Baronlando

Juts in the last couple years his voice seems sort of frail and unhealthy to me, it bums me out.

At one point I think he says they went looking for the 3-strip because Fox couldn't be bothered to spend the 50 grand on a print, I'm guessing he means a purely archival print? As opposed to one that was put to use for home video, rereleases etc. (by the way, did anything further come from this weirdness?:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/3856239-post16008.html

It helps, so they might as well do it. I mean, they're set up, the camera is there, the models are lit, so why not. Even now they still often ask for "handles" (extra footage at both ends of a shot) when an effects shot is being done.

xhonzi said:

Yes, all classic films irreversibly engraved on all of our minds.  An average of about 6.5 on imdb (for what that's worth).

Not much. IMDB people are all from the devil's asshole.

The way he talks it's a little tough to get, but it's near the end, around the 50 minute mark, he says "We did a 3 strip in order to preserve it and (years later) when we went to the salt mine to retrieve it, the cyan was completely out of synch with everything else. It was worthless."

Ah, interesting. He says the cyan strip was out of synch, so that's why the separations were no good.

You're just making it sound even more awesome.

Spielberg's smart enough to recognize that he only has a finite number of films left in him and spending time and energy being anal retentive about the old ones is a huge waste of time. I just hope he releases the original cut of DUEL, it's the best one. He even said the extra stuff was just to pad it out for overseas theaters.  

There was a whole ad campaign, but it may have been limited to tv ads billboards etc. They were character-specific, like you could see a billboard that just says "Han Solo is back!" and nothing else. Then down the road another sign says "C-3P0 IS BACK" And a lot of tv spots like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEN8MBxAI3M&feature=related

I did hear that young Anakin ghost was booed at the last one, when they showed Jedi. Wonder if that helps Lucas get a clue, since that's the friendliest crowd possible for that stuff. Probably not.

The Zahn trilogy was an interesting idea at the time, basically to turn Star Wars into airport books, for adults to read the way they would read Tom Clancy or whatever. That was fine to do for 3 books when they were only coming out once a year. But after that they just went nuts cranking this stuff out and it became comical that all this shit kept happening to these people. They're like O.J. in Naked Gun. Looking back, I think the Daley Han Solo books and some of the old marvels had the right idea, to do these smaller, more lighthearted, low-stakes stories.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda saidIt makes no difference which version of the film I or anyone else"prefers".  The original theatrical versions won seven academy awards including editing and special effects. Changing the editing and the special effects while not allowing a decent release of the award-winning versions creates an unprecedented historical artistic void that could and should be rectified.

Totally. I don't know how the superfans always manage to turn this issue into their own self involved blogging. "Dear Diary, I personally like most of the changes, most of them don't bother me, I never saw the original so big deal etc." The hell does that have to do with preservation of a piece of pop art, (to say nothing of the revisionism happening to the work of two directors who are now dead)

skyjedi2005 said:

Did Paramount or Spielberg do it.  I think Lucas would have thought the old master is good enough since it was in 1080P.

Supposedly it was Spielberg, according to the digital bits guy on the HT forum. All 3 were going to come out along with Crystal Skull for xmas 2008. Spielberg wasn't happy with the quality (and apparently not happy with the cgi cliff) and put the kibosh on it.

If the 2006 didn't meet expectations, I'm dying to know what their target sales figures were. You know, for a repack of a defective transfer that was barely 2 years old and a laserdisc bootleg.

And in the context of people talking about this blu-ray box, it's seems particularly weird to go around proclaiming to the world how much you don't care that the originals aren't on it, even though other movies have multiple cuts. What, you like getting less for your money? 

 I am 25 and grew up with the special editions. So I am not heartbroken myself.

25 is actually pretty goddamn old to be walking around with that 7th grade attitude. (It doesn't affect me, so it must be meaningless)

Well, we can't all be splitting the atom like they are on the rest of the internet.  I'm sure that's true that nobody cares beyond a certain group of fans, but I always wonder what exactly is the magic number that it has to hit to suddenly be considered a worthwhile thing. Is it a million? 100s of thousands? (Especially now that it was considered worthwhile for there to be 3 versions available of MR. ARKADIN.)

Sure, definitely, it would be all good with those 3 simple discs. The prequels and the special ed. get lumped together too much, when they are really very separate things. One was a perfectly reasonable thing to do (make sequels to hit movies, everybody does that) the other is a kooky, unheard-of display of contempt for your own customers/fans.

It's not, he doesn't have to answer to anybody.

A toast to good ol' Star Wars, and the simpler days.

The second jabba song (the instrumental thing that plays later) is missing too. And so is the negative for the Jabba scene in star wars. All 3 of these things were used in the star wars to jedi doc, and then went missing. Who was in charge of that thing?

Ho-ly shit, I forgot the actual Jedi Rocks song, that really happened! The cruise ship band on somebody's vacation must have blackmail photos.

I can't wait for the trashy Lifetime cable movie where young, powerful Lucas, played by the guy from The Mentalist, creates the whole scene just to showcase the singing of the original Sy snootles voice, played by Tiffani Amber Thiessen. Just like Citizen Kane!

I remember getting addicted to the PS2 pod racer game that came out around episode II, I think that was the last one I bought after being a loyal star wars- game fan all through the 90s.  Never could finish the last race, what a pisser that one was. (I wonder what kind of rights hassles are involved in reissuing those old games, either in a collection or to download.)

Or link to the best part of the day!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzK0hfIhaKg&t=1m10s

msycamore said: and the only star wars is the release Baronlando supervised... he did it just as they transferred Jaws 4 - the revenge. I just happened to remind him about it and he included it just for fun

Next I'm going to do Empire Strikes Back, hopefully LFL has enough cash for the lab to squeeze it in between these two:

Yeah, every time some superfan says it's impossible to present the OT properly because the negative has been special editioned, all I can think is negative shmegative. The Blade Runner final cut even has shots in that are from the workprint, since they never found any better source, and that thing is however many generations removed. And yet there it is, side by side with the negative. (and the Blade Runner '82 disc, which has been our barometer for a quality blu-ray all along, isn't from the negative either.)