is that the name for sure? that fucking sucks. I thought "the phantom menace" sucked the first time i heard it. then again, it DOES. and so does the film attached, aaargh. Is lucas directing again?

Hes gonna ruin spaced with it.The third series will be full of George lucas is a twat jokes!!
Hes always been a twat,simon. the new film will be just as rubbish as the previous 4!
Youre a big boy now you shouldn't give a shit.
I think Jar Jar is an insulting racial sterotype.My boy thinks hes fantastic.
Ans skating and comics are daft too Si.
Simon Peggs mate got to be the voice of Darth Supernoodles you know.I wonder what he makes of it all.

the phantom menace name grew on me after a while but attack of the clones sounds truly awful. going for the grand sweep of empire strikes back and return of the jedi but sounding like an episode of doctor who

Angus will be able to make a comment on HIGNFY about loads of sheep with ray guns.

>since we seem to have a lot of sci-fi nuts on the forum i thought i'd invite comment on the name for star wars ep. 2: 'attack of the clones'. i think it's pretty funny but i've never been a star wars fanatic.

Surely it should be 'when clones attack'?

It doesn't mean that the name is fixed. If enough people tell him it's shit he is open to suggestion. When I was a kid I had the "novelisation" of Return Of The Jedi, which had been produced several months before the film was released, and so still bore the original title "Revenge Of The Jedi"...

(I do love the idea of When Clones Attack, though - "Hi, I'm Greg Evigan." Boom.)

I've never seen Star Wars - is it any good?

>I've never seen Star Wars - is it any good?

I think it's over-rated.

Is it true the films can't come out on DVD until 2007 or something? Anyone know why?

And when was the last time the original film was shown on TV? I'd watch it if it was on.

>Is it true the films can't come out on DVD until 2007 or something? Anyone know why?

Just because. And george Lucas knows that he can get away with released 78 million 'special editions' of the original 3 films and saps will still fork out for it. I know someone who has bought the who lot at least twice.

However, isn't Phantom Menace coming out on DVD in the near future? About 35 quid though.

>And when was the last time the original film was shown on TV? I'd watch it if it was on.

it was on Sky Premiere last week.

>I do love the idea of When Clones Attack, though - "Hi, I'm Greg Evigan."

"And so am I."

"Me, too."

> Boom.

But people would still buy 'special editions' after the DVD release wouldn't they? From what I've seen, the picture quality on DVDs isn't perfect, and technology is improving all the time.

When was the last time it was shown on proper TV?

>>I've never seen Star Wars - is it any good?
>
>I think it's over-rated.
Not really, seeing as everyone seems to go on about how over-rated it is.

Mike, Star Wars is a great movie. Seriously. See it at a cinema if you can - it loses a lot of its impact on TV. It is not Godard, or Woody Allen, but that's OK because Godard and Woddy Allen already make Godard and Woody Allen films. It has become the root of all cinematic evil for many critics but if half the films at the cinema currently showed a modicum of the imagination, energy and zest present in Star Wars, the world would be a happier place.

If you want to watch something that is just exhilirating, joyful and fun - bereft of archness or clever, clever irony, you will love it. Unless of course you hate it. But I have recommended to many very sceptical people over the years, and I haven't been let down yet.

And in all seriousness, the bit in The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader is holding out his hand out to Luke and he says "No... _I_ am your father," and his cape is flapping in the wind, and his eyes are just two black shiny bumps, after just nearly slaughtering the poor kid, is just magnificent.

The most boring and groundless Received Opinion EVER is: "oh, the 3rd one's not very good".

The 3rd one is ace. Especially the bit where Jabba The Hutt's flying barge gets decimated.

Admittedly not as good as the 2nd film, which is one of the greatest films ever made, but still brilliant, and as good as the 1st one.

This is true, the third one comes off badly only in comparison with the second. The flirting scenes between Han and Leia are absolutely brilliant, crackling with naive sexual longing. "You're a scoundrel..." It's like a Katherine Hepburn film from the forties. And the dinner table with Vader saying "We would be honoured if you could join us" is quite, quite the thing.

Incidentally, Edit News Edit News Edit News. There's a scene in the Empire Special Edition with a bit of Darth Vader walking along and giving out orders, and it's definitely not James Earl Jones doing the voice.

>>>I've never seen Star Wars - is it any good?
>>
>>I think it's over-rated.
>Not really, seeing as everyone seems to go on about how over-rated it is.

No they bloody don't. They bang on about how great it is.

I have only seen them on video, but I didn't think they were great. The arguement "you really need to see it on the big screen" is rubbish. I had only ever seen Life of Brian on the small screen until recently, I enjoyed it in both formats. Although the visuals work better.

I what you're thinking, "but the Star Wars films are very visual". Yes indeed, but to me it seemed like style over content. The plots weren't very exciting, no matter how good the space chases were.

http://funkeymonkey.freewebspace.com/Episode_II_Scriptment.htm

Script for badly-named film is here apparently.

It's certainly got that trademark clunky Lucas "People-aren't-actually-going-to-have-to-say-this-out-loud-are-they" style.

MACE WINDU
Do you think Obi-Wan's apprentice will be able to bring balance to the force?
 
YODA
Only if he chooses to follow his destiny.

"George, you can type this shit, but you sure can't say it" - Harrison Ford

>"George, you can type this shit, but you sure can't say it" - Harrison Ford

Oh for fuck's sake - these films aren't social realism. No-one complains about the lack of car chases in Dogme films.

>>>>I've never seen Star Wars - is it any good?
>>>
>>>I think it's over-rated.
>>Not really, seeing as everyone seems to go on about how over-rated it is.
>
>No they bloody don't. They bang on about how great it is.

Depends on who you mean by "they". Most film critics, academics etc do think its over-rated. You are by no means 'the lone voice of reason' on this one.
>
>I have only seen them on video, but I didn't think they were great. The arguement "you really need to see it on the big screen" is rubbish. I had only ever seen Life of Brian on the small screen until recently, I enjoyed it in both formats. Although the visuals work better.
>
>I what you're thinking, "but the Star Wars films are very visual". Yes indeed, but to me it seemed like style over content. The plots weren't very exciting, no matter how good the space chases were.

The plots work perfectly well, but to an extent the style is the content. The argument that you need to see it on the big screen most certainly is not rubbish, and I would argue that it holds true for a great many films. It is, as you acknowledge, more true of Star Wars because it is a very visual film and there is nothing wrong with that at all.

I find it incomprehensible that someone who feels so passionately about one medium (TV) could be so cavalier about the parameters of another (film). Star Wars apart, you surely can't really believe that it makes no difference whether one sees a film at the cinema or on television.

Hey, I'm not complaining, I love Star Wars. I just think that Lucas's determination to build the film around the Jedi/Empire/Force mythology is the one thing that's wrong. He should just concentrate on making good films for their own sake, and only invoke the mumbo-jumbo when it's needed to move the plot along.

>Hey, I'm not complaining, I love Star Wars. I just think that Lucas's determination to build the film around the Jedi/Empire/Force mythology is the one thing that's wrong. He should just concentrate on making good films for their own sake, and only invoke the mumbo-jumbo when it's needed to move the plot along.

Sorry. That wasn't aimed specifically at you, it's just I get so tired of critics who attack the Star Wars films because the dialogue is unrealistic. It seems to be point missing on a massive scale.

The dialogue is, as I said, portentous and clunky in the extreme. I'm not asking for Ken Loach, just dialogue written by someone who doesn't write entirely in dialogue.

As for Jedi, for me (as for many others) it all falls apart in the second half. (Those fucking Ewoks.) However I've nearly come to drunken blows defending the first half in Jabba's palace, which I think is fantastically realised and one of the highlights of all three films. I was dismayed, though, when the special edition reinstated the entirely unnecessary Muppet song.

Star Wars is a fucking great film. Seeing it on the big screen in 1978 was a life changing event. Even now i find it the best one, as it does stand on its own more. Empire's ending is very unsatisfactory, as it is just teeing up the next one in the by then franchise. and that stop motion animal in the snow that Luke falls off looks really
crummy now.

Phantom Menace is a disgrace. Lucas should have made the final 3 of the series, not the first ones. would have been great to see the older characters twenty years on. but i doubt Harrison Ford would subject himself to that dialogue again. Unless they got Carrie fisher to script doctor it. a chance missed.

>>No they bloody don't. They bang on about how great it is.
>
>Depends on who you mean by "they". Most film critics, academics etc do think its over-rated. You are by no means 'the lone voice of reason' on this one.

I was talking about fans. If you say what I said above to most fans they say "No, you're wrong", offer no reason as to why and carry on with their lives.

>>I have only seen them on video, but I didn't think they were great. The arguement "you really need to see it on the big screen" is rubbish. I had only ever seen Life of Brian on the small screen until recently, I enjoyed it in both formats. Although the visuals work better.
>>
>>I what you're thinking, "but the Star Wars films are very visual". Yes indeed, but to me it seemed like style over content. The plots weren't very exciting, no matter how good the space chases were.
>
>The plots work perfectly well, but to an extent the style is the content. The argument that you need to see it on the big screen most certainly is not rubbish, and I would argue that it holds true for a great many films. It is, as you acknowledge, more true of Star Wars because it is a very visual film and there is nothing wrong with that at all.

I just found it a bit boring and very over-rated. I couldn't get involved with it like a lot of people can. The same happened when I watched Pulp Fiction - another, IMHO, over-rated film. The plots didn't interest me, the style seemed strained and over-done. I don't like sci-fi and gangster films in general. Ce la vie.

>I find it incomprehensible that someone who feels so passionately about one medium (TV) could be so cavalier about the parameters of another (film). Star Wars apart, you surely can't really believe that it makes no difference whether one sees a film at the cinema or on television.

I was talking about my enjoyment of the film. I enjoyed certain films in both formats. And didn't enjoy others in both formats. I'm not actually saying that film works just as well on TV. It clearly doen't, it is made for the big screen. The visual impact is better. It was for Life of Brian.

>as it is just teeing up the next one in the by then franchise.

Ahhh... "by then" being the key phrase. Star Wars obsessives the world over actually believe George Lucus is just gradually revealing a fixed, completed perfect story line he worked out in the early seventies. Utter tosh. The draft scripts from about 1975 are radically off the scope, having very little in common with the back story first hinted at in "Empire."

In the original cinema print of Star Wars, the famous scrolling introduction didn't begin with "Episode IV: A New Hope." They put that in the re-release that occurred after "Empire" came out. He's making it up as he goes along. It only became a multi-part saga when the money started rolling in.

Same with Lion/Witch/Wardrobe (didn't have "volume 2" written on it in first edition.) But not Harry Potter.

>Lucas should have made the final 3 of the series, not the first ones. would have been great to see the older characters twenty years on.

Does the final trilogy actually exist (in story terms, I mean)? I'm pretty sure I heard that Lucas has squashed this, and that it was all the idea of ex-producer Gary Kurtz anyway.

"Attack of the Clones"

Now, I might be wrong about this, but I think 'clone' in gay parlance describes the similar look a lot of gays had for a while ie denim jeans, white T-shirts, taches etc. There's a lot of material there...

>Now, I might be wrong about this, but I think 'clone' in gay parlance describes the similar look a lot of gays had for a while ie denim jeans, white T-shirts, taches etc. There's a lot of material there...

Ahhh. You see? All the flies and vultures are gathering. SOTCAA is dead and the parasites are gathering. Strays from belly-up Star Wars and Blakes Seven websites. Here they come, walkin' down the street... Bye bye SOTCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

>Ahhh. You see? All the flies and vultures are gathering. SOTCAA is dead and the parasites are gathering. Strays from belly-up Star Wars and Blakes Seven websites. Here they come, walkin' down the street... Bye bye SOTCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
>
No, I've been looking at this forum for a while but only posting recently. I have no wish to appear a vulture. Actually, what are you talking about?

>>Strays from belly-up Star Wars and Blakes Seven websites. Here they come, walkin' down the street... Bye bye SOTCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
>>
>No, I've been looking at this forum for a while but only posting recently. I have no wish to appear a vulture. Actually, what are you talking about?

You know what I'm talking about, sweetie.

>You know what I'm talking about, sweetie.

Love you too.

>>You know what I'm talking about, sweetie.
>
>Love you too.

Always use the green cross code, because I won't be there when YOU cross the road.

Dave Prowse may be a useless cunny as a superhero, but he could at least pppp... pick up a Magee and set him down on Kubrick's marks. And I love you too, Kenny G.

Who mentioned Blakes Seven? Eh? Trust you Frank. Trust you. Now you know mom said you was not to go out on that porch and start internetting with all them folks from the big city towns until you knew what the fuck you was talkin' about. You knew that Frank. Now, git inside and clean the muskets down, we got a Forum talking sense over on that Yahoo that we need to git over to and spout bullshit on.

>I find it incomprehensible that someone who feels so passionately about one medium (TV) could be so cavalier about the parameters of another (film). Star Wars apart, you surely can't really believe that it makes no difference whether one sees a film at the cinema or on television.

I saw 2001 in a new 70mm print a couple of months ago and it looked bloody amazing on the big screen. You notice very quickly what muddied colours you are used to from seeing it countless times on TV.

On Star Wars, the best moment has to be the Han/Leia exchange in Empire as he's getting frozen in carbon. "I love you." "I know." Marvellous.

Hey Billy Bob Kissin-cousin Gorshin,

Did yah fuck mah sistah in the fuckin' arm pit, yah three-eyed, sweaty-ol'-browed-fuckin'-talkin'-in-tongues-inbred-son-of-a-bitchin'-bastard-yah?!! How is yah, cousin?

>On Star Wars, the best moment has to be the Han/Leia exchange in Empire as he's getting frozen in carbon. "I love you." "I know." Marvellous.

You Are A Cunny, Ken. Sorry, mate, but that's how it is. But remember... Alec Guiness and his 2.25 % (gross) died laughing at YOU.

Oh fuck! You're not Kenny (midget icon) Baker are you? If so... sorreee.

>Hey Billy Bob Kissin-cousin Gorshin,
>
>Did yah fuck mah sistah in the fuckin' arm pit, yah three-eyed, sweaty-ol'-browed-fuckin'-talkin'-in-tongues-inbred-son-of-a-bitchin'-bastard-yah?!!

no, i sure did not. if she ain't good enuff for your family, she ain't good enuff for ours!

now git off ma porch afore Mulder and Scully appear and take you back to the the clinic.

>I saw 2001 in a new 70mm print a couple of months ago and it looked bloody amazing on the big screen. You notice very quickly what muddied colours you are used to from seeing it countless times on TV.

I saw 2001 at Bradford on its curved Cinerama screen and it was bloody amazing x10. Totally overwhelming. Not worth watching on television at all. I saw 2010 there as well in 70mm and that was incredible too, you could literally FEEL the sound before you heard it.

Oh, by the way, Frank Gorshin: could you do you Kirk Douglas impression for us? I saw you do it on The Ed Sullivan Show (the one with The Beatles and Davy Jones as The Artful Dodger) and you were great.

(P.S. I'm too polite to ask you to say "Riddle me this Batman, HA HA HAH HAH!!!".)

>On Star Wars, the best moment has to be the Han/Leia exchange in Empire as he's getting frozen in carbon. "I love you." "I know." Marvellous.

Yes, oh yes. This is where it all goes wrong in Jedi - Carrie is drugged out of her mind and Harrison is a big star and so can't be bothered to pretend to look interested any more. The scene on the rope bridge in the middle of the night where Luke tells her he's her brother, then Han comes along... that bit features possibly the worst acting in any Hollywood film ever. No exaggeration. It's a testament to the quality of the general "amazing spectacle" nature of the rest of the film that it isn't dragged down by things like that.

>On Star Wars, the best moment has to be the Han/Leia exchange in Empire as he's getting frozen in carbon. "I love you." "I know." Marvellous.

The original line was "Me too" or "I love you too" or something bland like that. "I know" was apparently an on-set ad-lib by Harrison Ford.

>The original line was "Me too" or "I love you too" or something bland like that. "I know" was apparently an on-set ad-lib by Harrison Ford.

God bless him. He wanted Lucas to kill Han Solo off to give some weight to the whole thing.

>>On Star Wars, the best moment has to be the Han/Leia exchange in Empire as he's getting frozen in carbon. "I love you." "I know." Marvellous.
>
>The original line was "Me too" or "I love you too" or something bland like that. "I know" was apparently an on-set ad-lib by Harrison Ford.

Is it correct that Harrison Ford also came up with the Indiana Jones gun shooting Arab man with sword scene in, ROTLA, or was it IJATTOD in order to save time?

funny thing is, considerin how he ruins that scene in ROTJ, the Han Solo character was the most attractive one in the films (until i was old enough to appreciate the wondrousness of Carrie Fisher). and that is why i think the Phantom Menace is so rubbish. there is not the cynicism of the Han Solo character. Lucas must think kids like Luke Skywalker type of hero. The world weary anti-hero (but with heart of gold, naturally) is a character with loads of mileage. (And the Millennium Falcon is the coolest space ship since Buck Rogers')

PS - what is a cunny?

>Is it correct that Harrison Ford also came up with the Indiana Jones gun shooting Arab man with sword scene in, ROTLA, or was it IJATTOD in order to save time?

Not to save time, but he shortened what was originally scripted as a long martial arts-type fight scene because he had, to put it politely, an upset tummy (he was filming in Delhi remember), and wasn't up to all that kicking and jumping about.

>PS - what is a cunny?

Something that twinkles on the branches of an Elm tree amid the distant, icy winter landscapes of Scotland's brightest and most bravely jocund days as viewed from a high window in a draughty bording house atop a hill over-looking a lake/loch.

And yet... the single greatest thing about Star Fucking Wars was that Peter Cushing was in it. Yet nobody cares or understands the implications of it... and THAT'S why you're all cunnies.

BRITS RUINED STAR WARS

Star wars is best appreciated as a hot drink.on sundays.in the autumn.
oh clac clac where are my eggs you bony old man

This is nothing but a messy rant of a post, and will probably gain me no popularity, but here goes:

>Mike, Star Wars is a great movie. >Seriously. See it at a cinema if you can -

Don't waste your money. Why not rent "Spaceballs" instead? A vastly superior work of ceenermah.

>it loses a lot of its impact on TV.

I saw the first one on the big-screen and it was the most hollow, unsatisfying experience I've ever had in a theater--the public really are idiots. The second film is actually good, and the third is an almost total botch of a resolution. In an even semi-perfect world Star Wars would be a nostalgically remembered series--not some gargantuan merchandising behemoth to whom thousands of pathetic fan-boys base their lives and outlooks upon. (Who knew Yoda would be the most popular philosopher of the 20th century?)

>It is not Godard, or Woody Allen, but >that's OK because Godard and Woddy Allen >already make Godard and Woody Allen films.

--Films with one-20th of the audience that SWs receives. Hasn't anybody considered whether the Star Wars series helped further retard and juvenalize the brain-dead audiences that frequent today's multiplexes? Are the kids who've lived and breathed Star Wars all their lives really going to be more receptive toward Godard or Allen? (Some of you will obviously say "Well, I'm a SW fanatic and like Godard and Allen-type films," but I wonder if your species is really so numerous) Isn't the fact that you can hardly see a Godard in the theater nowadays due to the shut-out of foreign films caused by the simple-blockbuster mentality that Star Wars helped usher in? In any case, if Lucas asked Godard and Allen to direct the series he'd get vastly more interesting films.

>It has become the root of all cinematic >evil for many critics

That's because it damn well is. Whatever happened to the old creed "Let's Be Elitist?" Why such trust in the general public?

>but if half the films >at the cinema >currently showed a modicum of >the >imagination, energy and zest present in >Star Wars, the world would be a happier >place.

If Star Wars were erased from history and all its fans shot, then the world would be an even happier place. I would personally weep with gratitude. Considering that many of the films out today are lousy Hollywood blockbusters that SW paved the way for, and that many of the best films are quickly buried by them, SW has a lot to answer for. And what's so imaginative about vampirically feeding off of old sci-fi B movies in order to create an update with the same lack of depth and true exhilaration? After American movies went through one of the most creative, innovative periods in their history, along comes safe, unprovocative Star Wars--a repackaging of older, dumber entertainment raised to an exalted level. Any other director might have created a distance between the old serials and B-movies he'd base a film upon: Lucas simply remodeled them and in the process resold a Pinto to the audience. Lucas made it respectable to go apeshit over stuff you should have outgrown when you were 13.

>If you want to watch something that is just >exhilirating, joyful and fun - bereft of >archness or clever, clever irony

Then watch a true classic. Movies were doing perfectly fine before Star Wars came along you know. Griffith, Chaplin, Keaton, Vidor, Von Stroheim, Von Sternberg, Lang, Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, Renoir, Eisenstein, Wilder, Sturges, Bunuel, De Sica, Dreyer, Ray, Bergman, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Oshima, Ozu, Welles, Bresson, Antonioni, Tati, Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, Tarkovsky, Fassbinder, Kubrick and a hundred others have made films with more imagination, zest and energy than Star Wars, Some of course don't move as fast, and may require you to think a bit, but is that something to be ashamed of? Audiences don't think enough anyway, and thinking is not exclusive of enjoyment, unless you're a moron. Star Wars has had its several decades under the sun. Movies wouldn't be hurt if it crawled under a rock and stayed there.

>I have recommended to many very sceptical >people over the years, and I haven't been >let down yet.

Well, there's still time.

I should have added to my overheated anti-Star Wars rant that my perspective is an American one, and thus some statements may not ring quite so true in Britain. That said, I shall now shut up.

>Isn't the fact that you can hardly see a Godard in the theater nowadays due to the shut-out of foreign films caused by the simple-blockbuster mentality that Star Wars helped usher in?

No. The mainstream stuff helps to pay for the minority fringe stuff. If it weren't for films like Star Wars and other block busters, cinemas would very likely have closed down all over the world.

Also, Star Wars didn't invent the multi-part franchise and lunch box phenomenon thing. What about Planet of The Apes? My older cousin had a lunch box with that on.

"Attack of the Clones"



....Not "Attack of the Clowns", then? Damn.

i think the ewoks get a bad press from return of the jedi. dont you see, its a vietnam allegory. a mighty, powerful force being beaten by a technologically inferior race using guerilla tactics. do you see? and the phantom menace is a watergate allegory, i just havent worked out why yet

> the phantom menace is a watergate allegory, i just havent worked out why yet

... all the swearing was cut out of it?

>If Star Wars were erased from history and all its fans shot, then the world would be an even happier place.

Jawohl, mein Sight und Sound reading Fuhrer!

>. I was dismayed, though, when the special edition reinstated the entirely unnecessary Muppet song.

And i'll tell you what's wrong with the Muppet song: it's a generic Motown rip off which gives the whole scene an unwanted context and feel. The Rebo band's song in the first one sounded genuinely unplaceable(alien) and all the better for it.

>This is nothing but a messy rant of a post, and will probably gain me no popularity, but here goes:
Never a truer word spoken...

>I saw the first one on the big-screen and it was the most hollow, unsatisfying experience I've ever had in a theater--the public really are idiots.

But at least they're not breathtakingly arrogant, eh readers?

>to whom thousands of pathetic fan-boys base their lives and outlooks upon. (Who knew Yoda would be the most popular philosopher of the 20th century?)

A pathetic, grotesque caricature that cultural elitists always use against SF in particular...

> >It is not Godard, or Woody Allen, but >that's OK because Godard and Woddy Allen >already make Godard and Woody Allen films.
>--Films with one-20th of the audience that SWs receives.
So what?

> Hasn't anybody considered whether the Star Wars series helped further retard and juvenalize the brain-dead audiences that frequent today's multiplexes?

Yes, I have. I've written about it. And it's bollocks. Many of my generation saw SW as kids and it awakened them to the whole world of cinema. I have built up an extensive collection of movies, written about movies, taught film. Star Wars was a big part of that.

> Are the kids who've lived and breathed Star Wars all their lives really going to be more receptive toward Godard or Allen? (Some of you will obviously say "Well, I'm a SW fanatic and like Godard and Allen-type films," but I wonder if your species is really so numerous)

Maybe. But why should they? There's a lot more to intelligent cinema than the French new wave.

> Isn't the fact that you can hardly see a Godard in the theater nowadays due to the shut-out of foreign films caused by the simple-blockbuster mentality that Star Wars helped usher in?
No. Lucas got so angry about this lazily tossed about truism that he commissioned a study into the number of successful indie movies. A large increase was found - partly due to the doubling of the number of cinema screens. I was aware that a large number of these were multiplex screens so I did my own research. The number of independent movies has steadily increased throughout the 1990s, exceeding the number of majors in 1995, 1996. Not thanks to SW necessarily - but no dearth of art movies because of it either.

> In any case, if Lucas asked Godard and Allen to direct the series he'd get vastly more interesting films.
Allen directing a popular space adventure? Get out of it. Why does every film have to be intellectual? What's wrong with visual excitement? Entertainment? This was a large part of cinema at the outset.

>That's because it damn well is.
Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. The route of all cinematic evil is people like you idly dismissing something because it's popular and isn't 'interlectyouall'. I have nothing against indie movies, there are many I enjoy. But why do I have to dismiss a film I love just because it isn't 'clever' enough. It's pathetic.

> Whatever happened to the old creed "Let's Be Elitist?" Why such trust in the general public?
I don't really think you understand the point of Joe and Mike's essay. They have no problem with mainstream populist entertainment - they love plenty of shows (Dad's Army, The Goodies, Only Fools...) that were popular with the general public. They just want quality - in all fields. And as far as mainstream adventure stories go, the SW films are the best.

>If Star Wars were erased from history and all its fans shot, then the world would be an even happier place. I would personally weep with gratitude.

I can't believe I'm even arguing with such poisonous rubbish.

>Considering that many of the films out today are lousy Hollywood blockbusters that SW paved the way for, and that many of the best films are quickly buried by them, SW has a lot to answer for.

Not true. Lazy received opinion. See above.

> And what's so imaginative about vampirically feeding off of old sci-fi B movies in order to create an update with the same lack of depth and true exhilaration?

A lot more to it than this. SW looks at the myths of the old West, eastern myths, germanic myth, and America's experience of war too. But it's only there if you're prepared to watch without a sneer on your face.

> After American movies went through one of the most creative, innovative periods in their history, along comes safe, unprovocative Star Wars--a repackaging of older, dumber entertainment raised to an exalted level.

Oh we've read 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls' have we? Look, the 'classic' period of 70s movie making came to an end because the principle players were too busy taking too many drugs and fucking each other. Before SW came along cinemas were closing at a more rapid rate than any time before or since.

>Lucas made it respectable to go apeshit over stuff you should have outgrown when you were 13.

Oh fuck off. I am SO SICK of people implying that they are grown up and mature because they hate Star Wars. Permanently adolescent more like. After all - you're so grown up that you w

>Lucas made it respectable to go apeshit over stuff you should have outgrown when you were 13.

Oh fuck off. I am SO SICK of people implying that they are grown up and mature because they hate Star Wars. Permanently adolescent more like. After all - you're so grown up that you want all SW fans dead. (Yes I know it was a joke - it's just not funny that's all.)

>Then watch a true classic. Movies were doing perfectly fine before Star Wars came along you know.
HOW CAN YOU BE SO UTTERLY PATRONISING? Is it a gift? Or were you born with it?
Griffith, Chaplin, Keaton, Vidor, Von Stroheim, Von Sternberg, Lang, Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, Renoir, Eisenstein, Wilder, Sturges, Bunuel, De Sica, Dreyer, Ray, Bergman, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Oshima, Ozu, Welles, Bresson, Antonioni, Tati, Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, Tarkovsky, Fassbinder, Kubrick and a hundred others have made films with more imagination, zest and energy than Star Wars,

My word - you've seen all those. Aren't you clever? At no point did I suggest SW should supplant any of these. I find it interesting that you need to suggest people ignore SW and focus on other films instead. Mike asked what SW was like - I told him. If he asks me about Tarkovsky I'll recommend 'Solaris' - there is room for it all you know.
> Some of course don't move as fast, and may require you to think a bit, but is that something to be ashamed of?
No. But apparently enjoying yourself is.
> Audiences don't think enough anyway
<Speechless>
>and thinking is not exclusive of enjoyment, unless you're a moron.
But it takes an intellectual moron to uggest that enjoying yourself is automatically inferior to enjoyment. Or to assume that because something is fast-paced and visual it requires no thought.
>Star Wars has had its several decades under the sun. Movies wouldn't be hurt if it crawled under a rock and stayed there.
They haven't been hurt by the fact that it hasn't. And it ain't going anywhere either - so you can take your Leavisite temper tantrums elsewhere.

>And yet... the single greatest thing about Star Fucking Wars was that Peter Cushing was in it.

That's not the single greatest thing about the trilogy. That was Michael Sheard in The Empire Strikes Back.

There's something fantastic about a career that includes Hitler (four times), Himmler (three times), Herman Goering's double, a fair few other Germans, 6 different parts in Dr Who, Adml Crane Ozzel, and Mr Bronson.

Basically what Al said, but yes, Star Wars is corny with cheesy dialogue, but like The Wizard of Oz this is part of its universal charm. Lucas set out to make a futuristic fairytale, with a simple yet powerful story line involving good vs. evil, and managed to combine this with some groundbreaking special effects.

>Are the kids who've lived and breathed Star Wars all their lives really going to be more receptive toward Godard or Allen?

Well the Star Wars films introduced many young filmgoers to the glory of moviemaking. The films themselves are very derivative of classic Hollywood film making of the 30s and 40s (the same era of films that influenced Godard and the whole French New Wave). They amalgamate a number of characters and styles from film history: Medieval knights, warrior legends, Westerns (in terms of good guy vs. bad guy), swashbucklers, WWII films, and, obviously, science fiction films, as in Metropolis which first introduced the naive sci-fi hero character.

The original at least is still a seminal film. It effectively created the concept of the big-budget blockbuster (although Jaws was the first summer blockbuster, Spielberg and Lucas were the two pioneering directors), which saved Hollywood in the 70s and is the antecedent of all of today's special-effects bonanzas (perhaps not a good thing but no less important). It was also the first film to pan across a star field.

>That's not the single greatest thing about the trilogy. That was Michael Sheard in The Empire Strikes Back.
>
>There's something fantastic about a career that includes Hitler (four times), Himmler (three times), Herman Goering's double, a fair few other Germans, 6 different parts in Dr Who, Adml Crane Ozzel, and Mr Bronson.

Have you read his (possibly vanity published) autobiography? It's great - like one of David Nivens, but without the stars and the anecdotes all end in anticlimax. He comes across well though, if a bit lovey.

>>That's not the single greatest thing about the trilogy. That was Michael Sheard in The Empire Strikes Back.
>>
>>There's something fantastic about a career that includes Hitler (four times), Himmler (three times), Herman Goering's double, a fair few other Germans, 6 different parts in Dr Who, Adml Crane Ozzel, and Mr Bronson.
>
He's Hitler in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade isn't he? I'm sure I've seen him as Hitler in one other thing but for the life of me I can't remember. Do you know the other occasions?

No, but seriously - when *was* the last time it was shown on terrestrial TV?

It's interesting how this debate parallels the general one on here about the dumbing down of TV.

The dull, populist programmes on CH4 that get the ratings (e.g. Big Brother) help to pay for the good, interesting, unpopular ones (e.g. Black Books.)

>No, but seriously - when *was* the last time it was shown on terrestrial TV?

When the TV rights expired, Lucas stopped renewing them so he could build up the mystique for the Special Edition re-releases. Up until the late eighties, it was on ITV about once a year, often in the middle of the afternoon on Boxing Day, like some crappy old B-film. Now all of a sudden it's supposed to be a major event when Sky Movies shows it. It cost Sky £12m for the trilogy, and they got their highest movie audience for two years.

i.e. I don't know.

I like ewoks in brown gravy.

Star Wars is a great film if you like lasers, robots, and space ships. Most of the fan base don't actually remember the film coming out (I have a vague memory of ESB cos my mum took me to see it when it came out in the US), but during the mid80's it was on like EVERY week.

Our love of it is because we connect it with half terms etc.

As for the political subtext, bollocks, not very well thought out.

I can understand why people (well mostly men) love the film, I love Dino's 1980 Flash Gordon (it's my fav film), not cos it's intellectually or artistically sound, but because my dad took me to see it when I was 4. I love it now, mainly cos it is tongue in cheek and looks great (well it does when yer out of yer face on Xmas day).

Star Wars is a kids film, a pretty heavy one (when was the last time a disney villain blew up a planet?), but a kids film, well made, slightly dodgy dialogue, but for fuck sake the average age of the audience is 8, 8 year olds don't want or expect clever Woody Allen dialogue from a film, they want to see some kid with a laser sword.

I don't think Star Wars has been on terrestrial for at least 10 years. In fact, I have a hunch it's only ever been on ITV about three times since it was premiered in 1981.

I'm hoping that almost madly vague answer might spur someone into posting something which fervently agrees or furiously denies the above threadbare information.

Does anyone remember Star Wars, (before it became Episode IV), as it initially came out being shown on ITV? I have vague memories of this, and seeing Luke watching the battle at the start through binoculars before the action shifts back to the Princess' ship. I also remember Biggs having a more prominent role and Luke saying "you'll always be my friend" or something akin to that as Biggs gets shot down. I wish to hell I still had that tape...

>>I saw the first one on the big-screen and it was the most hollow, unsatisfying experience I've ever had in a theater--the public really are idiots.
>
>But at least they're not breathtakingly arrogant, eh readers?

I think being an idiot is rather worse than being arrogant, but then again, maybe I'm just being arrogant. Or perhaps you are a humble idiot.

> >to whom thousands of pathetic fan-boys base their lives and outlooks upon. (Who knew Yoda would be the most popular philosopher of the 20th century?)
>
>A pathetic, grotesque caricature that cultural elitists always use against SF in particular...

I AM a cultural elitist, and you wouldn't know a caricature if it sodomized you: there are plenty of those same pathetic fan-boys out there, and I have met my share of them. It isn't some caricature, it's the reality you won't accept. I don't see people behaving over Star Wars the way they behave over other SF films like "2001" or "Forbidden Planet" or what-have-you.

>> >It is not Godard, or Woody Allen, but >that's OK because Godard and Woddy Allen >already make Godard and Woody Allen films.
>>--Films with one-20th of the audience that SWs receives.

>So what?

When heavily promoted and merchandized kids movies have a vastly larger audience than far more rewarding, entertaining and intelligent films, one suspects the world is even more unjust than previously thought. If Allen and Godard's films were as heavily, nasuastingly marketed(complete with pepsi commercials) they just might get a larger audience, though unlike Star Wars, they're not the perfect product: unoffensive, safe, and tame--designed to appeal to the 10 year old in all of us, rather than the advanced age most of us currently are.

>> Hasn't anybody considered whether the Star Wars series helped further retard and juvenalize the brain-dead audiences that frequent today's multiplexes?
>
>Yes, I have. I've written about it. And >it's bollocks. Many of my generation saw >SW as kids and it awakened them to the >whole world of cinema. I have built up an >extensive collection of movies, written >about movies, taught film. Star Wars was a >big part of that.

And had Star Wars never premiered, I presume you either would never have awakened to the world of cinema, or your awakening would have only been a half-awakening? If you were inspired by Star Wars as a child to go further into movies, then good. But I warrant that just as many still go to the movies wanting not much more than Star Wars; the same people who make bestsellers out of Star Wars novels because they're unwilling to read anything better. You can't lay a claim on your entire generation.

>> Isn't the fact that you can hardly see a Godard in the theater nowadays due to the shut-out of foreign films caused by the simple-blockbuster mentality that Star Wars >>helped usher in?

What good is having twice the number of screens if means being able to show twice as much of the same Hollywood crap? Why assume that indies make it into all thsoe new multiplexes(In California they're mostly what's squeezed out of them.)
And if indies are on a rise in the '90's, what the hell happened to them in the late '70's and '80's, when Star Wars' influence was most keenly felt?

>Why does every film have to be >intellectual?

Because a very tiny percentage of the ones currently made are.

>What's wrong with visual excitement? >Entertainment? This was a large part of cinema at the outset.

Inverse snobbery. Does intellectual content preclude visual excitement and entertainment? Are you so stupid? And just because early cinema was built around the crudest forms of visual stimulation, it doesn't mean we should go back to having films with trains rushing directly at the viewer, or comedies like "The Sprayer Gets Sprayed."

>>That's because it damn well is.
>Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. The route of >all cinematic evil is people like you idly dismissing something because it's popular >and isn't 'interlectyouall'.

As opposed to tools like yourself, who keep these empty scared cows of films free from criticism, and would defend their inflated position. I dislike Star Wars pecsiely because its popularity is inversely proportional to its worth. There are plenty of other popular films I'd be willing to defend, but not this one. It appeals to so many precisely because it asks so little of so many.

>> Whatever happened to the old creed "Let's Be Elitist?" Why such trust in the general public?
>I don't really think you understand the point of Joe and Mike's essay. They have no >problem with mainstream populist >entertainment

What about mainstream populist entertainment raised to a ridiculously exalted level? Surely they have problem with popular sacred cows?

>>If Star Wars were erased from history and all its fans shot, then the world would be an even happier place. I would personally weep with gratitude.
>
>I can't believe I'm even arguing with such poisonous rubbish.

I like the adjective. As it is, I'm still waiting for yo

>I don't think Star Wars has been on terrestrial for at least 10 years. In fact, I have a hunch it's only ever been on ITV about three times since it was premiered in 1981.
>
You're probably right, the only film I remember being repeated over and over again was actually ROTJ, which was on every 3-4 weeks, in my mind anyway.

>Does anyone remember Star Wars, (before it became Episode IV), as it initially came out being shown on ITV? I have vague memories of this, and seeing Luke watching the battle at the start through binoculars before the action shifts back to the Princess' ship. I also remember Biggs having a more prominent role and Luke saying "you'll always be my friend" or something akin to that as Biggs gets shot down. I wish to hell I still had that tape...

Lots of people seem to "remember" that, for some reason, but it never happened. Those unused bits of footage have been shown in "making of" documentaries, but never in any complete version of the film.

>Oh fuck off. I am SO SICK of people >implying that they are grown up and mature >because they hate Star Wars.

Maybe because they are more grown up and mature--as fully arrogant as that sounds. Isn't there something implicitly pathetic in caliming greatnes for a film that is honestly built for the mental level of a 9 year old? The over-sized praise accorded to Srar Wars is ridiculous--like claiming "Charlotte's Web" is as great achievement as "Ulysses." If I found the first Star Wars empty, I don't consider it totally worthless. I do consider it a kid's film, no matter how many myths Lucas borrowed from. "Empire" is a genuinely good film, and I'd consider it a classic, but otherwise, claiming transcendent greatness for Star Wars is like clinging to a rotting old teddy bear into adulthood. I don't claim to be more mature in other aspects--because I otherwise don't know you. But when it comes to Star Wars I think you're still going apeshit over something you should have outgrown.

>Permanently >adolescent more like. After >all - you're so grown up that you want all >SW fans dead. (Yes I know it was a joke - >it's just not funny that's all.)

Besides the question of whether it was gauged as a kneeslapper in conception, I think you're making too much out of an obviously unobtainable wish. However, if Star Wars were erased from history, I'd still weep with gratitude.

>>Then watch a true classic. Movies were doing perfectly fine before Star Wars came along you know.

>HOW CAN YOU BE SO UTTERLY PATRONISING? Is it a gift? Or were you born with it?

What's so patronizing about the utter truth? Did movies really learn anything from Star Wars? Did it take the example of Star Wars to really awaken people to the magic of movies? Were movie somehow in trouble beforehand?

> Griffith, Chaplin, Keaton, Vidor, Von Stroheim, Von Sternberg, Lang, Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, Renoir, Eisenstein, Wilder, Sturges, Bunuel, De Sica, Dreyer, Ray, Bergman, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Oshima, Ozu, Welles, Bresson, Antonioni, Tati, Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, Tarkovsky, Fassbinder, Kubrick and a hundred others have made films with more imagination, zest and energy than Star Wars,
>
>My word - you've seen all those. Aren't >you clever?

What's clever about seeing a lot of good movies? Why don't you quit this overheated baby talk?

>At no point did I suggest SW >should >supplant any of these.

Well, for millions of moviegoers, I believe Star Wars has. Many of the same people who worship SW would find--or claim--many of the above directors to make "boring" films. I think SW has genuinely retarded the public's sense of history and aesthetics--I think it's encouraged many people to remain on the same level of thought and juvenile standards as the film. Maybe not you, but plenty of others.

> I find it interesting that you need to >suggest people ignore SW and focus on other >films instead.

As they should.

>Mike asked what SW was like - I told him. >If he asks me about Tarkovsky I'll >recommend 'Solaris' - there is room for it >all you know.

And I would tell him to screw Star Wars and see Tarkovsky, because I don't think there is enough time to see everything worth seeing. Why bother with Star Wars?

>> Some of course don't move as fast, and may require you to think a bit, but is that >>something to be ashamed of?

>No. But apparently enjoying yourself is.

And when did I say that you liar? It's apparent that to you wtaching a slower film that requires you to think DOES mean not enjoying yourself.

>> Audiences don't think enough anyway
><Speechless>

No they don't, and most of what they see at a theater proves it. Do you think you think enough? Is there a limit?

>>and thinking is not exclusive of enjoyment, unless you're a moron.

>But it takes an intellectual moron to >uggest that enjoying yourself is >automatically inferior to enjoyment.

It takes a brainless moron to write the above sentence. Enjoying yourself should be the same thing as enjoyment; otherwise who is doing the enjoyment, your aunt Gladys?

>Or to assume that because something is >fast-paced and visual it requires no >thought.

Show me where I made that assumption. "star Wars," which moves relatively quickly (I don't think I've ever called a movie "visual"(!))I consider to require little thought. But I've never said that fast-pace is a sign of that--merely that many films which require thought aren't fast-paced.

>>Star Wars has had its several decades under the sun. Movies wouldn't be hurt if it crawled under a rock and stayed there.

>They haven't been hurt by the fact that it hasn't.

As I remarked in the first part of my reply to blinkered Al, I think they greatly have.

>And it ain't going anywhere either -

Well, who knows, perhaps in 30 years people will begin rightfully looking down upon it.

>so you >can take your Leavisite temper tantrums >elsewhere.

I've never read Leavis, and will not go elsewhere simply because my POV offends your precious SW love.I realize this post

My previous post was cut off. I basically have nothing more to say on the topic beyond my initial remarks, since this off-topic post has probably gone on too long anyway. In the cut-off section I had originally quoted another critic for rebuttal--namely Jonathan Rosenbaum, who along with J. Hoberman is probably the best practicing film critic in the US. (Hoberman's own article is required reading too:
www.villagevoice.com/issues/9919/hoberman.php
Besides being genuinely scary, it reduces much of Al's argument to pulp.) Rather than requote everything, I'll just give the address to any who are still interested:

http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/0197/0137.html

The article stretches a bit politically , but contains more in it than some defenses posted here. I like good film critics and quote them when their arguments are more articulate and better reasoned than mine. It's interesting that those who dispute the film's overblown status are in the same position as the Rebels at the mercy of the evil empire in the first film. But I predict a slow victory will come with time. The Emperor can't parade around naked for an eternity.

"Not Found
The requested URL /movies/archives/0197/0137.html was not found on this server."

Mmm... yes, I see his point.

>Mmm... yes, I see his point.

Maybe it's the 'Fillet of Solo' gig mentioned here

http://www.chicagoreader.com/specevent/FILLET2001.html

Star Wars. Better on the radio?

http://www.galacticempire.net/multimedia/radio.shtml

>I think being an idiot is rather worse than being arrogant, but then again, maybe I'm just being arrogant. Or perhaps you are a humble idiot.

Perhaps...

>I AM a cultural elitist
Good for you. I hate cultural elitists.

> and you wouldn't know a caricature if it sodomized you:
Don't you mention babytalk later on?

> there are plenty of those same pathetic fan-boys out there, and I have met my share of them. It isn't some caricature, it's the reality you won't accept. I don't see people behaving over Star Wars the way they behave over other SF films like "2001" or "Forbidden Planet" or what-have-you.
Missed my point entirely. Yes there are fanboys of Star Wars. But that does not mean that everyone who loves SW is one of them, thus it is not valid to use their behaviour as a stick to beat others with.

>
>When heavily promoted and merchandized kids movies have a vastly larger audience than far more rewarding, entertaining and intelligent films, one suspects the world is even more unjust than previously thought. If Allen and Godard's films were as heavily, nasuastingly marketed(complete with pepsi commercials) they just might get a larger audience, though unlike Star Wars, they're not the perfect product: unoffensive, safe, and tame--designed to appeal to the 10 year old in all of us, rather than the advanced age most of us currently are.

Look, this is silly. Surely the whole point of Godard and Allen films is that they aren't heavily marketed - that they are marginal and 'arthouse'. They, by definition could not be nauseatingly marketed, and from you tone I deduce that you would not want this to be so.

>You can't lay a claim on your entire generation.

No, fair enough. But I think that (with some reason) that SW awoke many to the possibilities of cinema

>What good is having twice the number of screens if means being able to show twice as much of the same Hollywood crap? Why assume that indies make it into all thsoe new multiplexes(In California they're mostly what's squeezed out of them.)

I actually acknowledged this point quite clearly. As I said, there is no reason to assume that there are more arthouse films, but no reason to assume there are less either.

>Because a very tiny percentage of the ones currently made are.
Not really true. Possibly it is if one counts all the US TV movies too. But as I raised earlier, to some extent it is impossible for the bulk of mainstream films to be arthouse - that would defeat the whole point of arthouse movies - they are marginal, avant-garde and not meant for everyone.

>Inverse snobbery. Does intellectual content preclude visual excitement and entertainment? Are you so stupid?
Of course not. But that doesn't invalidate visual excitement and entertainment with little recourse to intellectual stimulation

>As opposed to tools like yourself, who keep these empty scared cows of films free from criticism,
I don't see it as a 'sacred cow' - I just happen to like it, and I'm sick of being told by people like you that I am a 'tool' for doing so.

>Maybe because they are more grown up and mature--as fully arrogant as that sounds.
Yes it does. And it is patently untrue.

> Isn't there something implicitly pathetic in caliming greatnes for a film that is honestly built for the mental level of a 9 year old?
Not really. It is a great kids' movie that also holds enormous appeal for adults. What's the problem?
>The over-sized praise accorded to Srar Wars is ridiculous--like claiming "Charlotte's Web" is as great achievement as "Ulysses."
But I am not doing any such thing. I don't believe in some absolute 'Great Tradition' top 40 of film. Of course Ulysees is a greater literary achievement than Charlotte's Web, but does that make Charlotte's Web rubbish? Of course not.

> But when it comes to Star Wars I think you're still going apeshit over something you should have outgrown.
This really says more about your own prejudices than anything. I'm not going apeshit. I am simply sick of being patronised by people for liking a well-made, highly entertaining film.

>What's so patronizing about the utter truth? Did movies really learn anything from Star Wars?
It's isn't the statement - it's the presumption that I had no awareness of the quality of cinema before Star Wars that is patronising.

> Did it take the example of Star Wars to really awaken people to the magic of movies? Were movie somehow in trouble beforehand?

Yes. Cinema audiences had reached an all time low. Read Peter Kramer's chapter in 'Identifying Hollywood's Audiences - Cultural Identity and the Movies' ed. by Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby for more details. (BFI 1999)

>What's clever about seeing a lot of good movies? Why don't you quit this overheated baby talk?

No baby talk. Just again sick of people implying "Star Wars is shit - why not watch the classics?" I've seen plenty. Some are terrific, some are not. Star Wars is, in its own field, great. No reason why I can't like one and not the others.

>Well, for millions of moviegoers, I believe Star Wars has.
With or without SW these people you refer to would never have seen much arthouse cinema - it's a Frankfurt School fantasy.

>> I find it interesting that you need to >suggest people ignore SW and focus on other >films instead.
>
>As they should.

Why? Why can't people enjoy both? I liked Charlotte's Web and Ulysses - what's wrong with that?

>And I would tell him to screw Star Wars and see Tarkovsky, because I don't think there is enough time to see everything worth seeing. Why bother with Star Wars?
Nonsense. Of course there is enough time for both. And what about mood? Don't you ever feel the need for something light-hearted, fun?

>>No. But apparently enjoying yourself is.
>
>And when did I say that you liar? It's apparent that to you wtaching a slower film that requires you to think DOES mean not enjoying yourself.

Not at all. But, as I made patently clear, you seem to have a problem with films like SW that primarily engage the viewer through fast-moving action on a level of pure entertainment. I do not agree.

>No they don't, and most of what they see at a theater proves it. Do you think you think enough? Is there a limit?

I just think saying audiences "don't think enough" is another spectacularly arrogant statement. Who are you to dictate how much leisure time people should spend thinking? Why shouldn't they be entertained?

>>But it takes an intellectual moron to >uggest that enjoying yourself is >automatically inferior to enjoyment.
>
>It takes a brainless moron to write the above sentence.
<blushes> Yes it does. I mis-typed. What I meant to say was "enjoying yourself is automatically inferior to thinking". Sorry.

>As I remarked in the first part of my reply to blinkered Al, I think they greatly have.

You're the one wearing blinkers - big cultural elitist ones.

>>so you >can take your Leavisite temper tantrums >elsewhere.
>
>I've never read Leavis, and will not go elsewhere simply because my POV offends your precious SW love
Well your remarks are most Leavisite - and I'm sorry. Of course I don't want you to leave - it was an ill chosen figure of speech.

> It's interesting that those who dispute the film's overblown status are in the same position as the Rebels at the mercy of the evil empire in the first film. But I predict a slow victory will come with time. The Emperor can't parade around naked for an eternity.

Thing is - that's not true. In terms of film criticism, SW's name stinks - it is, as I said earlier, the cinematic root of all evil. And those who have the audacity to say that they enjoyed it are seen as immature fanboys who wouldn't watch any other kind of film because it might be boring. I could go on and list all the avant-garde films I've seen and enjoyed but it would look pathetic and defensive. Mike asked what Star Wars was like - I told him it was fun. I was not expecting to be attacked for that controversial opinion...

>"Not Found
>The requested URL /movies/archives/0197/0137.html was not found on this server."
>
>Mmm... yes, I see his point.

Okay. Go to www.chicagoreader.com
go to "Movies"
Go to the archive of long reviews.
Scroll down till you see Star Wars. I actually think the village voice article is better, but still.

I said I had nothing more to say on the topic but on the other hand I just like to argue..

>>I AM a cultural elitist
>Good for you. I hate cultural elitists.

I think a certain amount of elitism is neccesary in any cultural context. When any large amount of people testify to the greatness of something, one cannot immediately accept their verdict.

>Missed my point entirely. Yes there are >fanboys of Star Wars. But that does not >mean that everyone who loves SW is one of >them, thus it is not valid to use their >behaviour as a stick to beat others with.

Of course, but my point is that there are a HUGE amount of fanboys for Star Wars, especially when compared to other sci-fi films. And I think their outsized enthusiasm seriously blinkers them. I am not talking about a small group of people here. We all know our share of SW fanatics.


>Look, this is silly. Surely the whole >point of Godard and Allen films is that >they aren't heavily marketed - that they >are marginal and 'arthouse'. They, by >definition could not be nauseatingly >marketed, and from you tone I deduce that >you would not want this to be so.

They can't be nauseatingly marketed because they don't lower themselves to the general denominator. But I don't see why they should be so marginalized--especially here in the US, where the number of arthouses has plummeted anyway. And many of the best foreign films could reach a wider audience were it not for the xenophobia and immaturity of the American public--whsoe mindset has been negatively influenced by SWs. In the '60's and '70's arthouse/foreign films enjoyed far greater prominence and status than they do today. They once reached larger audiences. I think it unfair that the public has to keep subsiding off SW when some of the best films out when they could be greatly enriched by greater exposure to foreign and less marketable films. And that involves eductaing the general audience to expect more form movies than SWs, which is lite entertainment at best. (The 1st and 3rd films anyway)
What exactly was the fate of indie and foreign films in the decades immediately after SW anyway? I don't think arthouse immediately means meant for a small audience--I think a huge amount of films out there are buried that would appeal to large portions of the public--in the wake of SW many of those films are buried precisely because they can't guarentee an immediate profit or merchandizing possibilities. Arthouse should not become a ghetto for good movies that can't make a huge profit--and the MBAs ushered onto power on the heels of SW's success take precisely that point. The audience proved it was willing to accept a large glut of blockbusters that demanded even less mental stimulation, and even more retreads of past movies. I will continue to bitch at your opinions in part 2.

I'm obviously taking this thread to far but beg the indulgence of the board, and hope to conclude my rantings here.

>But I am not doing any such thing. I don't >believe in some absolute 'Great Tradition' >top 40 of film.

I don't believe in ranking films but I believe in tradition and hierarchy in the arts--though not in politics and elsewhere. I don't mind if people wish to claim the SW films are classics. I'm bothered when many believe they're a vital part of Western civilization and the pinnacle of mainstream moviemaking. I'd consider an unwieldy contemporary film like "A.I"--botched as it is--an example that mainstream sci-fi films are capable of greater and more interesting things.
I don't wish for Star Wars to have aesthetic parity with Citizen Kane or the Searchers or A.I--in the same way that I'd blanch if a literary critic would consider "CW" greater than "Us." As you've said, many film critics dislike SW, but some, and a huge amount of the public, consider it the crowning achievement that it isn't. Those films are calibrated directly toward the mind-set of a 10 year-old boy. I enjoyed SW when I was a child and view it as something to gradually grow out of. I accept your view that you've successfully done so, but many have not. The films should hardly be a yardstick of artistic measurement to be carried into adulthood.

>Yes. Cinema audiences had reached an all >time low.

This is an area I have little footing on, will accept your statement, though I wonder if you refer to both the UK and US. In any case, it's impossible to state if movies would have simply shriveled up and dried away if SW had not pulled a messiah act upon them (And was that messiah act really worth it?) What would have happened if the movies had continued with low audiences--and was that lowness world-wide? Creating niche groups out of the audience by forgoing the mass audience leads to a filmic tower of babel.

>Read Peter Kramer's chapter >in 'Identifying Hollywood's Audiences - >Cultural Identity and the Movies' ----I'll check it out.

>With or without SW these people you refer >to would never have seen much arthouse >cinema - it's a Frankfurt School fantasy.

That is too dogmatic to be true. I believe in the potential of a mass audience for mental growth and sophistication, and i also believe in the cyclical down-turns the size of an audience has. I don't think SW left the world a better place, but I believe many members of the mass audience--the sort of people that make blockbusters out of "Twister" or "Pearl Harbor"(films that SW made the world safe for)--do not neccesarily have to live in world where they deny foreign or less simplistic films because they're used to what has been marketed for them in mind. I'm admittedly vague on how a mass audience can be educated to branch out but I believe that potential lies within the mass audience. And I believe the coming of SW retarded any progress that might have been made by making it safe to produce films aimed at 10 year olds. If audiences were decreasing in the late '70's it might have been a good thing--perhaps it signified that the mass audience would have to adjust to the movies rather than the usual way.

>Not at all. But, as I made patently clear, >you seem to have a problem with films like >SW that primarily engage the viewer through >fast-moving action on a level of pure >entertainment.

I like fast-paced films that require putting the brain-on-hold. But there have been too many of them, and when I watch one it's effect is ephermeral. I don't place most of them on an exalted critical plane. And it's precisely through moving quickly and discouraging thought that an audience is turned into all-accepting putty. Audiences DO NOT think enough nowadays. Partly because thye are spoonfed increasingly mindless films and because none of us are capable of thinking enough. I do not think enough either. No one can. But thinking doesn't preclude being entertained: that is an anti-intellectual notion. If anything, when one is truly mentally stimulated one IS entertained, and that beats the efforts of lite entertainment anyday. I am a cultural elitist in that I despise the tastes of the general public. I am also not one because I have great faith in the potential of the public to give great artists the audiences they deserve, which is why I get angry when the public squanders its attention and allegiance on lesser efforts devised to take their money and make few demands upon their minds, morals, or deepest emotions.
As for supposedly being a Leavisite: I don't know what one is and am not bothered by it.
Though I'm risking repetion, are the url's of the articles that better articulate my opinions:
www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/ (then scroll down for SW)
www.villagevoice.com/issues/9919/hoberman.php

>>>That's not the single greatest thing about the trilogy. That was Michael Sheard in The Empire Strikes Back.
>>>
>>>There's something fantastic about a career that includes Hitler (four times), Himmler (three times), Herman Goering's double, a fair few other Germans, 6 different parts in Dr Who, Adml Crane Ozzel, and Mr Bronson.
>>
>He's Hitler in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade isn't he? I'm sure I've seen him as Hitler in one other thing but for the life of me I can't remember. Do you know the other occasions?

imdb is rather useful...Hitler in: The Dirty Dozen tv remake, Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade (he's also in Raiders of the Lost Ark as a U-boat captain), Rogue Male and an episode of The Tomorrow People. He was also in Corrie....

Err... yes. Fine.

Anyone for comedy? Yes? No? Sorry. Silly question.

>Err... yes. Fine.
>
>Anyone for comedy? Yes? No? Sorry. Silly question.

Odd that you're being so humourless about it.

>>Err... yes. Fine.
>>
>>Anyone for comedy? Yes? No? Sorry. Silly question.
>
>Odd that you're being so humourless about it.

Nothing odd about it. This is SOTCAA remember.

>>>Err... yes. Fine.
>>>
>>>Anyone for comedy? Yes? No? Sorry. Silly question.
>>
>>Odd that you're being so humourless about it.
>
>Nothing odd about it. This is SOTCAA remember.
>
Yes and it's a thread about Star Wars. Honestly, the last thing we need right now is some kind of 'thread Nazi'...
>

>Yes and it's a thread about Star Wars. Honestly, the last thing we need right now is some kind of 'thread Nazi'... >>

How about a 'comedy nazi' then? Whether such a thing can exist is, however, a moot point, although Allo Allo had a go - with Hitlerious consequences.

By the by, I hear Alexie Sayle is cracking observational jokes about Islington psueds over on the starwars.com website. What a topsy-turvey world we live in...

>By the by, I hear Alexie Sayle is cracking observational jokes about Islington psueds over on the starwars.com website. What a topsy-turvey world we live in...

Wow, you mean they can have more than one interest at a time as well? Amazing...

>>By the by, I hear Alexie Sayle is cracking observational jokes about Islington psueds over on the starwars.com website. What a topsy-turvey world we live in...
>
>Wow, you mean they can have more than one interest at a time as well? Amazing...

Actually no. Alexie is currently ranting away in his early 80's style (a wonderful return to form) and all the Star Wars people are completely ignoring him. Alexie's going on about knitting kaftans out of yoghourt, but the fans seem more interested in inventing names for the off-spring that Hans Solo and Princess Leia might have had.

Hey ho.

I'd like to think that this thread will now end and we can all get back to comedyland. However, I sense the imminent arrival of a new thread entitled: 'the fantastic worlds of Gerry Anderson'.

"Parker?"
"Yes m'lady?"
"You bear a quite remarkable resemblance to Peter Hitchens. Are you aware of that?"
"Yes, m'lady".

>
>I'd like to think that this thread will now end and we can all get back to comedyland.

if you don't like this one, may I suggest having a look at the other ones?

>>I'd like to think that this thread will now end and we can all get back to comedyland.
>
>if you don't like this one, may I suggest having a look at the other ones?


OOOooohhh! Get her! Pardon me for breathing! OOOooohhh!!! Ahh, fuck it. Well... bye then, and May The Palitoy Action Figures Be With You.

http://www.starwars.com/community/news/2001/08/img/jedi_tusken.jpg

He's a Jedi, you know.

This is very good:

http://www.daveprowse.com/editorial.htm

It's supposed to be a plea for less "negativity" about his role in Star Wars, because apparently that's all anyone asks him about, and then he starts systematically dredging up every 20 year old grievance he can remember, in the most bitter tone imaginable, leaving you with the impression of a man who likes to throw darts at pictures of James Earl Jones, and who puts on a black crash helmet when he's alone in the house and says lines from the film in a menacing west country accent, to prove to himself that he could do it.

>puts on a black crash helmet when he's alone in the house and says lines from the film in a menacing west country accent, to prove to himself that he could do it.

Carrie Fisher said that if his voice had been used, it would have been less Darth Vader and more Darth Farmer.

>>Yes and it's a thread about Star Wars. Honestly, the last thing we need right now is some kind of 'thread Nazi'... >>
>
>How about a 'comedy nazi' then? Whether such a thing can exist is, however, a moot point, although Allo Allo had a go - with Hitlerious consequences.

Doesn't Mr Bronson the Nazi being in the Star Wars trilogy count as comedy then?

>>puts on a black crash helmet when he's alone in the house and says lines from the film in a menacing west country accent, to prove to himself that he could do it.
>
>Carrie Fisher said that if his voice had been used, it would have been less Darth Vader and more Darth Farmer.

The anecdote on the Making of Hitch Hiker's vid is quite sweet - the guy inside Marvin (whose name I just forgot although I only saw it again last night) - who of course did not do the voice - was talking to Dave Prowse and asking why he thought he wasn't asked to do the voice: "Oi don't rarlly knoiw"

>The anecdote on the Making of Hitch Hiker's vid is quite sweet - the guy inside Marvin (whose name I just forgot although I only saw it again last night) - who of course did not do the voice - was talking to Dave Prowse and asking why he thought he wasn't asked to do the voice: "Oi don't rarlly knoiw"

The punchline is "Oive NOOW oydeear!" It's important to get these things exactly right.