War of the Stars: A New Hope Grindhoused

September 29, 2010 @ 10:23 pm

WOW!!!

AMAZING!!!

FRACKING BRILLIANT!!!

INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!

Just watched this last night and it is the most FUN I have had in a long time! My wife said I had a crazy goofy grin on my face through the whole thing.

When it was over, it left me wanting for more!
More Blood!!! More Jive Talking Darth! More R2D2 Zinger Subtitles! More, more MORE!!!

AUDIO: Hilarious and awesome! I notice no significant issues. 9/10
VIDEO: Absolutely horrible! I loved it!!!! 9/10
VISUAL: Did I mention, MORE BLOOD please! 9/10
ENTERTAINMENT: Oh yeah baby, it was good time! 10/10

Grindhouse edits may not be to everyone’s taste, but I LOVED this! It was just silly fun.
It took a movie I have seen a zillion times, and made it fresh, funny and entertaining again!

Favorite scenes…..
The new twist ending of Darth’s use of the dark side on Luke,
the new RED EYE effects whenever Darth uses the force (totally inspired!!!)
and most of all,
R2D2′s comment about Obiwan not remembering him…. I nearly fell out of my seat from laughing so hard!

THANK YOU for such an entertaining experience!

September 6, 2010 @ 3:54 pm

What else can I say here? Only that the man behind the mask is a absolute genius, loved it, fell about laughing at some of the scenes, the blood was an
excellent touch, and adding a scene from the fan movie troops with jawas was hilarious. This is a fan editing masterpiece.
10/10 from me.

July 9, 2010 @ 12:35 am

For me this was a masterpiece of fanediting. This edit stands alone in the vast warehouse of Star Wars fanedits. It is entirely original, consistently surprising, and 100% rewarding.

Technical Evaluation
Audio Quality
The sound worked well. The levels were consistent and I was never forced to turn it up or down. The new musical sources blended well with original audio elements and I felt that all of the musical choices were fantastic.
10 out of 10

Video Quality
The beauty of this edit is in the thrashing of the quality. this is one of the driving forces behind the feel of the edit which also allowed TMBTM to incorporate many elements that otherwise would never work in a ‘traditional’ edit. Looking beyond the grain and scratch filters (and original source quality) there is no obvious pixelation, no un-intended quality drop-offs. The integration of the lost/deleted footage is particularly impressive given the quality of the original source.Top notch.
10 out of 10

Visual Edits
As a person who has the ANH permanently etched in memory, every new shot, every new angle popped, and the manner in which this was all combined is truly impressive, mixing and matching so many sources so that it feels intentional and by design. There were perhaps 2 cuts that felt hard where the transition from totally original sequences (Cantina for instance) back to the more traditional footage. The transition was so abrupt it was like waking from a really wonderful dream. These were far and few between.
9 out of 10

Overall Entertainment
For me, the best term to describe this edit is; Relentlessly original. This fanedit injected a sense of joy into a movie that I have seen easily over a hundred times, there was a sense of newness that I never expected to feel in a Star Wars film again.
At the conclusion of every sequence I found myself thinking “Well, that was a good run, but really, from here on out there is NOTHING else that can be done to make this feel as new or fresh as what I just saw” And each time I was wrong. The Man Behind The Mask delivers originality throughout the entire film.
10 out of 10. The shining moments for me had to be the Cantina sequence (simply amazing and original) and the Death Star Trench run. I did not see that bit coming, and I just about spit soda out my nose when it happened.

This edit may not be for everyone, but for me this was as perfect as an edit can get; Well executed, 100% original, and 100% entertaining. Thanks TMBTM!!
Overall Score: 10 out of 10

May 21, 2010 @ 8:50 pm

Took me long enough to get to this one…thankfully, it was worth the wait.

The video quality was…bad, but that’s okay, because it was supposed to be. The only problem I noticed that was an actual error was during the opening sequence where the editor added some extra scratches using whatever program he used for editing. The scratches were visible in the black letterboxes on the top and bottom of the picture. Perhaps this was intentional, perhaps not. At any rate, it was a tiny bit distracting. This could have been fixed by adding new letterboxes to the picture. But of all things, this is a minor complaint. I also noticed a very, very mild case of pixelation during a few scenes…but having not seen the Puggo Grande, these may be a part of the print and unavoidable.

Audio was decent as well. For a “crappy” audio job, it was fairly well done. There were a few instances where I couldn’t quite understand what Vader was saying. Music selection was completely inappropriate in a few scenes….and again, it was good, I laughed quite a few times.

Now for the edit itself. (HEAVY SPOILERS): It actually worked quite well. The story was heavily condensed, but it still flowed fairly well. I liked the shifting of the “Binary Sunset” scene to after Owen and Beru’s death. One edit I really, really liked (that would work great in a non-grindhouse style edit) is near the end where Luke just walks away from Han while he is collecting his money. I also liked Vader taking control of Luke during the last stretch of the trench and killing Biggs (and then R2 calling him on it at the ceremony). The alternate takes integrated in well too, though the only way they could really be included, along with the deleted scenes, is in an edit like this where high quality is not necessarily the aim.

All in all, a great effort and an excellent final product. I think I’m going to download TMBMT’s Jaws edit at some point as well.

9/10

May 20, 2010 @ 3:23 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*