Short and Sweet, the latest tidbit found...

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

Nobody ever talks about any of this, but everybody makes smart ass comments about every persnickety little problem from the hubs to using the word "season" on the DVD sets to losing the CGI files (admittedly a monumental screw-up, but people talk about it like it was an act of malice directed at them personally.)

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You don't have to prove malice to prove negligence.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, SF fans are the whiniest, most annoying bunch of people in the world if the least little thing goes wrong or they don't get exactly what they want. Warner Bros. sunk something like $125 million bucks into B5, all told. They kept the show on the air, year after year.

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Profitable year after profitable year. This is a favor? That's what a business does. JMS gave them a show that practically ran itself and was constantly under budget. What more could they ask for? However, I do agree that scifi/fantasy geeks are extremely anal.

They tried two home video releases in the U.S. because the fans begged for them (and then had to cancel them when those same fans stopped buying them)

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Wasn't that because WBHV leaked reports of a pending DVD release, thus sabotaging their own VHS sales, and causing them to scuttle both the VHS AND DVD formats for several years to come?

Despite the failure of their first two attempts, they released the show again on DVD and did it just the way most of the fans they'd heard from had asked for it - widescreen, with extras, Dolby Digital sound remixes...

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That's funny, I thought they released a bare-bones edition of The Gathering/In the Beginning and only went ahead when they were completely flabbergasted by that DVD's success.

And for all this they get called "spineless toadies" and treated like they are somehow the enemy. This when they're actually paying JMS to write another new B5 universe project!

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Based on success of Seasons 1 through 3 to date, I'd wager.

"Spineless toadies" may be going too far, but it has its basis in frustration. WB allowed The Gathering to be half eaten by rats, lost the collective CGI files of Netter Digital, killed the Sierra B5 game at near completion, but worst of all, they continually exhibit very little faith in the show despite it's popularity growth and devoted fan base.

You know Joe, I FULLY agree with you. It seems like spoiled child.

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It's not being spoiled to want things done right (although I haven't really bitched about all those packaging errors, I've simply noted them). Those little "persnkickety" problems just seem all the more mind-boggling when you think of the money going into this stuff. I don't expect the person doing the layout to necessarily know which end of a Sharlin Cruiser is up, but I'd hope someone more informed would look it over before they begin printing a couple o'hundred thousand books and jackets. Oh well.

If I were WB I would be really pissed of with all this complaining. It is so easy to complain and so hard to acknowledge..... As I said in another message, with all this "crying babies" situation, we will never be a serious source of opinion for the WB studios.

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WB is not a person and does not feel. Nor does it bother to know our feelings or benefit from the collective knowledge available to it. This is not WB's fault - almost all companies run this way. They are populated with spineless toadies as well. But just as there is no malice involved when they go against our wishes, there is no benevolence at work when they give us what we want. WB will go where the money leads it. As long as we give them a profit, they will find something to sell us. And I have acknowledged WB in the best way possible, by buying all three sets of DVDs.

Personally, from my own selfish perspective, I hope it is a made for tv movie or mini-series. That way I can tape it and watch it repetitively. A real movie in the theaters would force me to wait for it to be released on dvd.

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

killed the Sierra B5 game at near completion

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Now you are just getting needlessly paranoid.

Sierra "killed" Into The Fire (along with half to two-thirds of the rest of its forthcoming output) in a massive restructuring of its products.

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

to losing the CGI files (admittedly a monumental screw-up,

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Sooooo monumental that it's hard to believe that it was an accident. Nobody could be THAT stupid,

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Well, to quote the show, "Never bet against stupidity."

The thing is, it doesn't even require individual stupidity, necessarily, so much as a bit of institutional lack of procedural foresight (particularly if you allow for personel turnover between the B5 stuff being put in storage and whenever their storage got overly cleaned out, so that nobody had real detailed knowledge of what was what in there). Everybody can do their job as it was laid out for them, but still have unintended consequences (like the deletion / destruction of some files that you really ought to keep). I could construct a number of scenarios where everyone involved acted in ways that were perfectly reasonable, based on the information they had, with the end result that something like this happens. Most of them start with edicts from "buisiness" side about things like "cost containment". However, I don't see the point in speculating in detail about events that I know nothing about (beyond the end result that the files are gone).

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

killed the Sierra B5 game at near completion

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Now you are just getting needlessly paranoid.

Sierra "killed" Into The Fire (along with half to two-thirds of the rest of its forthcoming output) in a massive restructuring of its products.

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Not paranoid. I could just be mistaken. The way I was remembering it was that WB was footing the bill for the game, Sierra was behind schedule and over budget, and WB would commit no additional funds necessary to complete the game. Sierra, unwilling and unable to dip into their own pockets, axed the game and cleaned house.

I could be only partly right on this. It's been a while.

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

killed the Sierra B5 game at near completion

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Now you are just getting needlessly paranoid.

Sierra "killed" Into The Fire (along with half to two-thirds of the rest of its forthcoming output) in a massive restructuring of its products.

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Not paranoid. I could just be mistaken. The way I was remembering it was that WB was footing the bill for the game, Sierra was behind schedule and over budget, and WB would commit no additional funds necessary to complete the game. Sierra, unwilling and unable to dip into their own pockets, axed the game and cleaned house.

I could be only partly right on this. It's been a while.

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Another reason for Sierra to cancel the B5 game was that they were afraid that it wouldn't been too profitable. I can't blame they for that, look at Freespace 2 for example, a great game, but sold worldwide only little over 21000 copies (yes, 21000 that's not a typo). And other space sims like I-war, little over 45000.. well.. sale numbers speak for themselves in space sim -section, don't they?

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

to losing the CGI files (admittedly a monumental screw-up,

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Sooooo monumental that it's hard to believe that it was an accident. Nobody could be THAT stupid, and if it was an accident, they had the wrong people in charge of the files. Indeed, if I worked at WB and either was the one who lost the files, or ordered the destruction of the files, I'd expect to get fired over it. That's what would have happened at my place of employment. I know that wouldn't result in the recovery of the files, but it would set an example.

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No. There is a much simpler reason for this. Warner Brothers did not realise that the CGI files were important. Babylon 5 was the first big use of CGI and probably the first to try and reuse it.

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

PillowRock

Well, to quote the show, "Never bet against stupidity."

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Believe me, when I wrote my line ("Nobody could be THAT stupid,"), I heard the line you quoted above, in response.


A_M_Swallow

No. There is a much simpler reason for this. Warner Brothers did not realise that the CGI files were important. Babylon 5 was the first big use of CGI and probably the first to try and reuse it.

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Who'd they have in charge of the stuff, baboons? Or as Mal on Firefly would say, "Was it space monkeys?" Did nobody involved have any programming (as in computer programming) or CGI experience? Didn't they know what they had? Good grief, how can people be this incompetent, and live?

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

The way I was remembering it was that WB was footing the bill for the game, Sierra was behind schedule and over budget, and WB would commit no additional funds necessary to complete the game. Sierra, unwilling and unable to dip into their own pockets, axed the game and cleaned house.

I could be only partly right on this. It's been a while.

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Or you could be, and are, completely wrong. Warner Bros. did not finance or control the game, and that is not the way these things are generally done. This sounds like another fan-generated conspiracy theory that somebody who knows nothing about how the computer game business or the TV licensing business works. I'm sorry that intelligent people find these things on the net and fall for them.

No, you don't need to prove malice to show negligence - but since I never said that Warner Bros. wasn't negligent (in fact, I said exactly that but not in those words) I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove except that you know how to construct a straw man argument.

I don't know why it comes as such a shock to learn that businesses are freuquently careless and short sighted. Something like 80% of all films world wide that were produced prior to 1925 are gone. No copies of them exist anywhere because nobody thought to preserve them. The fledgling studios of those days thought of films as emphemeral entertainment, like newspaper comic strips. They weren't considered art and nobody expected that anyone would be interested in seeing them after their initial theatrical runs. Most TV networks were similarly cavalier about the treasures of early broadcasting. Seeing high bills for storing the material and no obvious market or profit potential in it, they simply threw away or burned thousands of hours of kinescopes of live television shows. Nor is it just American television that suffers from this problem. When Terry Jones went to the BBC to try to get clips from his pre-Python Complete and Utter History of Britain to use in a special he discovered that the original negatives and all the prints had been destroyed - except for one print of one episode that survived only because it was misfiled.

So Warner Bros. screw-up with the CGI files was just that - a scew up. And for all we know the guy responsible was fired.

Nor is this kind of thing somehow limited to "disrespect" for SF. Those whose cultural horizons aren't so narrow know pefectly well that a) Hollywood is careless with everything and b) the "disrespect" applies to all so-called "genres". SF and Fantasy films don't win major Oscars? That's true. Neither (as a rule) do mysteries, westerns, "action flicks" and comedies. The kind of film that does win major awards falls into a very narrow range, and when a "genre" films does buck the trend it is usually one that is so good it is regarded as "transcending" the genre. (Gangster films didn't win Oscars for the most part until The Godfather came along. Genre films and actors aren't even nominated as a rule, so it isn't surprising that they don't win.) But people who only think in terms of SF don't even notice these other snubs. Because it isn't their ox being gored. And that sort of self-absorbtion is typical - well, of spoiled children.

Regards,

Joe

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

Nor is this kind of thing somehow limited to "disrespect" for SF. Those whose cultural horizons aren't so narrow know pefectly well that a) Hollywood is careless with everything and b) the "disrespect" applies to all so-called "genres". SF and Fantasy films don't win major Oscars? That's true. Neither (as a rule) do mysteries, westerns, "action flicks" and comedies. The kind of film that does win major awards falls into a very narrow range, and when a "genre" films does buck the trend it is usually one that is so good it is regarded as "transcending" the genre. (Gangster films didn't win Oscars for the most part until The Godfather came along. Genre films and actors aren't even nominated as a rule, so it isn't surprising that they don't win.) But people who only think in terms of SF don't even notice these other snubs. Because it isn't their ox being gored. And that sort of self-absorbtion is typical - well, of spoiled children.

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I agree with almost all of this post, however, the last two sentences are more than a bit pretentious. While fans of SF may see this disrespect as happening more to SF than other genres, it's probably because they pay a greater amount of attention to SF than the other genres. Dramas certainly don't have this discrimination (lack of respect, being taken seriously by the Academy) problem. Indeed, they are the darlings of the Academy.

True, when mysteries, westerns, "action flicks" and comedies win, it's because they are so good it is regarded as "transcending" the genre (e.g. "Unforgiven"). However, it almost always seems that the Academy would rather drop dead than give an SF film a Best Picture award. Ditto for the Emmys until "The X-Files" won, and re. the Emmys, The X-Files" was an aberration. What SF has won since?

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

While fans of SF may see this disrespect as happening more to SF than other genres, it's probably because they pay a greater amount of attention to SF than the other genres.

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Which is a slightly wordier version of what I already said, so you aren't disagreeing with me. What makes my version "pretentious" and yours, presumably, "OK"?

Dramas certainly don't have this discrimination (lack of respect, being taken seriously by the Academy) problem. Indeed, they are the darlings of the Academy.

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"Drama" is not a genre in this context. "Genre fiction" or "genre television" as used in the publishing and TV industries specifically refers to the literary ghettos of speicalist ficiton: SF, Fantasy, Horror, Westerns, Police Procedurals, Romance, etc. Again, you're not saying anything I didn't already say, so I'm not sure what your point is or what you think you're disagreeing with.

Besides, if you ever got what you say you want, I think your reaction would be something like this.



FOXTROT by BILL AMEND (c) copyright 2003 Bill Amend

Regards,

Joe

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

While fans of SF may see this disrespect as happening more to SF than other genres, it's probably because they pay a greater amount of attention to SF than the other genres.

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Which is a slightly wordier version of what I already said, so you aren't disagreeing with me. What makes my version "pretentious" and yours, presumably, "OK"?

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"But people who only think in terms of SF don't even notice these other snubs. Because it isn't their ox being gored. And that sort of self-absorbtion is typical - well, of spoiled children."

"Only think in terms of SF" and "...that sort of self-absorbtion is typical - well, of spoiled children." You're talking about the sci-fi fan in general here, like anybody who complains that SF films aren't nominated for and get more major awards, are suffering from tunnel-vision and acting like spoiled children. Watch out. Complain and thou shalt be chastised as being a spoiled child, by JoeD.

People can point out the discrimination between SF and straight dramas, and yet not deserve being looked down upon. You're looking down your nose at 'em like they're some bunch of whiney brats, and like you're above that.

I'm saying that they may notice the disparity more when it comes to SF than say comedies or westerns, because they pay more attention to SF, not that they only pay attention to SF. Just because somebody gets ticked off that "Return of the King" may not get a Best Picture Oscar solely because it's a Fantasy film, doesn't mean that the person who points is out is some kind of hermit that only watches SF, and is ignorant of all else.

Dramas certainly don't have this discrimination (lack of respect, being taken seriously by the Academy) problem.

Indeed, they are the darlings of the Academy.

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"Drama" is not a genre in this context. "Genre fiction" or "genre television" as used in the publishing and TV industries specifically refers to the literary ghettos of speicalist ficiton: SF, Fantasy, Horror, Westerns, Police Procedurals, Romance, etc. Again, you're not saying anything I didn't already say, so I'm not sure what your point is or what you think you're disagreeing with.

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By "Drama" I'm referring to straight dramas (which can be period dramas, e.g. "The Last Samurai"...which I liked BTW.), those that do not have major elements of SF, Fantasy, Horror, Comedy or Western. I'd put Police Procedurals and Romance as sub-categories of the previous four categories.

Besides, if you ever got what you say you want, I think your reaction would be something like this.

FOXTROT by BILL AMEND (c) copyright 2003 Bill Amend

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Great comic. Unlike the character, I do not fear that something I like (SF, Lord of the Rings, Babylon 5, etc.), will become mainstream. I'd be glad of that. The movies may lead the mainstream people to a deeper appreciation of the story. Maybe they'll read the books that are available. Then, there could be an increase in the number of people participating in the discussion, and enjoying the story. This is similar to why there's nothing better than turning a person onto B5, for example. It's great to see them finally see in it, what we see in it.

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

You're talking about the sci-fi fan in general here

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No, I'm talking about a specific sub-set of SF fans here. Those who only think in terms of SF. I think I was being reasonably clear about that. Then there are sub-sets of that group, like the fans who say B5 is a rip-off of LotR because that's all they know. These are some of the most extreme cases, but they're the ones the studios and the networks here from most often, and when more mainstream fans adopt the same tone in letters and e-mails the Powers That Be see them as being the same as the worst of us. And that undermines all of in their eyes, so why do it?

Just because somebody gets ticked off that "Return of the King" may not get a Best Picture Oscar solely because it's a Fantasy film

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You're still missing the point, and frankly you're now painting yourself as one of those fans I was talking about - which I haven't done. The reason RotK may not get an Oscar is NOT "solely because it is a Fantasy Film" (emphasis added to show presumption of positive prejudice against fantasy films) but because it isn't the type of narrow, "safe" mainstream drama (or "presitige" period piece from Merchant-Ivory) that the Academy usually goes for. Again, you're seeing a positive preference for "A", which automatically excludes "B" through "Z", as specific prejudice against "K". That isn't what's happening.

BTW, RotK is precisely the kind of film that has enough genuine drama in it to transcend its genre ghetto, and giving it an award (against a field likely to split votes) is also a way of recognizing the trilogy as a whole. (The Academy is famous for giving acting awards for lesser roles to people who should have won the previous year and for other strange reasons. Diane Keaton's Best Actress has Annie Hall engraved on it, but she really won for her work in the much-less-palatable Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Julie Andrews got the Oscar for Mary Poppins of all things purely as a consolation prize for having lost the lead in My Fair Lady to the non-singing Audrey Hepburn.) The Golden Globe nomination will certainly help, and a win there could well produce a RotK Oscar.

Regards,

Joe

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

Just because somebody gets ticked off that "Return of the King" may not get a Best Picture Oscar solely because it's a Fantasy film

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You're still missing the point, and frankly you're now painting yourself as one of those fans I was talking about - which I haven't done. The reason RotK may not get an Oscar is NOT "solely because it is a Fantasy Film" (emphasis added to show presumption of positive prejudice against fantasy films) but because it isn't the type of narrow, "safe" mainstream drama (or "presitige" period piece from Merchant-Ivory) that the Academy usually goes for. Again, you're seeing a positive preference for "A", which automatically excludes "B" through "Z", as specific prejudice against "K". That isn't what's happening.

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No. Incorrect. I see a positive preference for "A", which automatically excludes "B" through "Z", with an even greater (worse, a lower ghetto) prejudice against "K".

BTW, RotK is precisely the kind of film that has enough genuine drama in it to transcend its genre ghetto, and giving it an award (against a field likely to split votes) is also a way of recognizing the trilogy as a whole.

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That's what I'm hoping they do, give RotK the Best Picture Oscar (and also Best Director) in recognition of the trilogy as a whole. It's just such an outstanding accomplishment, that it deserves to be recognized in a BIG way.

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

with an even greater (worse, a lower ghetto) prejudice against "K".

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Except that there is no objective evidence to support that contention anybody is, in fact, treating "K" any worse than any of the other genres. Horse Operas got no more respect and won no more awards than did the Space Operas that were so often compared to them. Again, it is a matter of whose ox is gored. You perceive the "snubs" against SF and Fantasy to be worse because you care about those genres. Having no emotional investment in slapstick comedies, westerns or whodunnits you scarcely notice when they are "snubbed". So you're really describing your own perception rather than anything like objective reality. And now we get into the realm of tautology: I believe Hollywood hates SF and Fantasy and my proof is that my perceptions - shaped by my pre-existing belief - confirm this.

Regards,

Joe

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

If I had a clone, I'd send him off to to a complete analysis of the history of the Acadamy Awards. Unfortunately, right now, I could use three clones and have none (one to do what I described above, and two to work on two friends' PCs*, and the real me to finish my Christmas shopping).

* One is Frelled (They don't know what they did. Deer in the headlights look.) I suspect a virus/worm, or they've been hacked. There's some kind of redirect going on. No firewall. Just an antivirus prg. Guess the method of backup they have? 1.44MB floppies. That's it! Oh, and broadband cable. No CD burner, no Jaz or Zip drives, no USB, no SCSI. I'm looking into setting them up with a USB 2.0 card and CD burner.

The other needs at least Windows 98 to be able to use USB, which they need for a digicam they bought. Heh. Heh. Guess the amount of hard drive they have (total size). ~150MB. I think there's ~40MB left. Guess the backup hardware they have. 1.44MB floppies. Guess how much money they want to spend. About nada.

ARGH!

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

Why do so many threads of this nature eventually break down into Joe D and KoshN having some sort of bickering/arguing match?

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

Why do so many threads of this nature eventually break down into Joe D and KoshN having some sort of bickering/arguing match?

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Because he can never simply accept the fact that I'm right.

Anyway, I think we've exhausted this particular area of semantic confusion, so I won't be adding anything further on the subject.

Regards,

Joe

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

Why do so many threads of this nature eventually break down into Joe D and KoshN having some sort of bickering/arguing match?

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Because he can never simply accept the fact that I'm right.

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Oh, when you're right, I'll accept it.

Re: What about Direct to DVD?

You see what I have to put up with?

Joe