The "new" Star Wars trilogy: An appreciation

The Star Wars prequel movies George Lucas produced and directed in the late 1990s and early 2000s were massive money-makers but were also unevenly received by fans and critics. Many of the die-hard fans thought Lucas had monkeyed too much with his own premises and depended too heavily on CGI effects. Then there was the "wacky," universally hated and vaguely racist Jar-Jar Binks. What's clear enough, especially given how Lucas has also used CGI and other advanced digital effects to "enhance" the video releases of his earlier films, is that Lucas's "vision" has never been exactly what fans thought it was. He was hampered by the limitations of earlier film technology and didn't seem to realize how much those limitations helped him. 

The "new" films were entertaining, though. I still find myself tuning in for a while when they're on TV, which is often because of Disney's current ownership, I suppose. Here are some things (aspects of the films) I think make them worth watching. 

What's Good about the "Prequel" Trilogy:

1. Ewan McGregor

2. That weird rainy outpost where the clones are being created.

3. Yoda's fighting, especially his duel with Christopher Lee. Just watching Yoda in action is great. This is CGI at its best.

4. When Darth Vader kills the young Jedis and when he executes Count Dooku. Good work establishing Vader as especially evil. (It's always been hard to buy Lucas's retrofitted theory that the whole overarching story is about Vader's redemption, but especially after he kills the young Jedis. Sheesh, there's no coming back from that.)

5. Count Dooku generally; also his little mopedish land cruiser bike.

6. Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor. It's also cool that he's been around, more or less, for so much of the saga. 

7. Natalie Portman; even the goofy outfits have a certain bizarre charm. 

8. Samuel L. Jackson and Liam Neeson. Jackson is underused, but they both bring gravitas to the films and take their roles seriously. Of course this is the job of actors, but it must be especially difficult when you're acting with muppets and green screen so much of the time. 

9. Kiera Knightley as Amidala's double and handmaiden, because really, they do look strikingly similar. How many viewers didn't even realize the ruse when watching the first time?

10. Anakin being struck down by Obi Wan, before his scenes of transformation, which are pretty ridiculous (he looks too short, and the scene where he screams "No!" looks like it was created for the purposes of parody). His actual near-death scene, though, is pretty dramatic and gruesome and about how I imagined it as a 9-year-old. (Somehow, we were already passing around stories about Vader's prequel story, which had been fleshed out in some novel or magazine article or maybe just in Lucas's notes about the alleged nine-film saga that somehow got out to the general public.) I think as a kid I always imagined it as more of an actual volcano, but this was all pretty close.    

My with my toy Death Star, 1978. I dislike this photo, but it's a royalty-free image, and the only one related to Star Wars I could find. 

Road House: So Good It's Good

Patrick Swayze's "crowning" movie achievement, 1989's Road House, is often cited as the ultimate example of a movie "so bad it's good." It's easy to see where this comes from: This is not a movie that strives for arthouse emotional catharsis or any kind of subtlety. The plot is ridiculous, and the focus is on roundhouse kicks, raucous bar fights, car crashes, and cartoonish violence. There's even a monster truck for a true 80s feel.  

But I would argue it's actually a good movie, and not because it's "bad." This is not some cheap production with silly attempts at visual scares, like Frogs (also with Sam Elliot). The visuals are well done, as is the editing, the sound, the cinematography. The technical aspects are fine, and the film is tightly written around the central plot, with little time wasted. These actors are taking this material about as seriously as they can; Patrick Swayze doesn't seem "in" on the joke or anything. He's full of controlled rage and physical energy. The other leads, especially Sam Elliott and Ben Gazzara, are believable within this world and fun to watch. Gazzara relishes playing this implausible villain and makes an ordinary line like asking Swayze's character if he wants some breakfast humorous and threatening at the same time. Similarly, Elliott knows exactly why he was cast in this film and fleshes out his character with sardonic wit and sex appeal.

My photo from the Silver Dollar lounge in Bandera, Texas. It's a great dive bar.

There's funny dialogue, sex appeal, and violence that is somehow convincing without being grotesque or even particularly alarming (like an Old West movie). Even the sets, like the "barndominium" Dalton rents, are unique and just appealing to take in. These are filmmakers (with most of the credit presumably going to the director, Rowdy Herrington) that understand the possibilities of movies as rich entertainment, set in the "real" world (in as much as we're in a kind of gritty rural land, supposedly Kansas, with sleazy honky tonks and broken-down cars) but also creating a world of their own that we can submerge ourselves in for a couple of hours. Sure, you might say "oh, come on" at a couple of scenes (like when the monster truck destroys a local auto dealership), but mostly you just sit back and say, "Well, this is entertaining."

It's the focus on ordinary sets as interesting visuals and, especially, Herrington's excellent selection of character actors that set this film apart from "so bad it's good" movies and even the big-budget comic-book movies of today, which are supposedly redeemed by being "entertaining." (For my money, these are mostly entertaining like a video game, slick and fast-paced with very little of the interest that comes with minor characters and "slow burn" sequences.)

My favorite thing about Road House, though, is Herrington's use of minor actors, including the actors with larger speaking roles like Red the auto parts store owner and Kevin Tighe, who has been terrific in so many films and TV shows but will forever be known as "one of the guys on Emergency 51." And what about those character actors? There's the black man who Dalton gives his car to ("What do I look like, a valet?"), the used car salesman (and his sandwich), the diner owner, Dalton's landlord ("like putting an elevator in an outhouse"). Some of them don't even have lines, like the used tire salesman, but they all make quite an impression. Herrington really knew how to find these guys and how to populate a film with colorful characters to make it interesting. This isn't all you need, but it sure does help, and it brings a sense of reality to balance out the main story, which is highly entertaining but, yes, also ridiculous.

Fourth of July movies, part 2

 Here's my list, in no particular order besides the first two, which I've already discussed. 

1. Independence Day

2. Jaws

3. Born on the Fourth of July. I like this movie, but it's actually a little heavy for holiday viewing. The main character was born on the 4th, as the title suggests, and the early sequences featuring a recreated Fourth of July parade and fireworks in small-town American really capture the nostalgic appeal of the holiday, even as theses are set up as an ironic contrast to what unfolds. This movie is on most of these types of lists (with the title and war themes, how can you not include it?), so it's really on with #4 that I start to diverge. 

4. Frogs. This is one of those so-bad-it's-good horror movies about reptiles attacking a family as it begins to celebrate Fourth of July on its Southern plantation island estate. I'm not sure about the cult status of this film, and I'm definitely not convinced it's the best of this type of "bad" movie. It's bad, yes, but Sam Elliot and Ray Milland (and even Joan Van Ark) elevate the acting quite a bit, and it's pretty hard to be dignified when all the other minor characters are being attacked by snakes and turtles (the frogs, oddly, mostly seem to watch). We accidentally watched this on the Fourth of July this year, without knowing it had a Fourth of July connection, so I'm just thinking it's serendipity and that the movies was begging to be put on the list. Plus it is eerie and strange to watch this dysfunctional rich family assemble for its annual Fourth celebrations on the lawn. There's lot of passive-aggressive behavior and cutting remarks, which makes it seem like an authentic rich family to me. The cinematography is also good, as others have pointed out, though the "horror" just mostly looks like well-shot nature images of reptiles intercut with people thrasing on the ground as they are being "attacked." We're just supposed to assume from the intercutting that this is what's happening. That's a lot to ask from parallel editing, and the effect is more boring than funny. But there are lots of other reasons to watch, if you've got nothing better to do. 

Original fireworks photo, from about 2005. Captured on Nikon digital camera.

5. Brokeback Mountain.  This inclusion is also serendipitous, I think, in that I recently read the short story for the first time and have been thinking about the excellent movie. There's a scene where the Heath Ledger character fights some men, in an unexpected and somewhat excessive explosion of violence. After he easily dropkicks the men, who had been offending him by cursing in front of his young children, he's shown against a dark sky illuminated by fireworks. (This makes me pretty sure it's a Fourth of July celebration, though I really don't remember.) Some have apparently criticized the scene as an unnecessary display of masculinity, but, like this writer, I tend to just appreciate the beauty and ponderous nature of the shot. It is a movie, after all.  

Well, this is getting too long again, so I'll add a part 3 for the last few movies. 

Fourth of July Movies

Every year, my wife and I watch Jaws and Independence Day as part of our Fourth of July celebrations. Usually we eat hot dogs and potato salad, and just relive the kinds of rituals that always made this a special holiday for me as a kid. (I oddly never cared that much about fireworks, but we also usually watch the New York show for a dose of that.) 

Jaws is not a movie that needs to be defended or explained much in terms of its watchability; there have been lots of documentaries and writings focused on the unique merits of this film and holding it up as an example of make-or-break filmmaking for a up-and-coming director. It's a master class in how to make a truly thrilling (and even scary) movie even when your main horror prop (the shark) doesn't work much of the time. The dialogue is very snappy, and I could go on for a while about how well the writers and Spielberg build in conflict into every line and exchange, however minor, apparently building these strengths up to balance the weakness of the shark (which is scarier the less it is seen, another lesson in horror). Characters talk over each other, and the arguments of the three men on the boat reveal their characters while giving voice to our fears and anxieties. I use clips from this film when I teach screenwriting in my creative writing class, both to show how even a shark movie that's good is still about humans and to show how conflict works to heighten drama even as characters are going about seemingly routine business. The Fourth of July connection is obvious, but it's the way the date is mentioned is a key factor in the island's economic survival that intrigues me. Much of the way people celebrate the holiday in this movie -- the small parades, the food, and the overall middle-class vibe -- reminds me of the July 4th holidays of the 1970s, around the biccentennial, when people seemed genuinely glad to be in America. (Perhaps I'm sentimentalizing the past, but the last few years of July Fourth celebrations have seemed a touch too ironic.) 

Hot dogs, photo taken by me. All right reserved.

As for Independence Day, well, the Fourth of July connection is clear, and it's a big, entertaining movie. There's a nostalgia element for me, in that I first saw it with a friend at like 3 a.m. when they opened the movie by keeping the theaters open all night. The effects really hold up, also, which I think is because of, not in spite of, its reliance on pre-CGI special effects. The effects in CGI films of this period, like Titanic, look OK now, but they still often stick out as false more than they should. This has something to do with "visual literacy" (what we're used to seeing) in films, and it's related to how driving in cars or riding in wagons in old movies always look terribly phony today. To moviegoers of yesteryear, these effects probably looked pretty cool just to be on the screen.

I was interested in finding more July Fourth movies,  so I googled the topic, and I was unsatisifed with many of the lists. All of the lists include Independence Day and Born on the Fourth of July (because why not), but Jaws isn't always listed (!) and other movies didn't seem to belong at all. (Some of the them were just movies it might be fun to watch on the holiday). 

So the second part of this post (Part 2) will include a new list of my own. 

Euphemisms that become "vulgar"

I mostly hate writing about news like this (anything related to reactionary or so-called populist conservatism), but I think it's interesting how the "Let's Go Brandon" phrase has caused such a stir. It's a misheard line that then became the joke and a not-so-secret "code" phrase for what the chanters really meant (something vulgar and not very deep or informational). It seems to me that the code phrase, at least, evolved from humor and then caught on as a kind of euphemism so people could say one thing while meaning another. And then others decided that a code phrase is just as bad as the real thing. I disagree, in the sense that at least for most children not following the news, you'd still have to explain it. During the Obama years, there were "F*3k Obama" bumper stickers and t-shirts all over the place, and it was all not very clever and just a bit too angry.

Winner, winner chicken dinner.

It is interesting how euphemisms will evolve like that. When a was a youth leader many years ago -- a very young man in charge of younger boys -- I tried to stop the boys from cursing all the time. I told them to substitute the word "chicken" any time they wanted to cuss. I thought it was the equivalent of encouraging people to say "gosh darn." But "chicken" being the word it is -- and 12-year-old boys being who they are -- the boys thought it was hilarious and began using it all the time. "Chicken you," they'd say, or "chicken that." The cursing via euphemism probably increased our overall cursing problem by 10 fold. It was fun, but eventually we had to curb that habit also. This is what you get for trying to make boys behave. 

Beer is Proof that God Loves Us

Of the many quotes falsely attributed to Ben Franklin (who, like Mark Twain, is a natural persona to hang almost any pithy quote on), the one that makes the most sense to me is "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." For one thing, although Franklin never said this about beer, he apparently wrote something very similar about wine in a letter, so the spirit of the line is there. More importantly, though, is that it's more in line with Franklin's general lifestyle and attitude than the many quotes attributed to him like "a penny saved is a penny earned." That one, too, is apparently not exactly what Franklin said, but it's more in keeping with the prim and proper, later-Puritan persona that we generally identify Franklin with. 

Photo of pint of Blue Moon (taken by me). 

Like so many of the other aphorisms attributed to Franklin, the "penny saved" saying comes from Poor Richard's Almanac, and, like so many of these other familiar quotes, Franklin either created or cribbed them as a way of filling out his almanac with useful bits of everyday wisdom. That's not to say this was who he was. Though a prudent man by many measures -- a man who lived a long and prosperous life -- he was also a highly sociable man, one who enjoyed the company of women. He liked to drink and entertain those around him. He played the guitar and enjoyed the many pleasures of worldly existence, including wine, food, and song. So the "beer" quote, while not exactly accurate, is much more aligned with Franklin's true persona, at least as far as I'm concerned. Franklin had much Puritan heritage and knowledge to draw on for his practical purposes, but he was also a transitional figure, a leading intellectual and inventor during the Enlightenment who helped to guide the colonies out of their Puritan past. 

Franklin is a distant relative of mine (his grandfather was also my direct ancestor, so he's some kind of cousin, nth removed), so I naturally feel a kinship (or pretend to) with his more complex persona, and especially with his idea of happiness and the part of his personal philsophy that might be deemed Epicurean, though it's only one aspect of the man. This also the guy that basically invented the modern versions of the lending library, post office, and fire department, so there's a lot more than a love of beer going on. But that's also proof that a little wine and song don't necessarily lead to an unproductive life. 

As a brief update to this post: I realized I posted this just a day before Independence Day, without consciously thinking about the patriotic connections, though maybe I was thinking of Ben Franklin for a reason. One sad note about his life is that he basically sacrificed his relationship with his son, who was a British loyalist, in order to support the Revolution. It's a sad thought, but it also should underline the clarity with which the patriots saw the importance of independence. (More recently, people take the idea of abandoning family for political purposes too lightly, with a focus on loyalty to a single man.) I propose a toast to Ben Franklin and everything he stood for on this July 4th. 

'Sopranos' and the 90s aesthetic

 We've been rewatching some "Sopranos" episodes, and it's interesting to note how the styles and general aesthetics seem rather dated just a few years later. The series ran from 1999-2007, for six seasons, but its first three seasons aired before 9/11, and it seems the series never really loses its 1990s vibe or aesthetic. Some things -- giant oversized SUVs and flip phones -- while dated, didn't evolve much during the early 2000s, but there are lots of other things that seem more firmly grounded in the Nineties. There's the McMansions and "great rooms" (which even figure into the dialogue), the blond-wood furniture and overstuffed couches. The younger characters (the kids and teenagers) are always playing video games on the TV, and everybody is mindlessly consumeristic. Microwave foods and easy snacks supplement the characters' regular, heavy Italian cuisine. They drink Miller Genuine Draft and Stoli vodka. (Maybe Stoli isn't particularly a 90s vodka, but it's the first time I heard of it, and liquors do tend to have their heydays. Smirnoff, still the top-selling brand in the U.S., used to be considered "top shelf" and still is in the U.K. U.S. consumers in particular can be very fickle.)