NeverarGreat

My mother and grandmother both saw a UFO in West Virginia when my mother was very small, and they both still remember it. They were walking down the street one afternoon and a bright light seemed to follow them, and when they stopped at the corner and turned onto another street the light did a 90 degree turn as well. They started to get scared and run, and the light followed them, apparently disappearing before they reached home. Neither of them has any idea what it could have been.

I think there’s some compelling evidence that alien life has visited this planet, yet the sheer number of faked sightings and simple public incredulity is enough to lead most people to conclude that it hasn’t happened. Many governments have half-admitted that strange things are going on in the skies, but nobody wants to put their reputation on the line or provide the extraordinary amount of evidence required to back up such an extraordinary claim. It is often covered-up, compartmentalized, and eventually forgotten.

Now I don’t necessarily think that alien life traversed the cosmos and just so happened to land on Earth. There’s a lot about science and consciousness that we don’t know. I expect that most sightings are caused by natural atmospheric phenomena, hallucinations, and human technology. For the few that remain, I suspect that they may be alien in origin.

Of course, SETI and other programs have had very little success in this department. There has to be a reason that we haven’t received any response to our messages, and my theory is that life doesn’t exist for very long in any form resembling that of humans. If it did, and sentient life forms such as humans existed in large quantities and for long periods of time, one would expect the cosmos to be filled with alien spaceships and civilizations contacting each other with radio and visible light radiation.

Furthermore, this should be taken into account. In short, it is more likely that we are, by number, a common type of alien on an uncommonly large world. The analogy used is one of countries on Earth. If we were to randomly be assigned a country of origin, we would likely be born in China or India, since they have high populations. Moreover, since most people on Earth originate on those two countries, these countries must be large enough to support such a large population. Thus, our planet is likely to be larger and more populous than average, with most planets supporting intelligent life being smaller and less populous. Earth is essentially the China of the cosmos, with most planets being like Denmark or Sweden. Since the gravity of those planets is lessened, the intelligent life would on average be larger. Also, and this is only my speculation, since there is decreased gravity, any smaller planet with an atmosphere would have more particulate matter in that atmosphere, leading to much greater cloud cover. Such species wouldn’t be able to search the heavens as easily as we do, so most of the galactic exploration is done by a relatively small number of large planets with much smaller than average aliens. There may be a reason why the popular conception of an alien is of a small humanoid with a large braincase.

Anyway, those are my rambling and speculative thoughts on the subject. 😃

What!

I genuinely liked the green in the Falcon!

Ah well. I’m sure you did a good job regardless 😃

I suppose this video should be titled ‘history of the hole world’, i guess in keeping with this thread, but I like it anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs

Why Haven’t You Been Eating?

I’m glad there isn’t an ongoing Trump/Russia investigation or this firing would look reaaaaalllly suspicious.

I think George has one of the most finely attuned senses of cultural resonance of any living director, but he also knows that he is a terrible writer. In the case of Star Wars he labored for years trying to write a script capable of sustaining his brilliant cross-cultural archetypes, and with the help of his writer friends he managed it…twice. However, he eventually became too prideful to admit his shortcomings, and so when it came time to write the prequels they had to be HIS prequels. The thematic and symbolic elements are there, and are as strong as they ever were in Star Wars, but the scripts failed to allow these symbols to coalesce into working films.

Now I’m irked that the silverware doesn’t look more ‘spacey’.

pittrek said:

My “2 cents” :

SilverWook said:

Third revision:

Dear Disney and Lucasfilm,

Wouldn’t “Dear Disney, dear Lucasfilm” be better? To me an even better version would be
"Dear Lucasfilm, dear Disney" or maybe even “Dear Mr. Iger, Dear Ms. Kennedy” or something like that.

Today is the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, the film that started it all. Yet, where is that film? No, not the special editon, the original 1977 film. The one we grew up with. The one we saw more times than any other film before or since. The film that changed our lives forever.

I personally don’t like “Yet, where is that film?”. I would personally recommend it with something like “Yet, why can’t we watch the film at home?” or something similar. The first sentence sounds like you’re curious about the film, it sounds like you’re suggesting they’re not treating their property correctly which is not something a “boss” of a multi million dollar company like to read.

Whether young or old, whether we saw it in a theater or on home video, it prompted a desire in some of us to make movies or tell stories of our own. George Lucas lit a spark that remains within us today.

One thing we all share are the memories of where and with whom we saw Star Wars, and even of shooting down imaginary TIE fighters out the back window of the car on the way home. For others, it was a brightly shining light in the middle of a turbulent childhood. If Luke and his friends could triumph over their trials, maybe we could too.

All these years later, we would love to revisit the Original Trilogy that we remember, to recapture those memories of a long time ago, in a movie theater or living room far far away. Those of us with families want to be able to show our kids exactly what we saw when we were their age and relive it with them. It should be such a simple thing to do.

Now this is a bit confusing. In the previous paragraph(s) you talk about the 1977 movie, but now you jump to the original trilogy without any connection.

Only it isn’t.

We’re limited in our choices to outdated video formats that are increasingly difficult to obtain and inch closer to extinction each year. And the now out of print bonus DVDs from 2006, which utilize ancient video transfers from 1993, are hardly better, if one can find them at all.

“Ancient video transfers” sounds very “snobby”. What about something like “dated video transfers”, or “transfers which were already dated”?

None of us ever imagined as kids that these historic versions might fade from memory, ultimately, disappearing from the collective consciousness altogether. To the point where CGI scenes created in 1997 are now mistaken for the innovative groundbreaking FX technology of the 1970’s. Film history is being obscured, if not rewritten. We live in an era in which even “bad” movies are respected enough to be meticulously restored and made publically available. Shouldn’t a movie as loved and as culturally significant as Star Wars deserve the same treatment in it’s original form?

I don’t remember who are you targeting it to, but if I can recommend don’t use “FX” or similar “jargon”.

Also “publically” is a word that my spellchecker does not recognize. In American English it is supposed to be “publicly” (at least according to my spellcheck plugin).

We don’t bemoan the Special Edition’s existence. It simply isn’t the version of the trilogy we fell in love with. The Original Original Trilogy, or OOT, deserves to be seen in the absolute best quality afforded by modern cinema and 21st-century home video formats so that it can be loved again by all.

Again, not sure who should read this “open letter” but I would avoid nerdy terms like “original original trilogy”. What about something like “The original trilogy deserves to be seen in the original unaltered form and in the absolute best quality afforded by modern cinema and 21st century home video formats…”

There is room for all versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of The Jedi to coexist. And we want to give you our money for them; we really do! Please give us that opportunity. At least give us hope that we will be able to do so soon. Some of us aren’t getting any younger! That is all we ask.

I’m not sure if it’s worth to give here some examples of movies with multiple versions on one disc, or not.

Sincerely yours,
The Staff and Members of Originaltrilogy.com

I agree with most of your suggestions, in fact they are implemented in my previous post 😉

SilverWook said:

The short version is looking better to me all the time. 😉

dahmage said:

You are mixing this up with the SSE. Empire mkv release had a glitch at the end. The empire iso release fixed the glitch. But this is from the raw source again, so unless the raw source also had the glitch… Man, my head is spinning.

That was it.

It would probably create tonal whiplash with a quiet scene intercut with an action scene, as well as the two scenes happening at different times of day. I suppose I could fudge the time, but Yoda would have to be crawling through pipes for quite a while.

SilverWook said:

Third revision:

Dear Disney and Lucasfilm,

Today is the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, the film that started it all. Yet, where is that film? No, not the special editon, the original 1977 film. The one we grew up with. The one we saw more times than any other film before or since. The film that changed our lives forever.

Whether young or old, whether we saw it in a theater or on home video, it prompted a desire in some of us to make movies or tell stories of our own. George Lucas lit a spark that remains within us today.

One thing we all share are the memories of where and with whom we saw Star Wars, and even of shooting down imaginary TIE fighters out the back window of the car on the way home. For others, it was a brightly shining light in the middle of a turbulent childhood. If Luke and his friends could triumph over their trials, maybe we could too.

All these years later, we would love to revisit the Original Trilogy that we remember, to recapture those memories of a long time ago, in a movie theater or living room far far away. Those of us with families want to be able to show our kids exactly what we saw when we were their age and relive it with them. It should be such a simple thing to do.

Only it isn’t.

We’re limited in our choices to outdated video formats that are increasingly difficult to obtain and inch closer to extinction each year. And the now out of print bonus DVDs from 2006, which utilize ancient video transfers from 1993, are hardly better, if one can find them at all.

None of us ever imagined as kids that these historic versions might fade from memory, ultimately, disappearing from the collective consciousness altogether. To the point where CGI scenes created in 1997 are now mistaken for the innovative groundbreaking FX technology of the 1970’s. Film history is being obscured, if not rewritten. We live in an era in which even “bad” movies are respected enough to be meticulously restored and made publically available. Shouldn’t a movie as loved and as culturally significant as Star Wars deserve the same treatment in it’s original form?

We don’t bemoan the Special Edition’s existence. It simply isn’t the version of the trilogy we fell in love with. The Original Original Trilogy, or OOT, deserves to be seen in the absolute best quality afforded by modern cinema and 21st-century home video formats so that it can be loved again by all.

There is room for all versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of The Jedi to coexist. And we want to give you our money for them; we really do! Please give us that opportunity. At least give us hope that we will be able to do so soon. Some of us aren’t getting any younger! That is all we ask.

Sincerely yours,
The Staff and Members of Originaltrilogy.com

I like it! I think it’s almost there.

Here’s my take:

Dear Disney and Lucasfilm,

Today is the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, the film that started it all. Yet, where is that film? No, not the Special Edition, the original 1977 film. The one that the world fell in love with; the film that changed movies, and our lives, forever.

Whether young or old, whether we saw it in a theater or on home video, it prompted a desire in some of us to make movies or tell stories of our own. George Lucas lit a spark that remains within us today.

One thing we all share are the memories of where and with whom we saw Star Wars, whether it was shooting down imaginary TIE fighters out the back window of the car on the way home, or whether it was a bright light in the middle of a turbulent childhood. If Luke and his friends could triumph over their trials, maybe we could too.

All these years later, we would love to revisit the Original Trilogy that we remember, to recapture those memories of a long time ago, in a movie theater or living room far far away. Those of us with families want to be able to show our kids exactly what we saw when we were their age and relive it with them. It should be such a simple thing to do.

Only it isn’t.

We’re limited in our choices to outdated video formats that are increasingly difficult to obtain and inch closer to extinction each year. The last time the originals were available for purchase was on the now out-of-print bonus DVDs from 2006, which themselves were a product of video transfers from 1993!

None of us could have imagined that these historic versions might fade from memory. It has gotten to the point where digital effects created in 1997 are frequently mistaken for the groundbreaking model work of the 1970’s. In a very real sense, film history is being erased. We live in an era in which even “bad” movies are respected enough to be meticulously restored and made publicly available. Shouldn’t a movie as beloved and as culturally significant as Star Wars get the same treatment?

We believe that both the Original Unaltered Trilogy and George Lucas’s Special Editions deserve to be seen in the absolute best quality afforded by modern cinema and 21st-century home video formats, so that both versions can be loved again by all.

There is room for all versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of The Jedi to coexist. And we want to give you our money for them! Please give us that opportunity. At least give us hope that we will be able to do so soon. Some of us aren’t getting any younger! That is all we ask.

Sincerely yours,
The Staff and Members of Originaltrilogy.com

Jetrell Fo said:

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/ex-cia-director-james-clapper-confirms-british-intelligence-warned-us-about-trump-russia-activity/

This is a sad state of affairs because Ret. Director James Clapper originally said publicly …

Clapper was also asked on “Meet the Press” if he had any evidence that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russian government while the Kremlin was working to influence the election. “Not to my knowledge,” Clapper said, based on the information he had before his time in the position ended. “We did not include anything in our report … that had any reflect of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report,” he said. “We had no evidence of such collusion.”

Now he is testifying to the contrary? So which is it? LOL

He also explained that he wasn’t given any information at the time, so because he wasn’t in the loop, he would naturally have no evidence from them of the Russia-Trump connection.

Isn’t it just that her clothes were so blue that it could be used for Chroma Key?

There was a version of Grindhouse with an encoding error in the credits, but this was fixed in version 1.6 I believe.

Warbler said:

maybe, but I would still like to know what those words in the fine print say.

This is what I got:

Fine Print:
If victim card does not work,
continually claim oppression
and try to silence those who
protest with your brainwashing
by reporting them to get them
shut down, (i.e., censorship)

Precisely. I imagine that this version of the movie is what Obi-wan would have told Luke if he’d gone into detail. Most of Anakin’s viewpoint is taken out, leaving it much more of an Obi-wan centric tale.

That’s a good question. The only scene that could possibly go there is Obi-wan and Padme, and that wouldn’t work for numerous reasons.

Intercutting the fight with him forming the Empire might be cool since both scenes cut away to events that are no longer shown, but again that may be weird.

I think for such an edit any indication of another Sith would create problems, since we have no reason to believe that Sidious has yet another apprentice hanging around, and there’s no indication (yet) that Anakin was betrayed by one of Obi-wan’s students. If I thought there was a way to suggest such betrayal in this edit the scene would probably work with a blue saber, but as it is there’s just not enough to sell that idea.

Also, I don’t think it’s worth it to establish a new location just to show the Separatist leaders being destroyed on screen, since the Jedi state that the war will end with the death of Grievous. It’s cleaner if the Separatists don’t get off Utapau.

Count me as someone who enjoyed the Vader pun. Especially for an hour-long movie, I think it’s perfectly fine.

Also, maybe we could point out the irony of Lucasfilm and Disney making entire shows based on Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art but continuing to have the actual matte paintings from Star Wars missing in action.

GOTG 2 is such a funny movie, helped by the fact that it has arguably the best villain in an MCU movie to date.

Just got back from seeing GOTG 2. My recommendation? Whatever you rated the first one, this gets the same rating. Personally, I quite liked the first one.

As well you should be. Shame! Shame!

This is a good letter. Maybe even a great letter. But it is written from the perspective of someone who was alive back in the 70’s. There are some of us on the forum who haven’t been around that long (yours truly) and have only recently gained an appreciation for the originals as fundamentally distinct from the SE’s rather than just having a few different effects here and there.

Before I saw the photos of the Technicolor film projected at the Senator theater, I never imagined Star Wars could look genuinely beautiful. Before I saw the dozens of matte paintings so lovingly restored by Mike Verta which had been discarded for SE changes, I never really considered that Star Wars was art. But it is, and there are generations of people who haven’t had a chance to experience this artistry firsthand. It is not a case of rose-colored glasses by an old-timer wishing things were like they were back then, since I wasn’t around back then. This is someone who grew up with the VHS tapes and 2004 DVDs and 2011 Blu-rays. There was a point at which I thought the HD broadcast looked GOOD, where I showed it to my friends with excitement because I had never before seen the films in such detail. But that is a pale shadow of what they could be, from someone who never saw the originals or SE’s in theaters.

This is what a lot of people are missing in this discussion, that they think Star Wars is Star Wars no matter the presentation, they see OOT purists as ungrateful curmudgeons, but they simply haven’t taken that first step into a larger world. So including something from this perspective in the letter would speak to more people, I think.

I’m becoming more and more attached to the idea the more I think about it.

Consider: With the new crawl and omissions listed above, it would be possible for someone to watch the prequels in chronological order and still retain the slow point-of-view shift towards Vader that audiences felt in the 80’s.

Since it is now established that Vader began as merely a “pupil” of Obi-wan who betrayed and murdered Anakin, one can construct a compelling narrative in their mind with the help of the prequels. In this narrative, Anakin was briefly tempted by Palpatine with the power to save his wife, but remained in the Jedi Temple and held it against thousands of clone troops, protecting the children. But then! One young Jedi, wishing to save his own skin, turns on Anakin and stabs him in the back. He quickly surrenders to the clones and becomes an Agent of Evil. Obi-wan sees this in the security recordings, and blames himself for his failure as a teacher.

ANH reinforces this narrative, referring to this Jedi as merely a pupil (notably, not an apprentice or padawan!), and Vader himself saying that he was but a learner.

Then comes ESB, where Yoda says that Vader was Obi-wan’s apprentice. Did Yoda misspeak? Was he using imprecise language? And Obi-wan hints at a more personal connection to Vader than merely student-teacher.

What an idea, that the prequels could turn the OT into a more compelling story through this omission.