generalfrevious

walkingdork said:

@GF

So you are depressed and will never be whole inside because of a movie you've never even seen before? I can't imagine how you'll react when they change the character on the box of your favorite breakfast cereal. Tucan Sam! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Everyone here bitches endlessly about the treatment SW and Indiana Jones gets on blu-ray, so why can't I talk about children of paradise. Go to criterionforum.org to get a more detailed explanation of the video quality.

The cocksuckers at Pathe are so fucking arrogant and ignorant about the atrocious way they handled this transfer. They see no problem and and will never do another restoration. They have shot a hole into my heart that will never heal. I know some people will not like what I have to say, but not having a decent bluray of children of paradise makes me as empty as not having a proper blu ray of the OOT.

doubleKO said:

I hate Jeff Dunham and everyone that thinks he is funny.

How about Daniel Tosh? :)

And what if disney decides to make episodes 10-12? Thirty years down the road you may end appreciating Ep.1-9 as the true story. Just when you think it can't get worse, it does a hundredfold. 

Reminds me of a line from Weird Al's Yoda:

"The long term contract I had to sign means I will be making these movies till the end of time..."

Disney makes movies based on rides, people. Episodes 7-9 could just be live action adaptations of Star Tours.

We've gone from the eleventh to the twelfth level of hell with this Disney deal. The new SW will be so awful they will make us pine for the artistic integrity of the prequels (Remember Pirates 4 or the Burton Alice in Wonderland anyone?). Instead of the originals being preserved, the surviving negatives of the OOT will go into the incinerator by the end of the year, and anyone making fan films will put on death row ASAP. Remember, these are the monsters that broke our copyright law system back in '76. 

Back to my rant. Some people say the Children of Paradise transfer is so bad it looks waxy and computer generated at points. I really want to own this film on Blu-ray (as I haven't seen it yet), but I'm not sure if pathe and/or criterion would recall it and correct it soon. I may end up buying it anyways, but I still feel pretty bad about what I've heard from purists (Robert Harris was saddened by the transfer and said it should be recalled) about the video quality. And still, I want to wreak havoc on Pathe for how they handled the restoration. I would complain on criterionforum, but I have no idea if they will approve my posts or not.

I Hope Criterion handles Le Samourai better, as Pathe has botched that up as well.

There's finally something else for me to complain about in the film world. Pathe recently restored Children of Paradise, and then they botched the transfer badly onto Blu-ray. The video quality is getting some mixed to negative reviews, and it will never be fixed. This film is considered one of the cultural landmarks of French cinema, and the transfer onto Blu-ray is simply a disappointment. It treason against the French people IMO. Criterion had no choice but to use the transfer, and it will never be recalled and redone. I feel empty inside and borderline depressed because of this, and I want the people at Pathe to suffer horribly for making me miserable for the rest of my life. I will never be whole ever again.

Or would go through fatal withdrawals if they don't get their fix. Lucas is more like a drug lord at this point.

It will be a hundred times worse than that. Lucas has the intelligence of larry the cable guy.

Wexter said:

generalfrevious said:To make myself feel better about the situation, and maybe spread the truth to newcomers why we don't like George Lucas.

Absolutely, but you can do so much more. Go to the streets and spread the truth there. And, if possible, stay there :P

I think the newcomers here will get the idea with or without you.

I'm still taking a stand that the OOT is more than just three movies, and that something so monumental shouldn't be taken away like that. Newcomers think they are just movies, and Lucas treats them like they are less than movies.

Which is worse, bad color timing or the SE changes? And Lucasfilm ever decided to restore the OOT, would the "colars" be fixed as well?

I think all this talk about the messed up colors is just sour grapes because the OOT is not on Blu-ray yet.

Don't forget the Foundation trilogy. Asimov himself hated SW because he felt it was derivative of his work (like Frank Herbert).

Speaking of Kurosawa, both Lucas and Coppola helped finance Kagemusha back in 1980. I also think that he also got the emperor's theme from Seven Samurai.

Didn't he just want to make a Flash Gordon film in the first place, but did not have the rights? That was a big influence on SW, especially those opening crawls.

That's only half the battle; we need GL to repent for what his did to the OT and apologize to his fans. Preservations might save the OOT, but they cannot change GL's mind.

Wexter said:

generalfrevious said:

People should stop focusing on my hyperbole and attack Lucas. What he did with the SE is unique and should not be done by anyone to a classic film.

To put it in perspective, did Orson Welles ever digitally insert the Beatles on the 25th anniversary rerelease of Citizen Kane, and insisted that it was his intention all the time back in 1941? Or did Alfred Hitchcock update the opening credits to Vertigo with 1990s CGI because it fit more with his vision in 1958, but was crushed by the lack of technological achievement back then? Or did Coppola withdraw the Godfather 30 years after its release, and replace it with a version which recasts all the main characters with the cast of the OC? The answer is no, and it is not a sign of mental illness to want the classic films preserved. 

The problem is that you are only repeating yourself. We get it and if we take out the deranged obsession, most of us feel the same, but what do you do to help this cause except for endless whining on some forum?

To make myself feel better about the situation, and maybe spread the truth to newcomers why we don't like George Lucas.

People should stop focusing on my hyperbole and attack Lucas. What he did with the SE is unique and should not be done by anyone to a classic film.

To put it in perspective, did Orson Welles ever digitally insert the Beatles on the 25th anniversary rerelease of Citizen Kane, and insisted that it was his intention all the time back in 1941? Or did Alfred Hitchcock update the opening credits to Vertigo with 1990s CGI because it fit more with his vision in 1958, but was crushed by the lack of technological achievement back then? Or did Coppola withdraw the Godfather 30 years after its release, and replace it with a version which recasts all the main characters with the cast of the OC? The answer is no, and it is not a sign of mental illness to want the classic films preserved. 

What I meant is that Lucas committed a serious error by not allowing the originals to be available to the ongoing public when they are so integral to our popular culture. It's like painting over the sistine chapel with Abstract expressionist brushstrokes or placing every copy of the the complete works of Shakespeare in a locked storage facility on the North Pole.

The only reason the GOUT existed was because the bootlegs of the OOT were curbing his plans to gold-plate his summer home. The OT is not some obscure experimental work you can destroy without notice; they are the films THAT CHANGED AMERICAN CINEMA FOREVER. Lucas needs to respect that, and clearly he hasn't in the last 15 years.

Few understand that what Lucas is doing to the original three films is one of the sickest things imaginable: he is erasing history, and no one should be approving what he has done. Everything else, the prequels, the commercialization, even the Special Edition changes by themselves, are really meaningless points. The reason George Lucas is satan to me is that he refuses to give the OOT what it deserves: a proper DVD release. But he treats the films like second-class citizens when he released them as special features in 2006. The films that made him the billionaire he is today he treats with contempt, and that makes me sick to my stomach. I know I have said this more times than Lucas has money in his bank, but this is a point that cannot be stressed enough, and victory will not be attained until this wrong is corrected.

We are pretty much the only people who care about the OUT anymore, which is what frightens me. History is being erased by GL, which is a far bigger crime than the PT. And 95% of all SW fans are applauding it; most people under 20 think the SE always existed as it was released in 2011. LFL blatantly state films made last year as the versions released in 1977-1983 if you look at the back of the Blu-ray box. It doesn't help the Lucas said to people who care about the OOT that they can watch it on VHS and/or are meaningless to his marketing empire. Even THX-1138 only exists in the 2004 director's cut, which shoehorns CGI made decades after the film was made. The reason I have a defeatist philosophy when it comes to SW is due to Lucas himself, and his acolyte fanboys that puts most cults to shame. No one should erase history like that with so much contempt for the people who made him a billionaire and catapulted him to a position of power.

My anger against George Lucas knows no bounds. People have the fallacy that these are just movies like every other movie in existence. That is wrong. The OT is so woven into to the fabric of culture so quickly that it is important to humanity as air and water. So GL's decision to let these films to become permanently lost like this is not only negligent, but it is one of the most offensive things one can do that does not involve harming another human being. You know lucasilm will never release the originals ever agin after the GOUT. He only released that just for his own sadistic pleasure. It is clear to me that he secretly hates the whole franchise and whises misery on all who liked it. That's why he made the prequels, to reap money off fans while giving us some non-union job hackwork. The OT that future generations will see is just some imposter that distorts history like a soviet era photograph. I hate him more for doing this to us than for him making the films in the first place. Why didn't you just go in racing like you originally wanted to?

Whenever Lucas is marginally involved, you know you're getting a "quality" product. Is anyone concerned that we have to buy Crystal Skull with this set, which, btw, was already released four years ago? 

I would buy this set, but it's got Crystal Skull on it.

Plus Lucasfilm made those three movies. WE expect them to give us those movies on DVD/Blu-ray, not show them to us and then decide not to show it to us any more on a whim.

George Lucas is still arrogant and has committed a serious error in suppressing the OOT like this. No amount of preservations is going to change that. The OT does not deserve to be pushed underground like this and have the SE take its place with the general public not knowing the difference. Hell, on the Blu-rays themselves they no longer advertise that they are different editions from the theatrical releases! In five years time the SE will have been around as long as the OOT. You can ignore public opinion, but you cannot ignore the root cause of why this website and these forums exist, because Lucas refuses to release the originals out of some sadistic contempt with his fans, who by the way have made him a billionaire twice over (even though he is one of the least deserving men to have all that wealth). His arrogance is the very reason I act like an defeatist half the time on these forums! The institution that has shaped the SW franchise since 1997 must be torn down. And, I'm sorry to break it to you, fan preservations are not going to do it. 

Regardless of the preservations, we still haven't won against GL. I hate to see a future where all that is left of the OOT is these preservations just because of one man's arrogance and contempt. That's what I hate about the present: anyone with enough money can override public opinion. Most people love SW because of the OOT, and we have had the SE supplant it for 15 years now; no one deserves this. Sadly in another 15 years whatever current version of the SE will still be the official version of the OT. My hatred for George Lucas knows no bounds for what he did to those three films, in spite of all the fans' effort to preserve them.