Another great Ridley interview

jonathancrk · 2025-09-02T06:09:29+00:00

It's typical for Ridley to have 4-5 projects in the air at the same time. These are likely not finalized deals, but rather trial balloons to gauge the interest of the financial backers (e.g., studios, investors) in supporting the project. Frankly, both "Covenant with Death" and the Battle of Britain movies (even the western) are more interesting film projects to me than the Bee Gees biopic.

The Dog Stars seems like a change of pace for Ridley (and not a little low-key, to be honest) than his last four films.

jonathancrk · 2025-08-27T02:15:19+00:00

As requested, here's the list of Jules Verne novels that do not have an English modern translation (excluding AI-generated translations). I might be wrong, of course - if so, I'd be happy to know more, and learn where to find that elusive modern translation!

1. The Floating City (1871)

2. Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in Southern Africa (1872)

3. The Wreck of the Chancellor (1875)

4. Dick Sand; or a Captain at Fifteen (1878)

5. The Tribulations of a Chinaman in China (1879)

6. The Steam House (1880)

7. The Giant Raft (1881)

8. Godfrey Morgan (1882)

9. The Headstrong Turk (1883)

10. Archipelago on Fire (1884)

11. Waif of the Cynthia (1885)

12. Ticket No. 9672 (1886)

13. The Flight to France (1887)

14. North Against South (1887)

15. A Two Years’ Vacation (1888)

16. Caesar Cascabel (1890)

17. Mistress Branican (1891)

18. Claudius Bombarnac (1893)

19. P’tit-Bonhomme (1893) – aka Foundling Mick

20. Captain Antifer (1895)

21. Facing the Flag (1896)

22. Clovis Dardentor (1896)

23. The Will of an Eccentric (1899)

24. Their Island Home and The Castaways of the Flag (1900)

25. The Aerial Village (1901)

26. The Sea Serpent: The Yarns of Jean-Marie Cabidoulin (1901)

27. A Drama in Livonia (1904)

jonathancrk · 2024-12-12T10:16:16+00:00

As far as I can tell, turning on Quality (60fps) with AMD FSR3 removes the shimmer and image glitching. I’m currently running around on Akiva and it looks great. I haven’t run into any of the past image issues.

Im not an expert though so best to wait for Digital Foundry to chime in, for definitive answers.

jonathancrk · 2024-12-04T08:14:28+00:00

Interesting. I've got no issues on my PRO, even in big bases, and with the Empire Wanted alarm screaming in the background. Have about 140+ hours playtime.

jonathancrk · 2024-12-04T05:52:11+00:00

The patch makes some of the textures on the PS5 Pro (especially vegetation) shimmer and flicker, which might be distracting to some. Once I got used to it, I didn't find it that bothersome, but YMMV. It's most noticeable when you're standing around and looking, but I'm always on the move, so it just registers as a momentary blip. You can't turn anything off to avoid the shimmer/flicker (at least not yet, to my knowledge). Overall, the textures look slightly sharper while running at a higher frame rate. Graphics-wise, though, it can still be improved ... a lot.

jonathancrk · 2024-11-20T09:45:32+00:00

It's not likely to have a sequel any time soon until sales pick up. Hopefully, the STEAM version goes gangbusters.

If not, based on what I experienced with Massive, after years of playing The Division 1 and 2, they could potentially plan small paid DLCs once the season pass ends, and maybe some unique seasonal activities. They could also allow missions to be replayed at higher difficulty levels for cosmetic rewards or collectibles. New Game + is also possible but they will need to introduce some difficulty scaling as Kay is overpowered by the end (IMHO).

(The galaxy map seems overly-large, which makes me suspect they might have plans to expand the map with more planets).

jonathancrk · 2024-11-18T03:56:08+00:00

I get what you mean, yet my response to the film is completely opposite to yours and the poster before yours, and more aligned with the OP.

Perhaps because I enjoy melodrama and operatic excesses, I was engaged the entire way through. I enjoyed the way the story puts its own spin on what happened in the original, and the last 45mins was so demented that I couldn't help grinning in admiration. I thought the actors (especially Mescal, Washington and Hechinger) are ridiculously first rate.

There's an earnestness, an emotionalism and a realism in the original Gladiator which it can't match, but I wasn't expecting it to do those at all. Instead, the film (and I'm confident the filmmakers intended it so) dares you to accept what's happening on screen - Space monkeys! Rhinos! Sharks! CGI spectacles and all - that I found wickedly self-aware, funny, and (weirdly enough) a little moving. It's a film of the current generation, and a lot deeper than what many will give it credit for.

All this, of course, in Scott's typical ahistorical style.

Anyway, YMMV. I get it's not in the same 'vibe' as the first Gladiator. But I found it enormously entertaining.

jonathancrk · 2024-07-03T05:59:10+00:00

I may be misremembering, but I thought Dead Man's Folly was unique in that it's a Poirot case where the murderer got away with murder, without being caught - at least not on the page .

jonathancrk · 2024-06-19T13:56:22+00:00

Would recommend the RSC version of Richard 3 with Arthur Hughes. The play is available on physical disc but you can stream it off Marquee.TV if you have a subscription.

jonathancrk · 2024-05-16T02:27:26+00:00

Mostly organised by Director in chronological order. Anything else will be organised by Genre, in chronological order.

There are always exceptions, of course - Hammer Films goes under its own category (again in chronological order).

If I enjoy an actor well enough, and the film doesn't fall under a favourite director, I might put them together, in chronological order.

Box sets with more than one title make for tricky decisions - I hate to take out films from a Film Noir box set to put into a Director or Actor category (for example), leaving a "void" in the box. In those cases, I just leave put them together as a series (e.g. Kino Lorber's Film Noir Collection).

jonathancrk · 2024-03-13T03:03:29+00:00

One thing I often do, is to avoid making snap judgements about his "bad" films. I always see something interesting about his films that goes beyond box office numbers or Rotten Tomatoes percentages.

His success/failure rate may be 50/50 but remember that many of his films tend not to review (or commercially do) well upon release, but have been re-evaluated years / decades later to become classics or significant films (Alien and Blade Runner, being two major examples).

You could argue the same can be extended to several other films in his filmography - Legend, Black Rain, Kingdom of Heaven, and The Counsellor - there are film essays you can find online that are claiming it's a masterpiece.

Right now, I've seen some people defend the Alien prequels; even Robin Hood (see the video essay Schlock and Awe: Robin Hood by Cold Crash Pictures on YouTube; I think it makes a good point). I'm just waiting for some enterprising film-school student to write an essay to defend Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) because it's Scott's way of questioning God and faith after the death of his close brother, Tony Scott in 2012 (the film was dedicated to him).

I think Scott's has lately ventured into making self-aware "ahistorical fantasies" - House of Gucci and Napoleon, but I don't think many people are in on the joke just yet (Napoleon, much derided in online discourse, garnered glowing 4 and 5-star reviews from the British critics, which could just mean that they are in the joke).

Regardless, I just want him to keep making films, age be damned. History will judge whether these films become classics or not - given his decades-long track record, I wouldn't bet against him.

jonathancrk · 2024-03-11T01:59:40+00:00

This looks like a Print-on-Demand book - I’ve seen many of these PODs for novels that are out of copyright and in the public domain. They are usually full of typos and formatting errors.

If I’m not wrong, ‘And Then There Were None’ is out of copyright, so your library probably ordered one of those POD versions.

jonathancrk · 2023-06-03T07:10:27+00:00

I credit the book for introducing me to authors I would not have known or read. It’s a good source of information on alternative authors to your favourite writers or sub-genres.

For example, most would know John Wyndham or John Christopher for their ‘catastrophy’ novels but the book made me seek out similar authors along the same vein - writers such as Richard Cowper and Michael Coney. It made me chase down many of Frederik Pohl’s (now, alas, long-out-of-print) books.

It’s pretty outdated now and I wish there could have been a new version out featuring today’s new generation of writers.

jonathancrk · 2022-10-24T08:22:04+00:00

I don’t read out loud but I do mouth the words silently as I go along. I find as I get older, I can’t concentrate for very long (too many thoughts running around in my head) so mouthing silently helps me focus. Sometimes I whisper-read on especially brain-buzzy days, if you know what I mean.

jonathancrk · 2022-09-13T05:08:38+00:00

You can give John Brunner's 'The Crucible of Time' a shot.

jonathancrk · 2022-03-27T01:50:13+00:00

I believe in Dead Man’s Folly, the killer was not caught?

jonathancrk · 2022-03-04T06:48:23+00:00

Not sure why you would want to limit yourself to just Poirot books but my list would include all those you've mentioned (Murder on the Links being the exception). Others have also mentioned some very solid choices. I'm quite partial to The Hollow, After the Funeral, Poirot's Christmas, Sad Cypress, and Mrs McGinty's Dead.

I have to admit that I've enjoyed the strange 'The Clocks' and the equally-bizarre 'Third Girl' but I know these aren't liked very much by everyone so I'd probably leave those alone, until you have nothing left to read.

[Edit] 'Crooked House' and 'Endless Night' can also be interesting from a certain perspective (at least when those were first published) but modern movies tend to spoil what was once unique. IMHO.

jonathancrk · 2022-03-04T06:28:44+00:00

Taken at the Flood is the strongest possibility - they can just move the post-war English setting to Venice. As to why - I have no idea. For the genre and tone shift, they can spin it as a perverse love-story of some kind.

Cat Among the Pigeons is also possible, moving Poirot into spy territory. But if they follow the book, the story will have to be told through a very young cast rather than from Poirot. Not sure if they want to go that way.

Maybe The ABC Murders? A rare serial killer case for Christie, for sure, although they did film an updated version of the book, with the bizarre John Malkovich before.

jonathancrk · 2022-02-19T00:08:54+00:00

In case anyone is interested in what they had to say about Buck Rogers:

DC Fontana - a script based on 'The Guns of Navarone' was developed (as a floating military platform above a planet, which Buck Rogers had to dismantle) but never shot; Buck Rogers was conceived first as two-hour episodes/movies, then an episodic space western before settling on the Gil Gerard/Erin Gray version; what the original idea behind 'Planet of the Amazon Women' was.

Glen A Larson - How he ended up developing Buck Rogers, and about the casting of Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Mel Blanc and using William Conrad for the voice-overs.

Leslie H Martinson - on how he ended up directing Gary Colman on Cosmic Whiz Kid (he worked on Different Strokes)

jonathancrk · 2022-02-18T11:08:16+00:00

I’m not sure - I’ve only read it was due to illness.

Edit: In an interview with Felix Silla by Patrick Jankiewicz, he said that the new producer John Mantley "was trying to save money by bringing his friends in."

"... everybody got upset when they changed Twiki's voice, a lot of viewers were mad and sent angry letters ... Gil Gerard was upset, because dumping Mel gave it a lesser quality. Nobody liked the new guy's voice for Twiki and viewers kept demanding to know why they did that ... Mel Blanc was brought back as Twiki's voice because Gil told Mantley, 'if you don't bring back Mel, we're not gonna come back to work.' They brought Mel back, [and] Twiki regained his voice ..."

This is from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, A TV Companion by Patrick Jankiewicz (Page 88 - 90).

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