(no subject)

[heidi]

The new cover of Entertainment Weekly is so cute; it's a 1977 photo of Luke and Leia and Han and Chewbaca and it's just wonderful. I think they should've switched to a 70s style font for the magazine title and just gone with the mood.

And Dalton Ross did a wonderful 10 Things We Didn't Know, where he gets gleefully snarky. I would love to watch these three DVDs with Dalton chatting over my shoulder because he would *get it*. So would Kevin Smith, whose reaction to the changes is something I would love to know as well.

I am undecided about buying the DVDs, myself. I do own the Originals, pre-1997t-weaks, on VHS, but how long will they last? Sigh, maybe I should get these and just resolve not to unbox them unless and until my VHS versions die. Or maybe I should get them and watch them and save the original VHS ones for my boys, so they see the films as they were originally and so properly made.

George gave an interview to EW, and there was one question he was asked, where his answer really upset me, my sister, her husband and my husband.


EW: Say that it's 2010 and I'm a 10 year old coming to Star Wars movies for the first time. Should I start with IV or I?

GL: Your order should be I, II, III, IV, V, VI. Part of hte fun for me is that one generaiton will have seen it backwqards. For the next generation that sees it from I to VI, there are a lot of things in IV that were just fantastic [in 1977... But] what's really important is hte story and hte development of the characters. Now, once you get to IV, you know Darth Vadar's hte main character because you saw him [in previous movies]. So when Sarth Vadar walks in, you say, Oh, my God. Now, when you come across Princess Leia you know that's his daughter right away and you htink, doe she know? No, he doesn't know. Or does he know? And when you cut down to the planet and see Luke, you go, oh my God, that's Darth Vadar's son and Ben Kenobi has been waiting all this time to send him on his adventures. You're waiting for them to realise who everybody is. So it is a completely different movie.

Then, I choked a bit, and realised, what this needs`
[Poll #352098]

Comments

[jlh.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with George is power. Absolute unquestioned power. He had one really good idea, and man, he's run with it.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Makes you fear for JKR, no?

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Only in that she hasn't been using an editor.

But not really, for thee reasons:

1--She started at the beginning, and I don't think she's going to get too cute with her plots. (In fact, with Sirius being cute about secret keepers she's almost saying Keep It Simple, Stupid.)

2--She's ending at seven. If she keeps going, I'll be concerned but it sounds to me like she probably won't.

3--Writing books is less collaborative than making films, yet we have evidence that she isn't a total control freak because she lets the movie people do as they like. What really upsets me about Lucas is the way that his need for control leads him to squander all these lovely resources, like actors and crews and the like.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Re #3 - yeah, you know you have a problem when one of your leads says, "please kill me off."

[cleverthylacine]

When JK jumps the shark, if she hasn't already, she's going to do it the way Anne Rice did. She's already starting to have exponential growth in the size of her volumes, she's no longer being edited, and she's begun contradicting herself. She hasn't banned fanfic nor do I think she will, but she has developed an unhealthy preoccupation with making sure her fans think just like she does, which is never going to work.

It's so sad, watching people go down this road.

[no-remorse.livejournal.com]

I think this is a bit unfair. Rowling still has an editor, but oviously Emma Matthewson has started to edit the later volumes differently than the earlier ones.That's either the effect of Rowling being solely responsible for a large percentage of Bloomsbury's profits or the fact that since GoF the American edition is edited at the same time as the British, so that Rowling's editors do not only have to make compromises with the author but also with each other. (Rice doesn't get edited at all.)

And as Rice's volumes are still kind of the same size as her earlier stuff the dramatic increase in size of HP is not really Ricean, is it?

she has developed an unhealthy preoccupation with making sure her fans think just like she does, which is never going to work.

This is the only thing I agree with (although I have no idea whether Rice does something similar or not), Rowling has become really a bit too eager to present the One True Reading of a character recently. It's one thing to complain about people taking Lockhart for her ex-husband, it's another to diss people who think Draco, Snape or Lucius as interesting as movie-goers in love with pimply Tom Felton. (Whose appeal I will never, ever understand. I am sure he is a nice bloke, but he is not the reason I would attempt a redemption-worthy Draco reading.)

I don't get it. Rowling should know that as an author you have your chance at suggesting a one true reading only once - when you write your novel and when you have Draco suggesting Hermione should stay out of the Death Eaters' sight, then you have ever so slightly not-so-evil Draco, so any Draco redemption speculation is Rowling's fault. Any reading that has Draco as witty is based on his sometimes quite apt, mean comments about Hagrid's lessons, for example. That she doesn't realise that people like something, she wrote, and not Tom Felton's creation, is absurd, but that's the situation - not only with Draco, but also with Snape and other characters.

[zorb]

I can't be the only one getting Lucas = Voldemort vibes now, can I?

[chickadilly.livejournal.com]

Wah. :(

I was thinking Lucas=Palpatine if the rumours about all of this are true.

Maybe there needs to be an icon of Lucas morphing into Tom Riddle or something ...

Wah. :(