"The script is largely done, and now we're in that limbo zone where we're casting and making script adjustments as we go," Miller said in an interview while promoting 300, which he executive-produced and which is also based on one of his graphic novels.
Miller added that the sequel will be based on A Dame to Kill for, the second Sin City tale and a prequel to The Hard Goodbye, which was the basis of one of the first film's storylines. The sequel will also deal with "a couple of old stories and one brand-new one," Miller said. "The old ones are a couple of 'Blue Eyes' stories, and there's an 'Old Town Girls' story, and the new one features Nancy Callahan [played by Jessica Alba] in a very different, very scary role. I'm hoping we'll start in late spring. It gets pretty hot in Austin, so there might be a summer's interruption there, but both Robert and I really want to be shooting this thing as soon as possible."
Rob Corddry's new show, The Winner, has its pilot episode online, over a week ahead of its scheduled premiere on March 4th 8:30/7:30c. I've posted before about the premise. Apparently FOX is putting its shows episodes on Myspace (since their parent company owns it). The first time I went to the page it made me download some player, but the quality of shows is pretty good. I'm assuming you'd watch 24 episodes the same way. You can find the first episode of The Winner right here.
I thought it was moderately funny. Hopefully it gets better. Rob Corddry was always great on the Daily Show, so I'm hopeful that his shows does well. That and the creator of Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane, is also producing and co-writing the show.
Now, NBC needs to do the right thing and renew 30 Rock. Speaking of which, did you hear about Tina Fey's clever dis of Aaron Sorkin and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip , NBC's other show about a sketch comedy program? She said the following at the Writer's Guild Awards over the weekend:
"I hear Aaron Sorkin is in Los Angeles wearing the same dress - but longer, and not funny."
Ouch. But you can't question the fact that Fey knows funny.
The article also mentions that My Name is Earl and The Office have already been renewed for new seasons, which is awesome news. And 30 Rock really grew on me...it's a very funny show. Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, and Tracy Morgan make a heck of a comedy trio. In all fairness, I'm pretty sure Studio 60 aims to be more drama than comedy, and it's overall genre is dramedy. I've been up and down with that show all season, though currently I'm upgrading its status from "lukewarm" to just "warm."
For completeness, 24 is "in-fuckin-credible," The Office is
"bust-a-gut-hilarious," and 30 Rock is "pretty damn funny." We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
The upcoming Daylight Saving Time (DST) change may become a hassle for many. Starting this year, DST will take effect about three weeks sooner in the spring (starts on the 2nd week of March now) and ends a week later (the first Sunday in November). While people have been talking for some time about ensuring that everything computer-related, such as Windows and applications, is updated to handle the change going in effect this year, they seem to be ignoring other devices that could potentially be affected. Many clock radios, VCRs, TVs, cameras, and other portable electronic devices don't have the capability to get their software patched, and will likely need to be thrown away. That's because they are programmed to change at specific times of the year that are no longer valid. Keeping them would mean going from not changing them at all in a year, to changing them 4 times a year to keep them accurate...twice for the actual DST, and twice to revert its own incorrect DST changes.
With big companies going through patching everything for the new change, it's interesting to think about how much the change is actually costing, and how much it's really going to save.
Just a few days ago, Stanford joined the DARPA Challenge for this year. The DARPA Challenge is a contest to see if a vehicle can navigate a course without human control. In the past the contest has taken place in the Nevada desert, where in 2004 no cars successfully completed the course. The course required vehicles to follow a route mapped by GPS, but also negotiate obstacles and navigate for a period of time where the GPS signal was lost. In 2005, five of the 23 teams finished the course.
This year, the contest goes to a whole new level as the challenge takes place in an urban environment. From here:
The race is now called the Urban Challenge. Robotic vehicles will need to obey traffic laws, and deal with other vehicles, traffic circles and obstacles on a 60-mile course in less than six hours. The top three teams will win $2 million, $1 million and $500,000 awarded by the government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
About 90 teams have been selected by DARPA to participate, including 11 that are getting financial support from DARPA, and 78 that must rely on private funding. DARPA representatives will visit each team this summer, and those that meet certain standards will participate in a qualifying event in late October. The race will be held at an undisclosed location in the western United States on Nov. 3.
The implications of this contest, as well as the new features that are being implemented in cars right now, are huge. Driving controls are slowly being taken away from the human driver. The very beginnings of it can be seen now with things like the Lexus that can parallel park itself and the cars that warn you when you're either drifting out of your lane or are too close to the car in front of you. In the very near future they've said the car may even hit the brake if it senses an imminent collision.
So what happens when you have these new cars come on the road that can drive themselves? They would likely communicate with other similar cars to ensure they handle right-of-way properly and don't collide. But there's bound to be people, at least initially, that don't have such cars. The "smart cars" would need to recognize that and assume that those cars will not operate predictably. Basically, the smart cars need to be smart enough to handle human drivers.
The way I see it, there's a number of overall advantages and disadvantages to cars driving themselves:
Advantages:
Reduced traffic, especially during rush hour. Can you imagine a world in which there are few or no accidents? And even if there is an accident, you'd never have a stupid "gaper's delay" because drivers of other cars could look at another accident while their car continues to drive itself. Today, people stare at accidents and cause major slowdowns on the highway because they don't maintain their speed when they do so.
Reduced accidents, and consequently injuries and deaths
No drunk driving! Your car will take you home. Now getting up once you reached home is another matter.
Consequence of reduced and more efficient traffic: drastically reduced commute times to going anywhere. Cars on roads with less congestion could travel at very high speeds.
But it's not all peachy. There's plenty of Disadvantages:
For those that enjoy the thrill of driving (including me!), you're always going to be against something taking that away from you. So does that mean that the cars would have to allow you to drive if you want to? But if enough people are choosing to do that, the efficiency of automation is lost and you still have traffic and accidents. Maybe they would allow manual driving only during certain times? But then you're going to have people speeding and driving like crazy because it's the only time they get to.
Related to enjoying driving, what about roadtrips? A roadtrip wouldn't be a lot of fun if your car is zipping around at 150 or 200MPH (maybe more?) and getting you there in half the time.
Software glitches. All it takes is one bug in any car's software and the result could be fatal. Not to mention the bug would be on a large group of cars, and this could lead to many accidents. While obviously this kind of software would be very well tested to begin with, a software bug could happen to any company, and in this case the results would be devastating.
What is the car protecting? When it drives around it is going to avoid collisions. But what happens if you're driving around a narrow mountain pass and another car comes barreling around the corner? Would the car choose to launch you off the mountain because it's programmed to avoid collisions at all costs?
The more I think about these things, it seems like a scary but inevitable change that's going to occur. Hence the title of this post..."When," not "If."
IMDb semi-recently revamped their main page, but now they've also redesigned their title pages. It's not a drastic change, but fixes quite a few eyesores from their original design. The new navigation no longer has a ridiculous color scheme, and the links are no longer underlined, amongst many other subtle changes. Usually the links are not a big deal if they're underlined (of course you can tell I prefer when they're not by this website's design), but when you have as many links as an IMDb page has, it is a lot cleaner to not underline them.
So I just posted recently about how Joe Rogan outed Carlos Mencia for stealing jokes. Apparently this audio clip has been going around for a while now. Dane Cook stole a bunch of jokes from Louis CK:
I'm not surprised to see this now. I liked Dane Cook when he first broke out, but he quickly became unfunny to me.
Ok, so admittedly I discovered this a bit late this season, but there's still plenty of 24 to go! Apparently the site Watching 24 has started doing a character countdown this season. They start all the characters with 100 points at the beginning, and then different events in each episode determine whether the character gains or loses points. The way it's setup right now is not very conducive to a fantasy game, but I'm sure their system could be used somehow as the basis for one.
My favorite ones? (spoilers below!)
Sandra Palmer: (-2)
-Didn't show up in this episode (+10)
Net Gain/Loss: +10
Current Total: 8
and
Special Awards:
(-100) points to Marylin for not telling Jack about his Dad, and almost getting him blown up in the process.
So remember when you were little and it snowed a lot? So much so that you could do even better than a fort...you could make a snow cave! Well, make sure that you don't do it in the vicinity of a parking lot, or you could end up getting plowed into a snowbank!
Two Windham teenagers were trapped in a snowbank for more than six hours during Wednesday's blizzard after a plow truck smashed the snow cave they had built in a parking lot off Route 302. Although rescuers took the boys to Maine Medical Center, the two were in surprisingly good shape late Wednesday, police said. "They are thanking their lucky stars," said Windham police Sgt. Peter Fulton.
Christopher Stearns, 18, and Benjamin Wooster, 17, left for the parking lot of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish around 1 p.m. Wednesday. The two built a large snow cave, similar to those mountain climbers use to keep warm on expeditions, and were inside it when a plow truck cleared the church's parking lot around 2 p.m., Fulton said. The driver did not see the teenagers, and plowed right into their cave, smashing them into a 10-foot-high snowbank, he said.
Stearns and Wooster were trapped in the snowbank until about 8:10 p.m., when police and firefighters dug them out of the mound, Fulton said. Parents began looking for the boys around 5 p.m., and called police about an hour later.
[Police] tried to call the two on their cell phones to determine where to dig, but the snowbanks behind the church were so dense that they didn't hear a ring, he said. "We turned everything off. We just sat there and listened," Fulton said of the firefighters, police and state troopers who converged on the parking lot.
Stearns and Wooster were apparently unable to move. When police finally dug them out, Wooster was prone and Stearns was standing, Fulton said. Police first reached Wooster, who told police that his friend was nearby. Both were able to walk --with some assistance -- after the incident, Fulton said. The tightly packed snow likely provided insulation for the two, but Wooster was found without a hat. "He was certainly losing body heat," Fulton said.
I'm surprised the kids didn't hear the plow going around before it ended up plowing them. Maybe next time they'll make a window in their cave.
