movie

Star Wars Blu-rays

So, you may have heard the Star Wars Blu-rays are coming out in a couple of weeks.

After the last of the prequels came out, I was annoyed at Lucas’ clumsy storytelling, and… well, with those and the Special Editions, it felt like a cheapening of some great movies that I loved from my childhood. I try very hard not to be one of those people who turn whining and arguing about Star Wars into their life’s work, but I was frustrated enough that I made a conscious decision not to watch any of them for quite a while.

When I heard that the Blu-rays were coming out, I decided to pre-order the original trilogy, and I’d finally watch them again when they came out. Just in the last day or two, though, a bunch of previews have been posted to the web.

First, one very in-depth look with links to two more parts of the article.

This got me excited. Okay, so still no theatrical versions, but I suppose I can live with that, and there’s some really amazing behind the scenes stuff on the bonus discs that only ship with the full 9-disc set. Hmmm.

But then, I saw this.

…and a few other articles elsewhere, that indicate Lucas is still dicking around with the original movies, and in my opinion, making them worse in the process. So now I’m torn between upgrading my order to the full set just so I can see those cool extras, or canceling my order altogether because I don’t know if I even want the original trilogy if he’s messed with them again.

Maybe I should just try to find a cheap used Laserdisc player so I can watch these relatively unadulterated early-90s “restored” versions again.

Downloading Movies from Dropbox

When you upload a QuickTime or other movie file to Dropbox, and then get the “public link” to give to someone else, Dropbox does a really cool thing and redirects the original movie file link to deliver a very simple web page with the movie embedded in it instead. Which looks great in a browser if you just need to view a quick clip — but what if you actually intended for the link to be a download instead?

It turns out the trick is a little obscure, but fairly simple. All you need to do is add ?&dl=1 to the end of the “public link” URL. So:

http://files.getdropbox.com/.../movie.mov

becomes instead:

http://files.getdropbox.com/.../movie.mov?dl=1

Once you do that, Dropbox forces the download link, and the movie will download instead of playing in your browser.