Photos from 2002 October 28
Taking the bus back from Coonabarabran to Lithgow, we drove through this area where there was a huge dust cloud. At first I thought it was smoke, but something like this passed over SSO last week. It was amazing. The sky was a deep brown when I woke up that day, and the optical depth of the air just kept getting shorter and shorter as the day went on. More and more mountain peaks disappeared into the murk. By the afternoon, however, it had blown past, and the sky was blue again. I heard later that storm moved millions of tons of dust and dirt. Anyway, I think this was something similar, and I took several pictures from the bus window, trying to capture the eerie feeling of the scenery vanishing into the distance.	The dust gave everything a brownish-red hue, and since the drought had leeched a lot of the green out of the foliage, anyway, it made for an unsettling combination.	There's a lot of farmland just west of the Blue Mountains, and a lot of it can look very similar to scenery back home. And then you notice that the birds in the fields aren't actually crows, and maybe there are some parrots and cockatoos in with the other birds.	A lot of cattle and sheep in New South Wales.
Here's the monorail track on Pitt Street in Sydney, but that's not why I took the photo. I took the picture because of another one of those ancient/modern contrasts that I often find intriguing.	Okay, I spent a good chunk of my time today at the Powerhouse Museum. Last time I was in Sydney, they had a huge touring Star Trek exhibit. This time, it was a big Star Wars exhibit. The Magic of Myth. Frankly, I find a lot of this Joseph Cambell stuff to be overanalysing the series, and I can almost hear it creaking at the seams as they try to stretch what's in there to fit every possible mythological motif, and then to pass that off as deep rather than just generic. And I say this as a fan since I was seven. But, come on, guys. Homer or Beowulf it is not. Nor is it Lord of the Rings. It's fun, and it's great Sci-Fi opera, but it's not terribly deep. Jar Jar Binks may or may not have ruined the series, but he certainly showed that Lucas took the series a lot less seriously than most of the fans. But I digress... underneath the layers of academic pretention, there was some really cool *stuff* in here from the movies.	This is one of the original production models of a Star Destroyer. Now, I love computer animation, but I can't help feeling like something is lost when you don't have the big *toys* like this with all the little bits and pieces that someone lovingly foraged from who knows where and glued on just so. It's simply awe inspiring in a way that a computer model, no matter how clever, never will be.	An early design sketch for C3PO. Note the striking influence of Fritz Lang's _Metropolis_.
A production model for the escape pod R2 and 3PO use to escape at the beginning of Star Wars.	Speaking of which, here they are.	Ben Kenobi's costume. It's funny, watching the scene again where he tells Luke that Vader killed Luke's father, he pauses and gets all shifty-eyed. Did Alec Guinness know Kenobi was lying at this point? Or did Lucas take crafty advantage of the actor's ambiguity?	A Jawa. Needs no introduction, really, but I have to write something here for the software to process. Actually, I'll mention here that it's amazing how mundane the costumes look when you see them up close. What seems elegant or exotic up on the big screen can look slipshod or rough up close. The most striking example of this for me was Amidala's outfit from the final fight in Episode II (which I did not photograph). On screen, it looked like some kind of satiny latex thing. Up close, it looks like a cotton sweater. And the Jawas look like burlap sacks. This to me is not disillusionment in any but the most technical sense. It simply reaffirms the true magic of movies: to take the cotton and duct tape and create a convincing alien world. Amazing.
Han and Chewie. You know, for all the attention that the human stars get, everybody adores Chewie, and yet I have never seen a single interview with the guy inside the outfit. Did he enjoy it? Does he feel he gets enough recognition for the fantastic job he did to create such a beloved and human character through all that mask and costume paraphenalia? It still amazes me that Lucas didn't seem to learn the lesson I thought he was teaching us all along: that aliens could speak in grunts, beeps and whistles, and we the audience don't need subtitles to understand what they mean. Jar Jar would have only been mildly annoying, rather than flat out insufferable, if he had spoken in *complete* nonsense rather than pidgin.	The practice zapper gizmo (I'm sure that's the technical term for it ;-)) that hovered around Luke as he practiced with the light saber.	The little green guy himself.	I also tried a shot with a flash.
Some concept drawings.	There was a strange little exhibit where you were supposed to use the Force and raise the model X-wing fighter out of the swamp. The fighter was on some kind of lift that would raise and lower it while you stood there. Cute, but ... why?	Here it is, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy. In two sizes. The little one was palm-sized, and the big one was maybe a little bigger than a good-sized dinner serving platter.	Another shot of the Falcon model (hmmm... is this a model? Or is it more accurately called the real Falcon? What do you call a model for which there is no original?
Boba Fett. Probably the guy who got the most out of four lines than just about anyone in movie history, despite his ignominous end.	The infamous gold bikini.	Han Solo frozen in carbonite.	Some models of Vaders shuttlecraft.
One of the production models for the speederbike. Apparantly most of the levers and knobs on this thing actually performed some function, in terms of making the planes swivel or something.	More design scetches.	One of the storyboards from Jedi.	Vader props from Jedi.
The Sith Lord himself.	A profile shot. Boy, they did an amazing job with this costume.	Anakin's pod racer engines from episode I. I was surprised to see these, because I thought the pod race was all computer graphics and/or full size stuff. I didn't realize there was any model work in it.	The pod of the racer. I have to say, from a physics point of view, this is a pretty stupid way to design racers. Why would you put your seat right behind two giant jet engines?
A character sketch for Darth Maul. I guess that answers my questions about how much of his body those designs covered, eh? Or maybe not. ;-)	One of Amidala's many and varied costumes from Episode I. Regardless of what I said above, *this* costume looked pretty darn exotic. :-)	Standing cutouts of the current crop of Jedi.	And this is for the eight-year-old in me. Couldn't resist. :-)
Finally, believe it or not, a full-size copy of R2D2 made out of Legos. And yes, the head rotated and it bleeped. On the whole, it was a very fun exhibit, and a great way to kill a few hours.	That night, I went out to Newtown, a quirky near suburb that reminded me of Jamaica Plain, a little bit. Or maybe North Clark St. in Chicago would be a better analogy, without the ballpark. I would not have guessed a single neighborhood could support that many Thai restaurants. Anyway, many of the shop owners had a... distinctive sense of humor, as evidenced by the title of this shop.	Here's the main drag of Newtown. King Street.	Another quirky shop title. Not quite as bad as Ann Arbor's Sushi.come, but pretty close.
And finally, this speaks for itself. :-) This concludes my Australia trip. On the 29th, I came home.
Go to 2002 October 26