SADDO: THE MOVIE (aka READY PLAYER ONE)

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don't act like On Cinema isn't biting ILX all the time

avellano medio inglés (f. hazel), Wednesday, 8 July 2020 15:50 (four years ago) link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnPZtftH1F8&feature=youtu.be&t=270

its gonna be in the Guinness Book of Movie Records

frogbs, Wednesday, 8 July 2020 15:57 (four years ago) link

2020 jokes a little played already but seriously, just when you think it can’t possibly get worse

Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Thursday, 9 July 2020 14:04 (four years ago) link

two months pass...

just watched this with my 9-year-old son, he has a hard time sitting through almost anything non-Minecraft-related, but he loved it. I thought it was fine for a kids' film, not something I would watch on my own but preferable to the superhero & pokemon features I've had to put up with this last 6 months.

好 now 烧烤 (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 21 September 2020 20:06 (four years ago) link

how do the cultural references sit with a 9 year old, or did he not really care about that aspect?

rascal clobber (jim in vancouver), Monday, 21 September 2020 20:46 (four years ago) link

Didn't find the references dominated in the way I expected, there were plenty there, but they were easy to explain or ignore, and anyone who knows about video games could understand the story anyway.

好 now 烧烤 (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 22 September 2020 07:03 (four years ago) link

Same with my 11 year old, he loves the book and film.

All the things I dislike about the narrative are totally fine for him.

Things at the moment are so full of cultural references, then my son doesn't really notice that its any different from Stranger Things etc.

references to The Shining etc. just intrigued him, as he knew it was an 'adults film'

he's counting the days to Ready Player Two, so I think the sequel might do better due to the video game obsessed young adults market.

my opinionation (Hamildan), Tuesday, 22 September 2020 09:30 (four years ago) link

two months pass...

Well, if your son likes this...he's welcome to it.

#ReadyPlayerTwo is everything I dreamed it would be pic.twitter.com/C7oocc3QJN

— Jacob Mercy (@jacobmercy) November 24, 2020

Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 03:28 (three years ago) link

*adds to basket*

groovypanda, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 07:24 (three years ago) link

lol.

Two Meter Peter (Ste), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 10:35 (three years ago) link

'Halliday' needs to step up his security decisions

Two Meter Peter (Ste), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 10:37 (three years ago) link

christ that's insufferable

Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 12:42 (three years ago) link

its hard for me to understand that these are real books

turn the jawhatthefuckever on (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 13:22 (three years ago) link

Usenet fanfic has become viable and commercial for at least a decade now, eh?

Nhex, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 13:45 (three years ago) link

Ugh, that's even worse than I would have expected based on the few snippets I came across from the first one. That said, my son will absolutely want to see this when it eventually shows up on streaming services.

soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 14:11 (three years ago) link

I'm not totally certain but I'm willing to bet an AI program could construct a very similar read.

Two Meter Peter (Ste), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 14:14 (three years ago) link

You mean like the 2001 Steven Spielberg film entitled A.I.?

You will notice a small sink where your sofa once was. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 14:22 (three years ago) link

It's literally like Cline just documented an hours-long Wikipedia k-hole.

You will notice a small sink where your sofa once was. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 14:23 (three years ago) link

Imo being able to read and enjoy these books are a reverse-Turing test for sentience.

the colour out of space (is the place) (PBKR), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 14:24 (three years ago) link

My friend used to find the tagline on the poster for "The Thirteenth Floor" endlessly hilarious. "You can go there ... EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN'T EXIST!"

Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 15:20 (three years ago) link

Honestly, for the first few tweets I thought this was a parody.

emil.y, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 15:23 (three years ago) link

*adds to basket*

― groovypanda, Tuesday, November 24, 2020 1:24 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao

Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 15:57 (three years ago) link

It’s kind of fascinatingly unreadable. I don’t think I’d realised that he explains the each reference as he makes it, a whole book of this must be a draining experience

Gab B. Nebsit (wins), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:10 (three years ago) link

the

Gab B. Nebsit (wins), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:10 (three years ago) link

He smiled to himself, fondly recalling the 1984 film A Draining Experience (directed by Sidney Pollack and starring a young Howie Mandel) and thinking himself quite clever for paying homage to the film's title with his turgid prose. He also remembered that 1984 was the name of a book or something that someone made sometime before the '80s so it's not actually important to note.

You will notice a small sink where your sofa once was. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:20 (three years ago) link

fuck you pic.twitter.com/9YlivP9VAR

— Jacob Mercy (@jacobmercy) November 24, 2020

This made me squeal.

triggercut, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:30 (three years ago) link

http://i.redd.it/86pwtqyan1r21.jpg
earl earling in Earl

the serious avant-garde universalist right now (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:32 (three years ago) link

Like every time I play a video game, I have to actively ignore the 'story' because it is inevitably the worst part of the experience, but these books are like 'what if we jettisoned everything about a video game EXCEPT for the story?!?'

You will notice a small sink where your sofa once was. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:35 (three years ago) link

I love the exact word-for-word copy-paste.

HEY! NO! DROP IT! ERNEST! NO! PUT THAT REFERENCE DOWN! THAT IS NOT A TOY! ERNEST? DROPPIT! pic.twitter.com/AIGGA0ddEo

— Jacob Mercy (@jacobmercy) November 24, 2020

jmm, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:40 (three years ago) link

lol, that is some "my report is due in the morning" shit

When discussing the sperm whale, I am reminded of Melville's words from Moby Dick: "Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod’s side; and as we may freely go from one to the other, by merely stepping across the deck:—where, I should like to know, will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology than here?

In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a certain mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale’s which the Right Whale’s sadly lacks. There is more character in the Sperm Whale’s head. As you behold it, you involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him, in point of pervading dignity. In the present instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and salt colour of his head at the summit, giving token of advanced age and large experience. In short, he is what the fishermen technically call a “grey-headed whale.”

Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads—namely, the two most important organs, the eye and the ear. Far back on the side of the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale’s jaw, if you narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you would fancy to be a young colt’s eye; so out of all proportion is it to the magnitude of the head.

Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale’s eyes, it is plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more than he can one exactly astern. In a word, the position of the whale’s eyes corresponds to that of a man’s ears; and you may fancy, for yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects through your ears. You would find that you could only command some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight side-line of sight; and about thirty more behind it. If your bitterest foe were walking straight towards you, with dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not be able to see him, any more than if he were stealing upon you from behind. In a word, you would have two backs, so to speak; but, at the same time, also, two fronts (side fronts): for what is it that makes the front of a man—what, indeed, but his eyes?

Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of the whale’s eyes, effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which towers between them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of course, must wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this side, and another distinct picture on that side; while all between must be profound darkness and nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to look out on the world from a sentry-box with two joined sashes for his window. But with the whale, these two sashes are separately inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly impairing the view. This peculiarity of the whale’s eyes is a thing always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader in some subsequent scenes.

A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content with a hint. So long as a man’s eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing is involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing whatever objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one’s experience will teach him, that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of things at one glance, it is quite impossible for him, attentively, and completely, to examine any two things—however large or however small—at one and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side by side and touch each other. But if you now come to separate these two objects, and surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in order to see one of them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will be utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness. How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his eyes, in themselves, must simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man’s, that he can at the same moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he can, then is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able simultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct problems in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any incongruity in this comparison.

It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when beset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer frights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve them.

But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are an entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads for hours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no external leaf whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the eye. With respect to their ears, this important difference is to be observed between the sperm whale and the right. While the ear of the former has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible from without.

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare’s? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel’s great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try to “enlarge” your mind? Subtilize it.

Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand, cant over the sperm whale’s head, that it may lie bottom up; then, ascending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and were it not that the body is now completely separated from it, with a lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us where we are. What a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from floor to ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal satins.

But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at one end, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such, alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is it to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world like a ship’s jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon him.

In most cases this lower jaw—being easily unhinged by a practised artist—is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting the ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles, including canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to riding-whips.

With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were an anchor; and when the proper time comes—some few days after the other work—Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists, are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances the gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands. There are generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building houses."

In conclusion, the sperm whale is a great whale.

the serious avant-garde universalist right now (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:47 (three years ago) link

haha

Two Meter Peter (Ste), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:47 (three years ago) link

Fucking hell, I write fiction (often SF), and I do my best to make the prose as good as I possibly can. Hours and days and weeks and months and years I spend on it. And then I read this kind of tum-te-tum-te-tum sub-Dan Brown crap and think "why do I bother?"

fire up the curb your enthusiasm theme music (again) (Matt #2), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:50 (three years ago) link

well at least he's not obscenely well paid and famous

the serious avant-garde universalist right now (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:51 (three years ago) link

Ernest Cline is sincerely surprised that his performance art piece has been so successful.

You will notice a small sink where your sofa once was. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:57 (three years ago) link

(clicks random link, copies text from webpage, pastes into Word document, inserts a few 'Jimmy Joe wrinkled his brow and said'-s to make it look like a story)

You will notice a small sink where your sofa once was. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 16:58 (three years ago) link

I remember arguing once that this was actually a brilliant satire on my generation who have trouble expressing themselves outside of pop culture references and how TV & music becomes a substitute for personality

frogbs, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 17:05 (three years ago) link

Bloom was reminded of one of his favorite passages from Homer's Odyssey: The Lotus Eaters. "Oh shit! I suppose I have a thing or two in common with Ulysses after all," he said to no one in particular.

jmm, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 17:10 (three years ago) link

It wouldn't be much of a thing but it would at least be something if all of his references weren't so goddamned boringly predictably MOR. It reminds me of the two dudes who sat behind me at work who would discuss (at great length, and in great detail) e.g. the relative merits of the Santa Clause films.

You will notice a small sink where your sofa once was. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 17:22 (three years ago) link

Reminds me of Family Guy just recreating movie scenes with their characters, while I picture a dumptruck of cash rolling up to McFarlane's door and question my life choices.

Is there a literary fair use law? Maybe we need a CanCon percentage where 85% of the novel has to be original.

the body of a spider... (scampering alpaca), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 17:39 (three years ago) link

last Family Guy episode I saw was like an extended bit on the old Patrick Swayze movie Road House and it was so obvious that Seth MacFarlane had just saw that movie the night before writing the episode and just assumed the entire movie was fresh in everyone else's mind too. and Fox's response to this was to give him 3 more primetime slots

frogbs, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 17:44 (three years ago) link

Laura's thread on this has been great

Baby, it’s on pic.twitter.com/In8EhYgDAa

— Laura Hudson (@laura_hudson) November 24, 2020

Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 24 November 2020 20:23 (three years ago) link

eurgh that BTTF thing.

I'm not sure if I can take any more of it.

Two Meter Peter (Ste), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 20:58 (three years ago) link

The trouble with virtual reality is that it would be designed by people like this

a combination no self-respecting gunter would have trouble remembering (Matt #2), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 21:01 (three years ago) link

would be?

thousand-yard spiral stairs (f. hazel), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 21:02 (three years ago) link

He smiled to himself, fondly recalling the 1984 film A Draining Experience (directed by Sidney Pollack and starring a young Howie Mandel) and thinking himself quite clever for paying homage to the film's title with his turgid prose. He also remembered that 1984 was the name of a book or something that someone made sometime before the '80s so it's not actually important to note.

loool

huge rant (sic), Tuesday, 24 November 2020 22:18 (three years ago) link

We had thoughts at our podcast feed

Friends and listeners, we here at BtB are a peaceful bunch, truly. Then we see this excerpt from the new Ernest Cline novel. To which we can only say, begone foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace! pic.twitter.com/XQVHhum3sb

— By-the-Bywater (@BytheBywater) November 25, 2020

Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 25 November 2020 02:02 (three years ago) link

Ernest pauses, the tip of a well-chewed pencil between his lips, as he hovers over the list and casts his mind back once more into the well of youthful memory. Fast, he whispers to himself. What goes fast? After some time has passed, his eyes suddenly light up and he scrawls 'luck dragon' just below 'that spaceship with Pee-wee Herman's voice' and then wipes away the blood trickling freely from his left nostril.

You will notice a small sink where your sofa once was. (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 25 November 2020 04:43 (three years ago) link

Are you fucking kidding me

I've just been staring at this for five minutes pic.twitter.com/FDF740HMAl

— Jacob Mercy (@jacobmercy) November 25, 2020

umarell of the year (jmm), Wednesday, 25 November 2020 14:28 (three years ago) link

if we hit that bullseye, their house of cards will fall like a row of dominoes... checkmate

Neil S, Wednesday, 25 November 2020 14:35 (three years ago) link


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