War of the Stars: A New Hope Grindhoused

Man o man this is fun. I was watching this and thinking what if I was able to watch this while sitting in my 69 Malibu at a drive in. Eating some stale popcorn and drinking flat soda. Memories. This really has the feel of a film made expressly for viewing at a drive in. I stopped it a few times to rewatch a few parts. Laughed gave a few "yeahs", just had a grand time. I was waiting for the previews and intermission countdown. I downloaded the "HD" version even though it's "not"....lol Watch this along with the companion edit. A worthwhile afternoon. Oh wait I forgot to put the speaker back on the pole....damn

Brilliant.

Just watched this today, and WOW! Talk about perfectly blending the old deleted scenes into this movie, awesome job. Blood effects where very welcomed too. I love the look and feel of this edit. Definitely will have friends over to watch this one. Two big thumbs up from me. Great job TMBTM.

Nifty reworking of a classic viewed numerous. Edit incorporates plenty of ugly, deleted footage, making the experience greasier and dirtier. No disrespect intended. This is a snickering subversive retelling that takes its sweet time before slithering into broken territory.

Video - Decent 720p, MPEG 2. Outtakes were all crappy, with poor resolutions and bleached out colours. Editor TMBTM matched the look across the edit, so there was no jarring feature - bonus - feature - bonus recognition. The editor is too professional for his own nature, however, and transitions and edits were smooth and thought out.

Audio - 2 Channel, 448 Kb. Dialogue easy to understand. No subs - and yet - R2D2 is subbed throughout, and it proves to be one smart ass astrodroid. I also wondered about reinserted footage of storm troops on Tatooine. If redubbed, clever dialogue of poorly motivated workforce. The old saw about good help being hard to find applies.

Narrative - An altogether deceptive story that feints like an extended version, but midway begins to weave into a different direction. Having viewed the sequel first - lame, watching out of sequence - I can reassure uncertain readers that the modifications progress logically and bloom in the second installment.

Enjoyment - A lot of this is funny as hell. Storm troopers, who cannot shoot for shit in the original trilogy (Jango must have been rolling in his grave over nth generation clones) in this edit blast resistance left and right. Jawa haters, check this out. As noted, R2D2 is sees all, chatters away, but no one pays attention to him. Probably because he talks too much. A generous assortment of bonus goodies here, and you can’t beat Frances Gall (thank you for not going with the obvious ”Chick Habit”).

I suspect there may be purists who hate anyone tinkering with this installment, scratching at canon. Forget ‘em. This is a gaspipe kick. Go for it.

Wow, this brought me back to my 15 years of working with 35mm film as a projectionist. I love all those spots, cables, cigarette burns, audio skips, missing images, burning frames and all those things I miss in a digital cinema I am working at right now. Other than that have I seen a New Hope a dozen of times in all sort of versions but never as this before. It felt almost like a whole new film, one that was left on a shelf for many years. I never thought Star Wars could be that funny too, with things like crazy dialogue, R2D2 subs and blood splattering effects. You can't give this a low rating for audio and video quality because everything you hear and see was created intentionally. This is what I recommend every fan of Star Wars and the era of 35mm film to see!