Yeah, most of the 90s figures are like that. They’ve got a Tarkin figure from around then at the comic shop I go to that’s absolutely ripped.
I just think it’s unnecessary. People would have moaned if the film ended with the lightspeed jump now because so much was built up about Luke, but in 10 years when you are rewatching the trilogy, it would make more sense.
Should people’s home viewing a decade after the fact have really been the top priority, though? I think it’s unwise to discount the value of the theatrical experience here. The audience anticipation from not having seen these characters for 3+ decades in the real world is something they couldn’t (and I believe shouldn’t) have ignored. I went for one of my viewings with my mom and aunt who were both massive fans during the original run of the OT and lost interest during the prequels. They both thought that the Luke reveal was a huge moment. When I went on opening night, the vibe in the theater when the credits rolled was absolutely electric. I just feel like it would have been really lousy for the filmmakers to say “we know you’ve been waiting to see Luke again for 32 years, but you’re going to have to wait another two because it’ll flow better that way when you buy the box set”. The “A New Hope” subtitle in the crawl works better when you’re watching all of them on home video, after all, but a lot of folks here don’t like it because it wasn’t there for their theatrical viewings.
I disagree about the Naboo fighters not being Star Wars. Almost everything in TPM rang true for me in terms of design, the only real exception being all of the Gungan technology. Hell, I still consider this to be one of the most authentically Star Wars-y designs in the entire franchise:
It’s not until you get to stuff like the Geonosian ripple-gun things and the Coruscant night life scenes and everything on Kamino that the design started to feel off for me. Really, though, my problem with the look of the prequels has more to do with the maximalist ethic than the design itself. The sheer amount of stuff that Lucas insisted on cramming into every frame undercuts the kind of elegance that the earlier films achieved so wonderfully.
I think Abrams did an admirable job of emulating the starkness that made the OT so visually striking (rathars notwithstanding). Even in a scene like the Starkiller Base battle where you’ve got lots and lots of fighters whizzing around, they’re almost always shot to appear very small against a big empty vista. He sort of starts to lose it when it gets a little busy towards the end with the trench run, but it doesn’t even approach the sensory overload of, say, the opening of ROTS.
Not actually a new buy, but I found these guys while going through some old boxes today.
I believe the Chewie was my uncle’s in the 70s, and the Vader is mine from the 90s or early 00s.
If by replicating the look of the OT you mean continuing in the style of TFA, I haven’t heard any complaints about the look of that movie from anyone in my social circle, which runs the gamut from non-fans to casual fans to lunatics like us. The general consensus even among the folks I know who aren’t OT true believers is that the quaintness of the originals is preferable to the garishness of the prequels. Everyone also seems to be in agreement that TFA struck an ideal balance between the practical and the digital.
Someone did that thing I’ve been hoping someone would do! Hooray!
Looks like you’re still in the decision-making process as far as encoding goes, but is this more likely to be released as a large MKV or an AVCHD (or both)? If the re-encoding is going to diminish the benefit of the larger file size anyway it’s no big deal, but if there’s an appreciable difference I’d love to see it at the highest quality possible.
I left her out of my first post because she’s not a recognizable name, but Kelly Marie Tran was cast as well. I’m wondering if she’ll play the part that Tatiana Maslany and Gina Rodriguez were rumored for.
Oh for sure, Laura Dern is one of my favorites. I just had no idea she was even a possibility. Del Toro’s name has been bandied around for months, but Dern is completely out of the blue.
Here we go! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQQMLE4FuIQ
Also, Benicio del Toro and Laura Dern (?!) have just been officially announced.
Anyone else see the rumor that they’re planning to bring Thrawn into the mix next season? I didn’t actually read any of the articles when the story broke a few weeks back so I have no idea how legit the source was, but I’ve always thought that if they were going to re-canonize a Legends character wholesale, he’d probably be the easiest to insert into the new timeline. I figured that him being the mysterious fleet admiral at the end of Aftermath was probably wishful thinking, but if there’s any truth to this I think that’s almost definite. The Aftermath sequel comes out well before this is supposedly slated to happen on Rebels, so it wouldn’t be a huge reveal, but I’m pretty excited about the prospect of him turning up in a couple of different places in the timeline so quickly. He’s really the only Legends character that I regretted being stricken from the canon (well, maybe Kyle Katarn and everything that happened in Jedi Knight, but that was so tangential to the main storyline that its canonicity isn’t so relevant).
And speaking of Aftermath, I’m actually pretty surprised that Rae Sloane hasn’t turned up on Rebels yet. It’s only a matter of time.
For all intents and purposes Sith and Clones are tied for worst for me, but if I’m doing a proper ranking I give Sith the 6 slot because it commits more fully to being a hot mess. It’s at least ridiculous enough to be engaging.
I’m waiting for the Blu-ray to pass final judgement on Maz and Snoke. I remember being profoundly disappointed by the CGI in Jurassic World when I saw it projected at 4K, but when I watched it on my TV in 1080p with my family, it looked a lot better.
Best of Enemies - nice, tight doc about the Gore Vidal/William F. Buckley, Jr. debates that ABC aired during the 1968 Republican National Convention. I didn’t know much about either of them going into the movie (apart from the very funny Gore Vidal episode of the Dead Authors Podcast), and I found them both really fascinating. I ordered one of Vidal’s novels as soon as I finished the film and I can’t wait to start reading it.
Been close to two months since I looked at it, but I think the novelization had a few lines about Snoke influencing Ben from afar. I don’t remember exactly where it was and I don’t feel like looking it up just now, but I definitely got the impression that Snoke was a voice in Ben’s head at some point.
I was under the impression (and Wikipedia seems to confirm) that all of the pre-Abbey Road records were mixed and released in both mono and stereo, and that Abbey Road and Let it Be are only unique in that they never had a mono release. I have the 2012 stereo LP set (made from the 2009 remasters), and in the research that I did before buying those records I learned that in a series of blind listening tests some experts had difficulty telling the difference between the original releases, the late 70s mobile fidelity LPs, and the new remasters. Surely they’d have been able to tell the difference if the original releases were duophonic rather than true stereo (as some seem to be suggesting).
No links here, dude. Thems the rules.
Am I the only one who loves Beatles for Sale? I agree that there are way too many covers, but the originals are brilliant. I do have a propensity towards jangly pop songs with pessimistic/self-loathing lyrics, though, so that record hits a definite sweet spot for me that I’m not sure everyone else has.
Whelp, I guess it’s time to redirect my obsessive attention from the ROTJ thread to this one.
I think that’s a light leak. It’s been there in every version I’ve ever seen. I’ve always assumed it was native to the negative.
Coming to the end of Stone of Farewell by Tad Williams, which I’ve been enjoying immensely. I picked up The Dragonbone Chair shortly after finishing the existing A Song of Ice and Fire books when I read that Williams was a major influence of Martin’s, and I liked it a lot, but I found it very slow and I ultimately put off the second book for a year and a half. Book two doesn’t suffer from the pacing issues at all. These novels do an excellent job of evoking Tolkien without aping him, which is a tricky proposition in the world of high fantasy. I love me some George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss (and I’m warming to Steven Erikson), but sometimes I have an itch for something more traditional, and I’m happy to have Mr. Williams as an alternative option to rereading LOTR for the umpteenth time.
Just ordered Pastoralia by George Saunders after hearing a story from it read on NPR the other day. That’ll probably arrive just as I’m finishing Stone of Farewell, so I plan to jump right into that.
After that, I guess I should get back to the second part of The Stand; I don’t want to leave that up in the air for too long. I might squeeze in a Nabokov novella first, though. I’m about due to read something else by him.
Not to belittle anyone, but who uses standard DVD players anymore?
Pretty much everyone I know who doesn’t play video games. Some of these people still have tube TVs. It just isn’t a priority for a lot of folks. and I’m not about to hand someone a stack of blu-rays and tell them that players are semi-cheap at Best Buy.
Anyone have plans to put together an NTSC DVD-5 version in the near future? I gave a couple partial DE sets as Christmas gifts and I’m hoping to provide the recipients with their final discs now that this is out. If this isn’t on anyone’s radar I can fool around with it myself over the weekend, but I don’t want to do anything redundant. I also suspect that those of you who know more about encoding than I do are capable of producing a much nicer product.
Watched this last night, and good lord does it look wonderful. All of the 35mm stuff is integrated so much more smoothly than it was on the workprint. Now I’m really hoping that debated SW 2.6 actually happens, because this near-GOUTless wonder is so far ahead of the other two.
I’m actually thinking instead of making a v2.6 SW about making v3.0 a quick 1080p update for all three movies. Essentially, for color correction just upscaling the 720p masters and applying it as a chroma (color) layer over the 1080p BD and replacing the Despecialized shots with just quick 1080p 35mm cleanups and then making v4.0 the final polished versions with new color corrections and more careful cleanup and rotoscoping and stuff (for SW, this would basically be almost the same as working on v2.6 and for the other two, it should be a fairly fast process, since by that point I should have all the 35mm shots ready at 1080p anyway).
Does Empire still get a 2.5 release in this scenario or are you going straight to 3.0?
I’m not sure what a better way to describe it would be. It’s just so relentlessly bombastic. The frequent cymbal crashes, the stuttering trumpet accents. It sacrifices the subtlety the other scores have in order to be as big as possible at all times.
Also, it’s by far the worst in terms of recycling previous material. Almost half the movie is a cut and paste job.
Also also, “Battle of the Heroes” is a sludgy, plodding bore, and it’s the only theme from Sith that I can even remember without looking up. Seriously, the way people talk about that being one of the best soundtracks, I sometimes think there must be a version with an alternate score floating around that everyone’s seen but me.