Buffista Movies 4: Straight to Video
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Best alien ever
The beach ball? Yeah.
You know, I couldn't contribute to the
Donnie Darko
discussion because it's sitting on my shelf of To Watch. We've been putting off watching it because the DH wanted to get the one with the extra 26 minutes or whatever added back in. So I asked tonight, after having read Buffista commentary on DD, what those extra minutes were, and he tells me its the physics about the black hole/singularity thing.
Which is a key part of the science fiction game that I asked for the movie references for.
So does that count as a plate of shrimp?
(Probably not, but I'm tired)
The funny thing is that all of Zach's student films (that I saw) were show-not-tell, almost to a fault -- gorgeous pacing and composition, very very very sparse writing.
I believe this, because I believe the first 80 minutes are fantastic show-not-tell. That's why it's annoying when he decides to monologue the points home that he's already made so clear in the last two big scenes.
Now, crossing my fingers for BB.
The tech of
Batman Begins:
[link]
Somewhat spoilery, as to what the batsuit can do, etc....
I am randomly earwormed with the song "Suddenly" from Xanadu.
I need to find that movie. Gene Kelly on roller skates? What's not to love?!?
The GF and I bought a copy of Xanadu a couple of years ago and it's far worse than we remembered. We didn't even watch the whole thing. It was quite a disappointment.
That happened to me when I found a copy of "License to Drive." Just not as funny when you aren't 14.
That's what I'm afraid of, GC. I know I've watched Xanadu a billion times, but all when I was much younger. I can't remember much about it, except Gene Kelly, how much the guy looks like a Gibb brother, the music that randomly pops into my head that I know all the lyrics to, and a strange sequence pitting modern (read: 80's) musicians against a swing band in some kind of band-off.
And I just read on the IMDB boards (scary, scary place) that someone thinks David Thewlis is in the band sequence. In one of the bands. This thought somehow makes me sad.
Until I think of David Thewlis as a glam rocker. Then I'm thinking of something else entirely.
t in bunk
And... glam David Thewlis killed the thread.
hangs head in shame
goes back to bunk
A friend just sent me this article, saying if it's an insight into current conservative thought, [expletive deleted]. I don't know that it represents the general stance from the conservative party, but I think folks predicting Star Wars bumperstickers during the next election are probably right. (Not spoilery for ROTS, as the article's from 3 years ago).
The Case for the Empire
From the May 16, 2002 Daily Standard: Everything you think you know
about Star Wars is wrong.
by Jonathan V. Last
12/26/2002 12:00:00 AM
STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, "Attack of the
Clones." There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic
morality of George Lucas's series. But the truth is that from the
beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.
It's a difficult leap to make--embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor
over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia--but a
careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas's
off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case.
First, an aside: For the sake of this discussion, I've considered only
the history gleaned from the actual Star Wars films, not the Expanded
Universe. If you know what the Expanded Universe is and want to argue
that no discussion of Star Wars can be complete without considering
material outside the canon, that's fine. However, it's always been my
view that the comic books and novels largely serve to clean up Lucas's
narrative and philosophical messes. Therefore, discussions of intrinsic
intent must necessarily revolve around the movies alone. You may
disagree, but please don't e-mail me about it.
If you don't know what the Expanded Universe is, well, uh, neither do I.
I. The Problems with the Galactic Republic
At the beginning of the Star Wars saga, the known universe is governed
by the Galactic Republic. The Republic is controlled by a Senate, which
is, in turn, run by an elected chancellor who's in charge of procedure,
but has little real power.
Scores of thousands of planets are represented in the Galactic Senate,
and as we first encounter it, it is sclerotic and ineffectual. The
Republic has grown over many millennia to the point where there are so
many factions and disparate interests, that it is simply too big to be
governable. Even the Republic's staunchest supporters recognize this
failing: In "The Phantom Menace," Queen Amidala admits, "It is clear to
me now that the Republic no longer functions." In "Attack of the
Clones," young Anakin Skywalker observes that it simply "doesn't work."
The Senate moves so slowly that it is powerless to stop aggression
between member states. In "The Phantom Menace" a supra-planetary
alliance, the Trade Federation (think of it as OPEC to the Galactic
Republic's United Nations), invades a planet and all the Senate can
agree to do is call for an investigation.
Like the United Nations, the Republic has no armed forces of its own,
but instead relies on a group of warriors, the Jedi knights, to "keep
the peace." The Jedi, while autonomous, often work in tandem with the
Senate, trying to smooth over quarrels and avoid conflicts. But the Jedi
number only in the thousands--they cannot protect everyone.
What's more, it's not clear that they should be "protecting" anyone. The
Jedi are Lucas's great heroes, full of Zen wisdom and righteous power.
They encourage people to "use the Force"--the mystical energy which is the source of their power--but the truth, revealed in "The Phantom
Menace," is that the Force isn't available to the rabble. The Force
comes from midi-chlorians, tiny symbiotic organisms in people's blood,
like mitochondria. The Force, it turns out, is an inherited, genetic
trait. If you don't have the blood, you don't get the Force. Which makes the Jedi not a democratic militia, but a royalist Swiss guard.
And an arrogant royalist Swiss guard, at that. With one or two (continued...)
( continues...) notable
exceptions, the Jedi we meet in Star Wars are full of themselves. They
ignore the counsel of others (often with terrible consequences), and
seem honestly to believe that they are at the center of the universe.
When the chief Jedi record-keeper is asked in "Attack of the Clones"
about a planet she has never heard of, she replies that if it's not in
the Jedi archives, it doesn't exist. (The planet in question does exist,
again, with terrible consequences.)
In "Attack of the Clones," a mysterious figure, Count Dooku, leads a
separatist movement of planets that want to secede from the Republic.
Dooku promises these confederates smaller government, unlimited free
trade, and an "absolute commitment to capitalism." Dooku's motives are
suspect--it's not clear whether or not he believes in these causes.
However, there's no reason to doubt the motives of the other
separatists--they seem genuinely to want to make a fresh start with a
government that isn't bloated and dysfunctional.
The Republic, of course, is eager to quash these separatists, but they
never make a compelling case--or any case, for that matter--as to why, if they are such a freedom-loving regime, these planets should not be allowed to check out of the Republic and take control of their own destinies.
II. The Empire
We do not yet know the exact how's and why's, but we do know this: At some point between the end of Episode II and the beginning of Episode IV, the Republic is replaced by an Empire. The first hint comes in "Attack of the Clones," when the Senate's Chancellor Palpatine is
granted emergency powers to deal with the separatists. It spoils very
little to tell you that Palpatine eventually becomes the Emperor. For a
time, he keeps the Senate in place, functioning as a rubber-stamp, much like the Roman imperial senate, but a few minutes into Episode IV, we are informed that the he has dissolved the Senate, and that "the last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away."
Lucas wants the Empire to stand for evil, so he tells us that the
Emperor and Darth Vader have gone over to the Dark Side and dresses them in black.
But look closer. When Palpatine is still a senator, he says, "The
Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy,
squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one
point he laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now."
Palpatine believes that the political order must be manipulated to
produce peace and stability. When he mutters, "There is no civility,
there is only politics," we see that at heart, he's an esoteric
Straussian.
Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively
benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business
with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop
organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts).
The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average,
law-abiding citizen.
Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The
Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In "The Empire Strikes Back" Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor "falls down on the job."
And while it's a small point, the Empire's manners and decorum speak
well of it. When Darth Vader is forced to employ bounty hunters to track down Han Solo, he refuses to address them by name. Even Boba Fett, the greatest of all trackers, is referred to icily as "bounty hunter." And yet Fett understands the protocol. When he captures Solo, he calls him "Captain Solo." (Whether this is in deference to Han's former rank in the Imperial starfleet, or simply because Han owns and pilots his own ship, we don't know. I suspect it's the former.)
But the most compelling evidence that the Empire isn't evil comes in
"The Empire Strikes Back" when Darth Vader is battling Luke (continued...)