the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

the cop dog review is excellent imo

He actually doesn't totally hate Indy 4 iirc

idg the appeal of those RLM things. can people not work out for themselves why these movies are awful or something

seems like they act more as therapy for victims of Lucas' abuse than as anything particularly insightful

sigh

idg why people read or experience any kind of cultural commentary, ppl cant realize all this shit on their own or something

They are plenty insightful. One thing that always stuck with me is when he demonstrates how people in the prequels are always walking everywhere even when shit is going down because they were all filmed in little green boxes and they didn't have the space to actually run around. Like i had always known that the over-reliance on shitty CGI was one of the main reasons the prequels suck but that was as an aspect of it i'd never thought about

I don't need 10-minutes of pseudo-comical commentary to grasp that the characters in Phantom Menace are non-existent/underdeveloped. sorry. it's the level of insight here that I'm getting at, not the existence of commentary itself.

xp

You don't need to apologize for having different needs than we do, it's cool.

some ppl like to think about things in depth, its just like... a habit i guess

Shakey has never listened to a commentary track

lol @ 'level of insight' rhrn

the cop dog review is excellent imo

― polyphonic, Wednesday, February 8, 2012 6:34 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seconded, might have to watch that again sometime

the scene where he destroys his tv with jizz whilst watching an olson twin movie is a++++

I dunno, it didn't add any insight

Cop Dog and Baby's Day Out are two vids they did just to break things up, I think, since they were in the middle of the year when all the prequels were done.

And I never really like calling them "reviews" b/c the things are far more akin to lectures or case studies; they're not just saying "these suck", they get into the minutia of why and how.

A fair amount of people complain about the voice they take("Mr Plinkett") to express their content, but I think it's like Film Crit Hulk, where you have a deliberately affected voice of a dumb person saying smart things.

film crit hulk owns

You don't need to apologize for having different needs than we do, it's cool.

What? This is not the Internet our forenerds fought for.

I'm actually thankful for the overbloated 3D movie ticket price because it's going to be SO much easier for me to say "$15 to see Jar Jar Binks, so effing way".

I was talking with a friend last night about these. He said he liked AOTC the best out of the prequels because of the Yoda fight, and I remembered at the time seeing the Yoda fight was the coolest thing ever. I know it "sullies the solemn nature of Yoda" or whatever and is an obvious videogame cash grab, but it was the only genuinely thrilling and surprising moment for me in the whole prequel series.

The prequels are all terrible but I actually liked a lot of the *imagery* in Attack of the Clones. I thought the stormy water planet with the clone factory looked neat, and I liked the quasi-Harryhausen monster arena toward the end.

And Christopher Lee is just always a badass.

sigh

Sorry s1ocki

Agreed about the imagery. The best format for the prequels would've been a large, wordless coffee table book of full-page photographic illustrations.

Attack of the Clones is my favorite of the prequels. In particular, I really enjoy the sequence of battle scenes starting with the gladiator scene through to the end of the movie. Each of those sequences has some really nice visual ideas going on.

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060414171016/starwars/images/thumb/9/99/Queenamidalapaperdoll.jpg/250px-Queenamidalapaperdoll.jpg

xp. I er own that btw. According to the back "Inside this book you'll find a collection of the Queen's most gorgeous gowns, each one more richly detailed than the next".

Did you?

They did not get progressively shitter iirc.

yeah the Red Letter stuff is very informative in easy to understand yet cine literate terms whereas most reviews don't bother with a lot of that stuff nor have the space to go at it in such detail. the whole 'walking and talking' comparison with the first 3 movies bit is amazing. i mean sure some folk can work all that out for themselves and shiz but i still appreciated someone else taking the trouble and making it so funny.

i actually find the RLM stuff very smart and insightful. i like smart and insightful commentary on film, especially when it deals with the purely cinematic/mise-en-scene elements that RLM stuff really focuses on. the idea that people would just "figure this stuff out themselves" is ridiculous.

Agreed about the imagery. The best format for the prequels would've been a large, wordless coffee table book of full-page photographic illustrations.

― SNEEZED GOING DOWN STEPS, PAIN WHEN PUTTING SOCKS ON (Deric W. Haircare), Thursday, February 9, 2012 4:59 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seriously. i hope nobody thinks i was trying to defend the prequels. cuz there's a *lot* of hideous, ungainly cinematography and doofy effects in these movies in addition to the scant few things i was singling out for praise.

The waterworld stuff in AOTC I actually liked, because it was Obiwan investigating and learning things, and we were learning along with him.

Yoda fight was dumb, and deliberately went against the character into fanboy wank that never works. Film Crit Hulk wrote something about how if your approach to plotting starts with "Wouldn't it be cool if" you usually have already lost.

Also, there's something about all these guys' critiques that I find educational, making me more aware of shit than my coupla film classes built me up. It's made me more conscious and apprehensive and pretty much just disdainful of geeky friends getting hyped for upcoming geek shit regardless of any possible quality or point.

It's like, news flash, nerds won; genre consumption has gotten predictably monetized so there will always be plenty of geek/nerd shit on sale for you. There will always be plenty of superhero movies, fantasy epics, and sci-fi auctioneers for you to blow dosh on. You just don't need to breathlessly anticipate empty genre crap.

I can't remember if it was either Hammet or Chandler who ripped into how shit genre entertainment could be, and yet still get pushed out into the marketplace. He said in the '30s, about how the average mediocre novel won't necessarily get published, but that the most average mediocre detective story sure as shit will.

This is probly needs a thread all its own, but I find it heavily relevant to everything Lucas has shat out post-Radioland Murders.

u sorta forget he/they also *looked* pretty cool back in the day. you know for film nerd types.

http://www.thisisnotporn.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Kate-Capshaw-Steven-Spielberg-George-Lucas-and-Harrison-Ford-from-Indiana-Jones-and-the-Temple-of-Doom1.jpg

Did they?

Spielburg's shorts not so much, but the rest totally. But Harrison Ford basically looks good in anything.

Spielberg and Lucas were NEVER cool

Putting Indy-era Ford in there is stacking the deck imo

Spielberg was the coolest director in Hollywood after Jaws. But, that awesomness capital has obviously been spent.

More red meat for everyone here:

THR: People can get fanatical about the movies — how does that make you feel? The puppet vs. CGI Yoda ruckus, and the who-shot-first, Han Solo or Greedo furor come to mind.

Lucas: Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

And, indeed:

THR: What’s the status of Indiana Jones 5? Steven Spielberg says he’s waiting to hear from you.

Lucas: I know, and I’m supposed to be working on it right now, but I’m talking to you instead (Laughs).

so Red Tails has bombed, yes?

All art is technology and it improves every year

Says it all really. What a cock.

xpost -- Not entirely:

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=redtails.htm

All art is technology and it improves every year

cadence of this is very Geir-esque

Insisting on calling Star Wars "Episode IV" is one of the things that most annoys me about him. It's your own film. Call it by its name.
The last time he was on the Daily Show I just couldn't watch it, because I couldn't watch Jonny Beefstew fawn over this wanker yet again.

Again, dude's in a place where no one can say no to him. He divorced the only person who could like 30 years ago.

Another one of the good points that Mike @ RLM made when reviewing the blu-ray changes is that there's a weird ownership thing going on where Lucas has gotten to the point where he's changing flicks that he didn't write or direct, and inserting things into them that fundamentally alter the characters for no reason. Han shooting first was just the tip, but also luke screaming when he fell(added and then removed) and the Vader "No".

We can safely wrap everything up by reminding ourselves that -> Dude things Empire is the worst of the three originals. Says it all.

I like Sean's take here:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/george-lucas-says-han-never-shot-first-you-were-ju,69159/

As it turns out, those who saw that controversial edit as a fundamental betrayal of the character—changing Han Solo from a shrewd, streetwise bad-ass to a guy who got really lucky that Greedo is such a lousy shot; rendering his evolution from amoral antihero to full-blown hero less meaningful, etc. —well, they were just confused all along, because Lucas now says Han never shot first

[...]

Indeed, it was only the audience’s own bloodlust that led them astray and left them so confused for so many years—a bloodlust that festered into their ravenous need to set jaws upon George Lucas every time he tries to make his work a little more innocent and magical. Fortunately, all it took was a wider shot and a grafted-on cartoon laser beam to save future generations from wandering down that same dark path, which leads only to anger, hatred, and in forthcoming editions, a nice periwinkle garden.

Spielberg was the coolest director in Hollywood after Jaws. But, that awesomness capital has obviously been spent.

― Frobisher (Viceroy), Thursday, February 9, 2012 9:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, being cool for a 70s film director is pretty faint praise. It was nerd central.

"Jonny Beefstew"?