Star Wars 7 shit talk

xxxp tried four times, gave up.

i was intrigued by Kasdan saying he went off w/ Kershner to do his draft of the script. We forget that WGA credits and who wrote what don't often match up.

I'm sure this was posted way up thread but just in case any ship geeks missed it

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--1NEKrnWO--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/xe0yjmmjhdedgykt0a1j.jpg

http://imgur.com/gallery/Zt9Y4

(massive gallery of models from the OT)

i was intrigued by Kasdan saying he went off w/ Kershner to do his draft of the script. We forget that WGA credits and who wrote what don't often match up.

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, December 15, 2015 3:34 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a good rule of thumb to presume that, credit or no, a director had a lot to do w/ shaping a film's narrative. unless one has evidence to the contrary.

leigh brackett's credit is widely viewed as a courtesy. i haven't read her draft (which is out there) but most people suggest it doesn't have a ton to do w/ what eventually became 'empire'.

The world building in Star Wars is definitely the main thing of it from the point of film history. For better or for worse. At some point 'amazingly build world' became 'hodgepodge of marketing posibilities'...

heh, that point was in 1977 (or before)!

i mean star wars was always about marketing! i don't think it's particularly cynical, either -- the marketing possibilities just dovetail with the world-building ambitions.

Perhaps not, but the wave it began became plenty cynical...

grownups say that now

i'll remember those toys fondly thank u v much

a director had a lot to do w/ shaping a film's narrative.

there are entire eras and settings of commercial filmmaking where this is not true

"grownups say that now

i'll remember those toys fondly thank u v much"

exactly. it's easy to get disgusted by the amount of tie in marketing these days, but these things made my life so much more livable in the late 70's. I can't even imagine life without my action figures when I was 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYyuo7gm-aQ

a director had a lot to do w/ shaping a film's narrative.

there are entire eras and settings of commercial filmmaking where this is not true

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, December 15, 2015 4:06 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, it depends... it's true of a lot of classical-era directors, and probably most contemporary hollywood directors.

are we gonna mention Victor Fleming again

(I am never seeing this movie in case anyone was wondering)`

― Οὖτις, Monday, December 14, 2015 2:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in case anyone was wondering:

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so i'm watching this 'despecialized edition' of SW and while it's amazing it seems to me (having recently seen a 35mm print from the film's original release) that it does retain some of the revisions (audio and video) made to the film since the 1990s.,

Ha. I was just thinking earlier today that I sure know an awful lot about Star Wars for someone with so little interest in the new movie.

xpost There are a bunch of 'despecialized' editions out there. There's at least one super-anal version that does try, as much as possible, to restore it to the original theatrical version.

There's at least one super-anal version that does try, as much as possible, to restore it to the original theatrical version.

that's the one I got; the one that got all the press = Harmy's Despecialized Edition. 17 GB! it looks great, but i'm not convinced that it looks and sounds like a 1977/78 version of the film. (which is complicated since there were at least three different sound mixes for the film's first release.)

in the print i saw recently, the early scenes on tatooine (sp?) were beautifully grainy -- almost foggy. like they were shot with a really, really long lens. some of that seems to be gone in all the video versions i've seen.

also the original shot of the death star exploding (in slight slo-mo) is lovely.

I'm totally bringing a bong to this

Didn't they release the original theatrical cut as a bonus disc on DVD a decade or so ago?

Yes but it was a shit transfer ripped from the 90s laserdiscs

Still worth it to not see A NEW HOPE in the crawl

yeah but

1) it's non-anamorphic
2) very soft and blurry (taken from old laserdisc transfer to which a bunch of cheap early-90s "digital noise reduction" had been applied)
3) has "ghosting" and other analog video artefacts
4) has all kinds of audio problems beyond that
5) IIRC it uses 1985 sound re-mix prepared for first VHS release, not 1977 (or even 1981) sound mixes (mono or stereo or Dolby surround)

(there's a wikipedia page that documents all this in more detail than probably any of us care to read about)

xpost

It was more of a fuck you than not including it IMO

i mean, i know, it's easy to make fun of this type of anality, but if you're using STAR WARS to, say, teach the history of visual effects and sound design, it matters to actually have something that resembles the original release.

It was more of a fuck you than not including it IMO

― Hammer Smashed Bagels, Tuesday, December 15, 2015 7:33 PM (12 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

huh?

That Lucas deliberately 'caved' to OG fans by including the original cuts in less than desirable quality

Ie "ok you get it but I pissed all over it first"

oh, i see.

it occurs to me that the very perfectionism that led STAR WARS to become a landmark in visual effects (and it still really dazzles on that score) is what led lucas to constantly re-work the damn thing (albeit with much lower quality control).

i suspect that most of the parts of harmy's that don't include restored original fx are just from the se blu-rays-- iirc there is a visible change in the quality (used neutrally) of the image when it cuts to e.g. the landspeeder. could be wrong. those things are treasures tho.

tbh the landspeeder stuff is precisely what makes me think this doesn't really look like the 1977 release

in the print i saw, underneath the landspeeder there is a very conspicuous blur. in the "despecialized edition" there's a very well-defined shadow instead -- which is precisely what was done to "improve" the FX, if not for the 1997 edition then for earlier video releases. in other words, the FX seem to have vestiges of later re-toolings.

hell, all those Tatooine scenes looked murky for years, which fit the drabness of living on a desert planet without punk rock and bright clothes.

also i've always liked the searchers-quoting sequence where he returns home to find his aunt/uncle dead. i've always been a little shocked that they included those charred corpses in there--that's pretty intense stuff for kids. (and of course if it was a more thoroughgoing 'searchers' homage the horror would have been all displayed on obi-wan's face.)

and Snaggletooth's severed arm!

yeah! i don't object to any of this stuff. it's good to freak kids out. all the more reason to regret the relatively sanitized sequels.

I liked the pigeon droppings on Boba Fett's armor.

i suspect that most of the parts of harmy's that don't include restored original fx are just from the se blu-rays-- iirc there is a visible change in the quality (used neutrally) of the image when it cuts to e.g. the landspeeder. could be wrong. those things are treasures tho.

― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, December 16, 2015 1:44 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's some YouTube clips that show you what's being patched in from where

tbh tho the platonic Star Wars is one your mum taped off the telly two Christmases ago with an Argos advert and one for double deckers between yodas introduction and going back to cloud city

and Snaggletooth's severed arm!

Production photo shows they originally had something more hardcore in mind:

http://i.imgur.com/BjiJv.jpg

IIRC, the walrus guy in the cantina fight ("Ponda Baba" sez wookieepedia), I had his action figure, and his arm was frickin' detachable. Because 6 years olds need to be able realistically simulate the maiming that happens in bar fights that involve light sabers

Love the pipe in that photo