Slashdot Mirror
Star Wars Premier: The Line People
proudtobeageek writes "A friend of mine, an attendee of a midnight opening of Star Wars Episode III, took the opportunity to conduct a short documentary/interview of the costumed movie goers. He has his short movie available here on his blog."
It's a trap!
I prefer the insightful documentary made during Episode II's release by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
An article, about a website, about a video a guy made, of people in costumes, waiting to see a movie.
Ya know it's a slow news day WHEN...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
sorry.
:wq
I started to d/l this, and then I realized that I don't care.
I'm already tired of all this starwars crap.
http://www.bistolas.net
This movie sounds interesting. Conan O'brien made one a few years back as well. Unfortunately, I can't see this one because I've had a lot of problems in the past with the Quicktime plugin.
Any chance he can convert to another format? I hate installing quicktime, maybe it has something to do with the way it interacted with some old versions of firefox, but it has a way of invading my system and setting itself as default for everything that I don't want it to.
When can't get enough of them in the movie, just check out the lines to the restrooms. Otherwise, Vader might be your... uncle!
Movie Tickets - $10.00
..
Stale Popcorn / Watery Drink - $25.00
Custom Sith costume - $175
Lightsaber Replica (that you REALLY REALLY wished it worked) $75
Getting made fun of on Slashdot because you're a LAMER standing in line IN COSTUME for a movie
PRICELESS..
= Grow a brain...
Man, you know you're truly hopeless when you are being mocked as a pathetic geek... *on Slashdot*
Well, now that I know that I can post videos to my Xanga and get it published on Slashdot, I'm going to post my vids of the Gigli premier.
Hopefully won't be slashdotted... http://coyote.ycp.edu/~hwhitney/Ep3-TheLinePeople. mov
"P.S.S. to all Slashdot visitors: The Hamster has kindly provided ANOTHER DOWNLOAD LINK. Please don't kill my server... But thanks for the visit!"
HAHAHAHAH, begging for mercy is not a thing a respectable Jedi Knight would do.
Slashdotters charge up their Death Star of DoS Doom...
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Hey, slashdot editors. Consider updating the story with the coralized version of the URL:n mast.com/tangentideaproductions/Ep3-TheLinePeople. mov
http://redirect.nyud.net:8090/?url=http://www.rya
Just a thought. I'm surprised you guys don't just do this automatically by now.
____________________________________
-- I beleve you'll like this -->
Just made ito v.torrent
http://mininova.org/get/45884/Ep3-TheLinePeople.m
Enjoy, although it's not very good in my opinion.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
perhaps society has failed you instead, for making you believe someone is a monster because they eccentricly dress up as a character in a movie every few years and have a bit of fun.
Q: What's the difference between a line of costumed Star Wars fans entering the premiere of EpIII and a line of costumed cardinals entering the conclave to pick the new pope?
A: The Star Wars line has a higher concentration of virgins.
A /. article... about a PERSONAL website... with VIDEO.
:-P
From the website:
"To slashdot users:
Please don't kill my server" lol
Oh my God, that was so lame, it scared me.
And now I feel really old - I saw the first bloody movie when I was the age of some of those kids there.
We also queued up outside the cinema, about 5 of us, in Bangor, England.
Nobody had a movie camera. Nobody was dressed up. It was raining.
The movie was brilliant.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
"Revenge of the Sith" rang in a whopping $50 million on its opening Thursday, a single-day record boosted by eagerly anticipated midnight showings, and its total receipts since then beat the four-day $134.3 million opening of 2003's "The Matrix Reloaded." The George Lucas film has also grossed $144.7 million overseas for a total of $303 million worldwide.
"The reaction to the movie is absolutely spectacular," said Bruce Snyder, president of domestic distribution at Twentieth Century Fox.
Theater owners, studios and marketing partners were pleased to see "Star Wars" jump-start the summer movie season. "It's a very strong start to what will hopefully be a very strong summer," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Exhibitor Relations. The Adam Sandler-Chris Rock remake of "The Longest Yard" and the animated zoo tale "Madagascar" open in wide release during Memorial Day weekend, traditionally one of the busiest movie viewing times of the year. But "Star Wars" - which has sold an average of eight tickets per second online at Fandango.com - could remain at the top of the box office despite the competition. "I think we have a shot to be No. 1 next week even with two giant pictures coming out," Snyder said. The third and final installment in the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy chronicles the transformation of the heroic Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker into the villainous Darth Vader. Studio exit surveys showed the audience - usually dominated by men for sci-fi films - was 58 percent male and 42 percent female, with nearly half the viewers under age 25, Snyder said. "Revenge of the Sith" is the first "Star Wars" film to earn a PG-13 rating.now which one of these buttons calls your parents to come pick you up?
But their "loser"-status can't be all their fault. At some point, we as a society have turned them into these monsters by shunning them, excluding them, or mocking them for their odd and sometimes strange behavior. Perhaps it's some mild autism that they suffer from, or maybe some other neural disease that makes them "different" from most of us (and I use the word loosely) "normals".
Come on, isn't that a *tad* too much? Their behaviour is strange to you; they are happy, they have fun and they don't hurt anybody. Why bother? You said it yourself, you have better things to do with your spare time than critizing movies. They don't, they like it. Tastes vary.
Oh, and it's not a disease; these people are not sick. They just engage in activities most people find odd.
Now that you mention it, I really should have gone to the midnight showing of Star Wars dressed as Frank from Rocky Horror.
It would be even funnier if I acted really surprised that the movie showing was Star Wars... Or if I got a really hot-looking chick to go along with me dressed as Janet. Maybe even bring along all the usual Rocky Horror props (newspaper, toast, squirt guns, rice, etc.)
Hmm... note to self in case Lucas ever changes his mind and makes films 7-9...
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Well, Quicktime isn't reallt a codec - it's just a container like .avi
Beyond that, it's a good way of ensuring that people on both Windows and Mac platforms can watch it. What would you prefer? wmv? ogg? When you're aiming for the maximum audience then Quicktime isn't bad. Not perfect, but not bad.
Didn't you see his bumper sticker..??
"Lord of the Sith on board... NOW how's my driving?"
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
How dare you judge these people. Who are YOU to judge them. You're the one posting on here about them despite claiming to have "better" things to do.
If you ask me, the world could use some more "losers" like those fans waiting in line, and the sooner we get rid of judgemental people like yourself, the sooner people won't feel like they're "losers" because they have interests that differ from the norm.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
What's the point of going to see starwars at 12:05 AM is you don't get to see/make fun of people dressed as imperial stormtroopers?
Would that not be Republican Storm Troopers? As of Episode II the Republic was still intact.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Hmm... maybe the real losers are those who feel the need to define people who are different as losers instead of just letting people who aren't hurting anybody else just have their fun.
My brother works for an anime company as a sales guy. When they do the conventions, they're always stuck in the elevator after hours on their way to dinner with someone dressed in evangelion or whatnot, going to the allnight showing marathon.
His joking reaction? a gutteral 'Freak!' or 'Ner-urd!'
(sounded like a fog-horn)
Last time, his sales partner put his hand to his elbow, with a smile, "not freaks, revenue."
So now, he says "dude, did you check out that revenue?!" laughing all the way...
Terrible, I know. but please, rename your post, "Star Wars Revenue"
This isn't newsworthy. It's stupid and boring. Since when did /. become "News for Star Wars fanboys"?
For the record, the story about Star Wars Episode 3 being downloaded a lot? Same category. Dunno if any of the admins have been paying attention, but movies get downloaded once in a while and at least one or two of them have nothing to do with Star Wars.
I'm all for posting a story about the release of the film. It's a geek film. But half a dozen of the stupid things in a week is just plain rubbish. Slashdot is rapidly working it's way off my list of daily reads simply because I'm sick of reading the same articles over and over again. Seeing the same three articles every week is kinda boring: "Check out this Star Wars [blah]", "Google are about to take over the world", and "Microsoft sucks because Penguins are cute".
BORING!
Some of these guys are really, really lame. They kinda remind me of an episode from Sweden: Some Star Wars fans were camping out for a month in advance to see episode 2 and were excited as hell to get the first tickets. When they went inside and the movie started the theatre wasonly slightly more than half-full.
Furthermore the costumes are lame, lame, lame. When you are a smelly 37-year old nerd, you do not look even remotely like Amidala og Anakin.
Besides, everyone that matters knows the only thing you really need to bring to a premiere is a towel.
The video codec is Sorenson Video 3
The audio codec is Qualcomm PureVoice
If you don't like the QuickTime player there are many other players that will also play QuickTime contained multimedia.
Check out User Friendly before you mod me down. :P
I'm confused. I thought you said your friend was legally blind... but you use the screen reader?
In any case, if you were using a screen reader, you'd probably hear the text that is contained in the ALT tag for the image:
FYI - you don't get the captchas when you are logged in (even if you decide to post AC), so you could help your friend register for an account too.
Think of it as population control. After being seen like that, you know they're not going to be procreating any time soon, if ever. ;)
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
There was a hilarious little clip called the l33ttrailer, but it was pulled from the official website due to Lucas making copyright infringement claims. Good luck finding it now.
MacroHard - Boning you in a big way! (TM)
When I want to see a movie, I wait at least a few weeks before I can see it, so the theater is almost empty.
Nothing better then seeing LotR in a big theater when there are only 5 people in it. Nobody is kicking mty chair, nobody is asking stupid questions and nobody comes in late.
Yes, I go alone to the movies. I want to see the movie, so I do not give a rats ass if I know the person who sits next to me.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Found it here... http://www.unleadedjokes.com/html/Star-Wars-Episod e-3-Captioned.html
That's more or less what I wanted to post, especially seeing all the sad posts cheering that other lame dog-with-a-cigar video. I'm not even a SW fan, but I found that video lame and not funny. I just saw a lamer not even making jokes, but outright insulting people to their face because of their passtime didn't match the prescribed role for their age and social category. (Eew! They're playing Risk! That's a game for 12 year olds!) If that's funny...
It all boils down to enforcing conformity. If you don't act and dress like your prescribed role, you're an evil monster and a "loser". If you have a different passtime than the category you're pegged into, you're an evil monster and a "loser".
If you play Risk (or god forbid Warhammer 40k or Battletech) instead of Chess, or MTG instead of Bridge or Poker, you're a "loser" and an evil monster. If you spend 4 hours a day in front of the TV with a console game and a controller in hand, instead of 4 hours a day on the same TV but on sports channel with a beer can in hand, you're a "loser" and an evil monster. If you spend all weekend working on your computer, instead of working all week on your car like a Real Man (TM), you're a "loser" and an evil monster. And god forbid that you dare wear anything other than the approved uniform for your category, because that _really_ makes you an unholy monster.
If you don't want to be an evil monster, then, see, you have to dress like this, hold the beer can and remote like this while watching sports on TV, go to the same pub all the neighbours go to, etc.
Even if you want to be a rebel teenager, see, you can't just go ahead and do it your way. Nosiree, bob. Only "losers" do things their own way. To properly be a "rebel" you have to mindlessly conform to the "teenage rebel" role. Here's the approved list of rebel clothes, music, passtime and conversation topics.
Welcome to being sheep.
And it seems to me like WTH is the problem with these self-appointed guardians of conformity? Do their property values go down because someone two streets away spends too much time with a computer or watches the "wrong" movies, or what? Seems to me that whether I wanted to wear a business suit, or a spandex super-hero suit and cape, or a Jedi robe with "I went to the dark side and all I got was this stupid robe" on the back (never wore any of the three, but just saying), it ought to be noone else's business.
*sigh* Guess I might as well become a misanthrope now and avoid the christmas rush.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...to the guys lining up at the wrong theatre? Did they get a showing?
Yes it is. Check out TorrentSpy Theres only 3 bittorrent seeders atm and 0 downloaders. So seed it please when you get it.
"But seriously, there is a problem. Over 40% of males end up living with their parents into their twenties these days."
No, I don't live with my parents, in fact I live half a country away. Even visiting each other occasionally is a bit inconvenient. But I'm still left scratching my head "and the problem with being a family is...?"
See, virtually all cultures and societies used to be centred around the family until recently. Whether it was a farm or a medieval blacksmith's shop or whatever, it was _normal_ for a house to be the home for a whole extended family, and it was _normal_ at least for the firstborn to stay with the parents until they die.
E.g., when you read about the Vikings who sacked England or ended up elite bodyguards as far as Byzantium or Baghdad, those weren't really the cool ones. Those were the disinherited ones who had to fight or starve to death. The "cool" ones were those who inherited their father's farm and didn't have to fight. The ones who, in fact, lived with their parents not only into the 20's, but all the way until the parents died.
The craze about being on your own, and thinking you're so cool because you have no support, and your starving or not depends on a PHB's whims is an industrial age invention. I.e., a very recent one.
Is it really that much better. Yes, you're so cool, you live on your own, you have a big house and a car of your own. And it'll be so cool until you're old and sick. Then your choice will be to die lonely and abandoned in your home, or half-starved and still abandoned in the cheapest asylum your kids could find. Because now it would be sooo _uncool_ for your kids to have a parent in _their_ house.
We churn generation after generation who _will_ spend the last decade of their life abbandoned among strangers, and die among strangers.
Not saying that I have a better solution or anything, but it makes me sorta idly wonder... is it really that much of an improvement?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I myself was one of the freaks waiting in line for the movie for the past 6 weeks out front of Graumanns Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. (Yes it didn't play at that theatre, but thats a whole other political mumbo jumbo) This is about extreme as it gets. I wasn't there for 6 weeks straight as we all would come and go, but it was basically a 24/7 party with a group of people with like interests. Plus we raised 30K for a worthy charity
The thing I don't get is there are plenty of people that get at least this crazy about sports or other things every damn day and thats considered normal. Us as fans don't have events that happen every Monday night for weeks and weeks every year. So it all gets crammed into this time period that is relevant to something we enjoy. Its not like all every star wars fan does is watch and talk about star wars for our whole life. This was just an excuse to do that for a short period.
Anybody who has ever had any passion for anything in there life should have some understanding of what goes through the minds of a person who would wait in line for a movie. And such a big part of the whole thing is doing with other people and having fun together. In my opinion being passionate about a movie means you are probably also passionate about other things as well ( career, family, or even sports. )and passion about something put into positive use is what drives us as humans ( If I can get 'deep for a moment')
However, as a Brit, we have problems with violence on our city streets at night due to excessive drinking, we have to heavily police soccer matches to stop rival fans from waging war on each other, we have joyriders stealing cars and endangering themselves and every other user on the road, we have kids believing it's humourous to walk up to someone and just slap them purely to capture the event on a mobile phone camera...
So while the people queuing in the documentary may be seen as "wierdos" or "geeks", they're probably people that also don't get involved in the type of antisocial activities that I described above.
It's the "cool" people, in their constant strive for recognition amongst their peers, who usually end up being the antisocial people, not the geeks who queue for Star Wars and play Dungeons & Dragons.
If anything, geeks demonstrate they're intelligent enough to have enough individuality to just go do their own thing and enjoy it.
I say good luck to them...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
There is a lost art to making fun of people, or mocking them. It involves some subtlety. You know, stuff like irony, sarcasm, insinuation and/or goading them into acting like fools themselves.
/. that episode 4 was nothing special, and Obi Wan holds his lightsaber like he'd hold his *ahem* tool when peeing. That everyone only liked episode 4 because they saw it when they were 6 years old. I'm not really SW fan material.
E.g., Jay Leno, back in the 90s when I still bothered watching TV at all, was funny. He could bring up all sorts of mean stuff, but... without coming and spewing insults as such. He let you fill in the dots yourself.
E.g., Dilbert manages to _occasionally_ be funny, even in all its sheer anti-management bitterness. Whereas the average "my boss sucks donkey balls and should die" blog isn't.
Just outright insulting people to their face isn't the same thing. It lacks any kind of finesse.
There is no insinuation or irony in telling a pregnant woman that her unborn son will be a nerd and never even see female genitals. It's just a very very nasty thing to say to a mother. It ranks almost up there with saying "I foresee that your son will die of cancer."
And dunno, maybe I'm just deffective or not judgmental enough to find that kind of thing funny.
And again, it's not even about SW and its fans, seein' as I'm not one. You know, I'm the guy who posted on
I'd still find it not funny against anyone, though. Jocks, prom queens, rappers, bad managers, you name it. E.g., God knows I've posted a lot against bad management, but if anyone went to a management convention and started outright insulting random managers... dunno, I don't think I'd find that funny either.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Interestingly, clothe these people in football (soccer) kits, move location to wembley ticket office, include the mindset that eats from plates with club logo and drinks from mugs with club logo (also the wallpapers, bedsheets etc)
and you have a socially accepted soccer fan
bah!*@%!
Another one was Carrie Fisher in the slave costume in Return of the Jedi.
Hard to believe Mark Hamill is in his late 50's with kids of his own. He's done well as an actor.
Lucas came out pretty well, too, with a personal worth of around 3bn. I could live on that. :)
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
First of all, both Battletech and Chess are board games, played with pieces over a board. Face to face. Both MTG and Poker are card games. That's why I paired them like that: because the medium isn't _that_ different.
Chess is no more and no less a wargame than Battletech or Warhammer: it was in fact designed to be a wargame from the start, modelled after the real armies of that era. (The "bishop" was a war elephant, pawns were footsoldiers, etc.) When two people meet to play chess, it's no more and no less playing a battle than in Battletech. Except one makes you some intellectual elite, the other makes you a loser.
I'm not even talking about playing the online versions of either. (Although I can vouch for at least MegaMek as an excellent online implementation of Battletech. Open Source too. Check it out on Sourceforge.) In both cases the people are face to face, but in one of the cases that makes them nerds without a life or something.
So why is it that spending the weekend playing Poker is OK, but spending the weekend playing MTG past an age would get half the people looking down on you? Heck, if anyone heard that a co-worker lost $2000 at poker, they'd probably pat them on the shoulder and show some compassion. (Even if the kind of compassion to an addict.) But if anyone heard that an adult co-worker spent $200 (i.e., a tenth of that) on MTG cards, chances are good they'd think "gee, what a loser nerd".
Why?
Or how about football? Don't tell me that's not escaping reality, even though it doesn't involve stormtroopers or dwarves. (Although it does involve equally silly outfits.)
Now if I gathered myself and three friends on the couch and watched some good ol' american football, it would be ok and socially acceptable. But if the exact same 4 people, on the same couch, and in front of the same TV, played a 4-player game of, say, Gauntlet Legends, it would be a case of "gee, such nerdy losers. Grow up, get out more."
Why? What's so different between the two. What makes one an ok and socially acceptable way to spend your life, and the other some pathologic refuse for losers? It still involves the same people, they still meet in person, etc. Why is one of them somehow so unsocial, and why does meeting people count as "hiding from people"?
Or ok, you've met with your friends in a park, or at a cigarette break at work, and you're talking. Social enough, right? Yes, well, if you talk about yesterday's football game, it's social. But if the same people talk about yesterday's RPG or video game session, you're a bunch of nerds and losers.
Maybe it's the costumes that make it be bad? Well, no. Going in a stupid costume and with a flag painted on your face to a football match, now that counts as socially acceptable. Not the kind of "acceptable" you'd do at the office, mind you, but the kind where everyone understands "eh, people need to vent steam and act like fans now and then" or "eh, it's just a football game, it's normal". But if you go in a Jedi robe to a movie, or in a chain maille to LOTR, eeew, now that makes you such a loser.
Why? Both are wearing a costume to an event.
That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Things that are basically not that different, one counts as OK, one makes you a "loser". Things that _are_ social make you "a lonely nerd" just because they're not _the_ prescribed social passtimes for the age and social group you're pegged in.
And I'd be damned if I find any other good explanation than mindless prejudice and conformism.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
(in Atlanta) We had a Female storm trooper. An initial doubletake revealed a, um, Breast Plate with a different profile, and an exposed middrift.
She pulled it off admirably well. But the whole 'clone trooper' thing muddies the issue somewhat. Perhaps there was a bored lab tech worker.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I happen to be very good friends with one of the professional costumers who does this in her spare time. I also accompanied her to this year's celebration 3. I had never been to one of these, but I figured what the hey, its the last movie and I grew up on this stuff, it'll be a fun vacation.
Well, you might have seen her on TV. She was dressed as Bousch(spelling?) the bounty hunter Leia was disguised as in Return of the Jedi. She was on MSNBC, G4(yeah I shuddered too), and multiple other networks. She even had a number of Lucasfilm and ILM VIPs come up to her and ask for pictures/compliment her on the authenticity of her outfit. She also happens to be about the exact same height and build as Leia in RotJ so, to say the least, she was pretty spot on.
Anyway, why does she do it? She does it because it is a fun hobby, and because she likes to see the kids smile. She's a school teacher too, again in large part because of the kids. That's why a lot of the professionals(like the 501st) are doing this. To these people it is a hobby just like radio controlled airplanes, model boat building, etc. Only they end up wearing the final product. And they do it for the reactions and to see the kids smile and the adults remember a bit of their childhood.
Now, that said, there certainly are a few nuts out there. A lot of the time these people will show up in these lines and such. These are the people who just threw something together in a day or less. These are kind of like the big fat guys with painted beer bellies you see at sports events. The professionals are more like your cheerleaders, and they take their job pretty seriously. They get some nice perks too, the professionals that is. My friend has had private sit down dinners with the likes of Peter Mayhew, Jeremy Bulloch, Ian McDermand, Ben Burtt etc. You get to meet some neat people apparantly
Anyway, it isn't something I would choose to do as a hobby, but I gained a lot of respect towards the professionals who do this in their spare time after my trip to Celebration 3. So yeah, laugh, smile, joke, or have fun with them all, thats part of why they are there. But, hopefully this will let you see the people who do this sort of stuff as a serious hobby in a bit different light. I know I did.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
This was one pretty sad theater... we see like 2 or 3 people! I can tell you, the atmosphere was really twelve thousand times better than on that piece of video. Unfortunatly, video cams were not allowed in the theater, so I couldn't grab this wonderful moment. Where else can you see two people disguised as a AT-AT walker? I ask you!