Mike Russell is late to the show – apparently Rock of Ages put him in a bit of a dazed mindstate. To fill the time before he shows up, discussion turns to a debate over whether the Terminator is *actually* a cyborg, or just a robot wearing Austrian guck on the outside, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie getting roundfiled and why nerds cared so much, and then Mike shows up, and we all learn a little about Snow Crash, Bobby finally gets a chance to voice Cobra Commander, and the latest theatrical gimmick (this time, for your EARS) gets the once-over from a semi-skeptical crew. Finally, a quick review of the goofy and knowingly ridiculous Rock of Ages. It’s a full show. Dig in.
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
As much as I would love to have a home version of Atmos, Dolby already said this will be only a theater system, to bring people to the movies that otherwise would stay at home with their 55″ TV and their 7.1 home theater systems.
I grew up with a dad who loved quadraphonic stereo, and we had a small handful of quad LP’s that was meant to enhance the listening experience by hearing music with more than two channels. With vinyl though, the quad experience was simulated due to the limitations of the format. However, if it was on 8-track (Q8) or reel-to-reel, then you could listen to discrete surround sound. My dad never had that kind of a budget, so I didn’t experience true surround sound until movies at theaters would highlight the fact it was mixed that way. I clearly remember going to BACK TO THE FUTURE and having a car move from the front to the back of the theater, and then to the rear right channel. In the digital era, there are “hobbyists” who are able to get old quad LP’s, 8-tracks, and reel-to-reels so that music numb nuts myself can hear these surround sound albums as they were originally intended. That only came to be when DVD’s would be released in surround sound. Sadly, the music surround sound renewed-awareness-to-the-public was a failure, so formats like SACD and DVD-A were only popular with diehard music heads, and by then most people were downloading albums and songs via Napster. In other words, if you wanted to hear Santana or Edgar Winter Group go in and around your head, you now have options.
My point in mentioning this is due to this Atmos. I know Frank Zappa was very adamant about not only mixing in surround sound, but recording specifically for surround sound purposes. I guess this would be like creating a film, and then adding 3CD effects after the fact. In his case, he wanted to create mixes that were meant to be heard specifically as a surround sound experience. He would do mixes in 7.1 and 9.1 long before anyone knew what a x.1 was. Most people knew quadraphonic, and that was it. Now we’re going to 18+ speakers? To be honest, I would love to hear it, but is it something that the public will truly go after? I wish I could say yes, because who knew 3D would work in the 21st century? I would love it if the general public went crazy over sound.
A part of me thinks this is nothing more than yet another way for entertainment companies wanting to sell another piece of furniture. Record labels existed so they could sell you more speakers, more stereos, more turntables, more cabinets, more lint brushes. New technology? New iPod dock. Same crap, different hard drive capacity. Yet its effectiveness will not only be how well it works, but also how well it is promoted. If the promotional package can be pushed and people are fascinated with it, then yes, Atmos has the potential to be massive. The awareness of surround sound was renewed not because of the DVD, and the fact that one could buy a sound system/receiver where you could immerse yourself in the middle. Movie and audio nerds made sure they sat in the right place so they could be in that “sweet spot”.
If it lasts, I’ll be happy. Otherwise, I can see Atmos being misused and abused big time before it becomes another surround sound casualty.
- By most standards (of course, there’s no hard-and-fast definition for something that technically doesn’t exist yet), cyborgs are more about human CONSCIOUSNESS augmented by technology, whether it’s extending our memory and minds through proxy like with stuff like Google or smartphones, or actual machine parts like robotic arms and stuff.
- Wow, that Wikipedia description BLOWS. Snow Crash’s plot is much more about faith, language, culture and consciousness in a post-economic collapse high-tech world than anything else – but it’s also Gibson with a lot more action and kickass injected into it.
Here’s a choice quote: “Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.”
Snow Crash straight-up envisioned the Internet before the Internet was the Internet. Pop-up ads, walking penis avatars, social-club exclusivity in website access, all of that is in Snow Crash’s Metaverse – the actual use of the word “avatar” to describe a graphical representation of an individual online comes directly from this book (and actually, Stephenson predicts Siri as well). It’s questionable how much of the mind-blowing prediction (and as I think about it now, there’s a dozen new things that he’s predicted in Snow Crash that’s come to be just in the last five years or so that I can’t mention due to the dreaded spoilers) will carry over to the film version, given that what it predicted is now so commonplace. However, the “20 Minutes Into The Future” world of a post-economic collapse where you find million-dollar bills collected in the garbage and billion-dollar bills in wheelbarrows and the government and social order has shattered into corporate/government enclaves, THAT will resonate like crazy. It really is a perfect time for the novel to come back, and I 100% recommend that you all go out and buy the book right now. It’s got amazing surprises throughout, and the hands-down, most badass weapon I’ve ever read about in fiction. It’s called Reason, and it’s about 4/5ths of the way through the book. Get this book.
- Actually, they could cram that 48 FPS 500 channel sound footage down your pipe – maybe not streaming, but certainly downloaded. You’d have to set it to download an hour or so in advance, but it would totally work.
- I got nothing on sound design stuff. I do know that the Beyerdynamic DT880′s I have do just fine for surround sound on my desktop, so I suspect it’s more important to have a quality audio source connected to a pair of really good headphones than it is to have some kind of headphones with “SURROUND SOUND” emblazoned on the side in big gold-embossed letters. But more audio sources = more resolution = better sound positioning, so I’m willing to bet that whatever 128.5 surround sound system they roll out into theaters will kick the ass of anything short of those obscene million-dollar audiophile rooms. Think about it this way: the real world is a fully-immersive surround sound experience, utilizing an infinite amount of “speakers”. If you want sound from speakers to reproduce that, you want to be able to capture and play back sound from as many individual sources as possible. So, more positions for speakers will always lead to better THEORETICAL realism in audio. The real problem isn’t so much the sound system itself, I’m willing to bet that even having to upscale 5.1 or 7.1 or whatever to this crazy new standard is can easily be done by any decent desktop computer, but it’s making it worthwhile. Movies, as far as I’m aware, still take place in an essentially two-dimensional environment. Everything that goes on in the movie happens more or less directly in front of you, so why do you need speakers on the ceiling? Sure, shit flying overhead will sound great, but that’s a very, very small percentage of what goes on in any movie, even an action flick. Now, playing Battlefield 3 or Forza Horizon on a sound system like that would be mind-destroying, because those are fully three-dimensional environments, where things are happening not only in front of you, but in all other directions. And whenever we get holographic video technology up and running, this will be right there to pick up the audio slack. For right now, though? Aside from video games, I don’t see much of a point.
- I look forward to Sussudio – The Musical.
Show-notes for Friday, June 15:
A director’s cut of my Oregonian review of “Rock of Ages”:
http://culturepulp.typepad.com/culturepulp/2012/06/movie-review-rock-of-ages.html
That Sasha Stone piece I referenced during the show that analyzed 22 years of top box-office grosses and asked, “When did the top of the box office stop showcasing good to great films?” (or rather, I’d argue, films aimed at actual paying adults):
http://www.awardsdaily.com/2011/12/oscar-flashback-the-100-baby-and-the-dismal-tide/
The Hollywood Reporter: “Paramount Shuts Down ‘Ninja Turtles’ Reboot; Release Date Pushed”:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/paramount-shuts-down-ninja-turtles-338301
The Wikipedia entry on Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
The Hollywood Reporter on that new Dolby Atmos sound system:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dolby-theatre-brave-kodak-unveiled-hollywood-335874
Oh, and per my passing remark: I draw the best turtle.
http://culturepulp.typepad.com/culturepulp/2010/10/finally-took-that-art-instruction-schools-test.html
Oh, and:
The 1978 “Battlestar Galactica” pilot at the Hollywood Theatre, June 29:
http://hollywoodtheatre.org/rerun-theater-presents-1978s-battlestar-galactica/
The Live Wire Radio! broadcast schedule. If you tune in Saturday night 6/16, you’ll hear yrs. truly delivering an essay on my complicated relationship with “Star Wars.” It’ll also be up as a podcast later.
http://www.livewireradio.org/broadcast_schedule
http://www.livewireradio.org/podcast_archive
And! Can’t Stop the Serenity, June 24, the Bagdad:
http://pdxbrowncoats.com/?p=356
Advance tickets here: http://pdxbrowncoats.com/?page_id=62
NOW the show-notes are done.
ATMOS?
Are the Sontarans behind this?
Really? Adam Sandler as this generations Jerry Lewis? Come on, now. Jerry Lewis made some bad movies, for sure, and from what I’ve read he was a complete asshole, but he made some great movies in his time. The Geisha Boy, The Bellhop, and The Nutty Professor all stick out in my mind.
I guess the comparison could be made that both made some really quality stuff but became better known for their shitty movies, but I still don’t think Jerry Lewis’ worst film is anywhere near as bad as any of Adam Sandler’s worst.
Stephenson may pronounce his name “steven-son.” At least, that is how he has been introduced on panels. Which is irritating to me because I have been pronouncing the name of the main character of Ulysses as “Steffen” all these years – Joyce spells the name “Stephen.” Which reminds me … Happy Bloomsday yesterday.
Intentionally of not, the savvy of hiring Joe Cornish to direct a prospective Snowcrash film lies in the similarity of the milieus (milieux?) of the novel and the world in Cornish’s film, gutter punky off-the-grid self-motivated youths.
In re: Terminator 2, Robert may find this link interesting, i.e., David Foster Wallace’s defense of T2 as not a betrayal of the first film. The article was originally slated for Premiere mag, but rejected. With luck, the piece will appear in the forthcoming new anthology of Wallace’s essays.
http://www.smallbytes.net/~bobkat/waterstone.html
According to The Howling Fantods, the T2 essay and a bunch of other great uncollected work will be there:
http://thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/upcoming-publications/uncollected-non-fiction-later-this-year-both-flesh-and-not.html
“Both Flesh and Not” will also contain DFW’s Roger Federer essay, which is a great piece of sportswriting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html
Cort might be interested in the review of Rock of Ages by Lane in the new New Yorker, because in passing he analyses the shift in musicals from audience acceptance of people suddenly breaking out into song especially in buses at the start of musicals such as Bus Stop and High Society to the modern vague disquiet and uncomfortableness that most people now feel. The review just came on line: Here’s a link to the “abstract” … subscribers get the whole thing …
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2012/06/25/120625crci_cinema_lane
Excellent. Thanks!
A couple of quick comments.
First of all, for the audiophile geeks, does anyone else remember the Pioneer Chair? It was a Dolby Surround system on steroids built into a recliner that gave you “The Ultimate in Personal Audio Experience” at the time it was made. It was also an excuse to build an expensive crappy chair and justify it by cramming the empty spaces full of speakers.
For Mike Russell, did you ever play the Cyberpunk RPG? It was loosely based on William Gibson’s works. I liked his writing in general but as I recall he tended to write technically to impress the reader. As an example, he would use an obscure 3-word description as an act of precision where most authors would use a commonplace 2-word description that got the point across. Although, I will admit it’s been 25 years or so since I’ve read any of his work.
Now that I think about it, the last time I read a William Gibson was around the same time they quit selling the Pioneer Chair.
On the Pioneer chair, I may have seen them in photos, never had the (dis)pleasure of seeing or being in one, but I know that some companies still make them. When I read this, the first thing I thought of was a “Sound Egg”. It looks like an enlarged hard boiled egg shell, but cracked open and ends up looking like those vans from the 70′s. They still try to make them for the audiophile market, in fact a search lead me to one that looks like a first class airline chair, and another that looks more like a booster seat that’s meant to be in the back seat of a car. I remember the failed Q-Sound format where music was mixed to give off the feel of “surround sound” but it was just ambience that gave off the illusion. It was later used for video games, and I believe that failed. I found a Q-Sound component at a thrift store a few years ago, which makes it possible for any sound source to have Q-Sound. I’m sure filters and plug-ins would be easier these days, but it’s still funny to look at and realize someone had hoped this would be the way of listening for the future. Now it collects dust at Value Village.
I don’t think yall are dipshits but I do suggest that you read snow crash.