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The Quick Question Thread


rpvee

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I have a question about those reel/part numbers.

 

For example, Hook is a 142 minutes long movie and the recording sessions go until reel 16. So, we can assume each reel lasts for about 9 minutes of screentime. Both The Last Crusade and Jurassic Park are 128 minutes long divided in 14 reels, so it's also 9 minutes per reel. The Lost World is one minute longer than JP and it also has 14 reels, meaning each reel is about 9 minutes long.

 

And that's not even mentioning the 195 minutes long Schindler's List, which had 20 reels (9 minutes and 45 seconds per reel).

 

The point is, during the 80s and 90s the movies Williams scored were divided in reels about 9 minutes long each. However, by late 90s/early 2000s this changed.

 

The Phantom Menace lasts for 133 minutes and it had 7 reels (19 minutes per reel).

The Patriot is 164 minutes long and had 9 reels (18 minutes per reel).

A.I. is 146 minutes long and had 8 reels (18 minutes and 15 seconds per reel).

The Philosopher's Stone is 152 minutes long and had 9 reels (almost 17 minutes per reel).

Minority Report is 145 minutes long and had 8 reels (18 minutes and 7 seconds per reel)

 

These days reels continue to be longer than they were in the 80s/90s. TLJ had 9 reels (17 min per reel), KOTCS had 7 (17 minutes and a half per reel)... War Horse also had 7 reels, but being 146 minutes long, this meant each reel had an average duration of over 20 minutes.

 

In conclusion, until 97/98 movies were divided in sections of less than 10 minutes each, and starting on 1999 this sections were expanded to almost 20 minutes. Does anyone know why that happened?

 

Also, this division of a movie in reels is something to help only film composers? Or does other people involved with the movie also prefer working on them at small chunks?

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Do'nt know if this has been discussed before, but is Brussels' latest economic protectionist rubbish going to affect people who buy from LLl and Intrada or are we still okay as long as they continue to do the commercial sample thing?

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12 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

Do'nt know if this has been discussed before, but is Brussels' latest economic protectionist rubbish going to affect people who buy from LLl and Intrada or are we still okay as long as they continue to do the commercial sample thing?

 

I'm guessing the commercial sample trick will still be hard to expose. 

 

Does Intrada declare the packages as commercial sample? I thought they didn't.

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I'm not sure now, I always ordedered my Intrada stuff from Music Box after Varese refused to be sensible. I don't know what Music Box will do (or why anyone is standing for this).

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1 minute ago, bollemanneke said:

I'm not sure now, I always ordedered my Intrada stuff from Music Box after Varese refused to be sensible. I don't know what Music Box will do (or why anyone is standing for this).

 

I've ordered from Music Box. I requested them to label the package as commercial sample, but they instead declared €10 per item.

 

What do you mean Varese stopped being sensible?

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From what I understand, even if the labels declare the package low value now and the authorities believe that, you'd have to pay import/VAT fees, because the lowest category (under 22€, no fees necessary) is now gone. Then if they figure it out, customs on top of that. No thanks, I'll order from MRB, sorry labels. It's all bullshit anyway, these are niche exclusive products, importing them is not creating competition with the European labels because those are releasing different scores.

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1 hour ago, bollemanneke said:

They refused to do the sample thing. So my back to the future 3 cost me €75 because, you know, the insane shipping fees weren't enough of a punishment.

 

That's not stopping being sensible, that's just adhering to the laws.

 

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27 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

They are, but won't import things change for them as well? Or are you saying their bulk orders won't be affected since they were already importing more than we were?

 

I assume European stores have already been paying whatever taxes apply. I don't think they've done the "free sample" trick on a business level (that would certainly be risky). And the new rules just mean that orders under €22 are no longer tax free - but stores will rarely order stuck below that threshold anyway (unless they're specifically tracking down a unique item for a customer).

 

I can also only partially understand the frustration. VATs exist for a reason, we pay them for anything we buy domestically, it makes sense to also charge them for imports (because otherwise imports would be favoured over domestic purchases, which is obviously not the point of the whole thing). The fact that some big companies have been evading these taxes for big orders (especially for Chinese products, I believe, which are attractive because they're generally cheaper) may actually be a reason for dropping the small order threshold.

 

What is frustrating is that these limited soundtrack releases we buy usually come directly from the company producing them and generally cannot be bought anywhere else. So the main point of why import taxes are charged in the first place may not fully apply. You can at least make an argument for levelling the field for Euro stores importing and selling these albums though. And it's not like the 20% themselves hurt *that* much.

 

What I do not understand, and do object two, are two things: 1) VATs are applied to the full item cost PLUS the shipping cost (which for international orders is often horrendous to begin with). That really hurts, and I don't see a good reason for it. 2) Whenever an import is taxed, it delays the import (nothing you can do about that) plus you generally have to pay a handling fee, and with that you're at the mercy of the delivery company. For example, the Austrian post office seems to charge a fixed fee of €5 whenever they have to collect a tax fee. Which means that even my separately shipped Lionheart, billed as GBP 1 (because the full order was already taxes with the rest of it that was sent earlier), gets a total fee of €5.23 - 23 cents for the disc (who cares) and €5 for the handling. That bit is especially painful combined with the new no-limit law.

 

I can understand VAT and I can understand not having a VAT-free threshold, but I don't understand why I have to pay a fixed some of €5 even if someone sends me a single Euro cent.

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I couldn't agree more. BUt here is what I don't understand: why this VAT song and dance now? I mean, I always payed VAT when ordering from the UK as far as I know. But now they're raising it or something?

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12 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

BUt here is what I don't understand: why this VAT song and dance now? I mean, I always payed VAT when ordering from the UK as far as I know. But now they're raising it or something?

So far there were multiple levels: If your package coming from outside the EU had a value under 22€, you had to pay no VAT, if it was higher, you did have to pay VAT. Lots of chinese stores exploited the sub-22 level recently by marking the package as low value just like LLL and Intrada, and those definitely are undercutting local businesses and all that. So now the EU got rid of that lower level, you have to pay VAT on your package no matter what its value is.

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19 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

I couldn't agree more. BUt here is what I don't understand: why this VAT song and dance now? I mean, I always payed VAT when ordering from the UK as far as I know. But now they're raising it or something?

 

You always had to pay VAT for local purchases, you always had to pay VAT for imports from outside the EU, unless they were below the threshold. You didn't have to pay VAT for "imports" from within the EU, because the VAT paid in the origin country already counted as the VAT you had to pay (i.e. VAT was already paid in the EU). Now that the UK is no longer part of the EU, we have to pay VAT for imports from there, too. I believe there is technically a way to re-claim the VAT originally paid in the origin country, but it would probably be more hassle than it's worth, and it's probably not relevant for US orders, because I believe US prices are always listed without VAT (i.e. even domestic buyers have to pay the VAT extra, depending on their state - which is the main reason for (listed) $ prices often being lower than € prices).

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  • 3 weeks later...
18 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

Will any SACD play on any ordinary CD player?

 

any? I don't know; If the spec requires a normal CD layer must be put on the disc then yes.  If the spec doesn't require it, then someone could theoretically put out an SACD without a CD layer.

 

Most? Absolutely.

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2 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

Hmm, I'm not taking the risk then.

 

Which SACD are you talking about? Usually the fine print mentions whether or not it does include a standard CD layer, and that should be included in web shops too, I think. The risk isn't big in any case; there have been very few albums that I was interested that even had a separate CD release, and only one or two at most where the SACD version didn't include a CD layer.

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39 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

Which SACD are you talking about? Usually the fine print mentions whether or not it does include a standard CD layer, and that should be included in web shops too, I think. The risk isn't big in any case; there have been very few albums that I was interested that even had a separate CD release, and only one or two at most where the SACD version didn't include a CD layer.

 

For some reason I don't think @bollemanneke has the habit of reading the fine print.

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1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:

For some reason I don't think @bollemanneke has the habit of reading the fine print.

 

Neither do you, or you wouldn't have missed my "and that should be included in web shops too".

 

1 hour ago, bollemanneke said:

True, I rely on Amazon's product descriptions, which are almost always inaccurate.

 

Forget Amazon, just check the label's own page. That often has some technical information.

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, bollemanneke said:

Amazon claims that if the estimated import fee deposit I paid is not enough, I won't be charged again. So who pays the extra fees? Or will my country simply let me off the rest?

 

Perhaps that only applies to minimal changes in exchange courses or something. Amazon UK at least simply seems to calculate and handle the EU taxes as part of the regular payment now (which I suppose also means no extra handling fee). Worked for me the one time I ordered there since they started doing this.

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That reminds me, something seemed off about the calculated shipping costs at one point (by something like €5 I believe), so I refreshed the basket and then got the correct value. Don't know if that would have been corrected anyway when actually placing the order, or if the refresh was crucial.

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  • 1 month later...

I have a quick ALIENS question:

Newt's mom and pop go to The Derelict.

Pop gets a facehugger.

Mom brings pop back to Hadley's Hope.

Then what?

How does a whole bunch of eggs - not to mention the queen - get from The Derelict, to Hadley's Hope, and the processing station?

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On 9/13/2021 at 10:02 AM, Naïve Old Fart said:

I have a quick ALIENS question:

Newt's mom and pop go to The Derelict.

Pop gets a facehugger.

Mom brings pop back to Hadley's Hope.

Then what?

How does a whole bunch of eggs - not to mention the queen - get from The Derelict, to Hadley's Hope, and the processing station?

 

They got around through the tunnel system and deleted footage showed the infestation of Hadley's station.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Quick question: Am I the only one for whom embedded Spotify links are not working? All I get is a big grey rectangle with an error icon and the message "open.spotify.com redirected you too many times". Which sounds like an issue with OAuth/OIDC authentication (I've had plenty of fun with that stuff at work over the past two years or so), but I don't see why it would affect only me. I don't even have Spotify, so I'd be happy if it didn't try to redirect me at all and just showed me the standard unregistered view. Wiping cookies didn't help. I'm on Chrome in Linux, but I don't see why the OS would make a difference.

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12 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Try getting Spotify. It's worth it.

 

1. I don't want it.

2. It probably wouldn't help me if I can't login.

 

The question is if I'm the only one who has this problem (apparently), and what to do against it. I should probably try different browsers/computers.

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