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Thursday, December 17, 2015
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Growing Up With Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (and Beyond)
This is the 3rd and last in a series about being a kid in the 70's and 80's and being a part of the generation that was exposed to Star Wars first hand. All recollections are subjective and are not intended to represent those of the other billion kids who were also around. For Part 1 about Star Wars click here, for Part 2 about Empire, click here.
My memories about Return of the Jedi come with a lot of "firsts" attached.
It is the first movie I remember anticipating. The Empire Strikes Back has ended on a cliffhanger, and so it only made sense that from the second we saw the Skywalkers staring off into space and the credits rolled, I was signed up for the third installment. As I discussed in talking Empire, we moved into speculation.
What you kids have to remember is (a) there was no internet and (b) the sector of the population that obsessed over what movies were coming and when was much smaller back then. My first inkling that the movie was actually, like, really, really coming was a slide that appeared before some other movie my mom took us to. I don't think it said Revenge of the Jedi, I just processed that - yes, we were finally getting a 3rd movie. But the slide was really bland - just a title and a picture of a greenish planet, if memory serves.
After that, I do believe images began to trickle out in magazines and on television.
It was also the first movie I spoiled for myself.
My memories about Return of the Jedi come with a lot of "firsts" attached.
It is the first movie I remember anticipating. The Empire Strikes Back has ended on a cliffhanger, and so it only made sense that from the second we saw the Skywalkers staring off into space and the credits rolled, I was signed up for the third installment. As I discussed in talking Empire, we moved into speculation.
What you kids have to remember is (a) there was no internet and (b) the sector of the population that obsessed over what movies were coming and when was much smaller back then. My first inkling that the movie was actually, like, really, really coming was a slide that appeared before some other movie my mom took us to. I don't think it said Revenge of the Jedi, I just processed that - yes, we were finally getting a 3rd movie. But the slide was really bland - just a title and a picture of a greenish planet, if memory serves.
After that, I do believe images began to trickle out in magazines and on television.
It was also the first movie I spoiled for myself.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
TV Watch: Fargo Season 2
I was on blogging hiatus during the first season of Fargo. In the year since returning I haven't talked about the program a great deal, but if you're a regular reader (Hi, Dad!), you may have seen me make mention of the show and the Season 1 star, Allison Tolman. Hollywood, find this person work. She's great.
But with programs like FX's Fargo in this new era of American television, we're getting a new form of the medium, something akin to the novel for motion pictures. Obviously, TV has grown and changed. In many corners its unrecognizable from the industry and story-telling I grew up with, and while I find the idea of "binging" a show kind of weird and self-defeating, I can understand the desire to move from chapter to chapter and stay up late to finish a good book.
Fargo the TV series was never going to be the film of the same name, and seemed a hugely risky endeavor, a tight-rope act of television. It was to be produced by the Coens, but that's code for: they'd get a check, but have no real participation. Instead, it was the creative vision of Noah Hawley, a guy who worked on Bones and some other shows, but who didn't seem to have made a name for himself, exactly. Few modern filmmakers are as highly regarded as the Coen Bros., and few have been as routinely successful in plunging into new territory, film after film. And while you can enjoy a Coen Bros. film upon a first viewing, they bear repeat viewings and never disappoint. And the Coen Bros. are prolific.
The movie of Fargo arrived in 1996 to well-deserved critical acclaim and solid box office. A noir-ish tale of avarice, crime, and human monsters with the soft glint of decency still living on the edges, painting the warm bed and the mundanities of life as a refuge - a good thing - in a world that has darkness always lapping at the edges. The film struck a chord with a wider audience than the Coen Bros. had previously enjoyed, even when the studios tried to push them front and center with Hudsucker Proxy. Sure, a lot of folks went to see the cop movie with the funny accents, but they wound up seeing a pretty good picture, too.
So what could we expect out of a TV show with a seeming lack of participation from the Coens?
Monday, December 14, 2015
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