leaking badly after apparently being overheated during the shooting of a film, then the aircraft, uninspected, was returned to service.
Oh, to those asking about safety straps for the UH-1, no such devices, save in the seats. The Army quite discouraged such from at least the ’80’s onward, preferring all buckled into seats, rather than ejected in the event of an emergency. We also would fly with UH-60 doors open. Great on hot summer days!
The problem with a sizable space audience isn’t so much radiation or the pressure vessel for such a venue, it’s water. That many folks do emit a hell of a lot of water, both via perspiration and exhalation. The radiation is only a bit higher than a commercial airliner’s radiation level in comparison to the ISS’s LEO and comparatively, a lower total dosage than living in Ramsar, Iran. Radiation effects tend to be modulated not as much by simple altitude, but latitude due to the earth’s magnetic field. Of course, that’s a lot more complex a subject, as proton events increase for orbit, compared to more beta events in Ramsar and flight and flight and orbit sharing increased bremsstrahlung events.
As for accidents claiming wealthy and famous lives, I remember one schoolteacher dying in a space shuttle accident, nearly scrapped the entire program. We all know that wealthy celebrities are more important than mere schoolteachers in our shallow society.
I think space concert festivals should be encouraged. I envision one featuring Ted Nugent and Kid Rock with their most die hard fans. Kid Rock could shoot up a case of Bud Light with an M60 near a window viewing Earth to the delight of his audience. Win-win.
PZ: In fairness, when we were children, much less was known about the other planets, or what interplanetary travel would really entail, than is known now; so artists and writers had lots more room for wild fantasies back then, and the scenes you remember didn’t insult our intelligence then to the degree that they do now.
Hemidactylus @ 59, naw, go big or go home. Give him Ma Deuce to shoot that beer up, using Nugent’s special .50 BMG rounds.
wzrd1 @61
I defer to you on the choice. I was going on the notion what would Rambo use. I was stuck in First Blood mode, but in 2008’s Rambo he graduated to the M2:
https://screenrant.com/rambo-most-iconic-weapons/
[…]
There is one aspect of old school Rambo’s choice we should not overlook and becomes a feature more than a bug if we are putting it in Kid Rock’s hands in a space station:
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/rambo-loved-m60e3-machine-gun-us-military-hated-it-180214
As an aside I had thought one could not top Rambo Last Blood for horrifically gory violence. I was wrong. Equalizer 3 did it. Denzel must have really wanted to outdo Sly.
Um, Rambo died by the end of the one and only book.
And yes, I read the book well before the movie came out.
David Morrell had his own style, much as did David Gemmell, and I fucking hate to think of what fucking abortion of a movie will come out when (as will inevitably happen) his work is movieficated.
Anyway. The movies are the Hollywoodificated version, where nuance is lost and conformance to the work it’s “based on” (“inspired by”) is, at best, lacklustre. Basically, bad fan fiction of an actually interesting book and character.
The movie “Rambo”, which is about as accurate as the movie “I Robot” compared to the actual work, or as “Starship Troopers” is to the actual work.
Ah, the shit first movie based on the actual book, but with the characters and the ending changed for the inevitable hollywoodification and pollution and degeneration.
(Bah)
PS
Wow. You don’t get out much, do ya?
PPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Equalizer_(1985_TV_series)
Callan was better, but in this case, the TV series was nearly as good as the books, so it gets a pass.
(Also, IMO, Denzel is utterly miscast in those Hollywoodificated efforts at copying the original concept)
[Hammering the point home]
Ah, yes. As I recall.
Hey, anyone remember the Rambo movie (III, I think) where the Taliban were praised as the most admirable god-fearing people and Rambo helped them fight the atheistic Russkies? I do.
That one didn’t age well, did it? ;)
I do get you mean it’s what the movie Rambo would use, not what the canonical Rambo would use, Hemidactylus. But a bastardisation is a bastardisation.
(Was not that the one with the exploding grenade arrows? I’d check, but… movie Rambo ain’t worth it)
Sly was an author. And a bodybuilder. And an actor.
Denzel was an actor. A better actor, arguably, but not the others.
Certainly, in the buff bod department, Sly utterly outdid Denzel.
(actually, for me — and I know this is subjective — Denzel is one of those people who are supposed to look tough in the movies, but never quite sell it. Angry, yes. Focused, yeah. Tough, meh. Like… um, Garibaldi in B5. Sly actually managed that, so… another aspect where he outdid the D)
John Morales @ 63, kind of hard to get a Rambo 2 out if Trautman shot Rambo in the head with the sheriff’s shotgun.
Hell, I was surprised they didn’t add a love interest and he ended up riding into the sunset, getting the girl.
BTW, how many Starshit Poopers movies are they up to now? I honestly lost count. With the first, they really softballed an outright fascist society that was in the book.
Oh, in Rambo does Afghanistan, I was more under the impression of Northern Alliance precursors, but then Hollywood so bastardized things they could’ve been Irish. I was heavily impressed with Rambo getting his purloined tank to get into a head on collision with a Hind Helicopter though, while not only driving the tank, but aiming and firing the main gun (due credit, Soviet tanks at the time did use an autoloader). Well, those and his nuclear tipped arrows…
John Morales
Wow I set you off but that’s ok we both have our opinions. In your @67 when did Rambo 3 come out versus the founding of the actual Taliban? Timeline it.
Not quite as bad as the calumny that the CIA-ISI axis created Bin Laden from a prominent Saudi construction family as a supersoldier. Arabs have no agency and the Arab Afghans were the same as the various Aghani ethnicities with their own drama aside from not liking Soviet incursion.
I saw Rambo 3 which paid homage to the mujahideen Other as the US kicked them to the curb. The movie was ridiculous Rambo blowing shit up Cold War dinosaur shit that became temporarily passé when history ended for a spell but it actually humanized the Afghan resistance who were a diverse lot! I rewatched it not long after 9-11 and was dumfounded. It was kinda stupid but had some prescience that was perhaps unintended as we had kicked that covert ops project to the curb.
Canonical book Rambo was a terrorist. Sly turned him into a sympathetic vet for a spell but it should have stayed at one movie. I haven’t read the book but from what I gather Rambo would have been happy at Jan 6 insurrection.
I have my own issues with Sly but after his Netflix bio I see him differently because his daddy issues and vision with Rocky which I already knew was a love story which should have stayed with one movie. I did not know he was a pal of Fonzie.
Are you mad about Queen Latifah doing Equalizer too? The horrors.
Denzel’s character has a thing about clockwork. It really comes out in the latest as it opens in a Sicilian vineyard and he starts ripping through mobsters for a reason. Maybe not your thing.
Also I was mostly contrasting Rambo’s choice of guns per Kid Rock on a space station, which got lost in John’s vitriol about the film series which he hates. It wasn’t quite as high production value or good acting choos as Chuck Norris in MIA. As far as the original Equalizer series it barely registered for me at the time though I watched it. Miami Vice easily eclipsed it, especially given Castiilo’s backstory and badass demeanor. At the time he easily surpassed Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee for not being a ridiculous character.
Just the one. I kinda liked it, but it had fuck-all to do with the book, storywise.
Also, the fucking central conceit (you know, the powersuits with which the troopers had the firepower of a division and could jump miles in the air and so forth) was entirely missing in the movie.
Heh. Reminds me of “Gladiator”, which friends and acquaintances of mine extolled as being excellent.
They had mortars and elevators, supposedly in Roman times, but fucking worst of all, they had a Kiwi as a Spaniard in one of the worst miscasting efforts I have ever seen in my life.
—
When I was in my fucking 20s, that was. They were called ‘Muhajideen’ in the movie, too.
I well recall watching it and seeing it as pure propaganda.
Here:
What? No. Not even slightly.
He was a vet who had PTSD and was treated as a hobo by local law enforcement — the book might have been a bit over the top, but I damn well remember what a fucking stupid caricature the movie made of it, what with the moustache-twirling villains and the goody goody Sly.
Nuance, such as one got from Morrell’s books. I mean, he cashed-in on the success of the movies, but by fuck those were ubersimplifications.
Who is Queen Latifah? Lemme guess, a sassy rapper. Silent ‘c’ there. Black, probably.
(checks: check; I am bloody good at this, no?)
I wasted some time watching the first movie on Netflix, and that was enough.
Most certainly not my “thing”. Almost as grotesque as Liam Neeson portraying a tough guy.
heh. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/taken-3-fence-jump
Anyway, the point was that you talk about movie Rambo as if it were the actual canonical Rambo, which is about as impressive as someone talking about a Grimm tale based on the Disney version.
Nope. Don’t hate it, I just think it’s a feeble bowlerisation. Get it straight.
And again, the point is you refer to movie Rambo, not book Rambo.
And not vitriol, mere disdain.
Also, movie Rambo’s choice of guns (per Kid Rock, whoever that is) on a space station is left to speculation.
Been done already, and surely better in any case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outland_(film)
(Also, I get ‘choos’ → ‘chops’)
—
Ah, well, to be informed, I checked.
“Robert James Ritchie, known professionally as Kid Rock, is an American musician, singer, rapper, and songwriter.”
Look: if you ever mention some silent ‘c’ rapper, I shan’t know of them without Googling.
FYI.
John @72
Queen Latifah was one of the better mainstream hiphop artists before she became an actress. I recall her in Juice with Omar Epps and Tupac. Not sure what or why you are going on about:
Yeah both Latifah and Denzel happen to be black. So?
John @68:
Subjective indeed. Stallone comes across as a caricature of a child’s idea of a ‘tough guy’, ridiculously pumped up muscles included. The few undeniably tough guys I’ve known come across more like Denzel.
Maybe Peter Jackson should’ve cast Sly as Glorfindel in LotR ;-). Couldn’t have made the films much worse.
PS The best (though unintentional) Rambo reference I’ve heard was from a presser with the French footballer Eric Cantona. When asked about his cultural heroes, he mentioned Rimbaud. The dumbass journalists misunderstood…
<smirk>
What amuses me most is that this is not intended to be a laugh-out-loud parody.
Thanks, half-fingered.
The guy who got the lead enema was a hacker who stole pension money from someone Denzel’s character gave a Lyft too. Denzel saw that retribution through til the brutal end. You should really watch these things through before you judge them.
What? Ah, right. Trying for some sort of ‘gotcha’.
Feeble, but so it goes. Best you can manage, since otherwise it’s just personal opinions clashing.
It is unfortunate that you are more easily-impressed than I.
Still. You miss the point.
Just from the name, I did a Sherlock and deduced it was probably a Black woman crapper. And I was right, when I checked. Something about the current naming of crap singers clicked. Or, ‘hip hop” as it is currently called.
Still just chanties, talking in a sing-song voice, however you slice it.
Perfect for people who can’t actually sing.
—
Well, at least we would have had Glorfindel in LOTR, just like in the actual canon.
Instead, we go fucking Arwen. Wrong character entirely, story spoiled right then and there.
Anyway. I’ve already expounded at length about the liberties Jackson took with the ouvre, no point reiterating it.
But yes, an actual Glorfindel in the movie, as in the book, would have been fine.
Now, whether Denzel would have been appropriate, well…
In your opinion. Which I have already assessed.
More to the point, it’s not an absolute thing — it’s a relative thing.
A comparison between them.
More to the point, again: When it comes to buff, Sly shits all over Denzel.
And remember, it was you who tried to compare them.
Now, what was his name (googles) LeVar Burton was buff as fuck, the one time I saw him shirtless in TNG.
Neither I nor my wife imagined the rippling muscles under his Starfleet uniform.
Tough, not-so-much, but buff, for fucking sure.
So.
Space stations, music, booms.
(Outland!)
Um, I posted the clip. Is that not it? The vineyard scene?
(I concede I had to zot through the silly talking before I got to what is supposed to be the ‘action’.
And, obs, the baddies never read the Evil Overlord list)
You don’t have the backstory or Denzel saving the Sicilian town he begins to love from baddies in excessively brutal ways. Why does he have to be as excessively buff as Sly to be a credible foe?
You might not like rap but your opinion on that is crap.
John @79
Yeah “current naming of crap singers”:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Hail_the_Queen
From 1989 just yesterday. Current?
And: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hip-hop
“First Known Use
1979, in the meaning defined at sense 2”
You said: “Or, ‘hip hop” as it is currently called.”
Is 1979 current?
What, they’re no longer into stupid names?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hip_hop_musicians
FFS. Saturn, as it is currently called. When was it named? :)
Look. I have never, ever, ever put up with an entire crap song. Never.
I’ve had people try, and I have disabused them of their intent.
I can be very vehement.
Point being, when I saw that particular nym, I speculated (quite correctly) about its bearer.
I saw one the other day… um (checks) Megan Thee Stallion.
I mean, come on. Patterns, I can follow.
So, is it no longer called ‘hip hop’?
Because, if it is, I am 100% correct.
So, was it not once called ‘rap’?
Because, if it was, I am 100% correct.
And if it’s not, then what, pray tell, is it now called?
—
BTW, I actually wrote a longish post addressing all the other outstanding stuff, but thought better of it.
But your most recent silliness deserves a retort, and this is it.
Huh. Look: I am become informed. I was wrong, apparently. Live and learn.
“There are disagreements about whether or not the terms “hip hop” and “rap” can be used interchangeably, even amongst its most knowledgeable proponents. The most common view is that hip-hop is a cultural movement that emerged in the South Bronx in New York City during the 1970s, with MCing (or rapping) being one of the primary four elements. Hip hop’s other three essential elements are graffiti art (or aerosol art), break dancing, and DJing. Rap music has become by far the most celebrated expression of hip hop culture, due to being the easiest to market to a mass audience.”
(You deserve the thanks for this insight, Hemidactylus)
John Morales @85
That’s cool. Despite our little dustup over books, movies, and music tastes I don’t take it personally. You are kinda fun to engage.
But you did draw first blood :-)
John Morales @ 72, I dunno, the worst cast character selection I ever saw was The Conqueror, John Wayne as Genghis Khan.
I mean seriously, an Irish-American Mongol?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_(1956_film)
wzrd1, fair enough. Point.
Quite a few contenders, over the years, but.
Johnny Depp as Tonto. (very Amerindian, he)
Charlton Heston as Moses. (very Semitic, he)
etc.