neural networks and filePro

[Bill Vermillion]

Shakespeare wrote plays and sonnets that will last an eternity, 
but on Tue, Nov 16 16:33 , Bill Campbell wrote:" 

> On Tue, Nov 16, 2004, Bill Vermillion wrote:
> ...
> >"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" was written by Philip K.
> >Dick.  Largely unkown outide the SF field.  However the film based
> >upon that book is often ranking among the 10 best SF movies
> >every made.  That's Blade Runner with Harrion Ford.

> I would class it as one of the two really good SF movies ever
> made along with Barry Longyear's ``Enemy Mine'' with Lou
> Gossett, Jr. IHMO, most of what passes for SF in the movies,
> may be amusing (e.g. the Star Wars series), but doesn't do
> much in the way of posing interesting questions. ``Starship
> Troopers'' should have, but the hollywood types would hardly
> understand or agree with what Heinlein was saying as it doesn't
> fit their Socialist mold.

As to Star Wars - if you watch the film that inspried SW - 
Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress". A princess and her general have to
fight their way across enemy land to get back to her kindgom.
Upon the way the wind up with a short fat guy and a tall skinny one
- ex prisoners - who are lured by gold.   It is set in 15th Century
Japan and the sword fights between the opposing General and the one
on the princess's side - [Toshiro Mifune] are every bit as good
as the light-sabres in SW - but with metal sword sounds replacing
electric light sabre buzzing.

A great SF film is Solaris - the original by Andre Tarkovsky.
It's slow, wonderfully photographed - and the >thing< called
Solaris with George Cloney would have been better left unshot.

The problem for many viewers is you have to watch it with subtitles
and that's a kiss of death for most American movie goers.  The film
is in the original Russian - and early this year in a CNN poll
it ranked in the top-10 SF films, with 2001 taking top honors
and Blade Running coming in about number 4 or 5.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com