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SilverWook

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Join date
9-Dec-2004
Last activity
6-Apr-2023
Posts
22,080

Post History

Post
#538938
Topic
THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released)
Time

I haven't seen a multi-standard DVD recorder. Maybe in the professional broadcast world they exist, but they would be pretty expensive.

There is a PAL version of my JVC model on Ebay right now.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DVD-Recorder-JVC-DR-M-10-Stereo-Rekorder-2-SKART-Buchse-/400243897033?pt=DE_Elektronik_Computer_TV_Video_Elektronik_DVD_Players_Recorders&hash=item5d306532c9

Post
#538894
Topic
Star Wars Blu Ray Impressions
Time

IIRC, THX 1138 is a notorious memory hog, and you actually need to put a large memory card in your player for the damned menus to load. You'd think they would test these things out before releasing them.

Looked at Episode III briefly last night. That and the bonus disc didn't seem to take unusually long to load. My current standard for bloated menus that have to reload every frakking time you go back to them is Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Weird to have the THX logo at the end of the movie. And apparently no THX calibration thingy either...

Not liking the current chapter graphics that cover half the screen for a few seconds every time you skip around the movie. Who comes up with this crap?

Post
#538426
Topic
Star Wars Blu Ray Impressions
Time

Got my bonus discs in the mail today. Only had time to skim over the documentaries so far.

All the vintage docs are from really old video masters and it shows. (MPEG2 and 192kps Dolby track.) SPFX is still cut.

Much to my surprise, Classic Creatures has different credits from it's previous video releases and looks like it was finished up on film after all. (And sports the old 20th Century Fox tv logo.) Where on the old release some of Jabba's subtitles were replaced with video captions on a black bar, this version blows up the frame to omit them entirely. Not sure if this is a recent change or not.

Putting Robot Chicken into the spoofs seems redundant, as they have been released before. The chapter stops should have been put at the beginning of each individual bit.

EDIT:Watched the whole spoofs thing. Way too many RC sketches. (We can get those on DVD and Blu, thanks Lucasfilm!) Nice to have the Super Bowl ad with "mini Vader" though.

Lots of Saturday Night Live, but nothing of Carrie Fisher's hosting. One MTV movie awards spoof of ROTS, but no Chewie finally getting his medal from Carrie in the 90's, nor that band that performed in SW costumes several years back. An all too fleeting glimpse of the Donny and Marie SW musical, that could have been included in it's entirety, but that would have meant less Robot Chicken!

A couple weird things I never saw before, (British tv?) and at least one clip in really bad Youtube quality. There's also a Candid Camera bit from 1977 with a seven year old that will make even a bitter old fanboy smile.

I can think of several things they forgot. The Cantina skit Richard Pryor did on his short lived 70's series, with the actual costumes from the movie. The Bob Hope special Mark Hamill guested on where Bob appears in Vader garb. And a skit from the short lived 80's SNL competitor "Fridays" in which the Emperor is revealed to be Ronald Reagan.

Post
#538322
Topic
Idea & Info: Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' PAL complete/preservation edition
Time

Damn! Why couldn't that screening be out on the west coast?

Kubrick had all theatrical prints snipped of the coda not long after the movie opened, so it's amazing there's an intact version out there.

There are a couple stills of the hospital scene here.

http://pineapples101.blogspot.com/2009/01/shining-deleted-scenes.html

Now if we could only see the Dr. Strangelove pie fight...

Post
#538107
Topic
General Star Wars <strong>Random Thoughts</strong> Thread
Time

 

You mean this? (I know Google-Fu.) It was expensive stuff, even in the 70's.

I found a sealed roll in a thrift store in the 80's. Finally cut a poster sized piece off of it and framed it several years ago. People who see it think it's an oil painting. ;)

There was supposed to be Empire wallpaper, but I've never seen it.

Post
#538090
Topic
What was the &quot;fatal flaw&quot; of the Prequels if you think they sucked? (aka. Let's take a break from hating on the blu-rays)
Time

As the prequels are set decades before the other films, being familiar with the OT ought not to be a major requirement to playing a part in them. (Obi Wan notwithstanding.) Either the character is there on the script page or it isn't.

Aren't we all forgetting a certain actor who wanted to tie George to a chair, and force him to say those lines back in 1976? Carrie Fisher probably still has nightmares about "faster, more intense". ;)

Post
#537989
Topic
Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!)
Time

evan1975 said:

SilverWook said:

If you ever saw the Muppets that were on Saturday Night Live the very first season, you've glimpsed Jim Henson's darker comedy side. ;)

Yeah, to be honest I didn't really like those either.  From what I've read, Jim's people weren't allowed to write for those sketches, only the SNL writers, all of whom hated the Muppets.

Puppets cursing and making sex & drug refs is only funny for about a couple minutes.  Then it gets old real quick.

What Jim Henson did with the Muppet Show and George (and his people) did with the OT was quite ingenious on how they were able to entertain people of all ages without scraping the bottom of the barrel.  Today's type of "all-ages" entertainment is sloppy, juvenile storytelling with a few veiled sexual innuendos or pop-cultural refs.

I loved those characters. Without them, Dark Crystal and the Henson Creature shop might never have happened.

There have been a couple U.K. sitcoms with puppets behaving badly that pull it off. "PETS" is the only one I've seen complete episodes of though.

Post
#537983
Topic
What was the &quot;fatal flaw&quot; of the Prequels if you think they sucked? (aka. Let's take a break from hating on the blu-rays)
Time

I'd add Palaptine's true appearance to the list. Only because I used to think the way he looked in Jedi was from years of fully using the dark side, not from having Force Lightning turned back at him for three minutes.

If it was really scar tissue, then Luke ought to look pretty bad at the end of the film.

Any suspense of who the Dark Lord really is in the prequels isn't helped by Palpy's barely shadowed face. (It's also a darn good thing he has enough free time in a busy day of manipulating the senate to sneak off, throw the hood on, and hologram contact his minions too.) Clark Kent has a better disguise. ;)

Post
#537978
Topic
Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!)
Time

evan1975 said:

none said:

TV's  Frink wrote: What?

Anchorhead wrote: .

http://www.metatube.com/en/videos/74570/Behind-The-Scens-Of-Alligator-Boots-Tv-Show/

Wow.  Jim Henson must be rolling in his grave.  No wonder Frank Oz cut his ties with the Jim Henson Studios people if they can OK dreck like this.

I should point out the Henson folks have done puppet work for outside clients since the very beginning. Even if Disney didn't own the Muppets name now, they wouldn't put the Muppet label on something like this.

If you ever saw the Muppets that were on Saturday Night Live the very first season, you've glimpsed Jim Henson's darker comedy side. ;)

Post
#537864
Topic
Preserving the...<em>cringe</em>...Star Wars Holiday Special (Released)
Time

The Aluminum Falcon said:

balsho said:

Yes thanks Aluminum Falcon for the true 4:3 version, that border is a real lame move.

You're welcome. As it is, I'm disappointed they couldn't do a transfer from the original film, which would probably have been for the best. I am however glad that they didn't try to DVNR the cartoon to make it cleaner, a practice these days which sometimes has horrendous results.

As for the Holiday Special, funny thing: I walked into my local video rental store yesterday looking for the Star Wars Blu-Ray Extra Discs and also found that they had a VHS of the Holiday Special as well as Star Wars Casting Auditions...

A video store that rents VHS in 2011? That's like an Elvis sighting! Take pictures next time. ;)