I have not watched the latest changes Mr. Lucas has made to the movies. I’m not sure I could handle them in my weakened condition!

Happy Surprises

• The complete missing scene of Luke viewing the space battle over Tatooine and telling his friends about it at Tosche Station. This scene with Luke’s friend Biggs was in the comics and story book version when I was a kid and I’ve only seen brief clips of it in documentaries and other extras over the years.
• The animated segment from the Star Wars Holiday Special is included as part of Boba Fett’s costume prototype in the Episode V Collection. The animation is low budget and has some odd character designs but shouldn’t be missed.
• Inclusion of some classic fan films in the Spoofs video including Star Wars Gangsta Rap SE and Troops.
• Several appearances of Star Wars in 70s and early 80s TV shows, including a song and dance number from the Donny & Marie show with Donny and Marie as Luke and Leia (strangely prophetic!), and Mark Hamill on The Muppet Show.
• I really enjoyed all of Dennis Muren‘s special effects commentary in the Interviews sections.
• There are some original episode documentaries that I’m sure were broadcast on television soon after the movies came out. I don’t quite remember seeing them but I got a warm fuzzy feeling while watching them. They’re an interesting contrast to many “making of” segments these days which often is more about selling you on seeing the movie than how the movie was really created.

Onto critiques and other observations…

Some Critiques

• This is not a complete collection of all Star Wars material. There are deleted scenes and documentaries which can be found in some of the previous DVD releases which didn’t make it into the Blu-ray collection. In particular, I was missing some Episode II scenes of Padme and Anakin which were on the DVD releases.
• Pre-vis techniques maybe was instrumental in the development of the prequels but they make for really crappy outakes. Somehow, hand sketched drawings, toy models and even stock footage are easier to look at than low-rez, mostly static SD video graphics.
• The Spoofs video could’ve used fewer SNL and Spike commercials and a few more fan films.
• The Archives need an alphabetical index or some alternative view by topic. The only way to find everything seems to be to dive down by episode and bonus material type (collection, interviews, deleted scenes and concept art). It would be nice to check out all the ships, costumes, planets, etc. at one time.

Other Observations

• A PowerBook Duo with Duo Dock can be seen on George Lucas’ desk while he is talking about writing Episode I. Neat!
• Unlike many Blu-ray menus, the text and graphics are of high contrast and of sufficient size to be visible on my 27″ TV in my bedroom from a distance. Most Blu-ray movie menus seem to be authored on a 30″ monitor, frequently have poor contrast or selection indication of menu items and appear never to be tested on anything smaller than a 46″ TV from seven feet away.
• “Quilting bee” was frequently used to describe the model construction process where modelers are switched around so that boredom or a particular crafting style doesn’t set in. Not being exposed to quilting or knitting, I never would have thought of such a term to describe such a methodology.

For all those people thinking of skipping the Blu-ray edition because of the further changes to the films, you should look past that and enjoy not only a great set of movies but also a treasury of information on moviemaking!

However, Moonraker holds a special place for me. I was a bit young and afraid of Darth Vader when Star Wars first came out so I missed it’s initial run in the theaters. Instead, I got to see all of the pretenders to the throne that came afterwards: Battlestar Galactica, Black Hole, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Battle Beyond the Stars and of course Moonraker. Don’t get me wrong. I love all these films and think they range from ok to modern classics but I’m pretty sure none would’ve made it to the theater without the success of Star Wars.

Moonraker was my introduction to James Bond. While The Talk Show pulls apart the lapses in logic compared to earlier Bond movies, to me as a child it was insane fun. Sure, as an adult I can wonder why would a mock funeral be staged just to kill James Bond and why his gondola becomes a hover craft, but as a kid it was just one insane techno-action sequence after another. A boat with mines and a hang glider for escapes? Yes! Fighting on a runaway cable car? Yes! Escaping death by rocket exhaust? Yes! Marines fighting in space with lasers? Yes! Exploding bolas? I had never seen regular bolas let alone ones that wrap around and explode. Yes!

Now, on reflecting on the movie, maybe it was all too much, but for a 6 year old at the time, it was pretty damn cool. The combination of gadgets, action and sci-fi was great. Does a kid care that elaborate assassination attempts during a funeral procession, while skeet shooting or getting pushed out of an airplane made no sense? Not really. I just took it for granted that was how things work in the James Bond universe. I didn’t see For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy had no impact on me (I think I blocked it out it was so unmemorable) when I saw it during summer camp several years later. Moonraker had cemented itself as my archetype of Bond for years to come and gave me inspiration of what to do with my many space shuttle plastic models beside launch them into space and deploy satellites. But that’s another story.

Ultimate Doom #4 – In general, I really enjoyed the Ultimate Enemy/Mystery/Doom trilogy of series. Ultimate Doom #4 seems to have wrapped up the series, and laid the groundwork for a number of follow on story arcs. A lot of ground was covered including building up Ultimate Spider-Woman’s character, introducing Ultimate Nova, and of course really shaking up the Ultimate Fantastic Four. Like the 616 version, I didn’t follow Ultimate Fantastic Four prior to this series. I seriously had no idea that Ultimate Reed Richards was such damaged goods. Even after these series, I’m not entirely sure of his motivations or what he was trying to achieve in trying to stop science gone rampant in the way that he did. Maybe I have some catch up reading to do. I’m just waiting for a follow on series next year with a wedding getting interrupted by a new big bad from the Negative Zone. Bonus points for this series having a lot of coverage of Jessica Drew / Spider-Woman and having her find a place in the Ultimate Universe.

Ultimate Spider-Man #156 – The Death of Spider-Man starts and it’s a set-up you might expect with Spidey’s major foes escaping and ready to seek vengeance on the teenage wall crawler. Norman Osborn is particularly crazed believing he has divine help in his plans. Given all the references to Spidey’s frivolity and need to get serious about crime fighting the past half year, I expect that Spidey will emerge with some major personal growth from these events, assuming he survives. I’m probably in the minority of readers but I’m hoping that Bagley’s return is a short one. Of course his renditions are the definition of Ultimate Spider-Man, and in some ways the Ultimate Universe as a whole. However, I can’t help but feel he had his time on the series. Both David LaFuente and more recently Sara Pichelli’s work has been great. They’ve really freshened and added energy to the series.

Ok, that’s it for this entry. Next time I’ll try to cover Avengers, New Avengers and any finds of note from WonderCon 2011.

Like pretty much everyone else in the world, I enjoyed his music. I’ll admit I never found the need to purchase any of his albums. He seemed so ubiquitous in the 80s it didn’t seem necessary to pester my parents for his music. Oddly, I did long for the over $100 “Beat It” jacket but settled for a much less expensive, nylon/polyester one that only evoked a feeling of being inspired by the original. By the time the 90s came and I had my own buying power, I had moved on. In our iTunes collection of over 5900 items (we have several hundred CDs as a starting point), there are just 3 songs with Michael Jackson singing: “Thriller,” “Billie Jean” and The Jacksons’ “Can You Feel It.”

Why those songs? I can’t speak of “Billie Jean” since that came as part of my wife’s music collection, but I can trace “Thriller” and “Can You Feel It” back to a birthday party in elementary school. I was fairly introverted as a kid, even more so than now. It was a trait that often got pegged as being aloof, though I’ll admit I did look down on fellow grade schoolers who fooled around during class rather than do their work. Out of the blue one of my classmates, DeForest, I think, invited me to his birthday party. This was unprecedented. Me, invited to an evening birthday party? Of course I’d go.

I can tell you this party was on Friday, December 3rd, 1983 because it was scheduled to coincide with the premiere of the Thriller video on MTV. The party itself was fun, filled with snacks and video game playing, much like parties today. The centerpiece was the premiere. We all gathered in the living room to watch first “Can You Feel It” and then “Thriller.” “Can You Feel It” surprised me as it had this crazy science fiction / fantasy vibe with the Jacksons as super powered beings coming to Earth to spread hope, love and rainbows to the people of the world. Check out the video:

The main feature, “Thriller”, was both more and less cool than “Can You Feel It”. It wasn’t all space/new-age inspired but it was a full story with a beginning (with a twist), a middle (with a different twist) and an ending (with a final twist). It had Vincent Price doing narration, who at that time I knew mostly from the Dr. Phibes films. Who doesn’t know Price’s ending laugh? The werecat and zombie make-up was bad ass, as good or better than anything I’d seen in movies (pretty much limited to VHS rentals at the time due to my age). To top it off, the main dance number was insane! A quarter century later, anyone can raise their arms, sway them back and forth just so and you know what they’re doing. It was just 30 minutes or less for the two videos, commercials, etc. but I remember it so clearly. In fact, most of the rest of the night is pretty foggy in my mind, but being there for that video is cut in stone in my memory. It was a great evening.

So, that’s my Michael Jackson story, on this sad day of his passing. Maybe it’s time to browse iTunes or Amazon for a few more of his songs to add to the collection.

This isn’t the network I used to watch for a solid three hours every night. This isn’t even the network that I would tune into every now and then and be presently surprised to find something new on. I’m wondering if I’ve changed as I’ve grown older or has the staff of [Adult Swim] transformed over the years? They’ve been on what I view as a juvenile, downward spiral of low budget animation and cheap live action shows for a few years now. I know that money doesn’t make a show necessarily better but can we consistently have animation that doesn’t look like it was drawn by a three year old? Can we not attempt a parodies of old Krofft shows filmed in a garage with a green screen, annoying characters and inane plots? Half of the new shows over the last few years make me wonder if I need to be on something to fully enjoy them. Why? I expect better than internet quality programming on the TV, not worse.

Anime seems to be making up a decreasing percentage of the programming. Recently there’s been lots of old Fox programming like Family Guy and King of the Hill (which I enjoy, thank you) as filler. The days between new Venture Bros., Metalocalypse and Robot Chicken are filled with Xavier: Renegade Angel, Saul of the Mole Men, Fat Guy Stuck in Internet and Squidbillies. Did I forget to mention that flip book animation called 12 Oz. Mouse? Then there’s a whole set of “edgy” and inconsistent shows like Tim & Eric and Superjail that always have to go so over the top. Looking at the overall programming lineup on adultswim.com I guess there’s more good than bad but the bad is just so awful and feels out of place.

I’ve enjoyed a few live action shows like Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place and Look Around You but even then I think they might be better served on other networks. I’m just waiting for them to premier an actual reality show. The fake reality show Delocated feels like a first step to their unstoppable degeneration. If [Adult Swim] wants to continue to diversify themselves into live action programming, shows that are trying to be more cleaver than the writers are capable of being and targeting the apparently easily amused, that’s fine, but at what point do they just devolve into being another MTV?

Of course I watched B5 in the day and generally enjoyed the supernatural slant added to Spider-Man while JMS was writing ASM, so I’m confident that he will do FP right. Still not clear when the new FP will be out but hopefully this will help move things along.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see that JMS is also working on a Lensman project. Nifty!

I’ve been looking at ways to improve my photo workflow. Though I’ve been actively taking digital photos for eight years now, I’m still just a part-time hobbyist and don’t really take time to tweak my photos. My current workflow is Adobe Bridge and PhotoShop CS2. It’s real basic usage: exposure tweaking, leveling, cropping and downsampling / sharpening for posting on the web. Occasionally I’ll need to do something more like try to correct the picture’s temperature or white balancing (typically if the home lights are too strong). I could probably get away with just GraphicConverter but I’ve been using PhotoShop since version 3 in college and it feels more natural. Since the majority of my photoshopping is so photo oriented, I’ve gotten trial versions of LightRoom 2 and Aperture 2 to play with.

The TGS 2008 photos were organized, tweaked and posted using my LightRoom 2. I used Jeffrey Friedl’s LightRoom plug-in for the SmugMug posting. LightRoom 2 runs on my 1.5GHz PowerBook G4 with 1GB of memory but it’s a bit pokey. Since I’m not printing and not generating a standalone site, my experience was just with the Library and Develop modules. Loading images feels slow and I’m guessing a good chunk of the time is spent on histogram calculation and other analysis work being done. I haven’t taken the time to see if I could optimize the experience.

Basic editing is easy. In the Library view, there is a histogram and some “quick develop” tools like exposure adjustment. Move to Develop mode allows for cropping, red-eye and other common tools as well as greater control over image’s appearance. A history of the changes to an image is kept and it’s easy to undo changes to get to the original image. This is probably the biggest advantage over something like Bridge / PS CS2 where I typically would copy an image for editing (maybe in PSD format), make my crops and edits there. I would then bulk scale down and usually sharpen up original and edited images for posting, leaving multiple instances of the photos around. With LR2, it’s abstracted out and the originals are left intact while adjustments are applied and updated previews created. Having an integrated workflow with history capability has freed me to try more things. I’m certainly cropping and making minor exposure adjustments more than I have in the past. That’s a good thing.

With my initial experiment with LR2 out of the way, I’m debating the approach for working with my next “roll” of vacation photos. Either A) continue with LR2, making better use of saved settings and trying out more adjustments or B) move to Aperture 2 to be able to more accurately judge the beginner’s learning curve. In any case, it’ll be a few days before I can devote time to grinding through another hundred or two pics.

I decided recently that I needed to recapture some of those memories by adding a Duo to household. You can read more about my PowerBook Duo 2300c auction win on my blog at RetroMacCast.

Content-wise, it was a really good year. After blowing most of Saturday last year, I decided to join in on a block of panels this year (with my mom in her first SDCC attendance!) including Futurama, The Simpsons, Dean Koontz, Dollhouse and BSG. Not knowing much about Dean Koontz’s novels, I found him to be the most surprising entertaining. I guess a good storyteller can both write stories as well as talk about them to an audience. Overall, Futurama was my favorite of the set of panels with the voice talents of John DiMaggio, Maurice Lamarche, Billy West and Katey Sagal on hand to liven things up.

In the exhibit hall, Paramount returned with their free t-shirts but added a collection of Star Trek items including posters, construction crew badges by email and drawings for goodies. Warner Bros. beefed up their bag selection, held the usual group autograph sessions and had a lifesize Watchmen Owlship on display. Fox had what was probably the most useful schwag: a poster tube with strap. Everyone was giving away bags but I think Fox had the lock on the popular poster tube. Now if only someone will start giving out art portfolios next year.

More convention notes after the jump…

I was plesently surprised to see Todd Nauck in the artist alley. He wasn’t listed in the program and I guess was a late addition. As much as I read and collect comics, I’ll admit I’m pretty ignorant about the creators. For whatever reason, his art in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man last year stuck in my head and I was happy to collect a Betty Brant sketch and original art from an issue. My wife and I made the usual rounds to pick up ash cans, art and other goodies from the likes of Adam Hughes, Frank Cho and Dan Brereton.

Speaking of Dan Brereton, his wife (whose name escapes me right now) makes Cuddle Monster Toys, a series of cute, hand made dolls, baby / kids clothing and accessories. Each one is unique with variations in cloth color and positioning of the elements. I picked up a shirt last year with a monster on the front and we added a little teddy bear (with a sort of worried look) to our collection. The teddy has a hard time competing for affection with a two foot tall Snoopy we also picked up at the Con but I think it’s adorable.

Cosplayers get better and better each year with continually impressive displays of imagination and craftsmanship. There was a very detailed Bumblebee making the rounds near the masquerade photo area on Saturday. I made it to a couple of cosplay meetups including the Marvel one which had a great selection of Avengers, X-Men and Runaways. The masquerade itself was good but started even later than usual. The combination of missing out on a chair in the photo area and too many elective late nights / mandatory early mornings meant that I retired early this year and missed the best acts. I think I made up for it in my other pics during the week. See the previously listed photo link at the top for the photos.

I didn’t do too much shopping this year, economizing on space since there’s so much family gear involved in the trip. My main pickups were the Toynami Robot Santa and Santa Bender combo pack and various bits of art including the Todd Nauck page and a couple of cels from Golden Boy. A big shout-out to Nichibei Anime Club where I’ve been buying cels from for eight or nine years now. Interestingly, I didn’t pay for one comic this year. Considering the severe damage I did to my wallet at past conventions, that’s probably a good thing. I also didn’t use my incomplete web comic DB application that’s been in limbo for months. I have new motivation to make progress by the end of September so hopefully I’ll have an update in a few weeks.

That’s my brief wrap-up on San Diego Comic-Con 2008. If I have time, I’ll try to expand on some of the topics over the next week. And if I don’t make the time, just enjoy the photos!