quote:

Originally posted by fjp451:
"The Pedestrian" is no longer a fictional, futuristic narrative:...

Walking, just walking, walking?

I love that simple passage!!!

Bradbury is a master of these small repetitions that can convey so much. Another great one is "I remember you. I REMEMBER you." There's probably a technical term for this, but whatever it's called, I like it!

Phil, how true!! A soul stirring, ironic narrative. This poem says it all about Mr. B!

For anyone who has not lately read its wonderful final lines, "Enjoy!"
http://holyjoe.org/poetry/bradbury.htm

Last night, BBC America had another edition of The Nerdest. This editon was on Time Travel. Guess whose name comes up?

http://www.bbcamerica.com/the-nerdist/

I noticed the website Ray Bradbury Online is no longer. Last I checked, and I may be mistaken, it had not been updated since the publication of Gauntlet's edition of DARK CARNIVAL.

Still, it was a good reference site.

If you mean www.raybradburyonline.com, I noticed this had gone a while ago. IF you mean the more recent reincarnation of part of the site as www.spaceagecity.com/bradbury, I thought this was still up - until I checked it just now.

A quick Whois check shows that the domain of raybradburyonline is still held by Kevin Unangst until 29 April 2013, so maybe it might return.

I can't remember the name of the guy who had the Spaceagecity site.

Fortunately, Archive.org's WAYBACK MACHINE has most of the text of raybradburyonline archived from March 2009 (although none of the pictures seem to be there):

http://web.archive.org/web/200...ybradburyonline.com/

It seems to have done a better job of preserving the Spaceagecity one, which has pictures as well as text:

http://web.archive.org/web/201...gecity.com/bradbury/

Many thanks, philnic! It was the "spaceagencity" site I was wondering about.

Singin' in the Rain is on TCM right now, considered by many to be the greatest movie musical of all time, so get your rotten tomatoes together for the spoiler. (I assume everyone here has seen it.)

Am I mistaken, or is there a HUGE plot hole as to why this movie as portrayed could not have taken place in real life? In early talkies, sound could not be dubbed in. Buster Keaton's first talkie, Free and Easy (1930) portrayed how a live orchestra was even on set to provide music. This was why Buster had to make the same lousy film four or five times, in different languages, because they couldn't just use the one print and have other actors dub in speaking those languages--they had to refilm it with him and a different foreign cast each time. By the time Le roi des Champs-Élysées was made in 1934, someone did dub in Buster's dialogue of two characters (both speaking French, but one with an American and one with a French accent--neither were his voice.)

In Singin' in the Rain, The Dancing Cavalier is saved by Kathy Selden dubbing in Lina Lamont's AWFUL voice. Meaning Singin' in the Rain either couldn't have taken place after the first wave of talkies, or someone missed a trick back in 1928 that wasn't caught till sometime between 1930 and 1934. (Does anyone know what was the first film to use voice dubbing or other added sound?) Is this a small error or a huge one?

I can't answer your question directly without doing some research, but I can add something about the first eave of talkies:

The first British film with a full recorded soundtrack was Hitchcock's BLACKMAIL (a large part of which was actually shot "silent"). The female star Anny Ondra was Czech and her accent was considered not clear enough - so during her scenes she simply mouthed the words while offscreen the British actress Joan Barry spoke her dialogue. A kind of live dubbing! A couple of scenes show Ondra making a big move before she speaks, as if to cue Barry to say the words. All the other actors on set were speaking their own lines.

I believe that the earliest sound equipment used with film was disc-based, and this generally required a continuous recording for the length of a whole disc if there was any hope of maintaining synchronisation. This, incidentally, meant that film editing was compromised - it was no longer possible to speed up a scene in the cutting room by removing shots, since the sound couldn't be edited. This drove Hitchcock crazy, and he really quite resented how the coming of sound brought the (temporary) death of visual cinema.

Having said that, Hitchcock was the perfect man to work out technical ways around all these limitations, and BLACKMAIL is far less pedestrian than most of the other talkies of that early phase.

Anny Ondra does a voice test with Hitchcock, demonstrating her "strong" accent (and Hitchcock's impish humour):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl6SMOSXa7A

And I only have three copies of #13...

http://www.bookfinder.com/book...kfinder_report_2012/

quote:

Originally posted by jkt:
And I only have three copies of #13...

Hoarder!

I have zero copies of #13 (but I do have photocopies of some of it for research purposes - "fair use" and all that).

I do have one copy of no.32, Sagan's MURMURS OF EARTH, all about the record attached to the Voyager probes.

I also have one copy of #73, Martin Caidin's CYBORG, the source text for THE SIXMILLION DOLLAR MAN.

Gosh, I never looked beyond #13. Then again, you are the scholar in our little community.

I have two copies of #32, but zero of the others.

For the curious, check out these two sites in reference to #32.

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html

On this one click through the thing that looks like Vejur (to get to the "murmurs" of Earth): http://goldenrecord.org/

quote:

Originally posted by Linnl:
I have two copies of #32, but zero of the others.

For the curious, check out these two sites in reference to #32.

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html

On this one click through the thing that looks like Vejur (to get to the "murmurs" of Earth): http://goldenrecord.org/

Looks to be available for a reasonable price:

http://www.bookfinder.com/sear...ersteller%2520record

I will soon be an owner of one.