What else (other than Star Wars) has Lucas retconned?

In 2004, Lucas released his Director's Cut of THX 1138. There are no changes as big as making Greedo shooting at Han, but the there were still some controversial changes. Here a quote from The O.C. Wikia George Lucas article, Controversy section.

Changes Lucas personally made to THX 1138 for its 2004 DVD release further re-enforced criticism from fans who felt that he was spoiling the integrity of his original films.

As an example, a significant change he made with THX that he didn't do to Star Wars was reordering some scenes. You could see a exhaustive list of changes here and here. Here is the whole Postscript section of the first link (Emphasis mine):

Although the story stays pretty much the same the movie has been extensively changed. I'm sure George Lucas would claim that he couldn't accomplish his original vision back in 1970 due to the technology of the time and budget, so changes and additions could be seen as reasonable. The thing is though, George Lucas doesn't mention on the DVD that there has been any changes made at all, in the interviews, commentary, packaging, anywhere, the only mention is that the movie has been restored, this all seems very strange indeed...


As you can see George Lucas and ILM have done a wonderful job (except for the ones I have mentioned) in updating and widening the scope of THX's world for the masses to enjoy. This is a testament to the original movie that it can still be viewed today without looking too 70s. Some people may not like the changes, preferring instead the original, however, in my opinion they are both excellent. The George Lucas Director's Cut should have been released with the restored original theatrical cut rather than the way it has been released.

The Simpsons - Episode Identification

What was that episode where we hear Bart's thoughts as a man about Homer in voice over while the camera starts taking a close up of Bart as a kid, just before the voice is interrupted by Homer, asking Bart the kid what he is thinking about.

The scene makes fun of many movies with that sort of clichéd scene.

Will The Hobbit be released to video with the High Frame Rate?

Any 1080p50 capable TV will be able to play a 1080p50 HDMI signal from a 1080p50 Blu Ray disc.

So there is no technical reason not to release a high frame rate Hobbit.

"Speeding the film up" is not a relevant technique for digital formats. It is exactly how films used to be transmitted for TV but that was all about aliasing. If the TV station played the film at 24 fps then the 50 field per second cameras would introduce stobing effects, so speeding the projector's motor up and locking it to the field rate made sense.

In the digital domain one has to resample the frames. For 24fps to 25fps a common standard is 3:2 pulldown: "Converting a slower frame rate to a faster one requires duplicating frames or fields. People have been transferring film to video for a long time. For NTSC the film is slowed down to 23.98, and then every other film frame is held for one extra field. (see diagram) This is called 3:2 pulldown. Some of the original film frames now begin on the second field of the video frame. This looks fine while being played, and can easily be removed for conversion to 25 frame PAL or 24 fps for DVD compression. However, if this material is edited without attention to keeping a steady 3:2:3:2:3:2 cadence, a clean frame rate conversion becomes nearly impossible."
http://digitalcinemasociety.org/downloads/FrameRateConversionSimplified-N.pdf

This same approach would be used to resample 48 to 50.

The audio is not normally sampled at the same rate as the video and is typically at 48kHz even when the video is at another rate. The audio and the video are separately multiplexed into the MPEG transport stream and kept in sync using timestamps. Therefore there is no need to resample the audio when resampling the video.

What happened to the Mighty Orbots cartoon series?

According to Wikipedia, the 13-episode series was never released on DVD. It ended early

due to a lawsuit between the show's creators and toymaker Tonka, who
accused them of basing the cartoon on their GoBots franchise (which
was adapted from Bandai's Machine Robo line). The robot depicted in
the show was virtually identical to the robot in the anime for
Bandai's Godmars toy, although the colors were changed.

This may have affected its release.

According to a rather informative review here, poor ratings were its downfall, though its release in other markets on VHS developed a small cult following. T M S Entertainment, Inc./M G M/U A Entertainment Company is the copyright holder according to US Copyright office. If you have access to a VCR, there are a couple of libraries in the US that apparently have it in their collections (set of 13 tapes). You might be able to get your local library to do an inter-library loan for you.

In Primer, did they really need to do the time travelling themselves?

As they begin their exploitation of the stock market, both characters are afraid of bringing about any possible "paradox" situation. They sequester themselves in a hotel room. They do not communicate with anyone until they go "back" (second time through the same day), except to check the stock market. Only when the forgotten cell phone rings when they are not "back" do they allow themselves to play with that dynamic.

Therefore, any concept of sending a machine back in time to make the stock transaction for them would have been contrary to their (initial) conception of how to use this technology as safely as possible. Such a plan would force them to confront the Grandfather Paradox and related issues, which they did not have to do if they simply go back in time themselves (as long as they strictly follow their intended sequestration discipline).

In short, with the information they have at the beginning of the film, there is no proof that using a machine to do it for them would even work - maybe the machine makes them a bunch of money in a parallel universe, not in their own. The way in which both characters eventually seek to answer this question for themselves, lose trust in each other, and then turn on each other, makes the second half of the film so interesting (and confusing)!

Besides, there is the additional burden of designing a machine to extract itself from the time capsule mechanically after the correct delay, so that it does not "loop" forward and backward through time, only to be removed at the time the capsule is powered off.

What does the missing symbol on Quaid's arm symbolize?

Everything indicates that he is not dreaming, except for the symbol, but if it's all a dream Quaid´s should never would have dreamt about Melina before he goes to RECALL and that entire first scene doesn´t make sense.

Now assuming that is all real there is no explanation for the symbol. So in my opinion it has the ending wrong.

There is no reference that the symbol is permanent. it could be as simple as an ink stamp and can be erased easily, so imho everything is real or as you say the first scene would make absolutely no sense.

Where is Lost Girl supposed to be based?

I do not remember the in-story locale of Lost Girl ever being mentioned in the show, it is filmed in Toronto however, and in many scenes notable landmarks (such as the CN tower) can be seen which are never mentioned in and do not play any part in the story.

In addition, various colloquialisms differentiate the show from many American written shows (such as not referring to the police station that Dyson and Tamsin are officers at as 'precincts'.

Do any of the characters ever make mention to where they're located, are the events in Lost Girl based in any real world city?