herbiehancock

This is the sunrise view at the library as I arrive early in the morning.  I work in that building on the left . Do you remember a couple of weeks ago I told you about my computer and printer woes at the library?  My hard drive crashed and my printer refused to recognize the toner cartridge.  The computer guy ordered the hard drive for the computer and two new printers for me, and they were delivered, but he then had some unexpected surgery which kept him away from the library for about a week.  Since almost all of the work I do at the library involves the computer in some way, I was stuck unable to do what I needed to do for my job.  So I filled my time with boring, busy work which made for some very long days. This week, the technology guy was back to work part-time.  While here he realized that it was going to take longer to get my computer and new printers up and running than he first anticipated.  So he moved my files from my office computer to o...

No 330 - Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Director - George Lucas Episode 3 is the prequel which finally (at times) looks like Star Wars. Episodes 1 and 2 are all taking place in the grand old palaces of Naboo or the super busy super-city of a Coruscant - places which are massively different from the general aesthetic of the original trilogy. However, after the scroll of episode 3, we get to see the old school Star Destroyers back in action. We're beginning with an inter-galactic dog fight and it all feels like star wars. And yet, what Lucas has managed to do is take the basic designs of Star Wars and use CGI to make it feel wrong. Lets start out with that initial dog fight. The action is big and dramatic , but there is so much CGI thrown into the sequence that it just becomes a bit of a mess and difficult to follow. But CGI is a bit of a curse for the film. Everything has been replaced with CGI . Every single shot has CGI in it. Let IMDB put it into context with ...

No 449 - Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace Director - George Lucas This may be controversial, but you know what? Whilst there are some massive MASSIVE flaws with the film (which I'll discuss in a bit) - there are some really exciting bits. Lets focus on the positive shall we. Firstly, there is something which I've omitted from my previous Star Wars blogs - John Williams' excellent score. It is always a dramatic highlight of every film, underpinning the action with a real sense of drama and excitement. When it comes to the new trilogy, the score has been dramatically improved. I mean, cast your ear holes over at the frankly amazing ' Duel of the Fates ' which acts as Darth Maul's theme. It is a frankly epic and terrific piece of music. John Williams is an amazing composer (it is such lazy blogging to continuously point to another person's blog.... but still ). In fact, besides John Williams score, Darth Maul is probably the saving grace of the first f...

No 3 - Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back Director - Irvin Kersher What is it that makes this film so awesome? It is the film where George Lucas fully understands his vision and wisely puts it into the hands of a better director. Where the cast feel more comfortable with their roles and perform them fantastically. It is a film which is wonderfully wonderfully bleak. A New Hope is a great film and introduces ideas such as the Jedi and the lightsaber (the buzzing sound of lightsabers will always make me geekily excited) - however it isn't Empire that the full idea of the Jedi is realised. We first hear and see the Emperor (Grand Moff Tarkin having mysteriously vanished) and we begin to learn some of the other powers of the force. The audience, like Luke, is guided through this new world by Yoda. Possibly one of the greatest mentors ever put to film. So, not only is the world richer in theology, it also becomes far richer in location. A New Hope is mainly spent inside s...

No 22 - Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope Director - George Lucas I had a serious ponder as to what order to watch the Star Wars films. Should it be 1,3,4,5,6 or 4,5,6,1,3 (2 didn't make it into the list.....) - in the end I chose to pick with the order they were released, and I'm glad I did. I promise not to moan too much about the re-issue, and the constant fuckery that George Lucas does with these films ( The Incredible Suit did it much better here ), but what I will complain about is that if I wanted to watch the original film I had to trawl through the special features to find it. Also, the film was exactly as it was in the 70's, which meant that it had had no digital remastering. So I ended up watching a copy with worse sound and picture than my old VHS copies. But it was worth it not to get all the bullshit added stuff. Don't get me wrong - I can see the appeal of making the lightsabers slicker, or making the explosions better, or making the battles more epic.....

more YouTube digging! Empire Strikes Back 1950s style trailer