the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

Munich is great, Catch Me If You Can is charming.

I saw the Robot Chicken version of Munich the other night. Yikes

there's some weird backwards thing going on with spielberg where the movies are executed with more confidence the further back in time you go.
i have nothing but hate for michael bay but you get the sense that the man has a clear and willful sense of exactly what kind of shit he's going to make you endure.

2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2005 Munich

2005 War of the Worlds

2004 The Terminal

2002 Catch Me If You Can

2002 Minority Report

2001 A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Though I haven't seen the Indy, did any other director have as good a run in the 00s?

coen bros, wachowski bros, any bros I suppose.

who were the brothers that did "from hell"?

hughes

found munich v boring, heavy and overrated, but mostof his other 00's work was good to great imo. Indy aside obv

s1ocki started this thread to suggest options for a poll, but did we ever do a poll thread of this?

all the 00's movies are kind of OK passtime, but c'mon:

1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
1987 Empire of the Sun
1985 The Color Purple
1984 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
1983 Twilight Zone: The Movie (segment 2)
1982 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark

s1ocki started this thread to suggest options for a poll, but did we ever do a poll thread of this?

― some dude, Wednesday, January 19, 2011 8:38 PM Bookmark

no point, building meter data would win

Blu Ray trailer looks good despite it combining prequel footage with the originals:
http://www.starwars.com/video/view/001175.html

Love the originals, but I'm almost completely numb to these movies right now. All those shoddy VFX spliced into the originals will look even WORSE in high-def.

Lucas must be the only director that would look at a frame of film with Sir Alec Guinness in it and think "You know what would make this even better? A giant dinosaur butt blocking the entire frame."

A long time ago in another lifetime, I was in a screening room sitting in front of the late Gene Siskel. This was after the first "special edition" came out, and around the same time a new edition of "The Godfather" was screened. Someone asked him how it was, and he said "oh, it's pretty much the same, except now in the wedding scene there's a big giant lizard in the background. And during Brando's death scene, there's a little robot walking around."

If Lucas thinks the world will end next year, won't that (with any luck) stop him 3ding these fuckers? No point, surely, since they won't be out in time.

is there any more 2012 ho-lucas-t information besides the seth rogen hearsay?

Lucas is waiting until he can release these in 4-D, in Smell-O-Vision.

I love the smell of bantha shit in the morning.

I recently watched anamorphically re-encoded versions of the originals that came out on the 2006 DVD release and it was such a pleasure! I'd almost forgot that they could be enjoyable. They're obviously GREAT movies in their original form, but the special editions are simply unwatchable. Despite the egregious and anachronistic cgi insertions, the whole thing has been color-corrected to death.

The only thing I truly found about the increases sfx editions was the really bizarre song break-out in Jabba's bar in the 1st or 2nd (or..3rd?) movie. And I'm not even sure if that was actually one of the deleted scenes, but it was truly fucking insane.

And I guess while I'm at it I can't seem to remember the first encounter w/ Jabba and Han Solo actually having him mobile and talking to Han on the way to the m. falcon? Was that even changed? Did it always look so awful?

song was in the 3rd one. they shot it just for the SE.

in the 70s version han talks to jabba offscreen. theatrical SE and the current editions have very different versions of that scene, mainly because the original CG jabba looked fucking awful even by 1997 standards.

Xp yeah.

Han never meets him in the first film, they added the whole scene by cgi-ing Jabba over the original actor from a scene that was deleted.
Et voila!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWq71Y5-B4

To confuse things further they re-CGI'd the scene a bit for the DVD in '04 to make it more realistic than the original re-releases that came out in the late 90s.
http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/e/ec/Ataleoftwohutts.jpg

There are yet more changes planned for the new Blu Ray edition. He probably.. flies in or something.

http://johnkennethmuir.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/duneharkonnen.jpg

I recently watched anamorphically re-encoded versions of the originals that came out on the 2006 DVD release and it was such a pleasure! I'd almost forgot that they could be enjoyable. They're obviously GREAT movies in their original form, but the special editions are simply unwatchable. Despite the egregious and anachronistic cgi insertions, the whole thing has been color-corrected to death.

― Spencer Chow, Friday, January 28, 2011 12:52 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

Those are pretty awful DVD transfers though. I have a strong suspicion that Lucas deliberately made sure that the DVD transfers of the non-special editions were half-assed.

in the 70s version han talks to jabba offscreen. theatrical SE and the current editions have very different versions of that scene, mainly because the original CG jabba looked fucking awful even by 1997 standards.

ugh this is precisely why this is so sad - Lucas has actually ruined your memory

any good write-ups on what lucas has to say about the new editions? all i've heard is that he's fairly proud of them and that his vision can finally be completed w/ the ease of sfx.

i can't deny the guy is a grade-a definition visionary (YOU try simply imagining a universe as unique and in-depth as the star wars one) but i really can't believe the guy when thinking that back in the 70's, as he was gazing at the sarlacc pit that he had thought "if only this had a beak, then it would be complete" (it's a FUCKING MOUTH IN THE GROUND. how horrifying/ novel is that already?)

Did not know about the Jabba CGI re-do. Weird. Also, i totally agree with kelpolaris re: the only real big jarring problem was the singing scene in ROTJ. Sorta felt like the moment you saw that, you knew you had been sucked from the normal universe of OG Star Wars into the parallel dimension of hell that is Jar Jar Binks & Kit Fisto.

There's a great DVD bootleg someone's put together called "Deleted Magic", which is the first Star Wars with all the outtakes and unreleased footage synced up to the original Laserdisc film and shit. Absolutely jaw-dropping and a million times more enjoyable than anything past ROTJ.

UGH I HATE THAT JABBA SCENE. like i'm a grown-up now and i don't CARE about all the rest, i don't CARE that greedo shoots first, i don't CARE about the dinosaur butts, i don't CARE that there's little bullshit animals scampering around every establishing shot farting, i don't care about any of it EXCEPT THE JABBA SCENE god i hate it so so so so so so much. so much.

tbh that first picture is really funny. looks like jabba is tripping his balls off

he's watching the scene on the monitor.

ugh this is precisely why this is so sad - Lucas has actually ruined your memory

? i meant offscreen as in a scene not shown

They need to make Alec guiness step in dinosaur poop. In 3d.

Think of the possibilities.

what's infuriating about the jabba scene is that despite what george lucas says because he has some kind of seriously sick thing where every time he changes anything he has to act like that was his "original intention", like he had every second of every scene of every star wars movie all written out in his giant genius-head in 1976, that scene was shot with a human actor not so they could replace him with jabba (how would they have done this) but because that was jabba, because they didn't know what jabba looked like yet, and hadn't yet had the wonderful idea of making him into this obscene punch-cartoon parody of a swollen-to-immobility space capitalist, and thank god they cut the scene because A) it's a literally pointless scene anyway that slows the movie down for absolutely no reason and B) if they hadn't jabba would be a guy in a furry vest instead of an icon. an icon george lucas doesn't even understand the first thing about because he thinks it's acceptable to have him scooting around the set like he's in fucking Worms.

Those are pretty awful DVD transfers though. I have a strong suspicion that Lucas deliberately made sure that the DVD transfers of the non-special editions were half-assed.

The transfer isn't Blu-ray, but these have at least been re-encoded by someone for widescreen tv. They are quite a bit better than the old laserdiscs which were the previously final "untouched" version. It's highly watchable and I very strongly recommend it!!!

the special editions came out when i was 11 or 12, and they were the first time i saw all of the movies. previously i'd seen at least one of the star wars, but i cant remember which one. i thought all the special content was awesome, but that was both at the age and time when CGI imagery was at its most novel to me. since the movies were still amazing, i went for years not really thinking the SEs were any kind of major transgression. i hadnt seen any of them again until this last christmas, when i was at my friend's house and he had them on in the background on his plasma. i caught the end of Star Wars and was pleased to see that it still held up really well even after the prequels, and i appreciated the practical effects in a way I couldn't before. had to skip Empire, but when we sat down for the opening of ROTJ my eyes bulged in... amazement? at the tarted up CGI musical number that'd been inserted into the jabba's palace sequence. how did i forget this? why would you replace a kickin rad rubber puppet disco song with this shit? that was the moment when i 'got' all the bitching about greedo shooting first.

i guess the maddening thing about lucas is he could so easily use his powers for good. he has the resources to give us cleaned up, gorgeous transfers of the original trilogy, where every frame isn't crowded with computer generated farting banthas. he financed the prequels himself! he had nobody to answer to! he could've made literally anything he wanted. imagine if you gave jodorowsky 400 million and told him to make ~the space opera of his dreams~. the original space battle in ROTJ is (very likely) the most complicated trad effects sequence ever shot, and you can tell lucas hates it because episode 3 is filled with the kind of long, showy takes that couldn't have been done with models. there's nothing boundary-pushing about all that processing power onscreen, and it's deflating in a way because it illustrates the limits of his ambitions - just like there's nothing to be gained from overexplaining a tantalizing backstory, the VFX of the original trilogy (and lucas' own mythologizing around the time of the SEs) makes you think 'oh, there's so much he wanted to show us but just couldn't!' - but it turned out that the original movies thrived on those limitations, and him going back and splashing white-out on everything amounts less to ~movie magic~ and more to pulling the curtain back on the wizard of oz.

he financed the prequels himself! he had nobody to answer to! he could've made literally anything he wanted.

^^ this is sort of the problem, isnt it? i mean for me one of the big tragedies/disappointments was the realization that george lucas is boring, lazy and untalented

& it makes you go back to the original trilogy wondering if youd just been fooled the whole time

yeah thats what im getting at - what he wanted was boring and awful

it's like poetry, it rhymes

How much of Indiana Jones was him and how much was Spielberg?

it's like poetry, it rhymes

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X__nksxQxys

What I want is an entire disc of Empire stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyaAJ2JMjcM

Thing about Lucas having total control is that history has shown that the best stuff came from when he had no say at all. He was off working on Raiders when they did ESB, for example, or the bit(possibly mentioned upthread) where Harrison Ford told Mark Hamill just to say what he thought worked rather than what Lucas had typed.

how did i forget this? why would you replace a kickin rad rubber puppet disco song with this shit?

^This. The replacement of the original song with that GODAWFUL CGI cartoon thing, plus the replacement of the original "Yub Nub" celebration song, were the straws that broke the camel's back for me with the special editions when they came out. Greedo shooting first, whatevs. BUT DON'T YOU MESS WITH MY BELOVED EWOKS!

You know, if all Lucas had done was clean up the prints, maybe polish up some of the dodgier old effects (smoothing out matte lines, etc.) it would have been fine!

In retrospect we were all pretty well warned about where Episode 1 was headed.

^^ this is sort of the problem, isnt it? i mean for me one of the big tragedies/disappointments was the realization that george lucas is boring, lazy and untalented

― max, Friday, January 28, 2011 8:09 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

& it makes you go back to the original trilogy wondering if youd just been fooled the whole time

― max, Friday, January 28, 2011 8:10 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

Thing about Lucas having total control is that history has shown that the best stuff came from when he had no say at all. He was off working on Raiders when they did ESB, for example, or the bit(possibly mentioned upthread) where Harrison Ford told Mark Hamill just to say what he thought worked rather than what Lucas had typed.

― Crazed Mister Handy (kingfish), Friday, January 28, 2011 8:24 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, the thing about movies is that they are first & foremost collaborative. the director is obviously important but there are a million other reasons why movies turn out to be terrible or awesome. often it's the combination of people involved, not just the director's "vision".