Category: Cool

Screenplays

Slashfilm has the Black List.

The list is compiled with a poll of 150 development executives and high-level assistants, and contains a ranking of the hot screenplays making the rounds in Hollywoodland, which were written in, or are somehow uniquely associated with, 2007 and will not be released in theaters during this calendar year.

The Golden Age of Retro-Future

From Dark Roasted Blend:

This is the start of a new series, collection of the most inspiring & hard-to-find retro-futuristic graphics. We will try to stay away from the well-known American pulp & book cover illustrations and instead will focus on the artwork from rather unlikely sources: Soviet & Eastern Bloc “popular tech & science” magazines, German, Italian, British fantastic illustrations and promotional literature – all from the Golden Age of Retro-Future (from 1930s to 1970s).

The author is clear on one point: the future never looked better. Sure, it’s a sort of pseudo-pulp, science romance image they paint (which reminds me awfully of SpaceMaster, does that make me bad?) with plenty of cutaways, pointy rockets and smiling people in bubble helmets but there’s such a cheerful image that it’s kind of sad that it didn’t pan out that way.

The images certainly speak of re-usable spacecraft, a vision that is barely realised by the science of NOW. They also show some Abyss-style aliens (First Contact, by Nikolai Nedbailo).

The Retro Future Chart of Starships further down the page remind me of designs made for Frontier, Crucible Design’s version of Star Trek that, sadly, never went anywhere.

Let us know of other rare & unusual futurist art; next issue will be devoted to the architectural and transportation retro-future visions.

I’ll certainly be tuning in!

Of course, the prominence of the Red Star in many of the images from Russian artists and publications inspires me to think of a post-Cold War era backdrop where the smiling idealism of the images is real. A real Retro-Future of a successful communist Russia sending their brave cosmonauts into the void to build a better tomorrow and forever having to thwart the greedy machinations of Capitalist America with their military expansionism!

Yes, yes, Flash Gordon even, but with a big red star on his chest as the silent American defector muscle behind the scientific genius of the people, Hans Zarkov!

“Damn you Hans Zarkov, Hero of Comrades!”
“You will never defeat me, Ming the Capitalist!”
“I have hostages, Dale Ardinski and the defector Flash Gordon!”

Action!

Roman Road Maps

They didn’t have a GPS system back in those days.

BBC News link

it is an intensely practical document, more like a plan of the London Underground than a map.

“The red lines are the main roads. Every so often there is a little hook along the red lines which represents a rest stop – and the distance between hooks was one day’s travel.”

“Every so often there is a pictogram of a building to show you that there was a hotel or a spa where you could stay,” he said.

“It was meant for the civil servants of the late Roman Empire, for couriers and travellers,” he added.

Roman Roads

Passive/Aggressive

Wow. Am I passive/aggressive?

I don’t think so. Sure, I use sarcasm a lot, often in a humourous and self-deprecating way, but am I passive/aggressive?

Passive/Aggressive is defined as being reluctant compliance with passive disruption. Such as if you’re forced to cook the dinner, you burn it so that no-one will ask you again.

How did this term become one used to win an argument? If you make a point that seems to be a winning point, you then get accused of being passive/aggressive as that’s meant to shoot your arguments down?

To be honest, I think that todays forums are filled with whining pussies. That’s not passive/aggressive, it’s just aggressive! Being passive/aggressive is about avoiding direct conflict, inserting ambiguity, general kvetching. If anything, in the thread above, I’m responding to general passive/aggressive behaviour. Especially when it winds back to “Well, sure, Aberrant and Hero are okay, but you really should use M&M”. Bloody M&M cheer-fucking-leaders. I believe I’m not being passive/aggressive when I’m expressing my hostility openly. Wankers.

It’s so easy to construct a straw man argument or label someone’s contributions as passive/aggressive these days and win by default. I bloody hate it. I’m not wanting things to get back to the way they are on usenet, but JESUS…are things that bad that any time you actually have anything worth arguing about, people start to whine?

I’ve said before elsewhere that I’m brusque. Over here in Ireland I’ve been in some killer debate, fantastic arguments that REALLY made you think, really fired the blood. And yes, we’ve sworn at each other, laughed in the others face and at the end of the day, we have no problem getting up to buy the next round.

Debate is good. Conflict is good. Arguments are good.

But RPGnet seems dedicated to the idea that conflict and debate are bad. We shoud all just be generally agreeable wishy-washy types. Is that not the absolute embodiment of passive/aggressive.