movies

Chris Knight's avatar

I haven’t seen the new Superman movie that opens today.  Between one project and obligation after another there hasn’t been much time lately for anything like going to the theater.  I hope to catch it soon though.  For as long as I can remember I’ve been a Superman fan to some degree.  Superman is the superhero.  The prototype by which all others are measured.

In some ways, by which all of us in the real world can be measured, too.

Over the past few days I have heard some bits about Superman as he’s being portrayed in the new film.  Now, the character is almost ninety years old.  There has had to be some growth and acclimation during that time to keep up with the times.  But one thing in particular about this latest incarnation that I’ve been hearing about and… well, it kinda bugs me.  Because there is no ...

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The sad news is coming out today that Kenneth Colley, the British actor who portrayed Admiral Firmus Piett across two Star Wars films, has passed away at the age of 87.

Colley had enjoyed having many roles in his six decades as an actor.  He did some work with Monty Python (that’s him playing Jesus in the opening of Life of Brian) and he appeared in Clint Eastwood’s 1982 sci-fi Cold War thriller Firefox.  Colley was also among the amazing cast of the sweeping television epic War and Remembrance.

But it is his portrayal of Captain… and then Admiral… Piett that is most remembered in the annals of pop culture.

Piett first appeared in 1980’s Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back as the captain of Executor, Darth Vader’s flagship Super Star Destroyer.  Following the deployment of thousands of probe droids across the galaxy, ...

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Not looking like there’s going to be any going about this evening.  There are a few things I’ve got on my plate, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  And there is always church in the morning, so that accomplishes my spiritual and social needs in great part.

So on a Saturday like this I do some errands around the house, play with my miniature dachshund, make dinner, and for the rest of the afternoon and early evening it’s usually sitting up on my sofa with my iPad and keyboard and working on writing.  And that’s how a lot of my other nights develop into: writing for my book or op-ed pieces, or the fantasy romance novel that I’ve been inspired to start (seriously).

But since this is Saturday I’ve also got the weekly entertainment to look forward to, straight outta Berwyn.

Every Saturday night at 8 p.m. Eastern (and 7 ...

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Will this be Old Man Warner’s “lucky year”?  He’s no doubt praying that it isn’t.

A 1969 film adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s horrifying classic short story “The Lottery”.

I first read “The Lottery” during my freshman year of college.  Our English instructor Phil Conte promised that this story would scare us as few things in literature could.  What was Jackson trying to convey with her tale?  The older I get the more I believe that “The Lottery” is a dark parable about rigid conformity and obedience to mob mentality.  Something that must be sacrificed to if it’s to have any power.  In my mind the people of the town are no different from those among us who place party over all else, even if their loved ones must suffer for that.

Or, well… who knows what Jackson meant?  Almost eighty years later and here we are still debating it.

Anyhoo, ...

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Over the weekend I watched Gettysburg, the 1993 Civil War epic film about the Battle of Gettysburg.  It’s one of my most favorite historical films, although at more than four hours long it’s really not one I can afford enough time to watch often.  But for some reason or another I felt led to see it again.

Maybe I sensed that I was needing to watch it anew.  That the time was coming soon to bring it up in conversation.  That opportunity comes tonight, after reading how President Donald Trump is restoring the name of seven military bases back to their original names that honored Confederate officers from the Civil War.  The bases had been re-named by the Biden administration to be more “neutral” or “politically correct”.  The venerated Fort Bragg became the vacuous-sounding “Fort Liberty”, f’rinstance.

Now, to be accurate about it, the Trump Administration is not ...

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The perfect movie about young adventure.  Released on June 7th, 1985.
My family saw it in the theater about a week later, at the long-gone Janus Theater in Greensboro.  Watching it made me wish, not for the first time, that there were other kids living closer by, instead of us being out in the country.  It would have been fun to have others my age nearby to have adventures with.  The best we could do was have friends from school over on weekends, when we could use our imagination and make our family’s farm into something more than it really was.
Mikey, Mouth, Chunk, Data, Brandon, Andy, Stef, and Sloth… you are just as “Good Enough” today as you were four full decades ago.
...
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A couple of things went online today that I’ve watch a few times.  I’ve got a good feeling about both of these.

First, it’s the first trailer for the second season of Amazon’s  Fallout series.  As a die-hard fan of the Fallout games I absolutely loved the first season.  They completely nailed the look and feel of the franchise.  It was an astounding surprise that throughly delighted me.  Season two debuts in December, which may be a busy month for streaming if the final volume of Stranger Things comes out then also (as many are speculating).

So here’s the trailer for Fallout season two:

And then there’s this: the new (and probably final) trailer for Superman.  This is a project that has gotten me increasingly intrigued with each new spot that’s been released.  I think David Corenswet is going to do much as the great Christopher Reeve did ...

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The past several years have seen my love for the Star Wars saga take some brutal hits, but my love for the original film will forever endure.

Over the decades I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people from this movie.  Maybe too many than can be readily counted.  For some reason the ones who most come to mind are Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca, and Paul Blake who was Greedo.  A week and a half before 9/11 I had a VERY wild barbecue ribs dinner with Blake.  Quite an interesting chap.  I asked him about what he thought regarding the changes that George Lucas had made to A New Hope with the 1997 “Special Edition”, particularly making it so that Greedo opened fire first on Han Solo.  Blake’s response was awesome: “I think it’s absolutely BOLLOCKS what George did to Greedo!  Why did he do that?!?  Han was perfectly ...

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 Looks like we’re  about to get a whole new meaning for  “going off the grid”…

Tron is one of the more delightful films from my childhood and I really liked Tron: Legacy when it came out in 2010.  Tron: Ares looks like it’s going hardcore for the next iteration of the franchise’s evolution: the digital world entering the real one.  Well, Flynn did tell his son in Legacy that the two realms are more connected than we realized.  And Clu believed he could invade our reality.  So that seed has already been sowed.

Maybe if Disney commits to a solid film without a “woke” agenda – like its Snow White currently bombing bigtime – I might see this....

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