Mission

I did a look back and didn't see a topic on this, so I thought I'd throw it out there. Things are kinda' slow here... What are your favorite movies? I think you can tell a lot about a person by the movies they like. I'm going to suggest you stretch beyond the movie POTC, since many people have a bias there ("Yes, we know that one. Anything else?"). Here are a whole slew of mine: Animal House (IMHO, Tim Matheson is second only to John Goodman as far as being underrated as an actor.) Back to the Future ("Ah... Are you telling me you built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?!) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari ("...") Casablanca Cool Runnings Goldfinger The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (Eli Wallach :angry: ) Gremlins 2: The New Batch The Hudsucker Proxy Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Patton Raiders of the Lost Ark (What a great movie...) Singin' in the Rain The Sting When Harry Met Sally Yojimbo How about you? What are your faves?

Absurd and impractical apparel aesthetics aside, I've never quite understood why they use such dark washes for detailing flesh on minatures. It looks particularly odd on women (the deep reddish hues in the neck and particularly under the breasts) and can even look strange on men (look at the middle figure in the group "Ready...Aim...Fire" - especially his cheekbones and stomach). It makes them look overly-dramatic and fan-boyish to me. I think part of the problem is that they're so small that you are rather limited when it comes to layering paint. True human skin has undertones of green, yellow and/or blue in it. On those dinky things, you're lucky if you can get the peach-colored paint to stay in the lines. So many do their best, throw the most appropriate wash they can on it and hope for the best. It can be done, though. I used to have a friend who put eyes with pupils on AD&D minitures. Unbelieveable.

You all don't give Norrington enough credit. (chuckle) Me thinks you'll all see the lad a mite differntly after the next film. Yeah, they didn't exactly give Davenport much to work with. (He was a mite stereotypical as far as RN sailors in pirate movies go.) Be nice to add a bit more substance to his role. From the voiceover he did, he seems like a genial chap. Still, not being a pirate nor sympathetic towards them, he's always going to have an uphill battle to fight in a piratecentric movie. He's definitely a series two or three type character. Elizabeth's multi-various dresses are series 4 or 5 or 6 or 112... Give us Elizabeth in the pirate dress (or the RN costume ) After that, hold off on her. I'd rather see Koehler (undead, natch), Pintel and Ragetti (undead, natch), Twigg climbing (undead, natch), Gibbs, Cotton, Annamaria, Scarlett, Governor Swann, Murtogg & Mullroy, etc. before we start delving into the various Elizabeth costumes. Of course, if it expands like most AF series do, we'll get Captain Jack without his hat, Jack diving, Will in poofy feather hat, Will blacksmith, Jack without his coat, Will smiling, etc. along with one or two "other" figs in each series. Although...Bess' comment that they're sculpting Ragetti and Pintel are promising. Lots of background characters for them to do. When the new movie hits, the playing field will be changed, of course. All the OT characters from the real Star Wars movies would get back burnered everytime Lucasfilm presented us with a new opus.

Under the title Movies to Put You in the Mood, the February 2005 Reader's Digest lists some movies to "spark romance" for VD (Valentine's Day...what were you thinking?). Their three suggestionsf movies to share on VD? To Have and Have Not, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and (naturally) Pirates of the Caribbean! As they said, "Men love the action; women love Johnny Depp." So there you have your VD suggestion, Reader's Digest style.

Female AFs don't traditionally sell well. When they came up with the Star Wars POTF2 AFs in 1995, they knew they had to include Leia because she is central to the story. However, they made the decision to short-pack her, (1 Leia per case as opposed to 2) since they already knew that female figs traditionally sold poorly. Of course, that created an absolute frenzy amongst the scalpers, who snatched every Leia they could find off the shelves and re-sold them to collectors for 7x the store price. It was the absolute ugliest figure I think I have ever seen. On a board I used to post to, they nick-named it "Monkey-Faced Leia". Jack is the central character in the popular mind, so he gets the lion's share of the attention. (Note that he's the only one to receive the 18" fig treatment to date) Will has that whole giggly teen girl thing going for him (go check out the movie forum at piratesinfo.com if you don't believe me - although they cleaned a lot of it up a few months back), so he probably rates second. Barbossa's in the first round with Will, so that says something. Then there's a throw-away undead figure-to-be-named for Spawn and skeleton pirate fan (me) collectors.

They didn't even have 882 pieces on the set. If they can cheat, you can too.

Yeah, I agree with Roger. You can find many references to this notion. While Singapore was sometimes specified, the whole of the orient was thought to be a center of debauchery in certain eras. ________ "Rule number one: never do anything yourself when someone else can do it for you." "And rule two?" "Rule number two: in Japan, men come first, women come second." "I just might retire to here. " James Bond & Tiger Tanaka, You Only Live Twice

Hmm. You might want to post this on the Pirate Crews board. Here there be movie and action figure discussions.

It's probably artistic licence to show they are women, but just possibly it might be a depiction of shirts with very open necks. I have to believe that's just dramatics as suggested above. Here's what I find in General History of the Pyrates: Since it clearly a big secret, it's pretty doubtful that they ran around as depicted. Which would throw the veracity of those pics into doubt in my mind.

I have to chime in on ordering on-line. I do purchasing for my job. I've saved tens of thousands of dollars ordering office junk from on-line vendors using our corporate card. I also have stocked 99% of my tape library from eBay and Amazon at 1/4 to 1/3 the retail cost. Been purchasing off the 'net for years. Never had a problem yet.

Red Handed Jill, the upcoming Jack, Will, Barbossa & really interesting, cool figure of which they should make more are all 7" tall. The talking Jack is 18" tall. However, both the 7" and 18" Jacks share the same sculpt. Phil...you should get to work on that ship! ("What are you lookin' at?! Back to work!" ) The trouble will be in deciding scale. Of course, you could take the Lionel route and just make it whatever scale you feel like at the time. None of those Plasticville™ people Lionel made would ever fit on their trains! Since were on the topic.... Bess, since you appear to have knowledge of the artists (although the link between NECA and and the Disney studios suggested in one of your posts sincerely confuses me), when they go about making the undead Jack, please ask them if they will consider using the scene where he has his sword drawn in front of him angled down and is moving to attack Barbossa. If they're not sure of the scene, I will be more than happy to send them screen shots with no recompense required or expected. When they go about doing an undead Barbossa, please suggest they use the scene where he throws the bottle of wine against the bulkhead door. And if they're thinking about an undead Koehler, encourage them. They could use the scene where he's fighting Norrington. Heck, they could make it a two pack. If you do and they do, I shall be forever in your debt. (Personally, I plan only to buy undead characters now that I have the 18" Jack. )

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I thought they were suggesting that Jack will be more than cursed to walk the earth as the undead, he'll be in a domain ruled by a demon who for some reason has chosen to make the Flying Dutchman his home. Hmm. It does sound awfully familiar when you read it the way you're all talking, doesn't it? Still, I don't see the whole Cortez curse as being eternally damned, nor being in hell, Koehler's comments in POTC notwithstanding. If you can undo it, you're not really eternally damned, are you? So, if this alleged rumor is true, and if it doesn't change between now and a year and a half from now, I take the threat as being more "serious" than what was played out in POTC. I must have completely different views on the "living" status of the undead than everyone else. Perhaps I'm more grounded in the original Romero concept of being undead than some of the other people on the board. (I even read the book Dawn of the Dead. It's this weird, little orange book...anyhow.) Romero's undead, while not exactly lucid, were still not really dead. This is my starting point. It is more like a disease with a cure than eternal damnation...

Actually, though, if that's the real skeleton of the plot of the new movie, it's a pretty good route to take. It respects the story from the first movie and may give them a reason to bring back Barbarossa and crew. The only challenge I can see is to dance lightly around the topic of hellfire and damnation. Disney wants this movie to appeal to kids and adults alike. But Terry and Ted did such a nice job in the first movie toying with the undead, they will no doubt pull it off.

Actually, as it turns out, Jack is Barbossa's monkey's middle name. His real name is David "Jack" Jones, ruler of the ocean etc. etc. and Jack owes him (or possibly her - have to ask casting) a ship too. They do smell money on this, don't they? If the chairman of Disney is running around revealing secret plot info a year and a half out, that's a pretty good sign that dollar signs are floating around people's heads. Oboy. If that's true, we all get to refute the incorrect, fan-generated questions about Davey Jones (a term no one really knows the origin of) and his (or possibly her) ties to the Flying Dutchman. It'll be a nice change from refuting all the fan-generated questions about the real universal pirates code. (BTW, Bilgemonkey, this will probably get put in the rumors thread. They're trying to confine all the rumor and prescient posts to one thread.)

That was also a great film, but for some reason I actually liked Casablanca a wee bit more. Probably because I liked the Captain Jack/Han Solo-esque character of Capt. Renault. Still, if you get stuck watching either in a theatre because it's raining out and you're afraid turning into a pile of brown sugar if you go out in it...you'll have spent your time well. The cast is remarkably consistant between the two movies. ________ "All we've got is that maybe you love me and maybe I love you." "You know whether you love me or not." "Maybe I do. I'll have some rotten nights after I've sent you over, but that'll pass."

Thanks for the compliment, Fancy. While the dinosaur had a deadline...the snowplow didn't. Still doesn't. That's why it's not done. Poor dinosaur, he's sitting out in 8" of snow with icicles coming off his nose. I should take a picture of it. (Good test of the fiberglass job I did. ) I have the impresssion that the green banana was something Johnny surreptitiously added from what they said on one of the voiceovers in the DVD. I watched it once with the voiceover quite awhile ago, so I'm not sure. If you're really curious, you might try watching the scene with the director/Johnny voiceover on, Fancy.

How did we get onto unbuilt models? You guys got nothin' on me. I have a (totally unrelated to piracy, sorry) scratch-built O-Scale model D&RGW Rotary Snowplow that I started about 25 years ago. The 'net was only in colleges at that point, so I can't even offer that as an excuse. Yep, gonna' get to finishing that one some day...know right where it's at...next to the unfinished modified Brain Gremlin model I started 5 years ago... This is the great thing about AFs...they're becoming better and better and making figure modelling so much less important in our busy, internet-laden lives.

Duchess, he's of the 18" size. But he talks. Maybe your figure should ask her figure of Jack out. (This begs the question, if she were to ask, would mini-Duchess ask the smiling Jack or the serious Jack?) The 18" Jack is an exceptionally well-detailed figure. Except for their tendancy to make everything out of plastic including things that just look odd in plastic (loose cloth, for example), I'd call it nearly perfect as far as AFs go. You almost wonder why the eyes don't follow you around the room, it is so well sculpted.

I saw that the Defoe authorship issue was raised in the interesting Striving for Accuracy post. Since this topic was around, I wanted to post some info on the subject for the curious. This will probably add little to the knowledge of the knowledgable in here, but may be helpful to those who are a-questing. It is from a post of mine on another board. I had recently read The Canon-isation of Daniel Defoe by Furbanks and Owen's when I wrote it. I apologize for the length to those looking for a quick answer. (I suppose you could skip to the end. ) [bEGIN QUOTED POST] Canon~ical Background First, in order to understand Furbanks and Owens' reasoning behind why they don't think Defoe wrote General History, you have to understand what they think is wrong with the Defoe "Canon". (By canon, they mean the books that are attributed almost unquestionably to Defoe.) It has been historically difficult to accurately define Defoe's Cannon because 1) he wrote many things anonymously or under a pseudonym and 2) Defoe varied his writing style according to what he was trying to accomplish. He liked to parody styles to poke fun at people and this confuses things greatly. It is also suggested that he was sometimes paid to write on opposite sides of the same issue. Furbanks and Owens look at six scholars/biographers who tried their hand at creating the body of Defoean works (see list below). They take great pains to point out what is personally wrong with each author as a Defoe scholar and why each author is biased. As much as I disagree with their attacks, I can see where the various scholars’ personal opinions may have colored their research. However, I believe this is true of any researcher, including Furbanks and Owens. It is impossible for the scientist to be truly dispassionate. Even they seem to feel compelled to admit their bias when they state that, "Up to this point, our book has been largely destructive." (p. 125). Perhaps the biggest problem they identify is that the men who created the various canons were deliberately seeking to expand Defoe's list of attributed works so that they could claim that they had added to the canon. This is another common problem with research; if it isn't positive or doesn't add to the knowledge base in a positive way, it often isn't published. So in this way, Owens and Furbanks are doing us a service. Just as an overview, I will list the various Defoe Biographers Furbanks and Owens examine, the dates these authors created their list of Defoean works and the number of works they attributed to Defoe. Daniel Defoe (1660 - 1731) George Chalmers, 1790, 81 attributions to Defoe Walter Wilson, 1828, 210 attributions to Defoe William Lee, 1869, 254 attributions to Defoe James Crossley, ~1869/Not Published, 60 additional attributions to Defoe W.P. Trent, ~1920s/Not Published, 382 attributions to Defoe John Robert Moore, 1960, 570 attributions to Defoe You can see that the list has grown and swollen, almost alarmingly, to the point where Defoe is credited with having written 570 different books and pamphlets. Two points to consider here. First, note that the first version of the canon occurred 61 years after Defoe died. That's a long time to reach back and untangle what Defoe did and didn't write. Second, Furbanks and Owens make it very clear that they have no use whatsoever for Moore's list, motivation or methods. This is of crucial importance to this discussion because it was Moore who attributed General History to Defoe. A General History of Pirates They make quite a case against Moore personally and his attribution of General History to Defoe. In fact, they spend the entire chapter about Moore discrediting this attribution in particular. Since this is what interests most people on this site who have read this far, let's review some of their reasons: 1. Biolgraphical Inaccuracies? Part of the reasoning behind the attribution of the General History to Defoe is that biographer William Lee claimed that Defoe worked for Applebee's Journal which "specialized in the lives and dying speeches of criminals [such as pirates]." ..."Applebee and his deputies had access to Newgate [a prison], and thus Defoe got into the habit of visiting and questioning prisoners there..." (p. 73) However, this may or may not be true. They further note that "...Lee has produced no hard evidence for it whatever - not even for [Defoe's] having been associated with Applebee." (p. 73) That's a crucial blow to the General History attribution IMO. I have seen this "fact" sited as the reason Defoe must surely have written General History on the web several times. 2. Disagreeable Facts Defoe has been credited as the author of The King of the Pirates, a pamphlet about Henry Avery. This pamphlet disagrees in both fact and tone with General History. Of course, William Lee was the person who credited this pamphlet to Defoe, so who knows if Defoe really wrote this or not? Another pamphlet Lee put down as being by Defoe was about pirate John Gow called An Account of the Conduct and Proceedings of the Late John Gow. This disagrees with some facts in General History, even though History quotes parts of this pamphlet. So Defoe has been given credit for works that disagree with each other. This may or may not be enough to remove credit from Defoe. As noted previously, his works sometimes contradicted each other when he thought it was humorous, he changed his mind on a subject or possibly when he was paid to write for the opposing viewpoint. Still, why change your mind about the facts of a pirate's life? 3. Personal Bias Furbanks and Owens also note that Moore had a huge vested interest in maintaining that General History was written by Defoe despite the facts. They claim he was a proud man who would become very upset when this attribution was questioned. I personally don't much care for this line of reasoning and inclined not to weight it too heavily. 4. An Accumulation of Defoean Style One of the things that made me change my mind about the authorship of History was the style question. Because Defoe was apt to copy styles, many of the biographers who chose to assigned published material to him attributed works that are markedly different in style than those that Defoe publically claimed. To compound the error, as biographers added new works to Defoe's canon, they often said (in essense), "While this style is not like Robinson Crusoe (or whatever) it is like the style of this other work attributed to Defoe, so it must also be Defoe", even when the "other works" hadn't been fully proven to be by Defoe. In their book, they quote Rodney Brine on this particularly poignant point, "Not only did Mr. Moore fail to distinguish between what is peculiarly Defoean and what is merely conventional in contemporary narrative style and idiom; he also drew for his parallels upon works which have been since shown to works by others." (p. 108). 5. Temporal Anomolies Perhaps the most damning evidence in my mind is that Moore was the first person to assign General History to Defoe when none of the previous biographers had thought to do so. Moore first proposed this in Defoe in the Pillory and Other Studies in 1939, more than 200 years after the events took place! In Sum All in all, I am inclined to agree that Defoe did NOT write General History, although I do not much care for some of Furbanks and Owens' methodology in this book. Their worst crime, in my mind, is that after they put the fox among the hens, they don't follow through. They spend their whole book complaining about the history and final accepted canon for Defoe (the one written by Moore) and then don't provide us with a revised list. They only say that "our own estimate is that [the number of Works almost definitely by Defoe] might at most amount to some 150 of the over 570 works currently in the cannon." (p. 173) and "Our own, very incomplete investigation suggests that the number of works qualifying as [Works probably -but not definitely- by Defoe] might amount to over fifty, but would probably not be as many as a hundred." (p. 174) This raises yet another problem I have often seen in academic research: the researcher doesn't really have to produce results. If they were doing this research for industry (which is, of course and unfortunately, absurd), they would have had to identify the problem (Defoe didn't write 570+ works), prove it (of which I believe they have done a reasonable job) and then offer a solution. Instead of providing such a solution, Furbank and Owens cop out with, "...the production of a new Defoe bibliography would be a formidable undertaking, not to be entered upon lightly. Our only concern here has been to sketch out a possible structure which might enable the attribution issue to be dealt with adequately. It will be obvious that a host of other problems would have to be considered by those with the temerity to embark on such an undertaking." (p. 174) In other words, they don't seem to me to want to be bothered with (or aren't willing to risk) revealing their thoughts on the "true" canon. They'll tear things down, but won't rebuild them. (However I have learned a great deal about attributing material to authors from reading this book. Who knew that Defoe was such a big question mark?) [END QUOTED POST]

Yeah, but they're probably stored in files that wouldn't take that long to access. ILM's big business now. They may even have a digital files librarian! (I just hope the project in May is an improvement over the last two similar projects... I almost hope they start blowing up styroam blocks again. GL needs Terry and Ted.) Oh! Congrats on getting them involved with your project, Captain Grey!

Why not ask ILM? Based on the nature of their work, they've got to have scanned in copies of everyone's costume.

Where there is success, there are people jealous of that success and they must try to gain what they have typically not earned. It's a thin point this person is making. (Yet, Disney could well wind up paying him to salvage their image...) Ted and Terry are excellent and creative writers. I doubt seriously from what I've read of them and heard them say that they would steal other people's material. The truth is we're all influenced by what goes on around us and it appears in whatever creative ventures we undertake. That doesn't usually make it legal fodder...unless there's a lot of money involved.

Oh, that's right, Disney... "Look, Mickey Mouse ears!" "Brains!" "And an unused staple puller!" "Brains!" (I'm never quite sure whether you're serious or you have an even drier sense of humor than I do, Bess.)

I always wondered how I would furnish my grave if I were undead. "Look, a staple-remover!"

Let me go back and read that again... I agree with Phil; this whole argument is sort of a waste of time and psychic energy. We can't possibly know what someone three hundred years ago thought, did and felt. We can hardly figure out what they wore (the whole painful earrings debate comes to mind). If historians can't even agree on a minor point like that, how can anyone claim to be truly, 100% authentic to the times? Maybe you can announce that you're 10% more authentic than the guy with the bucket boots, parrot and earring ("Just one calorie, not authentic enough.") based on the limited knowledge we have. The one thing that impressed me about my tour of duty at another, scholarly pirate site is how little we really know. To borrow a quote from the wise PyratePhil's post: As for Star Wars, having moved around the edges of that world awhile ago, all I can say is that they have better reference material. We know what a stormtrooper's blaster is supposed to look like. We have lots of footage, models, displays at the Smithsonian and figures to offer as examples.