Comm Station
With Darren Maxwell
Everyone loves picking up a bargain, and a few
months ago I saw one that nearly had me scrambling for my
cheque book. One of the most expensive books I’ve ever
seen was being sold at a Collins Bookseller, drastically
reduced –they were practically chucking them away! Yep, The
Star Wars Chronicles - which was originally priced at
$350 – was now available for the paltry sum of $195!
Then the dreaded GST kicked in and the price rocketed back up
to around $215. Guess who’s spewin’ he didn’t
get one before July 1?
Just as I was typing that last paragraph,
someone’s mobile phone went off in the office here and
the ring was The Thunderbirds tune. Unfortunately
because the office is so crowded, I don’t know who’s
phone it was. Hmmm, I’ll have to wait and see which
staff member here has a tendency to walk like a
“super” marionette.
Everyone has a dream, and for some of us that
dream does come true. Melbourne Star Wars identity
Justin Dix, famous for creating the award winning amateur Star
Wars inspired film Bounty Trail, was blessed with
the opportunity of a lifetime some months back – working
on Star Wars Episode II in Sydney. His role was the
controller of R2-D2, however it wouldn’t surprise me if
Justin branched off into different areas within Lucasfilm
during his four month “tour of duty”. In any case,
it was a well-deserved award to a very talented person.
Looks like the video people are starting to
see the real threat of DVD. I noticed that the latest release
of Alien comes complete with new behind-the-scenes
footage and extra bits. I wonder how long it will be before a
film on video has the DVD-inspired “director’s
commentary” version available?
Speaking of DVD, I see that the great DVD
revolution isn’t without its drawbacks. Friends of mine
who were serious video tape collectors used to buy their
tapes from England or the US because the variety and quality
was better than on Australian tapes. Now with DVD
they’re buying their disks from the US for around
$A50-$60. Now if DVD is supposed to be so good, why would
they need to import disks instead of buying the cheaper local
ones? Well consider this example for an answer: The
Australian DVD release of The Matrix is available in
widescreen format, but did you know the US DVD of The
Matrix widescreen is even wider! And then there's the
complication of the zoning system - unless your DVD player
has been "modified", you are restricted to the
selection of DVDs available in your region only. Most people
I know with DVD players have either bought a US-zoned one and
buy their DVDs only from the US (usually via the Internet),
or else have their player modified so they're not limited to
the Australian releases, and buy whatever region they want.
So have you been going ape over the latest
“cult TV show” video releases yet? Buck Rogers
in the 25th Century, The Six
Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica - isn’t
it wonderful! But it's a shame that they're only releasing
one or two episodes of each show.
Seems like a science fiction movie is not really
successful until someone makes a Chess set out of it. A
while ago I saw a Star Wars The Phantom Menace computer
chess game. As is often the case with character pieces, they
don’t match up evenly against each other. In this
version Artoo units/Destroyer Droids make up the pawns and
Jar Jar Binks/Battle Droids make up the Rooks (gee I wonder
who’d win those fights). Queen Amidalaand Yoda
make up the white Queen and King, with Darth Maul and Darth Sidious
on the black side – which is an understandable match up.
All in all, this is a good looking set with nicely sculptured
pieces.
Who says videos don’t appreciate with
time? I recently went into a musty old video collector’s
store in Melbourne and found the Classic Star Wars trilogy,
pre-special edition, THX release videos for $160 the lot. HOW
MUCH! Now these may have been the last release of the films
before The Speccy Eddys came out, but paying over $50 for one
video tape is a bit much.
Remember the film Galaxy Quest? A lot
of people loved it because the film showed science fiction
fans at loose in their “natural habitat” of science
fiction conventions. Well, Galaxy Quest isn’t the
only picture on this theme worth checking out. If you’re
a serious science fiction enthusiast, check out the film Free
Enterprise featuring William Shatner as himself. All
things considered it’s a pretty dumb film, but it’s
priceless for its portrayal of sci-fi fans, especially when
everyone keeps quoting lines from sci-fi movies. Also, the
scene in Toys ‘R’ Us when the guy is shocked to
learn that the little kid is about to open his collectable
toy figure is just priceless. When I saw that scene I thought
“hey there’s me”!
Quoting lines from movies reminds me of the
time I attended a bucks day for a FRONTIER’s own
Jeremy Sadler, who decided to spend it go-kart racing on an
outdoor track. It was a great day, but there was one small
problem, it rained… hard. At one point we were all in
our karts parked on the wet grass with the engines switched
off waiting for some other racers to finish. It was cold,
wet, and we had nothing to do while waiting to get going. So
what do you think we did to pass the time? Yep we started
quoting lines from the film Aliens. Considering we all
had our helmets on and couldn’t see the faces of the
people around us, the voices just seemed to be coming from
everywhere. It really was a priceless moment of insanity.
I see that Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar from the
first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation) has
been involved in a film called Trekkies - which should
technically be called Trekkers, but I digress - which
is a documentary about the lives and habits of Star Trek fans.
From what I understand it’s a reasonably objective film
considering how derogatory it could potentially be, however
it does focus on a few who have taken their interest in Star
Trek to the extreme. To be fair, I think everyone knows
someone who has “tipped over the edge” a bit, a
person who perhaps find it difficult to separate reality from
fantasy. And then there’s football fans…
The sci-fi number plate business seems to be
running hotter than ever. Aside from the big list in the last
issue of Comm Station, here are a couple more that were
spotted recently: I guess it’s no surprise that someone
is cruising the streets with the number plate BUFFY
– they must have bought this plate super early
considering there are no incremented numbers attached.
I saw BMEUP (beam me up) not too long ago, which is a
nice little homage to the original Star Trek series. I
also saw a subtle number plate for the Babylon 5 fans,
PPG, which are the hand held guns used by Earthforce.