I know nobody will care, but I'm going to write this anyway...



In many ways, Jeff Wayne and his musical adaptation of the War of the 
Worlds is a bit like Lucas and his Star Wars.

Lucas made Star Wars. It was low-tech and kinda cheesy and clunky, but 
it was *cool*. And it was wildly successful. He made two further films, 
which were likewise very successful. (In my humble opinion, the final 
one was the best.)

Some time passed. The films came out in "special edition" versions. A 
few rough edges were polished, a few unfinished things sorted out. And 
yes, one or two bits of superficial eye candy were added. But overall, 
it was an improvement.

And then Lucas decided to make three brand new films. And they all 
sucked. I mean, the first one isn't too bad, but after that they become 
progressively worse. It's like the guy has totally forgotten what makes 
films enjoyable or something...



And now we turn to Jeff Wayne. In 197something, he released a musical 
adaptation of Wells' War of the Worlds, featuring some pretty big-name 
artists. It was wildly successful. It's certainly not everybody's cup of 
tea. You could argue that it's a bit low-tech and clunky in places. But 
overall, it's a damn fine piece of work.

Spurred on by this success, Wayne produced Sparticus. I borrowed this 
from a local library once. The cover and booklet are, to put it bluntly, 
lush. The entire package is decorated in truly lavish detail, and the 
list of big-name artists seems to be even longer.

On listening to the contents of the CDs, I was shocked. The entire album 
utterly sucks. I can find almost no redeming points. It fails utterly. 
It's as if Wayne has somehow magically forgotten everything there is to 
know about creating good music.

Really, it's astonishingly bad. It's simplistic, brash and garish. There 
is no hint of subtlety or detail. It sounds like a 14 year old kid got a 
sampler for Christmas and just had to go play with it. It seems 
increadible that this was produced by the same people!



Anyway, originally WotW came out on vinyl. Everything eventually comes 
out on CD, and sure enough, by the time I was about 12, there was a 
double CD out. Which I owned. An unremarkable thing it was. It contained 
the same sound as the vinyl, and the same inlay information. Much as 
you'd expect.

A while later, Wayne released WotW "The New Files". Which I now own. 
This features "a completely digitally remastered soundtrack" using 
Sony's "20-bit SuperBitmapping(tm) technology". Actually, it sounds 
precisely identical to the old CD in every detail. However, it includes 
4 new bonus tracks.

WotW, remixed in a techno style? OK, well this is either going to be 
awsome or awful! I was rather worried that this was going to be somebody 
taking a pair of scissors to the original soundtrack and dropping a big 
drumbeat on top.

Much to my delight, the remixes are actually extremely cool.

There's a remix of The Spirit of Man. Well, I never liked that track 
much in the first place. But it's a well-made remix.

Next there are two remixes of Forever Autumn. I forget what the first 
one is called, but it's very smooth and lovely. The second on is the 
Dark Autumn Dub. This is very cool, except that... the entire 8 minute 
track seems to be building up to some fantastic climax. Right up to the 
point where it fades to silence at the end. The climax never really arrives.

And finally, we have Eve of the War: The Pi R-Squared H mix. (Oh, that's 
cute!) This is... a masterstroke! There are a few dud sounds in there, 
but overall, it's a dark, brooding, floor-tapping dance anthem, and it 
rocks. And the final climax at the end... Jesus Christ, if the original 
had sounded like this! Wow.

In addition to all this, clearly a considerable amount of effort has 
been made to spruce up the inlay card and bootlet. It's all very smooth 
and tastefully done. All in all, it's a wonderful package that I'm 
thoroughly happy to own.



And then, a few years ago, a new "totally remastered" edition came out, 
along with a "7-disk collectors boxed set". Which I now own. I put the 
first CD into the player, and... woah! What the hell?? What *happened*?

The soundtrack sounds... horrible. I mean, it's the same 1970s 
recording. But all the mix levels are totally wrong. Lead sounds get 
drowned out by backing parts. The narrator's voice is sometimes 
inaudible over the music. Several vocal parts have ludicrous amounts of 
reverb. The entire thing is A MESS!

My God... did anybody even *listen* to this before the release?? It 
sounds like somebody set up the tracks on their mixer, got the 
approximate levels right by listening to the first 20 seconds or so, and 
then hit the "mixdown" button and just walked off to let it do its thing.

The result is an utterly flat performance. Lest anybody think I'm merely 
complaining because somebody dared to make my Sacred Music sound 
slightly different, let me give you an example:

   "The six cannons we had seen now fired simultaneously, decapitating a 
fighting machine. The Martian inside the hood was slain, splashed to the 
four winds, and the body, nothing now but an intricate device of metal, 
went whirling to destruction. As the other monsters advanced, people ran 
away blindly, the Artilleryman among them, but I jumped into the water, 
and hid, until forced up to breathe. Now the guns spoke again - but this 
time, the Heat Ray sent them... to oblivion."

With that, Chris Spedding explodes into what can only be described as a 
*blistering* guitar solo. Every time I hear it, I am amazed that a sound 
can be so increadibly distorted and yet have a pitch to it. The playing 
is utterly searing. It really makes it sound like the apocalypse is here!

Now I listen to the same passage in the new edition. Firstly, I can't 
actually hear what the narrator is saying very clearly. (Obviously, 
having hears his words many hundred times, I already know exactly what 
he will say...) And then the guitar solo appears... in the background. 
And it just sounds fuzzy and amaturish. A bunch of violins are drowning 
out the main solo. What. The. Hell.

It defies belief that Wayne would allow such a steaming pile of tosh to 
even be released. If it were me, I wouldn't accept this cheap recut. I 
wouldn't even want my name to be associated with this amaturish effort.



Interestingly, amount the other disks in the 7-disk set, there is some 
geniunely exciting material. There's a disk of techno remixes, almost 
all of which *are* what I feared The New Files would be: chop up some 
sound and drop a drum beat on it. (In fact, one "remix" doesn't even 
appear to contain any original source elements at all!)

There's a CD that contains Burton's entire vocal parts - which is quite 
extensive. (Also contains a few of the translations - which are just 
hilarious for no definable reason.)

There's a CD or two full of outtakes. Many of them are just pointless, 
but a few are quite funny and/or interesting. There's an early band 
runthrough somewhere, which is interesting.

There are even a few "instrumental" edits of a few familiar tracks. Most 
of these have been mixed to give a very different feel than the 
originals, and they really are quite refreshing. Inexplicably, these are 
all mixed *vastly* better than the remastered original performance on 
the main two disks!



On the 28 of December 2007, my mum took me to central London. Apparently 
the Millennium dome wasn't demolished and replaced with a block of flats 
as the news reporters claimed. It is in fact still standing to this day. 
It's been bought by O2, and is now called "the O2 dome". (Wow! Inventive...)

When I got there, I found that Jeff Wayne was there in person to conduct 
a 21-piece string section and a small band to give a live performance of 
WotW, together with "cutting edge" CGI visuals, "a light show 
spectacular" and a 30-foot high model fighting machine.

Well, first of all, the performance was certainly more rock concert than 
fine art. I think they used the venue's PA system; every time Burton 
said the letter "S", half the audience went deaf. The reproduction was 
rather lo-fi. Also, the volume was turned up a tad louder than I would 
have liked. If there was any subtlety there, we certainly couldn't hear it.

They had a large sheet of mylar with a "hologram" of a CGI Richard 
Burton projected onto it. (They say "hologram", it looked pretty 2D to 
me.) The booklet boasts of how "this is the first time a dead actor has 
been brought back to life". Er... no it isn't!

Anyway, they are eager to describe this "cutting edge technology" as 
being really wonderful. I was rather unimpressed. The character doesn't 
*quite* lip-synch properly. It's very close, but not close enough. Also, 
the character changes expression and looks around the room to give 
greater realism - which would have worked if his facials weren't in a 
trivial repeating loop [which is in no way synchronised to the news he's 
actually delivering or the music].

Similarly, the "high-end" CGI they had projected onto a 100 foot screen 
is actually pretty low-end as far as I can tell. The Matian's tenticles 
moved in a very simple loop. First a scripted sequence of moves plays 
forwards, then it stops and plays backwards, then it plays forwards 
again. Tenticles can be clearly seen passing through each other in the 
foreground. (Remember, 100 foot screen!) And sharp polygon edges are 
clearly evident throughout. (OTOH, the texturing was moderately good.)

In general, all of the CGI movement looked simplistic and unrealistic. 
It *looked* like something a computer drew. Several scenes involved CGI 
and original paintings or live action. The edges between these elements 
were always very clearly evident, with little attempt at colour matching.

There were many crowd shots which clearly involved only a dozen humans 
or so, simplistically multiplied to try to simulate a bigger crowd. 
Also, there was an unecessary number of shots of people running from the 
distance directly into the lense of the camera before being burned. 
[Some *very* hammy acting going on there too!] It's an unnatural and 
annoying camera angle.

Having said all that, the constumes did at least give the sense that 
this story happens in the Victorian era - something that doesn't come 
across particularly strongly from the music itself. That was certainly 
an interesting aspect.

The CGI of the Red Weed was especially silly. Lots of shots of computer 
generated weed growing other either paintings or live action shots. The 
line between the two elements is painfully obvious. The weed itself 
consists of untextured red lines with agonisingly low polygon counts. 
They do at least "grow" moderately realistically. But once grown, their 
movement looks simplistic and scripted.

There were a number of other visiual effects - lighting, smoke, etc. - 
that were clearly ment to be synchronised to the music, but weren't 
very. The term "light show extravaganzer" is a massive overstatement. 
There was a tiny amount of special lighting, but nothing you wouldn't 
see at any half-decent stage show.

I will say this for the music. The string section did its job 
flawlessly. And the band managed to produce sound that was always 
*recognisable* as what it was supposed to be. Recreating a studio album 
ina live setting certainly isn't easy. The band did a fairly passable 
job of it - although certainly it was rather flat and lifeless.

All of the vocal work was dissapointing. They had Mr Hayward come back 
to sing his parts, and - well, let's just say he's getting old.

They didn't have David Essex do the Artilleryman. They say it's an 
"age-specific part". So they got some guy I've never heard of. He wasn't 
very good. Essex did the part brilliantly; sometimes he sounded angry, 
sometimes frightened, sometimes simply numb. Sometimes he was 
trianphant. Sometimes he was even a little mad. The guy standing on the 
stage executed several bad pantamime acting sequences, and spoke in a 
constant angry shout. There was no variation in emotion at all.

Similar remarks go for the performances of Parson Nathenial and his 
wife. Both flat, cartoonish performances and poor quality singing. I was 
glad when it was over. (But then, I never liked that part of the music 
greatly anyway...)

In all, it was a night out, but a rather dissapointing one. The house 
was packed from floor to ceiling though. As for Wayne's "conducting" of 
the orchestra... looked more like bad disco dancing to me. Still, he was 
clearly having a brilliant night out. :-P



Oh, and I queued for about 1 hour to buy a T-shirt. Not that the queue 
was long. Rather, the Asian guys serving the public were astonishingly 
slow. I mean, seriously, there are over 400 people standing behind me. 

no hurry, I've got all night to dither around serving each individual 
person at a snail's pace. Now, if I can just get enough neurons to fire 
at once, I might be able to think through where to move my feet to next...

My mum subsequently wrapped the T-shirt and gave it to me for Christmas. 
Hmm... LOL! The evening wasn't that great, but the T-shirt is actually 
quite nice.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> And then Lucas decided to make three brand new films. And they all 
> sucked.

  "They failed to meet fan expectations" is not the same thing as
"they sucked".

  Compared to many other movies, even ones made using similar budgets,
they are masterpieces.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> And then Lucas decided to make three brand new films. And they all 
>> sucked.
> 
>   "They failed to meet fan expectations" is not the same thing as
> "they sucked".
> 
>   Compared to many other movies, even ones made using similar budgets,
> they are masterpieces.

OK, I rephrase: From a technical perspective, they are *very* 
impressive. From an entertainment perspective, they are rather 
dissapointing - especially when compared to the originals. (I can 
however think of plenty of other films that are far worse on this score 
though...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible wrote:
> I know nobody will care, but I'm going to write this anyway...

	You write something this long and *don't* post it to your blog? What is
wrong with you?<G>

	Usually, if I write something that long, I'd like to keep a permanent
copy somewhere...

-- 
Cartoon Law: Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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> Invisible wrote:
>> I know nobody will care, but I'm going to write this anyway...
> 
> 	You write something this long and *don't* post it to your blog? What is
> wrong with you?<G>
> 
> 	Usually, if I write something that long, I'd like to keep a permanent
> copy somewhere...
> 
Yeah, remember povray.off-topic removes old posts.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> From an entertainment perspective, they are rather 
> dissapointing - especially when compared to the originals.

  Even though I'm of the right age, I still managed to mostly miss all the
Star Wars phenomenon. Thus I didn't have too many expectations about the
newer movies, and IMO they were quite enjoyable.

  To tell you the truth, I don't really like the original trilogy
(currently known as episodes 4-6), especially not the first movie.
It has some interesting ideas, but it's not profound enough to raise
enough interest in my opinion. Technically it sucks. It sucks even
compared to other, better movies of the era (Alien being a prime example).

  It's not that I dislike all movies of the late 70's, early 80's because
they aren't technically comparable to current movies. There are, in fact,
many movies of that era which I think are true masterpieces, and others
which are simply good. Alien I already mentioned. Other examples include
The Thing, An American Werewolf in London, The Exorcist, and perhaps the
best of them all, The Shining.

  The Star Wars movies, especially the first one... I just don't like it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

>> From an entertainment perspective, they are rather 
>> dissapointing - especially when compared to the originals.
> 
>   Even though I'm of the right age, I still managed to mostly miss all the
> Star Wars phenomenon. Thus I didn't have too many expectations about the
> newer movies, and IMO they were quite enjoyable.
> 
>   To tell you the truth, I don't really like the original trilogy
> (currently known as episodes 4-6), especially not the first movie.
> It has some interesting ideas, but it's not profound enough to raise
> enough interest in my opinion. Technically it sucks. It sucks even
> compared to other, better movies of the era (Alien being a prime example).
> 
>   It's not that I dislike all movies of the late 70's, early 80's because
> they aren't technically comparable to current movies. There are, in fact,
> many movies of that era which I think are true masterpieces, and others
> which are simply good. Alien I already mentioned. Other examples include
> The Thing, An American Werewolf in London, The Exorcist, and perhaps the
> best of them all, The Shining.
> 
>   The Star Wars movies, especially the first one... I just don't like it.

Well, in that case I think we can conclude that you simply look for a 
different thing in a movie than I do. ;-) (Most of the films you 
mention, I wouldn't enjoy at all...)

I am curios though... I thought the original Star Wars was from the 
1970s, whereas the film Alien was from 1985 or so?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> I know nobody will care, but I'm going to write this anyway...
> 
> 	You write something this long and *don't* post it to your blog? What is
> wrong with you?<G>
> 
> 	Usually, if I write something that long, I'd like to keep a permanent
> copy somewhere...

Oh yeah, I'l likely to upload a copy there as well... ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:51:23 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> From an entertainment perspective, they are rather dissapointing -
>> especially when compared to the originals.
> 
>   Even though I'm of the right age, I still managed to mostly miss all
>   the
> Star Wars phenomenon. Thus I didn't have too many expectations about the
> newer movies, and IMO they were quite enjoyable.
> 
>   To tell you the truth, I don't really like the original trilogy
> (currently known as episodes 4-6), especially not the first movie. It
> has some interesting ideas, but it's not profound enough to raise enough
> interest in my opinion. Technically it sucks. It sucks even compared to
> other, better movies of the era (Alien being a prime example).
> 
>   It's not that I dislike all movies of the late 70's, early 80's
>   because
> they aren't technically comparable to current movies. There are, in
> fact, many movies of that era which I think are true masterpieces, and
> others which are simply good. Alien I already mentioned. Other examples
> include The Thing, An American Werewolf in London, The Exorcist, and
> perhaps the best of them all, The Shining.
> 
>   The Star Wars movies, especially the first one... I just don't like
>   it.

Star Wars (the 'first' movie made in the series) had some really 
groundbreaking effects for the time period; IIRC, they were one of the 
first to use chroma-key effects and large matte paintings to flesh out a 
background.

Alien came after Star Wars (2 years later, in 1979; "A New Hope" was 
released in '77); no argument from me that the creature effects in Alien 
were much better; Stan Winston Studios have many very gifted artists 
there, something Lucas didn't have for his creature effects.

The thing that Lucas did right in the original Star Wars trilogy (the one 
from the 70's and 80's) is built an ensemble cast that worked well 
together.  He really didn't seem to do that in the newer episodes, and 
that left the acting very stilted and essentially those movies had no 
real soul the way the first three did.

I have to admit, though, I liked episode 3, if only because it *had* to 
have a dark ending.  I absolutely hated the ending of Return of the 
Jedi.  Sith had a much better ending, even though it was entirely 
predictable because episode 4 had been made decades prior to its release.

So I'd agree with Andy's initial assessment about eps 1-3 - they sucked.  
But I'd also disagree with his assessment about the "special editions" - 
those also sucked, because Lucas took something that was iconic and 
messed with it.  Even though the changes were *technically* better, you 
don't mess with something that is generally considered iconic.

Jim

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Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I am curios though... I thought the original Star Wars was from the 
> 1970s, whereas the film Alien was from 1985 or so?

  The first Star Wars was made in 1977, Alien was made in 1979. Movie
technology did not advance too much in 2 years, so they are perfectly
comparable.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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