zombie84

TV's Frink said:

zombie84 said:
Technically, he already did that with TPM. I actually miss the theatrical version of Episode I and wish I could watch it instead of the home video version with its extra-bloated CG scenes.

How much extra is on the TPM DVD? I don't remember much different other than a quick city shot on Coruscant and maybe a bit of extra podrace....certainly nothing that made me miss the theatrical.

 There is about 20 seconds more on Coruscant and about 90 seconds in the pod race. That doesn't sound like much, but pure CG eyecandy for two full minutes can be pretty tedious.

The difference, overall, is not extreme like the SE of the OT, but the fact that I remember a version of TPM that was better is enough to make me long for it.

I don't know about that. The 1995 VHS release moved 9 million units in a single week. It was record breaking. This is because the Star Wars rennaissance steadily grew. If they re-released the OOT in 1997 instead of the SE it would have done almost the same numbers.

Technically, he already did that with TPM. I actually miss the theatrical version of Episode I and wish I could watch it instead of the home video version with its extra-bloated CG scenes.

I personally doubt she has.

And I have this feeling that there was once an exchange in the Lucas household that went something like this:

Katie Lucas, age 12: "So, what's up with this "Han shot first thing?" I keep hearing people talking about it."

Dad: "Oh, I originally wanted Han to shoot in self defence and finally fixed it a couple years ago and some fans just can't accept it."

Katie Lucas: "Seriously dad, some of your fans are just weird."

Dad: "I know."

Alexrd said:

CO said:

Alexrd said:

 

Being okay with the prequels and the SE?

 Because I know the talking points he is arguing with, as I heard them a ZILLION times when I used to post at TFN.   If you want, I can list the usual tagline arguments I used to hear at TFN.

And as I said earlier, I don't mind someone who disagrees with me (as long as you have a valid argument, but I don't want to hear the usual BS I heard  talking point I heard over at TFN, "These versions are rough drafts."  Those people will believe any BS Lucas says, and repeat it in their posts.  If Lucas said he was inserting Jabba taking a shit in ROTJ, they would defend that too.  :)

I don't recall Lucas saying that, so it's not a matter of believing in Lucas or not. But even if it was, it is still his opinion. Someone is not a troll for having his own.

It would be his opinion, but his opinion would be wrong. Anyone who seriously claims 1977's was just a roughdraft is either knowingly baiting, or they actually believe that and are just an idiot. And Lucas did say that.

I'm also sick of people repeating this "fact": the 2006 DVD sold poorly so people must not want them.

Where do people get this from? What sales numbers are they looking at?

The amazon.com archives for Star Wars 2006 DVD only go back to April 1st, 2007--after the fall and christmas releases, after the new years releases and starting into the summer releases, basically an eternity after its September 2006 releases when it had been long forgotten. And its sales rank is #600 for DVD. That's remarkably strong considering amazon has literally hundreds of thousands of DVDs, with over a dozen major studio releases every single week and over a dozen smaller releases each week (do the math: approx. 25 weeks after its september releases x 24=600 releases. So, Star Wars was among the highest sellers at the time it was released).

No.

I knew you'd take issue with TFNers having a "type." He's not being accused of being okay with the SE or prequels, there are plenty people here who have those views, including to some degree myself. It's not that everyone there fits into said type, because I am a long-standing member there, just that there is a unique brand of Star Wars fan with particularities that is mainly found at that place. Having been posting there for over a decade, I've come to recognize this. CO was a long-standing member there too, I think like me all the way back into the 1990s, and he would be able to recognize someone from there when he met one.

The fact that this guy is (vaguely) familiar with my work in the past seems to indicate this, as my book was first discussed at that place.

I'm pretty sure he is, regardless of whether he admits it. They have a certain type.

Just as an aside...

A lot of people here might not realize it, but I was only 14 years old when Phantom Menace came out. This, I believe, is the same age our old friend Anchorhead was when he first saw Star Wars. Does that mean I grew up with the prequels then? I guess it does. I was also twelve when I first saw the Special Edition of Star Wars, and it still to this day is the most important and enjoyable theatrical experience of my life, so I guess in a sense I grew up with the SE as well. Yet a decade later, I'm running savestarwars.com. That's why I think this notion of "anyone who grows up with the prequels will treat them as the older generations treated the OT" totally false, and same with the SE.

My friends were all the same age as me, of course, being 14 when Phantom Menace came out and 17 when Attack of the Clones came out, and we enjoyed the prequels as entertainment while they lasted, but at the end of the day I don't think I know a single person who has re-watched them since they were new, but I don't know anyone who doesn't re-watch the OT from time to time, even if it is just on the television re-runs. It's true that people are more casual about the SE though, but that's because they are more casual fans than us. They just want to see the films, and meh, the SE is the same basic movie, right? They accept the SE, but only because the SE is the only choice being offered and they aren't going to fight some campaign to see the originals like us. So, the SE is tolerated, but only by default, and that's an important distinction.

Art belongs to the public, and so do films. They are our cultural heritage, they are bigger than any one person or corporation, and therefore deserve preservation. This is what George Lucas said in 1988 and I agree with him.

George Lucas should have the ethical right to revise his own films, but he doesn't have the right to suppress history. (I would also argue he doesn't have the right to revise other people's films, which is maybe the most disturbing aspect of the SE)

I still think ESB and ROTJ had that heaviness--you can see them swinging these things with strength and when they clash, you can almost see them bounce apart from the density of the things. But ANH has a very different style, it's almost like a fencing match in the combat style seen in samurai, where the opponents slowly advance on each other and use only quick, efficient thrusts.

Easterhay said:

zombie84 said:

Hmm, reusing the same ideas, themes, situations and images from previous movies in later sequels to said movies while also taking them in new and different directions. How novel. Know what they call that in the real world?

A franchise.

 

Hmmm.  I've read your stuff, including the big deal you make of the numerous rewrites Lucas made before settling on a final screenplay (because we all know everyone uses their first drafts all the time.  Ho, and indeed, hum.)

Show me where I complained about Lucas writing second and third drafts? I'm not a retard, no one uses their first drafts, I was simply showing the writing process. Maybe you haven't read it after all.

and I see you're still making a meal of Lucas using recurring themes in the films to create a kind of symmetry and to show how two people can go on the same journey and make decisions that take them in opposite directions.

Tell me, how many other franchises have done this?  Y'know, telling a story in two halves, thirty years apart, and yet still ensuring mahoosive worldwide success? 

 Actually, Episode I came out 16 years after ROTJ, not 30. But the temporal gap in which the episodes were released was not in question. What was being discussed was the recurring use of themes, characters, situations and images across sequels. And to call this "symphonic" is not only pretentious, but ignorant. It's simply the way franchises work. Way to overlook the whole point. There's no question that Star Wars is unique for the lengthy and backwards way in which the final storyline was told, but that's not what we are talking about.

The Supreme Gangster joke is so funny I almost wish the interruption before it wasn't there to give it more emphasis. Good one!

I think he does have a point though in that certain terms are considered racist only at certain periods of time. The meaning of the word gets reappropriated. So if you called someone a negro today I think most people would say that is racist, or at the very least politically incorrect, whereas 80 years ago it was not only considered not racist but actually was the proper term to describe Africans and was used in scholarly works. But eventually it started falling out of favour and now it would be considered racist if you used it. So, the percieved racism of words is entirely dependant on the historical context in which they are used.

This probably doesn't have much to do with Leia, though, as she was clearly angry at Chewie and deliberately talking down to him and everyone else. I still don't see how that would make her speciesist or whatever, even if she may technically be making a comment on his appearance. It's like when Han calls him a "furry oaf". He has lots of hair, it's a distinguishing feature, otherwise if that's speciesist then commenting on any physical trait would be speciest since everyone's physical traits are determined by virtue of their species and are not optional. The Death Star commander, on the other hand, calling Chewie a "thing" is pretty clearly speciesist since he doesn't even acknowledge that wookies are "people" but instead refers to him as an object.

Oh, of course, actually I think Charlie DeLauzirika cut the scenes himself with little or no involvement from Scott and basically designed the deleted scenes to all play together as an alternate, abbreviated cut of the film, but I like the way they play out. It is also is dificult sometimes to insert theatrical footage--for instance I did so in the Taffy Lewis and Rachel vidphone scenes, and a lot of the other ones too, but the way the new Zhora intro works, there's no really good entry point to getting Deckard's con game in there; the deleted scene really presents an alternate version of their meeting. I could try to include some of the scene in there if people think the jump cut is weird. Personally I never thought this part needed work; there is a similar jump cut from black after the Holden scene too.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

I never said it was racist.  I said if the movie was made today that the line wouldn't have been included, because these days it doesn't matter if something is racist -- if soemone might perceive it to be, that alone makes it not worth the risk.  That is a window into the world we live in at this point in time.

 Are you kidding me? The man who invented Jar Jar Binks, Watto and gave some aliens the voice of Charlie Chan wouldn't have included a line of genuine humour if he thoughts there was a slim chance some might read it as racist?

The line about Chewie isn't racist in any way. She just made a snide comment based on his appearance. If he had glasses and she said, "would someone get four eyes here out of my way," that wouldn't necessarily make her prejudiced against people with glasses. If wookies were short and she said, "would someone get this shrimp out of my way," it wouldn't make her prejudiced against little people either. It's just a sassy remark and it fits her character very well.

The zhora edit is a jump cut intended for dramatic effect and is part of the deleted scene itself. The deleted scene cuts to her being shot from black but I wanted to include the chase so I cut to the first violent action instead of the last. I felt the deleted scene editing eliminated a really exciting sequence, was a bit confusing, and I also had a few extra crowd shots in the chase I wanted to include. It's not possible to include the theatrical dressing room scene where Deckard pretends to be a union rep, as the deleted scene editing with the new narration skips this (and I also prefer it skipped).

The chess bit gets taken out because Sebastian doesn't sneak his way in with chess but uses his security override and Tyrell invites him in. Also part of the deleted/alternate scene.

It wasn't a 16mm dupe. The doc wanted the negative loaned to them to make a 16mm dupe for Star Wars to Jedi, which they then lost. LFL then discovered an IP of the negative, which is what they used.

pm sent.

They do Halloween in France.

If that response offends you then good luck with the whole internet thing.

SilverWook said:

zombie, do you have any idea when video editing/post production became the norm for tv documentaries, even if shot on film?

Classic Creatures seems the odd man out of all the OOT docs, as it seems to have been finished up on video. 16mm copies of the others have been spotted in the wild.

 I'm too young to have been around for that, I think it was in the late 1990s for video productions and film projects followed as hardware got better and cheaper; I guess when you started using it depended on the project, the budget, and those involved. Documentaries shot on video were probably cut on a computer as soon as they moved from analog tapes to digital in the mid-late 1990s, before that you would have had to do a conversion process to get it digital and the older electronic editing suites were okay once you got used to them, they gave you the same sort of non-linear functionality. I used one a few times when I was in highschool and found it the most frustrating thing in the world, but then I saw pros use them and it was second nature to them so I guess there is just a learning curve. I will say that when I started out in 2003 and 2004, cutting film on video using an AVID was still seen as a slightly new thing that a lot of older editors had only recently grappled with--things had changed very rapidly in the previous half decade--and the first thing I ever edited was 2004 and I cut it on a good old fashioned steenbeck. Later that year the facility I cut it on was trying to sell it, I would have bought it since it was only $1000 or something but it weighed as much as a small car (no joke) and I had no room for it.

Nope, mainly talking heads and 2004 SE clips. Interesting enough, but like a lot of these things, like EOD, it's pretty fluffy compared to what could have been possible, nothing said will be new to anyone who has discussed the films on the internet or read a few academic reviews of the films. Worth watching once though.

Maybe, I don't think it had menus, I think it was just a straight up rip, but I know I've watched the special and it was on my computer.