SilverWook

Oh yeah! Forgot about him...

Watched Episode III with the archival commentary, and there are some really weird issues with shimmering, almost snowy grain infesting certain shots. Only certain parts of the image are affected though. The topper is white speckles on the Emperor's hood in the final scene!

I'm going to have to try watching on another player this week to figure out what the heck is going on. Haven't had this crop up with any other Blu Ray I've watched to date though...

Serling1979 said:

Harmy said:

Actually, I think that the comparison of BD to LD is quite accurate in the sense that BD is to DVD what LD was to VHS (here's hoping that BD will become somewhat more mainstream though).

 

I think this is the reason why BD will ultimately fail. There is nothing wrong with BD but there is nothing exceptionally new about it either. It's like a DVD but with higher resolution and while HD-TVs have become more common so have upscaling algorithms. Do I shell out another $20 to get the movie on Blu-ray or do I use my DVD? It's like the Star Trek rule, every movie with an odd number, or every other Bond being terrible (though Timothy Dalton was just mis-cast). It's just that DVD was such a revolution that BD didn't have enough new stuff to offer. Whatever the next home video medium will be, it will rock in terms of sales but BD, while still a good medium, is bound to crash.

Blu Ray is being sold in stores that never carried Laserdiscs. There was a time in the late 80's/early 90's I had to plan a trip to Los Angeles just to buy them.

The players broke the magic $100 barrier last Christmas. The cheapest low end LD player would have set you back four hundred at the very least.

And there's a Blu Ray bargain bin at my local supermarket. I bought The Dark Crystal for ten bucks! I paid nearly a hundred bucks for the Collector's Edition LD back in the day.

How sweet it is now. ;)

Harmy said:

Actually, I think that the comparison of BD to LD is quite accurate in the sense that BD is to DVD what LD was to VHS (here's hoping that BD will become somewhat more mainstream though).

Just look at it - 

"loossless" audio?

Even though I'm a dyed in the wool Laserdisc fan, high end VHS and Beta Hi-fi decks could give stereo LD audio a run for it's money. (Something I'm grateful for with the few music video tapes I've preserved.) One department store I used to frequent in the mid 80's always seemed to have a Star Wars VHS Hi-Fi tape running in the tv department on their early home theater demos.

Somebody went to bathroom during the opening scene?

Survived the prequel extras disc last night. Most of the deleted scenes are pretty raw due to the way these films were shot. None of these were finished up like the DVD scenes were.

I had to chuckle at the revelation that Jar Jar was originally going to have a pet sidekick named "Blarf". I kid you not. Did George catch the Lost in Space movie and mercifully scuttle this idea? The world may never know!

The animatics for Episode III are interesting. The extended escape from Grevious' ship had some nice walking on the walls as the gravity shifted. I don't think Artoo actually saving Palpatine from falling would have played very well though.

The Spielberg created Utapau chase animatic is almost Monty Python in the sheer number of clones being run over. Obi Wan actually knocks several of his own troops off riding that lizard. At one point, Grevious is grinding the wheel of his vehicle and clone body parts are flying everwhere. (I don't know if this is supposed to be clones getting maimed or they didn't have a shape for random debris.) Obi Wan pulls a couple Indiana Jones type maneuvers along the way.

Obi Wan killing Grevious is much more grisly here. I had no idea Steven was a gore fiend. ;)

Also of note is the General appears to have Darth Maul eyes here.

The Kashyyk battle animatic has some cool bits I wish they had actually shot. I almost prefer the intercutting of Yoda reacting to all the Jedi deaths to the final version.

I wonder how many people have Blu Ray players hooked up via composite cables, like the guy who wrote that newspaper article a few years back? ;)

Happy Birthday Mark!

And just in case anybody is wondering what he's been up to lately...

Did someone here bid on that magazine already? I'd like to avoid a bidding war. ;)

Some of the troopers falling over dead are just hysterical. Especially after they start piling up.

Disappointed the General Madine footage doesn't have this shot.

buddy-x-wing said:

I just wish there was some kind of audio commentary or someone to explain to me , that after 30 years why Han's Line in EMPIRE "You could use a good kiss!" was cut from the Blue Ray? I just wanna hear some kind of logical explanation as to how deleting that line ADDS anything or IMPROVES the quality of the movie?  it's like cutting out the punchline of the joke??

Does George really hate HAN SOLO that much that he needs to water down his character at every turn?

I just want to hear the rationale that went into making the decision to remove the line, because now all I hear is the gap where it used to be.

 

I hope this is a joke, or one hell of a audio remixing mistake!

Watched the Jedi section of Disc 8.

A couple little surprises here. A blooper from Star Wars where the mirror under the landspeeder falls off, and a glimpse of the "lightman" alien they couldn't get to work in Jabba's palace.

There are bits of the video storyboard for the speeder bike chase seen here that aren't in "Star Wars to Jedi". Would have been nice if it were shown in it's entirety, especially as split screen with the finished sequence. Someone forgot to correct Dennis Muren when he says G.I. Joe figures were used. It was Kenner SW figures of course. ;)

One of the movie transitions throws Wicket's new uber creepy eyes at you without warning. I blacked out for a couple minutes I think. :P

Some key props and models should be here but aren't. Jabba's barge and Vader's reveal helmet are no brainers. The metal bikini is represented to all perverted fanboy's delight.

Richard Marquand is curiously absent. (Is that his voice feeding lines to the rebel pilots?) They couldn't include even one vintage interview clip?

Harrison Ford on Lucas as a director seems misplaced here unless you subscribe to the backseat director theory.

You can find the bonus discs all by their lonesome on Ebay too.

Mr. Bungle said:

Baronlando said:

Looking at the charts, boy they aren't kidding when they say blu-ray sales are still relatively soft. Not for Star Wars, just in general. (The headline isn't is as great if you say "In it's first week Star Wars sells a fraction as many copies as the dvd of Beverly Hills Chihuahua!")

Yeah, and there's a significant portion of people who 1) don't own a Blu-ray player, 2) don't own an HD set, 3) already have the DVD set and are fine with that, 4) are kind of strapped these days. Regardless, there's a huge spin here in selling this as some massive success story. Yeah, it's definitely great news for a format that some people have stupidly compared to laserdisc and declared DOA. But people in general don't buy movies the like they did 5 - 10 years ago.

 

As Laserdisc had a healthy 20+ year run as a niche format, (and pioneered many things we now take for granted with DVD and Blu Ray today) that's actually a backhanded compliment in my book. ;)

I'd wager most consumers aren't even aware of any controversy. Not everyone is as plugged into things as we are. The situation would be the same no matter what movie was involved.

Whether or not most viewers of the Blu Rays notice things have been changed again, only time will tell.

Another Ebay item of interest.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1970-California-Living-George-Lucas-new-age-film-maker-THX-1138-/110748679364?pt=Magazines&hash=item19c922bcc4

This would appear to be one of those weekly magazines one would find  tucked into Sunday newspapers. People didn't save these as often as regular magazines.

I'm about half way through Disc 8.

The "fly through" of the Lucasfilm archives is a neat introduction. Unfortunately, now every potential master criminal in the world knows what George keeps in his nondescript barn on the ranch. :P

The rotating views of props models and costumes are pretty neat. At this resolution, the models are really showing their age. Vader's TIE appears to have been dropped at some point since it was shown on the old DC Laserdisc set. A bit of the front cockpit window is missing, and one of the wings is askew!

Seeing the prototype models is also really cool. The prequel ships could have looked more like them. ;)

Tons of pre-production art here. Some of it will be very familiar if you own "The Art Of" books for each film.

You can literally see the seams and stitches in some of the costumes.

It's interesting the matte paintings are about the shape and size of our modern video displays. The comparison wipes between them and movie footage leads to one goof though. The original Cloud City apartment painting wipes to it's CGI replacement. Whoops.

I would have personally liked to see even more props and costumes from each film than are shown here. An old fashioned Laserdisc style still gallery would not have taken up much space. Nor would the inclusion of the old Laserdisc extras.

The interview segments are really short, but informative. I never knew what was the first FX shot ILM actually completed for Star Wars.  A piece in the Dagobah section with Lucas discussing the Force sidetracks into prequel footage long enough to make you wonder if somebody goofed up.

It's irksome to see some vintage behind the scenes footage presented here in better video quality than the old documentaries got.

Can't say much about the deleted scenes that hasn't been said already elsewhere. Been waiting more than half my life to see some of these, and having them in HD warts and all is probably one saving grace of the whole hullabaloo. If you can get this disc by itself on Ebay, do it!

The "play all" feature is nice if you hate button mashing the remote through sub menus all day. (Or just want to watch the deleted scenes.) Being able to start at the beginning of the Empire or Jedi sections without skipping a hundred chapters to get to them would have been nice.

Will slog through the Jedi section tomorrow.

The seller is James Van Hise, who was a regular contributor to Starlog Magazine back in the day. Along with a lot of other things.

Spotted these on Ebay...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-STAR-WARS-1976-color-convention-photos-Mark-Hamill-/290258021875?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4394b9edf3

Mark looks great in that shirt doesn't he?

I don't think this has been seen before though...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1976-color-convention-8x10-photo-STAR-WARS-room-/230591375336?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35b05127e8

I can't imagine any costume or prop from the trilogy being displayed like this today. (Note the handwritten signs and spelling.) It's a wonder they weren't stolen! I also wonder how many people "jumped the rope" for a photo op.

Connotation or not, the phrase is often used to trivialize rational arguments and steer a conversation right into the ground.

I'm no fan of that phrase either, matter of fact I despise it.

If she's tweeting in a professional capacity, that requires a certain amount of decorum. One shouldn't get sucked into the lunatic fringe segment fanboy statements, or personally engage in flame wars with them. That's playing right into their hands, whether they are loons or simply trolls.

Did she take over for Sansweet when he left? Or is this a different position?

Johnboy3434 said:

Promus said:

They know we exist, and they know what we want - Lucas can't hold out forever.

If by "forever", you mean "until he dies", I have a feeling that's exactly what he'll do. The man loves money, but I think he loves having the last laugh even more. We've badgered him for this so much and for so long that I think denying it to us has become a matter of principal to him.

After he dies, though? I have a feeling whoever takes his place will see the potential in a remastered OOT.

Also, I just read about the Twitter debacle with Katie Lucas. I won't hold a single word against her, because anyone who would take their grievances to her is an asshole to begin with. If people came on my Facebook talking shit about my old man, I'd treat them like dirt too.

On the flip side of the same coin, wasn't she also posting tweets that could be interpreted as baiting angry fanboys?

I'm still slogging through the documentaries disc.

Anatomy of a Dewback doesn't look any better than it's old CD-ROM incarnation. The part where they consider using alternate takes when they can't find the original negative of the troopers in the desert shot is unintentionally funny. If they can put a CGI lizard into the movie, surely they can darken a stormtrooper's eye lenses and use the alternate take if need be?

Conversations with the masters is nice, but really short. Probably Irvin Kershner's last interview? (No mention of his passing.) Also gives the impression there's still tons of behind the scenes footage we haven't seen yet.

Star Wars Tech is the only thing on the disc in HD.

Star Warriors is really good. I hope all the internet smart asses who were trashing this thing sight unseen feel bad now!

If there are any easter eggs on this disc, I haven't found them.

Davnes007 said:

Instructions:

Darn you! I haven't had a Roy Rogers burger in over 30 years! Where the heck am I supposed to find one on the west coast at this hour? ;)

Funny how "The Padawan Menace" Lego movie actually went to town with this idea.