Star Wars Marathon
The first day of the Star Wars marathon weekend was fun, with me, , , , , Chris, and Katherine in the audience so far. 's surround sound system is like being in a theater, and having a projector is really cool. Call or e-mail me if you want directions.
kicked off with the Akira Kurosawa film Hidden Fortress, and we agreed it's a really enjoyable movie. We also watched the interview on the DVD in which George Lucas explains the techniques and elements from Hidden Fortress that influenced him on the first Star Wars movie.
Much has been made about how bad the Star Wars prequels are. I will not dispute it. Watching The Phantom Menace I attempted to list things that I liked and appreciated. It occurred to me that the strengths of the prequels have focused mainly in the some of the villians. If we didn't have the prequels, we wouldn't have Darth Maul. And I admire Ian McDiarmid (Emperor Palpatine) as a character actor. I've seen him in roles other than Star Wars, and he's always as great as he is here.
Tomorrow I will wake up relatively early and cook pancakes, waffles, scrambled eggs, bacon, and ham (and of course coffee) for the audience before Attack of the Clones begins. Then there will be the full animated Clone Wars TV series (which is short), then Revenge of the Sith, and A New Hope will finish off Saturday.
Comments
trav13369 on Feb. 4, 2006 9:00 AM — two things...
One: Ian MacDiarmid was the butler, Arthur, in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"> Bit part, but was still funny. Steve Martin's character was pretending to come back to Michael Caine's mansion, as part of a scam, and Arthur, knowing that Martin's character was about to be put through the wringer, simply looked at him, and drolly said, "Welcome to Hell." LOL
Two: All of the backstory of both the Japanese film and the Clone Wars animated series makes me feel bad that my weekend is so damn busy that I can't attend. (already told Bill while in PM in the TEM chatroom).
matt-arnold on Feb. 4, 2006 4:11 PM — Re: two things...
That's my favorite comedy. I recognized Ian McDiarmid in it.
trav13369 on Feb. 4, 2006 5:18 PM — Re: two things...
Yeah, if I was gonna go Transhuman and do the wetware thing, I'd want a link to IMDB.com- how I found out MacDiarmid played Arthur. Handy thing, that webpage LOL.
paranthropus on Feb. 4, 2006 2:45 PM
What a cool idea, to kick off a Star Wars marathon with Hidden Fortress.
I completely agree about the prequels. The last two, in particular, were quite wearying. When you look at the variety of shots in the original Star Wars (a New Hope), and compare them to the variety of shots in the prequels it's like looking at a 10th generation photocopy. Some tremendous shots come to mind from "A New Hope": Luke on Tatooine with the double suns in the background, the Millennium Falcon as it's being engulfed by the Death Star's docking bay, and of course the spectacular opening shot. Kurosawa's influence was clear.
The shot composition in the prequels is formulaic by comparison. 95% of all shots seem to fall in to one of three categories:
- Helicopter establishing shot, with lots of parallax and moving bits, in order to showcase the CG set.
- People standing around, talking.
- Fight / chase shot with a tracking / flying / floating camera.
It does not matter how much CG or cool props you put into a film, that much repetition is going to tire the viewer after a very short while.
matt-arnold on Feb. 4, 2006 5:31 PM
By the way, one of the nicest things about watching Hidden Fortress is accompanying the soundtrack with things like "that's no moon!" and "this is the point where that guy says bleep bloop beep beep."
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