SilverWook

TheBoost said:

SilverWook said:

As there was an HBO movie about the Tuskegee Airmen made in 1995, maybe Lucas simply took too long to get his version made?

Because a 20 year old TV movie forever takes a story off the table.

 

 

18 years. ;)

And Lucas did take a long time with this. Radioland Murders was another Lucas project I'd heard about since the 80's, and when it finally got made people didn't exactly flock to go see it.

Yeah, Chewie was about 200 in the OT, and it's only been 30 years since Jedi. Let's not make the Wook look like his really old dad Itchy. ;)

Who's the babe in the poster?

All Good Things is still the real TNG finale in my mind. Chances are good we'll see the HD remaster for a one night theatrical screening down the line.

With the rumors circulating about Enterprise getting revived ala Arrested Development, maybe a final TNG movie reunion could happen? (The Blu Ray releases are certainly rekindling a lot of warm fuzzy nostalgia.) A little scary to think the cast is almost as old now as their characters were in the future scenes of AGT!

More of an SE than a director's cut. (Only the fact it's been radically altered has been obscured.) He got his DC in '78. Follow the THX preservation thread if you'd like to know more.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/THX-1138-preservations-Italian-Cut-available-see-1st-post/topic/11741/

Pan and scan VHS is no way to watch the original version.

I predict that AOTR will accidentally be screened instead. Mass confusion and rioting ensues when they attempt to correct the error. ;)

Seriously though, this could be a way to avoid the "direct to video" perception if the other conversions are done, but Disney isn't keen on a theatrical release.

DuracellEnergizer said:

 

bkev said:

DuracellEnergizer said:


I'm starting on TNG now. I'm two episodes in already, and so far I haven't seen anything all that interesting. It's too early to give up the ship yet, though, so I'll give it at least half a season before I decide whether or not to bother continuing with it.

Season 1 minus the pilot with Q is absolute garbage... and even that has its crap moments.  Season 2 improves a little but the stories are still so silly and most of the actors haven't really hit their stride yet.

Seriously.  You could practically skip everything EXCEPT "The Measure of a Man" and "Q Who" and still feel comfortable with everything after.

I'm about eight episodes away from finishing season 1, so I can see what you mean ;-)

So far I've found most of the episodes I've seen painfully mediocre. "The Big Goodbye", "11001001", and (to a lesser extent) "Where No One Has Gone Before" and "Datalore" were pretty good, but so far they're the only real exceptions.

I find a number of characters to be pretty decent (Picard, Riker, Data, Geordi, etc.), but they certainly don't have the chemistry the TOS characters had. I don't like Troi and Wesley Crusher very much, though; she's a fifth wheel who contributes nothing more than pointless exposition in a boring monotone, while he is given more focus than he deserves and is, frankly, starting to get on my nerves.

And can anyone tell me what is up with all the human aliens? I can understand why TOS used them - it would have been too expensive back in the 60's to produce anything really elaborate on a regular basis - but what excuse is there here? It seems to me that the creators are just being cheap, lazy, and uncreative.

I'm going to go on and watch season 2. To be honest, though, a lot of the stuff I dislike in future ST productions seem to have their roots in this series and, really, I'm surprised it managed to survive cancellation to last seven seasons.

 

TNG was probably the most expensive series since the original BSG. I think someone behind the scenes (Roddenberry?) expressed the philosophy that audiences couldn't identify with aliens who were not marginally human looking. I could be wrong on this so many years on. There are some truly alien looking fellows in season two. DS9 by comparison has many more exotic aliens.

TNG aired in syndication just at the beginning of the demand for original first run off network hour long programming. It was in the right place at the right time, and caught the wave. In spite of how the first two seasons may seem today, it was a ratings bonanza for the stations that carried the show. It aired back to back with a series based on the George Pal version of War of the Worlds, which had more problems than TNG, and ended after a radically retooled second season.

There was an explosion of original syndicated genre shows in TNG's wake. (Babylon 5, Hercules, Xena, Highlander, Friday the 13th, etc.) That market sadly doesn't exist anymore today.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Shining-1980-Laserdisc-/310677892347?pt=US_Laserdisc&hash=item4855d86cfb

So, does Blockbuster still put labels like this on optical media? ;)

As there was an HBO movie about the Tuskegee Airmen made in 1995, maybe Lucas simply took too long to get his version made?

I think it would be more hilarious if Lloyd jumps right before the tower gets taken out.

How hard would it be to put the Coruscant skyline outside the control tower windows? That would really sell it...

Maybe a shot of passengers freaking out in Airplane 2 would work here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbv5B71KmkA

Frink, do you have plans to fix Artoo's annoying little "uh oh's!". It's almost as bad as Chewie's Tarzan yell. ;)

ILM seems like it was a great place to work back in the day.

The shot of two employees tied to the motion control camera track cracked me up. :)

Neat. Artoo's body details are abstract enough in that context to go unnoticed by the uninitiated. 

Also nice to see someone who breaks the fan stereotype too. :)

darth_ender said:

SilverWook said:

Titan A.E. got pretty close to what made Star Wars fun, IMHO...

It had a young hero with father issues, spunky heroine, Han Solo type, loveable alien sidekicks, and a MacGuffin both sides were chasing after. It had it's own humorous spin on sneaking into a secure area to rescue the heroine. There was a chase scene in a field of giant ice crystals that could give the ESB asteroid scene a run for it's money.

Did I mention the Earth gets obliterated in the first few minutes of the film? That sequence blew me away on the big screen.

It also had a great musical score, and a decent song filled soundtrack. I played the CD to death for a while.

I don't think it was marketed very well, (non cutesy animated films are still a tough sell) and it wasn't a box office success. Had it come out before Episode One, I feel it could have caught the wave of pent up demand for Star Wars that was building at the time. I went to see it about three times, and I only saw TPM once.

It does have a footnote in history as one of the first digitally projected films. Also probably one of the last feature films to have a honest to goodness Cinemascope credit.

I liked this movie so much, I collected quite a few items. Beyond the action figures, I've got animation drawings, and the now pretty darn rare Laserdisc release. (As with TPM, the LD never came out in the U.S.) I've also got a demo disc for a Playstation game that unfortunately was never released.

The movie did get a small cult following as evidenced by the amount of fan art out there. Alas, some of the fan sites I used to visit have vanished over the past decade.

If Fox would get off it's butt and release it on Blu Ray, I'd rush out and buy it. :)

What a fun topic, and what truth that this film was horribly underrated.  I really don't have much to add to the original topic, but I did want to make the extremely off topic but fully in character point that Don Bluth, the genius behind Titan A.E., Land Before Time, Anastasia, The Secret of Nimh, and many other brilliant films in competition with Disney, is...a...Mormon!

I had the chance to exchange emails with an ex employee of the studio that made Titan A.E. (The one that sold me the drawings and model sheets.) It was shut down by Fox after the film's failure, leaving a lot of animators who had relocated to Arizona up the creek. The movie had been in development for quite some time as Planet Ice before Bluth came on board. I also learned there were plot elements toned down or eliminated to avoid a PG 13 rating.

Since anime has come up...

Loosely based on the series of novels often cited as an influence on Star Wars, it was both a movie and a tv series. The animators slipped in a couple Star Wars characters into crowd scenes.

It was also the earliest use of CGI blended with traditional cel animation.

Sadly, neither version is on DVD.

Ryan McAvoy said:

vacuum said:

i also liked redtails, but back to the topic. i thought space raiders (1983) had some of the same fun that star wars had, anyone seen it? its on you tube.

I loved that Roger Corman documentary but I haven't seen any of his Sci-Fi stuff like 'Battle Beyond the Stars' or 'Space Raiders'.

Must add them to the watch list.

At school, I did eat the crisps though...

Be forewarned, SR is one of those Roger Corman productions using just about everything left over from Battle beyond The Stars,  including the FX shots. (The Wookiee like creature in the poster isn't even in the movie!) You're better off seeing BBTS first...

It's like Seven Samurai in space, and good fun. (The Blu Ray looks great.) Also, some kid named Jim Cameron worked on the models. ;)

Problem is, Family Guy has corrupted it's meaning.

Titan A.E. got pretty close to what made Star Wars fun, IMHO...

It had a young hero with father issues, spunky heroine, Han Solo type, loveable alien sidekicks, and a MacGuffin both sides were chasing after. It had it's own humorous spin on sneaking into a secure area to rescue the heroine. There was a chase scene in a field of giant ice crystals that could give the ESB asteroid scene a run for it's money.

Did I mention the Earth gets obliterated in the first few minutes of the film? That sequence blew me away on the big screen.

It also had a great musical score, and a decent song filled soundtrack. I played the CD to death for a while.

I don't think it was marketed very well, (non cutesy animated films are still a tough sell) and it wasn't a box office success. Had it come out before Episode One, I feel it could have caught the wave of pent up demand for Star Wars that was building at the time. I went to see it about three times, and I only saw TPM once.

It does have a footnote in history as one of the first digitally projected films. Also probably one of the last feature films to have a honest to goodness Cinemascope credit.

I liked this movie so much, I collected quite a few items. Beyond the action figures, I've got animation drawings, and the now pretty darn rare Laserdisc release. (As with TPM, the LD never came out in the U.S.) I've also got a demo disc for a Playstation game that unfortunately was never released.

The movie did get a small cult following as evidenced by the amount of fan art out there. Alas, some of the fan sites I used to visit have vanished over the past decade.

If Fox would get off it's butt and release it on Blu Ray, I'd rush out and buy it. :)

I don't think certain later episodes would make much sense if you've never seen Skin of Evil though?

doubleofive said:

 

SilverWook said:

You should at least stick with TNG for a while. The general consensus is they didn't hit their stride until the third season. The first two seasons have their moments though.

I watched them for the first time this year on Blu-ray, and I think that TNG S1-2 are still in the valley started by TOS S3, and starts climbing back up the peak in TNG S3.

 

There have been stories over the years of a lot of behind the scenes turmoil during the early era of the show. Don't know if anyone has written a tell all book about those days.

There was a period in the 90's when it seemed everybody from TOS was writing a book about how Shatner was a total dick, so there must be a market for that sort of thing. ;)

It's easy to forget how controversial TNG actually was back in '87. The idea of a new show without Kirk and company did ruffle some fan feathers. TOS cast a huge shadow in many ways. Some people were prejudiced against the show before the pilot even aired. I gave it a chance, but the first regular episode coming off as a retread of The Naked Time seemed like a bad omen at the time.

TNG eventually got it's space legs, and earned some respect, it just took a while.

poita said:

Just BTW, the only MUSE disc I have was the one that was jammed in my player when I bought it. :D

Yikes! How did you get it out? I had to send one of my players in for repairs a couple years back when some sensor mechanism failed, stalling the stop/eject cycle, leaving a disc stuck inside. Lucky for me there is still a dedicated reputable LD repair business left in the states.

In the case of Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers and Forbidden Planet, the 50's were the height of UFO mania. Ray Harryhausen even spoke with some alleged abductees in preparing EVTFS.

The final design of the Millennium Falcon as we know it had more to do with what someone at ILM had for lunch. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Falcon

Works for me.

Steve Grievous! Oh wow, maybe you could have the guards speak in all the "steve" riffs from MST3K #701 Night of The Blood Beast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnE2QvCvNh0

Hey, it's me. said:

Hayden is an actor, that is all. The others, Portman, Mcgregor, Neeson are 'good' actors. Jackson is a 'great' actor. Much the same as Pacino, De Niro and Nicholson are 'great' actors. The only other 'great' actors to have ever been in Star Wars are Mcguiness and Mcdairmid. That word is banded about too often are far as actors are concerned nowadays with no real substance that it is a deserved description. 

DuracellEnergizer said:

I just finished watching the three seasons of ST: TOS, and here are my thoughts/comments on the show.


I love Spock. Nimoy is definately the man! =D

The interaction between Kirk-Spock-McCoy is the best/strongest aspect of the series. I don't think the show would have been half as good without them all playing off of one another.

The first season is the strongest season. Maybe the scope seemed bigger, or the character interplay was at its strongest, but the subsequent seasons - especially the third - seemed to be missing a certain spark.

I like how the writers, even with a limited budget/effects, managed to create some really alien aliens on the show. Sure, they were overshadowed by the human/rubber forehead aliens, but I'm glad to see the creators make some effort toward bringing the truly incredible to life.

I wish Grace Lee Whitney had been on the show longer.

Without this show, my favourite scene from The Cable Guy would have never existed.

I think too many episodes were focused on Kirk and his love interest of the week to the detriment of other characters who deserved more exposure/development, like Uhura.

Pretty much all the episodes that focused on Earth-parallel cultures - with the exception of "Miri" - were all bland and only served to draw attention to the show's weakest aspect (the all-too-human aliens).

I think full-blooded Vulcans/Romulans should have been made to look more alien so as to distinguish them from Spock more.

I thought the Starfleet uniforms looked cheap and more effort should have been put into designing them.

I know it wasn't commonplace back in the 60's, but I would have liked to have seen some story/character arcs done on the show. It would have helped in the characterization department and made the show less formulaic.


I'm starting on TNG now. I'm two episodes in already, and so far I haven't seen anything all that interesting. It's too early to give up the ship yet, though, so I'll give it at least half a season before I decide whether or not to bother continuing with it.

May the ghost of William Ware Theiss haunt you for such blasphemy.  ;)

TOS uniforms are among the most iconic costumes in science fiction.

Romulans did get a more distinctive look on TNG. This created slight continuity issues later on though.

You should at least stick with TNG for a while. The general consensus is they didn't hit their stride until the third season. The first two seasons have their moments though.

Well, this was unexpected...

http://www.rifftrax.com/vod/dr-who-and-daleks

http://homes.yahoo.com/photos/12-unconventional-homes-inspired-nature-slideshow/12-unconventional-homes-inspired-nature-photo-024904784.html

A couple of these houses look like the residences of certain SW characters. Can you spot Wicket's and Admiral Ackbar's houses? ;)