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Star Wars Phantom Menace 1.1 Editor Speaks
guinnessy writes "Studio 360 interviews the person who carried out Phantom Edit 1.1. You can listen to the interview here if you have Real Audio. It's quite interesting and explains why he hated Jar Jar Binks so much and what he did."
Yeah I could if i Had real audio. Anyone will to write down the conversation and post it some were so those of us who don't have real audio can read it?
The "Lord Of The Rings [imdb.com]" movie trilogy isn't your average Hollywood "gee-what-kind-of-ending-did-the-test-audiences-li ke-the-most?" film series. It's a pretty faithful (so far) movie adaptation of what's commonly regarded [guardian.co.uk] as the best book of the twentieth century.
I'll have to dispute with you on that one. LOTR was a damn good book. Undoubtedly the best book of the Fantasy genre ever. However, there are books such as Ulysess, 1984, The Grapes of Wrath, The Old Man and the Sea, and of course Brave New World that I think edge out ahead of LOTR.
I think the poll in your article is skewed to favor LOTR because it is just a poll of regular people. Many of whom have heard about or seen LOTR at a theater near them. Many of these people have not heard of books like The Old Man and the Sea, or Ulysses.
Basically stated, what I'm trying to say is the recent publicity of LOTR has skewed the poll in the article you linked to. Most critics consider Ulysses to be the best book of the century, with Brave New World in second.
This whole racist obsession people have is kinda ridiculous. Colors aren't hidden racist subtext.
White is fascinating and black is scary. This makes sense. Think about it. The dark is "black". If you go into the dark, you can't see things and this is bad. Things can eat you in the dark. There are Grue's in the dark. Everyone naturally is warrier in the dark, even someone with "black" skin.
On the other hand, bright light is white, and it reveals everything that was hidden. Light also conquers darkness.
So if you're portraying a character who's evil and nasty you could (if you're wanting to make it blatantly obvious) dress them in black and have them hide in shadows. Dangerous things lurk in shadows, so the connection is obvious.
For an example. I, as a kid, was scared of the dark long before I'd ever seen a black person. I liked flashlights because they got rid of the darkness. This was long before I knew that I was "white" by comparison to anything else.
This is seperate from the skin color of the characters. It's just to explain that Gandalf the White and Sauron the Dark aren't necessarily racial comments in any way. Feel free to read anything you want into the skin colors of the orcs and the "good guys".
I am glad though, that they didn't throw in a token black character. They were dealing with small isolated populations. You likely wouldn't get someone with a really different skin color so it'd be a blatant "Don't hate us, here's your token minority" gesture. Now on the other hand, if they'd made (for instance) the wood elves dark (or the Rivendell ones) that would have made some sense because they were a seperate population. But it's unthinking knee-jerk PC gestures that stick out like a sore thumb. And in my opinion these do more harm than good because they bring the issue of skin color to mind, instead of ignoring it as the non-issue it is.
No people are not justified in being offended. This thin skinned bleeding heart crap has gone too far. If I were to make a movie, I sure as hell would ignore ANYONE who told me my bad guys couldn't have dark skin, or light skin, or speak with this accent or that. You read too much into it. And the people who generally whine about this sort of thing are the people who look for it everywhere.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.