The Problem with New Year's Resolutions

Tingman filmed his four-year-old daughter Laura talking about New Year resolutions. She's right. The new year shouldn't be the only time we decide to make changes in our lives. Food for thought.  

(YouTube link)

But that's not what makes this video special. She four years old! No, she didn't write this speech. She's probably not reading cue cards. But even if she was fed lines one at a time, she's got amazing presence and inflection, which makes her the cutest motivational speaker you will hear this week. Watch a video of Laura playing piano at age two.  -via Metafilter


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This is pretty old news. It's a similarity that was pointed out on the great Phantom of the Paradise fan site, the Swan Archives, at http://www.swanarchives.org , eons ago. Their take on it: "The Phantom's heavy breathing on the soundtrack reminds us a lot of the wheezing noise made by another famous damaged villain, who will make his first appearance a couple of years later, in Star Wars. But that's where the similarities end; it's not like that other character has injuries that require him to wear a voicebox with switches and dials on his chest to enable him to talk, wears a cape, mask and black leather from head to toe, or...oh, wait. Yes he does. (As is well known, Lucas and De Palma were friends, and even collaborated at times: they ran joint auditions for Star Wars and Carrie; De Palma wrote the opening crawl for Star Wars; and Lucas hired editor Paul Hirsch to work on Star Wars having been impressed with his work on Phantom.) We think it's impossible that Darth Vader's look was not inspired, in part, by the Phantom's."
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I don't see the similarity. Black has been the color of villains for along time. As for the breathing, "2001 A Space Odyssey" did it before this film, when Dave Bowman was shutting down HAL.

Everyone has influences. You just can't do anything that doesn't have elements of something else. Some may be direct influence, or and artist or authors come up with similar ideas independently.

Even in the case of the obvious similarities between C3PO and the lady robot in "Metropolis"... It is not a stretch for any Sci-Fi author to imagine a metal humanoid robot. Just try to come up with something that doesn't look influenced by "Metropolis".

There is still room to be creative, despite similarities to other works. The same people that designed the characters in Star Wars also did the ships and those were certainly quit different from what had been seen before.
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It would take a lot more effort, but be a far shorter list to name the things in Lucas' Star Wars that is not a ripoff of something else. He's the grandfather of the mashup.
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