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zombie84

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21-Nov-2005
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12-Jan-2024
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3,557

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Post
#302406
Topic
Blade Runner: The Final Cut in the UK!
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/302406/action/topic#302406
Time
The good news for R2 people I suppose is that you honestly won't have much a desire to watch anything but the Final Cut in the future; there's really nothing but improvements and they are so minor and slight that one might even forget that you are watching a version different from the one you had previously been accustomed to. The biggest gain is really the extras, but those are on the two-disk anyway. Just to make you feel a little better. Personally I doubt I will ever be watching the other versions, even though I pre-ordered the big 5-disk set. If you really want the previous versions as actual viewing alternatives and not "just to have" in the completist sense the way almost everyone else does, then I suppose you might want to suffer either getting the DVD set as well or else waiting for someone to post one of them in HD on the net from the R1 sets.

I could have sworn that the four-disk version was coming to R2 though...
Post
#302393
Topic
The Secret History of Star Wars
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/302393/action/topic#302393
Time
Well since I put out the original version of this thing in March I haven't stopped working on it, and after 9 months I've now completed the SECOND EDITION of The Secret History of Star Wars.

This edition has many corrections and expansion, edits and re-formatting, a new font face, two new appendices and a very handy index feature for quick referencing. Anyone who read this in July or August might not get a whole lot benefit from a second read but those who first downloaded this in its first months of release might find it to be a very different book if they were to revisit it.

http://www.secrethistoryofstarwars.com
Post
#302229
Topic
The Return of Futurama
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/302229/action/topic#302229
Time
After watching it a second time my opinion is higher. I was tired and missed a bit of it the first time round but somehow it seemed like it held up better the second time (maybe due to the convoluted plotting). They better have a good explanation for how it totally messed up the continuity though--ie Fry's dog didn't die of neglect because fry was alive and visited it at the pizza shop where he lived, Fry's brother didnt steal the four leaf clover and think he died in the year 2000 because he lived with him for over a decade longer, etc. Hopefully the ending that segues into the next movie will end up undoing most of the time-travelling from this film since it appears the universe is about to explode.
Post
#302227
Topic
Preserving the...<em>cringe</em>...Star Wars Holiday Special (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/302227/action/topic#302227
Time
Originally posted by: Baronlando
I believe that same interview has a quote about giving Luke a love interest in the "last three" movies! Even in 1987 he was still considering 9 parts. So much for the media inventing that notion.


Yeah, thats interesting too. Actually Rick McCallum and Steven Spielberg both acknowledge that Lucas' "plan" for the story runs "9 episodes", both in the same interviews--in 1999!! But what do his best friend and most trusted business partner who would actually be making them know, the media must be influencing them.
Post
#302170
Topic
Preserving the...<em>cringe</em>...Star Wars Holiday Special (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/302170/action/topic#302170
Time
Originally posted by: SKot
Originally posted by: zombie84
Well, despite Lucas' "I would personally destroy every copy" mantra, he was planning on releasing it on video in the 1980's. At a 1987 10th anniversary celebration someone asked him about the Holiday Special and he said something to the effect of "I think we're going to be releasing it on video this year", so something like this is not outside the realm of possibility.
That's a great quote! What was the source for this... video footage of the 10th Anniversary or someone who was there? (i.e., can we actually trace this quote to a hard copy?)


Actually it was printed in Starlog magazine! Its a Q&A with Lucas at a convention. I have the issue somewhere. I'll look it up some time.

Post
#302155
Topic
Preserving the...<em>cringe</em>...Star Wars Holiday Special (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/302155/action/topic#302155
Time
Well, despite Lucas' "I would personally destroy every copy" mantra, he was planning on releasing it on video in the 1980's. At a 1987 10th anniversary celebration someone asked him about the Holiday Special and he said something to the effect of "I think we're going to be releasing it on video this year", so something like this is not outside the realm of possibility.
Post
#302128
Topic
The Return of Futurama
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/302128/action/topic#302128
Time
Yeah I got it last night. Wasn't as funny as I had hoped. Still--it was worth watching, a decent come-back, I just found that there wasn't that many jokes in the film. Interesting in that it appears to segue straight into the second film which comes out in the new year--I hope it will be an improvement. Not that the film is bad or anything, its quite decent, theres just a lot of room to improve. Futurama set high standards for itself.
Post
#302127
Topic
Blade Runner: The Final Cut in the UK!
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/302127/action/topic#302127
Time
I saw this last night here in Toronto. All i have to say is....

WOW.

I have never seen Blade Runner in the theater and the experience was one of the best moviegoing experiences of my life. Just to see it on the big screen--the new remastering looks absolutely fabulous, the colors, the detail. Watching Ridely Scott's visual tapestry the way it was meant to be seen was a revelation. The biggest impression I got was the sound--my god, this thing is an aural experience! I have never had a good home theater sound system, but my DVD and VHS tapes did not even come close to capturing what I heard last night. The subtleties, the directional and atmospheric effects and just the sheer quality of the sound. The very first thing you hear in the film is a loud boom, it almost sounds like thunder, that begins the opening credits--this has always had a bit of oomph in it, but hearing this at home...I have to say last night was like watching a whole new movie. When that opening thunder clapped--it just about blew the screening room apart, like some bomb had detonated. It was a literal punch in the face to how different the theatrical experience is. Please, please for the love of god see this motherfucking film in the theater.

As for the new cut--its terrific. And theres hardly anything even changed--little nips and tucks, but if you hadn't seen the film recently you might be hard pressed to even realise that there were indeed any changes. The biggest ones are the original unicorn dream (works sooo much better) and a new matte painting for the dove shot at the end (looks awesome! You would never know it was an alteration). Most of the changes are stuff like re-comping the optical effects, removing visible wires and correcting some physical mistakes. Editorially I noticed that the took a few seconds out of Deckard's introduction reading the newspaper at the noodle bar (which was originally prolongued to accomodate a voice-over which now no longer exists), an extra bit where we see Deckard enter the strip club, and a new wide shot of him making his way through the crowded streets. Plus the extra-violent bits from the Internation Cut and Roy Batty says to Tyrell "I want more life FATHER" instead of "fucker", which is a very interesting change (this alternate I think might have been filmed for the TV airings). The color timing on the film looks great BTW--whereas the original version favored blues, there is a lot more green bias to the image now so as to evoke flourescent lighting in a lot of the scenes. I saw some screen caps of this on the net and wasn't too cnvinced at first but it looks absolutely spectacular on the screen.

Anyway, see Blade Runner--it'll be gone from cinemas very soon and you'll regret it. I am considering going back again tommorrow.
Post
#302125
Topic
Ian McDiarmid's performance in the PT (also the OT) is memorable and absolutely enthralling
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/302125/action/topic#302125
Time
Well with all due respect, the makeup is visually different first of all. In ROTJ his skin was sagging so as to make him look like a 200 year old sorceror; there were those weird deformations on his forehead but that was I think just to show that he was also somewhat deformed by his power. But more or less he fit into the traditional look of the "evil ancient sorceror." In ROTS its very different--similarities too, as one would expect considering its the same character and visual consistency is a given, but here he is given a look that is more monstrous, more horror-oriented, more resemblant of a Lon Chaney character or something. Also, perhaps because his appearance was now ambiguously linked to being deformed through an assault, the deformities were more exageratted.

Secondly, the aesthetic quality of the appliances are very different. In ROTJ it really just looked like flesh that had withered away, whereas in ROTS it has a plastic, sculpted look which highlights the depiction of the face not as an "ancient sorceror" whose appearance was due to the ravages of time and power but as a deliberate construction so as to appear monstrous.

I think the way McDiarmid played the role also contributed; in ROTJ he is quieter and somewhat labored, whereas in ROTS he is very expressive and energetic, especially in the end battle where the appearance really looks the most distant from ROTJ. The expressions of the artist under the makeup adds to the way the makeup looks. Thats why the scenes where he played things small and simple resembled the OT character more (ie some of the knighting scene, the scene where he reconstructs Darth Vader).
Post
#302075
Topic
Is there a 2001 reference in AOTC?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/302075/action/topic#302075
Time
2001 is a huge influence on Star Wars. Maybe Lucas found it slower back in the day but i find that hard to believe--THX 1138 is clearly mimicing the same abstract style as Kubrick's film. On the new DVD Lucas says that 2001 was one of the most profound influences on his life because it made him realise he could make THX.

As for AOTC--thats a tough one. If here are any starship hanger shots then one might count those--for instance the ones on the Death Star, with the white glowing rim, are taken directly from 2001. I never knew the pan-am ship was in there though, I'm sure thats just the ILM guys having fun/getting bored.
Post
#301653
Topic
A New Thought on George
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301653/action/topic#301653
Time
Originally posted by: Tiptup
I've said it before and I still believe that George Lucas is a man obsessed with ideas. A certain concept will grab his attention for a moment, he'll love it, try to use it, and then, once he's bored with it, move onto another idea. These fascinating ideas are what made Star Wars so great (and they easily comprise the most promising aspects of the prequels as well). While I'd say that this is his greatest artistic strength, it also causes him to ignore a lot of other things like continuity, plausibility, and finesse, as well as a whole ton of various emotional concerns (such as energetic dialogue). For instance, George knows what character drama looks like from the outside, and can have everything sitting in the right place, but he doesn't know how to connect all of that to the emotions sitting inside. Or, in the reverse case, when George starts with an emotional motivation (like the fear of loss), he doesn't know how to truly connect that to logical events nor on-screen performances. To do so would require too much work and he wants to move onto his next, fascinating idea.


Thank you so much for posting that. It is something I came to realise ever since AOTC, explaining the extremely different and entirely dissonant prequel identities. Its ironic that even though the OT is basically a patchwork of improvisations it still feels ten times more consistent and deliberate than the supposedly-planned PT.
Post
#301636
Topic
A New Thought on George
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301636/action/topic#301636
Time
I think this is a fascinating topic.

First up--its no secret that Marcia Lucas was, as Steven Spielberg put it, George's "secret weapon." The only Oscar the Lucases ever earned was the one that she won for editing Star Wars. Mark Hamill says "she was the warmth and heart of those films [the OT], someone he could bounce ideas off, who would tell him when he was wrong." IMO she is one of the unsung heroes of the American New Wave, editing American Graffiti, Taxi Driver, Star Wars and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

But what Gaffer Tape pointed out is absolutely valid--Lucas has always been stubborn and that was one of his greatest strengths. He was a genius who could see things that none of his contemporaries did, and when they told him was making a bomb he basically said "fuck it, what do you guys know," and he was right. His uncompromising vision is both the success of Star Wars and the failure of the PT.

But the truth is that its not one or the other--all of the above are true. Here's what I mean: Star Wars was designed to be a traditional drama, that is the audience is supposed to subjectively identify and become emotionally involved with the characters and the story, and thus be moved, be thrilled, be entertained. Unlike THX 1138--that was a film that is very much like 2001, you're not supposed to identify with characters or become engaged in a dramatic plot, the film exists for its form and its intellectualism.
But, the problem was that people didn't get the very concept of Star Wars--they didn't understand robots and spaceships and how you could make this be serious and emotional they way a normal drama is, the way, say, American Graffiti was, with humor, thrills, and identified characterisation. Everyone thought of "space opera"--the whole Flash Gordon/serial style that Lucas advertised it as--as being silly, unrealistic, with cardboard characters, convoluted plotting and implausibility. And if you read the first drafts that Lucas wrote thats what they are like--the characters are thin, and for people that couldn't see it the way Lucas pictured it in his head it must have easily seemed silly. Spielberg grew up on the same sci-fantasy diet that Lucas did and could see how you could take the vernacular of the old adventure films and update them with realistic characters and effects--and thats the sole reason why Lucas "got" Star Wars and supported it; and so did Alan Ladd Jr.--his father was the producer of The Sea Hawk and all the films Lucas said it would recall, which is why he also "got" Star Wars.

But Lucas wasn't good at writing, and thats why the film succeeded only through the input of others. I know the film says "Written by George Lucas" but its decieving because the film was co-written in a sense by a half dozen other people. Lucas wanted the film to have realistic characters that people could identify with, that would be interesting and funny and seem like real people, and so over the course of four drafts he listened to input from Hal Barwood, Gloria and Willard Huyck, Francis Coppola, Walter Murch, Matthew Robbins, Steven Spielberg, Michael Ritchie, and more, plus his wife Marcia--whom specialised in down-too-earth, realistic character-driven pieces--was there to point out "this is dumb" and "I don't get this". Then to top it off the Huyck's wrote a polish of the final draft to change the dialog to make it more realistic, and with the spot-on casting the actors brought it to life and made it their own.

Lucas said in 1973 he "gave up" on hiring writers because the results never satisfied him--he shelved entire drafts of THX, Graffiti, and yes, Star Wars II, because the writers didn't get what he was going for, both because his vision was so particular and because he's a bad communicator. But he didn't really give up at all. Instead of having someone literally write it for him, he would be the one to put down the words on paper in a manner that suited his tastes, but the script would be shaped, edited and influenced by a whole circle of friends whom all were successful writers themselves. They pointed out what worked, what didn't, what should be kept and added and where to improve, and even in some cases did actual writing themselves. The writing was totally a group effort. And then the edit had a team of people, including Marcia, who got rid of all the crap--Deleted Magic has the film edited as it is in the script and its very weak, but the changes they made brought it to a whole new emotional level. There's a reason it won the editing Oscar.

And thats how Star Wars ended up as a film that was uniquely George Lucas, that had all of his vision and defied those who said he was wrong, yet simultaneously was emotionally engaging by being the product of letting others shape and influence the work to make up for his shortcomings.

Why did the prequels suck? Because he abandoned this formula--the same forumula he basically used in American Graffiti, Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Return of the Jedi. At the time of Graffiti and Star Wars he would confess he was "a terrible writer", he had little confidence in himself and could face the facts that he was bad at writing characters, dialog and plot, as he admitted at that time. But when he got nominated--twice--for a "best screenplay" Oscar, had four of the highest grossing films of all time under his 5-film resume and was the most successful filmmaker whom ever lived: I think he began to think "maybe I'm a good writer after all." So when it came time to write the prequels--he just did it all himself. He didn't have a wife anymore, didn't collaborate with his friends anymore or even show them the script, and because he was treated as if a deity no one dared say anything. So thats why we ended up with Episode I, a film which shows how an unchequed Lucas goes off the deep end, getting obsessed with aliens and special effects and kooky weirdness and totally forgetting about characters and completely ignorant to constructing drama or a finely crafted plot.

So to sum up: yes, he was writing for Marcia and his friends. The reason he made Graffiti was because his wife and friends said he could never do a realistic and funny character piece and so he said "I'll show you I can"--and Star Wars was an extension of this. So he was writing for them from the perspective of characters and emotion--and in fact they themselves were the ones writing it in some sense--but at the same time the concept of the film, of spaceships and sword duels and such, was a uniquely George Lucas thing that was his uncompromising vision, and its the fusion of these two elements that created such a rich, imaginative, unqiue, but also warm and recognizeably human, film.
Post
#301587
Topic
Star Wars - The Vintage Edit (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301587/action/topic#301587
Time
This is a terrific project Paul--thank you so much for doing this. Things are looking good so far.

First up though--starfields, engine effects and blasters. On the 2004 DVD the starship engines don't have a glow in many shots---see the shot of the Falcon you posted and the Tantive IV. If you really want to be anal these should be colored, but with the method you are using that might mean hand-rotoscoping of some kind (you could possibly overlay them from another source--the GOUT unfortunately has aliasing issues so if you use that source to overlay then you have to correct that first). Also be careful about the missing frames from the two death star officers shot, people tend to forget about those changes (I think theres also an extra shot from the prison control room shootout omitted in the SE but I can't be sure). And of course the lightsabers--preserving the original lightsabers will be tricky. Good luck with that!

Color-wise its good that you are using the GOUT. IMO its the best reference for original colouring--theres little to no color issues beyond maybe a bit of a bump of the contrast and saturation, but I think that simply makes up for the small amount of fading done by the duplication and aging of the film. The black levels are not strong though but simply in terms of coloring its one of the best references to use IMO.
Post
#301565
Topic
Info &amp; Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301565/action/topic#301565
Time
Just for comparisons sake here is that shot on the GOUT.

http://www.secrethistoryofstarwars.com/cap218.bmp

Its hard to say which may be more accurate since there is obvious differences in color and brightness; the GOUT releases, IMO, actually exhibits little to no color deviation from what we know of the original release print, other than minor deviations from the telecine, so I'm inclined to say that that 70mm is way too bright, especially considering that still photos from the scene have that dim quality that the GOUT exhibits.

Using film scans is dependent on bulb intensity--a weak bulb will make it look to dim and a too bulb will basically overexpose (not accurate but its close) the image.
Post
#301564
Topic
Why, oh, why do they cancel shows this good???
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301564/action/topic#301564
Time
Originally posted by: bigbaddaddyvader
It was fantastically well written that episode.Jubal Early was a great character-very odd and you really start to get a sense of River's importance in that episode also.I was SO psyched to get that pistol!Terrible shame it was cut short.I have some screenused Reaver costume parts from the final battle with the reavers at the end of Serenity coming soon too and also some screenused bank heist money from Serenity.I also love the episodes "Ariel" and "War Stories" but it was a superb show all round.To my understanding a lot of the problem with Firefly was the wider audience reaction that they just didn't know what to make of it with the clash of western and sci-fi.I always thought that was what made it so superb.That clash of the past and the future to make a completely unique entity.Good stuff.


Well, also the fact that the episodes were aired totally out of order didn't help, and also the fact that there was pretty much zero promotion for it. I think a lot of people are turned off by the premise--most audiences hating sci-fi ("eww, Star Trek") and most audiences hating westerns ("eww, Rawhide")--and thats why they never even bothered, but once anyone actually sits down and watches a few minutes of the show they are immediately hooked. Thats why the fan-base was small but intensely loyal. My theory is that had the show been promoted more, been treated respectfully by FOX and allowed Whedon to write the episodes as intended, and given a bit more patience then the show would have slowly buit an audience and by the second season might have been a hit. Networks are so impatient nowadays because if something isn't immediately a runaway hit its canned, even though a lot of the best shows have had gradual buildup (ie Seinfeld, X-Files, Buffy, Family Guy, etc.).

Regarding Objects in Space, I actually was convinced that River had become the ship--I thought that was such a cool, weird sort of daring metaphysical thing to do, it was very mysterious and compelling yet somehow strangely appropriate considering where things were heading with her; I was a little dissapointed to find out that such was not the case (though I understand the reasoning of keeping things real).
That episode has my favourite exchange in the series:

Early [serious]: Where's your sister?
Simon: Are you Alliance?
Early: Am I a lion?
Simon: What?
Early: I don't think of myself as a lion... [liking it] though I do have a mighty roar!
Simon: No, no I said Alliance.
Early: Oh...but I though you--
Simon: No I--
Early: I see. [serious again] Where's your sister?

A great character.