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Regicidal_Maniac

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29-Jul-2004
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3-Oct-2005
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Post
#63392
Topic
Changes in 2004 DVDs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/63392/action/topic#63392
Time
Quote
Originally posted by: jimbo
Quote
Originally posted by: Hal 9000
They say they are trying to please "the fans" for this DVD set.

Yet when asked why the originals are no where to be seen, they get all disgusted and say "This. Is. What. Lucas. Wants. Screw. You."


Most fans don't care


Wrong.

Most consumers and casual movie enthusiants don't care.

The real fans care.

That's why they're called fans.

Look up the definition of the word fan and you'll begin to understand our devotion.
Post
#63391
Topic
Dude, where's the General Lee?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/63391/action/topic#63391
Time
I really liked Starsky & Hutch I thought it was a perfectly funny and irreverent film while at the same time still staying somewhat true to the source material.

Lost In Space was good but belongs in the guilty pleasures thread as the release version is deeply flawed.

Mark Goddard's cameo was great and a good role well played. I met him and he was a nice guy so I was happy to see him get a part with meat. It would have been nice if the father of Matt LeBlanc's Don West had been a photo of Guy Williams.

I feel that LIS had some wasted cameos early on. Like for instance June Lockhart as the school principal, she should have been the grandmother who was not fit enough to make the journey and that they had to say goodbye to. It would have been a nice moment.

Angela Cartwright and Marta Kristen were absolutely wasted having both as reporters at the press conference and would have been much better if at least one of them was a technician on the building of the Jupiter 2.

Now the biggest gripe. There were two cameo opportunities that were totally missed towards the end and that's Billy Mumy and Jonathan Harris who should by rights have been the older versions of Will Robinson and Dr Zachary Smith.

They tried to get Harris to cameo as the guy who sends Oldman on his siditious mission but he said he would accept nothing less than Smith himself. Well this would have been a perfect way to fix that issue.

As it is it's an enjoyable film until you think about what it could have been, and where's the damned sequel already?

On to the politically incorrect version of Dukes Of Hazzard, I hope it is. I'd hate to think that the moral crusaders have won and the 70 percent of us who live in fear of that outspoken 30 percent have lost our right to enjoy whatever the Hell we like just because some sour-mouthed, horn-rimmed glasses wearing spinsters and Jesus-freaks disagree with it.

If they don't like something they can turn away but enough of this 'worrying about upsetting the conservatives' crap.

Rant off.
Post
#63245
Topic
Irvin Kershner on Special Editions
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/63245/action/topic#63245
Time
William Goldman is one of the modern screenwriting gurus alongside Robert McKee and Syd Field.

He has written a couple of books about his many decades as a Hollywood screenwriter: "Adventures in the Screen Trade" and "Which Lie Did I Tell?".

Both books are very informative and I would recommend them to writers in ANY field.

I also recommend Syd FieldText's books beginning with "Screenplay".

Above all you MUST read Robert McKee's "STORY" as it is the quintessential tome on narrative, both cinematic and other.

Plus anything by Joseph Campbell is a must.

William Goldman works as a professional screenwriter and screenplay doctor he also wrote "The Princess Bride".

Another great site of information is Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio's WordPlay.

That's if you're interested.
Post
#63242
Topic
Beautiful Women
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/63242/action/topic#63242
Time
Read the first page, too lazy to read through the pages after that and before me at the moment.

The most beautiful women in the world... Well the most beautiful quality in the world is intelligence, attractive too no doubt about that, but what's the point if the conversation isn't as stimulating as the rest?


Rita Hayworth, I can definitely see what attracted Orson Welles to make her his third wife. Attractive, intelligent redhead.




Marilyn Monroe from Norma Jean through to her last days at 36 was one of the most beautiful women who ever has and will live. If I had a time machine...




Paulette Goddard in Modern Times. Sherilyn Fenn and Courtney Cox have similar qualities.




Sherylin Fenn.




Courtney Cox. Why Jen get's all the press I'll never know.




Neve Campbell.




I like smart beautiful women.
Post
#63106
Topic
Star Wars 2004 OT SE DVD release preview!
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/63106/action/topic#63106
Time
Yeah Hayden and Kiwi Fett were all it took for me to change their minds.

I'd hate to be working on the refunds counter at any DVD store in the next month.

8am September 22nd.

"Good morning sir. How can I help you today?"

"Uhm... Hi, yeah. There seems to be something terribly wrong with this copy of the Star Wars trilogy. For some reason it sucks now."

"Yes I'm afraid that's a problem with all of the copies, it's because there's something terribly wrong with the series' creator."

"Huh... Okay, well can I exchange this piece of crap for something better?"

"Certainly sir."

After the first few hours it'd get to the stage where as soon as the clerk saw a guy in his late-twenties to early-forties heading over to the counter with a parcel under his arm and a pissed-off/confused look on his face they'd have a routine worked out.

"Good afternoon sir, you can just drop your Star Wars trilogy DVDs in the bin provided to your left, take this ticket and go pick out something from the shelf. Thank you and welcome to the rest of your life."
Post
#63031
Topic
Episode III on EBAY?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/63031/action/topic#63031
Time
So Episode III goes straight to DVD?

I can see that.

Seriously though this is bull as they are still doing reshoots here at Fox not to mention the buttload of CGI shots that George will have ILM staying up until the night before to complete.

This will be an interesting auction to watch, I shall follow it's progress with great interest.

EDIT: Well that was quick.
Post
#62947
Topic
Star Wars 2004 OT SE DVD release preview!
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/62947/action/topic#62947
Time
That's a great review.

I had already made up my mind not to buy this release but I hope that this and other such reviews that are sure to follow suit will convince the unaware that these are not the films we love.

I'll be forwarding this review on to others in the hopes of dropping the sales points by at least a few.

It's amazing how few people are actually aware of the horrible, horrible new changes that have been inflicted upon the OT. Even clerks in stores who are pushing the release have no clue.

Anyway the next edits will have three releases to mix from.

To quote the war-president "Bring em on".
Post
#62673
Topic
All Stormtroopers with Jango's voice
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/62673/action/topic#62673
Time
Yeah think about how cool it would have been if a more creative writer/director had managed to give us Episodes I-II-III without spoiling the various revelations held by episode IV-V-VI.

I am your father is going to sound so trite now, whereas before it was a serious shock to both Luke and the audience.

As others have pointed out Obi-Wan basically becomes some lying old man and Yoda's bizarre behaviour has lost its wonderful payoff.

But then as we've already seen with the SE versions the surprise of finally seeing Jabba in ROTJ has been ruined by seeing him for no real story reason in Docking Bay 94 in ANH. I think it's funny/strange that Lucas is stealing his own thunder.

The truth about Anakin/Vader's 'death and resurrection' should remain a mystery until the audience pieces it together in TESB.

The problems with the PT, apart from being the boring, soulless products of lazy filmmaking at the expense of marketing and CGI innovation, are that they ruin the films that follow them.

I expected to see a rogueish Anakin, the best starpilot in the galaxy, follow General Obi-Wan on some damned fool idealistic crusade. I expected to see them become genuine friends. I expected to see the hinted at triangle between Kenobi, Skywalker and Amidala. I expected to see Vader make an appearance before the reported 'death' of Anakin. I expected to see Obi Wan drop his Jedi name, retake his birth name Ben and retire from the Jedi order for reasons known only to him.

In short I expected the PT to add depth to the OT and help build a richer galaxy not to plunder and destroy the OT's secrets and lay them bare.

A tad off topic I know.
Post
#62663
Topic
All Stormtroopers with Jango's voice
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/62663/action/topic#62663
Time
Quote
Originally posted by: Commander Courage
Quote
Originally posted by: buddy-x-wing
it's a pity they couldn't redub jango's dialogue with the helmet on so that he sounded more like the boba fett from Empire, so that he had a completely different voice with the helmet on to when he did unmasked

That's an EXCELLENT idea! Does anyone know who did the original voice? It wasn't Jeremy Bulloch, was it?


Jason Wingreen was the voice of Boba in the OT, he was born in 1919. He probably has one of those 'little old men' voices now.

I do a very good imitation of the Wingreen Fett if prompted.

For the Holiday Special professional voice artist Don Francks provided Boba's original voice. He was born in 1932 and is still a working voice actor.

I think it would have been fitting to use him. But then I think it would have been fitting to have made the prequels fit the OT and not retrospectively change the existing films to match some bullcrap 'new vision'.

I could go on but we all know where it's going.
Post
#62652
Topic
Guilty Pleasures (DVD)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/62652/action/topic#62652
Time
I think it's great to see a lot of love for Superman III.

For me that has always been my favourite, I'm a big Richard Pryor fan so the criticisms leveled at comic tone of the movie never bothered me one whit.

"You know a wise man once said, I think it was Atilla the Hun, "It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail.""

When I saw Superman III in 1983 that Braniacesque supercomputer that Gus creates had me freaked when it turned evil.

Then of course we have the incredibly underappreciated Gavin O’Herlihy as Brad, picking up on the football jock and Lana romance plot left dangling from Superman: The Movie.

Office Space and Superman III make for a good double feature.
Post
#62560
Topic
If the classics were released...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/62560/action/topic#62560
Time
Not to be a dreaded grammar Nazi but I think it's funny that so far no one here has spelled 'definitely' correctly.

It has to do with measurement and precision, similar to finite, it refers to distinct limits.

But enough about that.

I will not be buying the New Original Trilogy Star Wars DVDs, acronym: NOT SW DVD.

I was thinking about it but the 'Hayden's ghost' thing combined with the 'Kiwi Boba Fett' broke the camel's back on this issue.

I am now sorted thanks to Rikter and am no longer angry at Lucas just disappointed as I really did want to own an official Star Wars DVD set but he wil not have my money until he releases the unmolested OT.

The amazing thing is he could have had twice my money and everyone else's here doubtless if he had released a deluxe boxed set containing new transfers of the OT AND his horrible NOTs in the same package like the Alien Qualdrilogy.

I wouldn't have hesitated to own such a comprehensive Boxed Set and it would have joined the other volumous tomes in my DVD library. Obviously the changes are too great to seamlessly branch across and so would have required a disc per version of the film plus assorted extras discs.

They could also have put out a DVD boxed set of just the NOT and made the O-OT exclusive to the deluxe set.

This multiple release option was used for the E.T. DVDs you could choose old and new or just new. I chose neither as I've never been a really big fan of E.T.

This would have been the option to make the most cash for Fox and LFL. If they released two separate boxes one of the OT and one of the NOT then of course most of us old fans are going to purchase just the OT and leave the NOTs to the Jimbos of the world. However if they gave consumers the choice between NOT or both NOT & O-OT there would be less of an uproar and more money flying their way.

Consumers like choice and don't like being shafted.

I would really like to have seen the documentaries on the upcoming DVDs but I'll just pass on them if they only come with the new horribly disfigured version of Star Wars. If I could somehow get this extras disc on its own then I would. (Anyone?)
Post
#62503
Topic
Lucas: Madman or Genius?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/62503/action/topic#62503
Time
I agree with Cetera, he's right on the money.

George couldn't convincingly direct traffic anymore. The only reason why he was able to pull off ANH was because he was lean, hungry and still fairly fresh out of USC film school. Not to mention the fact that he had a far better director than himself, Francis Ford Coppola, looking over his shoulder and guiding and mentoring him.

Now GL listens to no man and the product speaks for itself.

George Lucas has become, in no small sense, the Palpatine.

Now secure in his power he has declared himself Emperor, and has shut himself away from the populace surrounded by yes-men assistants and assorted boot-lickers.

The only answer Rick McCallum knows begins with "Y" and ends in "es George, that's a great idea." Gary Kurtz would never have been such a toady and that's why the PT films are as bad as they are. Everyone is too afraid to tell Emperor Lucas "No".

I'd say it but then I'd be as out on my arse as Kurtz is.

McCallum is an excellent line producer, probably bar none, however he is not a creative person and is more concerned with job security than art. GL believes his own hype and can't understand why the real fans think the new films suck balls. He thinks it's just because we've grown up and expect violence and expletives from our Space Operas. I'm not going to lie to ya I enjoy a good violence-laden cussfest set in space now and then, which is why I rate Pitch Black and Riddick so highly, but it's far from what I expect from Star Wars.

I expect memorable dialogue, fantastic sets, a rich lived in galaxy with plenty of suggestions of its own history and above all plots and characters lifted from westerns and samurai films.
Post
#62497
Topic
So whats better? Phantom or Clones?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/62497/action/topic#62497
Time
So was that $20 each or do we all have to share?

I think the question of "which film is better TPM or AOTC?' is akin to 'which tastes better horseshit or dogshit?'

Either way it's still a pile of shit in your mouth.

For me I'd say that from a film making and narrative standpoint TPM emerges as the slightly better product. It's a more cohesive whole where AOTC feels like it was slammed together out of the poorly shot leftover parts of something better and edited by a Rhesus monkey with ADHD.

Not that TPM is in any way an enjoyable experience but it's a slightly preferable one, like having to choose the method of one's own execution.

I realise that in some ways AOTC is trying to pander to what it expects a Star Wars fanbase would like to see but I feel it does this at the expense of the narrative and characters. It's a bit like Star Wars porn; poorly written badly acted scene, ACTION, ACTION, MONEY-SHOT, *wipe*, atrociously written disinterestedly acted scene, MORE ACTION, MORE MONEY-SHOTS!! *wipe*.

Maybe I'm just a jaded OT fan who invested too much significance in the minutiae of films I saw in my youth in the late seventies and early eighties or maybe I know what I'm on about and George Lucas should never be allowed near the business end of a pencil, let alone standing behind a camera attempting to direct actors.
Post
#62456
Topic
What did we all expect from the Prequel Trilogy?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/62456/action/topic#62456
Time
Okay Jedi Master DJR, I can see what camp you're in on this so I'll only say that all I said in my example about Chewie also applies to Bossk.

As I said it's about the effectiveness of the screentime used and the context in which it is used.

Quote
-- INTERIOR: VADER'S STAR DESTROYER -- BRIDGE -- CONTROL DECK

Vader stands in the back control area of his ship's bridge with a motley group of men and creatures. Admiral Piett and two controllers stand at the front of the bridge and watch the group with scorn.

PIETT: Bounty hunters. We don't need that scum.
FIRST CONTROLLER: Yes, sir.
PIETT: Those Rebels won't escape us. 

Bossk, one of the bounty hunters, looks down from his perch and growls at Piett.  A second controller interrupts the moment.

SECOND CONTROLLER: Sir, we have a priority signal from the Star Destroyer Avenger.
PIETT: Right.

The group standing before Vader is a bizarre array of galactic fortune hunters: There is Bossk, a slimy, tentacled monster with two huge, bloodshot eyes in a soft baggy face; Zuckuss and Dengar, two battle-scarred, mangy human types; IG-88, a battered, tarnished chrome war droid; and Boba Fett, a man in a weapon-covered armored space suit.

VADER: ...there will be a substantial reward for the one who finds the Millennium Falcon. You are free to use any methods necessary, but I want them alive...

Vader walks to a stop in front of Boba Fett and turns to face him.

VADER: ...No disintegrations.
BOBA FETT: As you wish.


Here we see Boba Fett being singled out as, we can assume, a hard-arse who is prone to disintegrating his quarry. This one detail helps to flesh out this whole group of 'Bounty Hunter scum'.

It's true that Bossk doesn't do anything much in particular to advance the plot but in the context of the scene and by virtue of being included in a group of Bounty Hunters with Boba Fett he becomes more than a mere archetype and is given a small 'moment' which layers his character. Granted it's a thin layer but it's still thicker than any of the paint-by-numbers prequel characters.

An audience doesn't need characters to spout of reams of dialogue about who they are and where they come from and what their motivations are. That kind of information is all well and good for the actors to build the foundations of their characters on and extremely useful in helping film novelizers to fill the page count but all it does to the movie is bloat it like a three day old corpse in a summer stream.

My point is there's no difference between the methods used to realise the characters of Bossk or Chewie. Given their respective screentimes we know enough about each to move on with the story. Whereas expository dialogue slows the film down to a halt and neither endears the characters to us nor the screenwriter.
Post
#62447
Topic
What did we all expect from the Prequel Trilogy?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/62447/action/topic#62447
Time
Quote
Originally posted by: Jedi Master DJR If you mean through the Expanded Universe, that is simply because Bossk has been around longer, that's all. As for character development in the movies, I think lines I can understand are more developed then a growl not translated.


I have to disagree a little bit here. It's not so much that Bossk has been around longer and has been developed in EU stories since TESB. I think Bossk is a fully realised character and I've never read or seen anything to do with him outside of the five seconds of screentime he gets in that film.

It has more to do with the effectiveness and context of the screentime be it a few frames or a few thousand frames.

Ric Olie's 'Irving The Explainer' type dialogue, where he just tells you what you're looking at, comes across not so much as character development but as bad exposition. He's like an in-movie audio commentary for the blind.

Whereas an untranslated growl, in the right director's hands, can give so much depth to a character and so much emotion to a scene if played right. Think Chewie when the Hoth doors are closing in TESB.

"GnUuu-aaAarrrR!" means a Hell of a lot more to me than "Coruscant! The whole planet is one big city!"

Yeeaahh Ric, we can SEE that.

The difference is Brackett/Kasdan/Kirshner vs Lucas/Lucas/Lucas. It's a major quality gap.
Post
#62337
Topic
What did we all expect from the Prequel Trilogy?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/62337/action/topic#62337
Time
Hey y'all.

I remember only too well the uneasy feelings I had going into the theatre to see The Phantom Menace in 1999. I had already been thinking about the changes to the 1997 versions of the trilogy and how they just didn't seem like they belonged, they 'felt' wrong somehow.

As I waited in line for my session to go in I looked at the hundreds of other GenXers in the crowd, some in costume, some with their own kids but all with a particular look in their eyes, a far away stare like a kid who can't believe that his parents actually got him what he really wanted for christmas.

I had grown suspicious due to internet talk about a CGI Stepin Fetchit character named Jar Jar who damned near ruins the film but I was still shocked and excited to once more be standing in line for a Star Wars film having seen the originals in their initial runs here in Sydney when I was a wee lad. I remember the excitement of playground Star Wars where we'd each pretend to be a character and act out the film as we remembered it, then later as the toys became more widely available we would play in the forested area of the schoolgrounds having new adventures and loving George's creation.

Flashforward to 1999 and approximately 130 odd minutes later and my excitement had slowly and excruciatingly turned to quiet and then not so quiet disappointment as I have previously written here and continued on the next page here.

Now I know that the excitement one feels as a child and the awe of experiencing something new for the first time can never be recaptured but I was not looking to have my youth back I was merely hoping for some connection to the original films which I had grown to appreciate over the two decades since. The vibe was not there, this was not a film from the same style or mold and it 'felt' wrong.

I have been told, mainly by blinded apologists, that these films are not meant to be viewed critically as thet are for children. Well that may be true of the PT but it was not exclusively true for the OT. My parents loved these films when they came out. They took me to the cinema and I didn't have to drag them along. They saw Star Wars and figured it might be something I would like.

I have since studied these original films academically, like a great many of you, and as we know they do conform to the monomyth of the Hero's Journey and are technically brilliant films presenting a rich lived in galaxy with well defined characters and snappy memorable banter. They are an allegory for the Vietnam war and a corrupt and powerful government ruled by a cruel dictator who is surrounded by 'yes'-men but who ultimately comes undone through his own hubris. The films show over and again that that a willing spirit can defeat technology. The intertextuality of themes, scenes, characters, mythology and plot are many and varied.

In short they are modern classics.

The origins of Star Wars have been well detailed. They were meant, first and foremost to be a fairytale for the modern era cribbing this and that from here and there and making it a unified whole which would appeal to all ages in every country.

Then came the prequels.

Bored actors playing uninteresting characters reading stilted dialogue to hamfistedly advance an overly complicated plot whose only purpose seems to be to show off as many CGI sets and toyetic creatures as possible in two hours. Bleh. Take away Williams' music and the opening crawl and you wouldn't even know it was a Star Wars film at all, and most people wouldn't give it a second glance if you did.

I never saw AOTC in the cinema and I only just recently sat through the whole thing, MF's version thanks to Rikter. Thanks again man. Clearly these are not the films we were expecting after the sixteen year wait.

I had been expecting something more like what John L. Flynn writes about in his essay Looking Back To The Future Of Star Wars. All the information was there in GL's original drafts of The Star Wars so why did he choose to ignore it and tell a tale of taxation and whatever else?

So my question is what did YOU expect from the Prequels?