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Fang Zei

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14-Oct-2006
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24-Apr-2024
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2,768

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Post
#259814
Topic
Family Guy Luke Skywalker
Time
Originally posted by: Knightmessenger
Is the first shot of the exterior supposed to be a representation of the original or special edition scene? I'm reminded of only real good line from American Dad: "This is the man who persuaded George Lucas not to release a restored animorphic dvd of the original non special edition Star Wars Trilogy."


It was also oddly prophetic, since that was well before LFL's May announcement and the subsequent bad news.
Post
#259813
Topic
Legacy Of The Force - book series
Time
LOTF is a series of Star Wars novels published by Del Rey. Currently it's up to book 3 with a total of 9 planned. It's the first story set in Lucasbooks's latest "era," the legacy era. Just to refresh everyone's memory, the other eras are Sith/Old Republic (25,000 to 1,000 years before the Battle of Yavin), Rise of the Empire/Prequel (1,000 to 0 years BBY), Classic (0 to 4 years after the Battle of Yavin), New Republic (4 to 25 ABY), The New Jedi Order (25 to 40 ABY) and finally Legacy (40 ABY and beyond).

You're welcome

Shadows of the Empire and The Thrawn Trilogy (well, some of it) are the only post-Yavin novels I've really read. Vector Prime, the first NJO novel, seemed like a must read because of all the hype surrounding it. After reading both it and onslaught, I skipped ahead to Balance Point (once it hit paperback) but just couldn't get into the story. Some day I'll figure out the best way to approach the post-ROTJ EU from scratch.

Recently I had an epiphany about the New Jedi Order series. It got a lot of criticism for being a little too different, but in the end I think Del Rey was trying to tell a story that could only be told in the medium of novels. Notice how there are no comics or video games set during the NJO?

I've heard from people reading Legacy of the Force that it tends to ignore many of the repercussions of the NJO's events which took place a mere decade earlier. The Legacy comic book series, which I have been keeping up with, takes place a century after the NJO and actually acknowledges from the get go how the galaxy far far away is still living with the aftermath of the NJO, ironic since Dark Horse was apparently planning an "invasion" storyline of its own before Lucasbooks scrapped it in favor of Del Rey's NJO, but I digress.

Speaking of the Legacy comics, anyone think that 100 year gap may be LFL opening up a possible time period for more movies????

I had a blast reading the Clone Wars books, and Labyrinth of Evil was probably the most fun I've had reading a Star Wars novel.
Post
#259651
Topic
See, George, This is how it's done ...
Time
Originally posted by: booah
Originally posted by: Fang Zei
I can understand how the SIII thing happenned


I can't. The contents are a disc from a 6-year-old release. How could there have been that many of the old versions of Superman III lying around like, right next to the new ones, that they not only stamped a new label on the old disc, but actually put it in the box set? It's pretty ridiculous. It's obvious that WB has little to no quality control. My friend said that on the Willy Wonka remake 2-Disc edition, one of the Oompa Loompa songs is missing a verse. Yet another WB slip-up among many...


Actually, allow me to rephrase that.

I don't understand how someone could've made the mistake so easily but I do understand why it happenned. No, they didn't just accidentally take unsold, unshipped copies of the old dvd and print out new disc art. What happenned was that when it came time to program the machines that would press the discs for the 14-disc set, whoever was in charge must have accidentally retrieved the wrong SIII file from WB's computer systems, thinking it was the new SIII disc when it was actually the old one. Whoever was in charge of the individual release, which is exactly what's also found in the 8 disc "Christopher Reeve" collection, did not make this mistake.

On a more Star Wars-related note, I remember people saying that the SE copies found in the '06 release were just overstocks from '04 and '05, but if that's true then why go through the trouble of printing new disc art labels for them?
Post
#259639
Topic
Has technology accelerated that much?
Time
Originally posted by: BeeJayWhy don't you believe the OOT had a proper release in September of this year?


Look at posts on these threads from on or after May 18th and you'll know why.

Labeling it as bonus content was one thing, fine, so we also have to buy the SE when we buy the original unaltereds. But that same press release from May 3rd also had Jim Ward saying, and I quote "We returned to the Lucasfilm Archives to search exhaustively for source material that could be presented on DVD. This is something that we're very excited to be able to give to fans in response to their continuing enthusiasm for Star Wars."

Sorry, but I really don't think they had to do all that much searching for a few master tapes from 1993. That line about our "continuing enthusiasm for Star Wars" makes it seem like none of us want the OOT on dvd for any reason beyond nostalgia and that we'll accept whatever quality it's in. To remind everyone here that I'm criticizing quality of presentation, not content, the SE is presented in anamorphic widescreen just like every other widescreen movie ever made is expected to be, but the OOT is not!

To give the altered version the expected standard treatment and to give the original unaltered a substandard treatment is not fair at all, is it?
Post
#259618
Topic
Has technology accelerated that much?
Time
As far as I'm concerned, the OOT has not seen a dvd release. Hopefully it will some day.

Hey, it took some other movies from Star Wars's era a long while to see decent dvd releases.

The original Dune dvd from '98 was non-anamorphic and single layer. Earlier this year they finally released a new dvd with a new transfer for both it and the longer television version, both dual layer, both anamorphic. It's all on one DVD-18.

The old Blade Runner dvd, while anamorphic, looks horrible by today's standards. It was only single layer and the picture itself had many issues to begin with. Again, this year also saw it getting updated with a new transfer on a dual layer disc.

Yet another update this year was the Brazil dvd. The old disc was non-anamorphic but this was finally reissued by Criterion.

Even "The Doors," a frequently used example of non-anamorphic dvd releases, is also finally getting an update.

Lucas just might make Star Wars part of a rather exclusive club....
Post
#259511
Topic
Has technology accelerated that much?
Time
Originally posted by: BeeJayThey started going back to do the SE around 1996, possibly very late 1995. That is my guess. If anyone can correct me on this, that is fine.

Lucas mentions the work being done for the SE in at least one of the Leonard Maltin interviews from the '95 Faces set.

Originally posted by: BeeJayFollowing my theory of what LucasFilm is doing, let's be safe and say that if the original negatives were brought out again sometime early this year of 2006. That is a solid 9+ years that the o-negative has been dormant somewhere. During nine years, many things can happen. More grime can stick itself to the film, (nothing is perfect, even the most safest things get damaged,) and the restored scenes they did for the SE could've been lost inside of the computers. Why not go back and start fresh? That has to be what the plan is.


Good God, I hope so.
Post
#259127
Topic
ANH screening with modelmaker Lorne Peterson...WHY ARE THEY SCREENING THE SE??
Time
Originally posted by: BeeJay
The LaserDisc quality is not piss-poor quality, like a lot of people try to say. Of course it doesn't rank up with truly restored digital viewing, as it would have if they used the original negatives as the baseline for the September release.

By the same token, the old LaserDisc releases were rather crisp, don't you think?


Restoration has nothing to do with it. The GOUT has not been remastered.

The point is that an actual film screening of ANH is happenning to showcase Peterson's model work but it is the SE, which deleted some of his work.
Post
#258964
Topic
See, George, This is how it's done ...
Time
After various reports over the last several months of what to expect on the new S:TM dvd, it turns out that the 5.1 audio is actually suppossed to be the new 2001 remix but the 2.0 audio is not. The problem is that both tracks use the new 2001 remix, I don't know how this oversight occurred. All copies of S:TM theatrical are affected by this, so WB will be replacing that along with the aforementioned SIII.
Post
#258953
Topic
See, George, This is how it's done ...
Time
from The Digital Bits:

WHV tells me that corrected DVDs and sets will eventually find their way into stores (as a 'running' production change) once the current stock sells out. They'll have new SKU numbers to distinguish them from the current ones - don't know what those are yet.


this most definitely isn't the best possible way of going about it, but at least WB is doing something to correct the problem.
Post
#257866
Topic
"Black Friday" SW DVD Sales...Wow, Did Some of You...
Time
anxiously awaiting black friday sale lists for all the stores, but seriously these would have to drop to at least $5 and more realistically $3 before I even consider picking them up. $10 isn't quite what I was hoping for.

Don't hate me, everyone. I might not even pick them up just so I can stand by what I wrote in that angry email six months ago, and plus if the movies don't get remastered we're screwed either way.
Post
#256774
Topic
Where do I go from here as a SW fan?
Time
What I'm saying is that Lucas used those things I listed, which are all good things in and of themselves, in order to sell us the SE. With the '06 dvds, LFL first announced them in regards to the GOUT but then made the tv ads to focus on them being available "individually for the first time ever," and again he was just selling us the SE.

They'll no doubt use tactics similar to the '04 boxset to sell the '07 release. Who knows, maybe they actually will remaster the O-OT but as that guy from wired magazine so aptly put it, they won't make the fans happy because a happy fan has everything he or she needs.
Post
#256749
Topic
What versions of the SW saga do you own (OT, PT, preservations, etc)?
Time
PT:

-'00 TPM fullscreen vhs.
-'01 TPM widescreen dvd.
-'02 AOTC widescreen dvd.
-'05 ROTS widescreen dvd.

OT (copy pasted from the other thread):

-'95 ANH fullscreen vhs. Christmas gift that year.
-'97 widescreen vhs boxset. Christmas gift that year.
-'04 widescreen dvd boxset. Mom got it a few weeks after it was released, it's still back at home.
-'86 ROTJ fullscreen vhs. Found it by pure chance at my video store's used vhs sale in May of '05, still in its original box after all these years and it also plays just fine!
-'95 TESB and ROTJ, both fullscreen. Found these only a week or so later at a record and tape traders. Perfect luck since I already had the '95 vhs of ANH. Perfect luck....or so I thought. ROTJ works fine but I got totally gyped on TESB. Either edge of the tape is wrinkled so there's constant static like every other second practically. And the worst part is that I saw the complete '95 boxset (probably also fullscreen) at that same record and tape traders but passed on it since I already had ANH, plus I might not have had enough cash on me for it. In any event, curses on whoever sold that TESB tape to them in the first place. I was soooooo clooooooooose.
-cowclops v2 transfer of the OT, not 4 months before LFL's out of the blue announcement.

others:

-clone wars volumes 1 & 2
-ewok adventures
-a musical journey
Post
#253953
Topic
Letterbox looks like CRAP on a widescreen HDTV :(
Time
To be totally honest, I probably wouldn't care about them being non-anamorphic either if the damn subtitles weren't getting cut off. Everything I've read says GOUT is the best transfer out there. The anamorphic transfers probably look better on a 16:9 tv, but like I said they probably don't look as good on 4:3 televisions, short perhaps of doing that full resolution reverse stretch trick, and who really wants to do that?

Lucas could've been cool, he could've told us in advance about whatever he's doing next year ala New Line with Lord of the Rings or Warner Bros with the recent Blade Runner release, but then we'd have no reason at all to buy shitty non-anamorphic transfers unless we didn't know the difference.

Black friday can't get here soon enough.