Comic-Con 2023 Premiers Trailers, a Climate Graphic Novel, and a Musical 'Star Trek' Episode (avclub.com) 33
For a taste of Comic-Con, one San Diego newspaper is sharing photos of the 30 buildings in San Diego that had their exteriors covered this week with promotional "building wraps" for "the latest TV shows, movies and even a National Geographic special."
Some of the stranger announcements this year:
Some of the stranger announcements this year:
- Jamie Lee Curtis has co-authored a horror graphic novel with an environmentalist theme called Mother Nature.
- It was also announced that season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would include a musical episode.
- Star Trek: the Next Generation star Jonathan Frakes has directed a Star Trek: Lower Decks episode in which the animated characters crossover into the live-action world of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
And the A.V. Club offers a slideshow with its choices for this year's hottest trailers. Some of the highlights:
- The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
- Wheel of Time (Season 2)
- The Marvels (a new movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe)
- Agatha Christie's A Haunting In Venice (starring Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot)
- Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire (Season 2)
- Harley Quinn (Season 4)
Interview With The Vampire? (Score:2)
I know Anne has two books about Louis and Lestat, and two movies as well, so is second season going to be the last? Both movies pretty much covered the books.
One minor tidbit. If Interview had the look of Stuart Townsend and the acting of Tom Cruise, it would have been fantastic. While Tom did a very good job of being Lestat, the look wasn't quite right.
Strange New Worlds / Lower Decks (Score:5, Interesting)
I watched the Strange New Worlds / Lower Decks crossover and they knocked it out of the park. Which was nice after the obligatory courtroom and "am I hallucinating?" episodes that bored me half to death.
The LD actors were perfect and now, with all due respect to the excellent Lower Decks animation team, I want them to permanently switch to live action.
Re: Strange New Worlds / Lower Decks (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree about that ep being pretty good. My only regret is I wish Nichelle could have seen it. A lot of what was said spoke to her contributions to the series. _\\//
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It would be nice if the summary here got the show correct: LD crossed over into an episode of SNW, not the other way around.
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But do Vulcan's really have a "Rumspringa"? Or is this just a Spock one-off?
Spock with a smile kind of creeps me out.
That said, yeah, this was an awesome episode!
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TOS did comedy from time to time as well, and had comic relief all the time. For me, SNW has done a great job of capturing the original show and updating it for modern times.
I find it downright refreshing after decades of self-important mindless technobabble and stacks and stacks of garbage stories. Occasionally there has been some decent Star Trek sci-fi, but even then they found a way to make it boring.
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A musical Star Trek episode? (Score:2)
When it comes to butchering sci-fi classics with cheesy musical numbers, Simpson did it first [youtube.com].
Twice, actually [youtube.com].
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When it comes to butchering sci-fi classics with cheesy musical numbers, Simpson did it first [youtube.com].
Twice, actually [youtube.com].
Butchering sci-fi classics, you say? I give you, The Star Wars Holiday Special [youtube.com]. It does have at least one cheesy musical number in it.
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Your looking at the Star Wars Holiday Special through 45 year old lenses. Sure it's a turd today, and it did give me diarrhea last time I watched it, but at the time it was quite the amazing and exciting TV experience for kids and adults that were desperately thirsty for anything related to the most amazing movie they ever saw-Star Wars.
It's in the same class as 'KISS meets the Phantom of the Park'-crazy cool for a nine year old at the time, but today...WTF?
Re:A musical Star Trek episode? (Score:4, Interesting)
So far, the SNW writers have managed to have fun with the show without ruining it. They've earned some trust that they can make a musical episode and have it seem appropriate for the series.
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To me, (whole) musical episodes often mean writers have run out of ideas. :-) -- as if that show doesn't have enough spin-offs.
On the other hand, I might watch one for The Walking Dead
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To me, (whole) musical episodes often mean writers have run out of ideas.
I think "Buffy" got it right with their musical episode, who wasn't only fun, but also brought significant advances to the plot.
Re: A musical Star Trek episode? (Score:2)
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A musical episode is one of the classic "jump the shark" moments.
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I'd much prefer a modernized "eaten by the shark" moment.
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I'd watch that!
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"If my grandmother had a dorsal fin, she'd be a Mako." Aye, laddie.
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It's not necessarily that he writers are out of ideas, but the cast wants to do something different. Don't forget, they may look like adults but most of them were once 'theatre kids'. It also lets them show off talents they might never otherwise get showcased and that helps them with their career.
I don't like musicals, but if they get it right I don't mind a series doing a musical episode once.
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This is why, for the most part, actors should stay out of the creative process. Of course they want to showboat, but at what cost to their characters/the series? This is especially true with long running, well loved, established franchises, where the desires of a single actor pale in comparison to the gobs of story telling that made the actor's current job possible.
Harrison Ford wanted Han Solo to die, and so we got one of the most useless and wasted deaths in cinema. Thanks a lot, Ford.
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All three classic heros were wasted one way or another. Han got assassinated, Luke got character assassinated and Leia was turned into space Mary Poppins.
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And given how the press tours for Ryan Johnson's abomination started, it was obvious that Mark Hamill had nothing to do with the character Jake Skywalker.
Walking Dead alternate timeline (Score:2)
I think the original show had the world ending in 2010? The lack of distributed power is already looking like an alternate timeline.
If you bumped it even to 2025, there would just be a lot of cabins out there with power and water. "Alexandria" would have a power co-op. The show got around the problem of gasoline getting thicker and the engine unreliable after a year or so in a car's tank, by just ignoring it. But in 2025, there will be a lot of cars you can "refuel" at home, if slowly.
If they keep ext
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And perhaps not all that slowly in another few years. Solar panel costs are expected to continue to drop and efficiency to rise with further development.
(I could name several, including one with a reel-to-real cheap fabrication of a (potentially) no-semiconductor, metal-on-insulator structure, a theoretical efficiency limit over 90% and expected practical efficiencies of 40% at first commercial deployment and about 80% within a f
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Also: Fast-charging, long-lived battery storage is already over 90% energy-round-trip efficient, so your home power collection system could soak up power all day and fast-charge the car when you're home for even a short time or when it's dark, if that's desirable.
Now it's mostly a matter of equipment expense, which is continuing to drop with further engineering improvements.
Solar leaps (Score:2)
(I could name several, including one with a reel-to-real cheap fabrication of a (potentially) no-semiconductor, metal-on-insulator structure, a theoretical efficiency limit over 90% and expected practical efficiencies of 40% at first commercial deployment and about 80% within a few years thereafter.)
Bullshit. Or please provide a reference. The last time I remember hearing about a possible breakthrough solar advance was the one that converted to heat before energy - which was bragging about possible 80%. Seems to have come to nothing. I'll dig up a reference if you really want, but this is nearly a decade ago?
So, yeah, I'd love to see an advance like that. But I don't think it's coming.
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Bullshit. Or please provide a reference.
For one of the current startups working on optical rectenna panels, look atttps://www.novasolix.com/. For some of the other variants do a search for patents assigned to novasolix, them look for more in the names of the inventers of them. (I think that's how I found some metal-and-insulator only, geometric-diode based devices. I know those are also being worked by at least one other group.)
An IEEE Spectrum article on (yet another?) prototype developed at Georgia Tec
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Thanks for the links.
I wish 'em luck, but the tech that "would be working in a year" looks like it's been nearly a decade.
I've grown pessimistic; this looks like a money grab to me.
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I've grown pessimistic; this looks like a money grab to me.
Or got slowed down by COVID.
Fingers crossed. Maybe one of these will make it to production yet.
But even the current stuff it pretty good already, and there are a number of approaches under development to improve it. It only has about one more factor of five to go to be nearly perfectly efficient, but price can still come down a bunch, too. So we're not done yet.
One reason I like optical rectennas: The efficiency is high enough that if you can co
A.V. Club... (Score:2)
Should be renamed AI Club, since they are now using AI to write their articles. But that doesn't stop them from being paid shills for some unmitigated trash. Marvels will lose tons of money, and Wheel of Time S02 looks like the same amateur hour production that had me bail after 2 episodes of S01. Gotta love those fantasy series where everyone is always wearing fresh, crisp clothes.