Garrett Gilchrist. Artist, filmmaker, writer, film editor, video restorationist, voice actor. I have been a professional artist and illustrator for over twenty years. I did cover art for dozens of retro video game releases. I did a 2011 comic called The Chosen Ones. I directed the 2007 feature Shamelessly She-Hulk. I spent nine years restoring Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut. I edited Super Mario Bros: The Morton Jankel Cut, and Star Wars: Deleted Magic. I restore and archive rare film and video, such as Jim Henson Muppet rarities and the restored Raggedy Ann & Andy 1977 UHD. I am an honorary member of American Cinema Editors. I run the Knights of the Lost Media (Rare and Obscure TV/Film) group on Facebook. I created WhoSprites, the Doctor Who Lost Episode Animation Project. I've been putting stuff on the internet, often anonymously, since the 90s. I try to make obscure things less obscure, and develop new techniques. If you're part of certain fandoms, or looking up certain films or TV shows, you're seeing my research and work without realizing it. I graduated USC film school in 2004. I've written fourteen screenplays, articles for magazines, a novel called Cratchit & Company, and other work in progress.
There's a book that we had in our house growing up that I was obsessed with as a kid. It was just called "PAKISTAN: PAINTINGS BY LIN YONG AND SU HUA" and it was an art book of 100+ paintings/sketches by two Chinese artists who travelled thru Pakistan in 1978 and 1981, a sort of travelogue of their trip, and to little-kid me, it was some of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I have no idea why we had that book, but I would stare at it for hours, and it made me wish I could draw/paint/do whatever it was that these artists had managed to do.
Anyway, we've moved house a bunch of times and I lost track of the book and haven't seen it for probably two decades now. But I think about it now and again, and had struggled to find it over the years, but I finally, finally got my hands on a copy of my own and i want to cry haha
I was afraid that maybe the art isn't as good as I remembered, being just a kid and all, but I cracked it open and nope, it hits me just the way it used to. Maybe even more now. It's so fucking pretty. Have some random pages:
Several of the London-based animators on "Lux" had also worked on Richard Williams' "The Thief and the Cobbler" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Several of these talents also contributed their knowledge in some way to my restoration and research, when I spent about ten years off and on editing "the Recobbled Cut" of that (Thief) movie in various forms, and collecting information about its production. There was also, for a time, a Thief blog written by a few of those animators. Good folks.
In "Lux" - Tim Watts, Gary Dunn, Michael Schlingmann, Neil Boyle …
(Not to forget the direction by Framestore's Ian Spendloff, and animation by David Lochhead, Julien Van Wallendael, Carlos De Faria, and Dan Tomlinson, which takes us into 3D.)
Neil Boyle also did a lovely short in 2011 called "The Last Belle" (with Thief layout artist Roy Naisbitt and cinematographer John Leatherbarrow among others), directed the feature "Kensuke's Kingdom" (2023) and worked on "The Animator's Survival Kit" with "Thief and the Cobbler" master animator Richard Williams. (Neil's feature credits include Space Jam, and Sherlock Gnomes, which involved such notables as Gary Dunn, Tim Watts, Uli Meyer, and the always delightful John Stevenson directing.)
Framestore wanted a "Roger Rabbit" type look, and it got that sort of crew. It's worth saying this since they weren't credited for "Lux," and you went out of your way to credit them. Even IMDB doesn't bother with that list. You honor them by doing so, and with your own work that always looks very animated, and continues this legacy in some way. There aren't enough opportunities for animators these days, or what we now call "2D animators."
That genuine skill and spirit cannot and will not be replaced by automation and other such pretenders. It's also tough for independent creators on this nightmare of an internet right now. You are part of that tradition and a very talented and prolific artist. I always enjoy seeing what worlds you'll create next.
waves all this above my head YES. GOOD. THANK YOU.
I couldn't fit all that on a credits page but it's ridiculous how enormously talented the people who worked on that episode were and for them not to get a credit is such a crushing slap to the face- especially for an episode that's supposed to be, in part, a homage to animation! Outrageously poor behaviour on the part of WHO production. I'll never let them live this down (and neither will Lux!)
To push back against perceived left-wing "communist" screenwriting, Hollywood in the 50s and afterward pushed the idea that film is entirely a visual medium.
Film is best when it's a visual medium, but it also needs to be about something, and the Hollywood powers that be have never liked that.
As technology got better in the 2000s, it became possible for anybody to make a good-looking movie with very little money, and theoretically bypass all the Hollywood gatekeepers.
Hollywood's reaction was: Uhh a movie now has to cost $250 million and be based on franchise IP owned by Disney. Otherwise it's not a movie.
You can make something on a low budget which is high quality now, and Hollywood redefined what a movie is, with these animated remakes like doing Moana again, and other nonsense.
The gatekeepers have reacted by gatekeeping harder, partly to keep out left-wing "subversive" ideas and class consciousness, but also to hold on to their own existing power.
Most people breaking into Hollywood during this time have had family connections and money.
Almost all of the big movies now are existing franchise IP owned by Disney or a similar monopoly. This is a show of power, because it's all they really have to separate themselves from us.
The Star Wars Holiday Special Commercials RESTORED 1978
With two hours of bonus material. There are several good copies of The Star Wars Holiday Special circulating these days, but the better copi
With two hours of bonus material. There are several good copies of The Star Wars Holiday Special circulating these days, but the better copies often don't include the commercials. In the 2000s, it was common to cut the commercials out of the special, which only stopped when in 2007 when Rifftrax released their commentary, based on the WMAR airing. The more famous WCBS airing does not circulate in good quality.
Here, the commercials have been restored using multiple sources overlaid and combined. There is also two hours of bonus material. This includes additional commercials (which are often related in some way), part of the news with Roger Mudd which aired before the special, four restored promos, part of "Flying High" which aired after the special, and the "Wasting Electricity" deleted scene from the cartoon, which has been restored from a source which was damaged by digital dirt removal.
From acclaimed film restorationist Garrett Gilchrist. Rick Klein (Fuzzy Memories TV) and Rob Richardson (RobatSea) have contributed rare material to this presentation. This is the result of months of research and frame by frame restoration work.
There are local commercials here from the airings on WMAR, WCBS, KIRO and KOIN, and one segment from WHIO. All of these airings (plus the WCCI, briefly) have been cleaned up, restored, and combined into one picture when possible. Hundreds of additional rare sources have also been found to restore some of the commercials, and provide the material for the post-show.
In this trailer, the restored and combined edit is compared to our best DVD source of the WCBS airing alone, or sometimes the WMAR airing for local commercials, or a typical bootleg of "A Special Sesame Street Christmas," or a typical WCBS bootleg for "Fighting the Frizzies."
The full special and Rifftrax are not included in this upload, but I expect there will be edits which include the Rifftrax. Some DVD versions of the special are split at the commercial breaks, so it will not be difficult to set up a playlist and watch the entire presentation in full as intended.
Thanks to Alex Douglas for the music mashup, and to many others for the additional video sources.
The Bonus ads include other material which aired around the same time, or are similar to ads which aired during the special. This includes ads from "A Special Sesame Street Christmas," the CBS News with Roger Mudd from November 17 1978, and "Flying High." Plus other ads just for entertainment purposes. All ads have been restored from multiple sources when possible.
It's fascinating (and infuriating) to live in an age where almost everyone I know is languishing in Dickensian poverty but social media is slap full of professional-managerial computer-touchers who've never known hunger insisting that the economy is fine because their metrics say rich people are still rich.
A bad economist and a bad engineer are often bad in the same way; they're both people who, when reality doesn't conform to the model, decide to get mad at reality instead of adjusting the model
If you were a Namcot (or other) game released by Bandai for the Nintendo Entertainment System, what would your unnecessary subtitle be?
Other NES subtitles:
Solstice: The Quest For The Staff Of Demnos
Solar Jetman: Hunt for the Golden Warpship
Low G Man: The Low Gravity Man
Kiwi Kraze: A Bird-Brained Adventure!
Faria: A World of Mystery & Danger!
Galaxy 5000: Racing in the 51st Century
Wurm: Journey to the Center of the Earth
Skate or Die 2: The Search for Double Trouble
The Mutant Virus: Crisis in a Computer World
Cybernoid: The Fighting Machine
MetalMech: Man & Machine
Town & Country Surf Designs II: Thrilla's Surfari
Gotcha! The Sport
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
gummygunk
romaincrisis
