cool find ! That ad says music , sound effects and narration . I wonder if that means it is for a reel to reel version of " The Story Of Star Wars " or it means the dialogue itself in addition to the music and sound effects . I also wonder if it is a condensed version , or the whole film if the latter is the case .
I’ve read not only does Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon sync nicely with The Wizard Of Oz, but also The Force Awakens. I’ve never tried either of these, but maybe I’ll give it a go just to try something new. I wonder what else would work well? Maybe I’ll try Empire Strikes Back with the Vangelis Blade Runner soundtrack or Rogue One with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
^ this sounds like a neat idea , especially the Vangelis music .It may sound like blasphemy , but now I am thinking of synching some of the original Star Trek movie scores with the OT to see how it feels .
^ Thank you for the reply oojason ! Please let me know how your experience goes if you decide to do that . Love the pics man , that first one is the first Sony Betamax player that was released as a tv/console combo before they made a standalone player . It retailed for around two thousand dollars here in the U.S. when it was new and adjusting for inflation ,one could buy a new car in todays money ! I love old tech like that and would love to own a working one , if I didn’t live on the top floor of my building 😃 also love the analog glitchiness of that gif .
As a related aside , a while back , I hooked up my old Apex DVD player to my little vcr/tv combo and made a copy of The Force Awakens on vhs for my own personal use .It has kind of a cool retro feel to it and if I had the technical know how , I would convert it to pan and scan to make it feel more like an 80s tape .
this thread inspired me to watch ROTJ again today .
I linked to my favorite poster a page back , which is the ESB one by Ohrai . I will say though , that I like a lot of Drew Struzan’s concepts for Revenge Of The Sith more than the final version . Some of them can be seen at the bottom of the page here …https://markstoreyart.blogspot.com/2009/11/drew-struzan-original-movie-poster.html
I just tried a little experiment with watching my 95 faces set VHS copy of Return Of The Jedi …I have a Panasonic 4 head hi-fi stereo vcr and I plugged it into my 55 inch LG lcd tv via coax cable and ran rca cables out from the vcr to my little Emerson portable tv/vcr combo so I could watch it on both displays .
The portable tv is mono and the big lcd is stereo . I placed the little tv behind me while watching the big tv . This had the feeling of being outside at a drive in movie . The Big tv was great for the sound effects and music and the little one enhanced the dialougue .The 95 tape has pumped up colors from the releases prior to it , but on the lcd , the colors appear more toned down , making it seem closer to the theatrical colors .
Granted , the vhs image was softer on the lcd and a little fuzzy around the edges , but this gave me a feeling of 1980s nostalgia , as it was the pan and scan version and that is how I originally watched the movies at home before the 92 letterbox set came out .I have not popped this tape in in ages and forgot that the last shot of the movie as well as the credits switch to letterbox on the 95 tape .
I would like to get a small stereo crt tv with rca inputs and try this again sometime , but daisy chain 3 tvs .
Does anyone else out there have some unique ways of watching / displaying the movies ?
I prefer Yub Nub for a variety of reasons …it gives me the spine tingles that the special edition onwards do not . Part of that is the discordant sadness that underlies the music right after Luke sees the force ghosts and then it crescendos into a spirit uplifting chorus at the end and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up .It also seems more " present " within the scene , as the rhythms match the movements of the characters on screen ( I don’t see the victory celebration music being conducive to dancing ) and the Ewoks using the stormtrooper helmets as drums works better as well . Sure , nostalgia is part of it , but only a very small part for me .
for me it’s a toss up between Star Wars and Return Of The Jedi …Star Wars has great world building and alternate descriptions of things and events and I love the part in Return Of The Jedi when Vader’s mask comes off and his thoughts are described …that scene in the novel is beautiful and poetic . While Empire is my favorite film in the whole saga , the novel is a pretty straight forward adaptation , though I do like that description of Boba Fett wearing the armor of a group of evil warriors who were defeated by the Jedi Knights during the clone wars .I took that as gospel growing up and thought we would one day see that in the prequels when they got made . The Death Watch in The Clone Wars animated series are close to how I pictured the Mandalorians of that era would look though .
I just popped my GOUT copy of Star Wars 77 into my blu ray player and displayed it on my 55 inch lcd flatscreen the other day . First time in a very long time that I have watched it ,and it looked atrocious on that . Hell , my letterbox 1992 VHS looks better on that tv . ( I tried it right after ) . The GOUT is a grainy mess in comparison . I also messed around with the settings on my tv and displayed each in both 4x3 for proper proportions ,and in zoom mode .I will have to take a look at these on my crt’s later to see if they look better .Looking back at some of the links at the top of this thread , I do think Mike Verta was right in his belief that there was artificial grain applied to this release to make it look sub standard .Also , when this release came out , a lot of people were saying these looked better than the laser disc preservations that were being made at the time .Is that due to the displays they were being watched on at the time ? A lot of people still had crt’s back then . Granted , the dvd image may be sharper , but I will take the softer look of VHS or Laserdisc over this grainy image any time . I did watch my 92 VHS letterbox copy on my 30 inch widescreen Samsung Slimfit HD CRT recently , and that looked spectacular and crisp and vibrant on it ,though the colors did not “pop” like on the 95 faces VHS , but it looked more like I remember it looking in the theater originally .I go back and fourth sometimes , but I now think this is my ideal way to watch it out of all the media formats I own . I will definitely have to see how the GOUT looks on that crt .
yeah , I did like the old tree dude and Dark Empire 2 had some decent art in places ,the whole steam ship world etc . Oddly enough , I did enjoy The New Jedi order series , as they finally got back to taking some risks with the IP and moved beyond the Empire /Rebellion conflict and brought in a new threat ( even though Marvel did it first with the Nagai ) after that was when I bowed out , as thee cast of characters became too overblown to follow for me . I did keep up with what happened with Lumiya though and read about the final battle between her and Luke ,as I was a fan of the character from the Marvel series .The Truce at Bakura was another one I enjoyed .
for me it’s a toss up between The Great Heep and A Race To The Finish , but I dig the whole Moebius influenced art style of Droids …never cared much for Ewoks animated , but remember liking one of the final episodes where they brought the Empire in .
^ I loved the first Dark Empire series ,and for the way they handled the Emperors return ,it worked for me better than TROS .It certainly had a surreal touch to it in the artwork ,from the color palette to the recursive imagery of the star destroyers surrounding the planet Byss . ( which was picked up on in TROS ) .I remember being in a comic shop about a year before the first issue came out and seeing The Light And Darkness War and thinking this creative team would be great doing a Star Wars book …in fact , I mistook it FOR Star Wars at first glance .As a huge fan of the original Marvel Star Wars comic ,which was in publication before all of the over explained EU stuff , I was bummed when they stopped publishing it . When the first Dark Empire issue came out , I was ecstatic and bought it on the spot .I would now be getting my monthly Star Wars comic fix after 5 long years ! That first series felt very cinematic to me and indeed it felt like the possibilities of where they could go were limitless .I liked the Tales Of The Jedi comics for that reason as well .Dark Empire 2 and Empires End were a letdown to me though as they got too formulaic and I could accept the Emperor coming back once , but it was overkill after that and he just came off as another carton villain .Then there was the whole matter of these stories later tying in with the Kevin J. Anderson novels …while they had some cool concepts ,the execution was clunky . I was glad that the novel I,Jedi summarized those events more coherently and kept the cooler aspects in without going overboard .I also liked the audio drama of Dark Empire as well as Tales Of The Jedi and Crimson Empire .
^ " There’s always a bigger fish ! "
^ That is kind of how I look at this issue an I never got bothered by the 90’s EU being branded Legends in favor of the new Canon , as it wasn’t really the first time that older material got pushed aside in favor of the new . The original Marvel comics , The Brian Daley novels and Splinter Of The Minds Eye ,as well as the Blackthorne 3d comics were initially considered non canon when the EU concept started in the 90s and it was not until much ,much later that authors incorporated some of that stuff back in and cherry picking from it , much the same way current canon does .I just incorporated it into my own head canon , kept what I liked ,and discarded the rest .Same as I do now .And to the people who vilify Disney/LFL/Kathleen Kennedy etc , for " legends " ,it’s not like those stories no longer exist and you can’t read them , they are readily available in most bookstores , libraries and online shops .If anything , by republishing all of them under the legends banner ,they ensured their longevity and confirmed the importance of them to their fans .They didn’t have to do this and if they so chose , they could have ordered that all of those stories be pulled from stores .I think they made the right decision , as to incorporate them wholesale , would have boxed them in creatively . By the time Disney came in , the EU had become overblown with minutia and retcons .
Zucchini !!!
^ not sure about a direct mention , but Lucas did spend some time with Frank Frazetta , who painted the Conan novel cover collections in the 60’s as well as being in the same film school group as John Millius and running a comic book shop .I would hazard a guess that he was certainly aware of the works of Howard . This also brings to mind that I have read articles about the slave Leia costume being influenced by Deja Thoris from John Carter Of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs , another world builder . And down the rabbit hole we go …
also , Robert E. Howard deserves a mention in this discussion , he is regarded as the father of sword and sorcery and did a lot of world building for Conan’s world , as evidenced in his Hyborian age essay https://conanthecimmerian.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hyborian_Age Many fantasy authors imitated him afterwards , but never quite captured his spirit . Then there were the many many fantasy film cash grabs that came in the wake of the 1982 Conan The Barbarian film …
‘An unseen archive of movie poster artwork is being published’:-
https://lwlies.com/articles/the-feref-collection-movie-poster-archive-star-wars (mainly Star Wars posters)
^ awesome find ! Interesting look into the process , especially how a lot of the artists kept trying to emulate the design elements of the posters for SW77 . I have seen a color comp of the fourth one down online before though .
Black Angel is indeed an awesome short film ,I first saw that video a few years ago an wish we would have gotten the same experience here in the U.S.
Great article Bonez ! This is worthy of being a Star Wars Insider article , and it feels like one to me . Very enjoyable read . One thing to point out though , there was a first edition of A Guide To The Star Wars Universe that came out in 1984 , by Raymond L. Velasco , which was really one of the first times that things got detailed explanations ,Star Wars Poster Monthly not withstanding . I saw the guide in Waldenbooks in 1986 and bought it and still have it https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Star_Wars_Universe , though it did not give as much explanation of every single aspect as later publications. Also , when it comes to Surrealism ,the visual language is most apparent to me in the Dagobah cave scene in ESB and most especially the vision Rey has in TLJ with multiple versions of herself going off into infinity . That is the artistic principle of recursion ,inherent in the works of surrealist artists who defined the term surrealism , Salvador Dali , Max Ernst ,M.C. Escher etc . and it is spot on .
There’s a difference. Lando and the Ewoks did actually did change as events moved along. They were actual adversaries that became allies. Rose and Holdo didn’t change at all, they changed the main characters views. Finn learned from Rose and Poe from Holdo. To me TLJ is about learning from failure. Decisions aren’t always black or white, there’s a whole lot of gray.
^ " The greatest teacher , failure is " -Yoda . That is indeed the central theme of TLJ . I had a teacher , decades ago in art school ,who taught his students this exact principle ,which is one of the reasons this theme resonates so strongly with me . As for Luke being an antagonist , I would say it was Rey being the antagonist in the beginning of TLJ . Luke just wanted to be left alone , Rey antagonized him . In the end , Luke did the right thing ,heeding Yoda’s final lesson .
please disregard my previous post , I realize now that my browser was not loading the image . I thought Jason was linking to a larger image of the wood cut , hence , my confusion.
Thanks Screams, it feels good to be back mate 👍
^ click here for a larger image - https://i.imgur.com/8IMZ74Y.jpg
^ that link took me to an image of the Yavin temple from the Star Wars visual dictionary . Cool , but strange .
Just a warning about the above link. While it does lead to a Jar Jar lollipop, the webpage is riddled with pop-ups which locked up Safari on my iPhone.
^ I apologize for the headaches , I will try to better scrutinize the pages I link to in the future .
‘Scroll sawn Star Wars minimalist original trilogy movie poster. 8 different woods w/ no stains or dyes.’:-
^ more photos and info here - https://imgur.com/gallery/s2bN82V
^ pretty cool ! And by the way , I would just like to say it’s good to see you back Jason .
