Just wondering what the "new" footage consisted of.
Love the retro poster art with the Kenner style logo on the cover. :)
So, how long would it take to scan this little item frame by frame? ;)
Interesting you're hot-rodding a Sony. The consensus back in the day was that they were nowhere near as good as Pioneer models. (I personally owned a MDP-333 for a while and was unhappy with it.) Although the indusrtrial units seem to be the exception.
Any idea how it will handle moderate to severe laser rot? One legendary feature of the X0 is the ability to play badly rotted discs.
With all the rare LD titles still out there, I'm amazed nobody thought of this sooner!
Will you be posting more pictures of this beast? :)
Radioland Murders was one of those projects Lucas kept mentioning since the '70's. I have no idea why it took so long to finally get made. IIRC, it was also the debut of the current Lucasfilm logo.
I'm kind of miffed it enjoyed two DVD releases, while Howard the Duck went unreleased for so long, and we're still waiting for Twice Upon a Time!
Film reels are prints. Negatives are the actual camera footage which are cut and spliced together to make the film.
The same terms are used for 35mm photos.
Kenner always called it a "power droid". A fan coined the name "Gonk" at some point and it sort of stuck.
Nobody besides George has the negatives, unless somebody actually broke into his house ala "Free Hat". ;)
Holy crap! It went for $1055! I hope the winner was someone on this board.
And no, it wasn't me...
It's possible that the Gonk was venting coolant in a vain attempt to prevent being hurt. The device being used would simply melt the droid's feet, why would there be steam?
Droids feel pain (or it's digital equivalent) for the same reasons we do. How would you know if you stuck your hand in really hot water if you couldn't feel it? You would never pull you hand away in time to prevent severe injury.
You wouldn't want your expensive droid to melt it's arms off because it couldn't tell how hot some dangerous item it was handling had become.
And Sluggo, don't give George any new ideas! :P
Kurtis Bahr was still doing repairs last I heard. He was a regular in that newsgroup.
Which is what I thought. All the fullscreen versions are probably from the MTV broadcast. The letterbox version I've seen looks like a VHS dupe of a workprint. Some narration was missing from that one.
Was this part of a compilation of MJ videos or something?
That was amazing! And I finally got to see the Academy Awards I couldn't stay up for. ;)
I wonder if the water slide footage was from that infamous day Lucas drove up with the suits from Fox in tow, who were nervous how the FX budget money was being spent.
There was a Japanese LD release?
Didn't say I was going to bid. Not at that price, and certainly without knowing for sure what's on it. ;)
I've yet to see any bootleg version that looks better that what I taped off MTV in the 90's. (Pan and scan, unfortunately.) The only time it was ever shown on tv, IIRC.
If a disc like this gets into private hands, maybe the video portions of Star Tours will pop up someday.
With all due respect, your average movie theater's projection booth back in the day was hardly a pristine, clean, dust free environment either! And I saw no evidence he damaged the prints.
The AFI, BFI, and the Library of Congress all hold archival prints.
Unless one of us has a 35mm telecine in their basement, (or $40k to spend on one) there isn't a whole lot anyone could do with such prints anyway...
Could this be the movie, or just the documentary shown while waiting in line?
The “TDL” on the label may refer to Tokyo Disneyland.
"Once Upon a Galaxy" has probably the best behind the scenes info on Empire. It was written journal style by the publicist on the set, literally from the beginning of production and into post production. Whether it ever gets reprinted is anyone's guess. If the recorded audio interviews still survive, they would make for great Blu Ray extras someday!
I've toyed with the idea of scanning the entire book, as I fear it would be edited to reflect George's current take on things.
Someone on this board had access to some SE DTS discs a couple years back, but I have no idea if they could figure out how to play them back. The players used in a theater are proprietary and synch up to a timecode embedded in the film.
Dolby Digital is actually on the film print itself.
Guess I should have said it doesn't bother me that much. It's original footage, and no CGI schenanigans in sight. ;)
Had the special edition simply been a cleaned up restored longer cut, things might be different now.
It doesn't bother me, either. Except for the obvious foreground guy walking though they added to cover the dialog about Luke's father that was cut. Nothing about what Red Leader said actually contradicts the prequels. (And it stands to reason Anakin was a popular "war hero" who simply vanished from average citizen's point of view.)
Of course, if the early Biggs scenes had been put in, we'd all be nitpicking about how he managed to find and join the Rebel Alliance in less than a week. ;)
And yet Lucas puts the meeting up with Biggs on Yavin scene in the Special Edition, and everybody is supposed to know who the heck this guy is. ;)
Great interview! Thanks for the link!
I've long believed that lightsaber building sequence was fully shot, or else why would ILM create a matte painting of the cave exterior?
I remember seeing this previewed on Sci-Fi Buzz at the time. There were glimpses of a kick ass Vader/Luke saber fight, and a life-size Millennium Falcon that comes in for a landing! Pity it never made it to the states.
Why they included Tucker of all things, but leave out THX-1138 and Howard the Duck, I'll never know! ;)
Between the AFI, BFI, and the Library of Congress, there are several archival quality prints out there. (That Lucas won't allow to be screened.) If the negatives really were dismantled in the process of making the SE's, it's not impossible to do something with the prints.
It would not cost millions to scan the best available prints and clean them up. If Lucas would let Criterion do the OT and THX-1138, I'd be a happy camper.