A Theory About Star Wars

 ...or really a theory about George Lucas, I suppose. Star Wars is, as usual, the method by which Lucas has chosen to again antagonize geeks everywhere. By now, most of you have heard about the change to Return of the Jedi where Darth Vader screams "Noooooo!" before throwing the Emperor deep into the Death Star, as well as a few other "adjustments" to the Original Trilogy* (and the Prequel Trilogy, but really, who cares about that?). Attentive internet geeks have been pitting George Lucas from 1988 against the George Lucas of today, once again desperately trying to appeal to the director / producer. That, or to once again make the argument that the guy is a money-grubbing hack. Or that other thing - the totally overboard reference to what Lucas is allegedly doing to your "childhood" that I cannot abide by repeating.

 At this point, it gets really old hearing about how angry people are at George Lucas and about documentaries like The People vs. George Lucas, etc. Every time the inevitable re-release of the film comes out, people swear they're being cheated and that "this is the last time you'll get MY money, George!" and then news comes out about changes and then the hyperbole kicks into high gear. Star Wars came out on DVD - but it was the Special Editions. Then Lucas released the Original Versions on DVD, but not anamorphically enhanced and with 2.0 stereo mixes (direct ports from the Laserdiscs) and that was ripping people off so of course they aren't going to buy it. Now the Blu-Rays are coming out and another series of alterations are in place and fans are shocked to discover that a man who has digitally altered every single film he's directed for DVD and Blu-Ray release once again took the opportunity for more tinkering.

 Here's the catch - I think he knows that you're going to complain. He also knows (as I do) that the calls for boycotts are no reflection of actual sales. They haven't been in the past - and I've worked in places that sold those movies and toys and I know for a fact that people continue to buy the versions of Star Wars they claim to loathe - and I strongly believe that other than grousing the internet community, Lucas knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't even mind ruffling those feathers, because it helps his cause.

 Lucas has, once again, shrewdly concocted a way to keep everyone talking about Star Wars as the Blu-Ray release approaches. It's not enough to sell ad space and to make deals with Best Buy about exclusive this or yadda yadda that; despite what's said about the man, George Lucas knows how to get his audience passionate about Star Wars when it's time to have their wallets out. Whether the passion is positive or negative, I suspect he doesn't care, because here's what's going to happen: outraged fans are going to scream all the way up and down the internet about the classics being "butchered" again, swear that THIS TIME they won't be buying them, and then quietly ordering that nine disc boxed set off of Amazon so that the next time they see their friends, they can authoritatively rant with indignation.

 The changes we DO know about aren't the only changes, which may or may not be true - we know that puppet Yoda from The Phantom Menace is now digital, and that Obi-Wan's "dragon" noise is, *ahem* more suggestive, and that Ewoks blink now - but the earliest promise from Lucasfilm was of more "surprises" in the films. In order to be a properly incensed geek, that means purchasing the set (on the down-low, of course) in order to catalog the changes before someone else gets to it and then poring over every minute detail on chat boards.The people who yell the loudest online are almost always the first people to say to you "can you believe that Lucas did THIS and THIS???" at the first opportunity, usually before the average fan even noticed.

 So is this outrage surprising? No, not really. Is it fun to sit back and listen to? Yeah, it kind of is. If people really stuck to their guns and didn't buy this Blu-Ray set after rating it with one star on Amazon sight unseen, I'd be more impressed with the sturm and drang, but I don't see that happening. I've yet to decide if I'm going to pick it up or wait another year (*ahem*, thirty-fifth anniversary of A New Hope) for some other, cheaper, repackaging once this version is pulled from shelves (20th Century Fox, like Disney, will do that to drive up demand). I'd like to see those extra three discs of footage, and wouldn't mind watching the films in high definition, but it really depends on if I have a hundred dollars to spare in two weeks. I waited on The Lord of the Rings and that worked out well enough. Lucas has my passing attention, and he may well have my money, but I can't give him the outrage; just a passing glance and "Huh, this again?"




 * Actually, it's not even the Original Trilogy at this point. For a detailed examination of how the original films became the Special Editions and then the DVD editions, go here.

The Best You Can is Good Enough

I hope we all learned something from our Twitter experience last night. I learned that while it's a cute exercise, ultimately The constraints were more frustrating than creatively fulfilling. If the spaces count as "characters", then I really feel bad for people who are trying to do anything substantive in their accounts. I'll stick with whatever it is I'm doing here, thank you very much.

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As some of you may have noticed, I wasn't very careful in setting the parameters of the poll, so technically speaking, you still have a little over twelve hours to vote. I'm not going to sway the vote by telling you what's winning, so feel free to point me in one direction or the other. Provided I actually have time, I'll watch the winner tomorrow night and give it a proper write-up for Monday.

"But Cap'n," you exclaim, "didn't you say you'd be reviewing it tonight?"

Why yes, faithful audience, I did. Unfortunately, life got in the way and something non-movie related took precedence, ergo I allowed my foolish extension of voting time to stand. As it was non-movie related, I'm not going to bother you with the details. Besides, I have something much more amusing to talk about...

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As previously discussed in the Blogorium, Criterion is losing a bunch of titles to Lionsgate, who are subsequently releasing a handful of them as "StudioCanal Collection" titles. Being that the Cap'n is nothing if not a diligent pursuant of information, I went to the trouble of tracking down two of the first three releases (Contempt and The Ladykillers; I left Ran on the shelf because it's been getting universally poor marks for BD image quality) and was amused to discover the following paragraph atop the back cover:

"The StudioCanal Collection brings together the very best of cinema, with a series of acclaimed and influential films on Blu-ray with superior picture and sound quality and other unique special features. Discover or rediscover the great classics, contemporary works or adaptation from literature masterpieces. Cinema will never look the same."

What struck me almost immediately is how that blurb sounds suspiciously like a bloated version of this:

"The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of classic and important contemporary films, presents..."

It is fair to point out that Criterion never had a Spine Number for The Ladykillers, and in fact never released any iteration of the film, but they did have Contempt and Ran, and most of the supplements for those films appear on the StudioCanal Blu-Rays. I haven't seen any list of upcoming StudioCanal BD's, but I wouldn't be shocked to find they synched up nicely with the list of films going Out of Print from Criterion.

Perhaps I'd be a bit more forgiving if it weren't so apparent that these Blu-Rays are redressing of Criterion supplements (and at Criterion prices, by the way - the two I picked up on Amazon were exactly the same price as Revanche, Lola Montes, and Hunger). If they continue pushing beyond merely releasing HD versions of Spine Numbers, then I'll be behind StudioCanal a bit more. The artwork and discs for Contempt and The Ladykillers do look nice, in the interest of fairness.

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Finally - because there has to be a "finally" - I would also like to solicit advice from Spine Number aficionados (and foreign film buffs) as to what Criterion BD to pop in after I get around to watching the winner. Nary an unkind word has been spoken about their three latest releases, or Paris, Texas for that matter, so give me your two cents, gang.

Flim-Flammers Yammer

Greetings, my little Katzenjammer Kids! Hope you didn't mind the Cap'n taking the night off out of laziness giving you a blast from the past last night. Actually, considering how long it's been since You're All Doomed magazine actually existed, it might have been brand new for 90% of you. Those reviews are totally legit, by the way. The Cap'n wouldn't lie to you, would he?

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I know, I know; The House of the Devil. I so promised a review shortly after the disc arrived, and then... life happened. It has a nasty habit of doing that, and my plans to set aside 95 minutes for a movie I've been assured I'm going to dig the hell out of have kinda been put on the back burner. But soon, I promise. Like, on the other side of a paper due on Thursday.

By then, A Serious Man should also be here (it would already be here, but UPS has a curious policy of sometimes leaving packages and sometimes leaving notice for "signature confirmation") and I'd like to see Bronson soon. If you'd like to play a fun game, put bets down on how many of them I actually see between now and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" on Saturday*.

Oh, and Black Dynamite comes out next week on DVD and Blu-satility-Ray-Disc.

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To follow up a smidge on that "Criterion Out of Print" business, I noticed that next week brings two Blu-Ray releases from Lionsgate of former Spine Numbers: Contempt and Ran. They're being released under the Studio Canal banner, which I suppose is a fancy way of distinguishing them from the likes of Cabin Fever and Frailty. The extras seem to be pretty close to their Criterion dvd counterparts, save for conspicuously missing commentary tracks.

I suppose that this bodes well for some of the "marquee" titles leaving Criterion, like Grand Illusion; there's a reasonably good chance we'll see Blu-Rays after all, and possibly with most of their original supplements. It's not radically different from Disney's release of The Rock, which carried over all of the Criterion extras. The question that remains is if there's somebody out there who is willing to make new covers to put in the BD sleeves so we can pretend they're still part of the collection?

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Finally, I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty sure that the pill Jack tried to swallow was totally a Velociraptor egg, thus proving my theory that they don't call it Dinosaur Island for no reason!


* Hint, I could just show Bronson and A Serious Man on Saturday, so hedge those bets, folks...

Get those wallets ready, fanatics!

I seem to come back to this every few months, but in the waning days of the DVD market, the Cap'n finally has the opportunity to show you just how tricky it is for a smaller distributor like Criterion to keep movies, let alone get the ones you really want them to carry*. For the first time that I can remember, Criterion sent out an email letting viewers know exactly which movies would be added to the dreaded "Out of Print" list.

The list is as follows:

Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard)
Carlos Saura’s Flamenco Trilogy (Eclipse Series 6)
Le corbeau (The Raven - Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Coup de torchon (Bertrand Tavernier)
Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson)
The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed)
Forbidden Games (René Clément)
Gervaise (René Clément)
Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir)
Le jour se lève (Marcel Carné)
Last Holiday (Henry Cass)
Mayerling (Anatole Litvak)
The Orphic Trilogy (Jean Cocteau)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné)
Quai des Orfèvres(Henri-Georges Clouzot)
The Small Back Room (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Trafic (Jacques Tati)
Le trou (Jacques Becker)
Variety Lights (Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada)
The White Sheik (Federico Fellini)

Criterion is losing the rights to these films soon, and they'll revert to Lionsgate, who will release them in their own way as they see fit. I wouldn't be surprised to see several films by the same director released in "no extras" boxed sets, which Lionsgate has done recently with other "art" films. Or they might get Blu-Ray releases. It's hard to say, because as DVD winds down, studios are groping for whatever they can get in order to package quickly and get into stores.

As they mention in the email, Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion has another important distinction for any serious Criterion collector: in addition to being a terrific film, it bears the Spine Number 1. Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is still Spine Number 2 (and Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes 3), but soon it's going to be tricky to begin your collection. I suspect, like many low numbered items, that Grand Illusion will become the expensive "collector's item" out of this batch, but it's a hefty list of movies to pick up quickly, if that's your steez.

In the mean time, if you were still wondering why your favorite random movie wasn't getting the full-on Spine Number treatment, they have their hands full hanging on to the films they have. Taxi Driver probably isn't going to be the kind of movie they can get ahold of. In fact, the HD release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has none of the Criterion supplements; just the barebones Universal dvd "spotlight on location" and some deleted scenes. But, if I may interject, 2010 is the 25th anniversary of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, so maybe Universal and Criterion could cut some kind of Blu-Ray deal. Maybe?

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Finally, I found at least half of this video - which posits the question "what if famous directors filmed the Super Bowl?" - amusing. The David Lynch joke has been done to death, but the video is totally worth it for the one-two punch of Jean-Luc Godard and Werner Herzog at the end.



If only they'd thrown in some footage from Natural Born Football Any Given Sunday and pretended it was Oliver Stone's "Super Bowl" footage.


* Yes, this goes back to the long-standing "Troll 2: The Criterion Collection" joke, among others, like Cannibal! The Musical.

On the "reunited and it feels so good" front:

The Cap'n finally got one of my Out of Print Criterion DVDs back. While it's not Sid and Nancy or Dead Ringers or even a completely gone one like This is Spinal Tap or Tokyo Olympiad, I was happy to find a copy of Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious at a downright reasonable used price. Maybe it's because of the 20th Century Fox boxed set, which also carries alternate editions of similarly OOP Rebecca and Spellbound, but somehow I got Notorious for less than it would have been new six years ago.

Looking at Amazon, it wouldn't be too difficult to get Spellbound and Rebecca at reasonable prices too. Sid and Nancy is still pretty pricey, and Tokyo Olympiad is downright ridiculous at $64 used and $115 new. This is Spinal Tap is comparably silly at $48.95 and $109.99. Many of them aren't so bad any more, as when Criterion loses the rights other companies typically swoop in. Even Hard Boiled and The Killer aren't where they once were (pushing $500), and I bet the guy trying to sell Criterion's old version Salo is going to have his work cut out for him at $68 (to wit: it once sold for $2000 on eBay. Seriously).

The Silence of the Lambs and Robocop have fallen dramatically from where they once were, which is fine because I still have those. If there's one I wish I still had that I don't, it's Bruce Robinson's How to Get Ahead in Advertising, which is baselining around $50 (discount the $20-30 copies, as they're rentals and missing components). Oh, make that two; I had no idea Fellini's Nights of Cabiria was out of print. Damn.

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My goal with Spine Numbers is to no longer try to get all of them (it is, after all, a fool's errand to keep up with a collection that shows no sign of ending), but to seek out the ones I really want and rent the films that sound interesting. For example, right now I'd really like to have Salesman, Peeping Tom, Sullivan's Travels, Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss, Mona Lisa, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Insomnia, Nanook of the North, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, House of Games, and Kind Hearts and Coronets. I wouldn't mind having Night and Fog, La Jetee, Hoop Dreams, The Long Good Friday, That Obscure Object of Desire, The Horse's Mouth, Burden of Dreams, Overlord, Children of Paradise, and The Orphic Trilogy. I don't know that I need Maitresse, Border Radio, El Norte, Dodes ka-den, Bad Timing, I am Curious, or Fishing with John. There are others that aren't occurring to me that fit in a nebulous category of "I'd probably just rent it", but I think you get the idea. My days of being a completist are over and done.

I envy some of you mad men and women out there trying to conquer the collection. I no longer want to be you, although I may have to drop some coin in order to pick up a few of those OOP discs (the Sid and Nancy one is worth it for the commentary track alone, which is comprised of members of the NYC punk scene, many of whom dispute the portrayal of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen in the film). I don't know that I'd ever need the John Woo movies, or even This is Spinal Tap, but I suppose it is nice to know they haven't totally vanished from the face of the earth.

Thus endeth the blathering.