COMM STATION
With Darren Maxwell
The title of the Episode II, Attack
of the Clones has caused a lot of controversy. Some
people believe that the new film really isn’t called Attack
of the Clones at all - thinking it might be another Blue
Harvest or Revenge of the Jedi situation.
Personally I think the name should stay, unless someone at
Lucasfilm was just… cloning around.
August saw us all fill out the national
census, which created a hot topic of discussion with the
question of who was going to put down “Jedi” as
their religion. The Melbourne Star Wars fan club had a
light-hearted discussion at one of its meetings about how a
Jedi religious order might operate in our society. The end
result included Jedi “priests” wearing robes of
flannel to honour George Lucas, sitting atop the backs of
elephants for some reason! Glad it was all for fun.
Have you heard the gossip about the new Star
Trek series Enterprise? It is set pre-Classic
Star Trek, so can you imagine how hard it is going to be
retro-engineering everything so it doesn’t make Classic
Trek look so dated? And heaven help them if they
contradict Star Trek “canon” by showing
something that correspond with what we know from the
“future” Star Trek series. If I had the job
as the Paramount letter opener, I’d be feeling kinda
nervous about now.
When I heard they were remaking Rollerball
it I thought: “Why?” Then a trailer was released,
and I’m still thinking: “Why?” Some films
don’t deserve a remake, especially those films that
clearly don’t date well. Rollerballis a good
example of a 70s bleak futuristic sci-fi film that deserves
to remain in the 70s, and it’s got me stumped how anyone
was able to get funding to remake it.
On the subject of remakes, was it my
imagination or was the end of Planet of the Apes really
confusing? I remember reading in the FRONTIER e-mail list
that the ending was kept deliberately ambiguous, to keep
people guessing about what it all meant. Sounds more like a
case of ….
“We’ve got this great shot to finish
the film, but can’t explain how it happens.”
“Doesn’t matter… chuck it in
anyway, who’s gonna care?”
Want to know the definition of
“annoying”? It’s when you buy a favourite film
on DVD only to find that a “new” version of it has
just been released which includes HEAPS of extra material. I
purchased Plan 9 FromOuter Space a few months ago only
to find that the newer release has the addition of a 45
minute “making of” documentary, arrgh! Other
examples of this first and second release discrepancy are Tron,
The Mummy and The Terminator, which are all
available in both “normal” and
“collector’s edition” format. Makes you fear
buying a film in case another release will come out with even
more “extra bits”.
I guess that’s where the promotion of Star
Wars: The Phantom Menace comes in. I’ve never heard
of a DVD film release getting as much promotion as this one
has received. Containing bucket loads of extra bits and
pieces – over six hours worth, including a George Lucas
commentary - I’m sure it’ll be number one seller
for quite a while. However, can you really believe this will
be the ONLY version that ever gets released? There’ll be
the trilogy release when Episode III comes out,
perhaps some more special editions, then there’ll be the
box set version with the original trilogy…
Whilst on this subject, I noticed they’ve
released a video box set of Jurassic Park and The
Lost World, which is a pretty stupid thing to do
considering the release of Jurassic Park III means
it’s already out of date. No prizes for guessing if
there will ever be a box set of all three films.
I see there’s a huge fracas taking place
with the constant “censoring” of Farscape episodes.
Seems like there are different versions of the show depending
on what part of the planet you live on, not only to fit in
different amounts of ads, but also to water them down to a G
rating. TV stations should realise that to slice-and-dice
popular shows like this will not win them viewers. If
anything the fans will source “complete” episodes
of the show from other places. With the proliferation of
multi-zone DVD players, some fans are already importing the
Farscape DVDs, which are actually being released overseas
ahead of what’s being aired on TV in Australia.
The sci-fi car rego plate search has been a
little quiet this time around, all I’ve seen so far is SMEG
(a cult phrase heard on Red Dwarf) which was on a NSW
black Jaguar.