Every time I see new records for sale at Best Buy or elsewhere, I think for a split second Laserdiscs have come back from the dead. ;)
Isn't that really the European cut of the film that was on Laserdisc overseas years ago? The shorter version with the Tangerine Dream score being the U.S. version of the film. They are both original release versions.
Would be nice if they dropped us a note here once in while. Have we been forgotten about?
I'll bet someone builds the Falcon or Jabba's barge full scale and lives in it!
So, where does that leave Bluray.com posters and "true fans" like "Beast", who have constantly stated the original film is inferior in that thread? ;)
I often suspect that site is more for guys who wonder what the funny black bars are on some of their movies that won't go away on their widescreen sets.
They also haven't had anyone to taunt since the HD-DVD format died. ;)
Home Theater Forum is probably the last sane place besides here for intelligent discussion of these issues.
I remember someone on another board using the Hobbit as a pro SE argument several years ago.
The basic flaw is that I doubt the '37 edition was read or known about by as many people as saw Star Wars in it's "first printing".
I wonder if any of the OT novels have been "tweaked" since 1997?
The cover is fine, msycamore.
You can't go wrong with original poster art, something the studios often forget with their horrible DVD/Blu Ray covers. ;)
Does anyone think we'll see some store exclusive bonus discs?
I had this crazy dream Best Buy had the Holiday Special for their exclusive, and madness ensued. ;)
I was rereading Once Upon a Galaxy last night, and noticed another juicy Lucas quote.
Posting the actual page so you can see it in context.
[/IMG]
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Was Lawson able to dub his own lines to lose the accent, or did someone else re-voice him?
Interesting to hear George doing Luke's lines off camera.
A good director and or FX guy will help the actors visualize what they can't actually see.
If they do that, acting in front of green screen shouldn't be any more difficult than doing a stage play in which there's just a couple chairs and a black backdrop.
skyjedi2005 said:
SilverWook said:
to blaming Spielberg and Lucas for inventing the blockbuster.I think the blame is more about bad films like the star wars prequels, indiana jones IV, The war of the worlds remake and bayformers.
Nobody i know blames Lucas and Spielberg for their good movies Pre Jurassic Park , except for Biskind and he is a joke imho.
I was referring to the perception that the era of big budget blockbuster driven summer movies changed Hollywood for the worse. Jaws and Star Wars are the usual suspects blamed in that scenario.
Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
Of course there will be changes for 3D. George will want things that leap at the viewer to show off the 3D, so things will need to be added that do this. I expect that as they're driving through Mos Eisley, various new creatures will fly by and towards the viewer at random times.
The one I'm dreading is Jedi Rocks in 3D.
Lucas actually has said he doesn't like the "stick things in your face" 3D.
http://www.g4tv.com/videos/53047/star-wars-3d-with-george-lucas-tom-fitzgerald/
Unless these conversions aren't all finished yet, I don't see why they can't release two episodes a year. Movies don't stick around in theaters long enough to drag these out over five years!
Mithrandir said:
The way I see it from this corner of the world, is Hollywood has declined because (don't take it personal here) the north-americans have culturally declined. Ofc, speaking in a general way
When you have someone to compare (culturally), you've got to tell out the deep differences you got with those ones you are being compared with. When you're lonely in the cultural run, you just don't have to prove you're better than the other, 'cause there's no other. Pretty much the same thing that happens when you have no competition in the market.... you're not forced to make good products since you're the only offer. Now immagine this in a even bigger sphere, the cultural one.
That's a point where the cold war was useful. American culture (and capitalism btw) had to show its best image to the world, as well as the soviets did (or intended to). And what's more, they had to convince people that their respective sides were the "good" ones, so the culture in some way manifested that. From 1990 to 2008 (before the 2008 crisis), with only one global superpower, everything's more "light" haven't you noticed? (music, cinema, fictional literature, society, the union's struggles were quieter and even the perspective on life, love, etc.) As if there was nothing to discuss anymore.
I just can't believe from here how is it that a cheesy, repeated to death in sitcoms story such as the hangover gets more press than the king's speech had (at least that's what north-american TV channels show here) when there was a time you used to make many excellent movies every year.
Ofc there still are excellent (I really mean excellent) american movies (and about TV series, well you're the fricking kings of it), like someone said up here Chris Nolan's movies are very good. The guy even managed to make of a comic (Batman TDK) a deep enough story about moral values, instead the plain good vs bad guy.
Another thing that I see is that hollywood has developed an excesive taste for war or fight, rarely seen years before. And in war movies things often are presented in a very light way, while in a good drama you actually get to make that catharsis with the characters or the situation. And that makes a movie or play good, we know it from Aristotle.
From the commercials or movie trailers that reach these shores, it's like everything that's thought to be good is instantely adectivized as "epic". But epic is stupid, epic feels like nothing, unless there's a good quote of drama in it. Unless you see and feel they're fighting for something you yourself would fight for; not for a country nor a flag, but for a moral value. Again, good epic movies are the ones that have deep stories, and since today "deep" is a weird word in storytelling... Even the PT suffers from this.
I think that Thirteen Days for instance is a deeper, and more epic movie from a certain point of view, than Troy. And it's far from being an actual superproduction.
Another epic movie that worked in part because it had a deep story? The Lord of The Rings. When was it written? 1953.
Besides there's always a lot of militarist people that are so in favor of killing people or invading just because "my country's better than yours" or the classic "we're the freedom" that if you expose in a screen that phrase of Tolkien:
"It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace-all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind"
Well, some people wouldn't agree with that, some others would see the flaw of their own simple, lineal thoughts on that paragraph and would reject the whole movie, arguing that it's "not entertaining" while inside they don't like it because loosing the "general", the "national" sense of war to a more particular, human, sense of war (involving every fallen personal story, interests and name, etc) would just be too hard.
Even Lucas could have used this perspective. Showing Anakin as a "great warrior", a great general of the clone wars, just to show it as Yoda said, was don't make one great
In the U.S., The King's Speech was impossible to escape hearing about, especially at Oscar time.
Plenty of movies showing the dark underbelly of the American dream were made during the Cold War. Whether they were shown overseas I have no idea.
Hollywood's decline has been pinned down to everything from the end of the studios system in the 50's, the popularity of television, to blaming Spielberg and Lucas for inventing the blockbuster. ;)
Bingowings said:
DuracellEnergizer said:
Bingowings said:
Robocop 2 (the cyborg) was meant to be cutting edge technology, a more advanced version of the the first Robocop so having a giant plasma screen pop out of it's head for no good reason and do the growling Max Headroom thing really buggered up my enjoyment of a good film when it first came out and it looks much worse now.
It could have been worse. The cyborg himself could have been entirely CGI ;-)
In terms of looks, Grievous and Robocop 2 were about as convincing as each other.
Maximillian in The Black Hole was much more menacing than either of them and he was almost entirely a physical prop but the CGI Cylon Centurions in NuGalactica were also as threatening.
What made Grievous so goofy was more in the lines he said and the manner he was made to say them than the techniques used to render him.
If he had been vocally silent like Robocop 2 (sans CGI telly head) he would have been much more intimidating.
If you write Dirk Dastardly dialogue for a character it had better be a comedy no matter how that character is rendered.
Glad I'm not the only one who thought of good old Max when Grevious does his four arm blender impression. We need a "separated at birth" character thread sometime.
I recall one reviewer who called Maximillian a Vader rip off. Oh the irony!
Wow, what movie did he see? Wonder what he thought of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie...
Some of the scum they employ do!
Hutt Care actually provides a wide range of services to it's members. It even paid for Yarna D'al Gargan's boob enhancement surgery!
Anchorhead said:
Mrebo said:
Weird that you would feel a "huge" let down after seeing the creatures in the cantina.
The puppet characters in the cantina look equally fake. The let down for me was when the fake puppets went from background characters in a scene - to main characters in the story.
Jabba looked great.
I disagree. He looked like a giant puppet being used to portray a character that was so immobile that he would have been easily killed by his own people. The way Leia did.
One of the documentaries mentioned Jabba being styled after a "fat sultan" sort of villian. He isn't as much a physical threat as the power he still wields and the loyalty he commands.
I also heard the Hutts have a great dental plan...
And buy the Pink Floyd album "Echoes" to go with it. ;)
Gaffer Tape said:
Forgive me for my ignorance (as I've never seen 2001), but I admit I fail to see how taking the time and money to shoot "miles" of unnecessary special effects footage would produce any kind of tangible benefit over simply storyboarding them out and producing what footage needed to exist.
I only know what I read in the old making of 2001 paperback, which is probably still out of print twenty years after I found a copy in a used bookshop. They were breaking new ground, so there probably was a lot of filmed tests in any case.
The author could have embellished things though.
Douglas Trumbull was working on making a 2001 documentary, but either Warner Bros. or the Kubrick estate pulled the plug. :/
Stanley Kubrick famously had his 2001 FX crew shoot miles of footage, so he could cut his space shots like they were live action. He was probably the only director to do that though!
Well said, skyjedi! IIRC, Lucas asked Topps to make a sugar free bubblegum option for the trading cards back in the 70's for that very reason.
We don't need school playground level comments about his appearance. If he was deathly thin, I doubt people would make jokes about it.
I was listening to the commentary on the ROTS DVD last night, and just sighing when he launches into that "Tragedy" spiel.
Do current printings of the SW novelization and Splinter of the Mind's Eye still have the "From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker" subtitle?
That tool has been around since the OT was made. The Death Star plans in Episodes 4 and 6 were CGI.
The genie's been completely out of the bottle since 1982.