Sandman  wrote:   
   : Look at it the other way around - when the film is owned not by the   
   : artist but by the movie company and they have butchered the artists   
   : vision of the movie and the final product looks nothing like the   
   : artwork he had in mind from the start.  I'm sure you're familiar with   
   : movies like Brazil and Blade Runner just to mention two obvious ones.   
      
   That seems like a different issue to me.  Perhaps you can clarify?   
      
   Something else I was thinking of, was the loss of some 80% of feature   
   movies during the silent era.  I know why it happened (not through any   
   deliberate nefarious reason), and just think that it is unfortunate,   
   because they were important artistic achievements that we cannot see.   
    Whatever the reason, whatever the legality, I think it is unfortunate   
   when a revolutionary work of art cannot be seen.  SW won oscars for   
   special effects and editing (among other things), and so I think it is   
   unfortunate that we can't see the effects and the editing that won the   
   oscars in 1977.  Watching the SE, there is no way to tell which effects   
   were the ones that revolutionized filmmaking, and which effects are new.   
      
   : And don't forget the Star Wars Holiday Special, which is more close to   
   : the subject at hand. I'm sure you'd have no problem letting GL hunt   
   : down every single copy and burning it.   
      
   He'd have to pry my copy out of my dead hands! :)   
      
   : GL is special in this case since there is no middle man that owns his   
   : work as opposed to the above examples.   
      
   True, it is a singular case in many respects.   
      
   : I disagree. There are very few Star Wars fans that prefer the   
   : originals to the special editions. Many dislike certain aspects of the   
   : SE, but still like most of them more than the originals.   
      
   I think a far more accurate description, is that there are very few people   
   that even realize that the new releases aren't the theatrical versions.   
   Lucas has long stopped putting "SE" on his releases.  The recent Fox   
   75th Anniversary box set lists the Star Wars track as being "1977".   
   I don't see how anyone anymore would learn that there is a difference.   
   I was listening to the radio while driving last year (a daytime talk show),   
   and the co-hosts were talking about how inferior the 1977 effects were to   
   the prequel effects, and they used the Jabba scene from the SE as their   
   example of a bad 1977 effect!  And these are alleged Star Wars fans.   
      
   Most fans I know prefer the original versions.  But you and I probably hang   
   with a set of differently-inclined fans, so I'm not sure either of us could   
   lay claim to which is more popular.  Besides, most people who see the two   
   side-by-side would be comparing a restored anamorphic copy, to one that   
   many believe was intentionally made non-anamorphic so that it would suffer   
   by comparison.  It's little wonder that many casual viewers would wrongly   
   conclude that the original versions looked like crap, when in fact they   
   were spectacular 70mm marvels, every bit as sharp as the SE looks today.   
   The sound in fact was better, as the more recent versions are overcompressed   
   and have the rear channels inadvertently swapped.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)