Dying comet offers celestial spectacular - Yahoo! News UK
Seems to be worth a look. I'll certainly be doing so as long as Scotland doesn't do the usual & go cloudy throughout the entire event...
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Didn't We Just Say...?
But didn’t we just say…?
I noticed today that the courts have overturned a Home Office decision to deny a crowd of Afghan hijackers asylum in the UK.
Now, apart from the fact that they also quashed their convictions on a technicality isn’t this just the kind of thing all that furore about not deporting convicted criminals is about? Okay, as I just said, their convictions were quashed on a technicality but the fact remains that these men used guns and explosives to terrorise the crew and passengers of a plane and clearly committed several crimes. Doesn’t that make them exactly the kind of people we don’t want running around here?
I noticed today that the courts have overturned a Home Office decision to deny a crowd of Afghan hijackers asylum in the UK.
Now, apart from the fact that they also quashed their convictions on a technicality isn’t this just the kind of thing all that furore about not deporting convicted criminals is about? Okay, as I just said, their convictions were quashed on a technicality but the fact remains that these men used guns and explosives to terrorise the crew and passengers of a plane and clearly committed several crimes. Doesn’t that make them exactly the kind of people we don’t want running around here?
FINALLY
FINALLY…
So, George Lucas seems to have finally listened to his fans and is to release unaltered editions of the original Star Wars Trilogy on DVD. News here: http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/release/video/news20060503.html
It’s probably too late for a lot of us as owners of the original video tapes who were technically savvy enough already transferred them, but it’s nice to know that he’s listening.
That said, I do think there were actually some improvements here and there and all of them are exactly the kind of thing CG imagery is actually good at. The improved vistas in Cloud City, for example, or the new shot of Jabba’s sail barge were great. We don’t actually need to see the “Emperor’s Slugs” and, though it was nice to have the right face on the hologramme of him in Empire the new lines were so clunky as to be embarrassing.
But the badly-done Jabba scene – which he was right to cut in the first place – is going and, most importantly: Han shoots first!
That last always showed me how little George actually understood his own characters and just how much he undermined the Solo character by having him sit there meekly and wait to be shot at before killing Greedo. The point George somehow completely missed is not that this was a cold-blooded killing inappropriate in your hero, but that it shows Han could have become a bad guy unless he had met up with Luke & Ben. In many ways the ‘second’ trilogy is about redemption. Not just Anakin’s, but Han’s, too.
Thanks for giving it back to us, Mr Lucas.
So, George Lucas seems to have finally listened to his fans and is to release unaltered editions of the original Star Wars Trilogy on DVD. News here: http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/release/video/news20060503.html
It’s probably too late for a lot of us as owners of the original video tapes who were technically savvy enough already transferred them, but it’s nice to know that he’s listening.
That said, I do think there were actually some improvements here and there and all of them are exactly the kind of thing CG imagery is actually good at. The improved vistas in Cloud City, for example, or the new shot of Jabba’s sail barge were great. We don’t actually need to see the “Emperor’s Slugs” and, though it was nice to have the right face on the hologramme of him in Empire the new lines were so clunky as to be embarrassing.
But the badly-done Jabba scene – which he was right to cut in the first place – is going and, most importantly: Han shoots first!
That last always showed me how little George actually understood his own characters and just how much he undermined the Solo character by having him sit there meekly and wait to be shot at before killing Greedo. The point George somehow completely missed is not that this was a cold-blooded killing inappropriate in your hero, but that it shows Han could have become a bad guy unless he had met up with Luke & Ben. In many ways the ‘second’ trilogy is about redemption. Not just Anakin’s, but Han’s, too.
Thanks for giving it back to us, Mr Lucas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
