Predator I ( Sorry.....I meant terminator. )

[dawman]

I can't believe I finally saw this movie. I must have been very busy back then.

But I am shocked of the sounds of the synths in the soundtrack, and couldn't find any information in the movies credits or at IMDB.

Does anyone know which synth was used. It sounds awesome, and I guarantee it was analog. The character of it's sound was more than obvious.


Ankyu.

[hifiboom]

do you mean predator or terminator ?

both for sure are very good movies.

but I guess you mean terminator, as Predator has mainly orchestral soundtracks... ?
listen here:
http://www.soundtrack.net/albums/database/?id=774

though the Predator soundtrack is great too.

funnily we live in times of CGI-FX and high end rendering pcs, but the better sci-fi movies were made in the past with less CGI:
Predator, Terminator, Alien
good sci-fi is rare!

one newer movie which i really liked is this one:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119081/
quite dark, great athmo....

[sharc]

alien 1 is a class of its own

Agreed. I really can't understand why some people prefer Aliens.

It's still a good film and it did kind of open up the whole 'Alien' universe, but in comparison to the 1st film it's just a shoot-em-up

I am not sure about Arnie

I know what you mean, but to this day I'm not sure whether it's Arnie or just the brilliant direction which makes it far better than the other Predator films - including the AVP efforts.

While we're on the subject of Sci-Fi monster movies ...and CGI, if you haven't seen it yet 'The Mist' get's the thumbs up from me. Great stuff

[hifiboom]

when I compare Predator against AVP nearly everything was better:

- the characters
- the athmo
- the storyline

and to a certain level I think CGI effects, if overused, generate the impression that the movie is not realistic.
The same applies soundeffects, newer movies are always overdone with soundeffects.
somebody hit another one in the face sounds like you drive a car against the wall.

and in many cases the storyline is unrealistic too: a good example is MI-2 where Tom Cruise fights his enemy while driving a motorbike. Or does free climibing on a 4000m canyon. Thats just action crap.
Its just the super-hero thinking of our generation. Everything has to be extreme.
When you look at the older classic movie for example like james Bond, the main actor was by far not an overpowered super-hero, but more sombody tricky that always finds a way out of a critical situation.

To me it feels like the director doesn`t take his job to serious today. A good movie should grab you in the cinema. So that you go out and realize that you are now back in reality.

But I think it is another main factor that the majority of todays movies is just big business. So I think to a certain degree the movies are created for the mainstream, so they shouldn`t be to interlectual, have much action, maybe a little love-story and additionallly be a familiy movie.
in best case it should adress every possible movie customer.

Yet still there are always some sequels from time to time: like american psycho, beautiful mind, matrix1, airlington road and so on.

But for me 90% of cinema-visiting is a boring trip.

[sharc]

a good example is MI-2 where Tom Cruise fights his enemy while driving a motorbike. Or does free climibing on a 4000m canyon. Thats just action crap.

That film was really poor. All 3 of those films are nothing much more than a collection of silly stunts, but John Woo really went OTT on that one .

But I think it is another main factor that the majority of todays movies is just big business. So I think to a certain degree the movies are created for the mainstream, so they shouldn`t be to interlectual, have much action, maybe a little love-story and additionallly be a familiy movie.
in best case it should adress every possible movie customer.

You forgot to mention, cut to pieces to fit a nice compact running time of around 90mins, because children (and Americans) apparently don't have a sufficient attention span for a 3-4 hour epic these days.

A case in point is Kill Bill. That would have worked sooo much better as the one film. Instead, they cut it in two for no apparent reason. Then they did the same thing with Grindhouse. Split it up into 2 films and the whole concept was lost.

Then again it comes back to the business of maximising profits. They probably made a lot more than double the money on those films because of what they did. Shorter running time = more bums on seats & 2 films = twice the profit. Just a shame the movie makers don't have a little more artistic integrity these days.

[valis]

And there you have a large part of the reason for 90 minute run times as well. Theatres want to be able to turnover their seating as close to every 2 hours as they can get (including packing them in and cleaning up after), meaning that until recently overly long movies would be shown on less screens (LOTR changed this somewhat as it was a big enough draw and theatres are suffering these days).

Also rental shops want to have the possibility of people renting 2 movies for an evening where one longer one might have sufficed, which is part of the reason why an extended 'directors cut' will come out after the theatrical dvd (the other reason of course being that the movie studio can attempt to get 'fans' to purchase both dvds, and then later the triple pack extended ultra edition with the miniature collectible figurine!)

Also it's widely assumed that the reason things are dumbed down is because many people (Americans?) are dumb. This isn't necessarily the case, when you deal in mainstream advertising or tv/film production you want to hit as broad a cross section of the 'mainstream' audience as possible. What this means is that instead of targeting the individual tastes and likes of the audience members (which just get more niche & individualized as the audience ages go up) you must attempt to find some common basis that appeals as widely as possible and turns off as few people as possible.

When I worked in television it was constantly reinforced that if we didn't put this at a 6th to 8th grade level it was going to hurt ratings/ad revenue, the general perception is that after that age/grade level people start to individuate a lot more so it's perceived as being the point to target. Ie, even adults when spoken to on that level will have more in common, though they will probably perceive the content as 'childish' or at least 'dumbed down'. Obviously if someone wants something that appeals ONLY to a niche they have eliminated themselves already, but what's left over is definately very Lowest Common Denominator, to insure that it works as well as it can across a broad cross section.

Now how much of an effect/feedback loop this has with society in general is another point of discussion. If television & movies become the main resource for ideas for people, and it's dumbed down to attempt to remain appealing across broad cross sections, how much of an effect does this have on dumbing down people that don't consume more than the LCD/mainstream material?

[dawman]

I meant Terminator, sorry.

I never heard an ECS VCS3 but my bassist and I have a bet I wish to win. He clains it is the ECS and I say the 4 Voice SEM. But I can't find the credita anywhere. If the bet was a 100 I'd just buy the DVD but it's a meger sawbuck ( 10 spot ) at stake.

[hifiboom]

I think its a ggod thing to have at least one or two of such analog beasts in your own arsenal.

[dawman]

I can never stop using the SE-1X. DSP or VST emulations can cover most needs, but the lower octaves of analog synths can make the emulated synths appear more real, as the emulations lose accuracy in lower octaves.

I am still searching film databases for the credits to no avail.

[JoeKa]

depending on what elements of the soundtracks you are talking about, my guess would be you are mistaking the electric violin for a synth...

[Tau]

And there you have a large part of the reason for 90 minute run times as well. .....

Now how much of an effect/feedback loop this has with society in general is another point of discussion. If television & movies become the main resource for ideas for people, and it's dumbed down to attempt to remain appealing across broad cross sections, how much of an effect does this have on dumbing down people that don't consume more than the LCD/mainstream material?

Valis, I have been noticing this tendency too. 90 minutes. It's the length of a Soccer match, which would be called the prime tv show in Portugal. But recently, everything you see that is televised tends to 90 minutes. The news, soap operas... Take Formula 1, for example, each Grand Prix is now roughly 90 minutes long! Of course, here, on TV, a 90 minute film can be made to last at least 60 minutes more, if necessary

Tying in with the other issue you speak of, I just remembered the remake of "Solaris", a film originally directed by Tarkowski, and well over 3 hours (or at least around that). There's a certain mindset to be had when approaching such a long film, but when you watch the russian version, you are left with so much inside you, to think, to question, and to remember, and when watching the recent one.... it's so tidy and fast, so empty, so... dumbed down, 90 minutes.

And tying in with the other issue on topic, I noticed the soundtrack in the remake was very cheesy and even annoying at times (OK, I really didn't like the movie ) BUT the soundtrack of the original Solaris and other Tarkowski movies was really very good and well worth checking out!

The composer was Edward Artemiev, and one of the instruments he used was the ANS, a russian analogue photoelectric synthesizer, that used plates with drawings as oscillators and filters, and could generate around 500 notes poliphony, if memory serves me right!

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2008/ ... nthesizer/

The sound is very interesting, and not unlike additive synthesis, or "spectral" synthesis, and it was used not only on the music for the film, but also on the sound effects / incidental music, and that's another good reason to watch the movie. But there are other recordings of the ANS, I'm thinking of Coil's triple album "ANS" made exclusively with one of the surviving units, and not so long ago...

Cheerz,

T

[garyb]

patience and concentration are learned attributes. if not taught, they might never be learned.

drugs, nutrition and pavlovian conditioning moderate and modulate the process....

[garyb]

unless there's mercury in the vaccine that you got as a baby abd young child or if there's flouride in the water, or....

sure, that's how a human sacrifice works, the whole "free will" thing. when sacrificing a human(according to A. Crowley), it's necessary to tell the person what you're doing to him, to allow him a chance to say "no". that way you can blame him for his murder and take power from the "sacred ritual".

i like to compare it to an ox that you own that you use to plow the fields. it's as if as an owner, you are mean and you break the beast's legs for fun and then beat the animal for being incapable of pulling a plow.

[Tau]

Stardust - I believe you are right, many could get out, but don't really want to, while others are honestly trying, but have no idea of the means used in their imprisionment. It's like when people talk about drugs, and how one should stay "sober" to "validate experience". Well, if my water is drugged, the food is poisoned and the air polluted, if I am constantly fed lies and being manipulated in my ideas, can I say that I am sober if I don't do drugs? Or is this a case where others decide how to drug me?

One (old) idea to overcome hollywood and tv dictatorship is to READ BOOKS! They are not limited in "run-time", and allow you to reach closer to the author, and interactively participate with your mind in the unfolding of the story. The best special FX can be had when reading books, and you can select the soundtrack to your liking! It's also a good way to practice concentration and attention.

I like watching a movie, but I get more from books. Maybe it's not as "strong" an experience, in terms of emotional response, but it's far more outreaching.

I've been trying hard to convince my teenage nephews to read books, but it's hard to explain how that can be much more interesting than playing PS3 or watching videos all the time. I remember reading the "lord of the rings" series when I was younger, and what I imagined while reading was so different from the movie (even though I liked the film version) - the characters, the different races of beings, the settings... Like I said, I liked the movie, but I was very happy to have read the book before, and taking my own journey through the middle earth before I was force-fed faces and clothes and accents - know what I mean? But it would be difficult to convince a kid these days to pick it up and begin a months-long effort of reading a single story! And, seeing it like that, making the movie was a necessary move to show the new generation what the Tolkien universe is about, but, even though they made 3 long movies, there's still a lot left out.

And another thing, for instance, I like Sci-Fi a lot. My favourite author is, by large, Philip K. Dick, and I have many of his books, either in English, or translated to portuguese, most of these being old editions from the late 70's and 80's. I went to a bookstore the other day, and found there's a new edition of "The 3 stigmata of Palmer Eldritch", which, together with UBIK and VALIS was one of my faves.I bought it, started to read, went back to the old one I have and... well it's not the same anymore. The translation is different, the whole story sounds different too, not just from the english original, but also from the earlier translation, which was, in my opinion, far more comprehensive, and ambiguous, in a good way. What are we doing to our culture ????

Oh well, another very long post. Sorry for that, I like talking to you...

Much peace,

T

[Tau]

Philip K Dick is my favorite as well in that genre.
A true visionaire.

Many good movies are based on his books:

Total Recall
Minority report
Blade Runner
Screamers

A brilliant mind.

Also "A scanner darkly" - an excellent adaptation by Richard Linklater (and Soderbergh too, I believe?), in faux-animation style, and "Paycheck", by John Woo, that is ruined by way too many special fx and action sequences.

And "Next", by Lee Tamahori, which is a wonderful, surprising film. I never read the original to that one, but the film, even being classified as a romance/action movie is pretty good. Nicholas Cage stars in that.

It's funny to see how the Sci-Fi genre has declined through the 90's and now is so feeble. I guess nobody expected progress to be so slow, and we'd still be in this cave after the year 2000. In a way, reality is now stranger than fiction, isn't it? I mean, the best Sci-Fi you can read right now is just browsing the web for so-called "conspiracy theories" Not that I think that it's all fiction, some of it is perfectly clear to me. But if you take PKD as an example, his fictional stories seem to be very close to some realities I perceive, and it still is a good way to pass on ideas and data without having a bunch of skeptics falling over you. And without forcing the receiver to see things that are not there, but instead, to admit the possibility and find out what is really happening "out there".

Boris Vian opened one of his books with this sentence: "This is a true story. I can be sure of that, as I made it all up myself."

Cheers,

T