Showbits

A new Star Wars movie used to be a thrice-in-a-generation event. This summer's The Clone Wars has broken that tradition, and no one seems too happy about it. With only a 20% rating on aggregate review site Rotten Tomatoes. It continues a trend of anti-Star Wars sentiment that began in 1999 when young Anakin Skywalker first debuted as a podracing slave who, with a battle cry of "Yahoo!", miraculously saved the day.

I've not seen George Lucas' new animated entry into this storied series, but I do wish to take exception with those who suggest it's the fourth consecutive instance of the distant galaxy's creator flushing the franchise down the drain. Sure, the bar was set high, with Episodes IV and V earning an average rating of 96%, again on Rotten Tomatoes. But Return of the Jedi sunk to 74%, which provides good company for the three prequels, which garnered 63%, 66%, and 79%, respectively.

Even without comparing the prequels to their older siblings, there's still much to like. I won't dispute the obvious, like Jar-Jar's presence making light of a trilogy that, by its very subject matter, should be dark. But too often, the hate that is harped on these brilliant examples of all that is wrong with Star Wars overpowers the moments that truly shine.

Take Attack of the Clones which ends with a battle that's worth the previous two hours. Before then, we'd only ever known the galaxy's oldest Jedi as a shriveled Muppet on his death bed. Here, we learn Yoda is a force (no pun intended) to be reckoned with on so many levels.

That is one of only several jaw-dropping lightsaber battles to grace the trilogy. Whereas Jedi were scarce in the original films, Episodes I-III brought them out en masse. The Phantom Menace gave us the excellent music and choreography of "Duel of the Fates". Not only was the battle set to a song I always wished to be in the choir for, but it was the first battle against a prequel-exclusive Sith lord — and one equipped with a heretofore-unknown variation on the light saber! Now that's how to kick it up a notch.

Compared to that single struggle, Revenge of the Sith was a smorgasbord of skirmishes, with at least five lightsaber battles among the greatest heroes and villains of the entire six-episode epic. In the prequel's conclusion, not only had Anakin Skywalker grown up, but so had Hayden Christensen, with a portrayal of young Vader that was less whiny and more ambitious than we'd previously seen. It makes his perfect manipulation at the hands of Darth Sidious all the more painful to watch. Watching Revenge of the Sith was like watching Titanic: a tragedy that you knew couldn't be averted, but you hoped would nonetheless be derailed and fail to play out. I took me days to realize the extent of Palpatine's machinations, and at least a week to recover from my depression over his success. I mentioned this to a friend of mine, who laughed, saying he'd never considered the possibility that someone could be depressed over a movie. But taken in the larger context of what these three movies did to the Star Wars universe and the stage they set for Episodes IV-VI, I can conceive of no other response. To this day, I can't bring myself to endure that experience again.

We've already commemorated the impact made by the original trilogy's simple yet stellar tale of good vs. evil. The prequels are more complex, in where they were coming from, where they had to get to, and audience reception and interpretation. I submit that among those variables are many kernels of quality. Another site offers 11 concrete reasons for that supposition; I encourage you to rewatch the films and come up with your own.

(Hat tip to TheForce.net)

On a recent first date, I offered a typical probing question: what's your favorite movie? Acceptable answers include TRON, Star Wars (episodes IV - VI only, of course!), Wit, and the like. So I didn't know what to make of someone who responded with Enchanted. A Disney movie? I don't know why I was so taken aback; I count Aladdin and The Incredibles among my DVD collection. I proved more curious in the film than in its admirer, and after renting said movie, I'm happy to report something positive came of the evening.

Enchanted is a 2007 film that draws on the House of Mouse's extensive library to create an original yet familiar tale. It opens with an animated musical sequence that introduces us to a wicked stepmother, her royal son, and a innocent beauty whose friends are the woodland creatures. Desperate to keep the blissful couple apart, the stepmother casts the girl into a foreign land "where there are no happy endings" — New York City. The film then transitions into a live-action story with occasional glimpses back into the cartoon world.

From here, the story is somewhat predictable: Giselle (Amy Adams) wanders around the Big Apple until native New Yorker and divorce lawyer Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey) takes her under his wing until her Prince Edward (James Marsden) can come to the rescue. In the meantime, both Giselle and Robert have the values of their worlds to teach each other, producing some comical pairings. Yet the predictability does nothing to deter the joy of the experience.

The star of the film is without a doubt Amy Adams, whose wide-eyed naiveté is captured in her every nuanced movement. Her poise, carriage, and inflections make it believable that she really is a Disney princess stuck in a real person's body. When other characters from the magical land of Andalasia arrive in New York, their performances are amusing, but nowhere near as detailed as Ms. Adams'.

James Marsden is almost unrecognizable as the over-the-top, single-minded, valiant prince. I'm familiar with the actor's work only as brooding characters, such as Lois Lane's husband in Superman Returns and the mutant Cyclops in the X-Men trilogy. To see him acting so goofily was a welcome contrast. Susan Sarandon gets little screen time but is a wickedly wicked witch.

It's not just the transplants that are bewildered by their surroundings, as their behavior befuddles their New York friends in many amusing scenes. Giselle's animated proclivity to randomly burst into song embarrasses Robert, who doesn't want people to stare — and when the song explodes into a full dance number, he's astonished to see Central Park overtaken with choreography as he finds himself in one impossible scene after another.

Disney's heritage is evident in more than the 13 minutes of cel-animated, non-CGI animation, or in the catchy, upbeat soundtrack and colorful musical numbers. We have cliché and tropes from every past film, including talking animals, poisoned apples, and bumbling henchmen, but updated and even lampooned enough to make them enjoyable. Even just a simple but effective twist freshens what otherwise would've been a hackneyed climax. Not all the allusions are so obvious; multiple shots and scenes are set up exactly like their cartoon ancestors, as shown in this side-by-side image gallery.

Enchanted is both classic and modern Disney. It's a traditional tale that young audiences will enjoy, but pays homage to the predecessors that adults grew up with. Like any excellent family film, Enchanted has something for everyone.

Though actors enjoy the fame that comes with being in front of the camera, a cineaste has no trouble picking out the talent that raised those actors to stardom. Writers and directors like Carl Reiner, Sidney Sheldon, Gene Roddenberry, and Charles-Burrows-Charles brought us some of our favorite shows. Joss Whedon is no different, having created both Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was a unique combination of comedy, fantasy, sci-fi; and Firefly, a space-western.

Though it may be old news to us hardcore geeks, I'm surprised that Mr. Whedon's latest project continues to fly under the radar of the Internet in general. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog debuted last month and somewhat defies description, thanks in part to its misleading name. It's not a blog so much as a vlog, and not so much that as self-commentary interspersed with action sequences and musical numbers — which, without lyrics and a bouncing ball, are no more sing-along than any other musical. The cast credits include Neil Patrick Harris of Doogie Howser, M.D., Cabaret, and RiffTrax; Felicia Day of The Guild; and Nathan Fillion of Buffy and Firefly. Watch as Dr. Horrible (Harris), an up-and-coming villain who does the wrong things for the right reasons, learns to overcome his own shyness and ineptitude while pursuing his master plan to defeat nemesis Captain Hammer (Fillion), win the girl (Day), and take over the WORLD!

The quirky humor and unusual juxtaposition of genre and music make Dr. Horrible worth checking out, though the means to do so varies day to day, as the producers have seemingly waffled over the property's commercial direction. As each episode was released, it was available as streaming, non-embeddable video — but if you read the fine print (which I didn't), you'd know they would disappear on July 20th, to be sold exclusively at iTunes at $1.99/episode or $3.99 for an all-inclusive season pass. The three "acts" that compose Season 1 recently popped back up on the Dr. Horrible Web site, again as streaming video, but with embedded commercials. Since this format is how broadcast television shows are often archived online, it seems a fair deal to me. Regardless, we bloggers are left with only this trailer to redistribute:

You don't have to be a Firefly fanatic and kiss the ground Joss Whedon walks on to appreciate Dr. Horrible. I've bought all three episodes but haven't watched the second two yet, and I don't suspect I'll be memorizing the lyrics anytime soon (unless a separate soundtrack CD becomes available). It's just a fun show with broad appeal across geek culture, and a nifty demonstration of a series made for the Internet instead of just repurposed for it.

(Hat tip to The Standard)

Remember Father's Day? I didn't think so. It was a 1997 comedy with Billy Crystal and Robin Williams in which the perfect strangers hit the road to find the son one of them never knew they had — and to find out which one is the father.

Cross this film's plot with Mamma Mia!, subtract the comedy and soundtrack, and you get Broken Flowers, a 2005 film starring Bill Murray. I never heard of this movie when it hit theaters, but as with The Squid and the Whale, it was on my list of "20 Essential Break Up Movies", and I've been a fan of Bill Murray's serious side ever since Lost in Translation and The Razor's Edge. A friend recently criticized this actor's inability to be serious, a sentiment I found appalling — until I saw this film.

It's boring. 2001 boring. There are prolongated sequences of absolutely nothing happening. Murray spends the film's first half-hour mopingly contemplating an anonymous letter he's received that suggests a lover of two decades past has born him a vagabond son he's never known. Begrudgingly curious, he sets out to find the mother of his child. After that slow setup, we're then presented with a series of vignettes as Murray awkwardly encounters his past loves, with all parties exhibiting the symptoms of deipnophobia. Throughout it all, he expresses almost no emotion, which makes his character's reputation as a Don Juan unbelievable. The ending brings the audience no closure — a sort of romantic Rashômon, where we can choose which of four stories to believe, if any, but with none of them offering any satisfaction.

This is the second movie I've rented that fit this description: "Going through a breakup? Whether you're looking for escapism or self-assessment, laughs or bitter revenge, these are some of the best movies ever to deal directly with the end of a relationship and the world that awaits." Neither film was what I expected. When I'm fresh out of a break-up, I don't want to see other people in bad relationships, or even in any kind of relationship. A good breakup movie should celebrate the joys of bachelorhood and focus on the opportunities brought by this newfound freedom. In my case, and now that I know better, I'd exercise the freedom to not watch this movie.

In addition to Terminator Salvation, this month's The Dark Knight also saw the debut of the trailer for Watchmen. This movie, like so many others this summer, is based on a comic book (or, in this case, graphic novel), but not one of a comic nature. There's little to find funny about this contemporary to Frank Miller's gritty The Dark Knight Returns. It setting is primarily realistic, with "super"-heroes who are nothing more than costumed crimefighters with a repertoire replete of human flaws. They hide behind their costumes, seeking refuge from a multitude of sins: megalomania, paranoia, violation. Alan Moore's book is often considered one of the greatest graphic novels of all time, and many of its diverse elements and plot threads appear in the trailer:

But to the casual viewer — the vast majority of moviegoers who have never read, or even heard of, a 21-year-old graphic novel — the above montage will likely be unintelligible. It clearly portrays a dystopian setting, but its variety of brooding characters does little to suggest a storyline. I expect the movie will be successful in capturing the book's themes; what I question is the studio's ability to sell it. Will they call it a cross between Sin City and 300? Their pride in Watchmen's printed origin is evident, and given the recent success of other comic conversions, there's certainly nothing to be ashamed of. So they're likely to continue promoting that background, unlike Constantine or Road to Perdition, which you'd think were meant for the silver screen.

It will be interesting to see the evolution of public perception as we near the watching of Watchmen.

Star Trek often serves as a gateway to introduce me to new fiction, as I follow its actors and writers on to new ventures. But rather than new material, the Trek connection sometimes leads me backward to explore the influences that engendered the futuristic franchise. In this case, a recent review of the old TNG episode "A Matter of Perspective" led me to the Akira Kurosawa classic Rashômon.

This 1950 Japanese film is based on a 1915 short story that pioneered (or at least popularized) the literary technique of retelling one event from multiple perspectives, such as recently seen in the 2002 Jet Li film Hero. In Rashômon's case, the story is that of a bandit who lures a woman into the woods by holding her samurai husband hostage. With both people at his mercy, the bandit has his way with the wife … but what happens next? The scene of the crime tells the outcome, but not how the party came to it. The testimonies of the bandit, the samurai, the wife, and a hidden bystander all conflict, casting the characters in very different lights.

Although I am a fan of dramatic older films such as Fail-Safe and Splendor in the Grass, sometimes the gulf in era, genre, and culture is a challenging one to bridge. Despite the degree of style and allegorical and symbolic content, I couldn't connect with Rashômon. Its characters were theatrically, as opposed to realistically, dramatic, and the four variations on the same scene were insufficiently different to keep my interest through the retellings. In Hero, we see the main characters in numerous settings, motivated by unique goals; in Rashômon, we lack that connection to the protagonists, as their stories are recounted by witnesses, and the whole incident of the bandit in the glen was just that — not a mission, not an adventure, but an incident with little impact.

Unlike "A Matter of Perspective", Rashômon leaves the audience with no closure, as the truth of the four tales is never revealed. Perhaps that is where the film's impact lies: in prompting us to question the definition of truth. Its closing scene finally gives the narrators their own story, and the statements made there are more tangible and hopeful than the rest of the movie, offering the audience something more substantial than a Star Trek allegory.

It's been a month since the Get Smart movie was released, and reviews have been surprisingly positive. All the fans I know of the original television series who saw the movie have enjoyed it, which is not what I expected.

What's also unexpected is the alacrity with which Warner Bros. released a sequel — or more accurately, a spinoff. Bruce & Lloyd Out of Control, which came out on DVD the same day its theatrical sibling hit the silver screen, stars Masi Oka (of Heroes fame) and Nate Torrence as their characters from the Get Smart film. While Maxwell Smart saves the world, Bruce and Lloyd get their own adventure to recover an invisibility cloak that's been stolen from Control's tech division. Here's the trailer:

Though the film hasn't enjoyed the favorable reception of Get Smart, I consider it a creative venture nonetheless. It's ingenious that they thought to use all the film's assets and actors while they were already on the set, saving the cost and effort of recreating it later. It also rides on the coattails of its big brother, and vice versa: fans of Get Smart will recognize the brand name when they see it at the video store, while anyone who hasn't seen the theatrical film but liked this lower-budget alternative may be lured to the box office. And my reservations regarding the remake of the television show may not hold true here, since this is an original adventure with original protagonists.

By the holiday season, we may see a two-disc DVD set that contains both movies. In the meantime, the spinoff can also be purchased or rented on iTunes, where a 7-minute, 90-megabyte "making of" featurette is available for free.

Over the past year, I've heard of the film The Squid and the Whale from two sources. The first was my chiropractor, himself something of a philosopher, who'd also successfully suggested to me the film The Razor's Edge. The second is from a list entitled "20 Essential Break Up Movies". Those are two very different contexts in which to receive the same film recommendation — so, my curiosity piqued, I checked it out of the library.

The film, set in 1983 Brooklyn, bears many similarities to Blue Car: we have two children of the same gender struggling with the fallout of a broken home — the younger is the more outwardly distressed, while the older one flirts with romance. There's also a teacher open to having an affair with a student. The differences between The Squid and the Whale and Blue Car is that, here, we see the divorce happening, making its impact more immediate with both parents present.

Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney play the troubled couple, each with a PhD in English. Mr. Daniels plays his character with such ego and arrogance that it's easy to cast him as the villain, but just because his flaws are given more screen time does not mean that his spouse has none of her own. Their two boys each favor a different parent, coping with the stress of separation in a manner roughly analogous to how their preferred parent brought about the divorce. It's intriguing to hear the son speak to his girlfriend with the same words we earlier heard exchanged between his father and mother. But separation does not cure what ails this family, as each parent confuses the situation by quickly moving on to a new love interest (in Mr. Daniels' case, that being a flirty Anna Paquin). All four family members are desperate for attention, but none are

The film is roughly autobiographical of its writer and director, Noah Baumbach. At 81 minutes, it's also makes for a short viewing session, but I found its length just right for a view into the times and trials of a broken home, without the drama or creepiness of Blue Car.