May The Force Be With You. Now Go.

I finally watched George Lucas' first feature film, THX 1138. I was surprised to find that it was actually good. I expected it to be a dull student art film, and while it was pretty cerebral (read: exposition heavy), I found it to be well paced and interesting. He even threw in a car chase at the end. Really.

The copy I saw was the recent reissue of the film, so of course George couldn't keep his mitts off the "Digitally Enhance" button. There was still that washed-out 70's film stock look, but the cityscapes had been beefed up (or so I assume) and he clearly enhanced or outright added a few critters and characters near the film's finale. No Jar Jar Binks, but I think a new monkey man or two may have been thrown in.

Speaking of Star Wars, I loaned a friend my copy of Revenge of the Sith and the animated Clone Wars series DVDs. We both agreed that the Clone Wars were the best of the batch since the original trilogy. But in George's defense, other than the acting, dialogue, direction, characters, and plot, the prequels were solid gold.

Bond, James Bond

My folks babysat Cooper Saturday night so Lisa and I could take in a movie and go out to dinner. We saw Casino Royale, which in my humble opinion, is the best Bond film since On Her Majesty's Secret Service (which, despite Telly Savalas' Blofeld, was a really good Bond film). Sean Connery will never be replaced, but this movie's handling of the Bond genre was very authentic. It was far from the cartoonish blockbusters of the last, well, thirty years. There's an extensive gymnastic chase scene involving people leaping from very, very tall cranes that had my palms sweating.

On the flipside, we saw RV on DVD with my parents, which definitely trumped Wedding Crashers as biggest pile of crap I've seen lately.

DST and DVDs

With winter in full Seattle-style swing (cold and rainy) we're finding time to catch up on movies.

There's been some ringers. I highly recommend Thank You For Smoking, Lucky Number Slevin, and Art School Confidential. I was pleasantly surprised with Ju-on, the original Japanese movie that was made into The Grudge stateside. This and Ringu have convinced me that the Japanese are far better at making creepy psychological thrillers than their American re-maker counterparts. I don't even like horror films much, but if these two movies are representative of the Japanese take on the genre, I could see getting in to them.

There's also been some stinkers. As if we needed more reasons to think little of the American movie industry, we had the displeasure of watching Wedding Crashers yesterday. Holy cow. That was truly sucktastic. And I really enjoy Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson and Will Farrell, but good lord! What were they thinking? Man!

Speaking of the Japanese, I've been taking advantage of reliving my childhood memories of some Americanized anime, starting with my old favorite, Speed Racer. Funny thing about not being 10 years old: that show is awful! I mean, it's still good campy fun, but sweet lord it is dumb! So I've decided to move on to Star Blazers. I just hope that turns out to be as good as I remembered it.