Originally posted by: Obi Jeewhyen
To my knowledge, TCM has never shown the complete CE3K, though I have not watched every single airing (but, pfft, enough of them).
I think Duel is available in Europe. Heheh, if you have a region-free player, I think you can get it through Amazon UK. Maybe.
Oh, I agree that Spielberg's treatment of Close Encounters is different than George's treatment of Star Wars.
It's worse.
George believes in the changes he makes. Spielberg added that whole 'inside the Mothership' scene that he personally hated just to appease the studio into allowing him to make the changes he really wanted.
George is releasing a substandard quality version of his original 1977 film, perhaps with recreated elements such as the opening crawl to approximate what existed in 1977 (and, yeah, likely ignoring all the soundtrack differences as irrelevant.) Spielberg has never released, and as far as I know, has no intention of releasing the original 1977 version of his film, in any condition whatsoever. And the Criterion Version which claimed to be original, with Spielberg's blessing, was not.
Yes, very big differences.
As a filmmaker, Spielberg is light years ahead of Lucas. But as a self-censorer and second-guesser, Lucas is actually less objectionable. (Gadzooks, I can't believe I have to say that, but it's true.)
To my knowledge, TCM has never shown the complete CE3K, though I have not watched every single airing (but, pfft, enough of them).
I think Duel is available in Europe. Heheh, if you have a region-free player, I think you can get it through Amazon UK. Maybe.
Oh, I agree that Spielberg's treatment of Close Encounters is different than George's treatment of Star Wars.
It's worse.
George believes in the changes he makes. Spielberg added that whole 'inside the Mothership' scene that he personally hated just to appease the studio into allowing him to make the changes he really wanted.
George is releasing a substandard quality version of his original 1977 film, perhaps with recreated elements such as the opening crawl to approximate what existed in 1977 (and, yeah, likely ignoring all the soundtrack differences as irrelevant.) Spielberg has never released, and as far as I know, has no intention of releasing the original 1977 version of his film, in any condition whatsoever. And the Criterion Version which claimed to be original, with Spielberg's blessing, was not.
Yes, very big differences.
As a filmmaker, Spielberg is light years ahead of Lucas. But as a self-censorer and second-guesser, Lucas is actually less objectionable. (Gadzooks, I can't believe I have to say that, but it's true.)
My point is that Lucas has made very few films, whereas Spielberg has many a masterpiece to his name. The CE3K issue has always been odd, and the motherships sequence was removed is later cuts. What is it with that film? Does Steve hate the original version, or does he simply not want to commit the time to releasing the different cuts? Plus, we must remember, Lucas went back and altered his film 20 years later, not six months later. None of this, by the way, excuses Spielberg. He should release the original. It's just that I've never seen it, so I can't comment on it. Do the original elements of the original Close Encounters material even still exist? I mean, Spielberg altered it, what, six months later, or something?