Variations on a Theme of "Art of" Books
Jul. 5th, 2007 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWith one more review of mine on the Saga Journal site, I feel a little more productive and connected to the grand effort. Of course, with the review done I'm starting to wonder about my general lack of ideas about what I'll write for my next essay, and where I'll find the research material for it... but there's a little time for all of that yet.
I do feel lucky that I wandered through a used book store with an eye for noticing "The Art of The Phantom Menace" lately. That gave me something to review. It also means the only Star Wars "Art of" book I don't have now is "The Art of The Empire Strikes Back"... at the time it was being reprinted, I got myself "The Art of Star Wars" in part for the script in it, but there was no script in that middle volume. Nowadays, I might well be more interested in the extra comments I recall it including about the development of the art, just as one of the more interesting features in "The Art of Star Wars" nowadays is the vintage cartoons reacting to the movie. My vintage copy of "The Art of Return of the Jedi," for all that its binding is falling apart, helps prove that I was interested in the movie at the time, for all that I never asked to go see it... but then, my family has never seemed to be big moviegoers.
Even before I had the full version of "The Art of The Phantom Menace," I had the little booklet excerpting pages from it that was included in the widescreen VHS release of the movie. I suppose I could have lived without the extras (for all that I got it as a birthday gift), but since you couldn't get the widescreen tape without it, and I had "gone widescreen" with the video release of the Special Editions... At the time, I was pleased to see that the booklet included the "second worst" nightmare of Iain McCaig, as I'd always thought that drawing had a sort of "evil samurai clown" aspect to it that was a first step towards Darth Maul. It was only on reading the book all over again for the review, though, that I realised at last that the drawing was still supposed to be of a female Sith Lord. In any case, I suppose I liked the booklet more than the film slip also tucked into the box. My frames were of Padme in her hooded handmaiden gown; I'd heard of someone else who had part of the opening crawl, and thought "that would be pretty neat!", only to be told that the frames were from the very end of the crawl, with the text a vague yellow haze near the top of each frame...
I do feel lucky that I wandered through a used book store with an eye for noticing "The Art of The Phantom Menace" lately. That gave me something to review. It also means the only Star Wars "Art of" book I don't have now is "The Art of The Empire Strikes Back"... at the time it was being reprinted, I got myself "The Art of Star Wars" in part for the script in it, but there was no script in that middle volume. Nowadays, I might well be more interested in the extra comments I recall it including about the development of the art, just as one of the more interesting features in "The Art of Star Wars" nowadays is the vintage cartoons reacting to the movie. My vintage copy of "The Art of Return of the Jedi," for all that its binding is falling apart, helps prove that I was interested in the movie at the time, for all that I never asked to go see it... but then, my family has never seemed to be big moviegoers.
Even before I had the full version of "The Art of The Phantom Menace," I had the little booklet excerpting pages from it that was included in the widescreen VHS release of the movie. I suppose I could have lived without the extras (for all that I got it as a birthday gift), but since you couldn't get the widescreen tape without it, and I had "gone widescreen" with the video release of the Special Editions... At the time, I was pleased to see that the booklet included the "second worst" nightmare of Iain McCaig, as I'd always thought that drawing had a sort of "evil samurai clown" aspect to it that was a first step towards Darth Maul. It was only on reading the book all over again for the review, though, that I realised at last that the drawing was still supposed to be of a female Sith Lord. In any case, I suppose I liked the booklet more than the film slip also tucked into the box. My frames were of Padme in her hooded handmaiden gown; I'd heard of someone else who had part of the opening crawl, and thought "that would be pretty neat!", only to be told that the frames were from the very end of the crawl, with the text a vague yellow haze near the top of each frame...