raphael.longbournprods.com

You know, I’m getting really tired of greedy companies trying to squeeze more money out of fans of classic films and television by constantly reissuing them in ever more ridiculous “super-duper remastered rejiggered repulsive regurgitated” editions.

But what really ticks me is off is when the studio and/or filmmakers go back and try to “update” them with new effects, or new editing, or whatever.

Worst case scenario: Paramount is issuing Star Trek: the original series Season 1 on HD-DVD this November, for a whopping US$220. But what really offends me is that they’ve decided to re-do ALL the visual effects with modern CGI.

Why the holy fuck would anyone want to take a classic 60s show which was produced with sweat and tears with the best technology of its time and throw it all out of joint by pasting modern crap over it? Not only is that extremely disrespectful to the artists who worked on it at the time, but it is going to look ridiculous against the 60s hair styles, sets, and rubber gorillas that Captain Kirk fought.

What’s next, airbrushing out the beehive haircuts and putting digital trousers on all the women?

Leave well enough alone, and find some taste and restraint, guys. Weren’t the Star Wars “Special” Editions bad enough?

Man, I had forgotten how much I despise pan-and-scan videos.

Starman, the science-fiction film directed by John Carpenter and starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen, arrived on my doorstep at the end of last week, courtesy of Netflix (to my surprise, too, which I suppose is part of the fun of setting up a queue and then forgetting about it).

Equally surprising was the realization that, unlike what is stated at the Netflix site, the disc I received had no widescreen version of the film, enhanced for 16×9 displays; in fact, it had no widescreen version at all.

Instead, I was forced to endure watching a film that had been shot in anamorphic Panavision crammed into a nearly square box, which said box is occasionally and quite abritrarily slid from side to side within the original film’s 2.35:1 format.

Now, a letterboxed movie which is not anamorphic widescreen is bad enough. But a pan-and-scan “full frame” edition? Almost unendurable. I’d managed to steer clear of full frame DVDs pretty much entirely over the last few years, but one finally managed to rear up and take me by surprise. It would have to take me by surprise — I certainly wouldn’t rent a pan-and-scan movie intentionally.

What’s worse is that this Sony release is copyrighted 2005 on the disc, the same disc which says absolutely nothing about “full frame” anywhere upon its printed surface. And the menu — I saw better menus in the very first crop of Warners DVDs way back in 1997. I think it must be the worst DVD menu I have ever beheld. Bad enough in 1997; intolerable in 2005.

The worst insult a “full frame” movie can offer is actually not that it’s chopped off about half the picture. No. What makes it so horrific is the pan-and-scan feature. Because when the picture effectively trucks left or right, there is this horrendous smearing effect on the screen that completely and unceremoniously drops you out of the cinematic cocoon in which the movie has wrapped you. It’s like a wake-up call to remind you that the director and DP of the movie are no longer in control, and some technician with dodgy equipment will now be re-shooting the movie in a very small box with a bad dolly track.

And yet some studios still release DVDs in both widescreen and full frame versions (the Star Wars Trilogy comes to mind). The idea of actually consciously choosing to spend money to get a full frame edition seems to me equivalent to buying the airline edit of a movie because you prefer it to the original theatrical edition. It’s simply a decision for mad people who ought to be shipped off to Manhattan with the mutants and not get rescued by Snake Plissken.

To return to Starman, every time I began to sink into the movie and forget that half of it had been sheared off, along would come a pan-and-scan move, and pop, suspension of disbelief bursts. The truck move, complete with smearing of the picture, is so obvious and heavy-handed, it’s impossible not to be ripped from the narrative, because it’s so bloody incongruous. Pan-and-scan moves look absolutely nothing like a film move, they don’t look like a camera on a dolly, and the unpleasant sensation of scrolling along a two-dimensional plane (in other words, the movie screen itself), is so disorienting that it makes me sick. If a real camera really filming a scene were to make a truck to the left or right, on real dolly tracks, the perspective would shift as the camera moved. As viewers, we expect this shift in perspective for the movement to feel naturally a part of three-dimensional space. A Pan-and-Scan truck does not shift perspective, because the actual shot in the movie itself is usually not moving. Instead, the equipment trucks across the two-dimensional plane of the flat movie projector screen, while the perspective in the shot remains the same. That’s disorienting enough, but when you add this grotesque smearing effect to the affair, it just totally throws it beyond endurance for me.

I suppose I’ve been somewhat spoiled by having this great 16X9 HDTV set, and having so many anamorphic widescreen movies which fill my widescreen set and offer films in the aspect ratio intended by the filmmakers. It may seem like griping over something fairly trivial to some, but to me, especially after avoiding Pan-and-Scan videos for so long, it’s shocking to realize how poorly-treated filmmakers’ work has traditionally been, just because a few people are too stupid to understand what those damned black bars at the top and bottom of the screen are supposed to be.

Selfish I may be, but I hope to God I don’t have to endure another Pan-and-Scan full frame DVD any time in the near future. I swear, the experience may kill me.

Now if I can just find an edition of Starman out there with a widescreen transfer so that I can actually give the movie the attention it deserves.

Tags: DVD, widescreen, Starman.

(this post is spoiler-free)

Okay, actually the first of my summer sci-fi viewing reviews doesn’t exist yet. I’ll get to that coming up, because actually the viewing in question is much more complex and deserving of more varied, considered discussion.

First up (but second), is what I watched last night, the 1988 “science fiction” film Alien Nation, starring James Caan and Mandy Patinkin.

Set just a few years in the future (1991), the plot tells of a race of alien worker drones — dubbed “Newcomers” — who arrive on the planet Earth as immigrants, and are invited take up residence, slowly entering into society. As with any newly arrived race of immigrants, full incorporation into society is slow, and many of the aliens wind up in ethnic ghettos, such as the “slagtown” of Los Angeles. When Detective Sergeant Matthew Sykes (Caan) loses his partner in a Newcomer-related shooting, he gets Sam Francisco (Patinkin) — the first Newcomer to achieve the rank of Detective — as his new partner. Together they investigate the shooting which resulted in the death of his old partner, and unravel a criminal plot that could expose a horrendous secret of the Newcomer race.

The first and most important reaction to this movie is that, despite certain surface dressings, this really isn’t a science fiction movie at all. Most SF authors and critics state that in order for material to qualify as real science fiction, it must explore science or technology in a manner integral to the plot; in other words, that without this science element the story would not exist.

Alien Nation does not meet this criterion. It is, in all respects and in the most traditional of ways, a buddy cop picture. The science fiction elements in the movie are simply a veneer to provide color and a new taste to a very old formula (like putting cherry in Coke). Structurally, the screenplay is a very straightforward connect-the-dots “cops search out a mystery in the underworld while they struggle to work together” story. It’s like 48 Hours, except one of the two leads has a head which looks like a spotted ostrich egg. The race of alien Newcomers could just as easily have been replaced with another race of “exotic” Los Angeles immigrants — Koreans, Japanese, El Salvadorians — without any of the plot being lost. So, right there, and to my disappointment, “summer sci-fi viewing, part the second” has become “summer buddy cop picture with funny-loooking people viewing, part the first”.

As a buddy cop feature, then, how does it measure up? It’s acceptable, I suppose. Hardly revolutionary. It has most of the requisite features. There’s a high-society criminal villain, played with steel by Terence Stamp (a character indistinguishable from any corrupt wealthy citizen in any issue of Batman). There’s one car chase scene where most of the Los Angeles basin is traversed (sort of out of sequence) in something like ten minutes. There’s the requisite scene with an inexplicably aroused female who drops awkwardly out of the story as soon as she provides the needed minute or so of feminine pulchritude. There’s the standard bonding scene between the two cops from different walks of life over drinks. Then there’s the gasp shock couple of fisticuff finales at the end which tend to make things a little strung out and exhausting rather than exciting.

I’m being intentionally vague so as to avoid spoilers. But it’s actually not that difficult to avoid spoilers in this case because so many of the plot points are so generic that they are instantly recognizable to anyone who has any kind of familiarity with action movies, especially of the urban cop variety. They are given just a hint of a “science-fiction” flavor here and there, but not enough to free them from being anything but by-the-book formula.

Also, if a variety of visual effects are a necessary element in a science-fiction movie for you, this movie will disappoint. Aside from a kind of still-shot of the alien flying saucer seen on a television screen at the beginning of the movie, there are absolutely no visual effects whatsoever. And the alien makeup and prosthetics, despite coming from the vaunted Stan Winston studio, are nothing to write home about. The aliens, as mentioned, look like toned-down Coneheads with a few spots, their mouths and noses blotted out slightly like silly putty, but in all other respects they look just like any human being. Indeed, more to the detriment of the movie, they act just like native humans — the way they stand, their mannerisms, their idiosyncracies, completely blow any kind of sense of otherworldliness or exoticism. They’re terribly un-alien. This is excused away in the script with some silly reference about how they adapt to new societies remarkably quickly, mimicking the natives with ease, but it nevertheless kills any chance of the movie being perceived as anything but a standard cop movie with a handful of people with silly heads.

If there can be said to be a saving grace to the movie it’s no doubt Patinkin, who is always good, even when others around him are not. He does a commendable job acting like the straight man, in a sense, to Caan; while Caan is sarcastic and broad and wild Patinkin remains very sober and level, humorless, and calm (with one dramatic exception — you’ll understand when you watch it). I’m not sure how the writer originally envisioned Patinkin’s character Sam Francisco being played, but Patinkin played it very straight and very honest, and very seriously. Francisco therefore has a kind of weightiness and substance which makes him really the anchor of the film, far more likable than sarcastic and abstractly sleazy Sykes, and his honesty really sells the movie to the audience. Without him … hoo-boy.

There’s not much more that can be said. The story features very few supporting characters, and the somewhat slim 97 minutes don’t allow for lots of digression and subtle shading. Writer Rockne S. O’Bannon (no relation to Dan O’Bannon of Alien fame to my knowledge) would go on to serve as writer-producer on a number of sci-fi themed tv shows, including Farscape, and the Alien Nation tv series.

Ultimately, what is my emotion walking away from this movie? I think disappointment would sum it up best — disappointment that more wasn’t done with the theme, more wasn’t done to really explore the concept, and indeed, more wasn’t done to actually make this a science-fiction story and not a rather standard buddy cop movie with little more to the aliens than set dressing. As it stands, it’s a rather standard but acceptable enough buddy cop movie with an intriguing concept that is left largely unexplored, saved from mediocrity by Mandy Patinkin’s stalwart and strong performance. Not having seen the follow-up TV series, I can’t say whether or not they managed to explore the premise of a race of alien ex-slaves living amongst us in a more genuine science-fiction way. I hope so.

Up next: V: the mini-series, watched first but written about second, the classic 1983 mini-series chronicling the visitation of a very different group of aliens, and one that I think we can definitely say is unquestionably, and completely, science-fiction.

Tags: science fiction, Alien Nation, DVD.

Last night, or rather early this morning, I watched the utterly awesome American Zoetrope documentary on the bonus disc of the THX-1138 release.

Now, the whole early years of the film brat pack holds great mystique for me. Be a rebel, strike out on your own, form a powerful network of like-minded friends (who are all geniuses), buck the system, and then eventually make millions and millions by following your dream and being yourself.

For those unfamiliar with the term, the film “brat pack” refers to the first generation of filmmakers to emerge from the film schools in the 60s, who seized the film system then in flux and decline, and remolded it to their will by releasing a string of classic moneymakers throughout the 70s. Some of the names include: Steven Spielberg, Francis Coppola, George Lucas, Walter Murch, Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale, Martin Scorsese, Brian dePalma. Some of their products include American Graffitti, The Godfather, The Conversation, Carrie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Mean Streets.

There’s a strain of idealism and artistic ambition that runs throughout their individual and group stories which has always captured my imagination and piqued my interest. I’ve read lots of individual biographies of some of the participants, and I’ve read other biographical type books which at least in part cross paths with this loose-knit group at one point or another, to one level of detail or another.

The American Zoetrope story, which forms, if you will, the first chapter in the saga of the brat pack, was a San Francisco-based film production company / studio founded by Francis Coppola in 1969, with the ambition to make films outside the Hollywood system, and outside the traditional confines of the Hollywood production mentality. Coppola envisioned a studio where friends and collaborators would congregate, lending support to one anothers’ individual projects while they worked on banks of the most state-of-the-art equipment that money could buy. Coppola envisioned an entirely new production process, with movies made much like student films, stripped-down, lean, documentary-style, with lightweight cameras and mostly natural lighting, and virtually no studio work. Perhaps most important of all, each filmmaker was free to make exactly the film he or she desired, with no veto or forceful involvement coming down from Coppola in his role as executive producer.
It was a revolutionary dream, and those involved in it were transformed with excitement, led by Coppola’s tireless energy and boundless charisma.

Regrettably, the dream was not to be. In late 1971, when distributor/financer Warner Bros./Seven Arts saw Zoetrope’s first product, THX-1138, they were appalled. They demanded the return of the money they’d invested and cancelled all other projects in production. Coppola went into serious debt and, for all intents and purposes, American Zoetrope ceased to exist, its members scattering to the four film corners in search of new work.

Having recently read Droidmaker, which touched on these heady years early in the book, I was thirsty for more. And when I discovered that there was a well-regarded documentary on disc two of the THX-1138 DVD release, serious Netflix queueage ensued.

It was not a waste of time. There are actually two documentaries on the bonus features disc of THX, both produced by the same crew from the same interviews. The first is entirely about the life of American Zoetrope, and the second a shorter, almost addendum-like, documentary on the making of THX itself. Since the tales of the two are inextricably linked, both documentaries are best viewed back to back, which is what I found myself doing at one o’clock early this morning.

I do love me a good film history documentary, and this one doesn’t disappoint. As a film itself, it’s very well-done, edited with panache and directly informative. Unlike so many of those trashy A&E Biography type documentaries, there’s little in the way of hype or saccharine goodiness. Occasionally the swelling soundtrack is a bit — Hollywoody? — but, you know, whatever. A documentary is only as good as its subjects, and there is virtually every participant of the Zoetrope story on-camera here, totally ready to be forthcoming, as well as bystanders heavily influenced by this Coppola-Lucas journey, like Spielberg and Scorsese.

Perhaps most surprising is John Calley himself, who was head of Warners/Seven Arts from 1969-1975, effectively the antagonist of the Zoetrope project. For him to make an appearance, freely discussing the fact that, yes, his administration hated THX and, yes, it was they who severed relations with Zoetrope — it gives the documentary an impressive sense of completeness. Especially in light of the painful realization that, as someone states in the docu, if Calley had maintained his support of Zoetrope through their early growing pains, the fruits they would ultimately bear — like Apocalypse Now, American Graffitti — would very likely have gone to Warners.

I could go on and on and on — it’s one of my favorite blab topics — but I think I’ll just leave it at that and say, well, well worth a watch. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fan of THX or not. The opportunity to watch a documentary of this quality chronicling such an important and unique chapter in the history of filmmaking is one nobody should pass up.

And it’s narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, too, in his recognizable croaky voice. I’d take him any day over that buffoon who narrates those Biography things.

Simon Pegg’s newest project is the dodgily-titled Hot Fuzz, due from Working Title in 2007. A glance at the synopsis for the film elicits a resounding … meh. Still, the track record of the Pegg/Wright duo is stellar, to say the least.

For my Yank readers, actor/writer Simon Pegg and director/writer Edgar Wright are probably going to be most familiar from Shaun of the Dead, and Simon has had guest roles in a smattering of other international productions, including Band of Brothers and Mission: Impossible 3.

But for me — and for many of my British pals — Simon and Edgar are most admired for their truly awesome (and horrifically short-lived) UK sitcom Spaced, alongside the equally supreme Jessica Stevenson (who made a protracted cameo in Shaun).

Let me put it gently: Spaced fucking rules. Written by Simon and Jessica and Edgar, the “sitcom” is basically a massive geekout of in-jokes, hidden references, homages, and mimicry — not just limited to the dialogue and acting, but including the camera, lighting, and music as well. Sometimes the humour is entirely contained in a camera move, or the framing of a shot, a poking homage to some cult classic. Spaced is no ordinary sitcom, with the heavy use of Steadicam and contrasty lighting visually leading the way out of the cardboard studio sets of the conventional sitcom into much different territory. There’s no laugh track either, which means the comedy has to work doubly hard to get the viewer to laugh. But you laugh. Oh, yes, you laugh.

Sometimes the comedy is so subtle, so “inside”, that if you don’t know the film or show it’s referencing you’re completely lost. For example, there is an hysterical sequence in which Jessica’s character, Daisy, gets a new job at a taco joint, only to realize that all her fellow employees are just like the characters from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s handled so subtly that, if you haven’t seen Cuckoo or you don’t get why the silent Indian guy is so disturbing to Daisy, you just get lost. Of course, as the episode progresses, Daisy becomes more and more horrified as events in the taco joint play out like the movie.

And the Star Wars references. Oh, the Star Wars. Fear them, respect them, for they are legion. Simon is a big old classic Star Wars fan, and inside jokes, references, homages, and story arcs abound surrounding the movies. Pegg’s disillusionment with Lucas after the Phantom Menace debacle also plays a big part in the second series of the show, which opens with Pegg’s character Tim ritually burning all his Star Wars toys after being “betrayed” by Lucas for ruining his favourite series with Phantom.

There’s quite a few notable guest stars from the UK comedy scene as well. My favourite: Bill Bailey as comic shop owner (and Tim’s boss) Bilbo (yes, Bilbo), who must regrettably fire Tim in the second series when Tim reduces a boy to tears for innocently asking to purchase a Jar-Jar Binks doll.

Do these jokes sound stupid to you? If so, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for; move along, move along. If you’ve been giggling and squirming in your seat throughout this post, I think it’s time you took a peek at this show. Unfortunately, if you’re in the States, things get tricky. If you have a DVD player and TV set capable of playing Region 2 PAL discs, you can pre-order the re-release of the collector’s edition complete series at a very reasonable price from Amazon.co.uk or HMV or one of the other online retailers. If you don’t, you might try a Torrent search or something similar, though wouldn’t it be nice to lend your support to the artists by purchasing it?

We’ll see if Pegg and Wright keep up the side when Hot Fuzz releases next year. In the meantime, we can continue to appreciate them (and Jessica Stevenson) for the geek masterpiece that is Spaced.

(We will return to normal American English starting with the next post …)

For the metallically inclined, Ronnie James Dio is a name which figures prominently, a sort of godfather of the whole strange genre. Among other (more musical) accomplishments, Ronnie is the man who created the “devil horns” sign (not a Satanic symbol, but actually his Sicilian grandmother’s ward against the evil eye), internationally recognized gesture of metalness.

And for fans of the actual music, Ronnie’s presence as frontman on three legendary records has forever cemented his position in the genre:

1. Rainbow Rising (1976)
2. Black Sabbath Heaven and Hell (1980)
3. Dio Holy Diver (1983)

Each of these three records proved both a milestone for each of those bands, and milestones for heavy metal / hard rock as a whole. (As a kind of rambling aside, ironically my favorite records of each of these three bands are instead: 1. Rainbow Long Live Rock n’ Roll (1978); 2. Black Sabbath Heaven and Hell (1980) — the same in this case; 3. Dio The Last In Line (1984).)

I’ve been listening a lot to Rainbow and the first two Dio (the band) albums of late, and boy have they weathered the test of time well. I’ve often wanted to write up a little post singing forth praise for these records, but have found no catalyst around which to write a piece. Until now.

Yesterday (the 30th of May) in the US (the 29th most everywhere else) Eagle Rock Entertainment put out an extremely inexpensive live DVD recorded at the London date of Dio’s tour of the UK in Autumn 2005. What makes this show so special, and so worthy of a DVD release, is that for these UK dates the band performed the entire debut album Holy Diver, in song order (preceded and followed by songs from other albums, to round out the set length), the first time they have ever done so.

For a DVD which is so surprisingly inexpensive (ten bucks at Amazon), the disc is surprisingly replete. DTS is offered in addition to 5.1-channel Dolby and a stereo mix, the entire contents are in anamorphic widescreen (and thus enhanced for widescreen displays), and a sort of casual interview short is offered as an extra. The performance itself is well-filmed on digital video (though not HD cameras, I’m pretty sure), and edited in a very straightforward, lucid way. I prefer live performances to be edited to offer as clear and detailed a look at the performances, rather than the arty-farty lightning-cut approach of amateurs trying to be MTV music video directors. Fortunately the editors of this disc chose the more subtle approach. There’s even a little photo booklet insert, with brief essay by rock journalist (and metal fan) Dave Ling, something I really didn’t expect given the low price tag.

And the performance itself? Dio, now well into his sixties, has lost none of his energy, enthusiasm, or vocal range. Truly, the man is astounding, bopping around on stage, matching the audience’s devil horns signs, and belting out the tunes with the abandon unmatched by people a quarter of his age. So many rock singers have lost their voices due to the ravages of time and dissipated living: Dio remains at the peak of his form, perhaps slightly more gravelly than on the 80s recordings, but just as impressive and full.

Quick aside: I just love that Ronnie rocks out with out any interest in retiring, flying in the face of any ageist comments, or the cries of “where is your decency?” from those who think that being older means putting on a tie and slowing down. Ronnie is still the diminutive little hippie with the long hair and the fun of rocking out with the headbangers, and for Ronnie, the number of years he’s chalked under his belt simply has no meaning. It’s all about attitude, it’s all about preference. It’s the way it should be, and I really honor him for it.

Current lineup: Simon Wright on drums (really doing a good job matching Vinnie Appice’s awesome, involved drumming style from the albums), bass legend Rudy Sarzo on, ehm, bass (thank god he finger-picks), enigmatic Scott Warren at keyboards, looking like a supreme gothic vampyre type (and the keyboards are doubly important here because there’s none of the guitar-overdubbing to fill out the sound as on the records), and, finally, Doug Aldrich, who looks like he just stepped out of a Z-Boys competition down in Dogtown.

Let’s talk about Doug for a second. Dio fans tend to be divided about whether Doug Aldrich or Craig Goldy is the “better” guitar player to be in the band. It seems that for most, either Doug is a god or he’s “totally wrong” for the band. Without any offense at Goldy, I’m one of the people who likes Doug in the band. His presence on Killing the Dragon for me was a major reason why it was such a return to the vintage Dio sound when it was released in 2002. He has this fabulous capacity to mix insane technical speed with bluesy, swaggery soul. The man is just on fire, and he both manages to recreate the spirit of original Dio guitarist Viv Campbell’s performances, while contributing his own personality. On this DVD, he’s in much better form than on Dio’s last DVD, “Evil or Divine”, and the sense of cameraderie he shares on stage with Ronnie is a treat to witness.

I could go on, but there’s not really any point, except to say that if you’ve never experienced Dio before, or if you’re intimidated or hesitant about trying out classic heavy metal with lots of hard rock vibes, this is a fabulous place to start, and to witness one of the genre’s elder statesmen at the supreme height of his creative and artistic powers. If you don’t want to buy it, stick it in your Netflix queue — it’s worth the look, I warrant you.
We rock!

Lots and lots of you out there use TiVos and you think they rock. RIght on. If that’s your speed that’s great.

But my own approach is somewhat different and, for me, much more rewarding.

Before I get to that approach, though, I think I’ve mentioned on this lame little blog that I have this completely awesome recording exchange thing with a good friend of mine in Oxford (that is, that town with the university located midway between London and Cardiff), Danny. We’ve been perfecting it since 1999, the grim dark times of … [shiver] … tape.

(I won’t go into the cost and inconvenience involved in mailing packages of VHS cassettes back and forth across the Atlantic, but suffice to say we didn’t request as much programming of each other then.)

Then came the light. The light of recordable DVDs. We began to request more shows from each other. Digital frisbees were hurled from Los Angeles to Oxford with happy abandon. Good times were had by all. Postal costs were reduced practically to nonexistence.

Which leads me to my version of TiVo: HDD/DVD recorders. I have a Panasonic DMR-E85 with a hard disk that can record up to 54 hours of content (at SP mode). That content can reside on the hard drive as long as I wish it to, during which I can edit it, give it a name, choose a thumbnail still, and other rudimentary editing tasks. Then, when the fancy or whim strikes me, I can blow it over to a DVD-R, which can burn up an entire 2 hours worth of SP content to an 8x disc in a bit over ten minutes. Or I can choose to add shows to discs one at a time; I needn’t do it all at once. Then when the disc is full, I finalize it (which takes just under two minutes), and it flowers into a fully-compliant video DVD which will play in every DVD player I’ve tried.

You see, it’s that last ability where my system leaves TiVo behind, and why I don’t understand TiVo’s popularity over HDD/DVD Recorders: portability. With TiVo, you can watch to your heart’s content — but only on the television to which the TiVo is attached. You cannot archive the programming, send it to others, free up the hard drive, share the love.

Or send it to your friend across the Atlantic.

And thanks to the modern miracle that is HDTV, my friend has the pleasure of receiving widescreen programming recorded off downconverted HDTV with picture quality far greater than would be had from standard definition signals (the greatly reduced digital artifacts alone make a huge difference).

While the UK is only just now about to launch into HDTV themselves, they’ve had 16×9 widescreen for about five years now, which means that 98% of the content I receive from Danny is anamorphic widescreen, making the experience much more cinematic and dramatic than conventional 4×3 pictures.

This is going to sound corny, but what is so rewarding about my exchange with Danny is that I know the stuff I send him is going to blow him away, and he’s getting to see these things months in advance of his peers. A couple weekends ago, for example, he finally blew out his hoarded backlog of Season 2 Lost episodes in one twelve-hour geekout, bringing him up to about the early April broadcasts. Conversely, Season 2 of Lost only just recently debuted on Channel 4 (in other words, episodes broadcast in the States way back in October last), meaning that Danny can strut about, smugly proclaiming that he’s long since seen episodes others will have to wait weeks or even months to see. That rocks.

Okay. You can bittorrent them, or get them off the usenet. But there is nothing like the sheer pleasure of receiving this enticing parcel in the mail, with a mysterious customs label affixed to it, and then ripping it open to discover a heap of recorded joy within. Believe me. And the whole meaning of our exchange is that I do all the work to put together his shows, and he does all the work to put together mine, and it’s complete reciprocation.

Anyway, in a very roundabout way, my point is this: if any of you don’t yet have a TiVo and are considering buying one, do at least consider the possibility of an HDD/DVD Recorder instead, such as my Panasonic. I’ve never regretted not being part of the TiVo crowd, because I think my HDD/DVD Recorder takes it one step better.

Time to go burn some discs for my friend.

Technorati Tags: DVD, TV, DVD Recorders

It’s been two days now since the rumor-then-official-statement debuted that Lucasfilm will be releasing the original Star Wars trilogy in an original theatrical version on DVD in September (read the official, brief statement here).

I’ve read a variety of responses to this. There’s a kind of deflation, though, that I see in a lot of places, a kind of sense of anti-climax. A kind of feeling of “okay, it’s happened, at last. We got what we wanted. Right? Didn’t we?”.

I had some conversations with fellow-fan friends who loathe the altered versions, and all they expressed was cynicism and resentment that Lucasfilm was finally doing what they had originally been resentful they hadn’t done. Honestly, at this point, Lucasfilm has alienated these people enough that there’s nothing they can do to make them happy.

This led me to wonder what my own thoughts really were on this whole situation. I found the cynicism of my friends repellant, annoying, wasteful, at the same time that I couldn’t help but sympathize with the idea that Lucas’s whole empire has grown into something essentially mercenary and unpleasant. Where do I stand? Am I delighted, or am I jaded?

People, let’s be honest for a moment here. Although we like to think we do, we don’t own Star Wars. It’s owned by a corporation, a corporation called Lucasfilm, a division of Lucas Digital, Ltd. And while Lucas Digital may be a privately-owned corporation, not subject to the same level of manipulations that a publicly-owned company with a large board of directors is, it’s still a big corporation with mid-level management, with lots of people staring at spreadsheets, and thinking of their holdings as commodities, not as art. At the end of the day the Star Wars trilogy is a commodity that the Lucas companies are compelled to use to make money, like all corporations are supposed to do.

Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who’s on my blogroll (and should be on yours), wrote a piece about the news here. (Well, sort of; read it and you’ll see). His most insightful comment was this:

seriously, they are now selling “han shot first” at the official star wars shop: which is like having pol-pot selling “give peace a chance” buttons. it’s the classic corporate attitude of packaging rebellion and selling it right back to the same people who invented it. the orgy of double-speak, double-thought and double-dipping makes these guys the halliburton of sci-fi (whereas the folks who ran star trek into the ground are merely the ike turners of sci-fi - eventually many of us just got fed up, kicked the crud out of them in a limo and crossed the highway to hide out at the doctor who ramada).

“Han Shoots First” tee-shirts at the store? Jesus, that is taking things a bit far. And it’s true that, after the time I’ve spent at the forums of originaltrilogy.com, and the genuine passion for Star Wars that those guys who hand-build the special edition-free DVDs share, Lucasfilm’s version just feels so … mercenary. More like Boba Fett than Han Solo. It really does feel that Lucasfilm, seeing how much people were digging these homemade pieces of nostalgia fostered by a rebellious group who didn’t like digital stormtroopers, got out those trucks like in Soylent Green, scooped up the rebels, and drove them off to the Soylent manufacturing facility to end up as officially released DVDs with a barcode on their butts.

And yet, while originaltrilogy.com and elsewhere really do have this wonderful community of people, originaltrilogy.com is also the place where you go to sign this petition pressuring Lucas to release the theatrical versions of the trilogy on DVD. Which he’s now done.

Isn’t that what we’ve all been pressuring Lucas to do anyway? Is he not doing what we’ve asked? In what way does this make him evil? Is it hard to feel glee and happiness now, because this should have happened in the first place, two years ago, when he released the first DVD set that featured versions of the films even more altered than the 1997 versions? Is there the sense that our pockets are being stripped bare?

There’s also a certain wait-and-see from people: the 2004 releases were met with dismay when it was discovered that the sound mix had been inexplicably altered, as well as other technical issues that Lucasfilm maintained were intentional artistic decisions. Most glaring of these “artistic decisions” was flipping the rear channels on the score during the Death Star run finale of the first movie, which many found extremely unnatural and distracting. Is that the kind of mix we can expect to get with these new releases in September? We just don’t know.

I realize that at this point in time, and after all we’ve been through with our relationship with Lucasfilm, that we can never again enjoy Star Wars with the same pure sense of pleasure and idealism that we did in 1980, or 1977, or even during those lean years when we only had the West End Games role-playing books to keep us company. There’s been lots of water under the bridge. Star Wars is no longer just this film to waken our imaginations; it’s become an empire, guarded by a large corporation, and kept alive by an enormous body of fans, some of whom have clouded up the pure enjoyment of the movies just as much as the company has.

It’s all become so big, so much a “lifestyle”. People camping on sidewalks, people arguing on internet forums, billions of dollars in merchandise, this whole outsized “expanded universe” nonsense. And contention, disagreement, disappointment, confusion, and complication laced through it all. My idea of Star Wars is not necessarily her idea of Star Wars anymore, which in turn is not necessarily his idea. And each is ready to slam the others’ idea as “wrong”, put their nose in the air, feel that he or she is the “superior one”, the “purist”.

When I was a kid, Star Wars meant just one thing to me: a fabulous universe to explore that fired my imagination like nothing before or sense. I was overwhelmed with all the possibilities for adventure. I wore out action figures exploring worlds only hinted at onscreen.

And as I was writing that last paragraph something dawned on me: it was better then because Star Wars wasn’t political. When I heard the cynicism in my friends’ voices, when I saw the mixed reaction online, I realized that that was exactly what made me feel so uncomfortable, so sad: Star Wars has become a political thing.

Guess what? Come September, I’m going to go out and buy the new releases, and I’m going to bring them home and watch these films for one thing only: to fire my imagination.

That’s what Star Wars used to be about. I’m determined to make that all it’s about once again. The politics of it be damned.

Technorati Tags: star wars, original trilogy, dvd

No, not Jack Warner. I’m talkin’ David Warner, who is as far as I’m concerned the Evil Genius of all time, without question.

So let’s do a refresher course of the major roles as Evil Genius that makes him in my geek book one of the top dogs:

1. Ed Dillinger / Sark / MCP in Tron (Jesus, this guy is the MCP!)
2. Evil Genius — that’s right — in Time Bandits
3. Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI
4. Jon Irenicus in the RPG Baldur’s Gate II
5. Morpheus in the RPG Fallout
6. Picard’s torturer Gul Madred in Star Trek: the Next Generation

He’s been in a shitload of animated shows, too, playing Ra’s Al Ghul in Batman and Herbert Landon in Spider-Man. He’s been in Privateer 2: the Darkening, one of the Wing Commander spinoffs, the Outer Limits, Babylon 5, Lois & Clark, and on and on and on.

In fact, glancing at his bio at the IMDB, would seem to have appeared in everything. Ever made. Ever. Good or bad. He was even in Captain Power, for god’s sake!
But in my book, his crowning achievement, even over torturing the spit out of Picard, is as the MCP. To actually be the Master Control Program, and then also to be Sark and Dillinger. Wow. What a fabulous villain in a long career of fabulous villains.

Actually, to be fair, while he is the Evil Genius of all time, he’s not the undisputed master of all evil villains, a position which must be at least shared by Peter Cushing. I’ll tell you one thing, though — if Cushing had been unavailable for the role of Governor Tarkin, I know another native Briton who could have filled in nicely, despite being much younger…

End of line.

Given my age, it’s little surprise that Star Wars is beyond a movie (or trilogy of movies) to me, but something that’s an inextricable part of my existence. I grew up with it all around me, I expected it all around me, I needed it all around me.

And like so many others who grew up with Star Wars, I’m so intimately familiar with the original versions of the movie that I have a hard time watching the ever-changing Special Editions, the latest iteration of which can be seen in the officially released DVD boxed set. Sure, the films are good enough that I can look past the changes and still have a great time, and man is the transfer good on my HD set, but I would much rather see the Star Wars I remember rather than one which has the fingerprints of an increasingly out-of-touch director who can’t let something go all over it.

Enter the Fan Edits™.

For those of you who don’t know about this wonderful world, basically what’s happened is that there are tons of others out there who love Star Wars but maybe don’t love Lucas’s tinkering and tweaking. So, instead of bitching about it (well, maybe after bitching about it) they went off and found laserdiscs and other archive material and put together their own DVD versions of the original trilogy, the original original trilogy, the original one they originally remember watching originally.

Let’s be honest. Even the best enhanced DVD made off a laserdisc is going to look, well, like an enhanced DVD made off a laserdisc. But one of my favorites of the Fan Edits is ocpmovie’s “Classic Edition” of the original trilogy, where he used a hell of a lot of digital trickery to basically take the 2004 DVD release of the trilogy and then insert, paint, or wrangle in any material off other non-Special Edition source material wherever necessary, in essence brushing out the tamperings done by George and Co. in 1997 and 2004.

The effects are, by and large, fabulous. Because ocpmovie is relying primarily on sleight of hand, most of the time you can’t actually tell that you’re watching anything but the 2004 DVDs, only you never have to wince when Han is so amazingly stupid that he would allow someone sitting opposite him to fire at him before he shoots. At point blank range. Or when computer-generated puppets of stormtroopers clambering up these computer-generated puppets of their mounts (which look like they’ve been sprayed with shiny latex) look so fake and awkward that you have to turn away. Or that embarrassing “expanded” musical number in Return of the Jedi which induces uncontrollable vomiting because you know that the Ewoks weren’t enough, George just hadda go back and put more cutesy funny misery into the thing, so we could watch a reject from Fraggle Rock doing a blues routine like David Coverdale.

You don’t have to wince because all that shit has been flushed down the toilet, where it belongs.

Ocpmovie has gone a step farther with A New Hope and even done all these insanely obscure tweaks to things like the soundtrack, mixing back in the first, first bits from the Summer 1977 mix (like the original Aunt Beru), and other madness.

It’s not perfect, of course. Sometimes the poor source material stands out (though that never bothers me). He did miss one computer-generated 1997 edition shot in the final battle, but it’s quick. And a number of the altered scenes suffer from a stutter that can happen when, say, video is transcoded awkwardly from 25 fps PAL to 29.97 fps NTSC. It’s possible that he had to take the 23.97 fps rate of the 2004 DVD material and knock it up to 29.97 fps to mix in the other material, I don’t know. I haven’t heard others complain about this but it’s certainly noticeable on my system.

And Empire and Jedi, being as they are much less tampered with, are much finer jobs, more professional, more confident. There’s very little of the stuttering issue mentioned above.
It’s funny, I never bought the 2004 official boxset. I guess I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Maybe I was waiting for George to wake up and listen to his own comments about the preservation of films the way we remember them.

But if any of you out there don’t care for the tweaks and changes of recent years, and want the Star Wars trilogy as you remember them, stop by originaltrilogy.com, read up on the discussion, then torrent the Classic Editions or get them off alt.binaries.starwars.

I sure as hell am glad I did.