Lee sorta-liveblogs old crap from 20-plus-year-old tapes

Salix Babylonika

I still have the second Homeward Bound on tape. It's a good movie.

AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH FAT DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG

Justice4243

I think I only saw #2 once for some reason.

Not that I remember there being anything wrong with it.

Aliroz

Central Avenue said:

I remember in sixth grade, the school board gave the science department a bunch of money to spend on "educational" gadgets...one of which was a digital camera that saved its photos on floppy disks.

It's funny to think about; a floppy disk wouldn't be able to hold even one photo from a modern digital camera...

What sort of stupidly hi-resolution photos do you have? Like, 300 pixels?

Anonus

Go look at the mundane photos thread. We've got big pictures there...

lee4hmz

For what it's worth, the 8-megapixel photos from my Rezound take up about 1.4-1.6 MB as JPEGs.

lee4hmz

Minor update while I ponder something else to cover here (I've been busy and/or tired lately):

I'm watching some commercials from a 1981-1982 season airing of You Only Live Twice, and I notice the same thing about the commercials here as I did from that tape from 1994—it seems like the styles and presentation are easily 5-10 years behind the times. If it weren't for the fact that some of the commercials used some seriously advanced computer-aided animation for the time (a Minolta commercial that I swear looks like Abel's work, and a MasterCard commercial with streak-timing, prismatic and plain old rostrum effects all in one sequence), I'd have pegged it for about 1977. :P

Anonus

Abel?

lee4hmz

Robert Abel & Associates. They were compositing and CGI pioneers, and did a lot of work in commercials in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Anonus

Oh. I've heard of fewer of these firms than I should have...

Anonus

I feel compelled to mention that I know that Pixar and Nelvana (as BearSpots) used to do TV ads; while I have one of Pixar's old Life Savers ads on VHS, I don't recall ever seeing a BearSpots ad.

lee4hmz

I don't remember seeing any BearSpots ads myself (maybe they were limited to Canada?), but I clearly remember some of Pixar's commercials, particularly the "Tarzan Boy" Listerine Cool Mint ones.

Anonus

It's always kind of amusing to me to think about how Pixar did TV ads before they hit it big with movies...

lee4hmz

Oh my God. 

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG.

My brother ripped the E.T. and Friends tape!!!!!!!! I haven't seen this thing in years.

The first commercial in the rip is from the last break of It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown...for BETTY CROCKER. Yikes. 

So what exactly is this show? It was a one-off celebration of ETs in sci-fi in general, hosted by none other than Robin Williams (fresh off of Mork & Mindy). It was awesome.

Anonus

Is ET and Friends awesome?

lee4hmz

Yes, actually. I also like how the first alien they feature is Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

lee4hmz

Oh wow, a cameo from The Coneheads (of Saturday Night Live fame). I'd forgotten about that.

lee4hmz

(Yes, this is a clip show, and I'm pretty sure it was only ever run twice. The licensing costs alone would make re-release prohibitive.)

Anonus

Well, E.T.'s owned by NBCUniversal and I'm fairly sure they could work something out with Broadway Video/SNL Studios over the Coneheads...

lee4hmz

It's not only that; there's clips from at least a dozen other films and shows. The Day the Earth Stood Still is Fox, War of the Worlds is Paramount, Star Wars is Lucasfilm, and that's not counting all the TV shows (Outer Limits: MGM, Twilight Zone: CBS), B-movies and rarities they nicked. 

While some of it is more-or-less in the public domain now (Plan 9 from Outer Space, this means you), the rest would be a mess to track down.

Anonus

Was this the first Star Wars? That one's owned by 20th Century Fox; the rest of the franchise is held by Lucasfilm, and thus Disney.

lee4hmz

Yep, the first one.