SilverWook

Leonardo said:

Would you guys say there's not that much interest in space since... well, the 70's? Nowadays, if something happens in the scientific world regarding some new conquers in the matter of the colonization of outer space, it gains a little attention in the news, say a couple of weeks, people may think "huh, neat" but then it's quickly forgotten in favor of some blonde bimbo who gained her 15 minutes of fame doing something absolutely inane and vulgar on tv.

I mean, let's face it, space, sad as it is, has lost its appeal.

 

....Meet Leo, dispenser of platitudes...

If you've seen the Apollo 13 movie, the public and the media were getting ho hum about the moon landings until things went awry. It's unfortunate considering the technological spinoffs that touch our lives everyday. I've encountered someone reasonably well educated recently who didn't know there was more than one moon landing. *sigh*

How many people know we have an honest to goodness space station up and running right now?

I did see plenty of young people who were wide eyed with awe by the hardware on display at the Kennedy Space center on my vacation, so maybe there's still hope. Just being there for the first time since the 70's made me feel like a kid again.

George Lucas once expressed his hopes that Star Wars would get kids excited about real life space travel.

That some Universal titles apparently look better on HD DVD than the DNR heavy Blu Ray versions is both funny and sad.

The Dark Lord of the Sith does get around...

Anchorhead said:

CatBus said:

3000:1 - A famous Hollywood hillside landmark gets some of its letters replaced,

You should have taken that bet...

Would be even cooler with the Space Shuttle flyby from last week. ;)

Glad it's nothing serious.

Did someone trip over the power cord?

"suspended page" has an ominous sound to it...

GavSalkeld said:

Man, I must get a LD player... but my TV only has component or HDMI inputs! :(

Both my Samsung flat panels do composite video through one of the component terminals. Check to see if one of the three component connectors has a yellow marking, or consult your manual.

Bingowings said:

I love party games so to mark Sci-Fi's birthday lets play "How Many Science Fiction Shows Are They Showing On Sigh-Figh tonight?

You'd think they would celebrate it in some way. (Without drawing attention to the fact they are drowning in reality shows now.) Although I doubt anyone who founded the channel is still on board.

That very first FTL Newsfeed was eerily prophetic about Star Wars in a way.

No doubt. SW was compared to The Wizard of Oz from the very beginning.

And Lucas is a Kurosawa fan.

ATMachine said:

HewittYoda: That's totally intentional. As I noted in another thread, C3PO was definitely modeled on the robot Maria from Metropolis.

Since Metropolis is a black and white movie, the Maria robot appears silver on film; likewise, in the first draft of ANH, Lucas wrote that Threepio was chrome-colored. However, the female robot costume was actually painted a bronze color on set--a fact which Lucas must have discovered, because in his subsequent drafts of ANH, he refers to C3PO as bronze in hue.

R2D2 was modeled on the robots Huey, Dewey, and Louie from the film Silent Running--squat, blocky repair droids with claw arms, which talk in C64-style internal-speaker bleepy/bloopy noises instead of normal human speech. The robots on that film were "played" by double amputees within the metal shells. It was concept artist Ralph McQuarrie who decided to make R2D2 cylindrical instead of boxy like the Silent Running robots.

BTW, one other thing that may be of interest: in the ANH third draft, Luke watches TV (and later records a goodbye message when he runs away from home) on a small, handheld flatscreen device. It's clearly modeled on the portable TV sets seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey, during the scene where the astronauts watch their interview with the BBC. (Said handheld TVs kind of resemble modern iPads.)

IIRC, those were referred to as "telepads" in the making of 2001 book, and you can even see IBM logos on them watching the film in HD.

Joel Hodgson has cited Silent Running as one of the inspirations for MST3K.

The Metropolis Maria/Threepio inspiration was acknowledged early on.

http://www.df.lth.se/~ola/Starwars/StarWars/starwars6.html

negative1 said:

SilverWook said:

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/11397139-post65.html

Is this a reference to ot.com?

discussed here already:

=================

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-REMASTERED-is-now-released/post/596795/#TopicPost596795

later

-1

That specific post was discussed four days before it existed? Someone on here owns a time machine and has been holding out on us! ;)

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/11397139-post65.html

Is this a reference to ot.com?

Bingowings said:

Laika's Revenge : The space dog returns mutated and super powered to bury the bones of every last human being that exiled her to a her orbit of doom.

Tagline THE BITCH IS BACK!

My elementary school science texts were so messed up, I read no less than three different fates for poor Laika. I suppose the veil of Soviet secrecy in their space program back then didn't help much.

When I toured KSC over the summer, there was a small exhibit dedicated to the brave primates and other critters who blazed the way for men into space. The tour guide emphasized how every effort was made for American space test animals to come home alive, unlike the competition. ;)

Some praise and interesting info in this thread.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk/604406-star-wars-restoration-hits-milestone.html

This post in particular caught my eye.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/11368548-post37.html

"I can tell you this, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts has an unfaded Technicolor-process print of Star Wars, and good condition 70mm prints of Empire and Jedi. And that place is full of film students who all undoubtedly loathe what Lucas has done to the films. Get those prints to this mysterious scanner and we'd have HD editions of the original cuts of all three films by the end of the year."

Apparently it's the same, just not with the goofy remix.

It's getting progressively worse for me today. Longer pages are really getting hung up. It's like 1990's dial up service!

Doctor M, have you done anything with this lately?

An opportunity to get the LD boxset cheap has come up, and I was wondering if there was any interest in capturing the mono AP track from it?

It's worth mentioning that some classic 3D flicks are finally making their way to Blu Ray in their original stereoscopic glory. The HTF has a 3D subforum where you can read about the upcoming releases of Creature From the Black Lagoon and House of Wax among others.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/f/57136/3d-blu-ray

I clearly remember one clueless movie critic implying Dune was ripping off Star Wars back in 1984. *sigh*

Those pictures are similar to a Polish subtitled print that was on Ebay a couple years back. Right down to the rusty film cans...

I didn't watch the whole episode, but it's uttered around 56 minutes in. The blonde secretary apparently says "that's a switch" a lot.

I really need to get those episodes sometime. They escaped my obsessive compulsive taping of the show back then. The minute I get a fan copy, Shout Factory will probably announce them for the newest set though. ;)

That someone would be me. ;)

Only one I could find in a hurry is 420 The Human Duplicators...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2j9jWFjE_I

It's mostly Crow who says it, IIRC.

And happy 1000th post!

EDIT:Found another one. 705 Escape 2000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXBEqMtOk5g

Tom Says "Jimmy Smits" at 6:55

Has anyone ever checked out the earliest LD release of FRWL for this? They generally used the same video master across all formats back then.

Baronlando said:

Hah, long ago Cryogenic flipped OUT on me over who knows what, complete with hysterical, rambling PM messages. It was probably right about the time he became aware I was here too, and hence UNMUTUAL to the church. (on a surprisingly related note, go see THE MASTER). So to answer the question in the topic, we are seen as really, really bad people.  

If we're all UNMUTUAL, does that make George Number Two, and Skywalker Ranch The Village? ;)

I've had large weather balloons following me around lately...

Bingowings said:

Party On!

I totally wore out mine as a kid. Did yours come with the little stickers?

I actually have another one someplace a relative gave me still in the box. I solemnly vow to wear it when we can see the OOT in a movie theater again, or when I finally have the nerve to dress as Arthur Dent for Halloween. ;)