canofhumdingers

ATMachine said:

Yeah, it's interesting to see that 1970s-era Marvel put word balloons on their covers--almost as if prospective buyers actually wanted to read the dialogue inside.

Now that we have digital coloring in all the hues of the rainbow, the text balloons are gone. Imagine that.

Mind. Blown.

That was the coolest thing I've seen in a long time!

Man, I'm so excited by what is going on in the world of the OT. I can't wait for the day (that I think will be sooner than later with all the hard work people are doing now) when I can sit down and watch a beautiful, restored copy of the original trilogy, all sourced from original film!

Harmy, I LOVE your work, but I think even you'd agree that being able to watch completely original elements with no recreations or facsimiles is the ultimate goal, and I'm so excited to see how close that day might be!

(And yes I know, understand and respect the status of the legacy project and how it will and won't be shared)

Anchorhead said:

The FAA will be controlling the investigation. They were probably there before he was in his hospital room. They tend to take over quickly and completely.

[/former helicopter pilot mode]. No, not kidding.

The article above did state that it was a problem with the engine.

Harrison Ford is very well known in the aviation community for his enthusiasm and is generally regarded as a pretty good pilot by those who have flown with him from what I've heard.

He flies a lot of vintage aircraft. While they are held to the same rigorous maintenance standards as modern aircraft (and I can't believe someone with his kind of money would skimp by seeking out the lowest bidder for maintenance either...) the fact is that the older a machine is the more likely it is for something to fail.

Also, he is very well known for being an avid bush pilot, which is kind of the aviation equivilent of being into off-road motor sports. It is inherently more dangerous as you are often landing and taking off in very small, confined areas surrounded by trees or rugged terrain such as moutains. And rather than a nice long paved runway, you're often using fields, riverbeds, streams, snowfields, glaciers, and other unpredictable surfaces.

While most pilots will go their entire lives or careers and never have any kind of accident, it is almost guaranteed to happen to you at some point if you spend enough time flying vintage aircraft or bush piloting. The fact that he does both regularly means its no surprise that he's had a few bumps along the way.

We probably won't know the exact details of what actually happened for some time as the NTSB tends to take their time with generating the final accident report, but if it was some kind of mechanical failure like the engine quitting, then the fact he made it to a safe place without harming anyone or anything on the ground indicates he's at the very least a competent pilot.

Pretty sure that's a behind-the-scenes image and not a still from the film. You can see the stump where the wing ends prematurely and some of the set through the window...

Perhaps they built the log trap on a known AT-ST patrol path? And then led it down the path on purpose (after all, the walkers WERE chasing ewoks through the woods)?

The only argument about it being far fetched that I think really holds any water is the need to get the timing of the cut right so they swing together accurately.

But even that wouldn't be terribly hard to do. If you hung them at the same height with the same length ropes then you'd just need to cut them at the same time. The timing wouldn't even need to be exactly perfect, just close. And how easy is it for humans to synchronize actions? Pretty easy (one, two, three, GO!!). I'd hardly imagine ewoks couldn't do the same.

Both of those x-wing concept drawings feature the classic OT x-wings. It's just in one, you can see that they drew over the original round engine intakes and replaced them with the McQuarrie style semi-circular intakes.

They look like storyboards and probably just used the old design as a place holder. It's possible they just went back and altered the intakes to be more in line with the final in-film design after the storyboard was already drawn for some reason.

Woohoo! Thanks to the team who obviously contributed too!

^^^This. So much this!!!

This thread is interesting in that the Godzilla message board I frequent just went through this SAME experience of the Godzilla (2014) 2d vs 3d bluray differences with people being very upset that the 2d version was noticeably darker.

But what a lot of people don't seem to realize is that 3d copies are almost ALWAYS a bit brighter in order to compensate for the fact that 3d glasses have a slight tint to them. You can't compare a raw 3d screenshot to a 2d screenshot. To make the comparison fair, you'd need to send the 3d shot through a filter equivalent to viewing it through the 3d glasses. And I'd be willing to bet that if you do that, they will look awfully similar.

Regarding the hand guard on the new Lightsaber:

It actually makes a TON of sense. Having practiced European fencing in college and Japanese kendo for the last eight years, I can tell you from practical experience that having a hand guard at the base of your blade is absolutely imperative to prevent your enemy from just sliding his sword down your blade and cutting your hand off. (It's one of the biggest complaints I have about traditional lightsabers but they're so cool I was always willing to give it a pass / that and there ARE techniques I've learned in Japanese sword fighting where you can survive without a hand guard, you just have to be extremely good and very cautious and very very very aggressive).

THE PROBLEM with the specific design we see here is that there is an individual emitter head for each laser beam that could easily be cut off thus rendering the hand guard a mood point. A better design would have been to have one emitter just like a classic Lightsaber but then have a prism or something that splits the blade in three ways but doesn't leave a gap of any kind between the main blade laser and the little crossing lasers.

I don't know when exactly it was posted, but I do remember downloading the TPM trailer the evening it was officially made available online. I'm pretty sure the download went live sometime in the late afternoon/early evening (or maybe that's just when I was able to start it after I got home from school) and it took HOURS on our dial up. And I'm pretty sure we had the fastest dial-up available at that time. I just remember I kept going to check on it during dinner, and had banned anyone from touching the computer until it was done. I remember just sitting there watching the progress bar and watching this little 13 inch tv we had near the computer on a side table to kill time while I waited. (on a side note, how funny is it to think we actually put a tv next to our computer desk to kill time because it took so long to do anything on the internet back then!).

Interstellar on 70mm IMAX.

BAAAAAHHHHHHH. MIND. BLOWN.

What an incredible experience. If you are within a reasonable distance of one of the handful of actual 70mm film IMAX theaters showing this and have the means to go, you totally owe it to yourself to take advantage of the opportunity! This is the kind of theater experience that only comes around once every few decades. It was stunning. Spectacular. Exhilirating. Immersive. It just can't be put into words.

I am actually glad I had already seen the film once prior to seeing it in true IMAX as I feel I was better able to absorb and enjoy the incredible presentation of the 70mm IMAX format.

One of the few times I've ever spent $17 for one movie ticket and felt I TOTALLY got my money's worth. In fact, it was a bargain.

Interstellar - I'll agree with everyone else loving this movie. I was enthralled and on the edge of my seat. It is a tremendous return to the profound hard scifi space exploration such as 2001: A Space Oddyssey, Silent Running, and the beginning of Planet of the Apes. It was tremendous. It's not perfect, though. I think it has two major faults. The first is that it sometimes feels a little too derivative of the films that clearly inspired/influenced it (particularly 2001). The other is a major plot spoiler but I'll sum it up for those who've seen it as merely "the paradox". But neither of those things is enough to significantly temper my enjoyment of the film. And the robots were quite possibly the coolest things I've seen in a film in years. Maybe decades. They are equally crazy modern and futuristic while also managing to be a fantastic throwback to some of the coolest and most influential robots/computers in scifi history with a decidedly 70's design aesthetic and I LOVED it!

Dark Horse and IDW still do letter columns (at least in Star Wars and Godzilla comics, respectively). I dunno about Marvel or DC.

Well, like many of the OT things recreated for the prequels (Vader's costume, Yoda, Anakin/Luke's lightsaber) they just didn't do a very good job making it look like the original. In ROTS he was much thicker over all with a noticably different shape to his head/face and his fur color seemed more golden and had a different texture/sheen to it.

That shot posted above is awesome because it looks MUCH more like the OT Chewbacca costumes.

SilverWook said:

We've already seen a pic of Chewie

@ Deepanddark20

I'm not a Lucas apologist in the least and I think the evidence out there quite clearly shows that they were making things up and changing things as they went along. I never said Lucas had some big overall storyline planned out from the beginning. He quite clearly didn't and has lied about it for decades.

But that's not the point and has little to no bearing on the specific topic of Darth being a name. It very well may have originally been intended to be a name, but there is no clear evidence within the OT, or even within the first film if you want to narrow it down that much to prove that point. The strongest evidence is Obiwan's line about "a young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine..." But even that line makes perfect sense if you replace "Darth Vader" with "Captain Solo" or something similar.

JEDIT:
So I looked up the exact line and it reads, "A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights."

That does NOT say what his name was prior to turning to evil. It can be inferred, but that inference may be incorrect. The only thing that can accurately be ascertained from that line is that he was known as Darth Vader when he hunted down Jedi for the Empire.

Handman said:

Why call him Lord Vader when Darth is the proper title? It'd be like calling a King a Prince.

deepanddark20 said:

"Darth" is clearly a name, not a title, in A New Hope (e.g. "only a master of evil Darth", "you can't win Darth", etc.).

The people I've known in real life named Leigh always pronounced it "lee". Never heard anyone pronounce it like the word sleigh.

My Sideshow 1/6 scale Darth Vader figure based on his original 1977 appearance has been my favorite thing in my Star Wars collection for a number of years now. I modified the helmet slightly so the dome sits more accurately to how it appeared in the movie (out of the box they had it mounted far too high and tilted too far forward).

I'm quite fond of the sandtrooper next to him as well, but Vader is tops.

The "mastered in 4k" blurays are just a marketing thing. They are NOT actually 4k resolution. They are 1080p just like any other bluray. The 4k tag is specifically referring to the fact that the film was scanned at 4k prior and then that master was scaled down to 1080p and put on bluray. 4k discs and 4k players do not exist yet. At least, not in a form available to purchase by normal consumers.

As for 4k TV's, unless you're buying a REALLY REALLY REALLY huge tv, you probably don't have the eyesight to actually take advantage of the difference. And by huge, I mean so big it won't fit in most people's houses. Like, movie theater sized screen big.

There are other things that are actually far more important than pure resolution in determining over all picture quality. These include black levels, actual demonstrated contrast ratio (not the gimmicky number they list on the box), color reproduction, and motion reproduction. There's a guy on another forum I frequent who works in the home video industry and he's posted links to various industry shoot out tests done for professionals showing this. One test even showed that the vast majority of people will tell you a higher contrast 480p image with good black levels is higher resolution than a low contrast 1080p image with crappy more-gray-than-black black levels. In other words, they actually perceived the lower resolution image as having more detail than the higher resolution because the other factors were actually more important than the resolution. The industry has just latched on to the resolution number because it's easy to explain and market. Now, that's not to say resolution isn't important, it's just that it's not the MOST important aspect of determining over all picture quality.

Personally, I would hunt down the biggest Panasonic or Samsung 1080p plasma I could find before they become impossible to get. Panasonic hasn't made them for at least a year now, maybe more. And Samsung is winding down production if they haven't stopped altogether already. But as of a few months ago you could still get samsungs new in the store. For Panasonic you'll probably have to find one on the aftermarket. Personally I think Panasonic plasmas are a little better than samsungs but they both consistently score very highly in professional reviews.

It's sad to see them not being produced any more because plasmas still consistently deliver the absolute best picture quality of any modern display technology. The only thing that can really compete with plasma technology is OLED, but it's still crazy expensive right now. CRT was also as good or better than plasma, but you're talking about a tv that weighs hundreds of pounds (no exaggeration!) for something like a 60 inch tv. And I don't think they even ever made CRTs that big. I think the biggest were in the 30 to 40 inch range.

So, at what point in this argument of semantics do we get to debate what the definition of the word "is" is?