We watched the original Star Wars trilogy with the boys over the last week. It was their first time seeing them (Ryan’s mini-review: “awesome!”), but Gail and I have seen them many many times each. Some things you notice when you see movies that often:

Han: Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power.
Chewie: Does nothing
Han: Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power.
Chewie: Reaches over and pulls a lever right in front of Han

Right after this, Han says “We’re caught in a tractor beam, it’s pulling us in. I’m gonna have to shut down. They’re not gonna get me without a fight!” They’re not gonna get you without a fight? But you just said you were going to shut down. What kind of fight are you talking about?

Luke gets lost on Hoth, and Han goes out to find him. Once it gets late enough, they close the doors to the base, so Luke and Han are locked out. Everyone is very sad, assuming that both will die. Chewbacca and Leia are both shown very upset, and C-3P0 offers his thoughts: “Don’t worry about Master Luke. He’s quite clever you know, for a human being.” Cut to Chewbacca, who begins to weep. I always interpreted this as Chewie thinking “…but Han’s not!”

When they released the “Special Edition” versions of the original trilogy, they added scenes and changed the backgrounds and stuff in some other scenes. While watching the Special Edition movies (the ones on DVD), I can tell you from memory exactly which scenes were added, which ones were modified, and how they were modified.

“I have a [very, really] bad feeling about this” is said four times by four different people (Luke, Leia, Han, C-3P0) in the original trilogy.

When about to be crushed in the garbage masher, Leia grabs the pole she will use to try to brace the walls before the walls actually begin to move.

Why would Chewie try to choke Lando right after he helps them escape from the stormtroopers? I get that they’re angry at him for selling them out to the Empire, but didn’t Lando just set them free? Lando croaks “There’s still a chance to save Han” and Chewie lets him go. They are unsuccessful at saving Han, but their anger at Lando is instantly forgotten and never mentioned again.

Bad audio dubbing: Aunt Beru, the X-Wing pilot that says “Stay on target”, and the guy outside on Hoth that radios inside to say that walkers are approaching.

As I asked a way long time ago, if C-3P0 is fluent in six million forms of communication, why can’t he teach R2-D2 one of them?

When Luke and Leia are chasing the stormtroopers on the speeder bikes on Endor, Luke says “Quick, jam their comlinks! Centre switch!” Why would the bikes have a switch specifically for jamming comlinks?

The Emperor says that he allowed the rebels to know about the shield generator on Endor, and that “an entire legion of my best troops” are waiting there. A legion of the Empire’s best troops were beaten by a handful of people, a Wookiee, two droids and a bunch of teddy bears?

According to the second (prequel) trilogy, Jedi training begins in childhood and continues until adulthood. We see Yoda teaching “younglings” who are no more than six, and Obi-Wan is clearly in his late teens or early twenties in The Phantom Menace, yet is still considered a “padawan learner”. Luke, who had never even heard of the Force until he was seventeen, does a couple of hours of Jedi training with Obi-Wan on the trip to Alderaan and then a fairly short period of time with Yoda on Dagobah. It couldn’t have been that long — just after the Hoth battle, Han and Leia escaped into the asteroid field and Luke headed to Dagobah. The Falcon then headed for Cloud City to get repairs. So Luke’s training lasts for however long it took the Falcon to get to Bespin, plus the length of time they’re on Bespin. I suppose it’s possible that it took months to get to Bespin and that they’re on Bespin for months before Luke shows up, but there’s no evidence that either was more than a couple of days. Anyway, after this short period of training, Luke leaves for Bespin (Empire Strikes Back) and Tatooine (Return of the Jedi). He then returns to Dagobah where Yoda tells him “No more training do you require”, and that all that he needs to do to become a Jedi is face Vader again. Did Yoda give him the crash course? Is Luke so strong in the Force that he learns in a few weeks what it takes other Jedi fifteen years to learn?

Obi-Wan and Yoda wanted to hide Anakin’s kids from him (to protect them), so they hid Leia’s true parentage from everyone, even her. When Ben finally told Luke that he had a sister, he wasn’t even going to tell Luke who it was, for her protection. But they didn’t even change Luke’s last name — why was it so important to hide Leia when they didn’t even try to hide Luke?

Luke asks Leia about her real mother and she says that she was beautiful, kind, but sad, and Luke says that he has no memory of his mother. As we saw in Episode III, Padme died within minutes of their birth, so neither can possibly have any actual memories. Perhaps they could get some feelings of some kind through the Force, but why would Leia (with no knowledge of the Force) be able to do this while Luke the Jedi cannot?

During the final battle in Jedi, the rebels send their entire fleet to the battle zone. Why send the big frigates that are of no use in a battle?

Yoda says a couple of times “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny”. During the final battle with Vader, Luke clearly makes use of the dark side, since he is using his anger and hatred to give him power, and it helps him to defeat Vader. I’d call that starting down the dark path, but then he just stops and “comes back”. Forever dominate his destiny the dark side did not.

And finally, when the X-Wings begin their attack on the Death Star in the first movie:
Wedge: Look at the size of that thing!
Red Leader: Cut the chatter, red two.

We took the boys out to see Enchanted the other night. Originally, it looked to me like a movie the kids would enjoy and a movie that Gail would enjoy, but me, not so much. It did look kind of funny, and a clever idea, but I wasn’t too excited about seeing it. But the reviews I’ve seen online have been overwhelmingly positive, including a number of people who said that they didn’t expect to like this movie but did. So when Gail mentioned the idea of going to see it, I agreed. Bottom line: I loved it. The boys liked it, but I think Gail and I liked it even more. It was very funny, it was sweet, it had the beautiful Amy Adams for the guys and Patrick Dempsey for the girls, it had biting social commentary (well, not really), and best of all, the Disney people had fun making fun of themselves, and I like when big companies do that.

The story, in case you haven’t seen the commercials, is pretty clever — Giselle is an animated girl in an animated forest who lives with little animated forest creatures that talk to her and clean up her house and such, very Cinderella-like, while she waits for her prince to come and whisk her away to the castle to live happily ever after. The prince indeed comes, but his evil step-mother throws her down a pit, and she ends up in modern-day New York City. At this point the movie switches over to live-action, but the actors playing the formerly-animated characters keep their animated personalities, so it’s basically a fish-out-of-water kind of thing. Giselle talks about “love’s first kiss” and living happily ever after while Robert, the jaded divorce lawyer that she meets, tries to convince her that “happily ever after” doesn’t exist. At one point Giselle, while walking with Robert in public, attempts to break into song (as characters in Disney movies are wont to do), but an embarrassed Robert asks her to stop because in the real world, people just don’t do that. When she tries to clean up a messy apartment, she calls for the forest creatures to help her, as she did in her own place in the animated world, but of course in New York City, you don’t get sparrows and cute little mice, you get cockroaches and rats instead.

Adams does a fantastic job of playing an amalgam of Belle, Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Cinderella, basically all the “Disney princesses” rolled up into one. All the songs she sings could have come from any Disney musical, except that the lyrics are much funnier than those in The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast.

This movie might convince you that “happily ever after” may not only happen in the fantasy world. But even if it doesn’t, it’s certainly a couple of hours worth of entertainment.

Wil Wheaton (who I’m beginning to think of less as an actor and more of a
writer and blogger) wrote a blog entry as well as an article (SFW) at
suicidegirls.com (NSFW – I only read it for the articles) about Star Wars, what
it means to “my generation” (I’m only a year or two older than Wil) and why
the fact that the new trilogy “sucked so hard” made him not just disappointed,
but downright angry.

I didn’t hate the second trilogy (I’m going to refer to the trilogies
in the order in which they were released, i.e. the first trilogy is
episodes 4, 5, and 6, and the second trilogy is episodes 1, 2, and 3),
but it certainly didn’t mean the same thing to me as the first one did. I’m sure
that part of it was the fact that I was 8 when Star Wars came out, and my friends
and I were all into playing with the action figures and such. I think part of
it is also that there had never really been a movie like Star Wars – the effects
were state of the art, and unlike Star Trek, the aliens were truly alien,
not just humans with different coloured skin or bumps on their foreheads. It
created a whole new generation of science fiction fans, and paved the way for
innumerable other space movies. It was also one of the first movies to really
cash in on the toys and merchandising – I wonder if Lucas made more money
fom that then from the movies themselves. Basically, the first three movies were
not just great movies, they were groundbreaking in the world of cinema.

Then, 16 years later, along comes “The Phantom Menace”. The special effects
were, once again, state of the art, and zillions of people (myself included)
were excited to be entering the world of Star Wars once again. They even had big
name actors like Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor involved – how could it fail?
Well, it didn’t, financially, it made zillions. But the movie itself wasn’t
up to what I expected:

• First and foremost was Jar Jar Binks, the most annoying movie
  character since … well, since the beginning of time.
• There were the obvious comparisons between Darth Vader and Darth Maul, and
  while Maul looked menacing and was really slick with the very cool double-ended
  light saber, he had maybe two lines in the whole movie, and ended up being
  nothing more than a hitman. Vader, on the other hand, was the very personification
  of evil in the first trilogy.
• The dialogue was bad. Really bad. Anakin asking if Padme was an angel made me
  cringe, especially once we realized that the two of them would, (ahem),
  “get together” in the second or third movie – that was kind of creepy. Another
  classic bad line: “Let’s try spinning, that’s a good trick”.
• Qui-Gon insisting that Jar Jar (ugh) accompany them because of his life
  debt seemed like a desperation ploy to keep Jar Jar in the movie. Qui-Gon telling
  Obi-Wan “we may need a guide” was just laughable. Also, Jar Jar had no idea who
  these Jedi were, and yet immediately led them to the “hidden” Gungan city. Later,
  he led them to a special (also hidden) place that Gungans go when in trouble. If
  they have a hidden city, why would they need another hidden “special place”? And
  after telling them that Gungans don’t like outsiders, why would he lead outsiders
  to these hidden places twice?
• The midichlorians were these microscopic life forms that live within our
  cells and give us knowledge of the force. Why, George, why? The midichlorians
  served exactly one purpose: Lucas wanted a way to quantify how strong
  Anakin was in the Force. It wasn’t enough to just say “this kid is really strong”,
  he needed to prove that the kid had potential beyond that of any known Jedi. But
  without an actual number to quantify that, there was no way to make that point,
  so he came up with the midichlorians. Now he could give an actual number and
  specifically say that Anakin’s number was higher than that of Yoda. I didn’t like
  this idea, but I can’t say why. The best I can do is to say that making the
  midichlorians some kind of intermediary between people and the Force seemed to
  reduce the coolness factor somewhat.

It did have some good points too – the lightsaber fight between Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon and Darth Maul and the pod race were both good, though I suppose that’s mainly because of the visual effects (and sound during the pod race).

I really wanted to love the movie – like I said, I was (am!) a huge Star Wars
fan, and was really excited about it. I remember leaving the movie feeling like
I was “betraying” Lucas by not loving it. It never occurred to me at the time that
Lucas was actually betraying us, the fans, by making it. I’m still not
sure that I feel that way about it, but I know some, like Wil, do.

I’ll post my thoughts on Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith later
on.

Gail is away for the weekend, so it’s just me and the boys. We rented a couple of movies: The Wild (which the boys liked, I thought the other-movie-with-the-same-plot Madagascar was better. I did like Don Cherry’s cameo though) and Scooby-Doo for the boys, and I decided to get something for myself that Gail would have little interest in seeing. I decided on Nacho Libre, since I like Jack Black. Well, let me say this: Nacho Libre is easily — easily — the best Mexican wrestling movie I’ve ever seen.

Comparing it to non-Mexican-wresting movies, however, is not so favourable. There were some funny moments, but in general, it was kind of boring. The cinematography was weird (like a Mexican movie? I dunno), as was the soundtrack. It seemed to me that both would have been less grating if I were more familiar with Mexican culture, but watching a parody of something that you’re not familiar with is just not funny.

What is it with studios that they release movies with very similar plots around the same time? The Wild and Madagascar were released about a year apart, and both dealt with New York zoo animals escaping and making it to their natural habitat, with which they are unfamiliar. Antz and A Bug’s Life were released around the same time, both dealt with computer-generated ants. Armageddon and Deep Impact, both about meteor strikes. Volcano and Dante’s Peak, both about (you guessed it) volcanoes. Especially weird were The Truman Show and EdTV, both of which had what I would normally have considered a very unique plot. It would seem to me that one studio gets wind of an idea that the other studio is working on, and rushes to get their own “version” out first. Come on, writers, this is why you get paid the big bucks — write your own damn movie.

Movies Gail and I have seen in the last week or so:

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest: I enjoyed it, though I
found it kind of long. The sword fight on the big wheel was neat, but just
kept going and going… I also found the scene where Elizabeth yells and throws
rocks at Will, Jack, and the Commodore rather weak and out of character for her.
I liked the ending though. Maybe it’s just me, but I think the way they ended
it left it wide open for another sequel!

Superman Returns: Excellent. I like Kevin Spacey as an actor, but for
some reason I didn’t think he could pull off Lex Luthor. I was wrong.
Brandon Routh plays Superman, and he must have watched the original Superman
movie a zillion times as preparation, because he captures Christopher Reeve as
both Clark Kent and Superman really well. When we watched the original Superman
the next day, we were surprised at how many lines in this movie were copied from
the first one.

V for Vendetta: Excellent acting, intriguing story. We didn’t know who
the actor playing V was; turned out to be Hugo Weaving (Elrond from LOTR, Mr.
Smith from The Matrix). He was excellent — you’d have to be a good actor
to pull off a character like that without showing your face (a la Andy
Serkis as Gollum in LOTR, though Gollum’s face was kind of based on his anyway).
Natalie Portman was very good as well, and she had an interesting accent; it
sounded more South African than English at times.

Superman: Apart from the clothes and things like smoking in the office,
it’s not as dated as I was expecting. The special effects weren’t all that bad,
either. Gene Hackman was a great Lex Luthor.

Superman II: I remember this from my youth (I was 11 when it was
released) as being way better than the first one. Boy, was I wrong. The story
was good, but the special effects were really bad. Not just bad, awful.
Not just awful, terrible.
Half of Gene Hackman’s lines sounded dubbed, and after reading the IMDB entry, it looks like they
were. When watching any superhero movie, you have to have a certain level of
suspension of disbelief, but even still, there were a lot of “yeah, right”
moments. Is Lois Lane really stupid enough to jump into the rapids on a hunch?
How could Lex Luthor build a holographic projector while in jail? Superman spent
a long time figuring out who he
was and why he was sent to Earth, and he uses his powers to benefit mankind; would
he really give up his powers for Lois (the hell with mankind!), when (a) she
didn’t ask him to and may not want him to, and (b) they’ve been “together” for
only a few hours? Where did Lois and Superman get the car they drove to the
diner after he lost the ability to fly? Once he decided to go back, did he really
just leave Lois and start walking north again? I’m amazed this movie did well
enough to warrant another sequel, let alone two.

X-Men: The Final Stand: Pretty good. Considering it’s the final X-Men
movie (I believe), it was a fitting ending to the story. Having Rebecca Romijn
naked didn’t hurt either.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: As expected, it’s like watching a live-action
video game. The plot was secondary to the action and effects. I’m not a big
fan of Angelina Jolie, but she pulled off the “action star” role here pretty
well.

Lara Croft: Cradle of Life: Better than the first one, but still not
very compelling.

18 Blocks: Very good. Bruce Willis is convincing as an older cop who
seems like he’s just counting the days until he can retire, while rapper Mos Def
is excellent as the kid he’s escorting to the courthouse. I really enjoyed this
movie.

We rented the movie Firewall last night. It was pretty good – we’re both big fans of Harrison Ford (Hollywood Homicide notwithstanding), and as usual, he gave a pretty good performance. Having said that, it must kind of get old for Ford, since he’s played the same “Don’t screw with my family” kind of guy in lots of movies (The Devil’s Own, Air Force One, Patriot Games, The Fugitive (kinda)). Anyway, there were a couple of “yeah, right” moments, but overall, it was quite believable, and very entertaining. The ending was kind of disappointing though — it was almost as if they realized “Hey, we’re out of time, let’s end this now”. Some other comments:

• These hackers are good enough to be able to hack the desktop computer of the VP of security of a bank, and yet can’t just get the money out themselves? OK, so maybe getting to the desktop is one thing, but getting access to the real customer data is something else. That’s certainly possible. But didn’t they realize that the terminals in the server room (required for their plan to work) were just removed for security reasons? I would think that this would be the kind of thing that would show up in a recent email to the VP of security during the merger process. Haven’t they been monitoring his email for awhile, watching for possible snags in their plans?
• I don’t think you can use a scanner from a fax machine to scan a computer screen. Even if you could, the scrolling was way too fast for it to work as reliably as depicted.
• The phone rings and nobody does anything, so the kid goes to answer it. The bad guys completely freak out, and then afterwards, yell at the mom to do as she’s told. But nobody told her anything! The bad guys should have given her instructions the second the phone started ringing, or simply said “nobody answer it”. Bad guys is so stupid.
• Being a fan of “24”, the appearance of Chloe was a little weird, especially since she worked for a technical guy but wasn’t technical herself. Going into the church, asking Bobby to borrow his cell phone, and then just walking out with it was a classic Chloe move.
• SPOILER: Say you’re the wife at the end of this movie. The nightmare is finally over. Your family is safe, the bad guys are all dead, and your husband is badly beaten and can barely stand up straight. So what do you do? Stand there and look at him from 50 feet away for a full 30 seconds, and then stroll slowly over to give him a hug? No, you’d run to him as fast as you can. Same for the kids, for that matter
• SPOILER: Why the hell did the bad guys bring the dog with them? Other than as a plot device, of course.

Despite these little nits (which I can find in about any movie), I enjoyed this one.

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One good thing about being sick – it’s allowing me to catch up on my watching of movies I’ve seen before, because getting off the couch to change DVDs once every couple of hours is about as much energy as I’ve had for the past couple of days. Today’s quote comes from Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) from Pirates of the Carribbean:

I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Means “no”.

We all went to see Madagascar yesterday, as a kind of a Father’s Day outing. We were going to go on a hike, but it was kind of drizzly and cold and miserable, so we figured spending the day inside would be better. Not a bad movie, had some pretty funny parts, though I found it strange that I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who did the voice of Alex the lion through the whole thing (it was Ben Stiller). The zebra was Chris Rock and the giraffe was David Schwimmer – hard to mistake their voices. Anyway, Gail had been told that it was more a kids movie than a grown-up movie — by “grown-up movie” I mean that even though things like The Lion King and Toy Story and The Incredibles were kids movies, they had enough grown-up stuff in them that adults found them funny as well. Gail was told that this wasn’t true (or at least as true) for this one and that there was lots more potty humour, but we found it funny. There were references to other movies that kids wouldn’t get (“Darn you! Darn you all to heck!”), and I didn’t find that there was any more potty humour than any other similar movie — there was a lot more of that in Shrek, and I loved that movie. Strangely, there were a couple of references in there that looked very Disney-like, though it wasn’t a Disney movie. I did find the animation a little choppy, which I thought unusual for a big-budget not-straight-to-DVD movie.

We ordered Chinese food for dinner (because I love Chinese food and it was Father’s Day), and watched Tarzan II, which Gail had rented. (Yes, in case you’re wondering, having the kids watch two full movies in one day is atypical) Another pretty good movie, which the kids really enjoyed. George Carlin does one of the voices, and he’s really good, as always. He even had a line where he talked about someone messing with “his stuff”, a reference to one of his classic stand-up routines. The animation was much better than Madagascar as well — Disney tends to do a great job on animation on the first movie (eg. Lion King, Aladdin, Mulan), and not so good on the animation of any sequels (#2 of any of the above), but this was an exception, as was Lion King 1 1/2.

Once the kids were in bed, Gail and I started watching Hitch, with Will Smith and Kevin James (confession: had to check IMDB cause I couldn’t remember his name). He’s the dude from King of Queens, which I have never watched, but he was very good in this movie. The dance sequence was classic (“Q-Tip, Q-Tip, Q-Tip, throw it away”). Pretty funny movie overall, though we have about 45 minutes left to watch. Will Smith is his usual smooooooth self – I really like him.