Slashdot Mirror
Empire Strikes Back Director Irvin Kershner Dies at 87
bigredradio writes "Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner died at his home in Paris after suffering from illness, his goddaughter Adriana Santini confirmed to the AFP Monday. He was 87."
A sad day, that was the best movie of the series IMO. Too bad he didn't do more of them.
be with him.
Will make him more powerful than ever.
as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
indefinitely...
he didn't shoot first.
NOOO!!!!!
In all seriousness though, RIP Mr Kershner. May the force be with you.
Condolences to his family (well ok, not that they'll read this). Sad that I have no idea what else he did besides TESB.
Sounds like a good opportunity for Spike to get one more in before the end of the year.
I prefer to believe he is merely frozen in carbonite.
That being said, I recall the AFI Tribute to George Lucas, where Lucas openly admitted he couldn't write dialog. And Harrison Ford blasted him for writing dialog. Lucas is very good at coming up with a basic story and innovating at effects. But he isn't great at getting acting performances from actors, nor writing dialog. He knew he had these limitations, and thusly he allowed others to write the scripts and direct on Empire and Return of the Jedi.
So why exactly did he demand to write and direct the prequels? Wouldn't you want to put the best product forward and work around your personal limitations?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
The someone to OpenOffice, "Use the fork, Luke. Use the fork."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I just added Forbidden Planet to my Netflix queue, and noticed Empire was one of the "more like this...." features. Spooky. Was this because it also featured the work of a just-deceased person? Or did God just order up the same movie, and decided that he wanted "more like this" and took Kershner too? If it's the latter, then Bill Shatner and/or Leondard Nimoy may be in trouble, because The Search for Spock was suggested next to Empire; and Rod Taylor of the 1960 The Time Machine (also suggested to me) is getting on in years, and might want to be extra careful for a while as well.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
He also directed the understated and underrated (IMO) Never Say Never Again.
It just figures that the one Star Wars movie that didn't suck harder than Miley Cyrus while getting her first record contract was the one that George Lucas didn't direct. Too bad Lucas had to direct the others.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Who will be number 3?
Stephen King, dead at 63
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Solid article on Kershner and his push-pull relationship with Lucas:
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/col/srag/1999/05/13/kershner
Kershner was too ill to accept Lucas' offer to direct Phantom Menace. One wonders what his sensibilities for human drama and actual tension would have done to that cartoon.
Or more likely: People have gotten word of both deaths and Netflix (automatically) noticed that people who got the first movie also got the second and thereby suggested it to you.
Just a case of a simple program doing what it's programmed to do and accidentally appearing creepy.
informative and posted logged in, kudos, sir!
I'm sad to see a great man passing. I don't think he got enough credit for directing the best of the Star Wars series. Rest in peace.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Or it just suggested them both because they are both science fiction.
Despite Netflix actually having a suggestion algorithm contest, it still seems really, really simple and basic.
ESB was the best of all the SW movies, IMO
Am I the only one that had to double-take because of the "Entertainment:" prefix on the title?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Kershner wasn't available. And the pressures on George Lucas were very different. The original was made pretty much as a self-financed project with the powers that be thinking "meh, if he fails it is his money, if he succeeds, we got a nice flick out of it that sells a few tickets to the kids".
And then Star Wars happened. And he got pretty much a green light on the 2 sequels because NOBODY understood just what the fuck had happened.
Many people don't understand anymore just what effect Star Wars had. The world, of entertainment at least, was shattered and it tooks years, no decades before the rest of the world recovered. We haven't had a movie on the scale of Star Wars until the Lotro trilogy. Pure escapist a thrill a minute fantasy ride. It just wasn't done back then and nobody understood just how a simple movie that is at best a bland copy of ancient stories often told better did so amazingly well.
The HYPE for the pre-quels was insane. Only Peter Jackson can begin to understand the pressure to deliver anything close and he at least had the advantage that he was doing something new to him. If he failed, people would just say that he failed because he sucked. Not that he had once succeeded and then failed. Never being a genuis is far easier then being an ex-genius.
And Lucas was pegged in, there are things you can't do anymore. The actors from A New Hope were relatively unknown. Yes yes, Alec Guinness was known. Okay, but from WHAT exactly? Could he pull the same with the new movies or did he have to get some known names because that is the way you make triple A titles?
Could he get away with dwarves in silly costumes and a very simple camera trick to transport us to an alien planet (the two suns, a classic piece of cinematography). No, been there, seen that. The audience expected more.
George Lucas was set an impossible task. A story that was nothing more then a couple of words in an 20 year old script to explain some backgrounds of two dimensional characters. And an audience used to full CGI wonder lands expecting the same mystique as the first movie to truly transport us to an alien civilization we had visited over and over again.
Yes, he screwed up and he screwed up big time. But my god, so did everyone around him. The actors SURELY could have acted better. Why couldn't any of the newbies pull an Alec Guinnes or Harrison Ford? Why did none of his helpers pull the movie up like his wife and others had done with the originals?
The original three movies are a coincedence, a happy cojuction of the right people meeting at the right time with the right frame of mind. The pre-quels are the example of a product designed by a commitee were nobody dares to upset the chairman.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
One wonders what his sensibilities for human drama and actual tension would have done to that cartoon.
Yeah - we're really going to miss Ewoks "emoting".
RIP
May the Force be with you
'twas the best movie of the three by far
A great disturbance in the Force as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
AND
Wish he had made more
The Ewoks were only in Return of the Jedi, and he didn't direct that one.
He specifically turned Lucas down after reading the ROTJ script, saying "he didn't believe it."
So thanks for helping me make my point.
And they were Lucas idea, of course.
-- dnl
So thanks for helping me make my point.
One of the makers of nerd culture has passed away, and already we have people fighting.
I have a bad feeling about this...
My death pool is doing really well this year. If Woody Allen would just join Messers. Kershner and Nielsen I'll pocket $1000.
Come on, Woody, give in to the ennui! I hear Heaven is a lot like Manhattan!
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Kershner died in Los Angeles, not Paris. Hollywood Reporter seems not to have read the article they link to.
You are, Number 6.
I've read that the original screenplay was written by a woman who died early in production who didn't get much credit for her influence on the script. Any more info, Fandom?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
There are a lot of other (and better) science fictions films in their library, so there's likely more to it than just a common genre.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The Force will be with him, always.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Marsha Lucas edited the first two movies, then george became a workaholic and they divorced. downhill ever after imho. editing is key to a great film, or so i have heard from film geeks. Tarantino's editor Sally Menke, died and ... i dont think it will be the same without her.
I did give you a +1 Funny mod, but... :P
The standard "bad singer performs sex act in order to secure record contract" canard gets a little old IMHO.
I presume the executives, superproducers, et cetera are professionals happy with the piles of cash they can get from such performers, and look for chicks elsewhere. Specialization FTW.
With Miley, I figure the famous father pulling strings had something to do with it, eh, ahh, "networking". (Likewise, I wonder what having a songwriter mother did for Ke$ha's career.)
Also, though I'm no fan of Miley in particular, stuff can be entertaining even if it's not _good_, due to the energy/attitude of the performer (ah, but the best acts are those who have that energy/attitude level and are really good. :P)
Yeah, but it's probably just an actor or director or key grip or something.
"You may like this film because it has the same best boy as this other film you liked!" :)