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Rediscovered Lucas-Commissioned Short "Black Angel" Released On YouTube
eldavojohn writes: Youtube now offers Black Angel, a short film shown in UK theaters before ESB. What was once thought lost is now found; enjoy. This may be the best half-hour you spend today, even if you must "set your clocks back 34 years," as writer and director Roger Christian advises. (Christian is also known for directing 2000's Battlefield Earth .)
The book was good, but the movie was like... one of the worst movies ever made.
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The SSL certificate for the video source won't validate, making the youtube video halt downloading after a while.
Maybe the only good film ever directed by some guy who worked on Star Wars and has a tie to Lucas. I guess it gets a weak "yea" but this guy is not a good director. I had an unusual chance a few years ago to have a personal conversation with an actor or actress (I'm unwilling to name who I talked to) who appeared in "Prisoner Of The Sun" which finally got released last year and was directed by Christian. I specifically asked about that film and the person who acted in it said that they had doubts that it would ever see the light of day and they didn't think it was probably going to be very good if it did. Based on the IMDB rating, it looks like that person was right. I can say that the person I talked to did not have any negative comments about Christian himself, they just didn't really have a good feeling about that movie. Not sure given the track record that I'm going to invest 30 minutes in watching this one.
Christian is also known for directing 2000's Battlefield Earth
Which is, among other things, a very funny movie - after i saw it, i always wondered why it is considered "one of the worse movies" (as i read about in some "lists")... people missed its humor.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
I thought it was a total piece of crap. If this is their idea of drumming up interest in a new film, I'll pass thank you. I'm angry because I lost a half hour of my life over that piece of crap. 34 years ago it would have also sucked!
if you're a VIRGIN!
I have watched it, and I know the story as shown, but there are a lot of symbolism which escapes me.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
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Good god. I only watched it cause I had a half hour to kill before picking up the kid from school. The time would have been better spent picking lint from my navel.
No Jessica Alba. Doh!
This may be the best half-hour you spend today
Only if the other 23.5 hours were spent getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick. What a load of crap.
"Men's Rights Activists Call for Boycott of 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' Citing Feminist Agenda"
http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...
The real money shot of this article is this quote from the "men's rights activist":
Got that? "..a piece of American culture."
You are welcome on my lawn.
You're thinking of *Dark* Angel, this is *Black* Angel.
It was actually called "White Angel", until 2008 when Lucas decided it wasn't urban enough, and CG'd the titular character.
Star Wars Holiday Special.
That is all.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
There is another Dark Angel, it's got Dolph Lundgren in it.
"I come in peace!"
"And you go in pieces, asshole."
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Surely this is some kind of joke.
Yeah, they used decent cameras, but everything else is so... I don't even know what to call it.
I actually had to stop halfway through it to carefully consider whether I'd had an aneurysm of some kind, or perhaps ate a bunch of LSD and forgot I did it.
I imagine Lucas is probably still mad about this thing.
You just have to read it early enough... Like when you're 11-14.
Old enough to be interested in SciFi beyond simple space opera but not yet learned enough to be repelled by bad or pulpy writing. Though Hubbard sorta-kinda covered his ass there by claiming in-universe that the book was intentionally written that way.
E.g. On the inside cover of my library copy someone wrote "money is an idea backed with confidence".
Someone found that information so novel and fascinating, they had to write it down.
On the inside cover of the book they've read it from.
Just try imagining what could someone write on the inside of the DVD case of the movie.
Also, the book is full of some really fine pulpy action and adventure.
And it even manages to make negotiations and CONTRACTS exciting.
The movie literally put me to sleep first (and only) time I saw it.
Plus, the book is not dumb enough to have them flying harriers and raiding Fort Knox and doing all other nonsense which was not in the book.
Later though... One might find the book even more fascinating, but in a different way.
Like how much it echoes stories intentionally written to be a satire of an ultra-right pulp fairytale.
All of it clearly without the author realizing how steeped in those ideas his writing was.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In the book, teleporters all check in with the homeworld at a set date to send back ore and to replenish their atmosphere, food and workforce stock.
As there is no hyperspace communication or FTL travel, once the Psychlo world gets turned into a "radioactive sun", everyone just keeps checking in, one at a time, and blowing themselves up.
To clear up...
Not every planet got turned into a sun. That happens only to the main planet which had that special breathing-gas of theirs which reacted violently to uranium.
On other planets, only their central mining camps around the teleporting platforms explode - with all their remaining supplies of atmosphere and food.
Which they can only get from their home planet.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Even their aircraft worked on a form of teleportation.
As for the nukes... it was actually a case of many dirty bombs exploding under an energy shield, down through a hollowed out core of the planet which was mined for hundreds of thousands of years.
Here:
Finally they projected it. What a brilliant picture! They had thought it might be fuzzy such as you get with heat waves. But the light that had traveled for over a year was crystal-clear and straight.
There was the imperial City of Psychlo. Circular tram rails, streets down from its cliffs like conveyor belts. They even carried the idea of mining into their city design.
Huge, bustling Psychlo! The center of power of the universes. The hub of the great, cruel claw that raked the bones from planets and peoples everywhere. There was the three-hundred-two-thousand-year-old monster itself, spread out in its sadistic and ugly might!
Neither Jonnie nor Angus had ever seen a live city of that size before. A hundred million population? A billion? Not the planet, just the city above the lower plain. Look at the trams. Rails that ran in circular spirals. Cars that looked for all the world like mine cars but full of people. Mobs in the streets. Mobs! Not riots. Just Psychlos.
You ever see so many beings? Even in such a tiny size one could see mobs!
They were daunted.
They compared it to their own towns, even to their own ruined cities. These didn't measure up to it at all.
What arrogance to attack anything like that.
They were so awestruck and impressed they hadn't even been looking at the transshipment rig of Psychlo. They missed the beginning and had to track back.
They adjusted the projector lens and position to get the transshipment platform of Psychlo more centered and enlarged.
And then they saw the whole sequence, just as it had occurred right after Jonnie and Windsplitter had raced across the Earth platform.
First, there were the Psychlo workers racing out to leave the platform clear for the incoming semiannual from Earth. There were flatbeds lined up to receive coffins and personnel.
There was the first shimmer of arrival of the Psychlos Jonnie and Windsplitter had knocked down.
Then a small puff.
There were the Psychlo workmen flinching back.
A force screen had gone on! A dome over the platform had closed instantly to contain that small explosion. It could not have been an atmosphere armor cable. Some sort of shimmering, sparkling screen. Transparent but very much there.
Trucks had time to start up before anything else occurred. One huge emergency truck had lunged nearer the platform, evidently to handle the minor blast. A whole minute went by.
Then the first lethal coffin exploded!
A big âoeplanet busterâ nuclear bomb, nestled into a bed of dirty mines.
The force screen held.
The holocaust was contained. The boiling, ferocious blast had not even bulged the screen.
Then another shock as the second coffined âoeplanet busterâ went off.
The screen held! Good lord, what technology to build a screen like that. What power it must take to hold it.
Another shock inside that dome. The third planet buster. It and all its ancient, very dirty atomic bombs. The screen held.
Psychlos were racing toward it from far off. Those near the platform were flattened by concussion transmitting through the screen.
The fourth contained bomb went off. The screen still held.
But the transmitted concussion had hurled the emergency truck backward. Nearby buildings lost their glass.
The ground was shaking as though hit by gigantic earthquakes.
A nearby building suddenly dropped downward as though sucked from below. Other buildings began to go the same way.
The fifth bomb went off!
And seen in slow motion, first narrowly, then more broadly, the entire scene went into a churning, boiling mass of atomic fire.
No, something more! Molten, flaming fire was erupting in spots all over the plain.
They widened the angle quickly.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens