avoidz

Thanks for the pocast link. Yeah, the Holiday Special chat starts at 14:27.

Cheers :)

pittrek said:

I seriously hope this will be a 12 disc set, with every 1st disc containing the original theatrical version of the movie + a "director's cut", and the 2nd disc will include tons of bonus materials, including all deleted scenes. Otherwise I'll ignore it like the last x DVD rererereleases

As long as Lucas is alive that will never happen. Sad but probably true. I gave up hope with the insult that was the 2006 DVD "bonus extras".

Now LFL are messing with the great soundtrack mix like they did with the movies.

See how Star Wars, in its original form, inspired all sorts of sci-fi movies, good and bad. Another reason why the OOT needs to be kept alive.

What's weird is it contains more Star Wars than the prequels ever did.

And that Bea Arthur number isn't that bad!

none said:

*EDIT* Makes sense that the Holiday Special might have been the deciding factor which convinced Lucas to stop allowing others work in the SW universe.  But each step along the way Lucas clamps down a bit more.

Which is why watching the Holiday Special now is so much more enjoyable knowing Lucas hates it so much :)

At least Carrie Fisher had drugs and alcohol to make it through the show.

Itchy looks like a cross between an aging Chewbacca and that horrifying alien baby from Alien Resurrection.

Sevb32 said:

I don't get why we can't all get along and accept people have differing opinions without cutting them down and judging them or their motives. It's all OPINION anyway not fact. Crazy that some wish physical violence on people who disagree on movies with them. Geez.

The threats of physical violence is mostly just trash-talking... But other than that, if people just "got along" when they had differing opinions the world would be a far different place.

CO said:

I like this guy on the panle named Hodges who says that the Prequels were all laid out in 1976, so that should debunk all the PT haters that Lucas made this up as he went along.

Hey genius, he started making this shit up in 1980!!!!  Uh, Lucas gets a hard-on for incest because he had Leia kiss her brother!  Unless he considers dying when I was very young the same as dying at childbirth.  Unless he would have Uncle Owen forget he owned C3PO for 10 years when Episode IV rolls around as he is buying droids from the Jawas.

Oh yeah, and that one detail that Lucas calls the Saga now 'The Tragedy of Darth Vader,' yet the novel of Star Wars in 1977 is called, "Star Wars and the Adventures of Luke Skywalker."

Its a shame these fucking morons have to sit side by side with us as Star Wars fans.  I swear this shows me that PT defenders are the biggest fucking idiots!

Truth! Lucas has been reconning his own story for years, and yet those morons still eat every scrap of bullshit that comes out of LFL.

Two wonderfully bullshit quotes (feel free to add your own):

If The Phantom Menace came out in '77, it would have had the same impact.

One of the best things about the prequels is that they make the classic trilogy better.

The six portrait photos of the panelists all say derp.

I'm ashamed to admit I'm watching the entire show now in a small video window while I browse. Fortunately, I can pause and resume when the awfulness becomes too overwhelming. Those first 10 minutes are excruciating...

"One day, I will become the greatest Jedi EVER. I will even learn how to stop people from dying."

Easterhay said:

JW Rinzler is a great writer but this book has got some living up to do.  Alan Arnold's long out-of-print Once Upon A Galaxy: A Journal Of The Making Of The Empire Strikes Back (which has uncontestable proof that yes, Star Wars was always intended to be a nine-part saga and a hilarious on-set sequence involving the shoot in the carbon freezing chamber where David Prowse, with hysterically bad timing, tries to get Irving Kershner to read his book on fitness whilst Kersh is trying to juggle about eight balls at once.  Prowse is lucky he didn't end up in the carbon freeze himself that day.) has always been, for me, the definitive insight into the making of this film.

Agreed. I picked that book up many years ago, and it's always been one of the best Making of books out there.

I watched the "reader's digest" version of the Holiday Special a year or so ago on YouTube, and the cartoon separately sometime after that.

I don't think I could stand to watch the whole thing, though.

Most of them read matter-of-factly, but you are right; photos such as #60 trash-talk the 1977 a bit too much.

Mentioning "this is yet another scene ruined with more distracting CGI" on many of them would be good.

doubleofive said:

Once I get started, I just can't stop.

http://picasaweb.google.com/doubleofive/StarWarsSpecialEditionChangesHD

These are the highest res I've got, and I need to add the descriptions that I have already have written. Let me know if you think I missed anything.

Those are great! Thanks for doing these. Good descriptions too.

The more they mess with the soundtrack, the worse it gets. Which is a real shame since the movie has Academy Awards for music and sound mixing.

Those first three Indy movies are great entertainment whatever sound they have :)

(Another original trilogy almost sullied completely by Lucas's meddling and the fourth wretched installment.)

I wish LFL would just stop trying to make the OT look like the crappy PT. But it's pointless now that the digital door has been opened on the movies.

Mielr said:

Also, GL adopted 3 children, and MJ adopted 3 children.

(And no, I don't buy the story that MJ's 3 kids were his biologically).
 

 Well at least one of MJ's children has vitiligo, so it's not entirely impossible.

Possible typo correction on the 'Special Edition Changes' section:

These only list the visual changes. By my counting, Star Wars alone has approximately 120 new or altered shots--commulatively, quite a different experience watching the film.

Did you mean cummulatively?

Cheers!

I read all 12 pages. This sounds like a great project. Can I feel the Force flow too with a PM? Cheers :)

^^ Same.

That Secret History of Star Wars article on the restoration (mentioned in the QA section) is one of my favorite pieces about the SW movies ever compiled.

JediTray said:

Might I suggest making the Q's and A's have different colored fonts?

+1

Really nice work, zombie! Thanks for putting it all together.

zombie84 said:

The 2-disk original E.T. was a deluxe edition for cinephiles, so it was only made for a limited time as it was a "special" release, and thats the only reason the single-disk revised edition is in stores now. You can still find it if you really want it. When the film comes out on Blu Ray, I don't doubt it will be the same format as the Close Encounters, which had all the versions in equal quality.

For the 20th anniversary, yes. It would be good to see the same thing done for the Blu-ray version of E.T. too (maybe in 2012) — although I don't care for the "Special Edition" version at all. The CG went to these guys' heads...