JsARCLIGHT

While funny, this doesn't really belong here. It is *sort of* car related so it may warrant reposting in the larger auto discussion thread, but as a thread in and of itself it's kind of against type for this section. Sorry but she's a lock.

I wonder what finally got him out of that mini sub. I bet it was sharing a two foot by two foot space with Bill Paxton for a few years that finally did it. Let's hope that his directoral skills did not dull after all this time... it might just be the negative nelly in me but for some reason this project sounds more like a technology demo than a movie. It always bothers me when the apparent "focus" of a movie is not on the story it is trying to tell but the new presentation technology it is trying to sell... kind of like all those bad 3D movies that came out in the early '80s (Friday the 13th 3D, Jaws 3 D, etc.). Ian Malcom's "they were too concerned with whether or not they could to take the time to ask whether or not they should" is ringing in the back of my ears. Personally I could care less if the movie is CGI MoCap ReCap LoCap HiCap RealCap FakeCap 3D 4D or EleventyD... I just want a good James Cameron movie. If he doesn't spend adequate time where it's needed this thing could wind up being his own personal Phantom Menace. Then again, a lot of people claim his "Phantom Menace" was The Abyss... and I liked The Abyss.

For Firefox go to tools>options, then click on the tabs for cookies and cache. At the lower right on each tab panel is a button that says "clear cache/cookies". Click that. Done. I just did that here at work and your new avatar came up for me. As Hurin says, any problems you experience after that point are the fault of an odd computer.

A pic Coota0 posted was accessing that site and aparently needed a security certificate. I went into his post and removed that pic, that should remove that security call. Apologies to Coota0 if that boofed his post.

Personally I believe RT came and went fast NOT because of what it was but because of what it WASN'T... not what it DID but what it DIDN'T do. RT was far from a commercial success, and at the core that is what all '80s children's shows where about... cold hard cash. Could the network sell commercial time on the show? Could they market toys? Would those toys sell well? The big difference between the imported anime of the '60s and '70s and that of the '80s was that by the '80s children's television and it's lucrative toy market tie ins where all the rage. You could not have a kid's show without toys... and toy companies footed the bill of most of the show production in some cases. It was even better if you could import an already produced Japanese show and then import and repackage the already designed and built japanese toys for that same show. Half hour toy commercials, featuring a new toy every other episode was the norm. RT followed this model and was brought to the states on the back side of the big "robot toy/show" boom and was brought to cash in on that boom. Coming to the arena a year after Transformers was the crap, when Go-Bots still hung on the pegs, Maxx Steel and Roboforce had a real robot and Voltron was on every kid's 1984 christmas list instantly made RT the underdog. It had to compete with the trend starters and beat them, which was a tall hill to climb HG originally wanted to just push Macross but saw more openings in syndication so they tacked on two more shows. Their next gauntlet was to get the companion toy line chugging. Transformers had already boosted the Valkyrie design from Takara for their own ends while cheap "bargain bin" toy line "Convertors" had harvested many of the Takara "Train Station" toy molds and so on and so forth. RT's quick and dirty "import, repackage and sell" toy prospects where slim... so they did what they could. They got the few toys they could out of japan, repackaged them and got them to market. But their big card to play was to get Matchbox on the phone, a company who wanted to expand their toy offerings to include action figures, and they produced a line of toys that actually competed with GI Joe rather than Transformers. IMHO that was the big mistake... they had this great show full of all sorts of transforming robots (the popular trend of the time) and they "blow their wad" both in marketing and toy shelf exposure on a main toy line featuring ZERO transforming robot toys but instead a bunch of cheap 3 3/4" plastic GI Joe-like figures and kind of flimsy non-transforming vehicles (the hovertank doesn't count). Sure they had a handful of actual REAL transforming and triple changing toys, but compared to the "main push" of the Matchbox action figure line they faded into the background of most toy isles. Add to that the confusion a lot of kids had when they saw this bigass awesome "Jetfire" transformer at the same time they saw the Valkyries in RT... anyone can guess what happened. I clearly recall hearing kids back then claim RT ripped off Transformers! Kids being kids and not knowing one from the other assumed Transformers had made "Jetfire" and not RT because transformers where first to market with the design. To lump even more fire on the blaze the aforementioned Convertors toy line also had Valkyrie toys on the shelves under different names. Kids are lame consumers... they only know what they saw on TV and when they went into the toy isle to buy their toys with their allowance money almost all of them went right to what they knew... GI Joe, Transformers. RT toys confused them. Where they transformers? No, they didn't come in Transformers packaging. Isn't that Jetfire? No, that's a cheap copy of Jetfire. Where they GI Joe? No again, no GI Joe packaging. So with their brand muddled due to no fault of their own (other than not securing the rights to license and product distribution, which echoes still to this day) selling RT in the toy isle became a losing battle. And when a toy lost in the toy isle, it's show went into the can. I'm sure there is some legitimacy to people who say RT was pulled by complaining parents but the real thing that killed it was that it's "support", it's toy lines, failed. It's like trying to fight a war with your supply lines cut... you don't get very far. Which brings me sort of to the second "front" on which RT didn't do something the other shows did... it didn't ingrain itself in the minds of children. It could be argued that it did indeed do that on a small scale otherwise it would not have the adult following it has today... but at the time RT was fourth, perhaps even fifth or lower teir behind the juggernauts of the day. "Groundbreaking" and "entertaining" are nothing when compared to "popular". How well a show/toy does could (and still can) easily be gauged by walking onto a playground and seeing what the kids where playing with and what they most of all wanted to play with. Are the kids prentending to be Rick Hunter and Scott Bernard? Not really... they where pretending to be Voltron, Optimus Prime and Michael Knight. Now, I was a teenager at this time in the '80s and did my best to NOT buy toys and run around pretending to be cartoon characters (otherwise be branded a dork and lose my chance at a date that weekend) but I did see what kids played with and I did hear what the younger kids in my family wanted for birthdays and christmases... they wanted Voltron, GI Joe and Transformers. Not a single one of them wanted RT. Years, even decades after the fact, RT has hung around as a subculture. It has never been super popular, even in it's second life of "adult fetish collectible fandom". I bet if you went out and took a poll the hot toys of that time frame, GI Joe and Transformers, would STILL today be more popular and traded in higher numbers in the states than RT toys (Real Macross product included or not). The thing is everyone can debate and discuss the philosophical and metaphysical reasons and conjecture behind RT's impact on the media, it's impression on youth, it's relative complexity or simplicity against it's peers and whether or not kids actually liked the show... but the core issue that killed RT in it's day was it could not parlay it's presence into profit. The age old sword that kills all media. Was that because it was too complex for kids? Perhaps... I tend to think it was rather a gestalt of errors on behalf of the folks marketing it, strange coincidences that hurt it's marketability and it's late entry into the "big cool robot" genre. I can say that I firmly believe had RT hit the states BEFORE Transformers, not had all the issues with the "jetfire" fiasco, been edited a slight bit more to eliminate the "concerned parents" angles and had it's toy merchandising handled slightly differently it would have become a powerhouse. Instead it was a quick cash-in shot taken by an American production company looking to profit off of the robot toy/show boom. People who say otherwise are fabricating to make the goals seem noble.

And as I said earlier that is because for that generation at that particular time, RT was one of the several japanese conversion shows on the air in the US. Of those that saw it and liked it, some of them can honestly claim it is what got them "into anime"... but when you look at the actual numbers that lot of people is quite small. RT aired in 1985 in the states, it was all but gone by 86. That only gives a small handful of people the opportunity to see the show and credit it with anything. When people (like HG likes to do) paint with a broad brush and throw out statements like "RT started interest in anime" it simply is not true. It can become true when you put tons of qualifiers on it like "RT started people's interest in anime... if they where part of that generation, saw it on it's original run, had not seen any other 'landmark' animes prior or post etc. etc. etc. on and on." Actually the "modern" RT toy market was and is failing just as it's original one did. The superposables never got any further than niche status. They where not "everywhere", the best retail outlet exposure they got was to have three or four of them on a peg in a Gamestop... at which they failed to sell. Here in the midwest Gamestop had to clearance, discount and tantamount "give away" all their modern RT merch. It tanked terribly, sure they might have sold one or two to the occasional die-hard fanboy coming into the store but the bulk of the case lots just sat on the shelves. Consumer interest in RT toys was and still is abysmal. The internet and it's online stores mask true point of sale popularity of many "fanboy" toy lines. The new RT toys -appear- to sell well online, but in actual brick and mortar retail locations they tanked quite badly. Which points more to RT still being a very niche property. If it was anything but niche the toys would have truly been "everywhere", in TRU's and Targets, and they would have been selling like hotcakes. Instead we saw them eeking out a meager sales trend online at places like eBay and the Valk Exchange while they became bargain bin fodder at larger point of sale stores. Well, I was 15 at the time and I set my VCR to record the afternoon cartoons I liked while I did my homework, of which RT was part. RT "the show" came and went quite fast... It started in early/mid 85 and was off the air by Christmas. It was replaced with reruns of Tom and Jerry if I remember right for a few weeks before being permanently replaced by MASK. I actually have quite a fond memory of watching my daily tape and when RT was supposed to come on they had Tom and Jerry instead. I got a little miffed and checked the TV guide and it said RT was supposed to be on. I even called the local station and asked what the deal was only to be told it was canceled and it's time slot would be filled with something else later on. Sadly the original RT toys came and went from toy stores quite fast as well. I used to go to the mall quite often back then (the mall in the mid '80s was the center of the universe to a teen) and I remember the week the local toy stores got them in. They had a big display in the "boys toys" isle as well as a few endcaps and those freestanding bins in the front. Well, they warmed the shelves... Christmas 1985 came with little fanfare for the RT toys and after that all the RT toys and models went clearance in 86. They lingered on in the discount bins for months en masse, even into 87 in some stores... but that was only because no one was buying them. I can even remember seeing the occasional carded RT action figure rotting in that toy store bargain bins all the way into 1988 (mostly Zentradi figures and those small carded destroids). I personally did not see any popularity or fan interest in RT until well after the show was dead and buried. In all honesty a lot of RT's popularity today I believe bends on the fact that the show tanked and was removed quickly from the public eye. Kids (and then teens like me) never really got a good "look" at the show because it vanished so quickly, leaving in some of us the desire to hunt it down and see more of it. On the other hand mass saturation shows like GI Joe I could care less about... mostly because I saw "too much" of it back in it's heyday. So, one could argue that a big reason for RT's popularity today is resultant from it's unpopularity when it was first released. That is generally the case for most of today's fanboy focuses... shows and toys that failed to resonate at their time of release that small groups of diehard fans hold candlelight vigils for for decades until they are old enough, and spending enough money, to warrant the show's resurgence. I firmly believe had RT been such a success at it's original time of release it would have a much larger market share today and we would be seeing Superposables in Target and Walmart and not seeing them discounted to two bucks on the back rack of a Gamestop.

Which shows Speed Racer had greater mass popularity and staying power in America than RT. RT came and went like a fart in the wind. Heck, in my neck of the woods at the time the show did not even stay on the air for a full year... it got yanked and replaced with something else before it even finished it's first run through. People can praise RT all they want for being a "pioneer" and "making people want to see more" but for the time when it aired it was a lukewarm show at best and a bit of a marketing failure at worst. Yet you only list a small handful of the shows on the air at the time. Speed was most certainly on the air in many markets in the early '80s and even into the late '80s. It was a popular syndication show... mostly because it had a large episode library and it came cheap as it was an old show. I even remember watching it before shipping out to the Army in '88 on cable. Speed Racer is nonetheless a very "relevant" anime regardless of decade of origin. This "argument" may have been only about the '80s but I am speaking more to "all time" and "most recognizable" to the common man, the people Hollywood markets to. RT started as niche, ended as niche and to this day remains niche. It's like the '80s Battlestar Galactica or the '80s Buck Rodgers... folks love to laud praise on those shows as being so "ground breaking" and "influential" but they still tanked horribly at the time of their release and where canceled fairly soon into their runs. It was only a small but loyal fanbase that kept them and continue to keep them alive. The original question of this thread was "what does RT offer 'history and performance' wise to encourage modern Hollywood to make a movie out of it"... and my answer is nothing. It did not "take off" originally, was nowhere near as popular as it's peers of the day and to this day only has a very small following. Legal issues aside, it's potential for mainstream success is low as it's history of mainstream success is low. Giving the show unearned credit for "starting anime booms" or "getting people interested in anime" are not provable or "interesting" to Hollywood deal maker types. They want to see proven sales, a history of high public popularity and money-making ventures. They want to see something like Transformers or GI Joe that have spawned endless sequels, spinoffs, toy lines and merchandising. Had RT done THAT then it would deserve all the praise it gets. Until then Hollywood will look at properties like Evangelion, Gundam and other more market-savvy properties that have cash on their books with earnest while RT languishes on the periphery of fandom. As for what truly "got people into anime" that varies for everyone, giving one show credit doesn't really fly. Personally for me, someone showed me Akira in college and that got me into anime. RT was a long lost foggy memory mixed in with Jace and the Wheeled Warriors and The Legend of Galaxy Rangers that I did not get back into until after I saw a subtitled copy of DYRL many moons after getting "into" anime.

Actually Speed Racer came back on the air more times than Robotech. Speed originally aired in the late '60s on american TV then went off... only to come back on in the early '70s. It went back off but came back on in the late '70s, early '80s. It once again went off but came back on again in the early '90s both on MTV and regular TV in certain markets. It too had a "modern" spinoff of the "new" Speed Racer, which failed miserably like any other modern spinoff. Right now Speed Racer STILL plays on SPEED TV every once in a while (my Tivo picks it up) as well as on other cable and satellite channels, has a good following with DVD releases and still boasts a good selection of toys and merchandise both new and old. I was in a Hot Topic a few weeks back and they had Racer X and Speed Racer shirts... but no Robotech shirts. I guess what I'm trying to say is that any argument that can be made for Robotech is met with a "Speed Racer ALSO did that... first". As much as people (mostly HG) love to lump praise on Robotech, Speed holds higher social awareness in the general American public. I bet if you did like CNN likes to do and show the public at large a picture of Speed Racer and the Mach 5 and ask them who it is then show them a picture of "Rick Hunter" and his "Vertiech" and ask them who that is almost everyone will know Speed but few will know "Rick".

A lot of what Macross did Gundam did ahead of it. Keep in mind Macross was originally scoped as a comedy and not as a serious show. Many shows of the era (Dougram, Dorvack, Crusher Joe, Orguss, Southern Cross, Mospeada, etc.) all had similair theme, tone, scripting, content, etc. Macross could be argued as the first "important" transforming robot show due to it's popularity, most of which stemmed from the neato triple-changing fighter and mechanical designs. Being a child of the '70s I would have to say a big no. Battle of the Planets, Tranzor Z, Star Blazers, Astro Boy and the biggest and most socially notable to most americans SPEED RACER where America's first real taste of anime. Folks like Harmony Gold like to throw around Robotech as "the show that opened the door to anime in America", but in my book Speed Racer wears that crown. Robotech did indeed introduce people in the 1974-1979 generation to anime but to folks like me born in the 1968-1972 generation Speed is the man. Also say the word "Robotech" in open conversation with non-fans and a lot of them will not know what you are talking about... say the words "Speed Racer" and everyone is on the same page. My Mom knows who Speed Racer is... but she has no clue who "Robotech" is.

It's not a new thing either... "Gundam", "Votoms", "Dougram", "Dorvack", etc. etc. etc. All these made-up names start to boggle the mind after a while. At least Macross has a sort-of explanation as to why it has the name it has... which is why I ask if this "kiss dum" name has some sort of relevance to the show or the characters or something.

While it looks kind of interesting I find myself once again saying: Kiss dum? What? Does that translate to somthing or is it just more jibberish names like "Pumpkin Scissors"? I mean, does the name "kiss dum" "sound" cool in Japanese? As hard as I try I can't fathom some of these show names lately...

Come on guys, don't feed the trolls.

I have actually been holding my tongue for a long time on this subject, mostly because being a "dudley do-right" and constantly quoting law and procedure loses you friends fast... because of the permeation of it being "cool" to bootleg and copy. I have no wish to be known as the MW "square" who ruins everyone's party. In truth, I never wander into the model section so all the recasting in there slips by me... but just because I don't say anything there does not mean I feel any differently. I could run around this site and constantly drop law and quote regulations but it will still end up the same: life will go on, people will still recast and distribute and my rambling will have solved nothing. I have no wish to see people denied something , my only wish is that certain "activities" and "things" that are floating around this site that are not exactly above the boards be reigned in a bit. To me that includes recasting... but as I said, one guy asking for change does not an edict make. And as to the reason recasts are given a sort of "pass" on here but direct copying like bootleg videos and copied books are set upon could have something to do with how the law views those actions and how people see the people who perform those acts. See my previous post about "tangible" versus "intangible" items and how they are viewed under the law in respect to total copies and partial copies. Someone who creates a copy manually (such as tracing, physically sculpting or producing) is actually legal within the "fair use" clause as long as they don't sell their effort. Also if only a part is recast or created that falls into the realm of "spare parts" or "modification parts", requiring the original to be purchased and causing no financial loss to the original rights holder in theory. Also to some degree there is a level of "creative respect" given to recasters... mostly because everyone sees "recasting" as a time consuming, "tricky" "art form" that requires skill and finesse... whereas the common belief that in today's computer age "anyone with a pc can copy a video" or "anyone with a scanner can scan in a page from a book" seems to make them "unskilled" and thus not deserving of respect.

If I had my drothers NONE of this stuff would be pinned or openly discussed, but I am in the very, very small minority on this issue. I come from another realm of message boards, the firearms world. Any and all talk of illegal things on firearms boards is strictly frowned upon whenever it is encountered. I am used to having to "lecture" people on the law and the reasons you don't talk about certain things in the open. The thing is, that is done NOT because people like me want to be dicks and holier than thou punks... it's done for liability reasons. Hell in all truth about half of the firearm owners out there at some point in their lives are breaking a law... they may not know it, or they may know it, but it still comes down that they are not all rosy in the eyes of the law. The same thing happens here... there are a lot of people here breaking the law. They may not know it and then again most of them DO know it and don't care. The problem is in this culture of apathetic acceptance of illegal activity that has grown up not only here at MW but all over the net... and the world for that matter. In all truth if Macross World is ever "raided" in earnest by any of the rights holders' lawyers who's intellectual properties we "borrow" for all these things this place (as well as many of it's members and staff) would be subpoenaed and shut down in a breath for complicit activity. It has happened in the past to other sites and we run the risk of it happening to us if we unabashedly continue to thumb our collective noses in the face of the law and the original rights holders. Through our grudging acceptance and "encouragement" through inaction of all these bootlegs and copies we are setting ourselves up for trouble. The only thing, and I mean the ONLY thing, that saves us is that all this revolves around a long forgotten and vastly microscopic small scale (in the sense of greater things) foreign property. In other words we are saved because the original rights holders themselves are seemingly apathetic of enforcing their property on such a small scale... but there may come a day when someone decides we ARE a problem and they take action on something here. We may be small potatoes now, but given time and the increasing volume of stuff we do, we may soon make ourselves quite a juicy target. All this running fast and loose with other people's intellectual properties has to have boundaries "in public". When MW was a tiny, unnoticeable kitchen table group where everyone knew everyone else this sort of stuff was not really an issue... but as this place grows we NEED to keep a better handle on all the publicly visible questionable activity on here or risk possible legal repercussions down the road. Today's MW has thousands of people looking at everything... one of these days one of those people could be a copyright lawyer building a case. AND FOR THE RECORD: I am NOT against the people who are doing this, as like EVERYONE here (yes I mean ALL of us) we are ALL guilty of something in regard to this issue if not here then somewhere else. What I AM against is the open, brazen and "site encouraged" nature all this keeps taking on. There are ways to do what you want to do and still maintain an incognito low profile, you don't have to have all these blinking billboards pointing at things. In the words of my grandpa: "If you are going to break the law, don't go and do it in the middle of the street in broad daylight with neon signs pointing at your getaway car". After all, discretion is the better part of valor and I feel all this bootlegging and copying stuff needs more discretion. All a person has to do is look at the "bootleg" sites that continue to operate... the chief trait among them is their low profile. Am I saying it needs to stop? Not really. Am I saying we all need to play our cards a LOT closer to our chests? Yes. Then again from my vantage point none of you guys care. No one cares. It's "cool" be all apathetic and "whatever" about the legal side of all this "fun". Pointing at something someone else did in the past neither makes what you are doing right now right, necessary nor legal... it simply makes you another one on the pile. Eventually that tiny, unnoticeable pile of lawbreakers is going to get really darn big if this attitude continues and someone is going to see it. And at that point all this apathy is going to be our undoing. We need to change our tactics now while we are still under the radar. What that tactics change is is not for me to dictate, but eventually we will need to control the public display and encouragement of all this. It doesn't have to "go away", it just has to maintain a low profile.

Hmmm.... when I do a google search for "Macross" I get Macross World at #3 behind the official Japanese Macross page (Big West) and the Macross Compendium. Robotech.com is number 7.

And to that degree we can remember what happened to some of those more ambitious toy and model recast projects... Rohby's custom Joke Machine models, of which he designed and made himself thus copying nothing, where "shut down" via legal action. Captain America's 1/32 scale Legioss project also fell to the sting of legal action. For all the "successes" Macross World and it's network of recasters and uploaders has we have quite a few very notable legal C&D's. A large part of those items getting legally shut down was that they where advertised on here... their makers did not play their cards close to their chest and their efforts caught the attention of the folks who held the legal rights. It seems to me we (MW) get away with a LOT of the other stuff mostly because we keep most of it hush-hush and relatively low key. The more that people talk, the more people's attention it grabs... it seems to me the more "subversive" and under wraps that people keep things, the greater chance they have of eluding legal action IF legal action is going to find them. Also to the subject of "tangible product" versus intellectual property there is some legal "wiggle room" if you may. When you directly copy and "republish" someone's copyrighted materials such as a book, audio recording or movie you are making an exact copy of said property and thus infringing on their intellectual rights and possibly "damaging" them by people buying your copy rather than their product. But when you create new items based on their property (such as Rohby's toys or CA's legioss) you are guilty of using their license without their permission but you are not directly copying or bootlegging their property. Also in some cases, such as folks recasting single parts like 1/48 BP-8's or hands, that can be legally construed as "replacement parts" or "modification parts" as long as it is not a complete exact duplicate in both name and function to the entity. In other words if I build and sell a copy of a 1998 Camaro as a "JsARCLIGHT 1998 Camaro" without Chevy's permission they can hit me with all sorts of legal heat... but if I design and sell an aftermarket replacement quarter panel for the 1998 Camaro I have now moved from infringement to a more tertiary legal area. I may not be out of the legal woods but I have a much better legal defense making an aftermarket modification part than I do attempting to copy and sell the whole, for you need the original whole to use my part thus implying I am not damaging the original rights holder's ability to profit from their intellectual property. But when your sole product is a direct copy of someone else's intellectual property you find yourself right in that legal bullseye with little to no wiggle room. It's almost comical to think this but legally speaking if Mechinyun would hand trace the line art out of the Gold Book he could possibly bypass this entire legal issue as now his "traced" Gold Book would technically be an "interpretation" of the original protected source material and would fall into the realm of "fair use" as it is now "his work".

All this talk about it invites the negative, of which there is a lot, and all of it legal. I have no dog in this fight and I am not trying to be a bully or a so called "high horse" on this, I am just voicing the facts of the situation. You came on here asking "should I?"... if you really, truthfully want to do this you should, reguardless of what anyone else says. But my "issue" with this is you came out saying "I want to give something back to the community" and then you started talking about "recovering the costs" of you doing it, implying you will charge people for your efforts. Despite that not really being in the spirit of the IMacross FTP, it legally invites the most harsh retributions of copyright law onto yourself. We allow the IMacross FTP stuff because it is open ended, free user to user sharing. Having someone pay you, even if it is simply "recovering operating costs", raises the eyebrow of "bootlegging" which is NOT really discussed on here that much due to the stigma of law about it. If doing this is what you want, simply do it and release it into the wild... people will love it and you will have less legal tape tying you to it if it somehow comes back on you. You may not agree with what I'm saying but I'm trying to help you, not hurt you.

What you guys propose to do will not be legal. The Gold Book is not in the public domain (standard Japanese copyright law follows the Berne Convention which places timeframe of held copyright on published materials at "the life of the author" plus 50 years before it enters "public domain") and Big West has not given you written permission to do this, ergo you cannot legally "reproduce" their copyrighted material online... even if the book is "out of print" or not sold in you country. That includes "taking pictures" and publishing those as well (in a legal sense there really is no difference between scanning vs. taking pictures for online publication as it goes to the legal ends of "intent" and not "final outcome"). As this book is a Japanese creation it is controlled primarily under Japanese copyright law but the copyright laws of the US also back that up. So, as to the question of legality... what is proposed is definately not legal. Will people go ahead and do it anyway? Sure. Just keep this in mind: companies tend to get mad when they discover people copying their material and distributing it for free online... but they really get mad when people copy their material and then charge others for the copy, either online or off. There is a distinct risk of passing from simple contest of the "fair use" provisions of copyright law into bootlegging... and intended or not you can be classified and prosecuted under the same code violations as media pirates if you charge anything for material you do not own the rights to, even if it is simply to "recoup the costs of labor" it is still seen by law as charging a fee for someone else's intellectual property. My advice: if you go through with this do NOT charge for it, do NOT package it as a "product" (which mostly means making it an exclusive "commodity" available from a site you own or operate), do not put your name on it or in any way reference yourself in the copy and try to keep it as limited as possible in it's "distribution". In other words if you plan to do this distance yourself from it, simply do it and release it into the wild and let it go from there. Anything else paints a rather large legal bullseye on you.

Funny no one put this one up yet: Rocky VI on Family Guy

I only have watched two channels in the last two weeks, FOX and Cartoon Network... both are running the Eragon movie commercial and video game commercial in such high rotation that you see one about every other commercial break, plus FOX has Eragon branding at the start or segue of almost every primetime show I saw. The last two movies I went to see (Casino Royale and Happy Feet) both had Eragon video game commercials before the start and the Eragon trailer in the trailer spots. A few of the mass media websites I go to have Eragon banner ads chugging. It's sad but I've seen this creepy dragon more than I have seen my own wife right now. As Dobber said, I have not seen a push like this since Fantastic Four. Good or bad they are spending a lot of money on this push... a LOT of money. I wonder if this movie can turn a profit in theaters with this kind of marketing push. I mean, add all these marketing costs plus production costs (estimated to be $100 mil plus) and I bet you have a very high triple digit number that this thing can't climb. That is probably the reason for the hard push on the video games at the same time, the property needs to recoup as much as it can as fast as it can to clear the overhead so the makers can actually earn some money on it.

With the massive media push behind this movie I get to see some sort of commercial for it every time I watch TV, which is not that often... which leads me to believe they are going to market this thing to success or die trying. Personally, any movie that has to be pushed this hard makes me shy away from it. You could make the best movie in the history of time but if you over-market it, and I'm exposed to that marketing bonanza, I tend to not want to see the movie... mostly out of AGNTSA feelings rather than a true, fact based dislike of the property in question. The commercials for "A Night at the Museum" are doing the same thing for me. My own personal opinion: I know nothing of the books or the movie and base my opinion entirely on the commercials that I've been bombarded with. And that opinion is: the dragon weirds me out. It just looks odd. Something about the head and the face... it does not look "cool enough" to me and it looks a tad too humanistic. Maybee it's the big, round forward facing eyes and the gradually sloping human-like forehead. I dunno... but the dragon weirds me out.

Sounds like a timeline of the negative.

While I liked the first Die Hard, the second and third are completely unwatchable to me. It's not that they are bad movies, it's more that I just can't get "into" them as much as the first one. Die Hard was just so quirky, funny and in the best words a "roller coaster ride" of entertainment. Die Hard 2 was outlandish, overacted and had more glaring technical errors than I cared to shake a stick at... but hey, it was a brainless hollywood action movie so it gets cut some slack. When Vengence came along I hardly even noticed. Personally to me the best thing about Die Hard so far was the old PS1 game "Die Hard Trilogy" and the taxi driving part of the game. SMACK! -wipers- Don't you SEE these people!?

6 Years.... wow. I remember I lurked for a while on the old forums and finally signed up in I think spring of 2001, been here since. When you finally figure out that you've been at a place longer than you were in high school or college it kind of messes with your head.

Spoiler> I would assume he says that out of jest, and that his boys are most likely in no condition for "servicing" Vesper when he says that. The psudo montage that follows I image depicts several weeks of R&R at which point the twins heal enough for him to give them a workout. <Spoiler