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Lovable Rogue

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8-Sep-2006
Last activity
1-Sep-2011
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10

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Post
#530257
Topic
Interview With Richard Marquand Director of Return of the Jedi (June 1983)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/530257/action/topic#530257
Time

SilverWook said:

I don't think anybody involved on the films had the perspective in the mid 80's we now enjoy on watching Empire. Even Peter Mayhew once called it "a bit mediocre".

I can understand how Empire's unothodox plot structure and dark tone would have baffled some people in the 80s looking for a "fun" sequel, but there is no denying it has the most rock-solid story and best acted character progression moments of any star wars flick. Hell, maybe of any sequel period.

I much, much prefer "in-training" Luke in Empire to the naive, moisture farm bumpkin of Star Wars or "stoic" Jedi luke who is frankly a total bore who loses some of his humanity.

Han feels just right too in advancing from the first flick without being Jedi's teddy bear.

Every character seemingly lost their edge in Jedi, and the director bears much responsiblity 4 that even if he was Lucas' puppet in the end. 

Post
#530245
Topic
Interview With Richard Marquand Director of Return of the Jedi (June 1983)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/530245/action/topic#530245
Time

Marquand calls himself an actor's director because he says he is "very interested in directing actors—many directors direct cameras. I think the actors felt very lost and almost neglected on Empire. The special effects sort of rode through that movie in terms of the actors being left alone.

"I was lucky in this film. The major actors who carried the story and dialogue were by now very experienced at this nightmarish way of working. They were used to it and knew how to deal with it."

Ok, I get what Marquand is saying here. It's a fair point on special effect laden films, especially now with so much cgi and less real props. 

But Empire has the best performances out of any Star Wars movie cause the late, great Irvin Kershner knew how to direct actors. Not just "in theory" but in reality. The actors all have warm things to say about him too, Kershner is the REAL Yoda!

Needs to be said by somebody.

Post
#318863
Topic
Crystall Skull has GL's fingerprints all over it
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/318863/action/topic#318863
Time
http://chud.com/articles/articles/14873/1/TAG-TEAM-INDIANA-JONES-POST-MORTEM/Page1.html

This is for everyone here who bashed the guys for not going in-depth with their opinions due to a concern for spoilers. I agree with them that expectations for films are so low because of how commodified summer fare has become. I think it's funny this film has so many defenders from people who hate other cgi shit put out from other beloved franchises but give this one a pass because of Ford and Spielberg.
Post
#317543
Topic
Wow, maybe we're not as alone as we think?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/317543/action/topic#317543
Time
Actually, I think he was being generous with his critque of Spider-man. It really was a terrible movie, and so were the two follow-up remakes.

"Spider-Man" "Spider-Man 2," "Spider-Man 3" (2002, 2004, 2007)
Onetime cult horror director Sam Raimi seemed like a left-field choice for this big-budget enterprise, but he managed to do exactly what the studio and the comics publisher must have wanted him to do: drain away all his signature style and attitude, and turn in a product that even penniless people in Guam would make an effort to buy."

Spot on, the movies completely lacked (with the exception of the Doc Ock hospital scene, that was brillant) that sense of humor and style that Raimi had once-upon-a-time. Boring.


"It's not the cast (Tobey Maguire was a good choice)."

Tough call. I've come not to like Tobey in the role but isn't that the scripts fault? They sucked, a lot of great actors looked bad in it (like Defoe overacting big time). They made Spidey a socially inept retard, humorless, wannabe matyer filled to the brim with teenage anst but the virgin emo kind not the passion filled youth kind we all wanted.

Peter in the comics is both a smart and socially intellgent guy who needed some serious self-confidence boosting ala his Spider powers! He is witty and funny but can sometimes use corny puns to banter with villians, unlike Tobey who doesn't say much at all in the suit probably because of how high pitched his voice is. He is an everyman dealing with life's problems but above average like we like to imagine ourselves, that's why people like him. Tobey in the films is not smart enough to build webshooters nor does he use his brains to outsmart villians in battle. He is irrationally obsessed with a girl he barely seems to know, that he rejected on very flimsy grounds as she gets kidnapped anyway every single time, but now is obsessed almost to the point of being a stalker.

In the excellent new Marvel comic adaptation Iron Man, Tony Stark is portrayed perfectly by Robert Downey Jr. who really brings this larger-than-life character into the real world without sacrificing his wit or genius. It always feels like he is integral to the suited-up action scenes thanks to the funny bantering and intelligent strategy being displayed. There is no wall of separation between the hero and the man as there is in Spider-man. Spider-man the hero is so shortchanged by the Peter Parker melodrama that it honestly feels more like a chick flick then a real Marvel adaptation such as Iron Man.


"It's not the stories (well, the stories could have used some work)."

Huge understatement, the stories sucked and were repetitive. "Benevolent scientist gets turned evil by experiment gone awry, Spider-man must choose between self-interest or being responsible (why can't he enjoy being Spider-man?), he must go after Mary Jane but keep her at arms length in an unbelievable romance that functions as the plot dictates. She also gets kidnapped." Cut and paste this formula into any of them. The plots were like swiss chesse as far as plot-holes go.

"It's not the way everything is aimed at little kids (instead of, say, big kids, too)."

Agreed.

"No, it's the effects. Again. The age of digital has done the movies a lot of favors. But it has made special effects movies look cheap and two-dimensional. And Spidey deserved better than this."

Spider-man feels like a digital rubber cartoon character that punches people in the face. We deserve better!


Post
#244476
Topic
And on the 8th day, God created socks that wont stay up, mosquitos, Taco Bell, and Letterboxed DVD's. It was not good.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/244476/action/topic#244476
Time
Originally posted by: lordjedi
Originally posted by: Lovable Rogue
Originally posted by: Marvolo
Originally posted by: Obiwampa
As I sat watching the shimmery pixels of the twin suns setting on Tattooine yesterday, I bemusedly asked myself when was the last DVD I purchased that looked this bad? Had I? I went home to see. Yes I had. Kurosawa's 'Ran'. I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that this early edition was mastered using the same late 80's early 90's technology as the GOUT. What is the correlation between expensive soap and earplugs? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! What is the connection between 'Ran' and 'Star Wars'? Read on... George Lucas and F.F. Coppola helped Kurosawa get 'Ran' made. 'Ran' has since been given the ultra slick Criterion Collection two-disc all night spa treatment, with wet and wild super happy fun finish. While at the same time, Lucas is giving us this shut up and take it, prison shower style, dry handed reach around, with sphincter tearing anal invasion at no extra cost. The significance?? I DON'T KNOW!!! I just thought I'd mention it.

Lucas has sort of become like Bush. Shut up in his ivory tower, to high above us all to stoop to answering our pathetic little questions. "Let them eat laser disc masters..." he says through a mouthfull of turkey leg, while waving his ring laden hand at his servants. I guess like the war in Iraq, this is so infuriating because it could very easily have been avoided. What a waste of plastic this DVD is. Long after the human race is gone, this DVD will still be around, along with pop bottles, milk jugs, cockroaches, and Keith Richards. I hope that someday, someone will find a good use for it. Here are my suggestions, Mad Max/Waterworld mutant man... Plane signaler, coaster for your glass of filtered pee, break them into tiny bits for fishing lures, sharpen the edges and use like a ninja star, makeshift rearview mirror for your V-8 interceptor........


The war on terror could have been avoided if Clinton had taken Asama Bin Ladan into custody the five different times he had the chance to do so. His lame excuse for not doing so was that he didn't know whether he had the legal rights. What a load of bull. Bin Ladan is a terrorist who has know American rights and nothing concerning legal rights should ever have been brought into the matter. They should have strapped the sick bastard that Bin Ladden is, to a bomb and launched his ass to hell. I lost a cousin in the Pentagon plane crash and have seen a full video of a terrorist beheading of an American citizen (not the edited butchered versions on the news). Having experienced and seen the wrath of these terrorist, I think we should fight and keep fighting until the very last one of them is dead.


Psssst, the Path of 9/11 was made up bullshit by cowardly right wingers, Clinton never got the chance to catch Bin Laden even though he spent more money on counter-terrorism operations than any other President in history. The Chimperor on the other hand ignored a memo titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." and sat his ass down reading a book to kids while the towers fell. Also, you remind me of a character in Star Wars: "Wipe them out. All of them." It wasn't the good guys who believed in genocide.


Dude, you're not serious. It's well known that bin Laden was practically handed to Clinton many times, only to have either himself or the Secretary of State be unwilling to make a decision about capturing or killing him. Yeah, Bush screwed up too, but it seems that Clinton screwed up a whole lot more on this one.


Dude, I'm very serious. You've bought into the well known lies of the right wing revisionists. The truth is in fact the opposite:

The two great myths that have settled across the nation, beyond the Hussein-9/11 connection, are that Clinton did not do enough during his tenure to stop the spread of radical terrorist organizations like al Qaeda, and that the attacks themselves could not have been anticipated or stopped. Blumenthal's insider perspective on these matters bursts the myths entirely, and reveals a level of complicity regarding the attacks within the journalistic realm and the conservative political ranks that is infuriating and disturbing.

Starting in 1995, Clinton took actions against terrorism that were unprecedented in American history. He poured billions and billions of dollars into counterterrorism activities across the entire spectrum of the intelligence community. He poured billions more into the protection of critical infrastructure. He ordered massive federal stockpiling of antidotes and vaccines to prepare for a possible bioterror attack. He order a reorganization of the intelligence community itself, ramming through reforms and new procedures to address the demonstrable threat. Within the National Security Council, "threat meetings" were held three times a week to assess looming conspiracies. His National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, prepared a voluminous dossier on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, actively tracking them across the planet. Clinton raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave in the last three years of his tenure. In 1996, Clinton delivered a major address to the United Nations on the matter of international terrorism, calling it "The enemy of our generation."

Behind the scenes, he leaned vigorously on the leaders of nations within the terrorist sphere. In particular, he pushed Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to assist him in dealing with the threat from neighboring Afghanistan and its favorite guest, Osama bin Laden. Before Sharif could be compelled to act, he was thrown out of office by his own army. His replacement, Pervez Musharraf, pointedly refused to do anything to assist Clinton in dealing with these threats. Despite these and other diplomatic setbacks, terrorist cell after terrorist cell were destroyed across the world, and bomb plots against American embassies were thwarted. Because of security concerns, these victories were never revealed to the American people until very recently.

In America, few people heard anything about this. Clinton's dire public warnings about the threat posed by terrorism, and the massive non-secret actions taken to thwart it, went completely unreported by the media, which was far more concerned with stained dresses and baseless Drudge Report rumors. When the administration did act militarily against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the actions were dismissed by partisans within the media and Congress as scandalous "wag the dog" tactics. The TV networks actually broadcast clips of the movie "Wag The Dog" to accentuate the idea that everything the administration was doing was contrived fakery.

The rest of the article is here: http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/101303A.shtml

This is what Counter Terrorism Tsar Richard Clarke has to say on the response to terrorist threats:

Clarke said senior managers would respond by going back to their agencies to demand a search for any overlooked information and to put rank-and-file personnel on high alert, as happened when an al-Qaeda plot to bomb Millennium celebrations was thwarted in 1999.

“In December 1999, we received intelligence reports that there were going to be major al-Qaeda attacks,” Clarke said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” two years ago. “President Clinton asked his national security adviser Sandy Berger to hold daily meetings with the attorney general, the FBI director, the CIA director and stop the attacks.

“Every day they went back from the White House to the FBI, to the Justice Department, to the CIA and they shook the trees to find out if there was any information. You know, when you know the United States is going to be attacked, the top people in the United States government ought to be working hands-on to prevent it and working together.

”Now, contrast that with what happened in the summer of 2001, when we even had more clear indications that there was going to be an attack. Did the President ask for daily meetings of his team to try to stop the attack? Did (national security adviser) Condi Rice hold meetings of her counterparts to try to stop the attack? No.”

Link to this article here: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/032306.html

Also read this CNN news story where the GOP Congress blocked Clinton's push for anti-terror legislation: http://www.cnn.com/US/9607/30/clinton.terrorism/

The truth speaks for itself.
Post
#244439
Topic
And on the 8th day, God created socks that wont stay up, mosquitos, Taco Bell, and Letterboxed DVD's. It was not good.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/244439/action/topic#244439
Time
Originally posted by: Marvolo
Originally posted by: Obiwampa
As I sat watching the shimmery pixels of the twin suns setting on Tattooine yesterday, I bemusedly asked myself when was the last DVD I purchased that looked this bad? Had I? I went home to see. Yes I had. Kurosawa's 'Ran'. I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that this early edition was mastered using the same late 80's early 90's technology as the GOUT. What is the correlation between expensive soap and earplugs? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! What is the connection between 'Ran' and 'Star Wars'? Read on... George Lucas and F.F. Coppola helped Kurosawa get 'Ran' made. 'Ran' has since been given the ultra slick Criterion Collection two-disc all night spa treatment, with wet and wild super happy fun finish. While at the same time, Lucas is giving us this shut up and take it, prison shower style, dry handed reach around, with sphincter tearing anal invasion at no extra cost. The significance?? I DON'T KNOW!!! I just thought I'd mention it.

Lucas has sort of become like Bush. Shut up in his ivory tower, to high above us all to stoop to answering our pathetic little questions. "Let them eat laser disc masters..." he says through a mouthfull of turkey leg, while waving his ring laden hand at his servants. I guess like the war in Iraq, this is so infuriating because it could very easily have been avoided. What a waste of plastic this DVD is. Long after the human race is gone, this DVD will still be around, along with pop bottles, milk jugs, cockroaches, and Keith Richards. I hope that someday, someone will find a good use for it. Here are my suggestions, Mad Max/Waterworld mutant man... Plane signaler, coaster for your glass of filtered pee, break them into tiny bits for fishing lures, sharpen the edges and use like a ninja star, makeshift rearview mirror for your V-8 interceptor........


The war on terror could have been avoided if Clinton had taken Asama Bin Ladan into custody the five different times he had the chance to do so. His lame excuse for not doing so was that he didn't know whether he had the legal rights. What a load of bull. Bin Ladan is a terrorist who has know American rights and nothing concerning legal rights should ever have been brought into the matter. They should have strapped the sick bastard that Bin Ladden is, to a bomb and launched his ass to hell. I lost a cousin in the Pentagon plane crash and have seen a full video of a terrorist beheading of an American citizen (not the edited butchered versions on the news). Having experienced and seen the wrath of these terrorist, I think we should fight and keep fighting until the very last one of them is dead.


Psssst, the Path to 9/11 was made up bullshit by cowardly right wingers, Clinton never got the chance to catch Bin Laden even though he spent more money on counter-terrorism operations than any other President in history. The Chimperor on the other hand ignored a memo titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." and sat his ass down reading a book to kids while the towers fell. Also, you remind me of a character in Star Wars: "Wipe them out. All of them." It wasn't the good guys who believed in genocide.
Post
#242713
Topic
MagnoliaFan Edits: Ep I "Balance Of The Force", and Ep II "The Clone War" (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/242713/action/topic#242713
Time
Why didn't the idea of using KOTOR languages ever materialize? The dialogue is very professionally done and there is a lot of variety. The Neimodians can use the Duros language (they are related species) and the Gungans can use a language from one of the aquatic races. This is the best possible option available and I would love to see it used.
Post
#242274
Topic
MagnoliaFan Edits: Ep I "Balance Of The Force", and Ep II "The Clone War" (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/242274/action/topic#242274
Time
This Special Edition of BOTF sounds interesting, but worrisome as well. I'm a die hard OT fan, hated Episode's 2 and 3. Episode 1 was questionable as backstory, but it had its moments. John William's Duel of the Fates, Pod race, Lightsaber duel, Spectacle of it all. BOTF added much needed depth, making Jar-Jar Binks the scoundrel archtype, tieing the Kolbalt Crystal to the story, and removing everything that distracted from the Star Wars atmosphere. Putting in CGI Yoda, alien dialogue tracks, and more background on the Sith sounds great. What I don't like is the inclusion of unnecessary characters and dialogue in order to match up with the PT. I understand your trying to tie the prequels together, but these additions are distracting and bring the quality of the film down. If I may make a suggestion, consider releasing two versions of the special edition, one is to improve the film on its own terms, the other is meant to consolidate it with the entire saga. This way everybody wins, even PT haters like myself.