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Post by Joker on Nov 3, 2011 0:12:07 GMT -5
TrailerDirected by Alexandre O. Philippe In the 70's there was a young filmmaker named George Lucas who was upset that his films THX 1138 (1971) and American Graffiti (1973) were re-edited by studios he suddenly got a shot at writing and directing a film called Star Wars in 1977. The film exploded and became a culture of it's own around the world. For decades Star Wars became bigger and bigger in people's minds and they swore by the trilogy of films that defined their childhood and bought lots and lots of merchandise as George became a corporate business leader. Then in 1997 Lucas decided to re-release digitally enhanced versions of his beloved trilogy, restoring sequences, making scenes busier with more stuff, cleaning up the picture, making Greedo shoot first, and most controvertial of all eliminating his original versions of the films. Seeing how Lucas testified to Congress against Ted Turner colorizing classic black and white films in the 80's you'd think film preservation would be important to him. But we're not talking about other people's films, we're talking about George Lucas' films. So are all of the people interviewed in this film, which is sort of structured as testimony against Lucas in a trial. When does something you make no longer belong to you? Isn't an artist allowed to redo, retouch, and upgrade their work regardless of what anyone else thinks? Then the film gets into the soul-crushing prequel trilogy with rewriting it's mythology, dark hatred of Jar Jar Binks, and otherwise disappointing fans in a myriad of ways. Young fans love the new films while old fans are now apparently broken people suddenly confronting how things have changed with this series of films that defined their childhoods. Personally, I don't really care much for Star Wars stuff as much as I did when I was a kid. After the one-two punch of Episode 1 & 2 I had no desire to watch Revenge of the Sith. I've only seen some clips over the years and don't think I'm missing much. I can remember when Phantom Menace came out there was a ton of merchandise that was just not moving in the sporting goods store I was working in at the time, which adds weight to a statement about a landfill of plastic from Star Wars stuff mentioned in the doc. Another thing that stood out was people illegally pirating the original versions of Eps. IV-VI from laserdisc which seems like a moral act of film preservation the way it's told here. It would appear that Lucas destroyed the old prints once the Special Editions were released in the late 90's. What would you do to preserve a part of film history? The final and best thing about this doc is just how many creative people have been inspired by Lucas' films. The incredible shorts and animation show how art can be incredibly powerful and can ignite people's imaginations. The kids who made their own shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark was amazing even though it was a bunch of unsupervised kids doing fire stunts in their homes. This is one of the best fan docs ever made. Highly recommended. ;D
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Post by TheNewMads on Nov 3, 2011 6:52:27 GMT -5
weird coincidence, i just got this from netflix yesterday. i'm gonna start watching it today on the elliptical machine, so i can work out my rage at george lucas with aerobic exercise. *#$% the pain away!
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Nov 3, 2011 9:30:40 GMT -5
I haven't seen the movie, but I do have to say that having kids who know Star Wars from the Clone Wars cartoons and the new movies has changed my opinion of them. I have my own nostalgic feelings, but it's obvious that "Star Wars" is more than just three movies now. It's a whole universe (books, games, comics, etc.) and there are a number of different ways into it. While part of me may be sad that the "purity" of my own childhood experience with is pretty much impossible for my boys, I'm amazed at what it's grown into and I think that's a much better legacy for it than a trilogy of museum-piece movies, which is how a lot of the "die hards" seem to treat it.
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Post by TheNewMads on Nov 3, 2011 13:40:20 GMT -5
watched the first half today, about the special editions. the archival 1976-77 footage is great! learning that lucas is saying the original negatives to A New Hope have been permanently altered is... less great.
i definitely admire mummistal's equanimity but i think i'm going to have to put myself in the george-lucas-is-the-embodiment-of-evil camp. i'm not even sure how much credit he deserves for the original two movies. i think they must have been ghost-written. maybe gary kurtz? lawrence kasdan? i can't believe the same guy who wrote "A New Hope" and "Empire Strikes Back" wrote "The Phantom Menace." Maybe the real George Lucas died sometime in the 80s and they swapped him out with a lookalike, Paul McCartney-style.
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Post by Ratso on Nov 4, 2011 10:29:22 GMT -5
Maybe the real George Lucas died sometime in the 80s and they swapped him out with a lookalike, Paul McCartney-style.
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Post by TheNewMads on Nov 4, 2011 14:02:03 GMT -5
Maybe the real George Lucas died sometime in the 80s and they swapped him out with a lookalike, Paul McCartney-style. I KNEW IT! I JUST KNEW IT! well, i finished it today. overall it was really entertaining, although i'm gonna go ahead and say, some of those people like Stars Wars, um, a little bit too much. My Star Wars jones pretty much focuses on the first two movies and how much i loved them back when i was, like, 8 to 11 years old. that memory has dimmed, I can't watch the movies that made me love the franchise anymore (the Special Editions are too offensive, I can't even sit through them), the ewoks ruin Return of the Jedi for me, and the prequels are mediocre to horrid, so i have to admit i really just don't care that much about Star Wars anymore, and haven't in decades. Frankly, the only thing entertaining about Star Wars anymore is watching the fans savage it. On the other hand, that IS awful entertaining.
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Post by BJ on Nov 4, 2011 14:52:36 GMT -5
Thanks for the write up Joker, and your thoughts Newmads. I'll have to check this one out. I still love the original Star Wars, except for the Ewoks, and I really liked Sith as well. For anyone that wants to watch the original theatrical releases, the non-anamorphic laser dics versions on the 2 disc dvd sets are decent quality. There are also the downloadable versions, which attempt to restore the originals from higher quality sources, but that's kind of a grey legal area even if you've bought the dvds. Also, this It would appear that Lucas destroyed the old prints once the Special Editions were released in the late 90's. What would you do to preserve a part of film history? is definitely a myth that has spread like wildfire. Even if the original film elements were destroyed to make the special editions (highly doubtful), there would be duplicates available. And even if those duplicates disappeared, there would be other sources, such as privately held 35mm prints. The shot below is a scanned frame from one of those prints, which incidentally has more detail than the Blu-Ray. It's not about cost or lack of sources; Lucasfilm simply refuses to release these in decent quality, and that's where a lot of the fan angst comes from.
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Post by TheNewMads on Nov 4, 2011 16:07:46 GMT -5
The shot below is a scanned frame from one of those prints, which incidentally has more detail than the Blu-Ray. It's not about cost or lack of sources; Lucasfilm simply refuses to release these in decent quality, and that's where a lot of the fan angst comes from. i think this is definitely the lion's share of it, the tossing-the-originals-down-the-memory-hole thing. no one really cares that much that Raiders of the Lost Ark is the only decent Indiana Jones movie because it's available in basically unaltered form, and that's because when everyone snagged on Temple of Doom, Spielberg didn't respond by going back to Raiders and airbrushing Kate Capshaw and Shortround all over it. But I also think Lucas set expectations SO INCREDIBLY HIGH for the prequels by waiting decades to make them and hyping this phony Ennealogy thing ("Ennealogy"! It's like Trilogy, but for nine works! i love the Internet)... Thanks for pointing that out about the 35mm print having more detail than Blu-Ray. People don't realize how fine a visual resolution 35mm offers. That's why people say dumb things about how a movie's not worth getting on Blu-Ray unless it's got CGI in it. grr! Another funny thing is that when Star Wars came out there was basically no such thing as owning a movie. If you wanted to see a movie again you had to hope it either got rereleased in theaters or one of the networks ran a TV-edited version of it. (you could drop massive cash on a 16mm print on six reels, but *&^% that.) in a scant 30-odd years we now see DVDs of movies as a birthright, and it's positively Orwellian if someone refuses to release a DVD of an original film. Someone from 1977 who suddenly came here in a time machine would probably be pretty amazed at that.
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Post by TheNewMads on Nov 4, 2011 16:14:23 GMT -5
also, i think they should pull a Machete and just go ahead and make "George Lucas Strikes Back."
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Post by CBG on Nov 4, 2011 16:15:10 GMT -5
Another funny thing is that when Star Wars came out there was basically no such thing as owning a movie. If you wanted to see a movie again you had to hope it either got rereleased in theaters or one of the networks ran a TV-edited version of it. (you could drop massive cash on a 16mm print on six reels, but *&^% that.) in a scant 30-odd years we now see DVDs of movies as a birthright, and it's positively Orwellian if someone refuses to release a DVD of an original film. Someone from 1977 who suddenly came here in a time machine would probably be pretty amazed at that. Well said.
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Post by BJ on Nov 5, 2011 14:19:39 GMT -5
Thanks for pointing that out about the 35mm print having more detail than Blu-Ray. People don't realize how fine a visual resolution 35mm offers. That's why people say dumb things about how a movie's not worth getting on Blu-Ray unless it's got CGI in it. grr! I was actually just trying to show that the compressed jpg of the film print has more detail than the blu-ray (which is pathetic), but that's a good point. 35mm film has far more equivalent pixels than a Blu-Ray, while 16mm is about equivalent to 1080p. People just don't get Blu-Ray, and what it can offer. Like you say, many think a movie has to be new to look better on Blu. Yet, titles like Casablanca, the Prisoner and North by Northwest look incredible on Blu. Basically, anything shot on film will be noticeably better on Blu, as long as the film elements haven't deteriorated and the transfer is properly done. There are many that mistake film grain (which is good) for digital noise and compression artifacts (bad). This causes the studios to use digital noise reduction and edge enhancement on these discs, because the average consumer thinks that all hi def films should look smooth and glossy. There's another problem on the other end of the spectrum, where a large amount of consumers just think because it's in a blue box, it must be perfect. After all, that's what the advertising says. This means that the studios can use mediocre, ten year old transfers, and the discs will still sell like crazy (e.g. BttF, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and many others). The end results of this are often either fuzzy, near-hi-def, or smeared messes where the actors look like wax statues. There's absolutely no reason why The Evil Dead and Big Trouble in Little China should look better than extremely popular, big budget blockbusters, but they do by a wide margin. Sorry, off topic rant over. I'm just tired of my favorite movies coming out on Blu, and not buying them because they barely look better than the dvd.
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Post by TheNewMads on Nov 6, 2011 17:44:23 GMT -5
Thanks for pointing that out about the 35mm print having more detail than Blu-Ray. People don't realize how fine a visual resolution 35mm offers. That's why people say dumb things about how a movie's not worth getting on Blu-Ray unless it's got CGI in it. grr! I was actually just trying to show that the compressed jpg of the film print has more detail than the blu-ray (which is pathetic), but that's a good point. ha, yeah, silly me, I chattered out my comment and only then zoomed in on your attached frame and was like, hey, this doesn't look like a 35mm frame! It looks like a crappy jpeg! I misunderstood. 35mm film has far more equivalent pixels than a Blu-Ray, while 16mm is about equivalent to 1080p. People just don't get Blu-Ray, and what it can offer. Like you say, many think a movie has to be new to look better on Blu. Yet, titles like Casablanca, the Prisoner and North by Northwest look incredible on Blu. Basically, anything shot on film will be noticeably better on Blu, as long as the film elements haven't deteriorated and the transfer is properly done. There are many that mistake film grain (which is good) for digital noise and compression artifacts (bad). This causes the studios to use digital noise reduction and edge enhancement on these discs, because the average consumer thinks that all hi def films should look smooth and glossy. There's another problem on the other end of the spectrum, where a large amount of consumers just think because it's in a blue box, it must be perfect. After all, that's what the advertising says. This means that the studios can use mediocre, ten year old transfers, and the discs will still sell like crazy (e.g. BttF, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and many others). The end results of this are often either fuzzy, near-hi-def, or smeared messes where the actors look like wax statues. There's absolutely no reason why The Evil Dead and Big Trouble in Little China should look better than extremely popular, big budget blockbusters, but they do by a wide margin. Sorry, off topic rant over. I'm just tired of my favorite movies coming out on Blu, and not buying them because they barely look better than the dvd. this is insightful stuff, i don't know much about cinematography or the ins and outs of digital transfer but i do know that people are expecting things out of both media they they aren't likely to provide. 35mm film provides a beautiful picture but its character is essentially different from CGI or digital imagery, it's just soupier and grittier and less precise because it's a chemical process rather than a computerized one. blu-ray captures 35mm pretty well but only so long as you don't try to revise that soupiness out of it. in my uninformed opinion. my guess is the movies that look good, like Big Trouble, are just being put through rote processes to transfer the 35mm to blu-ray, whereas the more popular movies are going through more extensive "cleanups" and revisions, to smooth out the happy accidents that made the original 35mm look so good in the first place. and if that's true, seems to me totally on-topic, because it's just a more generic and less overt version of the same thing lucas is accused of doing. i mean, the problem to me seems ultimately to be one of trying to always update these movies to embody the latest aesthetic rather than letting it stand as published. it'd make about as much sense to rewrite "Moby Dick" in the style of Raymond Carver.
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Post by BJ on Nov 6, 2011 20:16:18 GMT -5
in my uninformed opinion. my guess is the movies that look good, like Big Trouble, are just being put through rote processes to transfer the 35mm to blu-ray, whereas the more popular movies are going through more extensive "cleanups" and revisions, to smooth out the happy accidents that made the original 35mm look so good in the first place. I think that's exactly what's happening. The studios want to spend next to nothing on cult films, so they just take what they've got, put it on a disc, and sell it. Fortunately, for whatever reason, they had a good HD transfer of BTILC lying around, so it came out great. Popular movies tend to get edge enhanced, sharpened, and put through automatic noise removal to make them look "better". If they'd just spent that money instead on rescanning the original film at 4k and then do nothing but clean up hair and dirt, these blu's be near perfect representations of what was available in the best theater. Unfortunately, uneducated reviewers would complain that the film is too grainy, and tell everyone how poor the disc is. One thing to remember about film grain is that it actually is the picture. Those little specs aren't noise, or damage, but the image itself. Without them, you'd just be left with blank celluloid. And you're right, even fine grain film will never look like it was filmed with a digital camera, and that's definitely a good thing. Not every movie needs to look like a Pixar film.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Nov 9, 2011 11:37:03 GMT -5
I agree that the prequels don't really warrant a re-watch, although Revenge of the Sith is decent, imo. But if you haven't seen the Clone Wars cartoons, they're actually quite good. My son likes them, and the Anakin there is substantially different from Christensen, which is great. I know some people find his apprentice "Ahsokha" (sp?) irritating and too kid-like, but the cartoon is actually pretty dark and deals with the moral ambiguity that Lucas COULD have developed in the prequels pretty well, I think. Plus, the clone warriors that you follow give a different sense of that universe that isn't all just heroes and Jedis, which I like a lot.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Nov 9, 2011 12:40:25 GMT -5
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