C3PX

Yeah, I definitly need to get it, I have hardly heard any negative things about either version, and the gripes I have heard don't amount to much. My only problem is I feel like I have spend a good deal of money over the past few months on games I have yet to finish, and don't quite feel justified in running out and dropping $50 on another one. The longer I wait, the cheaper it will get anyway. But it looks so downright amazing, it is really hard to hold back.

V, try not to read so much into things. I was just making a joke with Xhonzi. Most married guys will have gotten my joke.

CompMovieGuy said:

... so I assume that you know how to turn all caps off or you are just doing it on purpose for your own amusement

I thought we already went over all this? Is it really that hard to understand? Or are you just trying to ruffle Dayv's feathers?

I dunno man, 40 pages back give you an excuse; only two posts back on the other hand...

;)

Ripplin said:

Cool. Which version?

I still have an uncut version on VHS that I got almost a year before the official uncut version was released. Got it from a guy at another forum. I never did find out how he got it. At the time, I don't think he wanted to say, but I'm sure he would now. I should see if I can track him down and find out. :)

I watched the uncut version, don't see much reason in wasting time on watching the edited. Though I am curious as to what all they cut out of the cut version. I am guessing they just clipped a few things related to Tim's kidnapping? I was actually expecting something a lot worse during that scene, though it is still a bit upsetting seeing a character you have spent hours watching on screen caught in that situation.

Gaffer Tape said:

After I watch them, though, you can bet I will chew your ear off with discussion.

Great! Be looking forward to it.

Man, I really thought my post on IGN's top twenty five would have generated a bit more discussion... but then we got lost on some retarded internet gag.

Back on topic, I read some reviews and watched some videos for Batman: Arkham Asylum, and now I am really, really having to hold myself back from running out and grabbing a copy of it. I am surprised nobody here has posted about it yet. Reading about it got me in such a mood for Batman, that I watched Return of the Joker last night (which was an odd mixture of incredibly awesome, utterly lame, and slightly upsetting).

Now back off topic, I didn't know what a Mudkips was, so I looked it up (I honestly don't understand how these dumb internet jokes get so popular, some people have WAY too much time on their hands). Anyway, I go to visit my folks yesterday, and there is a freakin' stuffed Mudkip on the kitchen table. Really weird, right. Turns out it belongs to my three year old niece and she left it there. But seriously, out of all the stuffed animals in the world, what are the chances she'd own and leave a stuffed Mudkips at my parents house right before one of the rare occasions I go to visit them which just happed to be the very day after I learned what a Mudkips was. Crazy stuff.

Vinh, I think you are reading too much into Gaffer's post. He is the last guy to beat anyone over the head about anything. I am not sure how rare of an occasion it is for the Gaff to get pissed off, but neither of his two posts on this particular subject struck me as him being pissed off.  In the offending post, post number 34 of this thread, he was merely giving a statement about what makes us different from all those other obsessive SW related sites out there (in response to Xhonzi's "it is originaltrilogy.com after all ;) comment). There is no cause for defensiveness or hard feelings here.

Group hug!

G E Predator said:

What's so bad about having two sets?  You got one to keep in the box and sell as a collectible, and the other is yours to play with or display on a shelf in your room.  I'd say it's a win-win thing.

Heh, looks like someone opted not to read beyond the first post.

xhonzi said:

C3PX, have you met my wife?

Hehe, no, but all women are the same to some degree or another. For some reason they never understand why things like a plush head crab, a Mr. Potato Head who dresses like Darth Vader, or an unnecessarily massive Millenium Falcon are absolute necessities.

DarkGryphon2048 said:

I sold my Limited Edition trilogy DVD and that Bonus Material from the 2004 boxset two days ago. STAR WARS is done for me.

I don't even care when it's released onto Blu-ray disc. There's a different Trilogy of which I'm anticipated more on Blu anyway which is from Lucasfilm Ltd. which is Indiana Jones.

I'll even freely admit I'm way more of a fan of Indiana Jones compared to Star Wars anyway. I even rightfully enjoyed KotCS and that's my own fucking opinion. I even sold my DVD of it to get around to buying it on Blu-ray disc. What's that? I can't like KotCS since it's not like the other three films? I have my own damn opinion thank you kindly.

Yeah, I've even posted more on this forum in several Indiana Jones threads compared to Star Wars ones!

 

I DON'T A FUCK!

 

That was a strangely pointless post. Not knocking it, half my posts are pretty pointless, but this is such an amusing post, I feel strangely compelled to pointlessly respond to it.

I actually agree with you Gryphon, I gave up on SW a long time ago. I am not even sure if I would even really be all that excited if I heard the original unaltered trilogy was being given a wonderful restoration and being released on Blu-ray. But I could also equally care less about Indiana Jones. For some strange reason I bought a used copy of KotCS for $2.99 the other day, and now I am trying to figure out what to do with it... the thought of actually trying to watch it a second time kind of makes my stomach hurt, but I am sure I will eventually find a way to put it to good use.

Just strange that your post sounded so defensive, as far as anyone here is concerned, you are free to like or not care about anything you want.

Also I am glad to hear you don't a f***. Celibacy is a long and hard road, it is not for everyone, but I hear it can lead to good things and be very rewarding.

"I showed my wife and she rolled her eyes and told me my mother would be giving it to me for Christmas."

I think the idea was that when Jonzy's wife delivered that line, she was insinuating that he was being childish by having spent money on a large useless hunk of plastic; rather than her rolling her eyes as if to say, "Oh shoot! Your mother already got you one of those and was going to give it to you for Christmas"  as you seem to have understood it, canofhumdingers. (EDIT: I began this post before the OP's latest post, seems my assumption was also incorrect.)

You know, the nice thing about being a geek is that you like what you like, rather than feeling the need to like what others like you to like/expect you to like. I absolute hate watching televised sports, don't care about them one bit. When people ask me what team I like, and and reply with, "Actually, I don't watch sports", they often look at me as if I have just told them I ran over their grandmother with a lawn mower. Sometimes they actually seem offended. I am often given grief for my lack of interest in sports, I have been made fun of rather harshly in the past for not liking them. But I really don't care, because I really don't care for them and can't be bothered to waste my time conforming to what is "normal" (and not liking sports, I have been told, is extremely "abnormal", seemingly to the point that it merits the need for psychological help according to some). I have other friends who don't like sports who actually go out of their way to pretend to like them just to fit in. That saddens me.

...

All that to say, "cool geek" doesn't matter. Cool is not what being a geek is about. Unfortunately, in the last several years it has become increasingly cool to be geeky, which seems to have resulted in bringing all the baggage of the cool crowd into the geeky crowd. Now suddenly some geeky things are cool, and other geeky things are not cool. Forget about cool or uncool. If you like littering your living space with dust collecting items that serve no purpose other than to remind you of the things you love and how cool they are in your mind regardless of their popularity in the minds of others, I'd say you have a much healthier state of mind than that of your average individual who is constantly getting hung up on worrying if something is cool or not before he decides to form an opinion of it. 

Be proud of your geekiness! If the Neanderthalish sports fan can be overly proud of his obsession with watching groups of people knock balls around for hours at a time again and again, then surely you can be proud of your obsessions too!

DarkGryphon2048 said:

If Psycho_Dayv posted on a forum I personally created, he'd be permabanned instantly, no questions asked.

That is what is so great about OT.com. It is a nice nerdy little spot on the internet free from your typical nerdy anal retentive rule enforcing. If someone really needs banned from here, they tend to end up banned, otherwise life goes on, live and let live. If only the real world could be more like that...

Anchorhead said:

skyjedi2005 said:

books that have no topical allegory whatsoever....like Tolkien's lord of the rings.

Lord Of The Rings is one of the most famous pieces of allegorical fiction there is.

I've read before where Tolkien claimed to hate allegory - he was either deluded, or a hypocrite.  Lord Of The Rings is a thinly-veiled allegorical piece about how the industrial revolution destroyed bucolic England.  It's almost nothing but allegory.  Arguably, it's know as much for it's message as it is for it's story.

But are you sure that is what it is really about, or just something many people have read into it that just happens to make sense, despite the author's claims to the contrary (i.e. is that being read into it rather than being read out of it?) I could be way off here, but I have never had any problem believing that Tolkien really did write Lord of the Rings allegory free (as he claims he did). Obviously every writer writes personal experiences and views into his works, it is unavoidable, you can only really write about what you know and from your own perspective. I just don't see how it is even possible for a writer to delude himself out of truly understanding what he himself actually wrote about.

Since I was a teenager it has been my hobby to write short stories, most of them totally suck I am sure, but I would continuously crank them out anyway; they have always been my emotional outlet. Sometimes my stories are pretty vague that I feel I cannot even definitively pin down what they are about. A few years ago I let my wife read a few of my old stories and found it very interesting to hear her interpretations of the things I wrote; many of the conclusions she came to were nowhere near my line of thinking during the time I wrote them, yet her interpretations always fit my stories like a glove. Why? Because while rummaging through a chest filled with gloves she just happened to find the one pair that fit? No, because her mind wove the glove around my story, ultimately resulting in an interpretation that seems perfectly plausable, but yet had absolutely nothing to do with what I was writing about.

Despite being a literary fanatic, I have always disliked my high school and university literature courses. The professor stand before the class and explains to us the meaning of the things we have read. Sometimes the writers intentions are very clear, and you can definitively pin down exactly what they wrote about, but more often than not things are pretty open. Yet in every literature class I have been party to, the instructor will tell you exactly what was being written about with 100% certainty, regardless of the fact that the author has been dead for one hundred years and never left a personal commentary on their work. A little bit of historical and social research of the author's time, and they feel they have definitively unlocked the meaning of that author's every word.

I certainly agree every author has a message of some sort or the other in his writing, and I feel those messages can be gleamed by anyone who picks up their work and reads it, I just don't feel it is always possible to know exactly what the author wrote about unless he specifically explained it himself.

Ziz said:

I also prefer to have all my system components be dedicated to what they were designed for.  I'd rather have four boxes that each do one thing well than one box that does four things half-ass.

I was trying to explain that the PS3 and 360 are absolutely brilliant in their video playback and streaming abilities, far from half-assed. In fact, the only thing I can think of that keeps these machines (especially the PS3) from being ideal media players is their lack in ability to record. But you are right about the extra money, if you can buy a little box that can do everything they can do just as well as they can for a few dollars less and a lot less shelf space, then that is clearly the way to go.

Like Gaffer, I would have laughed if Jango's head had fallen out. So I definitely don't think it would have helped the film (though it couldn't have made it any worse, the film is already superlatively awful). I also think it would have added more to the identity crisis the prequels seemed to have, fart jokes galore, then a man get chopped in half, frolicking in flowers and riding giant ticks, then killing an entire village of people including the women and children,  and one films later the main protagonist slays a bunch of innocent children who look up to him and think he has come to save them.

I don't think we need to add a small child dumping his father's severed head out of a helmet to the mix. The idea of a kid holding his dad's severed head is kind of disturbing enough; the idea of that scene was that he was holding his father's helmet (I always assumed the head fell out during the rolling) and staring into it forshaddowing that he would take up his father's mantel and become a bounty hunter like his father.

EDIT: Wow, I had never heard of that Death Troopers book, I don't really keep up with the EU much. The overly gory (by SW terms) cover caught my attention, so I went to read about it, and it actually sounds really interesting. I haven't read an SW EU novel since the 90s, but I think I might check this one out. It sounds like the kind of EU I always liked best, takes place in the SW universe, but has nothing to do with any of the main characters or situations from the film (I loved the Tales from Mos Eisley one-shot comic book for that exact reason).

Tolkien is a very good example. He disliked allegory, and would protest when people tried to pull allegory out of Lord of the Rings, as they often did and still do. Yet, his books, Lord of the Rings being no exception, are chock full of messages and lessons.

skyjedi2005 said:

Subtext in films is not an abuse of art, it is an abuse of art for films to be a puff of air representing nothing other than noise, special effects and ticket sales.  The idea of film is that it is supposed to provoke a response in the viewer, whether of joy, sadness, fear, absolute terror, horror, being uplifted, or being shown the destitute and evil character of man.

Very well put. I think it sums up most of our frustrations rather nicely. I for one am getting very tired of puffs of air representing nothing other than noise, special effects and ticket sales. I think it is that emotional response we are all missing with the typical BS blockbuster these days. When I saw "silly" sci-fi films like Planet of the Apes or Star Wars when I was a kid, they provoked a huge emotional response from me. The trench run at the end of Star Wars was extremely intense to me, even after I had seen it several times, I was still on the edge of my seat. And for some reason, I still feel a bit of excitement and dread everytime Taylor stumbles upon the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes. Perhaps this is due to the age I was when I first saw that film.

Maybe kids these days are so used to seeing stuff like this and that is why so many of them tend to find Star Wars incredibly boring, and much prefer Return of the Jedi and the prequels. I suppose films like Attack of the Clones and G.I. Joe and their high paced action provides young audiences with a bit of a rush, much like the rush of excitement I used to get from watching Sean Connery or Roger Moore as James Bond when I was a kid. So I suppose the modern blockbuster does evoke an emotional response from its core audience, unfortunately, I am unable to tune into that emotion. To me, it comes off as little more than annoyance at the ridiculousness of what I am seeing before me.

Perhaps my grandfather felt this exact same way when he watched James Bond or Star Wars with me and labeled them as "foolishness". And I suppose the way I felt about his "boring" old black and white westerns that he'd play for me with pride, stating that they were "movies worth watching", is very much the same way my best friend's youngest brother (he is thirteen) felt when I tried to convince him that Star Wars (1977) was absolutely the best of the bunch, and that Revenge of the Sith (his favorite) was hardly worth watching.

Damn generation gap! Makes me feel really old... and disappointed that this younger generation will never experience the greatness of the films I love in the way I experienced them or feel the fondness for them I had.

Gaffer Tape said:

Yeah, well, guess what brand underwear I'm wearing right now... and what color!  Then you will understand the truth...

Fruit of the Loom boxer briefs... gray. See Gaffer, I know everything about you. Creepy, eh?

By the way, you should really consider switching to the new Hanes boxer briefs that are guaranteed not to ride up (make sure they have the seal saying, "Guaranteed not to ride up or your money back!" stamped on the packaging. They really don't ride up, brilliant stuff. Plus, Hanes is supporting has been celebrities with their advertising*, so you can rest assured that your money is going to a good cause.

* Commercial for the above mentioned product features Michael Jordan walking down the street, Charlie Sheen pulls up beside him in a convertable and excitedly announces that he has discovered boxer brief that does't ride up.

Hmm, I have to disagree about art that tries to convey a message being an abuse of art (though if the message is over bearing and heavy handed, propaganda may be a better word for it than art, but a well thought thesis being argued in a film is perfectly respectable in my book). For example, literature, which by far is my favorite form of art, invariably always has some kind of message behind it whether intentionally or unintentionally placed there by the author. (Though I can imagine that dine-a-dozen mystery and romance and other such novels that are pooped out by authors on a monthly bases may forego any type of intellectual message for the sake of amusing fluff, much like your typical summer blockbuster, but I would hardly consider those kind of books to be art). Skimming my own collection of books, I can't see a single work of fiction that I have read that I cannot immediately associate with some kind of a message.

I don't suppose fiction in the form of film should be any different. I have not seen District 9, so I cannot make any personal comments on it, though I have only heard good things about it. When I first heard about it, my thoughts were that it sounded like complete crap, but now I am actually quite looking forward to seeing it, but unfortunately have yet to have the opportunity. That said, films like Revenge of the Sith including an obvious political message leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not because of my own political position, but the way in which it painfully dates the film, and by the fact that rather than being well thought out, it takes the popular stance of the public and regurgitates it but hardly in any new or creative way.

Just my thoughts on the subject of films with messages.

As an additional 2 cents, I guess an author or film maker should always be aware of the views he is putting into his work, as good art should be able to speak to anyone, but strong biases alienate a portion of an audience. I am just not sure how it is possible to leave your biases out of a work completely and still have it be an honest work; I can't imagine a film that tries to please everyone not feeling rather fake.

I use my Xbox for this purpose, one of those would only cost you a little bit more ($199.99+the cost of an HDMI cable as opposed to $129.99, and it would give you a lot more options (play files from discs as well as the hard drive, stream content from your PC, play games, stream netflix if you have a netflix account. For even more options, the $299.99 PS3 gives you everything the Xbox offers, minus the netflix streaming, but plus a whole lot more including blu-ray.

My Xbox has always worked great with video playback, so far it has played all I have thrown at it, save for a few broken avi files (a quick run through divfix solved the problem everytime). A quick google search, however, seems to indicate that the 360 has trouble with .mkv files, which need to be converted to an mp4 container (can be done losslessly) in order to function.

Gaffer Tape said:

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that no one has posted some freak out that when the spin started, they were afraid I'd appear in a Wonder Woman costume.

If that had happened, I might have had to officially resign as a fan of the Gaffer Tape's YouTube Reviews of Awesome Candy-Creating Goodness/The Angry, Confused, Jabba Rescue Plan Hating, Film Reviewing Nerd with a Creaky Chair.

Alright, enough of this mudflapz nonsense.

I drove past a Blockbuster yesterday, and decided to pop in and see what deals they had on used games (gotten some pretty good deals there in the past). Luck would have it, they had their used games buy one get one free, and I ended up nabbing four 360 games for $30 bucks, nearly doubling my collection.

I got,

Turok (no matter how many of these games I play, I never tire of killing dinosaurs. Now with throat slitting action!)

Bully: Scholarship Edition (played a ways into it on PS2, but never finished it.)

Mirror's Edge (most people seem to think the idea of the game is interesting, but the execution is poorly done, figured I'd give it a try)

Watchmen: The End is Nigh parts 1 and 2 (played the demo, fun little beat 'em up, nothing special, but not near as awful as everyone makes it out to be)

Also found a brand new copy of Bubba Ho-Tep in their bargan bin for $3.99 (worth that much just for the Bruce Campbell commentary).

Ah, with a good night sleep behind me, I pop into the SW section, and the Jabba thread I was looking for is right there at the top of the page! Last night it seemed hoplessly impossibe to find.

My original name suggestion was, The Angry, Confused, Jabba Rescue Plan Hating, Film Reviewing Geek with a Creaky Chair, which is truely amazing and literally defines the word "awesome". The massive length just makes it sound more important.

Uh, what? Very little of that post made since, expecially after you stopped trying to spell.

That was fortunate. Guess they were not GTA fans, or they somehow didn't see it.

Good stuff as usual Gaff. I am in such a state of extreme exhaustion that the bit where you (spoiler alert!) spin around and turn into Batman seemed very surreal, I almost thought I had dosed off and stumbled onto a rather bizarre dream (fortunately, that was not the case, I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of you appearing topless in my dreams).

In the first Jabba escape plan thread, I suggested a rather brilliant and elegantly long name which I have completely forgotten and am too tired to go back and look up. Some conglomerate of all the more popular reviewers of this sort would be amusing (e.i. the confused nostalgic geek... only something much better thought out), it would be a name that kind of admits that you realize you're not the first guy to come up with youtube reviews and that you are in that way unoriginal, but at the same time you are bringing your own twist to the whole thing. I am seriously very tired, so if this sounds retarded or doesn't make any sense, feel free to pretend I didn't post it. Very likely a more awake version of myself will stumble upon this post in the near future and lambaste myself for being a dork.

That'd be funny if get online and see someone else using your LIVE account, you could play a game or two with the guy who robbed you, then kindly plead with him to return it. Still weird he only took one of your games.