SilverWook

The JSC was released in 1986. Hardly the end of the Laserdisc era.

As some of you know, I'm a big fan of the original making of ESB book, Once Upon A Galaxy. One of the best parts of the book is a transcript of the day Kershner wore a wireless microphone while preparing to shoot Han getting frozen. It's an amazing snapshot of what it was like making a tense sequence, and what a good director does to make it happen. Not to mention the moment when Harrison Ford dreams up the best line Lucas never wrote. ;)

I'm pretty sure this photo was shot that same day.

Never Say Never Again aired as part of the 007 marathon on SciFi over the Thanksgiving holiday. I was a little surprised to see it as it's one of the "rogue" films like the original Casino Royale.

I hope TCM will pay him tribute, and perhaps devote a day to showing some of his pre Empire films. I've never seen Eyes of Laura Mars all the way through.

Damn, and I was already saddened over Leslie Nielsen's passing. :(

That's what I get trying to do the Reader's Digest version of our wacky ratings system from memory. ;)

I still marvel that some of the Planet of the Apes films were G rated!

As for the Italian version, I think it's a combination of being a PAL recording and not being shrunk to non anamorphic letterbox. I can see the freckles on Maggie McOmie's head!

Interesting someone at the studio at least thought the college and alternative crowd might "get" the movie. Not sure if "underground radio" is a polite term for pirate radio stations.

On the lobby card there appears to be an X rating. X was briefly used for mature content films like Midnight Cowboy in the U.S. (The only Oscar winner originally rated X, IIRC.)

But sometime after the ratings system was revamped slightly, (GP was dropped and R added) the X rating came to symbolize pornographic films alone. The MPAA ratings board abandoned the X and replaced it with NC-17, but the stigma never went away, and no major studio wants to release a film with such a rating. Many media outlets here refuse to carry advertising for NC-17 films.

That Lucas made a potentially X rated film is hilarious.

The Japanese LD is the same print source, but it's hard to say for sure it's better than the U.S. release. It's a little disheartening I can see more fine detail in what erri_wan sent me.

I'm still waiting on that Betamax tape to show up.

I probably won't be able to send anything out to msycamore until next week. After Thanksgiving and the first weekend of holiday madness here has passed. Wish I could play "Buy More! Buy More Now!" over the P.A. system at the mall. ;)

Interesting things keep popping up on ebay.

Some nice sets of stills

http://cgi.ebay.com/Thx-1138-23-Stills-George-Lucas-Star-Wars-Set-/130459132058?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e5ff8609a

http://cgi.ebay.com/Thx-1138-28-Stills-George-Lucas-Star-Wars-Set-B-/130459132244?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e5ff86154

The original pressbook. I've been intrigued by these things ever since Criterion put one on the Robinson Crusoe on Mars Laserdisc.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Original-1971-THX-1138-Pressbook-10-pages-no-cut-outs-/400176306652?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d2c5dd9dc

And this one just made me crack up. I'll let you figure out why. ;)

http://cgi.ebay.com/George-Lucas-THX-1138-Vintage-1971-/390260122272?pt=FR_SK_dvd_Photo&hash=item5add50e2a0

Your cable or satellite provider might be the culprit here. My cable company has been guilty of screwy audio for decades. I still have to put up with certain channels that have the audio cranked to earbleeder levels.

My Sci Fi feed went all blocky and dropout ridden just in time for the marathon too.

Too bad the only reviews on Amazon so far are from people who haven't actually bought the set.

Camcorders didn't come along until the mid '80's. If someone managed this with a bulky camera and portable VTR in 1980, without being seen, I'm impressed.

They would have likely had to swap batteries halfway through.

It would really be something if a 70mm recording of ESB surfaced!

Well the timecoded version was leaked from somewhere in the postproduction pipeline. The new Harry Potter movie is the latest example of this.

I've read enough badly translated instruction manuals to believe a movie could be similarly mangled. And let's not forget "All your base are belong to us."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icVy7Ve6y6A

I'm pretty sure I've seen other Hollywood films since that have the director's name on the end credits. Either there's a loophole with the DGA, or things have been relaxed over the years.

The clips used in promos like this can come from whatever is lying around or within reach.

If they somehow did put the 97 SE on DVD, that would be interesting and confusing at the same time.

Seems like some people don't keep up with the 16mm preservation efforts around here.

And some of us like Howard the Duck, thank you very much. At least we got it on DVD in it's untouched 1986 version. If it had been anyone else's name on the producer credit, there wouldn't have even been much of a fuss. There are far worse adaptations of Marvel comics out there. ;)

Unfortunate that they do that. What I saw of the late night USA broadcasts seemed to be free of those damn pop-ups strangely enough. Or else they were not doing it every five minutes. ;)

generalfrevious said:

Anyways, if Spielberg directed Jedi, it wouldn't have made the film any better than it already was, because Spielberg isn't that great of a director to begin with. He's just a popular director.

He wasn't that popular in the wake of 1941. Raiders and E.T. proved he was no one trick pony in Hollywood.

Jedi would have benefited from having Steven direct. Lucas would not have been able to backseat drive him. And Harrison Ford might not have phoned it in.

A fellow named Kubrick apparently thought Steven was a pretty good director. ;)

The Sci Fi channel is doing a 007 marathon over Thanksgiving. A chance to watch the films that aren't on Blu Ray yet in HD if nothing else.

Now I'm left to wonder, could Lucas have gotten away with frozen poop and yellow snow jokes in a PG rated film in 1980? ;)

I was thinking more along the lines of hiring a lawyer willing to start a consumer fraud lawsuit. But the sticker idea has merit too. ;)

Neither are the old cliffhanger serials Indy was inspired by, but few younger people today even know about those.

Mythbusters could settle the whole fridge thing, but I doubt even they could get the amount of TNT needed to simulate a hydrogen bomb detonation! ;)

IIRC, the ebay auction has a bigger image of the record label. Maybe someone could put it over another picture of a 45 with a little photoshopping?

Tv commercials on 16mm were the standard until the 80's, so something could pop up on ebay.

I saw a revival screening of TOD a few years ago, and nobody asked for their money back. ;)

My local Costco has it in stock already. The Vader Poster is on one side of the box, and the Marylin Monroe is on the other.  It's almost as big and hefty as some Laserdisc boxsets of yore.

"Star Wars Episode IV:A New Hope" is the only clue as to what's actually inside though.

Sounds a bit fishy. Richard Marquand's film "Eye of the Needle" has some quite graphic sex and nudity, (not to mention violence) and it was the film Lucas screened before choosing him for Jedi. Plus the whole idea of Jedi being celibate priests didn't really exist at the time.

Of course, George did invent the whole Slave Leia/metal bikini business, so maybe he's less prudish than Steven! ;)

Thanks for finding the radio spots, myscamore. Odd they didn't put them on the DVD or Blu. I guess we don't need that record now. ;)

I'm wondering if the tv commercials are out there somewhere?

Won the betamax tape for less than a fiver, and free shipping too. Who the heck the other three bidders were chasing down an ancient pan and scan videotape I'll never know!

It's probably the post Star Wars cut, but the original logo might be intact.