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zombie84

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Join date
21-Nov-2005
Last activity
12-Jan-2024
Posts
3,557

Post History

Post
#319620
Topic
The Atheism thread
Time
Well, as an atheist I have to admit that it is quite infuriating to see the world constantly tearing itself apart in small and big ways over "religion." Even in domestic terms, you have things like a family ostasizing a member because they convert to "the wrong" religion or marry someone outside their faith, and its a real shame. I'm of the live-and-let-live philosophy, but organized religion often goes against this due to its inherant codification.
Post
#319573
Topic
70mm screening
Time
Baronlando said:

I thought the 1985 IP was one of the sources "stripped for parts" in 96 to make the special edition? I hope I'm wrong.


It might have been. I thought that the 1995 THX release was made from the 1985 IP though, or am I wrong about that? Somebody needs to do a guidebook about all these sources.

EDIT

I went and checked ILM: Into the Digital Realm, and it reports that the 1985 home video IP was the source of both the 1993 Laserdisk and the 1995 THX release. While it doesn't outright say it, it might imply that this might have been cannibalised, as it says that "the IP" was used in place of O-neg shots that were too damaged (and the 1985 IP is the only IP ever identified by the writer).
Post
#319439
Topic
Indiana Jones IV
Time
Max_Rebo said:

has he made a single good film in the last 10 years?


Have you been alseep for the last decade?

Saving Private Ryan
The Terminal
Catch Me If You Can
Munich
I thought War of the Worlds was awesome, and am always surprised to find some people didn't like it. A.I. is the only real clunker he's had but its a very interesting film, and Minority Report is quite good too. I'd say the latest batch of films are among the best he has ever done.
Post
#319376
Topic
Crystall Skull has GL's fingerprints all over it
Time
thecolorsblend2 said:

Data is always at risk for being lost or damaged beyond repair, whether it's physical or digital media. That being said, ROTS will never have to be remastered -- at least not in the same sense that, say, the Godfather has been.

This will only become truer as storage drive capacity expands beyond what it is today. The expense and logistics of terrabytes of storage is only an obstacle right now. It's only going to become easier, cheaper and more efficient from here on in.


In the case of Star Wars thats probably true, because the material is basically controlled by one company who only has to worry about those films, so keeping 6 films preserved is easy. The problem comes with a studio--how do you preserve 100, 000 films digitally? Its much easier to just make a celluloid negative and keep that properly preserved in a climate-controlled warehouse with thousands of other films. If your library has 100, 000 titles you want preserved, at roughly 200 GB per film thats 20 000 000 GB. But you can't have just one, because digital data is so easily corrupted, you would make a back up, so now its 40 000 000 GB. Not only do you have to pay the huge electric bill to keep those millions of hard drives spinning, you have to have a guy checking and maintaining them, and becase hard drives only have a lifespan of about 2 or 3 years, that means all 40 000 000 GB has to be back up almost bi-annually. Thats an enormous effort, not to mention a huge cost (just the act of telecining them alone would cost near a billion dollars).

So I don't really see digital storage replacng the old fashioned way any time soon, not in our lifetimes. They'll continue to co-exist, and as studios slowly build up their digital library storage cost will go down and physical hard drive space will shrink as well, but it'll still be a co-existance for a very long time, and they'll still continue to preserve the negatives they have, they aren't going to just chuck their history.
Post
#319370
Topic
Indiana Jones IV
Time
Tiptup said:

canofhumdingers said:


Finally, cgi has also led to the advent of "digital editing" (is that what it's called?) where filmmakers can literally splice two seperate takes together to get the performance they desire. I remember seeing this on some "making of" for one of the prequels. Lucas maybe liked take 2 for Anakin, but liked take 6 for Obi-wan. Instead of trying to coax each actor into giving the desired results together in one take by giving them good direction & feedback, Lucas was able to just splice those two takes together in editing. IMO, this just KILLS any chance of getting good chemistry between the actors. It's not something I think Speilberg would or has used, but it is something cgi has brought about & it's a concept I utterly detest.


Peter Jackson used that a lot for the Lord of the Rings. You can notice a lot of little details changing from one view to another here and there. The worst is when Boromir dies in fellowship since the location of their hands changes back and forth (it ruins the drama for me).


What you are talking about is back and forth editing, and since most dialog scenes are not shot with coverage of both people at once this is normal. What canofhumdingers is talking about is isolating actors WITHIN the same shot--if there is a wideshot of two people, Lucas would digitally rotoscope Liam Neeson from take 3 into a shot of Ewan McGregor from take 1, so that both actors oncamera at the same time are not actually oncamera at the same time but spliced together from different takes of the same shot.
Post
#319339
Topic
Crystall Skull has GL's fingerprints all over it
Time
Film is still less impermanent than digital though. The cost and effort of preserving digital data is enormous, it requires backing up terabytes of data every few years to keep a movie alive, wheras with film you can have a 35mm negative that will last decades. In fact, in an ironic twist, studios are now preserving digital works by printing them onto film, because this is currently the only reliable form of preservation.
Post
#319267
Topic
Indiana Jones IV
Time
I thought it was absolutely appropriate to have paranormal aliens. I mean look at X-Files, one episode they are chasing a spirit, the next episode they are chasing bigfoot, the next episode one of them is being abducted by aliens. I still don't really understand the apprehension to the extra-terrestrial plot. I thought the film suffered a bit by showing them too much, but the plot itself was very well done I thought, and appropriate to the Indy series.
Post
#319209
Topic
Indiana Jones IV
Time
Darth Chaltab said:

And are you really serious? If a high school student wrote and directed Attack of the Clones, it wouldn't have had Ewan McGregor, Ian McDarmid, or a multi-million dollar special effects budget... need I go on?

Yes it would, because thats not what I'm suggesting. If everything about AOTC was the same except a highschool kid wrote and directed it--if he had the same basic story, a $120 million budget, ILM, Ian McDiarmid, Ewan McGregor, etc, if everything was the same except for some reason there was a 15 year old boy who wrote the script and somehow was directing...I can't think of anything that would be different. Possibly, it would be better.
Post
#319208
Topic
Crystall Skull has GL's fingerprints all over it
Time
Yeah, I very much agree, Jackson turned Gollum into a very conflicted character with much pathos and made him much more heartbreaking. In the book, theres not much to him, he's bad but theres this little indication that theres still a bit of good somewhere there, but for the film Jackson really made his struggle between good and evil the character's focus. Its a shame that he was actually constrained by the book, because for me the logical conclusion of the trajectory Jackson set up was some kind of redemption, even if he still killed himself, because for most of Jackson's Return of the King Gollum just kind of casts aside all the wonderful conflict in the previous film and becomes bad. I kind of wish Jackson had dared be a bit more interpretive with the book here, but Tolkien fans already hate him as it is.
Post
#319172
Topic
Indiana Jones IV
Time
Darth Chaltab said:

auximenies said:

zombie84 said:

Nothing could be worse than Burton's Planet of the Apes. But then the whole film was on that kind of level anyway. It was like a final dump in the toilet to a two-hour bowel movement.

Wow. You've put in to words exactly what I had been feeling about that film since the evening I saw it. To me, Burton's PotA and GL's AotC are the two worst films I have ever seen.


If Planet of the Apes and Attack of the Clones are the worst you've seen, you're VEEEEERRRRY lucky... And for that matter, even those two movies aren't in the same league of badness.


I'm pretty good at steering away from bad movies. I mean, I'm sure if I watched something like What Happens in Vegas that would be a new candidate but why in the world would I want to do that? And it still probably has better acting and writing than Attack of the Clones. I watch a lot of low-budget horror stuff, so indeed I HAVE seen worse examples, but I think I can honestly say that AOTC has the worst acting and dialog I have ever witnessed in a mainstream motion picture in my life. I'm trying to think of stuff that comes close but its hard--stuff like Wing Commander and Battlefield Earth, though bad, is at least two or three times more convincing in that department. My argument has always been: if a high school student wrote and directed Attack of the Clone--what would be different about it? I can't think of anything.
Post
#319161
Topic
Crystall Skull has GL's fingerprints all over it
Time
Johnboy3434 said:

Tiptup said:

What happened to the painstaking care that used to look at each shot and scene for excellent visual details? I preferred it when people did real work to make sure that a particular image was as good as it could be. Though, I suppose that Guillermo Del Toro does a fantastic job in his movies. I can't wait for Hellboy 2 and he gives me hope for a good translation of the Hobbit.


A lot of visual effects artists would find that offensive. Using computer-generated effects is incredibly painstaking, regardless of what the public at large may think.


I agree. CGI can be even more painstaking than the old-fashioned methods. Theres a very big misconception that, from the standpoint of the artists, it takes less effort or less skill. Its easier for filmmakers because they have more control but from the standpoint of the technicians and artists it takes more time and effort in most cases--which is why the pos-production phase on FX film has gone from about 6 months, as it usually was back around 1980, to about 12-18 months as it usually is now.
Post
#319094
Topic
Indiana Jones IV
Time
I can understand some people being less than enthused, but what UTTERLY perplexes me is the people that HATE it, like personally harbor hatred towards it, when they liked the sequels. I mean, the people that say "Raiders is a classic, but with Temple of Doom it just went off the deep end, and Crusade was too funny and budd-buddy and it was the same movie as Raiders but done poorly"--I can understand those people, even if, in spite of these criticism, I can say "yeah, but the films are still entertaining!" Because Crystal Skull is just more of the same. It really is. I think it has more flaws than either of the two sequels, but there are tons of people that thought Temple of Doom was mediocre at best as well, and Crystal Skull is pretty consistent with what was established in the previous two entries (in fact, its sort of a weird amalgum of the two if you think about it).
Post
#319056
Topic
Indiana Jones IV
Time
During the rough cut screening everyone felt it all worked until Marcia spoke up and said there was a lack of emotional resolution because Marion disappears, she's presumably left on some island with a lot of melted Nazis. So they filmed a new scene in San Francisco for the ending where Marion is waiting for Indy outside the building and Indy comes out saying they're all fools and they have some dialog and go off together. Its a small change, but a very effective one.
Post
#318942
Topic
The Secret History of Star Wars
Time
none said:

Congrats on the major blog run of late! Have you figured out what sparked this interest?
none


Thanks. I'm not sure what you mean "have you figured out what sparked this interest"; you mean in the scripting of Star Wars? I don't know, for some reason its always interested me, it has a very interesting and unique creative evolution, and the fact that a lot of it wasn't known gave me the patience to spend three years writing a book about it. I've been continuing writing articles for the site because I continue to find interesting things to report about the series (much to my own surprise)!

I guess I should also use this opportunity to say that there is a third edition of the book out now that finally has re-edited things to make it read better. Its a pretty drastic improvement I'd say. Hopefully, future readers will now have a semi-professional-quality document to read, instead of the more amaturish thing that the earliest readers suffered through. :p