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Anchorhead

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12-Jun-2005
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7-Mar-2024
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Post
#254171
Topic
McCallum on Jar Jar & Kids before TPM came out
Time
Originally posted by: Nanner Split
How about Reservoir Dogs?.

Haven't seen it. Don't care for Tarantino's stuff. Too much work just to watch his movies. The guy could probably do some great work but he seems completely caught up in style over substance - shock over story. "I don't have a real story, so I'll just make the movie so violent and bloody that people will actually vomit in the theater - it'll be awesome".

The non-linear timeline of Pulp Fiction was interesting, but not when it's every damn scene. I don't want to have to work that hard. Again - not enough story to tell, so he just hacks-up the timeline, adds ridiculous amounts of blood and over-the-top violence - style over substance.



Post
#254141
Topic
McCallum on Jar Jar & Kids before TPM came out
Time
Originally posted by: Knightmessenger
Wasn't an earlier Hitchcock film, Rope, also in just one setting?

Yes it was. It was also shot in real time. Each scene lasting between 7 and 10 minutes (10 was the length of a reel of film). The walls of the set were on wheels so they could be moved once they were out of the shot, to allow for the continuous takes, and moved back when they were about to come back into the shot.

Post
#254121
Topic
McCallum on Jar Jar & Kids before TPM came out
Time
Truthfully - Star Wars is most likely the only movie of the six that I'll ever see again. I might watch Empire sometime in the future, but I'm in no hurry. Even it shows that Lucas had no more story to tell.

D.E. - I'm right there with you on set pieces. Especially where film is concerned. I love films that take place in a single location. One of my absolute favorites is Rear Window. Jefferies can't leave his one room apartment - so neither can the viewer. Great stuff! Of course, you have to have one hell of a story to pull it off. The frustration with not being able to stop the murder, the fear that he may have been seen, the feeling of captivity - all of it is so perfectly executed.
Post
#254108
Topic
McCallum on Jar Jar & Kids before TPM came out
Time
Originally posted by: vote_for_palpatine
did Star Wars fans watch the PT because they wanted to, or because they felt they had to?

Having been so disappointed by Return Of The Jedi when it was in the theaters, I'd given up on Star Wars as a series of films back in 1983.

I went to see Phantom Menace solely out of curiosity. I thought for sure it would, at the very least, be better than ROTJ. I was shocked at how juvenile it was.

I've not seen the last two.

Post
#254082
Topic
Star Wars most inconsistent plot point, in my opinion: Star Wars Lethal Alliance game
Time
Originally posted by: Obi Jeewhyen
... as with most of the "fixes," the execution was worse than the problem in the first place.

...there's no excuse for Lucas bungling this one. He's a cinema IDIOT!


I agree.
Two of his films (to me, at least) are great and I can watch them repeatedly - Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The rest of his work is mediocre at best. There's no denying he's had astronomical commercial success. However, that doesn't always indicate critical success or artistic ability. In fact, in this day and age, it almost guarantees mediocrity. McDonald's, Starbucks, and Reality TV shows - are a few examples that come to mind. These things make millions for their shareholders and are wildly popular - but none of them are any kind of high-water mark in their worlds.

Starbucks is open about not making the very best espresso - they readily admit that they strive only to make the one that appeals to the masses. Marketing does the rest. Want a really fantastic espresso? - go to an independent coffee house. Same with McDonald's - ok burger coupled with mass marketing. Want a great burger? - go to a smaller, independent place. Reality TV - it will only be remembered as a trend. Want a great TV program? - go buy a DVD of a much more intelligent show or look around on cable for something that took months to produce.

Lucas is no artist. He doesn't have to be - he's a hell of a businessman.


Post
#254032
Topic
Star Wars most inconsistent plot point, in my opinion: Star Wars Lethal Alliance game
Time
Originally posted by: Darth_Evil
you'd have to think about it to find there's anything to think about it all, which is why I don't care about little things like that.

It goes back to what I've always believed about Lucas and Star Wars. He wrote A story. It made for one great film, a good sequel in most people's eyes, and an unnecessary third film that was weak. Not having done much else after that, comparatively - he decided to revive the franchise two decades later. However, instead of telling another story, he decided to keep trying to tell that same story. There wasn't really enough story to stretch through three films the first time around, so the next three films were really stretching his original story to it's limits.

Lucas isn't a good storyteller. So, he won't (or doesn't want to) stray away from his one successful story. Instead, he actually sits down and concerns himself with the back-story of completely meaningless details, of single scenes, from 25 year old films - it's embarrassing.

The back-story of how a box of parts was moved from one room to another - that's just pathetic.

Star Trek - a very successful, respected, decades-old franchise - has many different stories, characters, movies, shows, etc. They are separate stories, with separate adventures, different ships, planets, organizations, people, crew members, etc - taking place in different times. Picard doesn't have to have some pretzel-logic back-story that somehow connects him to Kirk. They went to the same academy - that's it, that's how the stories are connected. That's more than enough.

A great story, with interesting characters is vastly superior to a they're-somehow-connected-after-all-these-years story.

Why not have a story \ movie about Han as a young guy becoming a smuggler? - or a film about Lando as a pirate who ends up becoming a successful business owner with a shady past? You could have stand-alone films with a character or two that was familiar, but wasn't dependent on several other films to be complete, or meaningful, or fun to watch. People could use their imagination to connect the stories - or not, if they didn't want to. Either way, they'd have a great movie - a complete story - to watch.

Like they did in 1977.





Post
#253777
Topic
Here's my stance
Time
Originally posted by: Obi Jeewhyen
"Star Wars" - that's the entirety of my canon.
.

+1

It's all I own*. It's all I'll ever watch. The stuff that came after has been slowly fading away for the last ten years (the last time I saw Empire). Although, I did see the first of the prequels.

That piece of crap started to fade from memory as I was walking across the parking lot afterwards.

* - I have the Definitive laserdiscs but have no way to watch them. They'll be on eBay soon.

Post
#253753
Topic
Star Wars most inconsistent plot point, in my opinion: Star Wars Lethal Alliance game
Time
Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
Mark Hammil looked entirely different in ESB and ROTJ than he did in ANH.
http://www.starwars-tw.com/story/character/jedi/luke_skywalker.jpg http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/s/skywalk1.jpg
I shit you not.


Your trolling wouldn't seem so obvious if you had used a picture that hadn't been Photoshopped so poorly.

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f20/stonetriple/skywalk1copy.jpg

There are unaltered pictures of him from the second film out on the internet.

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f20/stonetriple/luke_skywalker1.jpg

I shit you not.

Post
#253705
Topic
Here's my stance
Time
Originally posted by: Go-Mie
But "Canon", is something Lucas gets to decide because it's his universe.


Canon - can-on -n;

Standards accepted as axiomatic (true without having to be proven) and universally binding in a field of study or art.

Star Wars has become entirely too contaminated to have canon. Too many people have added to and altered the story over the years - particularly Lucas - for it to have any one accepted standard. Canon doesn't change just because the author goes through a divorce, has an argument with someone, becomes wealthy, has children, has writer's block, gets remarried, has an idea for a marketing tie-in, gets some new computer software, or any other of a myriad of reasons why they might want to change something 20 years later and then lie about it.

Star Trek has canon because there have been groups of people collaborating and providing a series of checks and balances when they decide storylines and films. They stay true to principals laid out in years past.

Star Wars films, on the other hand, are controlled by a single individual - power unchecked - who seems to change his mind and his stories every time something happens to him personally or whenever he gets a good idea for a toy, or can't come up with a story arc, etc.


Post
#253216
Topic
Here's my stance
Time
Originally posted by: Obi Jeewhyen

But how can we give Steven Spielberg a pass when we want to hang George Lucas in efigy?

I don't give him a pass. In E.T., he edited out the police officers' guns and replaced them with walkie-talkies. That's as bad as some of Lucas' changes. It's also not nearly as realistic as it used to be. If there's ever a time when a being from another planet is messing around with our children - the cops will be armed with guns - not talking to each other on two-way radios. It weakened that scene.

Post
#253211
Topic
Here's my stance
Time
Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
For the last time, people, if you're against changes being made in movies (or any type of art) be consistent!

I should mention, by the way, that I'm with Gaffer on this. Once a movie is released in the theater, it should be done. It enters the public domain at that point. I'm against any directors going back and CGIing in new footage, cleaning up shots, editing out mistakes, etc.

I bash on Lucas because he can't seem to stop doing it and he constantly lies about why he keeps doing it.

Post
#253151
Topic
Here's my stance
Time
Originally posted by: Fang Zei
To my knowledge, the only studio interference was the removal of "Episode IV A New Hope" in the opening crawl.

Another of his lies.

If the studio made him remove the title, post-production - why was it written out and referred to as The Star Wars during shooting and on pre-production documentation and early one-sheet artwork? Even reproductions of the early scripts published and printed as recently as the mid-90s had only these titles - "The Adventures of Luke Starkiller", "Journal of the Whills", and "The Star Wars".

The phrase A New Hope came into existence a few years after Star Wars was released, after a sequel was planned - not prior to the original release and then vetoed by studio execs.

Post
#253136
Topic
Here's my stance
Time
Originally posted by: Fang Zei
If Lucas really means what he said in that quote, I doubt he has much self respect.

I've always thought that very thing played a huge role in his ever-changing revisionist's-history BS of "what I really intended when I originally wrote the 9 - errr 6 - story double trilogy in the early 70s was...."

Having BSed and lied about statements for so long about so many of the aspects of his "original vision" and the goings on with the locations, budgets, directors, studio, etc, he has no choice but to stay the course with his lies about the past. He certainly can't come out 30 years later and say -

"There was never any grand vision, you guys have been right all along..."

"The Star Wars was just one story when I wrote it - a single 2 hour movie...."

"I know it's sounded more and more ridiculous with each new SE, but I kept digging myself in deeper with my lies..."

"I was making up stuff as I went along. The characters were never related to each other..."

"The marketing tie-ins decided major plot points..."

"I shouldn't have given all those magazine interviews back in the 70s. Too many people remember what I really said..."

"I shouldn't have tried to stretch a simple two hour film into a series of 6 films..."


He's so far down the revisionist's path, that he can't stop now.
Post
#252345
Topic
For me...it all came out in the end...
Time
Originally posted by: Darth_Evil
Go-Mer just pretends to care about the OOT preservation. He acts like he's on our side, while at the other time singing the praises of Lucas. These things totally contradict each other, and he tries to pass that off by saying he respects everyone's opinions. And he's never outright put down someone for liking the OOT, but that is his strategy.


"The so-called concern troll works to disrupt a forum by claiming to support its common cause but posting messages that promote the interests of the opposing cause.”

Post
#252144
Topic
Here's my stance
Time

Originally posted by: Darth_Evil
Why? What do you get out of it? Does it make you feel big? Does it bring you great joy? What is it that makes you do it?


Here's a lengthy explanation on internet trolls.

Troll article

Gomie is all but mentioned by name. There are several reasons why people do it but his seems to be a need for an identity - all attention (good or bad) is good attention. Control is another motivation. He steers the conversations - controls them - by inciting anger with his passive \ aggressive posts. He's also controlling the people that respond to him as well, by getting them so upset that they spend time trying to stop him. It's the only reason someone would join a board and constantly go against it's main theme. In fact, that behavior is mentioned specifically.

"The so-called concern troll works to disrupt a forum by claiming to support its common cause but posting messages that promote the interests of the opposing cause.”

He certainly falls into this category as well;

“Wasting others' time: One of the greatest themes in trolling is the idea that a troll can spend one minute of time posting a troll, causing multiple other people to waste several minutes of their time, catalytically affecting others. Most trolls enjoy the idea that they can waste others' time at comparatively little effort on their behalf.”

He's put up plenty of one and two word answers just to keep someone angry - just to keep the thread going.

Until he's banned, we'll have to suffer his presence. It's one of the drawbacks to internet discussions - the anonymity of the internet - "the safety of being out of range" as Roger Waters put it.

Gomie doesn't have to be concerned with being held accountable for his behavior. Online forums are just another form of entertainment for him, not unlike internet gaming. He just assumes a character identity and plays a part. If he were to behave in person the way he does here, angering and annoying people at the level he does, he'd get his teeth knocked out. On the internet, he's safe behind his keyboard.



Post
#251773
Topic
How do you watch the Star Wars Saga?
Time
Originally posted by: Go-Mie
Sucking off the PT isn't somethig to be ashamed of.
www.originaltrilogy.com

They are great movies
www.originaltrilogy.com

If everyone is allowed to have an opinion, then what's wrong with me having one too

www.originaltrilogy.com

Are you guys suggesting that I'm somehow sub human because I don't have such a mean spirited slant towards the prequels?

www.originaltrilogy.com

Troll somewhere else, kid. Your act is tired.

Actually, looking at the number of posts you've made in such a short time, maybe you should try spending some time outdoors for a change.


Post
#251535
Topic
Remember when...
Time
Originally posted by: SKot
As far as the term "Star Wars geek" is concerned, I don't buy that being used back then either. That's something I never heard people say. There were "Trekkies" back then, but there was no term for people who just liked Star Wars, because that was nearly everybody. Sure, you had generic "nerds", and "geeks" a bit later on, but whether or not they liked Star Wars was irrelevant. It wasn't until the 90s Star Wars revival that tons of people started commonly collecting anything with the Star Wars name on it, dressing in Star Wars costumes, and waiting in big lines for the movies that there started to emerge a common perception of the "Star Wars geek".

I am willing to admit that it's possible things were a little different in your particular region, but I really think you're totally retconning here (to use a fanboy/geek term) and trying to change history, kind of like Uncle George likes to do.

--SKot

Good call, SKot.

Using the word geek as a suffix to describe someone wasn't common until the 90s. Prior to that, they would have just been called a geek, with no association to anything specific. More often, nerd was used. Even then, not as a suffix to a specific thing.

Gomer forgot which board he was trolling. This forum has people who were actually around in the 70s. Notice how he tried to amend the statement after you called him on it.

First he says maybe you never heard it, but he did. He then follows it with a statement that might generate a few more replys and take the focus off of his mistake - "I remember the old saying that the difference between...". He goes one step further and comments on his own statement (complete with smilies) to try and steer the conversation even further away from his original statement.

Again, good catch SKot.



Post
#250770
Topic
Lucas Interview from 1979 - Alan Arnold's 'Once Upon a Galaxy' book
Time
Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
Seems to be the same old George to me.

I agree. Only a few years after Star Wars, and he's already become an egotistical control freak that thinks he's the only one that can do it all correctly.

Also note that he specifically mentions the nine film triple trilogy that he now claims to have never mentioned - plus he says he added the other stories after Star Wars was made. What about that grand vision he had from the very start, before any of the films were made?

The only thing he's done from the very beginning is make up stuff as he goes along. No wonder he worked that into the Raiders Of The Lost Ark script.