I save them as well, but for The Dark Knight I only have one ticket stub so I’d like to hold onto it. Usually I have extras since my brothers give theirs to me, but alas they did not in this case.
As much as I hate the prequels, saying that the Holiday Special is better is absurd. The Holiday Special is the most boring piece of media ever created. It’s not so bad it’s good, it’s so bad it’s really bad.
It’s so bad that even the Rifftrax guys couldn’t save it, and I had to turn it off halfway through despite their valiant attempt to hold my interest.
Like I said, I just don’t find Jar Jar’s stupidity annoying. If anything it’s endearing. As for him being a racial stereotype, that’s simply ludicrous. What little evidence there is is circumstantial and laughably insignificant. The fact he doesn’t even look remotely like a jamaican alone should be enough to dismiss this claim. AotC Watto, on the other hand.
He’s not endearing to everyone. You don’t see Mr. Binks walking around Disney parks as other prequel characters do. Even Watto got a shop in the Orlando park named after him.
Does a character have to be in blackface before they meet your definition of being offensive to some people?
I don’t think George deliberately set out to make Jar Jar offensive. The problem lies in the culture that existed at Lucasfilm where anyone who could say Gee George, I dunno. Maybe that’s not such a good idea? was long gone and Lucas surrounds himself with yes men.
Yes to this.
I should add that in addition to my ideas above I would make the case to Lucas that it would be warranted for him to do a Special Edition of TPM to change some of the more unfortunate aspects of Mr Binks, and also to maybe edit out the Midichlorians.
Since Frink jogged my memory, what do you guys think about a current events thread separate from Politics? Or did we have one that died a slow death and I missed it?
Died a fairly sudden death, actually
JEDIT: yhwx found it quicker than I did.
At least that thread lasted for 14 pages. Look what happened to mine!
The thing that I like about Vader is that he begins the OT as the Archetypal Evil Henchman, and his mask is slowly lowered throughout the trilogy to reveal the conflicted character beneath. Most of the characters in Star Wars follow this pattern - they are established as strong archetypes, only to be revealed as a complexity or subversion of the archetype.
The problem with Kylo, then, is that he’s not really archetypal. He is not fully evil, he’s too tempestuous to rule yet too rebellious to be a henchman, too serious to be a comic villain yet too infantile to be menacing…
In short, he’s a walking contradiction at odds with the spirit of Star Wars. Only time will tell if it was a good move for the series or not, but I understand why people have a problem with him.
So I guess it’s okay for me to finally reveal my big ‘Snoke is Krennick’ theory?
That scar is clearly from a low-powered Death Star beam.
77-81: Star Wars
97: Star Wars Special Edition
04-11: big silly title ending in A New Hope
Rogue One Part 2 and Star Wars Episode 4: George Lucas’s Star Wars Special Edition Version 3: A New Hope
What’s Monday going to throw us?
The mainstream pick: Manafort
The wishful thinking: Jarvanka
The obscure but important curveball: Sater
The nobody of consequence: Pence (hee hee)
The beginning: multiple persons, like Manafort/Stone/Kushner, etc
Looks like the mainstream pick was right, with a side of Rick Gates.
And there’s a lot of damage at the reel changes.
Should I have kids, I probably won’t deliberately expose them to SW. It’s just not worth it being a SW fan. Instead I’ll show them stuff by Bergman and Kurosawa and co. and try to get them interested in classic foreign films.
I figure that basically all people being born this decade will be a part of Disney’s master plan for the franchise whether they like it or not. And since the OT can be a brilliant and transformative experience for a young child and gets much less effective if introduced at an older age, it would be a shame to deprive someone of that.
Of course I do not suggest depriving someone of the experience of good foreign films, but unless you watch a dub it’s going to require a child with the ability and patience to read for several hours at a time.
What I’ll never understand is how someone can find a story as “rich”, “expansive”, and overall “emotionally satisfying”, a version of the Star Wars universe where:
The main character’s parents were people that we’ve never seen or met, and will probably never get to see, barring prequels.
The princess character belongs to a family that (thanks to the Death Star) we’ve never met, nor whom we will ever learn about in potential sequels.
A solitary knight(Ben) with no family or progeny whatsoever.
A villain who for all we know is some one-dimensional guy behind the mask. Nothing to his past, other than having once been a student of the solitary knight character.
That’s the character dynamics of the stand-alone Star Wars film, in a nutshell. I can’t see a story with such characters going beyond a single film.
In The Fellowship of the Ring film, we don’t see the parents or progeny of:
None of the villains had parents that we know of, nor do they have progeny (except for perhaps Sauruman’s weird Orcs).
And yet, I still feel like I can just maybe see the story going beyond a single film.
The little-used Catastrophe mark. It’s an inverted trident signifying that the preceding sentence requires evil laughter.
I believe he later finds work as one of the ghosts at Hogwarts.
What if I didn’t use syrup?
Well then you are lost!
Excuse me! I’m in charge of this reference here, M’lady.
I just ate pancakes for breakfast.
In the 2011 and 2015 versions, they both fire at about the same time. So I’ll bet George repented even if it’s not 100% back to the original version.
Here’s something that might help for A New Hope: http://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1122903
Here’s a spreadsheet I made for people who want to know what versions of ANH are available to watch:
Very handy - a super idea! If there’s room, it could be useful to squeeze in the word “GOUT” in the description for the Limited Edition 2006 DVD, since that is what it is commonly referred to.
Good idea.
With the resolution details at the bottom, I believe the DVD should be 480-576 horizontal lines (480 for NTSC, 576 for PAL, assuming it is anamorphic), and the laserdisc 425-440.
Bluto
Since there are film preservations which are included, I wanted to provide an unbroken continuum of (vertical) resolutions. However it’s been changed to be more accurate 😃
Here’s a spreadsheet I made for people who want to know what versions of ANH are available to watch:
It’s incomplete and probably has errors, but hopefully it gives some indication of all the versions and a good sample of the completed projects.
Yes. I saw the previous post, but that one had to do with Star Wars.
Yes, albeit loosely. I opined about the included non-Star-Wars bit of it for all of one post. Such is the nature of conversation. It doesn’t always have to be strictly on topic all the time.
Since this is my thread (despite Neverar’s failed attempt at an end-run)
I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!
A wink doesn’t hide the trolling.
You need a bridge to do that.
Actually, does that definition make these guys trolls: 
?
I feel I must turn in my Star Wars cred badge.
I just realized that Finn was named after Leia’s cell number.
I saw someone bumping threads in Off Topic today.
Well, apparently Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials, had scathing things to say about LOTR and Narnia. He called Narnia sexist, and racist among other things, and seem to trivialize both series simply because their authors were people of faith. My brother in law says such an opinion is also apparent in the His Dark Materials series itself, so nope. I’m not really interested in reading it anymore. I’m not keen on being lectured why faith is stupid.
He can be agnostic or atheist or whatever, but holding himself as superior for it annoys me.
I happen to think that LOTR succeeds in part because it’s written by a person of faith, since there’s a sense that Tolkien has personal experience with idea of mythology as a source of heroism, beauty, and goodness. While there’s an allegorical aspect to some of his characters, they very much exist as complete characters without such interpretation. However I dislike Narnia’s straight up religious allegory, and I believe that Tolkien thought the same:
“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
His Dark Materials sounds interesting, and I’ll probably read it sometime.
But back to Star Wars…