Mark Hamill walks down memory lane with Walter Chaw
March
20, 2005|You
learn some things about yourself when you undertake any sort of
profession, I guess--that is, how well you deal with certain unique,
job-related situations. I learned fairly early on, and luckily, that
I'm not given to being particularly star-struck. But there was a moment
as I was talking with Mark Hamill via telephone from his home in
California that I realized I was having to work a little bit to not
start raving like a lunatic. I noted a little tremor in my hand; it was
completely unexpected. Hearing the voice of Luke Skywalker--what was
possibly the single most important shaping cultural force of my
childhood--on the other end of the wire gave me a line, vibrant and
organic, back to a four-year-old me, back to a time before I spoke a
peep of English. See, with Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, I've since
identified them with other things (Indiana Jones and drug
addiction/ghost writing, respectively), but Mark Hamill remains primary
in my imagination as that kid I wanted to be: towheaded and chosen, the
golden calf of the culture into which I desperately wished to
assimilate.
There are common themes in hate mail--a fact no doubt nettling to those benighted souls putting hardscrabble pen to paper for perhaps the first non-"doomed community college application" purpose of their artless lives. They are as wanting for imagination and grace as the films they choose to defend. Without logic and without information, they respond kneejerk-like, rising in defence of films that, for the most part, they haven't seen with points that are indefensible and harangues impotent, ignorant, and occasionally disturbing.
*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+ screenplay by Henry Gilroy, Steven Melching, Scott Murphy directed by Dave Filoni
by Bryant Frazer Anyone over the age of 12 will quickly detect the distinctly secondhand elements comprised by Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a journey into George Lucas's ever-dorkier galaxy far, far away that panders relentlessly to the tween demographic so prized by the Lucasfilm empire. This is clearly a Star Wars movie, borrowing design elements, stylistic tropes, and even specific camera angles and editorial strategies from the live-action films. But the kid-friendly strategies sink it--there has to be some mileage in dramatizing the heretofore un-chronicled adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, but there's a glibness to the execution that makes this cut-rate excursion among the least compelling hero's journeys in the Star Wars canon. Even the "Knights of the Old Republic" videogame is a more rewarding endeavour.
*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B starring Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley, Warwick Davis, Jean Marsh screenplay by Bob Dolman directed by Ron Howard
by Walter Chaw It shouldn't be surprising that Willow fails as it does considering that the creative forces behind it were George Lucas (who has never had a good idea of his own) and Ron Howard (who's never met an opportunity for cleverness he didn't miss), neither of whom should ever have been entrusted with a fantasy film as late as 1988, as their work since (and just before) will attest. It is shamelessly derivative, raping countless sources to come up with what is essentially a limp riff on the Tolkien quest married to things as divergent as The Living Daylights, all three original Star Wars films, all three Indiana Jones films, Gulliver's Travels, The Bible, Masters of the Universe, and Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Recent Comments