Bingowings

Clearly this isn't the direction I was hoping for because in the novella the Cenobite with pins is much more a twisted object of beauty.

The grid is a delicate tattoo the pins are bejeweled and the Cenobite is androgynous.

The thing in that picture looks more brutal and ugly than disturbingly elegant (he looks like a victim from any torture porn movie of the last five or six years).

Really a step in the wrong direction as far as I'm concerned.

dark_jedi said:

Hellraiser is being remade.

I indicated my awareness of that in my post, though it does seem to be stuck in production (ahem) Hell at the moment.

I'm not convinced that the remake will be the kind of remake the material needs and deserves but who knows? I'm prepared to wait and see.

Dune needs to be remade (possibly as two films in a series covering the whole Frank Herbert series over many films) the current plans for another film version don't fill me with much confidence.

Hellraiser needs to be remade more like The Hellbound Heart and with a more serious tone. Once again I'm not convinced this is how the proposed remake project will end up.

The Star Wars prequels (yes I've said it too) there is really too much wrong with them to turn them into classics, we can try to fiddle with what we have but in my gut I think the best option is to start again.

The Lathe Of Heaven, such a great idea if remade by someone who kept the story and didn't swamp it with OTT action and special effects it would worthy of a second go.

Millenium, once again a brilliant central idea (the novel, based on the aborted screenplay, based on the short story is such a good read btw) let down by a low budget and chessy sci-fi flavours for the future sequences. A remake would be very welcome.

This will get heads turning but I think a remake of William Blatty's loose trilogy about faith (The Exorcist, The Ninth Configuration and Legion) with all the linking characters played by the same actors and some of the stupid additions (like the spinning heads in the first one and the tacked on exorcism in what became Exorcist 3) would make a fine companion piece to the films that already exist. Just as long as Morgan Creek have nothing to do with it and the three stories were blended with linking material (like having the Gemini killer on the news in the background of the first story and having Cutshaw freaking out on the launch pad because of what Regan MacNeil said to him at the party). If they were filmed as one project and shown either as a mini-series or in cinemas it would be a much more palatable alternative to the inevitable remake of The Exorcist that's bound to be thrust upon us some time in the future.

Ian delivers some of his best stuff in ROTS (the opera scene shows a very surgical claw in a velvet glove) but as soon as the Halloween mask is glued on he becomes really silly and we didn't need it.

Lucas clearly thought that if the Emperor didn't look exactly the same as he does in ROTJ we would be too stupid to recognise him and while the Emperor is a bit of a smarmy git in ROTJ he doesn't act like some demented muppet like he does in the last act of ROTS.

It would have been so much better if they ran with the line Palpatine was spinning in the opera scene of him revealing that he isn't what he seemed to Anakin but also planting the suggestion (with some foundation) that the Jedi Council aren't either and then have Anakin put them to the test.

This would turn Anakin/Vader into more of a nihilist villain (he has lost faith with the ideals he once had and lost trust in the authority figures that surround him and wants to punish their hypocrisy).

Not only would that explain his attempts to destroy the Jedi and his suspicions about his wife but also his plotting against the Emperor too.

His redemption in ROTJ would have then been his reconnect with the idealism he had as a boy.

Gods, why didn't Lucas get a proper writer in (not to mention a more solid core cast of actors).

With all that prep time between 1983 and 1999 (not to mention the three years between each of the prequels) he could have given us something really special instead of worrying about if the CGI was up to scratch.

1. Madam Satan, The masquerade ball on a burning airship! This film is difficult enough to see on the small screen but on a big screen (hopefully after a good restoration) I can but dream.

2. Lawrence of Arabia (again I'm allowed to see things again ain't I ?) I could watch that film every week and not get bored with it.

3. Masque Of The Red Death. The colours, the one and only Vincent Price on the biggest screen possible.

4. Any Val Lewton film but if I must The Seventh Victim, it has such a magical quality to it.

5. Any Powell/Pressburger film if I had to be pressed I'd go for A Matter Of Life And Death.

6. Something by Tsui Hark, possibly A Chinese Ghost Story.

7. The original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

8. Vertigo or maybe North By Northwest (I've seen them both so many times but never on the big screen).

9. The Ninth Configuration (possibly my favorite film, Janskeet would hate it going by his Lawrence Of Arabia comment).

10. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (I've seen the stage show, I've seen the film so many times I can't count but I'm still a cinema virgin because most cinemas won't allow the full on rice, water, audience par-tici-pation experience for health and safety reasons anymore).

Monroville said:

oh_riginal said:

The only issue I still have with ANH:R is when the Falcon comes out of lightspeed in the Alderaan System, and is passed up by a TIE Fighter. The Falcon follows VERY CLOSE to the TIE for a long time, while Han says things like:

"I think I can get him before he gets there. He's almost in range."

Yet we see the Falcon easily fire upon TIE's in ROTJ at around the same distance, very accurately and easily!

If I were ever to do a follow-up re-edit on ANH:R myself, I'd put a lot more distance between the Falcon and the TIE in the Alderaan asteroid scene.

Note: I'm surprised this wasn't brought up before....

Well, it's just like how at the end of EMPIRE the Falcon is damn near making a drive-thru burger order with the Executor and yet they are STILL not in range of the tractor beam.  Even in that dreaded argument a few months back, I just watched EMPIRE on Spike recently and sure enough the Falcon passes in front of the Executor nose (if that is the only location for a tractor beam on a ship 11 to 12 miles long, with hanger bays roughly 5 to 6 miles from the nose) for good 5 to 10 seconds if not longer before jumping away.

All I can say is it's STAR WARS and there's no point in arguing about it...

 

As you point out though that ESB and we haven't got ESB:R yet so really that's more of a thing for the ESB/ROTJ Wishlist.

fishmanlee said:

Molly said:

Alan Dean Foster used the phrase "Dark Lord of the Sith" in the novelization of ANH in 1976, iirc

i dont know how old this dark horse comic is that came with the ANH DVD but it says "that" in there too

 

Seeing as the ANH novelisation was the first story introduction to the Star Wars universe anyone (outside the film production) had I guess that trumps just about anything but for the purpose of this thread's title does it matter? The Sith are not mentioned at all in the OT films so you could remove references to them without contradicting anything in the original films (though it may be a bugger to pull off because in the PT they get name checked all the time).

Nice to see an Alzarian around these parts ;-)

vaderios said:

I like the idea of anakin be in the senate office but as he should be at the first draft scenario. Thats why palps have annie's saber.

 

-Angel

Gods! They actually shot this! It would have made so much more sense if Anakin saw Jedi making such an aggressive move on Palpatine from the beginning.

The deliberation scenes could be Anakin pondering if he should or should not tell Mace about what he's found out and he could tell him via hologram or communicator as a test to see how far the council would go.

That would give a much better reason for acting the way he does as he would see the Council trying to take over the government.

It would make even better sense if Anakin only found out for sure that Palpatine is a Sith after he fought off Mace and Palpatine used his lure to save Padme as a means to stop Anakin from trying to arrest him too.

Rhikter said:

Bingowings said:

There have already been suggestions of reconstructing deleted or unfilmed concepts like the Vader choke scene, the scorched Endor move (where Palpatine orders him to destroy the moon if the shield is shut down) etc.

And even to have him target the Executor to try to shoot it down before it can impact on the station.

It may be possible to create more off screen presence for the character if appropriate dialogue can be found elsewhere.

 

 

Ooo.  That sounds interesting.  I'd love to see what people manage to put together.

As a general point Double O Five keeps updating the suggestions list so it makes sense to pop over there and have a read ever so often to get a feel for some of the ideas that have been posted here in the past.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/RE-ESB-and-ROTJ-Wishlist/post/343302/#post343302

Both sentences are grammatically correct BTW ;-)

Rhikter said:

Under what sort of curcumstances would additional/altered JerJerrod dialogue be needed in RotJ?

There have already been suggestions of reconstructing deleted or unfilmed concepts like the Vader choke scene, the scorched Endor move (where Palpatine orders him to destroy the moon if the shield is shut down) etc.

And even to have him target the Executor to try to shoot it down before it can impact on the station.

It may be possible to create more off screen presence for the character if appropriate dialogue can be found elsewhere.

Inserted into a ROTJ edit of some kind at least, not every suggestion on this thread or on the Starkiller Thread will appeal to Ady.

I was given State Of Play (the television version) for my birthday a few days back and was suprised to see Michael Pennington AKA JerJerrod in the last couple of episodes.

I will have to see it again (it is bloody good anyway) to see if there is any dialogue that can be borrowed from it.

The book isn't very long and a lot of what is described (which takes up a great deal of the length of the text) can be covered visually often with pages covered with a single shot, so the arguement for not following the majority of the events of the book isn't really valid. The story hasn't much fat to strip away anyway, it's pretty much filmable as it is (and yet no one has done it yet which could have been the unique selling point to this film, especially with that title).

Dracula is an ages old aristocratic monster, with a sense of honour about his past and his eye set very much on the future.

That's all there is to him and that's all you need to tell the story.

He has his nocturnal powers, his bewitched henchmen and his horded treasure. He is an invader from the outer space of the past and alien world of exotic Eastern Europe.

He corrupts the simple air-headed Lucy and turns her into a wanton sexual predator and devourer of children. So her earlier silly state is necessary for the plot otherwise where does the horror of her transformation come from? The Whitby scenes and the murder of her mother are vital to the story as it builds up the futility of the attempts to save Lucy which pays off later when Mina is in a similar situation. Vampire Lucy is an utter perversion and desecration of the human she was, Lucy in that film died a saucy tart and woke up a saucy tart who bites children. Lucy's first encounter with the hunters is one of the most cinematic elements of the book and it's not in the film

The pillars of gas have a purpose in the book, Dracula marks them and digs up the treasure underneath to fund his activities, in the film they look good but don't actually serve any purpose.

The whole journey to Castle Dracula and Harker's stay there is a progressive journey into a horrific supernatural tinged world all the elements serve a purpose as does the horror on the Demeter (which is almost a mini-horror story in itself) cutting that out is unforgivable.

As Harker travels more into the forest he is travelling more into the past and more into the alien (Didn't Coppola get this? Hasn't he already proved that he can do this sort of thing already?).

The Demeter brings the alien from the magical past into the scientific present (well back then).

The love story utterly emasculates the threat of Dracula, he goes from being a powerful invading alien to a love sick soppy creature hounded to death by a group of cardboard villains only he isn't because he also feeds babies to his brides but he doesn't want brides because he wants Mina his true love but he does because he turns Lucy?

It's a real mess of an adaptation.

Which is a shame because it has wonderful production values, a proven cast (even Keanu and Winona can act when they want to) and a director who can direct but just didn't in the end a bit like the PT really.

As for Lucy's weapon fiddling I would have enjoyed it in Carry On Screaming but not in Bram Stoker's Dracula (there is a time and a place for everything).

We aren't going to change each other's minds here, that's not the nature of sharing each other's views on this or any other subject.

As I said earlier if the title and the publicity machine wasn't offering what it didn't deliver I would be more forgiving of the piece.

If the PT were fan films and not the official Star Wars Prequels they would be seen as masterpieces.

Dracula is such a filmable book that having no film version that just takes the story and puts it on screen after all these years is utterly frustrating. Especially when so called unfilmable books like Lord Of The Rings get better served.

No Golden Krone, a blink and miss it first coach ride, the killing of the baby's mother missing, most of the Demeter voyage and arrival missing, most of the Whitby scenes missing, Lucy's mother missing, Lucy's silly innocence missing, Lucy's first encounter with with the vampire hunters missing, Mina's oral rape scene inverted so she is almost attacking him, and there was so much in the film that made no sense at all.

Lucy being a saucy strumpet before getting bitten (if she acted like that in real life she would have been Seward's patient not the object of his suit), Mina walking around and meeting strange men unchaperoned (she is engaged), Whitby being in London.

Some of the material usually unseen from the novel is put back but lacking any purpose (like the gas plumes that the Count uses to find buried treasure to fund his activities being nothing more than window dressing).

Almost every actor did a terrible job even Oldman who seems to be playing six different characters, none of them the Count.

As I say take the name Bram Stoker off it and you will have a lush looking but rather silly, not really Dracula, Dracula film.

But with it on it's a bloody disgrace (I actually saw someone on the telly at the time saying she never knew that the original story was meant to be a romance, well it wasn't as you know and that title is part of the problem).

V'Gin!

ChainsawAsh said:

The "Jedi" logo was the only one that I created from scratch (using the Astro font, based on the logo on the SE poster).  Empire is an EPS file I downloaded a while ago that's 100% identical to the vintage poster (I perspective-corrected it and removed the "Star Wars" and surrounding circle-thing).  "Star Wars" is another EPS I downloaded, but haven't checked to see if there's anything specifically wrong with it.

What do you mean by "slug tummies" exactly?

The reason I'm asking is that I don't want someone to download this, watch the beginning, and then notice something wrong about the opening logo.  To me, something like that can ruin the viewing experience of any fanedit.  I don't want to have an "Eh, it's good enough" attitude for this project - I want it to be as perfect as I can make it.

If you (or anyone else) have any suggestions for how to improve the logos, please let me know!

Oh, and I did notice a problem with the first "S" in Star Wars that will be fixed.

By slug tummies I direct you compare the upper curve of the small Ss with the lower curve. The upper curves are perfectly rounded but the lower curves have more of a point to them (all be it smoothed but still more angular than rounded). The P in Empire has a very strange droop to the curve to (compare it to the R and you will see what I mean).

I haven't access to the typeset but if you have access to Fontlab, Fontographer or better still Fontforge (because it free) you can adjust these curves. Or if you have the designs as an EPS you could load it into Adobe Illustrator.

Kerning adjustments will help tweak the spacing between some of the letter forms too and help you avoid the crunching together thats very obvious in the ESB title it will also help prevent the clashing of close fitting uprights (like the vertical lines where the T in Strikes almost collide into the S and the R creating the illusion of a double width). Close crunching also makes a slightly off form look even more off.  Look at the curve of the C in Back, can you see how the diagonal of the A makes the already off curve seem to bend up?

Be warned it's really labour intensive work which is why some of the faults do (as you point out) turn up on official materials like posters because designers often can not arsed to do it right or don't think their audience will notice. Part of the problem is that the SE title designs were created to be seen with outlines filled in so the spaces between the letters were given more definition. Bear that in mind when you making outline only versions. In effect you are creating a totally new design because removing the coloured in sections you can no longer rely on them to iron out any clashes in the positoning of the letters.

Best of luck because this sort of work looks so easy until you actually try doing it and you have already done a much better job than many I've seen.

There are a few points of strangeness with the letter forms, the curve in the hook of the J in Jedi is the worst offender, some of the S's seem to have little slug tummies and the word "Back" seems to be rather crammed in there.

But the important question to ask is are you happy with them?

If the answer is yes leave them as they are, if the answer is no leave no pixel untwiddled.

Remember a dentine massacring dedication to detail isn't just for Christmas.

The cheese will not protect you, he wears the cheese, the cheese doesn't wear him.

I can't forgive the piece for promising with it's title what it failed to deliver, finally the film of one of the most filmable books in history.

It still shocks me that nobody has ever got it right when the book screams, "Film Me!" whenever I pick it up (well, whenever I forget to take the special tablets).

The cast are mostly awful in it too (Vinola and Keanu at their vorst), only really Richard E Grant and Tom Vaits come out of it with most of their dignity intact.

Lovely costumes though and the colour is lush but all the best bits of the book are missing or screwed up something I could almost forgive if Bram's good name wasn't on the piece.

I love the Vierd idea of British geography in the film.

Whitby, London, Englandshire.

If it was just some vacky Dracula film made by Ken Russell in his autumn years it would have been better obviously and a fun addition to the huge body of Dracula In Name Only films but as someone who first read the book when he was 8 and have read it more times than I can count (geddit?) I must say it pissed me off more than TPM.

BTW I would really love to see someone do a good job of Kim Newman's Anno Dracula books but it would probably get as mangled as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film.

Eternal Darkness : Sanity's Requiem is much closer to the feel of Lovecraft than any of the films directly inspired by them.

I haven't played the game but what I've seen of the new Arkham Asylum game it looks like it would make one hell of a Batman movie.

The Silent Hill games (though the film is better than most) still trump a lot of films for wierd atmosphere, the fourth one (though not really a Silent Hill game) would make a great Lynchian wierd out film. Sort of like a cross between Rear Window, Repulsion and Hellraiser.

oh_riginal said:

I don't think "balance" is meant to be taken literally, in regards to Jedi/Sith population. It's not nearly "philosophical" enough for either faction. I think what is meant by "balance" would be something like "all is well in the universe" or something along those lines. The dark side throws off the balance.

But I'm not the one with the final word, as none of this was really explained in any of the prequels clearly. That's just my interpretation.

We can all agree on "Blessed are the cheesemakers" though can't we?

Crikey Avid!

That's one expensive piece of software. I'd have to sell all my platinum diamond tipped teeth to buy that baby.

 Double post, Sorry.