Original version of Star Wars Trilogy to be released on DVD

I more or less agree with the take kgg

But like Blaine says: Kiddie Films ?

Let us not mention Lucas and Spielberg in the same breath, please. Steven is a god; Lucas is a biotch.

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Munich Blaine, when they take out the female operative in her home ? Jesus. Gnarly.
 
John_Hudson said:
Munich Blaine, when they take out the female operative in her home ? Jesus. Gnarly.
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For what it was and what it added to the story, that was an incredible scene in an incredible movie. His best imo since Schindler's List. :thumbsup:

I'll be buying it on Tuesday :)
 
Super Trooper said:
whats star wars?
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Okay, I've never been a big fan of Star Wars. It is an entertaining story; the "classic" "hero with a 1000 faces" story. When it came out I was in my twenties and it seemed like a story geared to a younger audience at the time. I was never able to shake that impression, though, as I said, I found it entertaining.

(I own all the Star Wars movies just because I felt they were needed for a complete movie collection. Some are better than others...:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG) )
 
i still think the original star wars is a masterpiece. not surprisingly, it is the one that Lucas put the most work into, by far.
 
mrpunch said:
Dang - I'm losing another reason to hang on to my Laserdisc player? :-(
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I only have mine to transfer older gems to DVD that currently don't exist as DVD's, like Robinson Crusoe on Mars.

Try it, it's fun and much more user friendly than eject-flip-play. Plus those damn LDP's are noisy after they spin-up.
 
I meant generally. Certainly through the 80s--and you have to include all the movies he was producer on(Goonies, Batteries not included-Harry and the Hendersons etc). ET was Spielberg's crowning achievement for a decade(not to me personally). It must have peeved him he didnt get an oscar because he had a cartoon over his desk that showed Gandhi holding a bunch of oscars and looking uncomfortably over to ET--who was smiling with bags of money. I just feel that his reasons for making Colour Purple and Empire of the Sun may have had something to do with chasing oscar as much as the material itself, or maybe wanting to escape the reputation he had for making kid friendly films(and he got flak for the violence in Gremlins and Temple of Doom because of that rep). Then he gave up on that for a while. He did Always, Hook--which rubbed off on Jurassic Park--then Schindler, which, if you examine it closely, isnt such a huge departure thematically from what Spielberg was doing before. You had good guys and bad--no shades of grey(despite the B and W photography. And a very manipulative film. The red dress scene.

He was also quoted as saying that he couldnt bring himself to killing a character he had generated audience sympathy for. The last time he did it was Sugarland Express I think(Quint in Jaws may count, but he was not really that sympathetic compared with brody and Hooper-and it was work for hire for Zanuck and Brown). You have to go way forward to Saving Private Ryan to find him doing it again(I think).

I think CE3K was his most interesting character-driven film--a fascinating family dynamic(which he said he would never have done today--given the fact the guy abandons his family to chase ufos).

BTW--it was Spielberg who said that he and his generation were raised on comics and tv-- he said it when he won the Thalberg award.
 
kgg said:
I meant generally. Certainly through the 80s--and you have to include all the movies he was producer on(Goonies, Batteries not included-Harry and the Hendersons etc). ET was Spielberg's crowning achievement for a decade(not to me personally).
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I assume all this is coming from your statement that because Welles was raised on literature he was great and Lucas and Spielberg were raised on TV and comics they were lacking. A critical look at Welles work shows long periods of less than stellar work.

It must have peeved him he didnt get an oscar because he had a cartoon over his desk that showed Gandhi holding a bunch of oscars and looking uncomfortably over to ET--who was smiling with bags of money. I just feel that his reasons for making Colour Purple and Empire of the Sun may have had something to do with chasing oscar as much as the material itself, or maybe wanting to escape the reputation he had for making kid friendly films(and he got flak for the violence in Gremlins and Temple of Doom because of that rep). Then he gave up on that for a while.
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And there's something inherently wrong with trying to create something of more substance?

He did Always, Hook--which rubbed off on Jurassic Park--then Schindler, which, if you examine it closely, isnt such a huge departure thematically from what Spielberg was doing before. You had good guys and bad--no shades of grey(despite the B and W photography. And a very manipulative film. The red dress scene.
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Schindler himself was something of a grey character. It's kind of hard to find something redeamable with concentration camp commandants. It was a brutal look at a terrible event and how one man was so touched that he rose above himself.

I think CE3K was his most interesting character-driven film--a fascinating family dynamic(which he said he would never have done today--given the fact the guy abandons his family to chase ufos).
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I'm not sure why that negates the fact the Close Encounters was an exceptional movie.

BTW--it was Spielberg who said that he and his generation were raised on comics and tv-- he said it when he won the Thalberg award.
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The times they are a-changin'

Concerning Welles. I liked his acting more than his directing. He is considered a genius because of Citizen Kane, which I find incredibly slow and boring. I though his best movie was Touch of Evil but all in all I'm at somewhat of a loss to understand why, based on his body of work, he is held in such high esteem as a director.
 
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Spielberg's brilliant & classic creations are no more "kiddie films" than those of Frank Capra were. The absolute only exception may be Hook (which I feel catches undeserved flak...but that is a separate argument altogether.)

Since you are quoting him (and somewhat out of context at times)...I think an important and relevant sentiment that Spielberg has never hidden was that he "missed the (late) sixties altogether". Personally I think this is a major factor in his filmmaking brilliance...for, like it or not, there was something in the generational drinking water during that era that changed the culture forever (and it could be debated whether it was a change for the better or for the worse.)

I feel it is a grave mistake in misreading his not giving in to visual sensationalism for consciously marketing to a PG crowd. It's A Wonderful Life has themes reaching far beyond the realm of childrens' hearts & minds...as does E.T.

If you wanna saddle him with anything, let it be as a throwback to a (better) time...a time before innocence was lost...& a time when pure, straight-forward storytelling was just that.
 
Certainly through the 80s--and you have to include all the movies he was producer on
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.

Conveniently leaving out:

Empire of the Sun (D)
Three O'Clock High
The Color Purple (D)
Fandango
Twilight Zone: The Movie (Directed an Episode)
Poltergeist
Continental Divide
Used Cars

I wouldnt call these films exactly kiddie stuff.

ET was Spielberg's crowning achievement for a decade.
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Not following this statement ? Crowning achievment ? Box Office speaking ? The Color Purple (3 years after E.T.) was nominated for Best Picture and Steve being dogged on the Directing nod is typical Academy politics.

It must have peeved him he didnt get an oscar...
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Probably pissed he wasn;t even nominated, yet the film was. I assure you, there are 4 other directors that night that were probably pissed off that night.

I just feel that his reasons for making Colour Purple and Empire of the Sun may have had something to do with chasing oscar as much as the material itself
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Or it was imple maturity as a filmmaker. People tend to forget he was 26 when he made Jaws.

then Schindler, which, if you examine it closely, isnt such a huge departure thematically from what Spielberg was doing before. You had good guys and bad--no shades of grey(despite the B and W photography. And a very manipulative film. The red dress scene.
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Good guys and bad guys ? You mean the Nazi's and the Jews ? No shades of Grey ? Sans Schindler himself. The Red Dress ? I found it very artistic and bold. Manipulative? Yes. Then you got it!

I think CE3K was his most interesting character-driven film--a fascinating family dynamic(which he said he would never have done today--given the fact the guy abandons his family to chase ufos).
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Can't argue that although I find Jaws to be right up there in that respect. .

BTW--it was Spielberg who said that he and his generation were raised on comics and tv-- he said it when he won the Thalberg award.
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Since the dawn of the 20th Century, filmmakers have been raised on comics and tv. Generally speaking of course.
 
I wasnt actually dissing Lucas and Spielberg because they were raised on comics and tv--just suggesting they came from a different background than Welles did. But Spielberg mentioned it in his acceptance speech suggesting there was something wrong with it and how they needed to be more literate yadda yadda yadda. I think the writer Brian Aldiss said it before though concering, Lucas, Spielberg, Joe Dante, etc.

And I wasnt criticizing CE3K. Spielberg did. I doubt he disowns the film--just that he would feel it was irresponsible(but those kids were nasty). Mind you--he had strong producers on that film--how much was their influence(the way Lucas gets credited for everything Star Wars when he had Gary Kurtz for the first two).


Another thing I read somewhere was that in his last years Welles would be asked by Spielberg and others in his generation to tell them stories about old Hollywood, and yet none of them used their influence to help get his films finished.
Not criticizing--just saying what I heard. :)

I think one of Spielberg's biggest contributions in terms of cinematic history was convincing Warner Bros to let Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck appear in a Disney film. No one else had the clout to do that.
 
John_Hudson said:
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Since the dawn of the 20th Century, filmmakers have been raised on comics and tv. Generally speaking of course.
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Very, very, very, very generally, I'd say.

Speilberg's was about the first generation you could really say that about. There had already been two major studio eras by the time anyone was really watching TV at all.

DeMille, Von Sternberg, Lubitsch, Lang, Griffith, Ford, Hawks, Hitch, Mank, Huston, Wyler, Capra, Cukor, Lean, Mamoulian, Preminger, etc. All of these people and many, many more already had distinguished movie careers when TV even became widely used.

Even Kubrick was already establishing himself as a filmmaker in the 50s, so you can't even say he was "raised" on TV. Besides which, he was a CRAZY reader. That boy liked his books.

Comics about the same thing. Comics the way Spielberg's talking about them didn't really evolve until the 30's.
 
Of course of course

:P

Why I said that I am not sure. I was trying to reference that generation of filmmaker (Post WW2?)!

Tks for the correction
 
John_Hudson said:
Of course of course

:P

Why I said that I am not sure. I was trying to reference that generation of filmmaker (Post WW2?)!

Tks for the correction
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But I think the greater point here is, Lucas isn't getting any more of my Goddamned money either.
 
According to IMDB news Lucas isnt going to be releasing the OS in widescreen DVD format after all. Its going to be done from the laser disc and pan and scan.
So he is a crazy "I am a painter even though I pay 500 other people to move the brush" type of guy. I find that worse than if he was holding out just to suck more money out of people, since as a perfectionist, he is a complete failure.
 
They're not going to be pan and scan, just non-anamorphic widescreen, which is nearly as lame, since anamorphic widescreen is the DVD standard these days.
 
Lucas sux (Now). All I have to say is I don't care if the movies are non anamorphic widescreen just so long as they dont have really lame CGI all over them. Come on. I know its his to ruin but it still sux.
 
this is from imdb

Despite earlier reports that Lucasfilm would be re-releasing the original unedited theatrical versions of the first three Star Wars movies on DVD, it now turns out that they will be copied from the laserdiscs of the films released in the mid'90s, formatted for the conventional TV screen and not wide-screen "letterbox" versions. The revelation has provoked anger among Star Wars fans, expressed on such Internet sites as www.thedigitalbits.com, and www.hometheaterforum.com. VideoBusiness.com quoted Lucasfilm spokesman John Singh as saying, "We hoped that by releasing the original movies as a bonus disc, it would be a way to give the fans something that is fun. We certainly didn't want to be become a source of frustration for fans."

http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2006-05-25/#2
 
IMDB is just wrong. The flap is about not having an anamorphically squeezed letterboxed version on dvd. They're just using the regular letterboxed transfer that was on the last laserdisc version. In case you don't understand the difference, an anamorphically sqeezed letterboxed DVD (which most are these days), has significantly better resolution when played on a widescreen TV. For regular televisions, this won't be an issue, as your DVD player throws away the extra lines to display in a proper ratio. The fans just want a new transfer in the best possible format, not some rehashed version of the laserdisc on DVD, which you can get in Malaysia (and which I own).
 
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