[QUOTE=George Lucas]
I’ve worked hard enough and earned enough to fail for the rest of my life. And I’m gonna do it!! - About making art films that he admits no one will want to see.
[/QUOTE]
What a load. This is his defense for making whatever the opposite of an “art film” is–a garbage film?–that no one wants to see?
What a load.
[QUOTE=gaffa]
Assuming he doesn’t get his by a bus, American Grafitti and these later films will be the ones that will define his legacy - as well as the technological changes to film-making he pioneered.
[/QUOTE]
Lucas’s legacy will be, beyond any doubt or question, “Star Wars.” It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference what he does for the rest of his life; Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are what he’ll be remember for. “The Force” will be in every newspaper story about his death.
This “Lucas made the movies he wanted” excuse is interesting, but I don’t for an instant believe he intended to make BAD movies. But that’s what he did. So, frankly, no, I don’t believe he got what he wanted.
I thought the girl who played Pearl in Night of the Hunter was pretty bad, but most of the articles I’ve read disagree. I realize acting is difficult for a four or five-year-old, but the little girls in Ponette and Forbidden Games were amazing.
He’s gotten quite a head start, then.
[QUOTE=gaffa]
His experiments “Sound Droid” and “Edit Droid” became Pro Tools and Avid respectively.
[/quote]
Hate to burst your bubble, sparky, but Avid was founded in 1987. They showed the Avid/1 in 1989. They bought Edit Droid and Sound Droid from Lucas in 1993, at a time when Avid was already a well known product and company. Meanwhile, Digidesign (maker of Pro Tools), was founded in 1983, and launched Pro Tools in 1991, and had squat to do with “Sound Droid”
[QUOTE=TWDuke]
I’ve somehow managed to miss every Dakota Fanning film, but seeing her listed along with Haley Joel Osment and Brandon de Wilde makes me think she may be a great young actress who’s worth seeing. This thread is meant as one big whoosh, right?It really does seem to break down by age, with Ewan McGregor being the dividing line.
[/QUOTE]
The general concensus about her seems to go like this:
After her first movie: “Wow, what a fantastic actress. She managed to play a child with maturity far beyond her years.”
After her second: “Uh… this seems familiar…”
After her third: “Holy crap! She plays the same ‘child who acts like a 30-year-old’ character in every movie!”
YMMV (everybody’s does. You’ll just have to watch and judge for yourself. But skip WotW. It’s utter crap.)
The kid in Manos: Hands of Fate was atrocious. Then again, so was the movie. 
[QUOTE=squeegee]
Hate to burst your bubble, sparky, but Avid was founded in 1987. They showed the Avid/1 in 1989. They bought Edit Droid and Sound Droid from Lucas in 1993, at a time when Avid was already a well known product and company. Meanwhile, Digidesign (maker of Pro Tools), was founded in 1983, and launched Pro Tools in 1991, and had squat to do with “Sound Droid”
[/QUOTE]
My mistake. I had confused Digidesign with Sonic Solutions:
From that article:
Jeezus. That is just so wrong. Lucas* (Arts, ILM, whatever) didn’t visualize the “timeline” as a software interface. If you want to dispute this, I’ll dig up cites, but a timeline interface to show events was something shown in (my estimation, cites upon my time to google) around 1980-ish, and probably long before. I recall reading articles regarding music editing software that did something like this in the 70’s. MIDI software was doing a bunch of this kind of thing in the mid-80’s. I don’t know what the genesis of this sort of thing was, but I’m really sure it wasn’t a Lucas project.
ETA: I’m sure Rubin and others did really good, original trials of what interfaces to use, and more importantly, how to make them work – the EditDroid trial using laserdiscs was indeed innovative, and got a ball rolling of a certain sort. It was good stuff. But I don’t see why it should be claimed, whatever its values, as a genesis of this sort of thing.
[/hijack]
[QUOTE=gaffa]
Name one.
[/quote]
One toady? Whoever told him that a seven year old protagonist was an, “Ace idea Mr. Lucas, true genius!”
Unlike Rodriguez he hasn’t directed anything of worth since 1977.
I didn’t say he wasn’t rich. I said he’s an idiot.
Please. They weren’t throwaway popcorn movies, they were embarrassing failures by an arrogant fat-head who didn’t think he’d actually have to work to continue the one set of good ideas he ever had. He’s pathetic. He’s the fat burn out rock star who comes back to stage after thirty years and hasn’t practiced guitar since his last concert. He should be ashamed and we should pity the utter immensity of his failure.
You’re wrong. Thanks for your peculiar ideas though.
I don’t think anyone’s disputing that Lucas (and his many companies) has had a huge impact on the industry or that he’s made a couple of cool movies. I think that what happened to him as he got older was that he found that he enjoyed the technical aspects of film making much more than dealing with actors. His biggest problem is that he can’t seem to let anyone other than himself have any kind of control of the film; he wants to do everything himself. What he needs is a co-director to direct the actors and he can do all the fun stuff.
I would also nominate the kid from Kubrick’s The Shining, only I’m not even sure that was a real kid.
[QUOTE=gaffa]
<snip> <responding to the fact that SW Ep I - III were poorly written and acted>
Yes, they were. They were intended to be so. They were Saturday morning serials with a huge budget. He got what he intended. But if you haven’t seen American Grafitti or THX-1138 you have no idea what he is capable of producing when he’s not creating a huge budget popcorn movie. IMDB doesn’t list any of them yet, but Lucas plans to make arty films next:
[/QUOTE]
Sorry but a genre film, like Star Wars can be well written and have good performances. See the Indiana Jones movies. Generally well written and generally well acted. Those are the Saturday morning serials films.
As far as his future projects, I’ll watch them and then judge them.