Someone doing an iRiff of Zardoz has reminded me this is a movie you guys should really take a look at Hell, it's about time you did some John Boorman in general. The idea that the same guy that did Zardoz also did Deliverance and Excalibur...

Plus the opening up of the post Jedi continuity for spin off novels and the like not only brings in money with no work on the part of Lucas, but also satisfies some of what people would want in a remake. When Star Wars dies off, either due to over exposure or just changing tastes, then it may be time for a remake. Then again, most of what we'd want to do in one can just as easily be done in an original story...

OK, this sucks. I'm use to studios making a version of a DVD just for Netflix, usually making a double sided disk two DVDs or some such. For Scott Pilgrim however they went the extra step of removing EVERY extra, including the commentaries! Oh, they left them in the menu, but you're told to buy the damned thing if you want to listen to them. I can fully understand removing extra scenes and such,but this makes renting DVDs no different then streaming. Sigh...

I don't think it's unfair to draw a comparison between Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and JMS's Babylon 5, at least as far as industry influence goes. In both cases they created projects that demanded multiple movies/seasons to finish the story and had a definite ending, and when others attempted to do the same type of thing they almost all crashed and burned None of the other "5 year story arc" TV series lasted more then a season or two, and we have a growing number of "book 1" adaptations that will never see a followup. They both also broke some industry stereotypes, in that LotR was the first Fantasy movie to really break through and got others to be green lit, and B5 was the first non-Trek SF to last on TV and opened the floodgate.

Tech demo movies can be entertaining in their own right, in the same way a piece of piano music written just to show off incredibly hard techniques can also be emotional and moving. It's just a rare combination, otherwise the early Pixar shorts and movies wouldn't have stood out so much from all the other early CGI demos.

The history of the original radio show is interesting. An original idea for a series in which the Earth is destroyed in each show turned into 6 episodes with a definite ending from which there can be no sequel. Then they had to come up with a way to get the characters together again, minus Trillian, and end it with an open ending leaving room for an expected sequel... and Adams was never asked to do more The gymnastics they had to do to try and match the end of the radio show to the start of the 3rd book for the new radio adaptations is rather extensive.

Also interesting is there were changes to the first series when it was released on records. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe episode was changed/expanded somewhat. Not sure which version is now available when you buy the show.