All posts tagged “star wars”

George Lucas talks to Times Online

It’s really, really hard to like George Lucas these days. First up, he ruined the best sci-fi franchise ever with a gore fest of CGI, bad acting, slapstick comedy and ridiculous storylines. Then he ruined the best action-adventure franchise with a (wait for it) gore fest of CGI, and ridiculous storylines. In the meanwhile he’s milking his creations to the brink of a drought with releases of cartoons, animated features, and a live-action tv-series. So, I didn’t really think it was possible to dislike the man any more, but then I read a recent interview with him, on Times Online:

“Indiana Jones only becomes complicated when you have another two people saying ‘I want it this way’ and ‘I want it that way’, whereas, when I first did Jones, I just said, ‘We’ll do it this way’ — and that was much easier. But now I have to accommodate everybody, because they are all big, successful guys, too, so it’s a little hard on a practical level.”

“Really, with the last one, Steven wasn’t that enthusiastic. I was trying to persuade him. But now Steve is more amenable to doing another one. Yet we still have the issues about the direction we’d like to take. I’m in the future; Steven’s in the past. He’s trying to drag it back to the way they were, I’m trying to push it to a whole different place. So, still we have a sort of tension. This recent one came out of that. It’s kind of a hybrid of our own two ideas, so we’ll see where we are able to take the next one.”

“I can’t say yet, but they’ll be personal. n fact, I’d sooner just make them and not even release them, just put them on the shelf, like ships in a bottle — ‘Oh, look, let me show you my collection.’ Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Films are a very expensive hobby. And you have to get people to want to go and see them.”

The amount of arrogance is just mind-boggling. And the fact that he isn’t making movies for the audience, but for himself, is fine, just don’t try to continue the legacy, of something good you made, more than 25 years ago, then.

Movies I’ve seen before I die

I got this book at Christmas called ’1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’, and since I’m bored to hell I’ve been looking through it to see how many of those movies I’ve seen. So, without further ado:

1. Nanook of the North (1922)
2. Celovek s kinoapparatom (Man With Movie Camera) (1929)
3. Triumph des Willens (1934)
4. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
5. Animal Farm (1954)
6. The Birds (1963)
7. Goldfinger (1964)
8. Dr. Strangelove. Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
9. Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (1966)
10. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
11. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
12. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
13. Dirty Harry (1971)
14. Deliverance (1972)
15. The Godfather (1972)
16. Badlands (1973)
17. The Conversation (1974)
18. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
19. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
20. Barry Lyndon (1975)
21. Jaws (1975)
22. Rocky (1976)
23. Taxi Driver (1976)
24. Star Wars (1977)
25. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
26. The Deer Hunter (1978)
27. Grease (1978)
28. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
29. Halloween (1978)
30. Alien (1979)
31. Life of Brian (1979)
32. Apocalypse Now (1979)
33. The Shining (1980)
34. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
35. Raging Bull (1980)
36. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
37. Das Boot (1981)
38. Gallipoli (1981)
39. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
40. The Thing (1982)
41. Blade Runner (1982)
42. Star Wars: Episode IV – Return of the Jedi (1983)
43. Scarface (1983)
44. The Terminator (1984)
45. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
46. Ghost Busters (1984)
47. Back to the Future (1985)
48. The Fly (1986)
49. Aliens (1986)
50. Top Gun (1986)
51. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
52. The Untouchables (1987)
53. Akira (1988)
54. A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
55. The Naked Gun (1988)
56. Big (1988)
57. Die Hard (1988)
58. Rain Man (1988)
59. Batman (1989)
60. My Left Foot (1989)
61. Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
62. Pretty Woman (1990)
63. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
64. Total Recall (1990)
65. Delicatessen (1991)
66. Thelma & Louise (1991)
67. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
68. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
67. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
68. The Crying Games (1992)
69. Jurassic Park (1993)
70. Schindler’s List (1993)
71. Forrest Gump (1994)
72. The Lion King (1994)
73. Clerks (1994)
74. Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
75. Nattevagten (1994)
76. Pulp Fiction (1994)
77. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
78. Riget (1994)
79. Babe (1995)
80. Braveheart (1995)
81. Toy Story (1995)
82. Casino (1995)
83. Heat (1995)
84. Se7en (1995)
85. The Usual Suspects (1995)
86. Fargo (1996)
87. Independence Day (1996)
88. Trainspotting (1996)
89. Scream (1996)
90. The English Patient (1996)
91. Titanic (1997)
92. The Big Lebowski (1998)
93. Festen (1998)
94. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
95. Fucking Åmål (1998)
96. Lola rennt (1998)
97. The Thin Red Line (1998)
98. There’s Something about Mary (1998)
99. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
100. Three Kings (1999)
101. Den Eneste Ene (1999)
102. Fight Club (1999)
103. American Beauty (1999)
104. The Matrix (1999)
105. The Sixth Sense (1999)
106. Gladiator (2000)
107. Bænken (2000)
108. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
109. Meet the Parents (2000)
110. Wo Hu Cang Long (2000)
111. Memento (2000)
112. Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001)
113. Moulin Rouge (2001)
114. Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (2001)
115. The Pianist (2002)
116. Oldboy (2003)
117. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
118. Good Bye, Lenin! (2003)
119. Lost in Translation (2003)
120. Der Untergang (2004)
121. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
122. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
123. Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
124. The Prestige (2006)
125. Das Leben der Anderen (2006)
126. United 93 (2006)
127. El Laberinto del Fauno (2006)
128. The Last King of Scotland (2006)
129. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
130. Babel (2006)
131. Apocalypto (2006)
132. The Departed (2006)

It’s more or less what I expected, I feel pretty embarrassed that I haven’t seen more of the classics, especially Hitchcock and Kurisawa’s. I disagree with a lot of the movies though, especially the new ones, Meet the Parents for example, what the hell?!

I’ve also uploaded a spreadsheet with the IMdb top 250 movies I’ve seen, you can see it here.

Why I hate Star Wars ep. 2 & 3 – Part 1

One day more than 10 years ago my dad brought home three brand new, blue VHS covers, they featured astonishing artwork and soon there after I was introduced to the incredible saga that is Star Wars, a series of masterpieces way ahead of their time. In 1999 George Lucas released a new episode: The Phantom Menace, a decent movie, but never the less, from this point on he steadily started buttfucking the classics we enjoyed as kids (I rock at analogies!). In my opinion Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, in their current state, should never have been created, and I’ll try to explain why.

Humor
There was some funny moments in the original movies, especially between R2-D2 and C-3PO, and it fitted nicely into the films. In the newest two movies it’s different, almost all droids are made out to be funny. The standard battle droids look funny, they have weird voices and say ridiculous things like “Uh-oh!” and “Roger, roger!”, which means you never see them as a threat, like you did with the stormtroopers, even though they were stupid and couldn’t hit anything, they were at least somewhat threatening. Now, let’s get back to our blue and golden friends. I particulary remember two scenes from the new movies, the first one is C-3PO accidently having his head mounted on one of the battle droids, he then runs around apologizing while his body shoots at stuff. Not only does it seem extremely unrealistic that his head just so happens to be placed at the body, it’s also just a ridiculous scene. Make the humor subtle, don’t push it into peoples’ faces like it’s some sort of second-rated Adam Sandler flick, it’s Star Wars for fuck’s sake. The second scene is even worse, the beginning of episode 3, R2-D2 is battling two of the big, black battle droids, as far as I remember he squirts oil at them, they slip in it, and he lights them on fire. The scene is full of the mentioned ridiculous punch lines. This lame humor is probably the biggest reason why I dislike these movies, it just doesn’t fit in.

CGI
The first movies were revolutionary when it comes to special effects, since CGI kinda sucked back then spaceships were created as miniature models, all the environments, it being space battles or dusty outskirts of strange planets, it looked astonishing. There was a time period before CGI became good enough to portray city environments, characters up close, etc. when, even in low-budget movies, everything had to be built, which made the sets of many of these sucky movies look pretty incredible. Today CGI is used in almost all movies, you can more or less create everything with it. I know it’s not easy to create these realistic scenes, but it still seems a bit like seeling out when you use CGI in abundance, I’m more impressed when they actually build the sets from scratch, like they did in Lord of the Rings. Another reason for disliking the new movies; almost every single fucking scene is created with CGI, even though it would be possible to build the stage. For example; in episode 3, every single clone trooper is created with CGI, not a single real combat suit was used, that is fucking sad.

Well, that’s all for now, I’ll think of some more to bash later. ;) What do you think of Star Wars episode 2 and 3?

January issue of >pcplayer

Latest issue of >pcplayer is out, do yourself a favor and go buy it. I've contributed with a two-page interview with a Star Wars Galaxies player, mainly as a follow-up to a similar interview in the march issue, and the retrospect article in a recent issue of the magazine.