Queen. I absolutely love Queen. I’ve listened to them since the beginning way back when.
It was only a little while back that I realized how little instrumentation they use. Most of the time, it’s just one guitar or the drums or keyboards. Rarely more than one musical instrument.
In short, the group made the correct decision to accompany Freddie Mercury’s astonishing voical range and singing techniques.
I wouldn’t say realize, as I wouldn’t have been able to notice it until now.
In the episode of Gilligan’s Island where they eat the radioactive vegetables the Professor is reading to the castaways from what is supposed to be a book on vegetables. Obviously on a 1960’s TV you can barely see the book. Today of course you can. It’s Army Manual TM 9-729 for light tanks. I know at the time it would have been impossible for anyone to notice, but they couldn’t even be bothered to create a book cover with “Vegetables” on it?
I read Robert Heinlein’s Juveniles for the first time decades ago, and I’ve re-read most of them, sometimes more than once. I’ve also read E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series ages ago, and re-read some. But for some reason it never struck me that “Sir Isaac Newton”, the Venusian in Between Planets is clearly inspired by Smith’s Worsel the Venatian.
Both of them are essentially classic Dragons with reptilian skin, talons, and batlike wings, but with multiple eyes on stalks coming out of their heads.
They’re both extremely intelligent leader types honored by their positions, and they befriend the human heroes of their respective stories.
Worsel isn’t always properly depicted – those multiple eyestalks must have creeped some cover artists out, because they show him as a pretty standard dragon. But here he is, properly depicted:
This one is almost too traditional dragon-ey
Sir Isaac Newton
Heinlein was a huge fan of Smith – his tribute to him appears in “Expanded Universe”. Also I note that in Between Planets one character uses the greeting/blessing “Open Sky”, which is basically as close as you can get to the equivalent Lensman saying of “Clear Ether” as you can get without violating the copyright*
To make it perfect, he could’ve had the Martian Ambassador resemble Tregonsee of Rigel, but instead he’s an insectoid with vestigial wings.
*“Clear Ether” is also the more-than-daily newsletter of the Arisia science fiction convention, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who’s read the Lensman series.
I was listening to the David Bowie song “Aladdin Sane” last week. It was the first time I noticed the title is a pun on “a lad insane”.
Emphasis mine. Although they used (acoustic) pianos, obviously, many of their early album covers boasted “No synths!” to highlight the fact that most of the music came from Brian May’s guitars.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but a few decades ago I worked at the National Air and Space Museum and we were able to screen a few episodes of the original Star Trek series on 35mm prints lent to us by Paramount. Seeing them fill a significant portion of the IMAX screen made the presence of stunt doubles in the fight scenes painfully obvious. I haven’t watched the same episodes in HD or 4K, but I imagine it’s pretty obvious on a good TV these days, too.
I was showing my 12-year-old son the greatness of Airplane last night and I realized that Johnny has an earring. Earrings are a lot more common now, I think, but it does look a bit out of place in a control room with a bunch of guys in white shirts and ties.
I stumbled across episodes of Star Trek running on BBC America the other night, and watched the last half of Space Seed, wherein Kirk engages in a hand-to-hand battle with Khan. It was discernable when the stunt doubles were used, quite apart from the fact they were doing stunts.
I’m convinced that for some reason, they didn’t care one bit about the fakiness of fight scenes. The stunt “doubles” were built differently, had fake wigs (that didn’t match the hero’s haircut anyhow), and punches missed by a foot or so.
The first time I noticed that was a simple “punch the bad guy, he falls down” scene in The Prisoner. Badly-coiffed stuntmen, and a punch that clearly misses by a mile, while the villain throws himself backward.
Even as a kid, I felt cheated, and rewatching it later, I thought “They clearly paid attention to the writing, the casting, and the sets… why did they just give up when it came to making that one move believable?”
Yeah, Star Trek fight scenes are always a bit hokey. You won’t get any marital arts tips there - except maybe how not to do a flying side kick. Hint: don’t throw both feet at the opponent and then crash to the ground on your belly or back.
I have to say, though, that bad stunt replacements is sort of a sign of the time. Women would be stunt doubled by men. Larger, big shouldered men. Wonder Woman was a ground breaker using a woman who looked like Linda Carter to do her stunts.
Also, martial arts wasn’t as well spread, and fights in other shows just weren’t choreographed well. It’s like they didn’t think audiences had an expectation of a believable fight. Give a punch or three, a couple of generic untrained kicks that look unstable, throw in some throttling, and you’ve got a fight. Star Trek is an egregious example.
Don’t forget that in the 1960s, the best image a television broadcast could provide was 480 lines of vertical resolution at 30 fps. Not all viewers could get a strong signal from their local station, so lots of people got fuzzy pictures even worse than that. Hell, lots of people didn’t even have color TV. We didn’t get our first color set until the early 1970s.
Producers had no incentive to spend money to make sets, costumes, or action sequences look better than what most viewers would be able to see on their home TVs.
I agree that some of the examples here indicate a little more negligence than was warranted, but just remember than no one had 1080p, to say nothing of 4K, back in those days.
I was too young to be looking for that at the time…
It’s not obvious, didn’t want to start a thread about this, so in Kill Bill vol 1, the Bride and Vernita Green are in the kitchen. Suddenly, a shot rings out! And the bullet hole disappears for subsequent shots!
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was mentioned in another thread and it made me think of the opening.
The book was published in 1884 but it was set in the 1840’s. And it was a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which was published in 1876.
But Huck (the novel is told in the first person) explicitly says he has read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. So he must have been “telling” the story in the late 1870’s long after the events occurred.
That reminds of story Shatner told that after he did the Original Series he was in a situation that he thought might turn into a fight and his first instinct was to do one of those flying side kicks. He then realized he had no idea how to actually fight and decided to leave.
This thread is now more than 10 years old!
It took 10 years for you to realize this?
It took 10 years for you to realize this?
It wasn’t really that obvious until recently.
According to the rules, he had to read the thread a million times first.
This thread turned ten years old just two days ago.