ATMachine

"The ball has opened."

-- Not Abraham Lincoln

SilverWook said:

towne32 said:

TK-949 said:

towne32 said:

TK-949 said:


Currently I'm watching Torchwood as well as the first episodes of classic Doctor Who.

 People who don't enjoy classic british TV will probably find the first doctor hard to get through (though that first episode is enjoyable to most fans).

My girlfriend and I are watching classic Star Trek right now, so I'm in the 60s mood anyway. Just after Season 5 of nuWho I watched the wonderful TV movie "An Adventure in Space and Time" which made me curious about classic Doctor Who.

 The first few seasons are even more slow paced and low budget than Trek. It's more as if you're watching a play. They didn't cut or do reshoots unless they really had to (the entire set falls down, an actor curses, etc). So you'll see people slip up on their lines or repeat them, little stumbles here and there, the occasional set wobble. All part of the charm. :)

 Videotape was expensive (one factor in old episodes being erased) and video editing in post really didn't exist yet. It boggles my mind that videotape was sometimes spliced with a razor blade and glued together in the early days.

The behind the scenes stuff on the Hartnell era DVD's makes one appreciate how technically complex some stories were to pull off, essentially doing them like a "live" show.

To think I used to stress out over doing a simple three camera talk show back in college!

 I suspect part of it was that the BBC just had really antiquated equipment and almost no money. (Not to mention a production crew that came out of radio, rather than film.)

After all, only one year after the first episode of Doctor Who, Gene Roddenberry in the US was able to make "The Cage," which is quite complex in terms of editing, and still fairly visually impressive.

Tobar said:

I found his new saber sounds quite interesting. The three prong design is still idiotic though.

 It's the sort of thing a fanboy would design while thinking it looks hella cool.

"Stop chaos? The Elders thought they could. Now they know better. So should you."

"If we can't stop the chaos, what CAN we do?"

"The only thing for us to do is embrace it, and turn ourselves into creatures of shadow... or plan our escape!"

"Escape? To where?"

-- LOOM (LucasArts)

Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?

-- Shakespeare, Richard II (3.2.145-177)

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that.

-- Shakespeare, Hamlet (5.1.190-202)

Danfun128: It wasn't something about whether she knew Odin's words whispered to Baldr's on his funeral pyre, was it? ;)

Also, a more generally random thought:

There was a silence. The old man did not move in his chair. At length Gandalf spoke. ‘Hail, Théoden son of Thengel! I have returned. For behold! the storm comes, and now all friends should gather together, lest each singly be destroyed.’

(JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers, "The King of the Golden Hall")

That statement speaks volumes about the present state of CGI -- and the looming question of replacing flesh-and-blood actors with puppets modeled on the stars of yesteryear.

Personally, I'd like to see human bodies continue to star in films that are ostensibly about humans. But I've got a house that is almost literally overflowing with books, so what do I know about modern art?

Pace Pythagoras, I am not a number; I am a free man.

DuracellEnergizer said:

ATMachine said:

The SE of THX 1138 was rated R in 2004, though the previous versions had been rated PG back in the 70s (and that was back when there was no PG-13 rating!).

Yes, well, with all those stupid digital effects shoved in, that version of the movie deserves to be restricted. =P 

 Unfortunately, that wasn't the reason for the change in rating. ;P

One of the most baffling changes in the 2004 recut, to my opinion, is the recutting of the scene where THX makes an error that almost leads to a nuclear meltdown before someone else stops it.

It's abundantly clear in the 1978 cut that the scene in question involves a Louis Slotin-style criticality accident, but the recut CGI'd version (though it adds the element of the droid production line from the novelization) makes it nearly impossible to tell what exactly is going on.

Did GL think people in the 21st century wouldn't understand the idea of nuclear reactors?

A proper PT-era Cushing makeup ought to be rather less gaunt-looking than the Tarkin of 1977.

Here's Peter Cushing as he looked in Hammer Studios' initial 1958 Dracula:

Contrast this with Cushing's appearance in Dracula AD 1972 (no prizes for guessing the year it came out).

Cushing's extremely angular look in SW 1977 was in large part due to the physical strain of his grief after his beloved wife died in 1971.

As I recall, in his autobiography he even admitted that he tried to induce a heart attack in himself through overexertion the night she died.

This is a rather ghoulish subject, I'll admit, but if you're going to have the audacity to create CGI Zombie Peter Cushing, then as far as I'm concerned you don't exactly have a leg to stand on in the decency department.

Anchorhead said:

ATMachine said:

Yeah, namely creating that clone, "Luuke Skywalker." Personally, I always found those extra Us in the clone names in the Thrawn series reather silly.

I was trying to be subtle without spoiling it for anyone who may not have read the series, but may still be thinking about it. 

 Subtle? Moi? But that's just not my style. You should know me better than that by now. ;)

Look at my username; do I seem like the type of fellow who likes redundancy?

(Don't answer that.)

----------------------------------------

You're missing the point.

Sevb32 said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

A transient saber that was sacrificed to demonstate the cutting power of assembly line machinery.

God, I hate how unpersonalized and replaceable lightsabers were treated in the PT. Obi-Wan goes through two (or three, if you count Qui-Gon's weapon) before finally getting his signature lightsaber from SW in ROTS (And even then, it's not a film-accurate replica of the SW saber.).

 The hilts look basically the same from scene to scene, but there are also differences in the context of the same films. Luke's (Anakin) saber has differences from the ANH one in ESB and even differences from scene to scene in the context of the same movie.  Hero (Close up) shots are very few in the context of the films themselves, so it's really no big deal. The main way to spot difference is look at the prop photo books.

 That's just part and parcel of the art of illusion that comprises movie-making.

Yeah, namely creating that clone, "Luuke Skywalker." Personally, I always found those extra Us in the clone names in the Thrawn series reather silly.

And indeed, more web pages need to get with the times and stop using Flash.

Quite.

What, the old story about somebody having Found Luke's lightsaber in the depths of Cloud City?

I wonder if any other plot points in the st will be similarly borrowed from the Thrawn trilogy.

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=45203

Sounds like the post-ROTJ Empire has its own version of the Dolchstoßlegende myth going on.

Have a Cornish pasty, if you're into that sort of thing.

Think not. Do. Or do not.

Or have a donut. ;)

Depends on whether you'd consider the whole OOT to be part of your canon or not, I'd say.

If it were up to me, I might make multiple canons -- just to see how the new material from each successive film altered the overall story.

John Doom raises a very good point.

In fact, although Vader says in ESB that he is Luke's father, never once does he say "I am Anakin Skywalker."

Even Yoda is careful to refer to Vader as "Obi-Wan's apprentice."

The definite assumption that Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker are one and the same person actually appears to date to the writing of ROTJ, not ESB.

After all, it's quite possible that Mother Skywalker was getting some action on the side....

Times change. The SE of THX 1138 was rated R in 2004, though the previous versions had been rated PG back in the 70s (and that was back when there was no PG-13 rating!).

joefavs said:

Someone brought up Charles Dance in the comments of the AV Club article about this, and while I personally think he isn't  right physically for the role, I'd much rather they go that route than digitally recreate a dead actor. Whether or not they can pull it off, I'm a little squeamish about it ethically. It's like that Audrey Hepburn commercial for . . . I want to say . . . Chocolate? I found that whole posthumous endorsement deal thing really unsettling. Anyway, I have to think that to do this in an actual movie would set a potentially dangerous precedent.

aside from all that, even though I don't like him for Tarkin, I'd love to bring Dance into the saga in some other capacity. He'd be great.

 Might as well -- there's plenty of Game of Thrones embedded in the DNA of Star Wars anyway.

...You do remember the bit in Die Walküre where Siegmund and Sieglinde are actually half-siblings (and thus were born at different times), right?

Anchorhead said:

Regarding Luke and Leia; Their ages and proof they were never meant to be related.

From the shooting script for Star Wars:

EXT. TATOOINE - DESERT WASTELAND - DAY

               A death-white wasteland stretches from horizon to horizon.
               The tremendous heat of two huge twin suns settle on a lone
               figure, Luke Skywalker, a farm boy with heroic aspirations
               who looks much younger than his eighteen years.

----------------------


  INT. REBEL BLOCKADE RUNNER

               Threepio stands in a hallway, somewhat bewildered. Artoo is
               nowhere in sight. The pitiful screams of the doomed Rebel
               soldiers can be heard in the distance.

                                     THREEPIO
                         Artoo! Artoo-Detoo, where are you?

               A familiar clanking sound attacks Threepio's attention and
               he spots little Artoo at the end of the hallway in a smoke-
               filled alcove. A beautiful young girl (about sixteen years
               old) stands in front of Artoo. Surreal and out of place,
               dreamlike and half hidden in the smoke, she finishes adjusting
               something on Artoo's computer face, then watches as the little
               robot joins his companion.

 Yeah, as I said, originally Luke and Leia definitely were not twins.

The question of them not being related, however, may be another story entirely...

...have you ever seen Der Ring des Nibelungen?

Obi-Wan is 25 in the TPM shooting script, though you're right about him having originally been 30 or so (back when he was the star of the movie and "Quigon Jinn" only showed up in the third act).

So "officially" Obi-Wan is only 57 when ANH begins. Kind of understandable given Ewan McGregor's relatively youthful appearance, but it doesn't quite gel with the timeframe of the OOT.

John Doom said:

About Obi-wan's age, I found this dialogue useful:

                                     VADER
                         A tremor in the Force. The last time
                         I felt it was in the presence of my
                         old master.

                                     TARKIN
                         Surely he must be dead by now.

                                     VADER
                         Don't underestimate the power of the
                         Force.

Tarkin seems to imply that Obi-wan may be very old, so much that he may've died of old age, yet he survived with the power of the Force. Could he be more than 70 years old? That would make sense: Yoda was able to live for more than 800 years in the same way.

Vader, on the other hand, seems he's not considered "old" by Tarkin, thus it's possible he's still in his 40s-60s in Star Wars.

If that's the case, Anakin's could've actually been the last Jedi generation, explaining why few people know about the Jedi in the OT.

Finally, if the Jedi disappeared with the rise of the Empire, it would make sense it started no more than around 50 years before Star Wars.

 The shooting script for ANH specifies that Obi-Wan is at least 70 years old. I believe this remained the general school of thought until the prequels came along and mucked about with the original timeline.

(Said script also specifies that Luke is 20 and Leia is 16 -- meaning they're definitely not twins.)