I am a huge John Williams fan. His scores have always moved me and he has this wonderful skill of amercing you deeper into a film with his music. Any number of the films he has composed for just would not be the same... Of course, I'm not saying that Steven Spielberg is a terrible director without the incredible "film improving" powers of John Williams, but there's definitely a different level of excellence when the soundtrack blends so smoothly with the visual elements of the movie. It has often been said by many that John Williams' scores are more of an additional character in the movies than just music in the background.
Case in point: Check out this scene from Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope without the sound first and then play it again with the sound on.
It's an entirely different feel. Which is true for just about any scene in an film or piece of visual art, but without that extremely familiar piece of music, that scene wouldn't have the same amount of gravitas. Without saying a word, the look on Mark Hamill's face and his body language, mixed with the soundtrack, expresses longing for more and a feeling of being trapped better than any dialog could possibly attempt to match.
With his status as one of the greatest film composers of our time, I was concerned for a long time that when we do lose this man and his talents because of retirement or anything worse that we would not have a proper heir to the title. When the grossly-underrated Superman Returns came out and composer John Ottman took over scoring duties, I thought we had finally found our crowned prince. I even went as far as to draft a "Dear John" letter to Mr. Williams, stating that the Superman Returns soundtrack was everything that the original Superman soundtrack should have been.
Sadly, I was let down after John Ottman's other films because they lacked the same heart, energy and general appeal that Superman Returns had on me. The search continued...
Oddly enough, it wasn't until last year when a little film called Star Trek came out that I realized that a proper inheritor had been around some 15 years! And that I'd been a fan for about 5 years.
Michael Giacchino began his professional career as a video game soundtrack composer and was able to parlay this experience onto film and television. I've said for a long time that video game music was due some just credit, and to see someone prove himself in such a media so to move onto the "big leagues" is proof that I'm right.
My first time experiencing Mr. Giacchino's work, like most people, was the first time I saw the Lost pilot. Not only was that first episode incredible because it was basically a movie, but like John Williams, Michael Giacchino was able to make his score weave in and out of every aspect of that show. As if that wasn't enough, we were treated with a one-two punch in the last part of 2004...
The biggest problem with most Disney Pixar movies at the beginning, in my opinion, was the scores were by Randy Newman. Yes, Randy Newman has his distinct style that works for certain films, such as the Toy Story series, however, the fact that he was Pixar's "Go-To" Guy was a bit discouraging. He's kind of a one-note act. He makes songs about what he sees, like Family Guy joked about... But his compositions don't hold up to the scale that Pixar was quickly climbing to.
But in November of 2004, The Incredibles came out and it was, for the lack of a better term, incredible! It took Pixar to a whole new level. And Michael Giacchino became the new "Go-To" Guy for Pixar films. He's done every film of their's, except Toy Story 3, and he's moved onto other fantastic projects. And everything is so different from his previous work! Of course, he has his "signatures" that a trained ear can pick out, but overall, he is a very diverse and talented musician.
The next time you get a chance to sit down and watch a couple different movies, really pay attention to the music. And in your queue of movies to watch, get on IMDb and pick up a few of Michael Giacchino's pieces. You will not be disappointed, I can almost guarantee it! You will be treated to a wide array of musical tastes and influences. Enjoy!
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
3-D? 2 is Fine By Me, Thank You.
Hollywood is lazy yet fickle beast. If you ever go on the website Fark.com you will find, among many other jokes, the line paraphrase from sort form of "Hollywood must really be out of ideas..." This is usually followed by the latest news or rumors about a Shirt Tales movie or the latest remake... excuse me, "Re-imagining"... of a neo-classical movie from the 1980's.
"No one remembers us any way, have your way with us, Hot Topic!"
The whole "Hollywood is out of ideas" statement has never been more just than now with the whole 3D craze. Once upon a time in Hollywood, you would have 2 similar movies come out around the same time to prove this point. Generally, you would have a so-so movie and a much better quality movie. Armageddon and Deep Impact. Dante's Peak and Volcano. Antz and A Bug's Life. And the exception to the rule, in my opinion (and it's my blog, so that's okay) is The Illusionist and The Prestige which are equally fantastic in their own ways. But now, we've been force fed a far greater foe in the form of this horrible 3-D fad. Movies that should not be in 3-D are coming out in 3-D. Movies that were not originally meant or shot to be in 3-D are coming out in 3-D. 3-D has become what "EXTREME!" was to the mid-to-late-90's. It's more of a buzz word now than actually being a form of art. And to make it worse, in some movies, it does nothing more than make the tickets more expensive.
I will admit that I have only seen one movie in the theater since this 3-D business began again. And that was Toy Story 3. It was fantastic. The 3-D elements weren't "in your face" or ridiculous. The 3-D was in the details. The 3-D came after the story and the overall design of the movie. And most of the time, it was so subtle that if you weren't looking for it, you probably either didn't notice or your mind just processed it in the suspension of disbelief. The scene that really sticks out to me is one scene in the daycare, and if you look out the window in the background it really looks like it is a full world outside of the building. It doesn't even look like a matte painting. The real. Goddamn. World. In fact, the most 3-D in the whole experience was during the opening short "Day & Night," and that was what 3-D should be! The cartoon was basically characters cut out of a black screen with the "real world" behind them.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
But does the rest of Hollywood follow this mindset? No. Instead we are overrun with regular movies that have had the 3-D added in post-production using computers. Therefore we get The Last Airbender wherein the main complaint I've read about is that the movie was very dark (in lighting terms) on it's own, and the 3-D made it very difficult to even see. On top of that, this coming year you have a steady stream of 3-D films that shouldn't be 3-D: Step Up 3-D, Piranha 3-D, Saw 3-D (which is actually the 7th one!?!) and so on and so on.
Coming Soon: Throw Momma From the Train... 3D!!!
The last one, Saw 3-D, is what makes me the angriest about 3-D movies. This movie will be filled with "shock" value meant only for 3-D. Things like hands reaching "toward" you, the traps coming "toward" you, or something else jumping out "toward" you... Look, this trick has only worked in 2 movies I've seen: Captain EO and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Why? Because 1) They're both Disney World (Epcot) Attractions, and 2) When something or someone is coming toward you, its almost believable because its on a huge screen. And in the case of Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, it's a fully-engrossing experience with water and moving chairs and air guns. If you try to watch Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) without 3-D glasses, you miss all of those little effects and it's basically really annoying and stops any pacing the movie had going up until that point. And if a movie, like Saw 73-D, is going to completely rely on that, there will be no plot and it will just be filler between sight tricks.
Oh, so just like it is now!
Not that long ago, computer generated effects were completely obvious to the naked eye, but it was so new to us that we suspended our disbelief a little farther to enjoy the movie. But even back in it's infancy, left in the right hands, shoddy CGI could be masterfully and seamlessly introduced into a film. Look at The Abyss or Jurassic Park. Amazing, even for their time. And those led to James Cameron being able to create the world of Avatar. Here's hoping that with a little more time and proper effort, 3-D can become something to cherish and maybe even become as standard as everything else we love about movies.
The whole "Hollywood is out of ideas" statement has never been more just than now with the whole 3D craze. Once upon a time in Hollywood, you would have 2 similar movies come out around the same time to prove this point. Generally, you would have a so-so movie and a much better quality movie. Armageddon and Deep Impact. Dante's Peak and Volcano. Antz and A Bug's Life. And the exception to the rule, in my opinion (and it's my blog, so that's okay) is The Illusionist and The Prestige which are equally fantastic in their own ways. But now, we've been force fed a far greater foe in the form of this horrible 3-D fad. Movies that should not be in 3-D are coming out in 3-D. Movies that were not originally meant or shot to be in 3-D are coming out in 3-D. 3-D has become what "EXTREME!" was to the mid-to-late-90's. It's more of a buzz word now than actually being a form of art. And to make it worse, in some movies, it does nothing more than make the tickets more expensive.
I will admit that I have only seen one movie in the theater since this 3-D business began again. And that was Toy Story 3. It was fantastic. The 3-D elements weren't "in your face" or ridiculous. The 3-D was in the details. The 3-D came after the story and the overall design of the movie. And most of the time, it was so subtle that if you weren't looking for it, you probably either didn't notice or your mind just processed it in the suspension of disbelief. The scene that really sticks out to me is one scene in the daycare, and if you look out the window in the background it really looks like it is a full world outside of the building. It doesn't even look like a matte painting. The real. Goddamn. World. In fact, the most 3-D in the whole experience was during the opening short "Day & Night," and that was what 3-D should be! The cartoon was basically characters cut out of a black screen with the "real world" behind them.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
But does the rest of Hollywood follow this mindset? No. Instead we are overrun with regular movies that have had the 3-D added in post-production using computers. Therefore we get The Last Airbender wherein the main complaint I've read about is that the movie was very dark (in lighting terms) on it's own, and the 3-D made it very difficult to even see. On top of that, this coming year you have a steady stream of 3-D films that shouldn't be 3-D: Step Up 3-D, Piranha 3-D, Saw 3-D (which is actually the 7th one!?!) and so on and so on.
The last one, Saw 3-D, is what makes me the angriest about 3-D movies. This movie will be filled with "shock" value meant only for 3-D. Things like hands reaching "toward" you, the traps coming "toward" you, or something else jumping out "toward" you... Look, this trick has only worked in 2 movies I've seen: Captain EO and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Why? Because 1) They're both Disney World (Epcot) Attractions, and 2) When something or someone is coming toward you, its almost believable because its on a huge screen. And in the case of Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, it's a fully-engrossing experience with water and moving chairs and air guns. If you try to watch Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) without 3-D glasses, you miss all of those little effects and it's basically really annoying and stops any pacing the movie had going up until that point. And if a movie, like Saw 73-D, is going to completely rely on that, there will be no plot and it will just be filler between sight tricks.
Oh, so just like it is now!
Not that long ago, computer generated effects were completely obvious to the naked eye, but it was so new to us that we suspended our disbelief a little farther to enjoy the movie. But even back in it's infancy, left in the right hands, shoddy CGI could be masterfully and seamlessly introduced into a film. Look at The Abyss or Jurassic Park. Amazing, even for their time. And those led to James Cameron being able to create the world of Avatar. Here's hoping that with a little more time and proper effort, 3-D can become something to cherish and maybe even become as standard as everything else we love about movies.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Movie Firsts
Life to some is defined by firsts. Most will always remember certain firsts in their lives. Who doesn't remember their first kiss? First trip to Disney World? Broken bone? First Love? Date? How about the first time you saw your favorite movie? Or an incredible movie that moved you? How about this: How many of the "life firsts" happened with the "movie firsts?" It's amazing how film has integrated into our everyday lives that important life events can mix into our experiences with motion pictures.
For example: In my life, I can tell you that I have never kissed in a movie theater, I've had numerous dates at the movies, I saw The Truman Show at Downtown Disney (not on my first trip, but 1998 when I went twice thanks to a school trip in March and a family vacation that summer), "Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!"
Next role: Cool Runnings
Take a moment and remember the first time you saw your favorite movie. It didn't necessarily need to be in a movie theater. I've fallen in love with numerous movies on VHS, Betamax, Laserdisc, DVD, Bluray Disc and even TV. For argument sake, like pretend you're remembering it in a theater...
Imagine you're sitting in a relatively-comfortable chair in a theater. There's a chill in the air, not too bad to you but you know there's some poor girl in the audience that's already freezing. The trailers have played and the lights have just gone down. In my case the next thing you hear is a drum roll and a blaring horn line screaming the all-too-familiar fanfare matching the illustrated monolith for 20th Century Fox. As the strings finish the theme and the screen changes to a green glowing stylized production company logo. This logo still doesn't feel right compared to the plain, dull-green san serif font that once stood in it's place. Suddenly, as the music ends, you are met with complete darkness and silence. After a moment, plain blue texts fills the screen...
"A long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away...."
It fades away into the darkness and you are left to ponder. "I thought this was a space movie? This has to be based in the future! And those are humans! This has to be our future!" Questions continue to race through your mind, but before you can begin to formulate any sense of that sentence fragment, the screen lights up and the full symphony orchestra explodes in the theater! Yellow-outlined text races away from you into the vastness of space! The orchestra continues in sweeping phrases as paragraphs flow into the distance explaining what you've gotten yourself into. As the paragraphs draw to a close the music fades, a A lone flute line punctuates the vast loneliness of space. As the camera pans downward and frames on 2 moons and large orange planet, the strings crescendo and a spaceship flies overhead in the midst of a laser fight with something behind it. You assume that it will be another spaceship of equal size, just a little more threatening looking. You couldn't be more wrong as the bright gray triangle in pursuit continues to grow and grow and grow until the point you doubt it will ever end. In a subtle touch of sound effects, the hum of the Star Destroyer and the firing of the lasers is so ridiculously massive, that it completely overwhelms the orchestra playing at a fair loud volume beneath the scene.
This chain of events forever changed my life. And I'm not the only one. I remember the first time I saw Star Wars. There are so many moments in that movie that completely blew me away! In all my years (and there were less than 10 at that point) I had never seen ANYTHING like it. And the first time I saw all three of the "Original Trilogy" was on a VHS tape that copied them off of television! Imagine how I felt the first time I saw it on a good VHS copy! Or in 1997 when the "Special Editions" came out in the theater! Or even in the last 2 years when I saw it for the first time on a HDTV... It was like watching it for the first time all over again!
Kinda like this
The long and short of it is that movies shape our lives in more ways than we truly realize. We all have moment movies that stand out in our minds and whether we mean to or not, we've all referenced some sort of pop culture/movie moment before. Hell, I needed a good first blog post and I just talked about one of the greatest first scenes in cinematic history!
Stay tuned for my special little thoughts and feelings on movies and everything that goes along with this subject. I may not review the newest stuff out there, but I hope you'll be entertained nonetheless!
Much love!
-Mark
For example: In my life, I can tell you that I have never kissed in a movie theater, I've had numerous dates at the movies, I saw The Truman Show at Downtown Disney (not on my first trip, but 1998 when I went twice thanks to a school trip in March and a family vacation that summer), "Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!"
Take a moment and remember the first time you saw your favorite movie. It didn't necessarily need to be in a movie theater. I've fallen in love with numerous movies on VHS, Betamax, Laserdisc, DVD, Bluray Disc and even TV. For argument sake, like pretend you're remembering it in a theater...
Imagine you're sitting in a relatively-comfortable chair in a theater. There's a chill in the air, not too bad to you but you know there's some poor girl in the audience that's already freezing. The trailers have played and the lights have just gone down. In my case the next thing you hear is a drum roll and a blaring horn line screaming the all-too-familiar fanfare matching the illustrated monolith for 20th Century Fox. As the strings finish the theme and the screen changes to a green glowing stylized production company logo. This logo still doesn't feel right compared to the plain, dull-green san serif font that once stood in it's place. Suddenly, as the music ends, you are met with complete darkness and silence. After a moment, plain blue texts fills the screen...
"A long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away...."
It fades away into the darkness and you are left to ponder. "I thought this was a space movie? This has to be based in the future! And those are humans! This has to be our future!" Questions continue to race through your mind, but before you can begin to formulate any sense of that sentence fragment, the screen lights up and the full symphony orchestra explodes in the theater! Yellow-outlined text races away from you into the vastness of space! The orchestra continues in sweeping phrases as paragraphs flow into the distance explaining what you've gotten yourself into. As the paragraphs draw to a close the music fades, a A lone flute line punctuates the vast loneliness of space. As the camera pans downward and frames on 2 moons and large orange planet, the strings crescendo and a spaceship flies overhead in the midst of a laser fight with something behind it. You assume that it will be another spaceship of equal size, just a little more threatening looking. You couldn't be more wrong as the bright gray triangle in pursuit continues to grow and grow and grow until the point you doubt it will ever end. In a subtle touch of sound effects, the hum of the Star Destroyer and the firing of the lasers is so ridiculously massive, that it completely overwhelms the orchestra playing at a fair loud volume beneath the scene.
This chain of events forever changed my life. And I'm not the only one. I remember the first time I saw Star Wars. There are so many moments in that movie that completely blew me away! In all my years (and there were less than 10 at that point) I had never seen ANYTHING like it. And the first time I saw all three of the "Original Trilogy" was on a VHS tape that copied them off of television! Imagine how I felt the first time I saw it on a good VHS copy! Or in 1997 when the "Special Editions" came out in the theater! Or even in the last 2 years when I saw it for the first time on a HDTV... It was like watching it for the first time all over again!
The long and short of it is that movies shape our lives in more ways than we truly realize. We all have moment movies that stand out in our minds and whether we mean to or not, we've all referenced some sort of pop culture/movie moment before. Hell, I needed a good first blog post and I just talked about one of the greatest first scenes in cinematic history!
Stay tuned for my special little thoughts and feelings on movies and everything that goes along with this subject. I may not review the newest stuff out there, but I hope you'll be entertained nonetheless!
Much love!
-Mark
p0pcult. Classic- DVD Review: The Genius That Was (and Still is) Family Guy: Blue Harvest
EDIT FOR GOOGLE SEARCHERS: A lot of you are coming from Google looking for the answer to a very burning question (you might want to get that checked out, actually): What is The Most Unattractive Male Name in the English Language? So you don't have to look any further, here's your answer:
Gold. Hey, feel like sticking around? Check out the rest of the site here at p0pcult.
Now back to our regularly scheduled Blogging.
If you were to make a pie graph of all the bloggers in America, a small sliver of this absolutely tasty mathematical representation have never seen Star Wars.
"I stole this off of a window like in the old Tom & Jerry cartoons"
Seriously, at what point hasn't a blog had even a loose reference to the Holy Trilogy? An observation about a bit of casting in a new movie: "I have a bad feeling about this..." or comparing any number of political figures to the Evil Galactic Empire or even the millions of fanboys bleeding their love for slave costume-clad Leias. It's out there, and love them or hate them (re-releases and all) every fan of the series has wanted to create Star Wars in their own image.
But working part-time at the Game Stop and paying your mom rent and half the total for this month's groceries doesn't allow for the expendable cash to make your dream reality. It's sad, but we've all had to face this truth.
Enter Seth McFarlane.
"Artist's Rendering"
The man, the myth. The heart, soul, cock and balls behind Family Guy. A show that's been killed and resurrected more times than Caprica 6... A show that quickly found that PC barrier we all hate and smashed it like the Berlin Wall. A show that speaks to and for it's loyal viewers. And that is what I'm getting to. What better show to take the King of Trilogies and make it it's own?
This movie (let's admit it... it was a movie, more so than the Stewie Griffin 3 episode arc) had everything that a Star Wars and Family Guy fan could want! It had the sillyness of Family Guy, the appeal of Star Wars and the testicles to poke fun at everything. The Family Guy fan will enjoy the pot jokes, the outside-the-box references, and, for my money, the best Meg insult to date. The Star Wars fan will enjoy the incredible visuals (or recreations, masterfully done) and awe of the original movie and the one scene that defines every Star Wars fan: The TIE Fighter attack where Peter starts singing the John Williams score. We've all done it, admit it. If you love both, the beautifully intertwining of the styles, stories and characters makes you appreciate each separate entity on an entirely new level. And if you don't like either... you should not be reading this blog site... Go away.
There are 2 aspects of this movie that I believe make Family Guy Blue Harvest stand out as a truly genius piece of art, and they are none too subtle.
1) The entire running gag with the couch. Everyone in this world has either attempted to move a couch through a door that is way too small for it fit through without some sort of quantum physics (or just unscrew the legs) or seen someone attempt said action in person. If they would have ended the joke after they try to load the couch into the Millennium Falcon while still doing the "turn it this way, turn it that way" bit and being fired at by the ever-expert shooting of movie bad guys, I would have felt a little letdown. But they took it the next level with the escape from the Death Star flying shot. For anyone who has had the misfortune of helping someone move a piece of furniture in a vehicle that was too small or ill-equipped for such an act, ie college, they appreciate the swing shot of Peter still on the outside of the Millennium Falcon, holding the couch in place and saying in a half irritated, half scared shitless tone "Easy!" Classic "funny because it's true" moment. And like any good comedy, the comedic red herring makes a comeback in the most unusual and non-foreshadowed scene possible... The couch becomes the new seats in the cockpit of Peter and Brian's space ship. Classic and brilliant.
2) The writers of this parody realized that every Star Wars fan both loves and loathes these movies. Even the Sacred 3... not as much as the prequels, but they hate these movies. They nitpick everything. They know the movies so well, they find the faults that scream at them every time they watch it. It's like that stain commercial (...you know, that one) and it's so obvious and annoying to them, the average person thinks this little Jedi fiend is batshit crazy because they're convinced that the mouse droid sounds completely different in the re-released version than the 1977 original. But the writers KNEW this and they went with it. They had George Lucas' blessing and free run of all things Star Wars, so they just took off and did what the Hell they wanted. "A long time ago, but somehow in the future..." Awesome! "My God! You shoot small animals for fun? That's the first indicator of a serial killer, you freak!" So true! "Great kid! Don't get penis-y!" Pure comic genius... Dick and fart joke comedy, but genius nonetheless!
So all said and done, the "episode" was fantastic, and the special features are gold mines too. I'd recommend the commentary for Star Wars geek-out sessions. And I don't f around when it comes to DVDs, so the special edition came with a shirt, 3D glasses for the TIE Fighter scene and trading cards in the style of the old 1977 Star Wars Topps cards. Non essential, but fun to have.
Overall rating: 8 out of 10
Gold. Hey, feel like sticking around? Check out the rest of the site here at p0pcult.
Now back to our regularly scheduled Blogging.
If you were to make a pie graph of all the bloggers in America, a small sliver of this absolutely tasty mathematical representation have never seen Star Wars.
"I stole this off of a window like in the old Tom & Jerry cartoons"
Seriously, at what point hasn't a blog had even a loose reference to the Holy Trilogy? An observation about a bit of casting in a new movie: "I have a bad feeling about this..." or comparing any number of political figures to the Evil Galactic Empire or even the millions of fanboys bleeding their love for slave costume-clad Leias. It's out there, and love them or hate them (re-releases and all) every fan of the series has wanted to create Star Wars in their own image.
But working part-time at the Game Stop and paying your mom rent and half the total for this month's groceries doesn't allow for the expendable cash to make your dream reality. It's sad, but we've all had to face this truth.
Enter Seth McFarlane.
"Artist's Rendering"
The man, the myth. The heart, soul, cock and balls behind Family Guy. A show that's been killed and resurrected more times than Caprica 6... A show that quickly found that PC barrier we all hate and smashed it like the Berlin Wall. A show that speaks to and for it's loyal viewers. And that is what I'm getting to. What better show to take the King of Trilogies and make it it's own?
This movie (let's admit it... it was a movie, more so than the Stewie Griffin 3 episode arc) had everything that a Star Wars and Family Guy fan could want! It had the sillyness of Family Guy, the appeal of Star Wars and the testicles to poke fun at everything. The Family Guy fan will enjoy the pot jokes, the outside-the-box references, and, for my money, the best Meg insult to date. The Star Wars fan will enjoy the incredible visuals (or recreations, masterfully done) and awe of the original movie and the one scene that defines every Star Wars fan: The TIE Fighter attack where Peter starts singing the John Williams score. We've all done it, admit it. If you love both, the beautifully intertwining of the styles, stories and characters makes you appreciate each separate entity on an entirely new level. And if you don't like either... you should not be reading this blog site... Go away.
There are 2 aspects of this movie that I believe make Family Guy Blue Harvest stand out as a truly genius piece of art, and they are none too subtle.
1) The entire running gag with the couch. Everyone in this world has either attempted to move a couch through a door that is way too small for it fit through without some sort of quantum physics (or just unscrew the legs) or seen someone attempt said action in person. If they would have ended the joke after they try to load the couch into the Millennium Falcon while still doing the "turn it this way, turn it that way" bit and being fired at by the ever-expert shooting of movie bad guys, I would have felt a little letdown. But they took it the next level with the escape from the Death Star flying shot. For anyone who has had the misfortune of helping someone move a piece of furniture in a vehicle that was too small or ill-equipped for such an act, ie college, they appreciate the swing shot of Peter still on the outside of the Millennium Falcon, holding the couch in place and saying in a half irritated, half scared shitless tone "Easy!" Classic "funny because it's true" moment. And like any good comedy, the comedic red herring makes a comeback in the most unusual and non-foreshadowed scene possible... The couch becomes the new seats in the cockpit of Peter and Brian's space ship. Classic and brilliant.
2) The writers of this parody realized that every Star Wars fan both loves and loathes these movies. Even the Sacred 3... not as much as the prequels, but they hate these movies. They nitpick everything. They know the movies so well, they find the faults that scream at them every time they watch it. It's like that stain commercial (...you know, that one) and it's so obvious and annoying to them, the average person thinks this little Jedi fiend is batshit crazy because they're convinced that the mouse droid sounds completely different in the re-released version than the 1977 original. But the writers KNEW this and they went with it. They had George Lucas' blessing and free run of all things Star Wars, so they just took off and did what the Hell they wanted. "A long time ago, but somehow in the future..." Awesome! "My God! You shoot small animals for fun? That's the first indicator of a serial killer, you freak!" So true! "Great kid! Don't get penis-y!" Pure comic genius... Dick and fart joke comedy, but genius nonetheless!
So all said and done, the "episode" was fantastic, and the special features are gold mines too. I'd recommend the commentary for Star Wars geek-out sessions. And I don't f around when it comes to DVDs, so the special edition came with a shirt, 3D glasses for the TIE Fighter scene and trading cards in the style of the old 1977 Star Wars Topps cards. Non essential, but fun to have.
Overall rating: 8 out of 10
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