the groundhog day project

Han Solo likes it when Leia calls him a scoundrel. He gets involved with the rebellion only because he's out for cash. And, decades later (presumably after some brief attempt at settling down and starting a family with Leia) he's a smuggler all over again. And then he dies. Delve into the Expanded Universe--most of which is no longer canon--and he used to be an Imperial soldier. He defected when he saved Chewbacca from being enslaved by the Empire. That's why Chewbacca owes him a "life debt". One bright light of action in an otherwise scoundrelous (c) existence-- (Which brings to mind an interesting sidenote: How did I know about that life debt as a kid? Was that something they put on the description text of the Chewbacca action figure? Like everybody knows those smaller furry forest folk in Return of the Jedi are Ewoks, but no one ever calls them that. We know it because of licensed products, action figures, books, promotional materials. (Similarly, I wonder i...

Roger Ebert apparently never reviewed The Empire Strikes Back when it came out. He wrote a review for it in 1997, though, and he's got a great description of why this film is the reason the trilogy resonates. He writes : After the space opera cheerfulness of the original film, this one plunges into darkness and even despair, and surrenders more completely to the underlying mystery of the story. It is because of the emotions stirred in "Empire" that the entire series takes on a mythic quality that resonates back to the first and ahead to the third. This is the heart. It's an interesting idea, actually--that one film in a series might be the one that really makes the whole work. In the case of Star Wars , with only three films--the prequels and the new Disney-produced films are a separate case--and with repeated actors and filmmakers (and George Lucas behind all three), it is much easier to understand how this works. These three films connect more than, say, the Fri...

Good versus evil is easier when neither side are bumbling fools . Darth Vader is one of the great film villains despite the simplicity of his motivation--hell, in the original Star Wars , does he even have a motivation? He's evil, he's prone to choking people, he's not quite in charge but his powers mean most other imperials defer to him. But, why is he this Imperial... Tool? Weapon? Knight? His look is iconic enough--and James Earl Jones' voiceover performance as well--that he works in a film aimed at a young audience. George Lucas has a good eye for set pieces, especially when he's not free to do whatever he wants with CGI. He is good at throwing one problem after another at his heroes like we're watching some old serial in some small town theater in the 40s. And here, with The Empire Strikes Back , he's just far enough away from the production--as neither director nor screenwriter--that everything works a little better. I mean, it's not just the bett...

Today might not make any sense. Or it might involve insights into filmic structure and the visual tendencies of cinema... especially within the Star Wars films. See, I’m going to watch a video built from all six previous Star Wars films playing at the same time. (I was going to link to it, but to copies have been taken down from YouTube and the site where I’m watching it now might just lose it also. (Oh, just in case .) There is another version that has (present tense—that one has not been taken down) them laying over the top of one another, but it is hard to really look at that one for too long. I tested this one out a few days ago to make sure it wouldn’t be utter chaos. It’s not. Much. Positive thought: without the ability to make out a lot of Lucas’ cheesy dialogue, maybe this will make some of this more awesome. Anyway, here goes. (I’ll keep it simple— The Phantom Menace is ONE, Attack of the Clones is TWO, and so on.) Note: this video uses the “Special Edition” versi...