Just feeling meh about the first Avengers: Doomsday trailer

I must be honest, that I'm not completely jazzed about Avengers: Doomsday.  Not like what happened the last time the Russo brothers made Marvel movies (Infinity War and Endgame).  Maybe I'm just tired of comic book movies?  Others seem to be feeling the same.  This and Dune Part Three are coming out on the same day and I know which I would get a ticket for.

What about you?  Does a new Marvel movie stoke you?

Well anyhoo, here is the first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday.

I do confess that Robert Downey Jr. playing Doctor Doom piques my curiosity.  So we'll see.

And yes, I am aware that there is a new trailer for Dune Part Three.  But I haven't watched it.  The first two movies were such a delight (though there was some deviation from the novel) that I want to go into this next movie as cold as possible.

EDIT 07/20/2026 06:43 PM EST:  Earlier this afternoon Marvel also released this image of presumably the teaser poster for Avengers: Doomsday.  This is starting to incline me toward having more interest in the movie.  It depicts Doctor Doom, his back toward us, as he gazes up at a haunting tapestry depicting a boy and woman (young Doom and his mother?).  Beneath them is a depiction of a world on the verge of being shattered.

I really, really like this picture.  Who knows, maybe Marvel will stick the landing with this movie yet.

Read More

The Hand of Darth Sidious: A Star Wars Theory by Yours Truly

What if the Palpatine we saw in Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker was not the "real" Palpatine at all?  What if he was some kind of replica without an iota of Palpatine/Sidious's spirit whatsoever?

There is precedent for such a notion.

In Timothy Zahn's two-part "Hand of Thrawn" novel duology from the late Nineties, the galaxy hears whispers about the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn.  Thrawn in the still-venerable expanded universe, you may recall, was killed toward the end of The Last Command.  The galaxy thought he was dead.  But he prophesied that he would return in ten years' time if he ever was thought to have died.

Long story short, it turns out that at Thrawn's hidden fortress (see what I did there?) in the Unknown Regions, the grand admiral had prepared a clone of himself.  It had been in stasis all that time.  Just waiting to be "brought online" by his faithful Chiss followers.  It would not have had any of Thrawn's soul, but it definitely would be Thrawn after a fashion.

What if Emperor Palpatine did such a thing for himself?

I can easily imagine that Palpatine went to Exegol and had himself cloned, and had it put in storage.  It would be waiting, for the "unlikely possibility" that Palpatine would die.  Who knows how but perhaps the clone was given the original's memories and abilities (it seems to have been the case for Joruus C'Baoth in the expanded universe), ready to be taken out of its vat and brought online.  The Emperor would be reborn.  But as Palpatine says in a deleted scene we know exists, he would be "more than a clone, less than a man."

So Palpatine/Emperor/Darth Sidious creates the clone and when his Sith Eternal followers get the news that he died and the Empire is finished, they activate the clone.  Just as Thrawn's people were about to do with his own clone.  And THAT is who we see in The Rise of Skywalker: a replica of Palpatine, created as a failsafe in case the real one was killed.

Such a notion preserves the idea of Anakin Skywalker being the chosen one who brings balance to the Force.  While at the same time restoring Palpatine as the overarching mastermind behind the dark events throughout the Star Wars saga.

Just a theory, I confess.  But it's one as good as any other.

Read More

Aliens came out forty years ago today

 One of the seminal motion pictures of the science-fiction and action genres hit theaters on this date in 1986.

And it still holds its own four full decades later.  Aliens is going to prove to be as timeless as its predecessor.  I love pretty much everything about this movie.

Bit of a side note: a week and a half before 9/11 I had dinner with Jenette Goldstein, the amazing actress who played Vasquez.  She's an absolutely delightful woman.

Happy anniversary Aliens.  And no doubt we will be enjoying you just as much forty more years from now as we do today.

 

Read More

Memories of the giant turtle

My memoir Keeping the Tryst has been getting around some.  I confess, its biggest audience seems to be composed of people who have known me, friends and family.  It's gotten some other purchases, though it's far from being a "bestseller".  Still, I've been happy.  And one never knows how far a book will get in the larger scheme of things.  A lot of books started out selling small but went on to bigger things.

One of the most consistent remarks that I've gotten about Keeping the Tryst has been about my memory.  This book covers half a century of the lifetime of an American boy, and it does so in at times almost microscopic detail.  As I said in the first chapter, I have no idea how it is that I remember some things so vividly and clearly.  It just "is".  Sometimes I feel like Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five: unstuck in time.  One moment I'm here in the present and the next I'm anywhen else down my timeline, and sometimes it's as if I can see a little bit ahead, too.  The memories come often without anything precipitating them.

Like this latest one, that has me stumped about why it should come to mind many decades later.

A few nights ago I remembered something that I saw on television, at an age so young that I couldn't pinpoint what year.  It had to do with a giant green turtle and a beautiful woman with glowing green eyes.  It was a movie.  And for some reason it made me sad, like it had a tragic ending.

I knew that I wasn't imagining this.  It's something that has crossed my mind a number of times over the years, without warning.  This was a thing that I had seen with my own eyes and it must have been before I ever started school at the age of five.  And it was haunting me.

Why?

The other day, the memory came again.  And finally, at long last, I plugged what little I knew into Google and braced myself for whatever might come.

Well, it turned out that I was not the only poor soul who had gone looking for the giant turtle and the girl with glowing green eyes.  Many others had too.  And so I followed the trail...

It led to one Michael Summers, proprietor of the Dangerous Universe website.  And with his post from 2000 titled "Dream of the Big, Huge Turtle" the final link in the long chain going back to my childhood snapped into place.

It was a movie after all.  Its title is The Bermuda Depths.  And it was broadcast on the American television network ABC on January 27th, 1978.

That was a few months shy of my fourth birthday.

I read the article on Wikipedia and found out more...

The Bermuda Depths is a science-fiction/fantasy/horror film, starring among other people Carl Weathers (who was in between the first two Rocky movies) and Burl Ives.  It's about a young man who grew up on Bermuda, meeting a girl named Jennie when he was younger, and after some time away comes back to the island.

I remembered that much, too.

And then there was that monstrously enormous turtle.  That more than anything else is what made the impression on me.  It was a terrifying spectacle.  I remember there being a fight with it toward the end of the movie.  And I think that in a way the turtle won.

I have memories of watching the final scenes and crying.  I cried a lot, as a child. I was very sensitive.  Sometimes I would cry listening to a song.  It just needed to sound sad enough.  Songs that don't faze me and haven't for a long time since then.  The Bermuda Depths made me cry, and I don't know why.

I suppose that I'm going to have to watch this, sometime or other, maybe in the near future.  I did a looksee and it's available on DVD at Amazon for thirteen bucks.  Maybe when I do see it, the real last pieces of this movie that has at times haunted me unbidden will fall into being.  Perhaps then I will understand why memory of it has lingered and persisted for going on fifty years.

If I do see it, I'll make a post about it.  But then again, I wonder if I really should watch it.  There should be a bit of mystery in one's life.

However this goes, my memory has a name now.  And I know that I wasn't imagining it.

EDIT 07-18-2026 02:06 AM: I was so startled by discovering that I hadn't hallucinated it that it didn't occur to me until just now that there might be clips of The Bermuda Depths on YouTube.  But there are some.  So I'll post that link and lure others to also partake of the madness.

(Turtle picture generated with Google Gemini)

Read More

The trailer for I Play Rocky goes the distance and I wanna see MORE!

I have already told my best friend Chad that if I can get 250 miles to where he lives in November, we are going to see this movie.

Yowza!!  I believe already that MGM has a solid, solid hit on their hands.  This is going to connect with the fans and the critics.  Darn it, we need a feel-good inspirational movie right now, if we ever needed one at all.  And the story of how Sylvester Stallone came up from the streets to write and star in Rocky is as inspiring as it gets.

I Play Rocky comes out in select theaters on November 6th and all over the place later in November.  Plenty of time for award consideration.

Read More

Haven't seen Young Washington yet. I did see Disclosure Day though...

On Independence Day some friends asked if I wanted to join them at the theater to see the new Steven Spielberg movie Disclosure Day.  I went with them and we agreed afterward that it's a great movie!  Not Spielberg's best but it's definitely tapping into "old school Spielberg" that a lot of us remember from our youth, with a dash of the "mature Spielberg" who has been with us since Schindler's List.

That is how I gauge our greatest living filmmaker.  There is the Steven Spielberg that I met at the Boy Scout Jamboree in 1989: the "big kid" who was as giddy as a schoolboy, dancing around in his Scout uniform.  That's the man who brought us E.T. and Indiana Jones and Jaws and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.  He had a childlike twinkle in his eye and we were fortunate to have him.

Then Spielberg went off to Poland to make Schindler's List.  He wasn't the same after that.  The twinkle went out of his eyes.  The Spielberg who came back was a darker figure, and it reflected in his work.  The Jurassic Park sequel was Spielberg attempting a return to form, but it... lacked something.  I can't put my finger on what it was, but it did.

It was like that for Steven Spielberg for awhile, until 2001.  It took finishing his pal Stanley Kubrick's work with A.I.: Artificial Intelligence to pull him back to the wonder. Even there, I don't think it was a complete return.  The Spielberg of fifteen years earlier might have left David inside the amphibicopter, looking at the blue fairy, until his power ran down and everything was frozen around him.  That would have been a downer of an ending and yet one with hope.  The Spielberg of 2001 couldn't leave David like that, he instead gave him a more concrete ending.  One that was completely absent of humanity, it must be noted.

Over the past quarter century it's been coming back in fits and starts, and with Disclosure Day we have gotten as close to the old-school Steven Spielberg as we've gotten post-Schindler.  This is definitely going back to Spielberg's fantasy/sci-fi roots, the rich soil that bought forth Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.  Disclosure Day is a pure Spielberg film, with a script written by longtime collaborator David Koepp.  And the cherry on top, a terrific score by John Williams (this is the thirtieth project that Williams has done with Spielberg).  It's got all the classic Spielberg cinematic style, and it's pretty obvious that true to form Spielberg chose to shoot this with real film: it's got that beautiful grain look to it.  Visually I thought it much resembled the look of 2002's Minority Report, and that's not a bad thing at all.

I'll have to say that I recommend Disclosure Day.  It's not a perfect film, but it is a fine enough motion picture made by the greatest filmmaker of our time.  Try not to make sense of it as you go along, is the biggest advice I'll give it.  Suspend your disbelief at the theater door.  Trust me, it will make sense toward the end of the movie.

So that's what we saw on Saturday.  My friends already had tickets for Disclosure Day.  Had we gotten to the theater without any real plans in mind, we might have seen Young Washington, which debuted the day before.  I have heard nothing but amazing about that movie.  More than enough to make me want to catch it while it's in theaters.

Young Washington is produced by Angel Studios.  I've had my eye on Angel for awhile now and it has been a pure pleasure to watch it grow into a solid, solid mid-tier studio and maybe more than that.  Angel is building off of lessons that faith-based filmmaking has long been in the process of learning.  Let's face it: the Christian filmmaking community has made some real stinkers over the past fifty or sixty years.  Only now, in the last fifteen or so, has it come to realize that the message is little or nothing if it's without a story that sincerely entertains the audience.  Sherwood Pictures earnestly began the trend with their movies like Facing the Giants and Courageous, and now others have come along too.

Keep an eye on Angel Studios.  They really have become and continue to be as formidable an outfit as there is apt to be for a venture of its size and scope.  And it's only going to get better.

But I think that Angel Studios missed a real marketing opportunity with Young Washington.  One of the current gimmicks for seeing movies in a proper theater is that they offer the opportunity to have special popcorn buckets.  I've seen them in all shapes and sizes.  Some amazing to behold and some downright ridiculous (the one for Dune, a plastic sculpture of the sandworm, was... shall we say, "suggestive"?).  But they have become very popular and nice collector's items.

Angel Studios should have had a popcorn bucket for Young Washington.  It could have been a tricornered hat.  Holds your popcorn during the movie, and fashionable to wear afterward!

Yeah, it's a ChatGPT rendition.  I'm still sticking with my vow to not produce any AI-"written" work on this blog.  And if there is any AI "art" I'm going to disclose that.  But I needed a hat/popcorn holder pic and that was the fastest/dirtiest way to have one :-P 

Read More

Thirty years ago we celebrated our Independence Day!

It occurred to me that it was thirty years ago today that the science-fiction blockbuster Independence Day came out in theaters...

I saw this movie seven times that summer!  The only other movies I saw during the summer of '96 were Twister and A Time to Kill.  And I can tell you exactly on which dates I saw Independence Day each time.

It was on July 4th that was the first time.  I was working a summer job at a bindery and we had a few days off for the holiday.  Ed, my best friend at Elon, and I caught the movie at the now-non-existent Janus Theaters in Greensboro, North Carolina.  We loved it so much that we caught it again two days later.  And then a little over a week later my friend Bennie from Belgium was visiting for a week, and we saw it together. Then a few days after that my friend Johnny announced that he was engaged and asked if I would be one of his groomsmen.  I said yes and to celebrate I took him to see Independence Day, too.  The following weekend I saw the movie for the only time on my own.  Then the following week Ed and I caught it again and then a few days before classes started at Elon he and saw it once more with our friend Gary.

To this day I cannot explain what it was about that movie that had me going back over and over to see it.  Maybe it was getting stoked about Star Wars's special editions coming out in a few more months and it made me want to see any big-screen sci-fi blockbuster at all.  So Independence Day was preparing me mentally for that.

Well, I could say more, but actually I already did.  Here is the essay I wrote in 2006 about Independence Day and it's pretty much what I would write today if I had to all over again.

(In case anyone's wondering, I have not seen the sequel.  It came out during me and Tammy the Pup's epic journey across America and for various reasons I didn't catch any movie that summer while we were out and about.  I really don't care to see it either.  The original movie was too much "lightning in a bottle" and I don't want to diminish thinking that.)

Read More

Happy 100th Birthday to Mel Brooks!

 

Only 1900 years more to go!

(Die-hard fans will get the joke ;-)

And he's still going nonstop!  Coming next year is the long awaited Spaceballs sequel.  It wouldn't surprise me if Mel Brooks has more up his sleeve for after that.  The man has been a comedic force of nature for most of his life, what else might he entertain us with?

There is no doubting what I'm doing this afternoon to celebrate Brooks's centennial.  I'm going to watch Blazing Saddles for the hunnerd zillionth time.

Read More

So I watched Citizen Vigilante yesterday...

I had never heard of Citizen Vigilante, Uwe Boll's new film starring Armie Hammer, until a few days ago.  That's when I read that this movie has been effectively banned in Germany and the United Kingdom.  Something about it encouraging violence against migrants.

But then Elon Musk made Citizen Vigilante available to watch for free on his X (formerly Twitter) platform.  Something that would avoid the censorious thought police and let the people see and decide on their own.  Which only made the German and British governments even more furious.

Rush Limbaugh called it the "Streisand Effect": trying to keep people from watching a thing, makes people want to watch it even more.  Suddenly I found myself curious enough to check out Citizen Vigilante.  That's what I spent part of the afternoon yesterday doing.

What did I think?

It's a far shot from being award-worthy.  There have been other films - I'm especially thinking of the original Death Wish and also Harry Brown - that deal with vigilantism much better than does Citizen Vigilante.  There are some things about this movie that should have been left on the editing room floor (the brothel scene was especially cringe-worthy).  The entire movie looks like it was shot on an iPhone with no color correction or other tweaking.  I could tick off a few more things that are problematic with this movie...

But those things aside, I do believe that this is a film as relevant as any other during this particular time in modern history.

Citizen Vigilante is a movie that dares to acknowledge something that too many corrupt officials in all the wrong places would rather not have the people thinking about.  Namely, how out-of-control immigration that allows any so-called "refugee" into the civilized countries of the western world.  And with those "migrants", who refuse to assimilate into proper society, has come obscene levels of violent crime. Including rape and murder.

The officials in government don't dare touch the issue, they're that afraid of looking "racist" and "bigoted".  A lot of judges have been letting the migrant defendants - whenever they can be brought to court - off with easy sentences.  Their rationale: that migrant youth "don't know any better" and are even simply "misbehaving".

Meanwhile the actual citizens of those countries must live with two-tier law enforcement that places migrants above them.  To raise the issue and dare challenge it is to invite condemnation from the government.  Indeed, it's now a punishable offense in England to post criticisms of the migrants on the Internet.  Do so and you're going to get the constables banging on your door to take you down to the hoosegow.  The real citizens are treated much more harshly than the illegal aliens.  Everybody knows it's happening.

Citizen Vigilante in inspired by that radical disparity across Europe between law for citizens and "law" for migrants.  It's a very rough movie but there is no doubting the central message: that increasingly people are having to fend for themselves because the government refuses to help them.  If there is a breakdown of the law and the duly-appointed officers cannot or will not intervene, then it becomes the duty of the people to address it themselves.  And that is what Armie Hammer's character Michael Sanders does.  He's taking out the bad guys, including the judges who are much too lenient, in order to drive the people into taking charge on their own.

This is a very, very brusque film.  Not a spectacular film, and it won't win any prestigious awards.  But it will get people talking.  If they cannot readily see it because of their "democratic" governments refusing them access to it, they're going to want to watch it.  I suspect that there might be a thriving underground commerce for Citizen Vigilante across Europe (is The Pirate Bay website still functioning?).  It's going to make a lot of people think... and be moved to act.  I doubt - and I really do want to doubt - that this movie is going to entice sane people into doing some of the things that Sanders does in his war against out of control migrants who refuse to like civilized folks.  But it will anger them enough to take the bull by the horns and bring their governments back under their control.

My advice: go watch Citizen Vigilante, however it is that you can find it.  Don't expect a pretty and easily palatable story.  But you will find a very timely one.

EDIT 03:16 AM EST: I just checked and The Pirate Bay Is indeed still online.  And yes, Citizen Vigilante can be found there.  Disclaimer: I don't advise piracy of anything in any form.  But if governments like the British and German ones continue to try to keep this movie from being seen by their own people, I'm almost tempted to say that downloading and distributing this movie might be a moral and ethical thing to do after all.

 

Read More

Did Elliott and E.T. ever see each other again? Steven Spielberg has the answer...

 

To be honest, it's not a notion that I've given any real thought to, now almost four and a half decades since first seeing E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.  It's the suggestion that maybe, just maybe, E.T. and Elliott had a happy reunion many years later, when Elliott was all grown up.  Might the heart-burning alien who found his way everywhere in 1982 (or at least all over your own house especially when you had small children... and let's not forget the Atari game!) have made a return to Earth?

It's a question that Steven Spielberg himself has now addressed.  Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast to discuss his new movie Disclosure Day (a friend said it's worth seeing especially for John Wiliams's score), Spielberg shares about whether Elliott and his pal had a reunion...

"No, never saw him again," he said.  "But he did dream about him.  So there was a psychic link between the two of them.  If you notice that E.T. touched Elliott right here [points to his forehead] and said, 'I'll be right here.'"

I can live with that, as heartbreaking as it might be for some people to be told that.  Sometimes there are people who come into your life for however brief a season.  They make an impact on you, and you like to think that you make one just as strong on them.  You may never see them again but they're with you, bright in heart and memory.  In E.T.'s case that is quite literal.  And maybe someday, in ways you've never imagined or thought possible, there gets to be a happy reunion after all.  It's certainly happened in my own life a number of times.

But if not, I like to think that Elliott grew up happy, and now has a family (maybe he's even a grandfather) and that the days he spent with E.T. are forever a special part of his childhood.  No doubt something that he's shared with his own children.

That's as good an ending to the story as any.

Read More

Chris watched Masters of the Universe last night! What did he think of it?!?

I rarely go to the theater to watch a new movie anymore.  Mark it up to being so busy with trying to be busy (if that makes sense) and also it's gotten so gosh-darned expensive.  Tickets used to be just a few dollars.  This time I paid more than 14.  I feel sorry for those people with children who might want to see a new animated feature, especially in this economy.

But last night something came out that I have been hoping to see for a very long time. And yeah there is the 1987 film adaptation and it definitely has heart, but in terms of faithfulness to the basic material it lacked a lot.  1987's Masters of the Universe has been called a very good Jack Kirby-inspired movie though, so it's got that going for it, and I can agree with that.

So a more accurate (??) adaptation is something that a lot of us ("lot of us" reading as "guys in their forties and fifties who are trying to relive their childhood favorites) have been wanting for quite awhile now.  And now Masters of the Universe, directed by Travis Knight (no relation) and starring Nicholas Galitzine as heroic He-Man and Jared Leto as the evil Skeletor, has finally arrived.  I went to the 7 o'clock showing last night at the theater about ten minutes from my house.

What have I to say about it?

Masters of the Universe '26 is just what I was hoping for in a summer movie: big, loud, colorful, dumb, and fun!

This is not a movie that takes itself seriously or asks you the viewer to take it seriously either.  Masters of the Universe is very aware of what it is: a motion picture based on a line of toys.  In this case it's inspired by one of the most well-remembered toy lines of the Eighties.  I guess that after the raging success of Barbie, Mattel is hoping that lightning will strike twice.  And based on what I saw last night and the audience reaction, they might have something approximating that.

No, it's not a deathly serious movie.  This film is like watching every Masters of the Universe toy you ever had in your big box of them being dumped out on the floor, and throwing them whole onto the big screen.  And I was having a hoot pointing to and saying the names of the characters: Fisto, Roboto, Trap-Jaw... hey even some characters from the '87 movie (look for Dolph Lundgren in a fairly important cameo).  If you have any persistent knowledge of the toy line from forty-odd years ago, you will be rejoicing at how many classic characters show up in this movie, and practically every one of them looking exactly as you might have imagined them appearing in a live-action spectacle.  I can't think of a single disappointment in that department.

Masters of the Universe doesn't have much of a moral, or at least not one that it beats you over the head with.  Okay, yeah there is something about standing up and not backing down, which Man-At-Arms (wonderfully played by Idris Elba) tries to drill into young Prince Adam early in the film.  But so far as an agenda goes, there is absolutely none in this movie.  It's a children's playtime, writ large and projected onto the big screen (I'd love to see how it looks in IMAX), with all the carelessness and lack of worry that we ideally should have all had from ages 6 to 10 and playing make-believe with those amazing action figures.

I had a blast seeing Masters of the Universe.  I wasn't alone.  The theater was fairly packed and I noticed a few men about my own age who had children with them.  I spoke with one of them after the movie and he told me that he had been showing his kids the classic Eighties cartoon series and that they had really been loving that.  "You're raising them up right!", I told him.  He told me that he tries.

So much else that could be said about this movie.  I won't add on much else, other than it was a very enjoyable two-plus hours and I wouldn't mind catching it again while it's in theaters.

By the way, be aware that there are three mid/end credit scenes in this movie.  So don't go rushing out of the theater before the lights come back up!

Read More

Marcia Lucas - film editor extraordinaire - has passed away

The very sad news came in the past few days that Marcia Lucas, the incredibly talented film editor who made her mark with the original Star Wars and many other movies, has passed away at the age of 80.

From what I've heard over the years, Marcia came into the production of Star Wars after her then-husband George Lucas had shown a cut of the movie to his friends.  The near unanimous verdict (Steven Spielberg was the only one in the room who said he liked it) was that George had a disaster on his hands.  That first cut was a narrative nightmare.

And then Marcia swooped in and said that she would fix it.

And she did.

Among other things she made it so that Princess Leia was much more action-oriented than she had been first perceived to be.  That was a huge thing that made a tremendous impact not only on the film but on the expansive saga that Star Wars came to be.  And then there was the final assault on the Death Star.  Marcia had 40,000-some feet of footage to whittle down and assemble into a cinematic dogfight as good as any ever put on film.  It took two months of work.  The result was a battle that became one of the most epic from any movie ever.

Marcia Lucas also worked on American Graffiti and Taxi Driver.  She would contribute to The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, which was her final film credit.

Movie editing is a true art.  It is the fine chiseling that produces a David from a rough block of stone.  It has become one of the most enjoyable aspects of making a film that I have experienced in my own cinematographic pursuits.  I've come to discover that I'm having the most fun when I'm behind the camera, and that includes post-production when I'm getting to look at all that footage we've shot and then deciding what fits best in what will become the final product.  It's hard work.  It can be heart-wrenching at times, when you're having to decide what to keep and what to cut especially when your cast and crew have been giving nothing less than their best effort.  The temptation is to want to include a little bit of everything that you've shot... and unfortunately that just isn't feasible.

I can't begin to imagine the task that Marcia Lucas had set before her.  But I also can't help but think that despite it all, in her own way she was having fun too.  Marcia believed in Star Wars when few others did.  She knew it was worth sharing with others and she knew it was going to be a success.

She was right.

Think I'll watch that first Star Wars movie this afternoon again, in her memory.

Read More

Steven Spielberg is right: Movies need two months in the theater!

I've been arguing for over five years now, since we started going back to the cinema in the wake of COVID, that movies must spend some time in the theaters before going onto streaming video or some other digital delivery service.  A film represents more than just casual entertainment.  It is the result of the efforts of a lot of people who collaborated together to produce something that, ideally, has not been seen before.  Those people deserve appreciation, and acknowledgement.  Their labors merit watching in as big a venue as is feasible.

When movies come out in the theaters, they can take on a life of their own.  A good movie without much fanfare can become a "sleeper hit" that finds success by word of mouth (two examples of good sleepers are The Artist and My Big Fat Greek Wedding).  Movies get talked about, and vigorously discussed.  It's something that they make an entire art of in places like Europe, where movie goers will often repair to a sidewalk cafe and converse about the movie with friends and family.  That's how we did it when I went to Brussels a long time ago, anyway.

Movies in the old-fashioned way are communal experiences.  Watch a film in your living room, and what can be said about how much you were moved by it.  But seeing a movie in a theater, with other people sharing the same room, and something almost magical happens.  When Avengers: Infinity War came out, on opening night I saw it in a packed theater.  The stunned look on everyone's faces after that movie ended is something I'll never forget.  It was a look that said it all: "Oh crap, NOW what?!  How can there possibly be a good closure to this?!"  You can maybe simulate that at home, but it's just not the same.

A typical movie, not a solid stinker of the sort that Ed Wood used to make, deserves at least two weeks, maybe three, in the theater.  That's enough time to weigh whether it really resonates with audiences.  But then there are some movies that come to demand much more time getting projected onto the big screen.  Those deserve at least a month listed on the marquee... if not more.

I'm not the only one either believing this and in fact I'm in good company.  Steven Spielberg has been at CinemaCon this past week and he had something to say about the time movies spend in the theaters.  Mainly, that there needs to be a sixty-day window for new movies to be available only in theaters.  Bringing up his forthcoming film Disclosure Day, Spielberg said that "This is a movie that needs to be experienced, and what you need to get from the beginning to the end is a seatbelt."

I love having good movies on my iPad.  The night that Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker came out on iTunes, I gleefully loaded it on my tablet so that at last I had the complete Skywalker saga on one device.  Not long ago I finally watched Dune: Part Two and that's on my iPad also.  It's a great convenience to be able to do that.  But it's something that I can wait a little for, if that means more people get to see the movie as its director and producers and cast want and need us to see it as.

I know that I'm not the only one who believes this, who feels this way.  Surely there are other cinemaphiles out there who love the movie-going experience and want others to know what that's like, too.  Maybe they will chime in like Spielberg has, and persuade the studio execs to hold out on the instant gratification of home-audience profits in favor of something deeper and more meaningful, if only for a few months.

Read More

New trailer for Masters of the Universe is here!

Masters of the Universe is officially the movie I most want to see this summer.  It looks like it's going to be all kinds of bonkers good time!  It comes across as every Masters toy I had as a kid put into a big box and shaken around and then poured out on the carpet.  The design, the color palette, the voices...

This is going to be a supremely big dumb fun movie.  The perfect two-hour getaway from the craziness of the real world.

Here's the new trailer that dropped yesterday.  Lots of stuff in this one, including our first look at Jared Leto's Skeletor as he delivers some dialogue.

I think that there should be a collector's popcorn bucket and that it look like Man-At-Arms's helmet.  Practical and fashionable.

Read More

Fifty years ago today, Star Wars began filming

It was about 6:30 a.m. local time in the desert of Tunisia, on March 22, 1976, that the first scenes for George Lucas's film Star Wars were filmed.  Shot that day: the Jawas "droid auction" and the scene between Luke and Threepio as they are standing outside the homestead looking for Artoo.

Here is Mark Hamill in costume, in the first behind-the-scenes pic from the production of a Star Wars movie:

One has to wonder, what were the cast and crew thinking as that first torturous day unfolded (the Artoo-Detoo's front leg refused to deploy, and Anthony Daniels's Threepio costume didn't fit).  Did they have any notion at all just how special their project would become to not only millions but arguably billions of people over the course of the next half-century?  How it would be endlessly discussed and debated, and so beloved even five full decades later?

It all started that spring morning in Tunisia: nine movies, numerous television series (not including the holiday special), dozens of books, countless toys and games, music that has become a cornerstone of modern pop culture...

It all began fifty years ago today.

Read More

John Carpenter's The Thing has been added to the National Film Registry

 

This is great!!  One of my favorite movies of all time.  In fact, I watched it this past weekend as the ice was beginning to fall.  It's a tradition I have whenever there's a winter storm that's trapping me inside the house.  This film is such a favorite of mine, that it's one of a few that I always keep loaded on my iPad.

John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing is one of the new inductees on the National Film Registry.  This year's class also includes Inception, The Karate Kid, Glory, and The Incredibles.  The Truman Show and White Christmas made the list too.

In adding The Thing to the registry, the Library of Congress said this of the movie: "Moody, stark, often funny and always chilling, this science fiction horror classic follows Antarctic scientists who uncover a long-dormant, malevolent extraterrestrial presence.  The Thing revolutionized horror special effects and offers a brutally honest portrait of the results of paranoia and exhaustion when the unknown becomes inescapable."

It's now well over four full decades later, and The Thing is no less startling and engrossing than it was when it first came to theaters.  After more than forty years and we are still discussing and debating this movie.  Who was who, when, and where?  What happened to the blood?  That one is a particularly favorite mystery to ruminate on, one I cannot figure out at all (Palmer maybe?  When did he turn exactly anyway?).

There is another storm coming.  Starting tonight.  Current projections are that here in the Upstate of South Carolina we may get 5 to 8 inches of snow.  We're not going anywhere, again.  So I guess I'll be watching The Thing once more.  Maybe the answers will hit me this time...

Read More

The first trailer for Masters of the Universe promises big, dumb, and FUN!

Hot dang!  I have to see this when it comes out.  Masters of the Universe looks to be the most funnest movie that I would have beheld in a theater in too long a time.  And I will see this in a theater, Lord willing.  It's just... awwww man this is simply awesome!  It's like the Masters of the Universe figures that I had all together in a box, taken out and brought to glorious life.  Not sure about the "Earth angle" though, but I'm going to be more than willing to give this a chance.  Right now I want nothing more than the distilled essence of this trailer shot into my veins and giving me a hearty boost of magnificent.

Awright well enough of me blabbering on, here is the first trailer for Masters of the Universe: a film that dares to be better than we possibly deserve:

"I HAVE THE POWER!!!!"

I wonder if Dolph Lundgren will get a cameo in this.  He did play He-Man in that very peculiar Masters of the Universe movie from 1987 after all.  Maybe he can play King Randor.

Read More

Ten years ago tonight, the Force awakened...

It was on this day ten years ago that Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens was released in theaters.

I caught the first show of it on opening night, at a theater in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Chad, my best friend since childhood, and his wife and I saw it together.  And it truly was a very special night.  It was the first time in all our history together that Chad and I had seen a new Star Wars movie with each other in the theater.  It was like God was winking at our shared childhood.  Made all the more poignant because a few months later Chad and his wife became parents to a beautiful little girl.

Yes, I'm aware of the reputation that the Star Wars sequel trilogy has come to have.  I would be a fool to not acknowledge that particular gundark in the room.  I have shared those sentiments also.  But alas, those have softened somewhat during the past decade since the first Star Wars movie produced by Disney was released.  I'm increasingly of the mind that the sequel trilogy - The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker - does indeed work as a cycle unto itself and as components of the larger Skywalker family saga.  They may not be the most brilliant films of the series: those will forever be the original trilogy, especially The Empire Strikes Back.  But neither are they the irredeemable mess that many claim them to be.  I've had the opportunity to work with children in the past few months.  Something I've asked them a number of times is what do they think of Star Wars.  The almost unanimous answer is that they love it, so the saga is still producing fans.  Then I ask them what do they think of the newer movies.  And almost every young person I ask that of tells me that they like the sequel trilogy especially.  Rey has her fans, particularly among girls.  And that's not a bad thing at all.  It tells me that Star Wars is still at work doing what it was always meant to be: a multi-generational story to be enjoyed by people of all ages.  As a Generation X kid, I loved the original trilogy.  I came to better appreciate the prequels as I got older.  Now in my fifties, I am seeing people who are as young as I was come to enjoy Star Wars, too.  And that is good.

Well, anyway, it began in earnest ten years ago tonight, with the long-awaited arrival of the seventh episode of the Star Wars saga: something that I dare say most of us had given up on ever getting to see.  Lumps and all, it is a Star Wars movie as much as any movie can be.  And I certainly do appreciate that.

Read More

Nine years ago tonight in San Diego...

Nine years ago tonight I was in a movie theater in San Diego, California.  I was about to do something I'd never done before in my entire life: watch a Star Wars movie in the theater without anyone to share the experience with.

It was still Tammy the Pup and me, a boy and his dog across America, a very long way from where we had started six months before.  I was stuck between wanting to see a new Star Wars film so very much, but also having to face that there would be no friend or family to enjoy it with.  That's how I went in to see Rogue One.

But maybe God provided.  I wound up sitting with some high school kids who were very excited about the movie, and we talked a little bit.  We'd become rather acquainted by the time the lights went down and the movie started.  I think we all enjoyed the movie in each other's company.  Something that was well reflected toward the end of Rogue One, when the movie comes to the scene of those Rebel soldiers trapped in the corridor.  We were ALL screaming, every one of us in that theater, as we watched Darth Vader mercilessly eviscerate every man in his path.  It was Darth Vader in a way we had always wanted to see but somehow never had the chance to before.  We truly shared a moment of collective horror... but in the right company, that can be a very fun thing.

The movie soon ended and as the credits began rolling my new friends and I talked about it and we agreed, that Rogue One was one of the best Star Wars movies yet made.

Doesn't seem like that was nine whole years ago.  I wonder what those kids are doing now.  They'd be in their mid to late twenties now.  I hope they are well, wherever they are.  They certainly were good company for one fine evening at the movies.

Read More

The ORIGINAL Star Wars: A New Hope is coming to theaters in February 2027!

This is something that a LOT of us have waited almost thirty years for!  It was reported a few days ago that the original cut of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is coming back to theaters in February 2027!  This is going to be the first Star Wars movie as it existed before the "Special Editions" came out in 1997.  From an age when the special effects of the saga were done without benefit of computer-generated imagery.   This is the movie that shattered the bar for what practical effects could do and it set the platinum standard for every blockbuster since.  And now in time for the film's fiftieth anniversary we're going to behold it again in its original glory.

(I'm going to assume that "original 1977 Star Wars" actually means the print that was released prior to the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back.  That version was the 1977 cut but with the "Episode IV: A New Hope" added to the opening crawl.  That is how it was most widely known as in the years after its original release.  That's my assumption anyway.  It's still going to be the material circa 1977.)

It's a real wonder that it is coming out though!  Ever since 1997 the official line from Lucasfilm is that the footage that was cleaned up and restored prior to getting enhanced effects for the Special Editions, had been irreparably damaged during that process.  George Lucas insisted that A New Hope as had first come out in theaters no longer existed.  He further stated that the Special Editions were in his mind the definitive Star Wars trilogy and that there was no real need or perhaps even desire for the original cuts.

Disney many have done a few things wrong since taking over the franchise in 2012, but this is not one off those.  Because many of us have been wanting the classic A New Hope - the version that won awards out the wazoo and was one of the very first movies inducted into the National Film Registry - to be made available to us.  The A New Hope cut that many if not most of us still remember from between 1977 and 1996 is, I prefer to believe anyway, a priceless historical artifact of its time.  It deserves to be forever honored and esteemed.  And the people who have come after deserve to see it for themselves: a cut of the first Star Wars movie that really does have Han shooting first.

I don't know how they did it but apparently there was a pristine print of that first version of Episode IV out there and now it's been restored and being made ready for its golden anniversary.  I hope this does a zillion dollars at the box office.  Maybe then Disney and Lucasfilm will not only release the original versions of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi also, but make them on sale for home release.  I would certainly love to have the first trilogy as originally enjoyed in my personal library.

Think I'm going to wear my lucky Star Wars cap, that I've had since being at Elon, when I go see this in the theater.

Read More