Abob Teff

Fixed.

cactusoly

Watch it. Ypur gonna get flamed ... oops too late.

but i gotta admit that cat is pretty damn funny.

rennervision

Kcbrett5 - maybe I'm just reading your posts with the wrong tone, but I swear it sounds like you're being sarcastic. Please tell me you forgot to add that little winking smiley face!

Abob Teff

Rennervision's sig says it all . . . BTW, add me to the list of people who will not be spending money purchasing the SW Trilogy. I will admittedly spend a few dollars to rent them, but will save my purchasing power for a set of bootlegs.

Get Me Coffee

Hear hear

dick_grayson

This has to be a joke. I'm beginning to get suspicious that people will post something so inane just to see a reaction on the forum.

flyboy

Good one! I second that...

Boots for me too...boots all around!

freudguy

I'm trying to keep an open mind until I see everything all together in context. Even then, I won't be talking to everyone else like my opinion is gospel and putting down folks just because their opinions are different from mine. The general "That's the way it is, so nyah!" attitude in the SW threads as well as in several others is getting so very banal.


I'm looking forward to buying them and watching them.....and will revert to my LD copies whenever I need to cleanse my palate Who says you can't have both the official and "unofficial" releases

Cygnet74

I can... when he refers to him as SKYWALKER at the beginning of empire, well before he talks to the emperor.

dick_grayson

yeah, that's what I assumed. I never thought it was that big a deal.

Terrell

American Graffiti, THX-1138, and Indiana Jones. So much for that statement.

dick_grayson

I meant since then. I also could have said "one of the only good things....." Semantics!

Lokimok

This only disproves part of what he said. Yes, Lucas has done other "good shit" & while I think "fucking up" would be too strong, you could say that all of these films have been meddled with to some degree. I haven't seen the new version of THX 1138 yet, but it isn't hard to believe he has fucked it up.

duff beer

That's nice Terrel that your opinion means the most for you. But when more people prefer the older one to the newer one, than that tells you something, which is that if the masses like the older one, no one gives two big balls for that newer bumblefuck of a hologram shit.

Rivero

Here's a review of the new THX-1138 from Harry Knowles' site. Lucas continues to gain new fans:




George Lucas, where did our love go? STAR WARS was probably the single most important experience of my youth, the movie that got me interested in filmmaking. From this single flick I developed a voracious appetite for cinema from all over the world, no matter what the genre, as long as it was good, interesting, unique or special in some way. Not even the diminished returns of the numerous sequels have quashed my determination to receive a joy of some kind from each and every entry in the series, as I’ve always been able to find at least a spark or a moment of inspiration tucked away in the heart of all of them. When the time came for me to go back and examine your previous works, such as AMERICAN GRAFFITTI and THX-1138 it was rewarding to discover that you were in fact a legitimate director who was capable of working with actors on material that was both intriguing and challenging. Like another American original, George Romero, you not only wrote and directed your films, you even served as your own editor, which added yet another dimension of personal signature on the work, another level of authorship that marked the rugged individuality of your early films which were trendsetters in their own, special way.

THX-1138 (1970) has been a special favorite for me. In the midst of all the usual dystopian paranoia and sci-fi trappings you were able to shoehorn a level of self-aware and pitch black humor that raised the film far above the standard, humorless and straight-laced dunderheaded science fiction of the time. Sure, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) may have graced the screens two years earlier and changed the shape of speculative films to come for all time, but THX-1138 brought the future to us in a palpable way that Kubrick’s attempt to drag us kicking-and-screaming into his future could not. The layering of sound and image was richly experimental in both tone and it’s attempt to tell a fairly linear story in as non-linear a way as possible while still maintaining coherency. The committed performances of all the performers and the truly striking choices as concerns camera composition makes even the most potentially mundane moment feel special and “futuristic” even as two people sit on the floor of a bare room and embrace (as David Cronenberg’s STEREO and CRIMES OF THE FUTURE shorts also do). The melding of sound and image grabs normalcy by the scruff of the neck and projects it head-first into the visionary future of a defamiliarized here and now.

But you had to go and f**k it all up, didn’t you? Seriously, pal; I don’t know who you’re hanging out with these days and how far they’ve allowed you to jam your head up your own ass, but you took the jewel of your empire and treated it like toilet paper after a particularly rough night of Taco Bell indulgence.

I’m referring of course to the Director’s Cut of THX-1138 I saw digitally projected last night for what I hope will be the only time I will ever have to suffer the indignity of watching a classic film gang-raped by underage hooligans in public.

It’s all over, George. I’ve been rooting for you ever since I heard you were restoring the damn thing. I remember hearing the first rumblings about changes being made and CGI effects being added to open things up a bit, but mentally I stood by your side and said to myself that you’re a smart guy and that since this was your first feature and (to me, arguably) your best film, the choices you made would be tasteful and augment what was already there. And when the first frame grabs of the changes were leaked, I balked at a few of the decisions reached, while other images raised an eyebrow and made me think that some improvements might actually be made. So it was with that (relatively) open mind that I excitedly attended the screening last night.

As the screening began, and the first images of THX-1138 unfolded with a sharpness of image and clarity of soundtrack that I’ve never heard before, I was elated as I noticed little details in the frame that I’d never seen before and also picked-up on some dialogue that had always been just a little bit to muddy for me to decipher. You really had me going there, George; even the first epic CGI shots of a grotesquely overpopulated future world, which were intrusive to someone who knows the film as well as I, were forgiven and shrugged off as an unnecessary but not horrifying addition. I felt good about myself and my ability to adjust my expectations, to trust in you as an artist who still had some integrity and not just some desiccated old-man running an empire on autopilot; not some King Lear, victim to the whims of his own infirmities and the connivings of his underlings.

But then, suddenly, when LUH (Maggie McOmie) tells THX (Robert Duvall) she thinks everyone is watching them as they engage in illegal drug evasion and sexuality, you really do cut to a series of faces that appear to be watching them (re-edited from a much more subtly evocative moment from the original version). And now SEN (Donald Pleasance) is watching them have sex on his viewscreen as well?!? Could you please connect the dots for us any more? Someone asleep in the balcony might have missed that. Worst of all, defying the wonderfully paranoid logic of the original version just to make a plot point more clear for today’s “dumber” audience, when THX turns in SEN for his crimes, the act is now not the furtive scribbling of the illegality on a card in an empty hallway – an illicit act filled ripe with paranoia, as it was in the original version. Nope, now we get a CGI added viewscreen above the box THX is writing his card on so we can clearly see what he’s writing and the fact that he’s turning SEN in to the authorities. What was implied, very clearly, in the original is now punched into our heads with no subtlety whatsoever. Worst of all, it defies all logic for THX to turn in SEN if he knows that it’s not an anonymous process (as in the original, ala the boxes outside the firehouses in FAHRENHEIT 451); who in their right mind would issue a report on anyone if they knew they were being recorded while doing it?!?

There’s more; oh, so much more, so I’ll just jump to the other worst offenders. Like why, in god’s name, did a more elaborate scaffolding set-up (complete with extra people on it) for THX to drive through need to be added to the already exciting tunnel scene? Was it for the ha-ha moment where a worker jumps to safety just before it collapsed beneath him? Jeezus, did Greedo REALLY shoot first?!? And worst of all, the f**k-it-all-I-just-give-up moment of all film history for me (really, this was the moment that enraged me the most) was creating CGI versions of the shell-dwellers, which were originally played by little people, who briefly attack THX just before he escapes. They look awful, everyone in the audience (rightfully) laughed at it (not with it) and it’s the most jaw-droppingly embarrassing moment I’ve experienced in a movie theatre in a long time. And let’s face it, this summer has given all of us ample opportunity to feel embarrassed sitting in a theatre.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have been rooked, and let nobody tell you otherwise. The next time someone moans about how audiences have gotten stupider and that’s why it’s harder to see good, intelligent cinema at the local Cineplex anymore, you just point them right at this Director’s Cut of one of the smartest sci-fi films of it’s era and tell them (in your best Norma Desmond voice) that it’s the producers who got stupid, not the audiences.

(As a footnote, a super-special “f**k-you!” is in order for the MPAA, who saw fit to retrofit the film with an R-rating. What the hell is wrong with you idiots? No obscene language, brief frontal nudity from a hologram and some people in the far-off distance. It’s a sci-fi flick about people trying to escape the drugged-out stupor of their addicted society and you don’t want high school age kids to see this? Please just die, Jack Valenti, and soon. You are a further pox upon the movie-going public. Do everyone a favor and take a dip in the tar bath with the rest of the moronic ghouls you work with; consider it recycling, and the best thing you can do for the people of the United States.)

-Scooter McCrae

kcbrett5

I am seriously not joking. I honestly believe everything I wrote. I love the changes cause it gives me a reason to watch these movies again.

I have every line memorized. There is little incentive at this point to keep watching them. I have way too many other things to do at this point in my life.

Just accept it folks. Not everyone hates the changes. Look at this poll. 30% like the changes better.

kcbrett5

So in the entire galaxy there is only one man that ever was named Skywalker?

Please explain this to poor Matthew and Stacy Skywalker in St. Petersburg, FL. I am sure they will be happy to know they are descendants of Darth Vader.

Thanks to Yahoo people search for this valuable information.

Rivero

Get Me Coffee

mthiel

Does anybody have a mirror for the video file?

bboisvert

ESB opens with Vader sending "thousands" of probe droids throughout the galaxy, looking solely for Luke. The opening crawl to ESB states that Vader is "obsessed" with finding young Skywalker. When he finds the base, he doesn't focus on the rebels at all, but says "I'm sure Skywalker is with them!"

You actually think that at this stage of the film, he's unaware that Luke is his son? That he think's he's just "some other" Skywalker?

Ruderic

This new scene hurts more than helps unless he has changed alot more dialogue.
I say Lucas is thrown into the Sarlacc pit! Don't make me sell my new box set on E-Bay and get my laser discs back!

NitroJMS

I just watched the new ending. I seriously hope Lucas adding Hayden Christiansen to the ending is a joke on the fans.

His looks to Yoda and Ben don't seem to match up and it just looks bad with that awful smirk he is doing. Plus, how does Luke even know who that is when he's never saw his father as a young man?

wm lopez

So this makes those cav laserdiscs very valuable.

RocShemp

Everything looks, sadly, legit but I have to question the shot of Anakin in the ending. It doesn't look right. His behaviour is all wrong. He's looking all goofy and smiling and then suddenly gets all serious. It's as if he were actually in the middle of a costume test goofing off and someone told him to cut the crap and look serious. Really weird.

And the shot of Cloud City is horrible. Also, why did they replace the scene of the Emperor's statue being knocked down as seen in the '97 Special Edition.