Tobar

This game sounds fascinating.

Something I just now noticed:

Mon Mothma

Mon Calamari

DuracellEnergizer said:

Oh, well -- perhaps I'll find better examples of similarily different movies (if that makes any sense) to compare and contrast some another day.

 What about the American and Mexican versions of Dracula? Superman II ended up being directed twice as well.

doubleofive said:

My friends have a great interview up with the writers of Star Tr3k. Check it out!

http://trek-fm.squarespace.com/commentary-trek-stars/87

 I think I pulled a muscle from cringing when Mike said Trek 09 was the best Star Trek movie of all time.

I just wanted to say thanks Harmy, it means a lot. =)

I know I said my last post was it but I really felt like I had to address this.

Harmy said:

And losing picture information isn't really an argument - losing a small part around the edges is not only not altering the movie, it is proper. 

Losing some of the image in projection and overscan on televisions is a technical limitation of the medium. Removing more of the image than is necessary to fit the proper aspect ratio of a film is a creative decision that does not fit within the purview of what is supposed to be a restoration.

You would never see Criterion round crop one of their releases and I think most would agree that they're authorities in this area.

If the rounded corners provide you personally with a sense of nostalgia that's a fine thing. But rounded theater screens are not universal. Providing it as an option would have been perfectly fine but now they're something that has been forced on everyone. And that just reminds me of something someone else would do.

I would hope after all the hard work to undo what's been done to the film over the years, that you'd be understanding of that.

Here's the last thing I'll say about it.

From the beginning the goal of the project was to restore the films as much as possible to their original theatrical presentations in as high a quality as possible.

Painstaking work was put into fixing the myriad problems and changes the films have suffered over the years.

Some guesswork was required and was inevitable but until now there were no changes done to the films just on a whim.

Restraining ourselves from changing things just for our own tastes in our restoration efforts is what separates us from the Camerons and Lucases of the world.

I can just imagine what Lucas' reaction would be if he were to ever see this. He'd probably laugh and think to himself how even these people who claim they want the originals can't even help themselves from altering the films to their own liking.

To those that say, "oh you probably never would have even noticed it!" No one would have ever noticed the random changing of the color of the Saurian's shirts in the Mos Eisley Cantina if it hadn't been pointed out. Does it make that change okay since next to no one would have ever noticed it?

It's excessive cropping of the image and a loss of image information. To those that say, just crop it out yourself, that would entail an even bigger loss of image information. The shape of projector screens is not relevant in that the vast majority of the people who will ever watch these projects will do so on monitors and television sets. It wasn't done for technical reasons, just aesthetic ones.

It was a change for the sake of change and is antithetical to what a restoration project is all about.

Carrie Fisher's Daughter Billie Lourd Joins 'Star Wars: Episode VII'

No details were given for Billie Lourd's role in 'Star Wars 7', although it's possible that the daughter of Carrie Fisher may only have a cameo.

Billie Lourd, the daughter of Carrie Fisher and Creative Artists Agency chairman Bryan Lourd, has joined the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII.

Latino Review's report does not reveal which character she may be playing, but it may be just a cameo appearance. The 21-year-old Billie Lourd does not have any acting credits to her name, so if this report is true, she will be making her feature film debut in the highly-anticipated Star Wars: Episode VII, which is set 30 years after Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi.

It's worth noting that the Star Wars: Episode VII script, co-written by director J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan, reportedly features the offspring of Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), so it's possible that Billie Lourd may be playing Princess Leia's daughter. Naturally, that has not been confirmed, but stay tuned for more updates as Star Wars: Episode VII continues production in London.

hairy_hen said:

The level of nitpicking that goes on never ceases to amaze me.

If Harmy is going to be called out for something so miniscule, then I might as well be taken to task for the 5.1 tracks that accompany these releases. 

 I can't speak for Tyrphanax but I've never listened to your 5.1 tracks. I always go for the mono.

As it happens, film prints actually do have rounded corners, and given that these movies were shot on film, it's not like such a thing is coming out of nowhere.

Except it did come out of nowhere. No home release of any film I can think of has done such a thing. None of the previous releases of SWDE had such cropping. Will there be a 2.7 release that adds it in?

At the end of the day, this is not a complete restoration as such.  The stated goal is to recreate the experience of watching the original versions of the movies, starting from the special edition and working backwards.

If we're going to start altering the film to recreate the original theater going experience why not lose some of the clarity of the picture and add in dirt and scratches to more closely approximate a print of the film that's been running in the theater for a while?

As for this being some kind of minuscule nitpicking. There's a difference between having to make a compromise because of the sources you have to work with and making your own creative decisions to alter the film for no reason other than your own tastes. And that distinction is an important one.

Oh wow, I only knew that character from the Muppet Vision show at Disneyland.

Mmm...both of those gifs seem pretty self-explanatory to me but I'll leave them unexplained to preserve the mystery for you. =P

Unless you're talking about the image you posted, in which case I have no idea.

That channel sounds amazing. Figures we don't have it in my state. =(

darklordoftech said:

Which brings me to something that I love about TCW: that it reveals that Maul's KISS-reject look comes from him being a Nightbrother, not from him being a Sith.

 That's been an aspect of it from the very beginning though. Eeth Koth, another Zabrak and a member of the Jedi council itself also sported facial tattoos:

Harmy said:

As to the rounded corners, they were there from the very first WP and no one's complained about them until now, so they are obviously not a big deal and since I like them and it would be a serious hassle to remove them now, even if I wanted to, I don't see any point in discussing them any further.

 Well I think it is worth some discussion. It's the one change that goes against the spirit of the project by introducing something that wasn't there originally. Secondly, though a minor concern. In the future if someone was working on an ESB fanedit or any kind of fan project for whatever reason nothing from this project could be used because of it. If it's too late in the process to undo okay, but it just seems like a questionable decision is all.

Wow, I have to say you've really outdone yourself here. Fantastic work! Though I do have to agree with the others in regard to the rounded corners.

DrCrowTStarwars said:

 Does it still have the borderline racist characters and sexual and drug based humor that feels out of place in a movie based on a cartoon about giant robots?  Also can you tell what is going on in the action scenes?  Because those were my problems with the last three movies.

 Nope, nope and most of the time.

TV's Frink said:

 Did you watch with a 5.1 sound system?

 Nope, just a stereo television.

TV's Frink said:

 Do you know which version you watched?  The original only had stereo sound but he did an updated version with 5.1.  I saw the stereo one and have had the 5.1 version on my HDD waiting for a watch for a while now.

 It was the updated release with the 5.1 audio.

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Now that was definitely more like it! A quantum leap above the dreck that was RotF. Michael Bay actually delivered a great movie about transforming robots. All of the idiocy from the previous entries was nowhere to be found. Optimus was still a little too edgy but overall it was a breath of fresh air compared to the others. I'm actually really looking forward to the sequel.

RicOlie_2 said:

This was also the first time I've seen Ally Sheedy

 You mean you've never seen Short Circuit?!?!?! 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Sheesh. A decent fanedit might be able to salvage an at least watchable film out of this. But the theatrical cut is just awful. The idiotic attempts at "humor" were turned up to 11 this time. And how did the twins EVER get approved at any level in the chain of command? People take issue with Jar Jar but they make him look eloquent by comparison. The most offensive characters I've ever seen in a film.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)

This was more like it. I can understand why no one ever bothered to do a fanedit of this. The majority of the horrendous crap in the previous films was toned down a lot. It could still use a little slimming but in terms of distasteful humor it was nowhere near as offensive as the others. Unfortunately, what they do to Ironhide and Optimus Prime is unforgivable and unfixable.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Cruise really should play a Sith lord. He wouldn't even have to get into character for the part, either -- he'd just play himself. 

Fantastic! Hopefully the costume designers working on the new films give it a read. =P

Try replicating a hunt for a Gorax on the forest moon of Endor in real life and tell me how that goes. ;)

SWG was about getting a taste of what living in the Star Wars galaxy might be like. SWTOR never even approached the immersiveness that SWG achieved.

Anyway, Tyr and I were discussing where the developers went wrong with choosing the era to set the game since they apparently had to have playable Jedi. Not the merits of MMOs.

You're leaving out the most important aspect of the experience: socializing with others.

I couldn't even begin to tell you how much fun I had in that game hanging out with the friends I had made while waiting for the game to release.

From going out and questing together, to racing, fishing and exploration. The planets in that game were about six miles across in either direction and packed with all sorts of neat things to find.

With a game like that, it's the natural stories that happen when you're out in the world that matter. Not the pre-written heavily scripted stuff, just virtual life.

You don't know fear until you've wandered deep into a Squill cave you've stumbled upon on Tatooine.

Someone get Lando on the phone while Han's stuck in bacta!

Ô_o It was an MMO. A damn good one too.

The problem was that they decided to set the game inbetween ANH and ESB. A time period that is supposed to be devoid of Jedi.

But the game developers wanted to have their cake and eat it too and so added Jedi as a secret class that people had to figure out how to unlock on their own.

After a long while no one had figured it out and SOE was worried that they were going to have to start facing accusations that the class was a lie. So to combat that they introduced holocrons that revealed that to unlock the Jedi class you had to master two specific professions that your character was randomly assigned.

This would prove to be the death knell for the game. Before this, everyone played at a leisurely pace, experimenting with different playstyles and skill configurations. It was a bustling community of easy going folks.

Once the holocrons were released everyone started grinding through professions trying to be among the first to unlock this now legendary profession. This led to droves of people burning themselves out and leaving the game after taking all the fun out of it for themselves. Which led directly to SOE trying desperately to increase subscription numbers by introducing the NGE which basically turned the game into a WoW clone and that put the final nail in the coffin.

Which is why had they set the game in a time period where Jedi were common in the first place it never would have self-destructed.

How “Twin Peaks” shaped the entire golden age of TV