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. Rollerball is 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 From Outer 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.