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Gaffer Tape

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Join date
2-Jun-2005
Last activity
13-Nov-2019
Posts
7,996

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Post
#283816
Topic
Splinter Of The Mind's Eye - review and thoughts.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/283816/action/topic#283816
Time
I didn't read the spoiler section, but reading the opening really makes me want to read this book. According to your previous thread, this book is no longer in current publication, right? (probably because, like you said, it devalues all of Lucas's comments now, therefore he has no desire to see its existence) That means I'll have to go to somewhere like eBay to track it down, like you did. But it might be worth looking into.
Post
#283303
Topic
Have Lunch w/ Harrison Ford
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/283303/action/topic#283303
Time
You know it's gotta be a hell of an ego boost to know that people would pay at least four figures just to have lunch with you. Hell, if I were to auction off myself, I'd be lucky to get a bid at all! But I have to wonder how Harrison Ford feels about this, and if this was his publicist's idea, the group's idea, or heck, maybe his idea. Heh, if I was in his place, I seriously couldn't do it. "How do we raise money?" "Um... I was thinking that, um, maybe, if you think it's a good idea, we could auction... um... me off... no, I can't go on!"
Post
#283267
Topic
Virginia Tech shooting
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/283267/action/topic#283267
Time
So has anybody else heard the backlash aimed at NBC for choosing to air the videos that Cho sent to them? I'm honestly glad I got to see them. They were a bit chilling to watch, but it was an interesting look at a killer. I can understand how families of the victims might not particularly appreciate seeing it, but I do feel that it qualifies as news and should be seen.
Post
#283230
Topic
Virginia Tech shooting
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/283230/action/topic#283230
Time
This pisses me off. It says that a college student in Colorado, I believe, was arrested for saying things in class sympathetic to Cho's massacre. While I can't imagine it being a very popular view, last I checked, it was hardly a crime to hold a contrary viewpoint. So, of course, everybody's going to be paranoid for awhile and crack down on anybody who could possibly be conceived as a potential threat.

I also read another article lately that, not surprisingly, leans in the direction of Cho being a social misfit and having been bullied for years. Like I said, I don't find it surprising and have sort of been waiting for something like this to be said, because that's usually the motivation for school shootings. It said that in middle school he was pushed around a lot. And there was a particular instance in high school where a classmate said he was forced to read in front of the class and was immediately made fun of for his accent and told to "Go back to China." Don't misunderstand me at all. I'm not defending his decision to murder nearly three dozen people. Nothing justifies that. But it really pisses me off how people, especially kids, treat one another. If you're going to find something to target, don't have it be gun control or *pff* video games, neither of which seemingly have any real bearing on this situation at all. Bring up your kids to be nice to be nice to each other and not to be little yuppie assholes who bully and victimize everybody who's different. Whether or not that would have had any effect on Cho going crazy and murdering his classmates, you can't argue that it wouldn't do any good for society in general.
Post
#283145
Topic
Virginia Tech shooting
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/283145/action/topic#283145
Time
I read the whole thing, and I agree wholeheartedly.

This story has links to the videos that Cho sent to NBC. Particularly of note to me is how he compares his own impending death to that of Jesus Christ. In theory "defending the weak and helpless," or whatever it is he said, is a good cause, but I don't think Jesus took 32 people with him when he died.
Post
#282908
Topic
Virginia Tech shooting
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/282908/action/topic#282908
Time
I just read a minute ago that it's already been confirmed where he bought the guns, and that he was within his legal rights to buy them.

"One law enforcement official said Cho's backpack contained a receipt for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol. Cho held a green card, meaning he was a legal, permanent resident, federal officials said. That meant he was eligible to buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of a felony.

Roanoke Firearms owner John Markell said his shop sold the Glock and a box of practice ammo to Cho 36 days ago for $571.

"He was a nice, clean-cut college kid. We won't sell a gun if we have any idea at all that a purchase is suspicious," Markell said. Markell said it is not unusual for college kids to make purchases at his shop as long as they are old enough.""


Story
Post
#282865
Topic
Video Games - a general discussion thread
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/282865/action/topic#282865
Time
Originally posted by: theredbaron
Originally posted by: Nanner Split
Originally posted by: TheCassidy
Any Wii gamers here shouldn't be doing anything other than playing Super Paper Mario. It's an amazing game.


Does it still have turn-based combat like the other Paper Mario games? Because if it doesn't, then I'm gonna have to get it. (I hate turn-based combat with a passion)


It's essentially a classic Mario platformer with RPG elements, whereby one can switch the level from 2D to 3D in order to find secrets and solve puzzles. The only downer apparently, is the ridiculous amounts of dialogue, which while well-written, interrupts the flow of the game.


So it's not really the RPG that its predecessors were. That's what I figured, and, unlike Nanner, I love turn-based combat with a passion. That doesn't mean I don't want to play this, though. It looks like a wonderful new twist on the whole "paper" dynamic.
Post
#282864
Topic
Virginia Tech shooting
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/282864/action/topic#282864
Time
I'm not sure what we're expecting the campus officials to have done at the time. This is a university, not a high school, where you have one or two buildings with a linking PA system. This is a university, with thousands of students spread over hundreds of acres and dozens of buildings. I'm not sure if there is a better way to inform the entire student and faculty body of danger than e-mail.
Post
#282784
Topic
Virginia Tech shooting
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/282784/action/topic#282784
Time
Maybe the factors of parents, violent video games, and/or girl problems helped influence this person's decision to do that. After all, they can provide quite a lot of stress. But now that I think about it, he's not the only person who's ever had to do with less than supportive parents, and who partakes in violent video games, or has had a girl break his heart. Hell, I've been through all three of those... in fact, I've been playing GTA3 a lot lately. And I have to say that I find it quite a stress reliever for my polygon character to kill a bunch of other polygon people in all manner of gruesome ways. I've had more than my fair share of unpleasant encounters with my parents. I became emotionally distraught in my teen years over girls who hurt me. I've had plenty of fights with my girlfriend. Yet I haven't, nor do I ever see myself, taking the life of any human being because of my own personal problems or my choice of hobbies. If my playing violent video games caused me to kill people in real life, maybe it would stem from my wiring being already screwed up, and I was a messed-up sociopath, a person devoid of any sympathetic connection with other human beings who had no respect for life, and not because I saw it on a video game. The point is, I'm sure lots of people including many people at this boards, can also use the descriptions I said at the beginning of my post to describe themselves as well, yet none of us will likely commit the heinous acts people like Jack Thompson think we will. And that's because we possess the ability to make choices, to weigh the difference between right and wrong, and to come to a decision based on that, not because our choices are determined for us by works of fiction or personal circumstances. As everyone else has said, a person makes a choice to do something. A gun doesn't force someone to kill people. Grand Theft Auto doesn't force someone to kill people. A girlfriend doesn't force someone to kill people. Hell, what most people consider the most innocuous thing could be someone's supposed impetus for killing someone else. Do we ban every object, every thought out of fear that maybe someone will use it as an excuse to commit acts of violence? Or do we accept that maybe the person who fires the gun is responsible, and not pass the buck because it's easier?
Post
#282782
Topic
Anyone else totally disregard Leia being Luke's sister?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/282782/action/topic#282782
Time
Well, I think the nature of prequels makes it so that it's harder to accept changes than with sequels. With sequels, you get a feel of expansion, that the things you see in the sequel are added on to the nature of the first movie. So you still have Star Wars the way it always was, but Empire was the next Lego block to be stacked onto it, and the same with Jedi. But with prequels, it's harder for both the creator and the audience to get on board. As zombie's book points out, it's much easier to simply state that this is what happened then actually showing it in detail. I mean, for a generation, fans of the trilogy were pretty much on board with the fact that Obi-Wan trained Luke's father, who became evil and became Darth Vader. Talking about it in the original trilogy made sense. So why, when the facts were established and the audience had already accepted those facts, did it become so hard to make movies expanding upon that? Because it's easier to vaguely explain than actually show. Add to that the fact that all those allusions back to the OT (which make it quite obvious to me that the intended audience for the PT is already established viewers of the OT, not the other way around) are pretty contrived and ridiculous... but are they more so contrived than what the sequels added to the first Star Wars? Or can we just accept the sequel changes easier because they are sequels and not prequels, and due to our own acceptance of storytelling, we can still view the first movie in its original context while we have a harder time doing that with stories set chronologically previously?

As for me, I'm relatively young. I was not there for any of the original screenings. My history of Star Wars begins in 1995, the first time I saw (and owned) the movies on videocassette, the infamous "One last time..." Faces set. And so my history of Star Wars comes from what Lucas said in those Leonard Maltin interviews that accompany the movies. You know, the one where he claimed that the entire trilogy was really originally one movie that he had to cut into three parts because of running time and cost. I now know that that is complete bull (a mindset totally solidified by zombie's great book), but being a nine-year-old boy at the time who hadn't been there at the beginning (or even at the end) and who had no reason to believe the creator of the movies was lying, that was my accepted history of Star Wars for many years. In short, I held the trilogy mindset. That was my fandom. A few years later, I saw the prequels and enjoyed them but never even tried to integrate them into what I considered to be the main story. I cringed at all the horrible retcons, like Anakin building 3PO. So I stayed pretty consistent with my fandom. And later I would learn more of the truth of Star Wars. And now I feel adequately knowledged in real Star Wars lore. And I can honestly say I'm not one of those who lets nostalgia get in the way. As soon as I found out that "Episode IV A New Hope" was not originally in Star Wars, I immediately dismissed that subtitle, even though it was what I had grown up with for years, completely unaware of anything different, and I didn't look back. In fact, seeing releases with that subtitle in there (anything but the GOUT, I guess), it makes me cringe just a little bit because I know it's not supposed to be there, and that's not what audiences in May of 1977 saw. But on the other end of the spectrum, I can even get myself to see the whole "Saga" perspective. Is it my preferred perspective? No. Is that how I would choose to introduce anybody to Star Wars? Certainly not. In fact, I discourage people from seeing the prequels first. But it's an interesting perspective that I can choose to see once in a while, despite its flaws. And I can see Star Wars as a trilogy, like the way I grew up, which follows Luke from a young farmboy to becoming a Jedi and redeeming his father. And, especially now that I know the truth, I can see Star Wars as a single movie, about a farmboy named Luke who saves a princess, uncovers a mysterious power, and defends the galaxy against evil, becoming a hero. Luke CO, I don't view it with all the things the sequels and prequels add to it. I view it on its own, coming at it as completely new. And then I choose to see the other two movies that came after it, to see what they add to the original story, taking it one movie at a time and realizing what was made up later, and that it's simply a new movie. I don't pretend to be Anchorhead or anyone else who was actually there. I wasn't. I don't have that experience. But I do have the knowledge of what was what and try to relive that in my own little world, as if I was there.

So to actually weigh in on the original question, no, I don't disregard it. I accept it. I think it's rather lame, but I accept it when I watch Return of the Jedi. When I view the movies as a trilogy, I apply that bit of information to prior events to see how it fits in. A lot of times, it doesn't necessarily. It doesn't blatantly contradict, like a lot of the things in the prequels, but it doesn't necessarily flow. Leia kissing Luke in the first two movies doesn't contradict the possibility that they're related, it would just be classified as a shoddy bit of storytelling, especially if you're causing people to labor under the impression you'd had all this planned out from the beginning. And then, when I watch the movies taking one at a time, I only apply Leia being Luke's sister when it's introduced to me and do my best to flow with it from there.