Skip to main content

The Force Awakens Into The Woods

First things first: I've got a backload of films I've seen that I need to review, including Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, David Fincher's Gone Girl, and The Judge, among others. There's also Marvel's Phase III lineup that was announced last week and how excited I am over two new heroes entering the fray, its significance, and what it means going forward & preparing my annual list of the Best and Worst of 2014. Today is a day for celebration for both Star Wars fans, and fans of musicals and/or Stephen Sondheim.

J.J. Abram's Star Wars Episode VII (due out December of next year) has a new title! And....

.....yeah.

That's the title, folks. Star Wars: The Force Awakens. What, did the Force get smashed last night and now it has a massive hangover? Did it awaken only to learn that it had a one-night stand with a Trekkie cosplayer at a sci-fi convention? Or did it wake up in a musical with Rapunzel, the Big Bad Wolf and Cinderella? Elaborate, Mr. Abrams! Sure, we're going to take shots about how generic and bland the title to the eagerly awaited seventh chapter to the space opera is, but at the end of the day, it's still a better title to a Star Wars movie than The Phantom Menace. Though, I do like the idea of the Force waking up in the middle of an enchanted wooden forest with singing and beanstalks and peasants. It might make for a more interesting movie than Into the Woods!



First, there's dialogue in this musical; second, I don't see any shaky camera work or poor editing cuts in the frames; and lastly, I think it's painfully obvious that there's not a Russell Crowe in this cast who sings like a drunk man at a karaoke bar has the voice of an angel calling from the Heavens. If I want to watch a real musical, i'll stick with Tom Hooper's Les Miserables, thank you very much!

Ok, now that I've gotten my inner Cinema Snob out of the way, I'll say that the trailer looks really good. The production values look stunning as one would expect. Meryl Streep has a really good singing voice, and there's a nice blend of talent here, from the three-time Oscar-winning actress herself, to Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, and Johnny Depp as The Wolf. But I will be the first to say that I'm not sure i'll be rushing to see this on Christmas Day (mostly because i'll be seeing Seth Rogen's new comedy, The Interview on that day), partly because I'm just not the biggest fan of musicals, and partly due to me believing that Rob Marshall is a one-hit wonder who got lucky with Chicago and hasn't made anything decent since. Still, will I give this a shot? Eventually yes.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What We Talk About When We Talk About Great Movies: The 10 Best Films of 2014 - Part II

And here's (finally) part two of my list of the best from last year, along with the full list at the bottom. 5. The Wind Rises  - The worst thing I can honestly say about this gorgeous animated feature is that, at 126 minutes, it wasn't long enough. I could get lost in Hayao Miyazaki's final effort for hours and not get bored. The writer-director-animator is a master of whisking us away to new worlds of his own creation, but how fitting that his last masterwork is where we're rooted into the past as Miyazaki tells the story of real-life Jiro Horikoshi as he lives out his dreams of building airplanes, despite them being used for the Imperial Army back in World War II. Every last frame of this film - from Jiro's dreams with fellow designer Giovanni Caproni and his brief romance with Nahoko, to showing the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1932 and his journey to Nazi Germany several years later - is painstakingly beautiful and artfully crafted to within an inch of his...
1 comment
Read more

Mr. Brown Verses Bland, Weepy Teen Melodrama

Todd in the Shadows once said that he defined the worst hit song of the calendar year as a song being the absence of good. At the time, I didn't really understood what he meant when he chose "Tonight Tonight", by Hot Chelle Rae in 2011 and "Roar", by Katy Perry in 2013. Last night, I finally understood what he meant. Because, I, too, have seen a movie that's the absence of good. Todd meant that a song could make you angry, the beat could drive you insane, the lyrics could be insulting and simply lazy, but, in his eyes, those two aforementioned songs had nothing  going for them. Nothing lyrically, nothing catchy, nothing offensive, nothing that could make you feel insulted, angry or simply seeing red, because there's literally nothing  about it that can make you feel anything. That movie belongs to Bland, Weepy Teen Melodrama , the  latest attempt to suck money out of teen girls ....I mean, young adult novel by Second Rate Nicholas Sparks that became ...
Post a Comment
Read more

American Hustle

A film about corruption and searing social commentary about what we'll do to chase the American dream? Made by the guy who made of the best anti-war pictures of the last several years ( Three Kings ) and one of the best sports dramas since Miracle  ( The Fighter )? And it combines Christian Bale & Amy Adams from The Fighter  and Bradley Cooper & Jennifer Lawrence from Silver Linings Playbook ? This has to be a sure-fire Oscar heavyweight! Man, director and co-writer David O'Russell is swinging for the fences here! He's going to make this next period piece his Goodfellas , and hell, if you're going to draw inspiration from any crime drama, that's the way to go! I'm going to see this tonight! 2+ hours later......... Well, two out of three ain't bad. American Hustle is a good movie. A damn good one. O'Russell nails the period of the 70's perfectly. The lavish clothes, the attitude that this gravy train of decadence will never...
1 comment
Read more