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Preserving the...cringe...Star Wars Holiday Special (Released) — Page 44

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I have a Blu-ray version that someone made and set out on the winds. I believe it’s an EditDroid upscale – it didn’t name the source, but the language in the .nfo made me think so.

And it’s not bad. The commentary track did nothing for me, but I have watched it through.

I assume that this disc is based on that release, but with added subtitles and supposedly other bonus features. And of course, I’m sure I’ve either seen or know everything in those special features.

But still there’s the temptation…

“Before the Dark Times. Before the Prequels.”

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SKot, there have been so many commentary tracks for this thing, some good and some bad but all with some degree of misinformation.

You’re someone actually qualified to do a commentary track.

I can dream…

“Before the Dark Times. Before the Prequels.”

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MattMahdi said:

Many special features even subtitles in Wookie !

So does it just say “[WOOKIEE NOISES]” every ten seconds?

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MattMahdi said:

SKot, there have been so many commentary tracks for this thing, some good and some bad but all with some degree of misinformation.

You’re someone actually qualified to do a commentary track.

I can dream…

That’s actually something I’ve wanted to do for a long time…I hope I can have the opportunity at some point. Steve Kozak would be good to get on that as well, either separately or together.

–SKot

Projects:
Return Of The Ewok and Other Short Films (with OCPmovie) [COMPLETED]
Preserving the…cringe…Star Wars Holiday Special [COMPLETED]
The Star Wars TV Commercials Project [DORMANT]
Felix the Cat 1919-1930 early film shorts preservation [ONGOING]
Lights Out! (lost TV anthology shows) [ONGOING]
Iznogoud (1995 animated series) English audio preservation [ONGOING]

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Just reviewing a load of open tabs and https://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/ appears to be gone now?

Hitting the url redirects to: https://www.adstide.com/

Archive.org has a wayback snapshot from 19th May 2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20240519110721/https://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/about/

Did anyone archive an offline copy of the site while it was up? I believe this is much harder to do with Wayback Machine copies, as it alters the base html.

I hope SKot is ok.

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

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Zion said:

So it appears the HTTPS version of the URL gets redirected but the HTTP URL still works. Weird.

Yes, the site got hacked recently and corrupted by malware due to an exploit in WordPress…I always disliked WordPress for websites, and this doesn’t help my feelings about it.

The site is broken as well I believe in that all links from the first page give a 404. Except the link to the old (non-WordPress) Holiday Special site, that works fine still!

I will try to get it all fixed. It’s sort of halfway fixed now, but there is still work to be done to get the whole thing working again.

—SKot

Projects:
Return Of The Ewok and Other Short Films (with OCPmovie) [COMPLETED]
Preserving the…cringe…Star Wars Holiday Special [COMPLETED]
The Star Wars TV Commercials Project [DORMANT]
Felix the Cat 1919-1930 early film shorts preservation [ONGOING]
Lights Out! (lost TV anthology shows) [ONGOING]
Iznogoud (1995 animated series) English audio preservation [ONGOING]

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SKot said:

Yes, the site got hacked recently and corrupted by malware due to an exploit in WordPress…I always disliked WordPress for websites, and this doesn’t help my feelings about it.

Good to know you didn’t lose control of the site at least, and you’re able to fix it.

WordPress seems like it always has a huge target on its back since it’s so popular. I ran a few company websites that were WordPress and almost daily we’d get email notifications about failed hacking attempts.

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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SKot said:

Zion said:

So it appears the HTTPS version of the URL gets redirected but the HTTP URL still works. Weird.

Yes, the site got hacked recently and corrupted by malware due to an exploit in WordPress…I always disliked WordPress for websites, and this doesn’t help my feelings about it.

The site is broken as well I believe in that all links from the first page give a 404. Except the link to the old (non-WordPress) Holiday Special site, that works fine still!

I will try to get it all fixed. It’s sort of halfway fixed now, but there is still work to be done to get the whole thing working again.

—SKot

That sucks, I’m sorry to hear that. There really are some scummy people who’ll just target anything or anyone.

Best of luck getting things back online again.

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

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SKot said:
I know there’s a new “5K” up-res of the Holiday Special that may look nice on Blu-ray.

Fun fact, that 5K upres was done by actor Christian Simpson, who played Lieutenant Gavyn Sykes in TPM along with other roles throughout the prequels, sequels, and anthology films. He’s a really cool dude; great channel to watch if you’re into retro computers and gaming.

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MattMahdi said:

I have a Blu-ray version that someone made and set out on the winds. I believe it’s an EditDroid upscale – it didn’t name the source, but the language in the .nfo made me think so.

And it’s not bad. The commentary track did nothing for me, but I have watched it through.

I assume that this disc is based on that release, but with added subtitles and supposedly other bonus features. And of course, I’m sure I’ve either seen or know everything in those special features.

But still there’s the temptation…

You mean you got the Blu-ray from Showtown Apparel and More?

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Hey, it was never really discussed in this thread, but has anyone else had the chance to look at the 1st Generation Betamax Copy uploaded by meredith95 on Spleen back in 2022? Got a look at it today, and aside from the waviness it may be the highest quality version I’ve seen (aside from Editdroid) in terms of detail and clarity. I don’t know how someone could get their hands on the tape, but a proper capture run through a TBC would be a really cool project for someone with the means to undertake.

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another thread i’m trying to pin down i hope someone could maybe fill in the blanks on: the origin of the WMAR opening crawl.

the Google Video version of the special, used by Rifftrax and later as the basis of Zion’s Hybrids, featured a unique, fan-made opening crawl. this version was uploaded in December 2006.

after doing a lot of research, i’ve yet to find the origin of this crawl. it’s possible the google video uploader created it, though my inclination is to say that’s unlikely. the other versions of the special i’ve found floating around, still up from this time, do not feature this crawl. additionally, i was able to acquire a mass-produced bootleg WMAR VHS tape from the late 90s, which also did not feature the crawl.

it leaves a few different possibilities:

  • the google video uploaded added it (i find this unlikely for a number of reasons)
  • another anonymous fan created the crawl unofficially, and it circulated on one of the early 2000s p2p sites before being uploaded to google video
  • one of the bootlegs circulating around the early 2000s on an early digital format added the crawl to give a more cinematic presentation

personally, i lean option 3, but i have no way of knowing. the biggest suspect here would be one of the VCD versions that got passed around way back when, which would also account for the incredibly low-quality of that upload and every version of the crawl.

if anyone has any clue as to where this came from, please let me know. additionally, if anyone still has bootlegs from the 90s/00s, i’m curious as to what information you have, or what’s on your copies.

edit:

the other possibility i just thought of is it coming from the version played on the lucasfan theater website around that time as well. don’t know if anyone would have info about that either.

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My own personal theory (or at least the one I like to believe, based on zero evidence, lol): RiffTrax made it. They wanted to sell a riff of the Holiday Special because their other Star Wars riffs at the time were very popular, but it would have been hard to sell an audio-only HS riff unless there was an easy way for people to watch the special. So they uploaded it to Google Video themselves and added the crawl so the specific version they riffed was easily identifiable. Then, several years later, someone came along and made a HS DVD with RiffTrax based on their version of the special, only this time with a more professional-looking crawl, and they made a VOD out of it and started selling it on their website. 😛

Sorry, that probably doesn’t help at all but I thought it was worth sharing.

(And just to clarify, I don’t hate RiffTrax at all. I actually love those guys and I’ve made many purchases on their website. I even bought my own DVD, lol.)

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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Zion said:

My own personal theory (or at least the one I like to believe, based on zero evidence, lol): RiffTrax made it. They wanted to sell a riff of the Holiday Special because their other Star Wars riffs at the time were very popular, but it would have been hard to sell an audio-only HS riff unless there was an easy way for people to watch the special. So they uploaded it to Google Video themselves and added the crawl so the specific version they riffed was easily identifiable.

The only wrinkle in that theory to me is the timeline. The Google Video version was uploaded December 25, 2006, and Rifftrax released their mix on December 10, 2007.

going back through the thread more, there this post from Rikter in 2005, which mentions a DVD of the WMAR transfer. I would not be surprised if that was the origin point.

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in doing more digging, i found this article from 2017 that says the crawl was added by someone “around 1997,” which would align with the second two options.

additionally, the Lucasfan version was the “realmedia” encode in extreme low quality. I was able to find a copy on Wayback and confirm it didn’t have a crawl.