Category: Fanboy

Homer and the Butterfly.

The trailer for Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder, starring Ed Burns and Ben Kingsley, shows up online, and I’m getting the sense the Treehouse of Horror V version might just be more entertaining. And what’s up with Kingsley’s flat-top? With this, Thunderbirds, and Suspect Zero, he must be making a huge down payment on a house or something.

Invisible Touch.


As The Fantastic Four begins shooting, USA Today posts this shot of Jessica “Honey Daniels” Alba as the Invisible Woman, and SuperHeroHype has kindly scanned in the rest of the cast. I must admit, Alba looks more like the character than I originally suspected — indeed, she may be the closest fit of these four: Ioan Gruffudd’s Mr. Fantastic looks too young, Chris Evans’s The Human Torch looks nothing like Johnny Storm, and Michael Chiklis’s Thing…well, I’m thinking Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein at the moment. Update: High-quality versions of all four are now up.

Joey and the Bat / Gary vs. the Empire.

In the fanboy bin, Bruce Wayne’s girl-of-the-moment Katie Holmes talks a little about Batman Begins, and Gary Oldman opts out of Revenge of the Sith due to its being a non-SAG production.

Mach 3.

The new trailer for Blade: Trinity arrives. Ok, they stole the music and slo-mo from The Matrix and the whole Parker Posey-in-the-desert-fortress bit from Hellboy, but I’m still quite looking forward to this. The first two Blades were both surprisingly fun popcorn flicks, and I expect nothing less from David Goyer’s outing, since he was both screenwriter and consigliere to Stephen Norrington and Guillermo del Toro the first two times.

It’s Funny Because It’s True.

Bad form, I know, but this week’s Onion is particularly amusing. Take, for example, Hundreds Of Republicans Injured In Rush To Discredit Kerry. “‘It’s bad down here,’ Savannah (GA) General Hospital director Lloyd Sautner said. ‘We were still treating hurricane victims when all these politicians were hurt in the whirlwind of manufactured controversy.’” I also liked Bush Campaign More Thought Out Than Iraq War and Terry Gilliam’s Barbeque Plagued by Production Delays.

Return of the Jedi.

So while out yesterday evening to pick up some power converters, I managed to procure the Star Wars Original Trilogy DVDs through the NYC fanboy underground, and subsequently stayed up way too late in the night perusing the set. On the plus side, the transfers are really crisp and stunning, particularly A New Hope. Whatsmore, the 2.5 hour Empire of Dreams documentary on the supplemental disc includes quite a bit of fun material I’d never seen before, such as Kurt Russell and William Katt reading for Han and Luke respectively, Bill Moyers and Walter Cronkite assessing the trilogy’s cultural impact, and Harrison Ford and Lawrence Kasdan making the case for a dead Captain Solo to start off RotJ.

But as for the 2004 changes…well, they can be jarring to say the least. Alas, as feared, Greedo-shoots-first now looks even worse than it did in the 1997 iteration. For some reason, they tried to make it seem as if Han’s now-disembodied head dodges Greedo’s blast by floating to the left, and it just looks awful. Hayden Christiansen at the end of RotJ also seems bizarre, given that Alec Guinness and Yoda still look the same (I mean, why not throw in Samuel Jackson while you’re at it?) As for the other changes (the revised Emperor scene in ESB, Temuera Morrison’s voice replacing that of Jeremy Bulloch), they were off-putting last night, but I expect I could grow used to them. The CGI-Jabba in A New Hope is also much-improved, although he still seems a pretty distant cousin to his RotJ incarnation.

Regarding the Episode III teaser, it’s not much of a tease — mostly just footage of Christiansen and Ewan MacGregor practicing their climactic fight scene on a soundstage, intercut with ILM ugnaughts manufacturing a new Vader helmet. One of the ILM guys goes on at great length about how Vader’s mask wasn’t symmetrical in the OT, and how the new one they made is now perfectly symmetrical, which I thought encapsulated one of the central problems with the prequels. Who care if Vader’s mask was or wasn’t symmetrical, and why don’t you just make the mask he was wearing in the first films? It’s the Midichlorian Dilemma — If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

While I’m complaining, also included on Disc 4 is a documentary featuring other genre directors — PJ, Spielberg, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, the ID4 guys — explaining the contributions the original films made to their own work. And, while Lucas should be justifiably hailed for both the OT and his many FX contributions to the medium (ILM, THX, Skywalker Sound, etc.), the tone of this piece — and particularly its over-reliance on clips from Lord of the Rings — sadly comes off a bit smug and sour grapes-ish.

Still, despite the unnecessary tweaking and slightly tone-deaf docs, the set does include Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (and, ok, Return of the Jedi) in all their glory and, for long stretches — when Boba Fett isn’t speaking with a Kiwi accent or Gungans aren’t (sigh) proclaiming “Weesa free!” — it’s possible to remember a time not so long ago, in a galaxy actually not all that far away, when there were only three Star Wars films, and they were almost inarguably the most amazing, awe-inspiring, captivating and entertaining works of science fantasy ever put to film. Obi-Wan, Mos Eisley, Tarkin, Hammerhead, Yavin, AT-ATs, Cloud City, Ozzel, Veers, Needa, and Piett, Wedge, Lobot, Yoda’s discourses on the Force…they’re all here looking and sounding better than ever. For these and for countless other moments, this DVD set is worth picking up. But as for the tweaks and the prequels…well, best not to dwell any longer on them, I suppose. Once you start down the dark path, forever it will dominate your destiny.

Update: The Production Photo Gallery is definitely worth a look as, not only did the Lucasfilm wags have some fun with the captions, but there are a number of shots from deleted scenes (Toshi Station, the ESB Wampa Attack, etc.) that aren’t otherwise included in the set.