Star Wars Anthology shit talk (Rogue One, Young Solo, TBD)

Ron's got a hell of a work ethic, at least

have we done a ron howard poll btw? if not, maybe the time is right

Kathleen Kennedy: "I aim to make sure the Han Solo movie as good as it can be by hiring the best directors."
Ron Howard Voice: "She didn't."

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) June 22, 2017

nobody who made Frost/Nixon is the platonic ideal of anything

it must be a weird feeling (at least until the check clears) to be the guy people think of immediately when what's needed is a director with baseline competence but no other discernible/detectable qualities

I wonder what character Clint will show up as

No Ron Howard poll as such, but there's a lot of overlap in this equally essential poll: Babaloo Mandell and Lowell Ganz: A Match Made In Heaven

have any actors from a Star Trek OS episode been in a SW film?

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/708/657/1024/balok.0.jpg

no

Pretty sure Elisha Cook, Jr. played Dengar.

Felix Silla, apparently.

https://www.chaostrophic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/felix-silla-star-trek-star-wars1-700x350.jpg

Ron Howard forever excused for his appearances on The Simpsons tbh

just heard they've replaced alpen stevenreich in the title role with this guy:

http://68.media.tumblr.com/b759f2679a396890405a8a0520cdf098/tumblr_opfm3sDHCP1uex49zo4_400.jpg

Is Ron Howard today's Robert Wise?

Chakka teaming up with Chewbacca would be cool.

There's always money in the Millennium Falcon.

When Kennedy felt that these measures did not get the production on track, she asked Kasdan to come to London. Kasdan is said also to have been unhappy with the limited shots and displeased that Lord and Miller were calling out lines for the actors to try from behind the monitor rather than sticking with the script that he had written in collaboration with his son. (Lord and Miller had input on the script before shooting began.) “As a writer, producer and part of Star Wars world, you get on a plane when that happens,” says a person with knowledge of the situation.

But Lord and Miller were not prepared to have Kasdan become a shadow director. With an impasse reached, Kennedy finally pulled the trigger. The next day, when the crew was told that Ron Howard would take over as director, sources say they broke into applause.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-han-solo-movie-firing-new-details-behind-phil-lord-chris-miller-exit-1016619

right after Coccon, some (clowns) judged Ronnie to be Spielberg II

okay lol

Narrator: He wasn't

You know who they should've gotten instead of Ron Howard? George Lucas

And, not entirely satisfied with the performance that the directors were eliciting from Rules Don't Apply star Alden Ehrenreich, Lucasfilm decided to bring in an acting coach.

http://68.media.tumblr.com/e32e028013537639c82fd4f7f8f3525f/tumblr_o6tpe8IgZp1qg4e0wo3_r1_400.gif

omg, perfect

Snoke is Mace Windu.

maybe Harrison Ford? "They can write this shit, kid, but we sure can't say it."

Lucas is almost certainly going to direct another Star War before he dies, isn't he? Almost certainly by the time they're cranking out two or more of these things per year.

afaik the only way that'd happen is if Disney approached him and asked very nicely

I could imagine some sort of non-movie live action thing, done for an anniversary of the films, could have them reach out. No way a full length feature gets made with him directin

I'm not sure anyone in the world wants that?

there's some adult out there who was five when Episode I came out and really fucking loves pod racing

still only really interested in a Lucas story. Absolutely get someone else to direct it.

and write

and edit

There's also the weird contrarians who think the prequels are the only good Star Wars films, e.g. Richard Brody

wait what

even as someone who mostly likes the prequels, this seems like an insane position to take

The labyrinthine opening shot of “Revenge of the Sith”— of Anakin and Obi-Wan giving chase to Dooku through the space vehicles on the planet of Coruscant—is a mighty and audacious gauntlet-throw, the digital equivalent of the opening shot of Orson Welles’s “Touch of Evil.” It wheels and gyrates and zips and pivots with a vertiginous wonder that declares, from the beginning, that Lucas had big visual ideas and was about to realize them with a heroically inventive virtuosity. And the rest of the movie follows through on that self-dare.
If I had seen “Revenge of the Sith” in real time, in a theatre upon its release, in 2005, I think that, at the moment when Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), sizzling in the blue lightning that Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) reflects back at him, cries out to Anakin (Hayden Christensen), “Power! Unlimited Power!,” I would have leaped out of my seat yelling with excitement. The entire movie is filled with an absolute splendor of the pulp sublime, and that moment is its very apogee. Lucas reaches historic heights in the filming of action: the martial artistry of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s double duel versus Dooku, the gaping maw of outer space and of the airshaft into which the heroic duo drops, Obi-Wan’s light-sabre fight with the four-armed Grievous, and, above all, the apocalyptic inferno of the confrontation of Obi-Wan and Anakin (which, regrettably, cuts back to Yoda and Emperor, a much duller battle). I watched these sequences over and over—happily, with the sound off to get rid of the musical score—and was repeatedly and unflaggingly amazed by Lucas’s precise, dynamic, wildly imaginative direction.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-the-seven-star-wars-films-reveal-about-george-lucas

yeah, the prequels are cinema's greatest force-watches (no pun intended) for me. with a lot of prep and repeated watching, you can convince yourself that dialog and quality of FX really doesn't matter, and you're just watching for appreciation of the "history". Kind of like reading The Silmarillion

but then you see one of the old ones, and jesus it's like breathing real air after being submerged in crap for an hour

If I had seen “Revenge of the Sith” in real time, in a theatre upon its release, in 2005

see, this is what's wrong with binge watching. you can have entire sections of dud content, but the fact you're seeing so many scenes in a row makes the better bits stand out that much more. plus, if you're watching at home, you can do things other than strictly watching the movie

reviewing something as a movie, and reviewing it as hours seven through nine of twenty hours of viewing related junk are not the same

Or watch it with the sound off, for example.

'To get rid of the musical score'

ffs

there's much more Williams hate in the full piece

oh god I couldn't get far enough into skimming that to see that he didn't like John Williams' score

jesus christ

lol

it is tempting to follow this guy around online and comment "you are bad and your opinions are bad" on everything he writes

Brody is a High Cinema priest who has written a very thick book on Godard. He also values Personal Expression above all. Hids fave film of '15 was Chi-Raq.

he also loved the Woody Allen Rome movie, and the Obamas' First Date movie

Maybe all that's been keeping you from really high profile reviewing gigs is your lack of a head injury

i quit that shit shortly after seeing the Woody Allen Rome movie

FTR, I was not endorsing another Lucas-directed SW joint, just saying that it's entirely possible if not likely. The world of popular entertainment is filled to the brim with folks who return to a thing after making very clear that they would never return to a thing. And let's be honest, no one foresaw Ron Howard directing a SW movie so the future directing slate is a pretty open field.

NARRATOR VOICE: It wasn't.

So Rogue One popped up on Netflix and I figured I'd give it another chance. I got through the first act, basically to when they're about to go over to Mads Mikkelsen's rain-and-boulder planet, before sighing heavily and turning it off. I will say that one thing I don't think I gave it enough credit for last time around was the visual sensibility which generally was very vivid and memorable, e.g. the opening shots of Mads Mikkelsen's grass-and-igneous-rock planet, with Krennic's white imperial uniform contrasting nicely against the landscape. K2-SO and Saw have good designs, the obligatory cantina-esque "alien variety pack" scene had nice costumes and props, etc. God save us from the pointless walk-ons by the original cantina lowlifes and such grotesque franchise-dependent scene-derails as the music swelling into a bit of John Williams's classic stuff when Jimmy Smits walks into the frame to nod approvingly at something. God knows how that plays to anybody who hasn't memorized the minor cast of the first three prequels.

But man, the plot in this thing! On the second time through, knowing what gets paid off and what's a bunch of red herrings or threads abandoned in the reshoot phase, it feels really manic in its jumping between things. I checked this time - we have to adjust our minds to six different planets/locations in the opening thirteen minutes: igneous planet, prison, Jedha, wherever it is that Jyn gets busted out of a police van, kasbah asteroid where Diego Rivera kills that guy, and Yavin. Yeesh! But the real problem is how contrived and forced the conflicts are: the whole middle act happens because the Wrong-Headed Commanding Officer gives Kasabian secret orders to kill Mads Mikkelsen. Which are the same secret orders he already gave him, so the film is going out of his way to show the rebels reaffirming this plan upon receiving the news that the apparent defection of Mads seems to be legit, that the Death Star is already working and blew up Jedha, and that they should really get going to Scarif to get the Death Star plans. The commander has to say something like "who knows what Mads is working on! Stick with the plan of killing him!" You'd think Diego could muster "I think he was probably working on the Death Star, the one that blew up Jedha." So the next major leg of the movie - will he shoot Mads, be stopped by the others, or stop himself? - is based on complete silliness, like Diego's been in a different movie this whole time.

Meanwhile, our notional protagonist, Jyn has done absolutely nothing to advance the plot, and made no choices except agreeing to watch a hologram, half-heartedly. It's a good moment from her, reacting to her dad's message and her changed understanding of him, but meanwhile she's had about forty-five seconds of screen time with her estranged surrogate father figure which you'd think would be a pretty big moment too - - - but of course that would depend on us actually understanding their past, and it seems pretty clear, from the Band-Aid of the confused flashback dream montage, that this backstory was cut out of the movie late in the game, probably to make room for the superfluous X-Wing and Anonymous Assistant Commandos Video Game Objective stuff at the end. Then Saw sees the city blowing up and accepts death immediately (for no reason - some grizzled, ruthless extremist he turned out to be!) which from what I recall has no effect on Jyn whatsoever. Does she even mention his name for the rest of the movie? What a mess.