Star Wars Day. May the Forth be with you
Publison
Posts: 12,366
A little play on words, It should read: May the Fourth be with You.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Day
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Day
Comments
I was in good company. George Lucas didn't think it would go anywhere, either. And neither did 20th Century Fox, who arranged for fewer than three dozen theaters to show the film when it first came out. This turkey only made $1.5 million its first weekend, and that was for a long 5-day Memorial Day weekend. Still, eventually, it would earn 3/4 of a billion dollars.
Goes to show you some turkeys *can* fly. Or prove themselves to be swans in disguise.
The local conversations about movies turned to Starwars recently and a couple of my younger Taiwanese friends were gobsmacked at the idea that I actually stood inline for 6-7 hours to see the first one.
The idea of actually waiting in line for a movie seems absurd to them (everything is shown in multiplex theaters here), and they thought that it would just be easier to get a bootleg DVD of a new release before it comes out than to bother with even going to the theater.
My world is upside-down, and normal rules don't apply.
I plan to key an eye out for a bootleg DVD of the new Starwars arriving before the actual release... should be interesting.
I am gob smacked at the idea that anyone would stood in line for 6-7 hours to see a movie. That is absurd.
I can understand hungry people standing in line for hours to get food like back in the good old old USSR. But movies? Not even good movies?
Your world would be less upside down if you stopped standing on your head
I think the longest I ever spent waiting in line for a movie was Jaws, at about an hour and a half.
Star Wars is not great cinema, but it's fun. That's all it was ever meant to be.
I am not standing on my head. I just live on the other side of the planet. It seems to me that you are the one that is standing on your head, but I do know better than that.
I also stood in a long line for 2001: A Space Odyssey -- it was part of the fun, the wait, the anticipation, and reward. I guess that's why this new Star Wars is being promoted so early -- we have to wait until Chirstmas.
Waiting in line for Jaws seems a bit odd to me. I never really got caught up in the whole shark scare thing. I suppose it is great if you take a girl with you and she buries her head in your chest and wants to be held close through the whole ordeal. I am just not much on the blood and guts horror genre -- though Chucky is a bit amusing.
Perhaps I would have stood in line for 2001. Had I known anything about it before I saw it.
I'm up for a blood and guts horror movie. Jaws was just boring though.
The longest time I ever waited in line is probably only the 45 minutes it took to get into hear the Dalai Lama speak a few years ago.
Hello!
I find it interesting that the film we are discussing was also released suitably enhanced, what the group called "Special Edition", I had bought my tickets for all three online, but for awhile that entire line worked as one, I found myself standing in front of a woman bringing her sons to see the film, it seems they'd only seen the film on the telly. The woman of course had seen the original series in the theatre as I had. I mentioned that all three would be suitably impressed. And so was I.
This isn't to say some cleanup isn't sometimes warranted In the original telecines of Star Wars, you can see the junk mattes in the space battle scenes. In the first VHS copies these mattes were clearly visible and objectionable. They were not visible in the theater because of the nature of how they make release prints, and quite possibly a lack of care during the telecine process. It makes sense to digitally alter these scenes to make them as close to the original intention as possible.
It was years ago, but I took my son to the re-release of Disney's Pinocchio in theaters. We had seen the video version countless times, and this of course was standard-def VHS. I was impressed by the artistry of the backgrounds in that film -- something it's known for. More recent digital video versions of Pinocchio also show the detail, thanks to HD video. But what they didn't do is "digitally enhance" Geppetto into scenes he wasn't in originally. My only hope is that Disney won't be so artistically challenged in these new Star Wars movies. Make the films best they can using the techniques available at the time, and move on to the next.
Just remember: Han Solo shot first. No revisions of that scene can alter that fact.
I thought it was Indiana Jones who shot first!
I heard Ford was pretty sick that day, and decided to improv, and they keep it. Urban myth?
If it's an urban myth, it's as old as the "making of" documentary they did while filming. I'm pretty sure they highlight it.
Had George Lucas directed that film, he would have made it sound like he had planned it that way ever since seeing his first matinee serials. Spielberg is at least up-front with his off-the-cuff improvisation. He's always admitted he intended the shark in Jaws to appear much sooner than it did, had it not been for its mechanical problems. Turns out inferring the shark increased the suspense 10-fold, and made for a better movie.
As best I can recall, he only spoke a couple of words.. toward the beginning of the film when some officer was deploying these guys 'up river'. I think he just said, 'Yes, sir."
Having since made it up river and into Myanmar/Burma near Laos, it all is great fun to recall.
I tend to dislike the 'so-called' enhance versions of the originals, but something had to be done as the negative and prints seemed to have degraded over time. Either than, or we just accepted much less in the way of quality way back then.
Revenge of the Fifth
What's May 6 in real history? 1937?
The Hindenburg exploded, killing 36 people. I didn't Google it, I'm a zeppelin freak.
Must eat a Hindenburger today!
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPKhlKyVsQk
What anyone saw years ago was SD video, because that's the equipment we all had at the time to view it. As I mentioned with Pinocchio, above, the original quality of the film is still there because the negatives have been carefully stored. So, today's HD editions of the movie are as pristine as the 35mm original.
Lucas has a penchant for altering the old films, and it's not just for creative reasons. IMO there has long been a marketing angle to this. Die hards want the "special directors cuts." It's to make extra money, even if the new version doesn't add anything meaningful to the story.. Not all special editions are like this. Blade Runner release and director's cuts were different films, for example, with different aspects throughout. Abyss was the same way, as were many others. The special editions are just that, and the original theatrical release remains available, and the two are clearly identified.
Happy fourth day
And Cinco de Mayo tamale!
And then there's May 6, 1937...