Bingowings said:
Most of the time however they showed us what we already knew in a boring way
Exactly. In Star Wars, I loved the line where the imperial officer says "How will the emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?" In that line we really can visualize the depth of the Empire's stranglehold. But in episode 1, they actually go and make us WATCH the bureaucracy! Ugh.
I know nothing!
- Manuel, "Fawlty Towers"
adywan said:
You can't expect people that are new to the saga to watch them in the 4,5,6,1,2,3 order. When you see a set of movies that are numbered in order then you will watch them in numerical order. The only other way around it would be to renumber the OT 1,2 & 3 and have the prequels numbered after them, but the episode numbers have become so synonymous with each film as they stand now, i doubt changing the episode numbers would sit comfortably with people.
As long as you're making major changes, there's no reason you couldn't change the crawls to renumber them however you want.
Personally, I don't think the prequels are salvagable in any form, as prequels or episodes 1-3. Although of course I'll enjoy giving your revisited saga a chance, like I said in an earlier thread, at this point my preference is just to watch the latest official versions of the prequels. They are train wrecks, but at least they suck.
I saw SW and ESB in the theaters when I was 17 and 20 years old, respectively. By the time I saw ESB in the theater, everyone already knew the reveal -- the secret lasted one day, if that.
Having said that, the reveal is significant and is meant to be a surprise. That is why they must be seen in the order 4,5,6,1,2,3. And for that reason, there is no reason to hide the reveal in the prequels.
Furthermore, it would be impossible to hide the reveal... when Ben talks about Anakin being a good friend that he was tutoring, who ELSE could he be talking about? He also says that Vader helped the empire destroy the Jedi. In ep.3 we watch Anakin do all those things, and then become Vader. You'd have to ditch pretty much all of ep.3. Hmm, not a bad idea, now that I think of it.
Harmy said:
This is exactly the sort of thing that is driving me crazy with PSB. The top shot has better cloud detail, the bottom shot has better tree detail.
After trying a variety of fanedits of the prequels, I have finally come to the conclusion that the best way to watch them is the most recently released official version. Yes they are a crapfest, but at least they suck. The fanedits remove the only reasons to watch them and they just become tedious. If I'm going to watch a train wreck, there better be lots of shrapnel and twisted wreckage... otherwise, what's the point of watching it?
Ok, here's what I've been doing lately...
I finished going through scene-by-scene in reel 1, picking for each scene the best from three tracks: a light capture, a dark capture, and the "blend" of the two using althor's script. Most of the scenes seemed best either from the dark capture, or the blend. As I reviewed the finished edit, two things bugged me about the blended track:
- a frame that didn't sync correctly in the blend. It took this long before I noticed a single incorrectly aligned frame, so I knew there couldn't be many. But I went on a hunt for more, and managed to find a few others. So now I'm worried about using the blend lest there be others that are noticed later.
- colors. It occurred to me that because of the differing exposures, the white balance in each of the two captures isn't absolutely identical. That isn't a problem when slicing scene-by-scene, however it could make the blended track problematic to color-correct in those scenes where the blend is chosen. Because, the blend is made up of bits of two slightly different color sources, meaning that in some cases there potentially might not be one white balance appropriate for the entire frame.
At this point, I'm inclined now to go back and redo the edit, and only use the blend on a few particular scenes that clearly benefit from it, and only by checking frame-by-frame to ensure there aren't any badly aligned ones.
CP3S said:
I have been kind of interested in seeing Genesis of the Daleks sometime.
It's an incredible episode, many people's favorite (including one of mine). Oh, and for a good intro to Sylvester McCoy's doctor, there's Remembrance of the Daleks, another one of my favorites.
I can only stomach so much of Tenant, and his even-worse companions. Moments of brilliance, wallowing in an endless stream of chick-flick goo.
I also like the longer length of the older episodes... they take time to settle in to an atmosphere you can immerse yourself in and feel a little sorry when it's over.
Selecting a single entry-point into the Doctor Who world is an often-debated topic on DW forums. Most suggest starting with a Tom Baker (not Colin Baker) episode, or even one of the current series with Matt Smith (I like his debut episode, "Eleventh Hour"). Tom is arguably the quintessential Doctor and his quirkiness is unlike any other character on screen. I like the Jon Pertwee episodes too because the stories are almost always good. You must be tolerant of low-grade special effects. Don't start with Sylvester McCoy (although a few of his episodes are very good too), and don't start with one of the movies.
If you want an idea of how incredibly clever the series can be, you could start with the David Tenant episode "Blink". That's my choice for a newbie intro, even though it doesn't follow the typical DW format. Tenant is my least favorite doctor, but that episode blew me away and is on almost everyone's short list of favorites.
My top-15 favorite films, roughly in this order:
Ken, thanks for your candid answers.
Do you think that preserving film history is important?
I can't remember!
I have a suggestion... first, welcome back, Ken. Your presence here is actually a wonderful opportunity for us. Let me try to explain...
Many of us are perplexed at how so many people could think that what GL is doing is ok, and why they would think we are so stupid in demanding that the originals be restored. Ken is one of the people giving the blu-ray a 5* review, waxing on about it without having seen it, parroting the lines we hear over and over, and appears from our vantage point to be one of George's utterly vacuous minion conduits for his revisionism. HOWEVER, what sets Ken apart is that he is willing to come here and discuss it with us without calling us idiots. If you think about it, that is rather remarkable. This is an unique opportunity to try - and we all know it won't be easy - to pick his neurons and maybe just maybe learn the source of what to us is an incomprehensible but frighteningly widespread hypnotic trance.
Ken may be the only "regular" on this board who actually seems willing to stick around and try to convey a firsthand view from the "other side", without calling us names. He may not always be eloquent, but he is often more polite than we are.
I am reminded of those sci-fi movies, where the humans capture a space alien and try to keep it alive so they can communicate with it to learn their motivation. This is one of those chances! Let's not squander it... instead of needling Ken into leaving again, instead of laughing at his grammar, and most of all instead of trying to convince him that we're right, let's try and avail ourselves of this chance to do meaningful research into the minds of GL's contemporary fanbase.
Ken, if you're willing (and I hope you are), I'll start...
Ken, would it bother you at all if George Lucas never releases the original versions of the OT again? Start with a simple Yes or No, then you can add explanation if you want.
kenkraly2007 said:
Yes but who knows which are true star wars fans and which ones are not on amazon.com but yes the 4 and 5 star reviews are true star wars fans.
So to be a true fan of SW, you have to approve of the SE changes?
Or how about, "It's Kim Jong Il's country he can do what he wants." Doesn't make it right.
Hmm, that two little kids would even claim to know the entire dialogue from ESB is encouraging. Most of the time, knowing about something from 30 years ago means you must either be an old dude or an idiot.
BTW, this isn't limited to YouTube. Web feedback on just about everything is 99% trash. Just look at the feedback on most news stories from respected newspapers' websites, and you'll see mostly mindless trashing. Every story on yahoo is followed by 20,000 (or more) "feedback" posts that are utter trash, most of which is bashing someone. What gets me is the incredible degree of disrespect that millions of people are willing to express publicly every day, to people they don't even know and on subjects they know nothing about.
I'm a 50 y.o. computer science professor, doing AI research with a small cadre of grad students. I have a ridiculous number of hobbies, the main one right now being table tennis. Am I the oldest regular on the forum?
SilverWook said:
Youtube has become such a troll hangout, I'm hesitant to even upload anything anymore. Vimeo seems a much nicer place too.
Yeah, I've had to turn off comments on some of my posted videos, especially ones posted for historical interest. It's not that I mind the idiots so much, it's that my purpose in posting the video wasn't to give those idiots a forum to insult people that I respect. And the trolls LOVE to insult historical material -- it makes them feel big.
Some people need to put other people down to feel good about themselves.
I'd like to see a series of short adaptions of HP Lovecraft that are true to the originals. His were short stories, they should be short movies. Done that way, they could be really scary. Something like "Trilogy of Terror" but with all Lovecraft. A whole series of such trilogies would be awesome.
Also, a decent film about really early jazz. I hear a movie is in production called "Bolden", which sounds promising. One on King Oliver would be great too, if done right (which would almost be impossible... very few movie makers would get the music or the ambiance close to correct).
Marty Reisman's "The Money Player".
A decent depiction of Bobby Fischer (also not likely, but some bad ones are certain to be made -- one already has).
As long as I'm not harmed during the making of the film...
Whenever I watch the "2001" Blu Ray, it makes me realize just how phenomenally incredible Star Wars on blu ray COULD (and sadly won't) be.
TV's Frink said:
Was Natalie in 2001? I might have to change my mind on it.
Some of her molecules are.
Gaffer Tape said:
I don't think I realized until I came here that, for example, the original Star Wars didn't always say "Episode IV A New Hope."
While the other half of us said "what the F???" the first time that popped up.
