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read all the news from 2005, archived (part 2) read all the news from 2005, archived (part 1) read all the news from 2005, archived (complete) read all the news from 2004, archived read all the news from 2003, archived read all the news from 2002, archived read all the news from 2001, archived read all the news from 2000, archived For the very latest news, stay tuned to FFrevolution.com. n e w n e w s Orange Cow Presents is on your TV! Adelphia customers in most of Los Angeles can see it mondays at 11:00 PM, on Channel 98, or Channel 77 in the Santa Monica area. We are also going to be airing on various Comcast stations. Our schedule may change so I'll keep you posted. Officially working on three TV pilots now. The first is an ambitious sci-fi comedy project starring a cast of all puppets. They are aliens who are trying to take over the world, but are all right really. I need to raise some money, if this is ever going to get off the ground. The pilot script is very funny, and was written with the help of Daniel Geduld. I'm doing some work on my animated pilots The Chosen Ones and Dance With Grandpa. Pilot scripts are nearly completed for both. The Chosen Ones is missing an ending, and Dance With Grandpa gets a little sketchy toward the end. I plan to record voices for both these pilots as soon as possible, and then sit down and do way too many drawings, if I ever have time. I need an agent. I'm doing casting now for a whole bunch of different projects, including my musical The Dead Can't Dance (formerly Musical of the Living Dead) and a sci-fi comedy project, Flowers For a Dying Sun. I'm broke - almost got kicked out of the place I'm living here. Not sure if I've dodged that bullet yet. But I keep on trying. Journal of a struggling filmmaker in L.A. Orange Cow on L.A. TV! Adelphia and Cox Cable, and for rental http://orangecow.org/videos/ocppresentsintro2.mov (12 MB) Orange Cow Presents - 2005 season - opening title sequence. Enjoy. http://www.ffrevolution.com/1ocpvideos/ocp...singmontage.mov (46 MB) "The Sun is Always Rising" (Ken Thornton) - montage of clips from Orange Cow movies. 
Orange Cow Presents is on the air! Adelphia customers in most of Los Angeles can see it on tuesday, November 15th, at 11:00 PM, on Channel 98, or Channel 77 in the Santa Monica area. We'll be airing tuesdays at 11 PM from now on, it looks like. The show has also been approved by the Comcast station in Hollywood, and another station is approving it. So pretty much all of L.A. will be able to see the show at some point. And we're gonna be airing on some station elsewhere in the country thanks to Aaron Snyder. But I forget where. I've been living here for six years, but I've never had a cable access show in L.A. My stuff has aired all over the country, most notably in Illinois and Wisconsin but also in Texas and some other places I forget. Lots of places. We were randomly written up in Gear Magazine in '01 as one of their 10 best cable access shows in the country, which was bizarre, but which I keep mentioning since it sounds official and nice. So, for the first time, I'm putting a half-hour version of Orange Cow Presents on the air here in L.A. The opening title sequence is set to "Innertube TV," the theme song from a Jim Henson pilot in the early 90s which never got picked up (it changed into The Jim Henson Hour). I thought it would be fun to use an old rejected 80s-style theme tune, and actually use it. It gives it a slightly retro vibe which I enjoy. The show will show the Orange Cow short films, and feature films. I've taped host segments for the pieces, talking about and introducing the shows, with the occasional help of a dog who happened to be there the first day I was taping. So there's that. 
And thanks to Video Journeys of Los Angeles (Glendale area), who are providing the Orange Cow movies for rent at their store. They have five Orange Cow titles now - Shorts Volume 1, Gods of Los Angeles, Ghostbusted Trilogy, Indulgence, and even Deleted Magic. I wasn't going to give Deleted Magic to them to rent out, but the guy didn't mind - he said, hey, Lucasfilm isn't going to come in here and shut it down. Rental is free of charge (so hey, no Lucasfilm infringement) as part of their "local filmmakers" section. On my way out, he asked if these discs were any good. I said yes. (Because I hadn't expected to give them the Deleted Magic disc for rent, the rental disc is actually my master copy! Or what used to be my master copy anyway. Guess it isn't anymore.) Video Journeys. 2730 Griffith Park Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90027. While editing the opening titles for the new show, I also cut together a montage of Orange Cow clips set to Ken Thornton's lovely "The Sun is Always Rising" ... Here it is. http://www.ffrevolution.com/1ocpvideos/ocp...singmontage.mov I'm going to upload my standup set in Laguna Beach from September also. Orange Cow Presents 2005 edition Episode Guide: Episode 1: Squiffy the Derelict Cat, For Science, Gods of Los Angeles trailer 1, Indulgence trailer, Radio Man trailer Episode 2: Mort (Originally part of an hourlong cut of episode 1 - bumped to its own episode when I had to cut the show down to 28 minutes.) Episode 3: Lover's Poison, I've Been Mocked Enough, The Cancer Episode 4: The Journey of Truesong, Stripped Away Episode 5: Music for the Mind Ballet, Beautiful Zelda, Gods of Los Angeles trailer 2 (This was originally episode 3, but had to be bumped down lower because of a problem with the DVD.) Episode 1: Squiffy the Derelict Cat, For Science, Gods of Los Angeles trailer 1, Indulgence trailer, Radio Man trailer Episode 2: Mort (Originally part of an hourlong cut of episode 1 - bumped to its own episode when I had to cut the show down to 28 minutes.) Episode 3: Lover's Poison, I've Been Mocked Enough, The Cancer Episode 4: The Journey of Truesong, Stripped Away Episode 5: Music for the Mind Ballet, Beautiful Zelda, Gods of Los Angeles trailer 2 (This was originally episode 3, but had to be bumped down lower because of a problem with the DVD.) Episode 6: Ghostbusted, Squiffy Meets Giffy Episode 7: Ghostbusted 2, part 1 Episode 8: Ghostbusted 2, part 2 Episode 9: Ghostbusted 3 clip, Torgo and the Quest For Fuck, Excaliburger and Gorilla Interrupted trailers Episode 10: Gods of Los Angeles part 1 Episode 11: Gods of Los Angeles part 2 Episode 12: Gods of Los Angeles part 3 Episode 13: Gods of Los Angeles part 4 Episode 14: Gods of Los Angeles part 5 Episode 15: Gods of Los Angeles part 6 Episode 16: Gods of Los Angeles part 7 First four episodes are scheduled at Adelphia! The first 16 episodes have already been put together. Gods of Los Angeles begins airing on the tenth week of the show. I may bump it forward to get it shown sooner, but that's currently where it begins. It airs in seven parts, and works surprisingly well as an episodic drama. There are naturally lots of cliffhangers in the film which work really well as episode ending cliffhangers. Some deleted material has been reinstated for the TV airing of the film - Five scenes featuring David Maddox's Clifford performing his stand-up routine, which were cut out because there was no place in the film to put them, have been included as introductions to to the last five of the episodes. Okay, so what's my next movie? I am beginning pre-production and casting now on several different projects. Five projects, to be exact. I am starting so many projects at once because I want to throw a lot of things up in the air and see what sticks. The project that develops the most momentum will be the one I really go ahead with. If more than one project develops momentum, I will work on more than one project at once. Wish me luck. New video! Garrett Gilchrist Live in Laguna Beach - Standup comedy! http://www.ffrevolution.com/1ocpvideos/ggs...lagunabeach.mov (39 MB) Here it is at last, the infamous standup set from September that I performed at the Laguna Beach Brewing Company. I was asked not to come back and do it again. My original account of that night. http://ffrevolution.com/InvisionBoard/inde...t=ST&f=2&t=1004 It's a pretty funny set. From about 5 minutes into this clip I think I'm rather proud of it, not before that though. I don't like watching this clip at all partly because I criticize my own delivery, and most of the real jokes just fall completely dead on the audience, who are barely paying attention. The comments about the girl who left me over and over (Lisa Bendelstein was her name) are among those that fall totally dead. Oh well. (That's the first part of the performance I actually like, but it gets no response.) Also, the layout of the room was so awful that it threw me and I don't even get into doing my actual material for about 1 or 2 minutes, I just ramble on til then very improvvy. My actual set, what I'd written and planned to do, got pretty screwed up but that always happens. The video quality is very poor - you should have seen it before I brightened it, the room was totally dark and you couldn't even see me with your eyes, much less this crappy camera. However, the sound is quite clear. This was shot by Laurie Weiland. I've framed this clip with short clips of host Lynn Epstein doing her thing, and a clip of the guy who came on after me beginning by commenting on my performance, twice. This will help to frame the night for you and let you know what I was up against. Orange Cow Color Guide: To Obscure Characters All on the same page (broadband) http://orangecow.org/colorguides/viewall.html One at a time (dialup) http://orangecow.org/colorguides/ As part of a secret project I might be working on, it was necessary for me to go through my old character designs, including drawings I did 12 years ago which are pretty horrible looking today, pick out ones that had certain qualities to them, color them in, and post them online as a guide. So here it is - in color - a guide to some of the more obscure characters I've designed over the years. Thought it might be nice to post because this is the first time I've posted some of this art online - some of it, in fact, comes from the kids' show pitches I did for Nickelodeon, unsuccessfully .... like the color images of my old elementary school characters Rob Rabbit, Ralph Aardvark, Margaret, Jeans Johnson, Opus, etc ... A lot of the art ain't great, but it's an interesting thing to look at, there. New Star Wars DVD art! With thanks to Coov, whose work inspired these designs. 
Large: http://orangecow.org/starwars/swcovers-ocp...tedmagicnew.jpg The image of Biggs etc. on the front was black and white. I colorized it, and Photoshopped a different face onto Luke. This was quite intense Photoshoppery. I also had to fix some flaws in the Japanese ESB poster to get this - 
Large version: http://orangecow.org/starwars/swcovers-ocp...sbnewbigweb.jpg Luke, Lando the "starburst" and part of Cloud City were taken from a low quality version of the Australian poster (which was retouched and fixed from the Japanese poster) and I changed the entire color scheme. Difficult Photoshoppery. 
Large: http://orangecow.org/starwars/swcovers-ocp...eclassicnew.jpg 
Large: http://orangecow.org/starwars/swcovers-ocp.../newempire2.jpg 
Large: http://orangecow.org/starwars/swcovers-ocp...ssicdiscart.jpg And now, have a look at the great designs that Coov did. http://kevin.alfahosting.org/test/picKLE-a...ssic%20wood.jpg http://kevin.alfahosting.org/test/picKLE-a...cpmovie-esb.jpg http://kevin.alfahosting.org/test/picKLE-a...pmovie-esbA.jpg http://kevin.alfahosting.org/test/picKLE-a...TED%20MAGIC.jpg http://kevin.alfahosting.org/test/picKLE-a...ED%20MAGIC2.jpg 
http://orangecow.org/starwars/swcovers-nonocp/ Here it is - a folder full of designs for Deleted Magic and the Classic Editions done by people other than me. Lot of Coov stuff here, I've also included his "Trading Card" set for the O-OT. A nice set. http://orangecow.org/starwars/swcovers-ocp/ And here is a folder full of the official Deleted Magic and Classic Edition & etc covers done by me. 
Ghostbusted DVD art? HAHAHAHAHHA WHY? I should explain. There's a video store near here called Video Journeys. Actually pretty cool, a little mom & pop store run by people who love cult movies, so they have a good selection of obscure good films. They also have a section for local filmmakers. The rentals are free for one day. I actually recognized one of the names there - the guy from Channel 101. I thought it was nice that someone would be able to rent low-budgeters by local filmmakers, and I instantly wanted to give them a full library of Orange Cow films. But I had never designed Amaray cases or DVD art for some of the movies I wanted to put there! I never did an Amaray case or final poster for Gods of Los Angeles. I also wanted to give them some of the stranger stuff like Ghostbusted and **********. So the last couple days I've gone ahead and designed Amaray cases (and disc art) for Gods of Los Angeles, Ghostbusted and **********. For Video Journeys. Kerry, who lives here, has a lovely printer that he's letting me use, so I'm able to print these things out in very high quality. It's nice to see them finally in proper cases getting the respect they deserve, or, in the case of Ghostbusted, not deserve at all! Party hearty. As for the Ghostbusted poster art, the photos I had to work with were awful, but I did nice things with them I think. I really darkened them carefully to make them look less "flash-y" and awful. You should have seen them before. Jason Santo never posed for a cast photo, so his head is from a screen grab, with his body a combination of Jonason Ho (waist up) and Mike Stoklasa (waist down). Mike is also a different head on another Mike body. And the tip of my gun is a Mike gun. Warren is from a screen grab. 
Here we are then. This is the sixth, and probably final, poster design for Gods of Los Angeles. I had to come up with something new specifically designed for a DVD case. Spent today working on it and came up with this. Note how the heads of Rhonda/Clifford/Lily form a triangle, and all the cast members' faces form a pleasing curve/circle ... especially the small pictures of Bruce/Rhonda/Jules/Martha which form a very clear half-circle. This just kind of happened, and I like the shapes and movement going on in the design. The design is inspired by the previous design, which had a sunset with Rhonda up in the sky and Lily at the bottom. The sunset is a bit brighter this time round, so Rhonda isn't quite as well integrated, and I miss the "hug" picture of Bruce and Rhonda and the palm trees at bottom, but otherwise this is an improvement. Note that the supporting cast shows up in this poster, for the first time. Clifford is featured prominently - I hate to feature him so much larger than Bruce, but there are more good photos of Clifford than there are of Bruce ... anyway Bruce gets his due on the back cover, and people have wanted to see Clifford on the poster in some form. You'll also spot Jules on there, small from a screen grab from the film rather than a photo - Rhonda/Bruce, Rhonda and Martha are also from screen grabs. The inclusion of Julie Kenworth as Martha Masters is an odd one, as she's such a minor character, but I thought it would be nice to feature the film's female cast prominently on the poster. They look better on posters than the guys do. Actually, a lot of decisions here were made to avoid using photos of the cast posing looking directly at the camera (like the picture of Bruce and Rhonda you see on the back). Way too many of my photos of the cast are like this. For the photos of Lily, Clifford, Bruce and Rhonda I actually took faces and torsos from different photos and put them on the bodies of wider shots, to get full-body shots. Which you don't get to see in Clifford and LIly's cases, as the figures are cropped at the waist ... but they go down further, they do. The "Los Angeles" view at the bottom is pretty dull, I kind of dulled it, softened it, diffused it and greyed it out so it wouldn't overwhelm the composition, but maybe I should have chosen a cheerier picture. I also wish I had a more romantic picture of Bruce/Rhonda there on the front. The previous version had a grab of them hugging, which I liked the emotion of, but decided not to use again because it's an ugly picture of both of them. Hm. Otherwise, I'm quite proud of this composition and I think it'll do nicely for the DVD cases here. Compare with previous posters: 
Joshua Klein, DVD columnist for the Chicago Tribune, interviewed me today. He's not a huge fan of Deleted Magic but enjoyed the Star Wars Classic Edition disc a lot, and we talked at length about Originaltrilogy.com and the ways fans are finding to preserve these classic movies and give them the respect they deserve. We talked about a lot of things so I have no idea what he's going to use. He'll be doing an article about Classic Edition and the O-OT in ... tuesday's paper I think? Coming soon. I am SO going to get sued by Lucasfilm. Chicago Tribune `Star Wars' fans seek long, long ago edition By Joshua Klein Special to the Tribune A little more than a year ago, millions of "Star Wars" fans finally got their wish granted with the release of the original "Star Wars" trilogy--"Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi"--on DVD. A vocal minority, however, merely grumbled, since what was sold was not the original trilogy at all but the so-called "special editions," released theatrically in 1997 with added scenes, new special effects and, some might argue, inferior results. The real original trilogy--which is to say, the versions many fans grew up with--were nowhere to be found. Short of a change of heart on creator George Lucas' part, the original "Star Wars" films are unlikely to ever appear on DVD, and needless to say, a few weeks before the DVD release of the final "Star Wars" installment "Revenge of the Sith," many fans remain frustrated. "Look at the DVDs that are out now," says Garrett Gilchrist of Carlsbad, Calif., a 24-year-old film school grad responsible for "Deleted Magic," a remarkable compendium of seldom-seen deleted scenes, alternate takes and outtakes from the first "Star Wars." "They're not getting any respect anymore. These are classic movies that should be preserved, like `Bridge Over the River Kwai' or `Seven Samurai.' Not to get too pretentious about it, but these films should be given a bit of respect so that everyone can enjoy them, not force you to overlook how bad the release actually is." To that end, some fans have repeatedly attempted to re-create and reconstruct--with home computers, professional software and various releases of Lucas' sci-fi epics, as well as plenty of time and money--their own versions of the director's sci-fi epics. Gilchrist's "Classic Edition" combines elements from the 2004 DVDs and the '93 laserdisc. His close approximation of 1977's "Star Wars" goes so far as to digitally paint out distracting special effects, correct real and perceived errors discovered on the official 2004 DVD versions and feature professional-looking DVD menus. Gilchrist even edited together his own commentary track. He calls his "Classic Edition" the "original" version of "Star Wars," "not the way it was, but the way you remember it." That's keeping in line with Lucas' stated views on film restoration. "I am very concerned about our national heritage, and I am very concerned that the films I watched when I was young and the films that I watched throughout my life are preserved, so that my children can see them," said Lucas, referring to the colorization movement. That quote is the first thing you see at www.originaltrilogy.com, where fans commiserate over changes Lucas made to their favorite films as well as discuss, attempt and trade remedies. There's also a petition addressed to Lucas. "Obviously, all the chain-rattling one person on the Internet can do is about as effective as the world's smallest violin," says Justin Bielawa of Connecticut, a Web site regular and friend of Gilchrist. "The question is now what can we do to get him to change his mind." These homemade "preservations" provide to the unsatisfied (and perhaps unsatisfiable) the next best thing. Yet the proliferation of so many different versions of the films, from Lucas' own to the dozens of bootlegs and ambitious re-creations, shows that a solution may now be impossible. "I don't know if that'd be possible, due to the many sources of the original trilogy and how differently each person tackles their preservation project," says Rid Hughes of Gloucestershire, England, who has worked diligently on his own laserdisc to DVD transfers of a universally embraced DVD edition. "Everyone has their own idea on how it should look, and they're all different." Hughes' version of the first "Star Wars" was made from three different laserdisc sources: the U.S. Definitive Collection, the French THX collection and the German THX collection. It's cost him more than 200 British pounds (about $350), "utilizing parts of all three versions to combine them into something I'm happy with." Ben Payton of Great Falls, Mont., who has embarked with four friends on what he calls the "X0 Project," is a freelance Web designer whose "Star Wars" obsessions drew him to the pricey Pioneer HLD-X0 laserdisc player in hopes of preserving the best possible image. "It is perhaps the best laserdisc player ever made, and still demands a hefty asking price on eBay--$2,800 last time I checked," he says. "We have centered our preservation around using this player, and the early results are about the best we've ever seen in an LD-to-computer transfer." "I have had a lot of fun doing what I'm doing, and someday might even like to do something like this for a living," adds Payton, who is serving in the military. "I'd say even if by some miracle Lucas decides to release the original `Original Trilogy' right in the middle of our project, I think I'd still finish it, just to see how well it stacks up to the real thing." Gilchrist, who recently completed a version of "The Empire Strikes Back" and is pondering attempting "Return of the Jedi", stresses that as angry as fans sometimes seem, this is largely a fun exercise. He also points our that until Lucas makes the original trilogy available again, in its original form, he sees no harm being done. "The `Classic Edition' was about revisiting a movie that doesn't exist anymore," Gilchrist says. "The movie you're creating is the movie you grew up with, and the movie you want to see again. It gets harder and harder to watch ("Star Wars") the way Lucas has it now . . . .He's interested in what he can do now, but we're not as interested. And if these films are being ruined, and (his versions are) all that's coming out, then that's no fun." Justin asked me the other day if I was going to restore the Empire Strikes Back too. Your wish is granted. I've been planning to do this for a while anyway. These projects are always a good way to learn advanced DVD authoring, and before you bitch at me for wasting my time with these projects, you should know that this only took a few spare hours today and yesterday. It was finished very very quickly. Here's what I posted at originaltrilogy.com, for the hardcore Star Wars crowd: Throw away your laserdiscs. Throw away your '04 DVDs. This is the only version of The Empire Strikes Back you'll ever need.     
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Classic Edition by ocpmovie (tygerbug at yahoo.com)      
From the creator of Deleted Magic and Star Wars Classic Edition comes the ultimate restoration of what many believe to be the best film in the Star Wars saga. It looks exactly as good as the real 2004 DVDs. Because it's made from the 2004 DVDs. But this is the original 1980 version of the film. No special edition material to be found here. The definitive preservation of this classic film. 
I finished all my video editing today, and looked at a test burn of the DVD. I was actually blown away. It's hard to overstate how well this worked out. 95% of it looks exactly as good as the official DVD (because it IS the official DVD), and the other 5% looks basically exactly as good as the official DVD, and it's very very hard to tell the difference. I am not posting screen grabs from the normal parts of the film. I'll just post the parts where I merged bad quality stuff with better quality stuff. 95% of the film looks better than these screen grabs - if you want screen grabs from those, just screen grab your official DVDs. There, you've got it. I learned a lot from doing the Classic Edition edit of the first Star Wars. One thing that people noticed were the DV artifacts - the miniDV format has trouble with highly saturated reds and blues, and they develop jagged edges visible on a computer monitor. Although that disc looked great, I was convinced that I could do better. 
I wanted to try to actually use the real official DVD encode for as much of the film as possible. This time round, I only rendered the portions of the film that needed to be edited. Any stretch of the film that was to stay unchanged, I didn't touch. I then actually merged my little bite-sized chunks that I'd edited myself along with the actual 2004 Lucasfilm DVD files, making any change from one to the other completely seamless. This means that for 90% of the film, I haven't even touched it. In any way. It's the 2004 DVD that you're watching. This was a bit tricky to do, but resulted in a DVD of shocking clarity. As for the scenes which have been reedited, these look equally great. The Cowclops V2 laserdisc transfer came in very handy here, and so did a DVD of the 1997 Special Edition. It also saved some work in the long run, so I was able to spend more time on just the parts that needed editing, and finish the entire edit in a day or two - about 5 times faster than the first Classic Edition. You'll find I've learned some new tricks. You'll find I'm full of surprises. 
I actually created a digital matte painting of the old grey corridor to replace the special edition corridor with its big pink windows. When Leia fires, I painted the gunshots back in frame by frame. The corridor is from the laserdisc, Leia and Lando from the DVD. 
The "hatch" shots are my favorite. That is actually Lando and Luke from the DVD, but the white hatch is from the laserdisc. How is that possible unless I painstakingly painted out the CGI hatchway (added in 1997) frame by frame? There's a deadly clever trick to this shot. I used the "Lumakey" function in FCP, telling it to blot out everything from the laserdisc except for bright whites. So then I pasted the bright whites from the original shot over the 2004 DVD. Suddenly I'm back to the 1980 version of the shot, but in 2004 clarity. Now that is cool. 
Luke hangs upside down. A tiny bit of laserdisc footage of Luke was used to merge two 2004 DVD shots into one 1980 shot. It's so well hidden that it all looks like a 2004 shot. I defy you to notice it without watching it many times over and over with me there to tell you where the join is. 
The middle of this shot is from 2004, the edges around the Falcon from 1980. 
A brighter starfield has been added to the 2004 crawl, to make it look like the 1980 original. 
Again, a brighter starfield. 
The castmembers are from 2004, the background from 1980. This was an interesting shot to restore because in the 1997 version, the animators added a pan-down - the shot moves and you see more of them at the bottom of the screen. So I match-moved the moving version of the shot carefully until it was staying still again. In truth, a lot of the special edition changes to Empire were very clever, and I hated to remove them, but the film does work better without them. Otherwise we wouldn't be so desperate for the original versions of the films. The 1997 version of Empire was definitely the best of the Special Editions. Apart from changing the sound mix back to the 70mm version, which resulted in at least one annoying line change, it was a good edit of the film. Particularly compared to the horrors committed on all the other films. On the other hand, the 2004 DVD is a travesty - thanks to just one thing. Replacing Boba Fett's voice with a horrible performance by Temuera Morrison? Way to ruin one of the best characters in the film. The sound mix here is the 35mm one from 1980. The one we love. 
Note the window -- Some laserdisc footage is carefully pasted in frame by frame over the clearer DVD image. The result is seamless.
More original 1980 architecture at the end of that hallway, pasted in carefully over the 2004 image, frame by frame. 
Ditto - check that door at the end of the corridor. That's not there in 1997/2004. 
More fun with 1980 architecture in Cloud City. 
Han gets his classic vest look back, restoring a popular continuity error otherwise fixed in '04. (I liked doing this, but it did force me to actually edit the entire "I love you/I know" scene, rather than just take it straight from the DVD, which is a shame for the very very very slight loss of clarity that entails. For that reason I am still undecided on whether to put the imperial insignia on Piett and the other guy back on the wrong way at the end of the film, when they're talking to Vader and the scene is flopped. They fixed it for the 2004 DVDs with some clever CGI, and I may or may not unfix it. You may or may not know what I'm talking about.)
The first appearance of the Emperor! Before the wonderful Ian McDiarmid was cast for Jedi. This scene appears here in DVD quality thanks to the 1997 special editions. It's nice that Lucas filmed McDiarmid for the '04 DVDs, but the new scene is slow-paced and kind of vaguely awful (lots of closeups of Vader looking confused). And the emperor in it looks like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. It's nice to bring back the original, just for old time's sake. Even if he isn't the "real" Emperor, this is very definitely the "real" scene. So there you have it. I don't want to blow my own horn here and say I've done it again, but, well, I've done it again. I can't overstate this, this is the only version of The Empire Strikes Back you need. It also only took me like a day or two to do, which is nice. A definite improvement on Star Wars Classic Edition, which took forever and lots of tries to get the shots right. This one was perfect on the first try. The sound isn't all in sync yet, I'll figure that out tomorrow. To save room on the disc for the improved picture quality of this version, I won't be really including any extras. Also because I'm really busy and don't have time to create a great commentary track like for ANH (and I don't have the interviews to do it with anyway). The isolated score will be included, and a few nice menus. As always, you can email me at tygerbug at yahoo.com. And before you ask will there be a Classic Edition of Return of the Jedi, the answer is maybe. (I get the feeling I'll be answering this question ten times a day now too, along with the Deleted Magic sequel question.) Enjoy this folks. You don't need to throw your other versions away, but you can let 'em gather dust a little. You won't be watching them much. It's the original version of The Empire Strikes Back, in quality so clear it's just like George had bothered to restore it and release it himself. You'll love it. I know. On wednesday the 28th, I will be doing my standup comedy act at the Laguna Beach Brewing Company - this is the first standup act I have ever done at a professional club. It's a big step up. If the woman who booked me, Lynn Epstein, likes my style, she'll ask me back to do more. Wish me luck. I will be doing 10 minutes of material in a bill including professional comics. This show runs every 2nd and 4th wednesday of each month. Cover is $8 and the club has a full bar and menu. The show is 21 & over and begins at 8pm sharp. The Laguna Beach Brewing Company is located at 422 South Coast Highway, Laguna Beach, CA. You may call (714)499-2337 for more information. My mother's old friend Christy Rucci (a massage therapist living in Irvine) recommended me to comedienne Lynn Epstein, who books these shows. I haven't met her and she's never seen my stuff. She'll see it on wednesday. http://lynnepstein.com/ If anyone wants to come, please do. I actually don't even have a ride there yet. But I will. PREVIOUS PAGE OF 2005 NEWS |
