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In the Beginning: Stories from the Bible

Posted on by Remy G.

An anime adaptation of many Old Testament stories from the Bible (and the story of Jesus’ birth) from Tezuka Productions that stemmed from a request by the Vatican of the studio during the 1980s, with studio founder Osamu Tezuka dying during its production. Among the quirks the studio injected was a mascot character, a fox named Roco; their depictions of Roco and other animals, primarily those in the Genesis portions, are endearing. There seemed to be many episodes missing from the internet, particularly the later ones. However, I still enjoyed this series, even if the English acting often seemed stiff.

Paint Your Wagon

Posted on by Remy G.

Based on the 1951 Lerner and Loewe American Western musical of the same name, the 1969 adaptation of Paint Your Wagon stars Lee Marvin as a prospector, Clint Eastwood as an amnesiac whom he recruits as his business partner, and Jean Seberg as one of a Mormon’s wives that he decides to sell to the highest bidder. I first saw this film as a rental in my town’s Blockbuster Video when that chain was still a thing, the title alone piquing my curiosity, the fact Clint Eastwood was in it being one of the sole things I knew about it. The following knowledge I would get about the film came from a brief spoof in The Simpsons episode “All Singing, All Dancing.”

Despite the title, the musical has nothing at all to do with literally painting wagons, with “paint your wagon” being a (very) dated expression meaning “to get things done.” Marvin’s character, Ben Rumson, dubs Eastwood’s “Pardner” as he recuperates, with a new tent town, “No Name City,” emerging when they discover gold. The male inhabitants become lonely from no female companionship until the mentioned Mormon husband comes and sells his wife Elizabeth to a drunken Rumson. A love triangle quickly emerges when Ben leaves his fiancé under Pardner’s care.

The latter portion of the movie involves Rumson and his men scheming to tunnel beneath No Name City to collect gold dust precipitating through the floorboards of saloons from paying customers, the only notable plot detail of which I had heard, courtesy my high school economics class, before I streamed this film. A zealous parson also comes to town in futile attempts to get its residents to abandon their sinful ways. Of course, many musical numbers abound, and while Marvin and Eastwood have never been known for their singing abilities, they did decently, with the former’s “Wand’rin’ Star” probably being the high point of the film’s songs.

While I know this film gets its share of criticism, much justified, I found it an entertaining watch, with some initial themes like Rumson putting his business partners first and his apathy towards humanity resounding well with me. Mature content like references to venereal disease and prostitution also get some spotlight. Religious themes are front and center as well, given Rumson’s indifference towards God, the references to Mormonism and polygamy, and the ultrareligious preacher. Much of the film likely didn’t fly well with 1969 moviegoers (though modern audiences would probably find it less offensive than, say, Blazing Saddles). However, I think that time has vindicated it somewhat, and don’t regret seeing it.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Posted on by Remy G.

The film adaptations of the first two installments of author Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson & the Olympians series seemed to amount to an orphaned franchise, but the Walt Disney Company, after acquiring 20th Century Fox, distributor of said movies, gave its crack at the fantasy novels in the form of a streaming Disney+ show. The first season adapts the inaugural book, The Lightning Thief, focusing on the eponymous dyslexic, attention-deficit twelve-year-old grade-schooler, expelled from school after a supernatural incident at a museum, whom his mother Sally begins to convey to Camp Half-Blood in a world where Greek gods and monsters are real.

While it’s been years since I last read the books and saw the films, I enjoyed the Disney+ adaptation, given its modern fantasy setting like the Harry Potter books and mythological influences. The episode titles hint at the show’s lighthearted nature (and borrow from a few chapter names in The Lightning Thief). Given that the length of all episodes totaled grossly outweighs that of the first cinematic film, it’s assumedly faithful to the source material, having excellent world-building and cast performances. Thus, I will continue watching this series as future episodes are released.

The Orville

Posted on by Remy G.

When I first started watching this live-action science-fiction dramedy on Fox the last decade, I assumed it would be a knockoff of the Star Trek series, but given the repertoire of showrunner Seth MacFarlane, responsible for animated series such as Family Guy, American Dad!, and The Cleveland Show, I knew it would be a more lighthearted take on the sci-fi genre. The series opens with up-and-coming Planetary Union officer Ed Mercer, portrayed by MacFarlane, catching his wife, Kelly Grayson, having an affair with an alien, which leads to their divorce. A year later, Mercer receives command of the eponymous spaceship, with Grayson, to his shock, becoming his first officer.

The Orville isn’t shy about its Star Trek inspirations, beginning with its music. The opening credits theme takes inspiration from “Life Is a Dream,” Jerry Goldsmith’s central composition of the first and the fifth Star Trek Original Series films as well as The Next Generation, a similarity more so apparent in the season three remix. The Planetary Union is a nod to the United Federation of Planets from Trek, along with the various alien races, with sundry conflicts erupting throughout the series, chiefly with the Krill, a vampiric and ultrareligious society. The robotic Kaylons, with one of its members, Isaac, serving as a neutral ambassador aboard the Orville, also come into play later.

Other notable crew members include Bortus, a member of the Moclan race with deadpan speech patterns that make for some occasional humor, who mates with Klyden and has a child named Topa, born female, which is rare among their species in their male-dominant society. The episode “About a Girl” focuses on the couple’s decision to change Topa’s gender to male to conform to Moclan society, which hit home to me as an autistic and receives a follow-up in the third season. Another first-season episode, “Majority Rule,” focuses on a twenty-first-century society reigned by upvotes and downvotes, touching upon themes such as the role of social media and public shaming, which parallels modern cancel culture.

The Orville has a pretty good selection of stars, both guest and recurring, aside from Seth MacFarlane. Brian George, who played the Pakistani restauranteur Babu Bhatt in Seinfeld, and various other Indian or Pakistani characters in other media (despite being Israeli), plays a researcher in the first episode. The late Norm Macdonald plays Yaphit, an amorphous blob with a crush on Doctor Claire Finn, and briefly appears in human form thanks to the ship’s Environmental Simulator (which Isaac also uses when he tries to woo Finn). Patrick Warburton plays a long-nosed alien in a few episodes, and Ted Danson recurs as an Admiral in the Planetary Union throughout the entire series.

Overall, I had a great time watching The Orville, which largely avoids the pitfalls of MacFarlane’s animated shows, such as the drawn-out gags and topical references (but there is some sound sociopolitical commentary that never becomes ham-fisted) and strikes a balance between being humorousness and seriousness. I found it an excellent homage and even rival to the various Star Trek series (and it did semi-compete with Discovery upon its original release), which evokes Trek’s feel (musically and aesthetically) while standing well in its own right. I would happily watch future seasons should the series continue and consider it a capstone among Seth MacFarlane’s television productions.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Posted on by Remy G.

The first Home Alone sequel, and the only one to feature a majority of the cast from the original film, starts similarly to its predecessor, with the McAllisters preparing for a Christmas trip to Florida, preceded by a school performance that goes wrong thanks again to Kevin’s older brother Buzz. This time, Kevin joins his family on the trip to the airport. However, circumstances divert him to a flight to New York City, where he stays at the Plaza Hotel, briefly meeting a future U.S. President and an adversarial concierge and bellhop portrayed by Tim Curry and Rob Schneider. Afterward, he again faces the fugitive Wet Bandits by boobytrapping his uncle’s residence-in-renovation. It’s structurally identical to the first film but decent in its way and likely better than its myriad sequels.

Home Alone

Posted on by Remy G.

The first installment of the Home Alone film series, directed by Chris Columbus, stars Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, part of a sizeable family planning to spend Christmas in Paris, although a scuffle with his older brother Buzz and consequential cleanup leads his father to throw away his ticket and passport accidentally. Coupled with a power outage in the middle of the night and a miscount of heads the following morning, Kevin is left stranded at home, which he must defend from a pair of thieves known as the Wet Bandits, portrayed by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. It rightfully stands as a holiday classic, with great music by John Williams, and has aged well.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (rewatch)

Posted on by Remy G.

Spoilers for those unfamiliar with the franchise.

The third and final installment of the eternally-polarizing Star Wars prequel trilogy opens with the off-screen kidnapping of Supreme Galactic Chancellor Sheev Palpatine by General Grievous, leader of the droid armies of the Separatists (which doesn’t have a canon on-screen occurrence, even in the extended Clone Wars television series or in the canon books, unless I’m mistaken). Personally, were I in charge of writing the opening crawl, I would have included something about Anakin’s imminent plight to the Dark Side of the Force, although the quote “There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere” I think accurately describes politics, particularly in America’s duopolized system.

Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi are tasked with rescuing the captive Chancellor from Grievous and Sith Lord Count Dooku, whom the Jedi duo duels on his ship above the city-planet Coruscant, afterwards crash-landing the vessel. When Anakin reunites with his secret wife Padmé Amidala, he learns that she is pregnant, with her unborn offspring until the last minute referred to as “the baby”, and I somewhat find it odd that Anakin and Obi-Wan in particular, who spend the most time around her, couldn’t sense multiple lives within her womb, despite their Jedi senses, and surely some sort of prenatal screening would have clued her into her twin pregnancy since she was obviously aware.

The final battles of the Clone Wars occur chiefly on the planets of Utapau, where Obi-Wan confronts General Grievous, and on the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk, where Yoda spends significant time, having interaction with original trilogy character Chewbacca. On Coruscant, Palpatine gradually lures Anakin to the Dark Side with the tale of the tragedy of his old Sith Master, Darth Plagueis the Wise, who could manipulate life itself before his ultimate betrayal. Here, the Force having a biological basis in midi-chlorians actually has some significant basis, with a Darth Vader spinoff comic hinting that Palpatine may have had a hand in Anakin’s conception in Shmi Skywalker.

Palpatine chiefly preys on Anakin’s visions of losing his wife in childbirth, similar to those he had before the death of his mother on Tatooine at the hands of the Tuskens, and feels that turning to the Dark Side can save her, despite the secret Darth Sidious not giving any sort of apparent education in his deceased Master’s dark teachings. The Chancellor also appoints Anakin to be his representative on the Jedi Council, which they accept, although he doesn’t receive the rank of Master, which upsets him. I think a better quote in this situation would have been, “We accept your appointment to the Council, but do not grant you the rank, privilege, or voting power of a Master.”

Playing a significant part in the film’s latter events is the Chancellor’s Order 66, which turns the clone soldiers, genetically-created to follow orders blindly, against their Jedi Generals. I actually don’t feel sorry for the Jedi, since their teachings didn’t give any emphasis on defense against the powers of the Dark Side, and Anakin, knighted Darth Vader after he saves the Chancellor from arrest and death at the hands of the Jedi, storms the Jedi Temple of Coruscant in the beginning of his genocide against the Order. One could argue that Anakin was actually somewhat fulfilling the Chosen One prophecy in his decimation of the Jedi, balancing Light and Dark Side followers, given the latter’s “Rule of Two”, and Vader actually had every right to be angry at the Order given he would have possibly saved his mother had the Jedi not severed his contact with her.

Padmé is somewhat equally and unintentionally unsympathetic as the Jedi, since she really should have known what she was getting into when she became intimate with Anakin, and even as a child, Anakin showed potential genocidal tendencies, given his destruction of a likely-alien-inhabited Trade Federation ship in Episode I, and slaughter of the Sand People that killed his mother. Padmé also thinks her husband incapable of his atrocities, despite having in Episode II confided in her about his killing the Tuskens. Her death was also arguably forced; you could say postpartum depression and/or a broken heart (which I actually somewhat believe is possible), but given what she went through during the Clone Wars, she definitely got out of worse scrapes than childbirth.

Obi-Wan also is arguably not a good hero in that he fails to prevent every major tragedy in the franchise, given the Jedi, who were initially reluctant to take on Anakin as an apprentice, were actually somewhat right in their reluctance, and that he adopts an alias that includes his real last name (Ben Kenobi), while living in exile on Vader’s homeworld Tatooine near his stepfamily (although Kenobi’s respective Disney+ series shows he doesn’t get off completely scot-free). He was also potentially sexist, given his view in Episode V that Luke was the Galaxy’s last hope, Yoda having to remind him “No; there is another,” which I think would have been better worded as “Do not forget; there is another.” Obi-Wan reiterates his claim in Episode VI, with Luke noting as well that Yoda “spoke of another.”

Ultimately, the film culminates in tragedy with a duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan on the lava planet Mustafar that leaves the former scorched, and put on life support when returned to Coruscant by the new Galactic Emperor Palpatine. Luke and Leia are born and separated, the latter whom the royal family of doomed Alderaan adopt. The last scene, where Obi-Wan delivers the infant Luke to his stepaunt and stepuncle on Tatooine, was beautiful, aurally (the first part of the music a melancholy remix of the opening crawl music) and visually (with the setting of the twin suns and all), and nigh-impossible for me to watch with dry eyes, serving as a reminder that even in the darkest times, there is still hope.

Overall, the Star Wars film franchise as a whole has very much been a subject of my many arguments over the internet, especially with those who consider the original trilogy infallible (which I personally don’t, as Episode III shares many issues with its chronological predecessors and successors), and I feel that the series has been far more about flashy effects and battles, and to a lesser extent the characters, than good writing (and even the “best” film, The Empire Strikes Back, has some holes, and I don’t think Lawrence Kasdan is any better a writer than George Lucas). Generally, I would consider the franchise’s writing simultaneously good and bad, good in that there are a lot of genuine awesome and emotional moments, bad in that there are said holes in their stories and questionable narrative decisions.

I definitely don’t think the film, or others in the Star Wars series, is a masterpiece, but I think it definitely qualifies as “culturally or historically significant,” since it has some good sociopolitical commentary (even if some is ham-fisted) about things like the dangers of love, the fragility of democracy, the nature of war, and such. Many of the “flaws” film critics complain about in the film are in the original trilogy, and I’m tired of movie reviewers and even the franchise’s alleged “fans” as a whole considering certain films infallible, and pretending certain ones are better (or worse) than they actually are. Personally, I liked the prequels more than the sequel trilogy since the prequel trilogy isn’t a case of real life writing them, and again, as Lucas said, “It’s the story of a family, and it has to start somewhere.”

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

Posted on by Remy G.

Most can acknowledge that Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was a polarizing film among both critics and fans of the franchise, although actual reception of the movie wasn’t completely “negative,” since The Empire Strikes Back and especially Return of the Jedi got weaker reviews upon their original releases. However, the former would ultimately receive vindication as a nigh-infallible “masterpiece,” and while it is indeed an amazing film, it does have serious flaws that “professional” film critics need to consider before passing it off as one of the “greatest movies of all time,” and many of the shortcomings of the original trilogy exist in the prequels as well.

Attack of the Clones occurs around a decade after Episode I and opens with an assassination attempt upon the life of Padmé Amidala, who has since transitioned from Queen to Senator of Naboo. The culprit is none other than a servant of the bounty hunter Jango Fett, father of Boba, who serves as the genetic base for the eponymous clones that serve as the military for the Galactic Republic’s overwhelmed Jedi, with many star systems declaring their independence under the leadership of the enigmatic Count Dooku. As is the case with ghost-trapping in the Ghostbusters series, no one questions the ethics of using rapidly aging human clones as an army.

There is also the inconsistency of Chancellor Sheev Palpatine’s claim that the Republic is a millennium old, when Obi-Wan Kenobi says in A New Hope that the Jedi have been guardians of the galaxy for a thousand generations, which the original Legends continuity somewhat addressed. The exact reasons for Palpatine not letting the rogue star systems go in peace are eventually touched upon as well, and Obi-Wan goes to the planet Kamino, knowledge of which was erased from the Jedi Archives, to survey the clone army supposedly commissioned by long-dead Jedi Sifo-Dyas, and admittedly, not all of the holes in the franchise have been filled by the canon literature.

Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker also serves as guardian to Senator Amidala, and develops an attachment to the politician, which, alongside his Oedipus complex relating to his mother Shmi, is a catalyst for his ultimate fall to the Dark Side. Attack of the Clones introduces Anakin’s stepfamily, the Larses, on Tatooine when he goes to rescue his mother from Tusken Raiders that kidnapped his mother, whom Cliegg Lars, father to Owen, married after purchasing her freedom from slavery. Jar Jar Binks has a more subdued role in Episode II, eventually replacing Senator Amidala, with droid C-3PO serving far more as comic relief and giving a slight tonal whiplash to the film.

Flashy battles conclude the film, with the Jedi deciding to adopt the clone army, and given that its basis attempted to assassinate Obi-Wan several times, it does raise the question of why he didn’t suspect something amiss. Overall, the film does definitely have its flaws, but I probably enjoyed it more than the sequel trilogy since it, alongside its predecessor and successor, aren’t cases of real life writing them or derivative of the original films. Some of the technology does appear superior to that in the original trilogy, but it’s largely due to Star Wars in general being more about the worlds and their inhabitants. Regardless, I would rather watch it and the other prequels than, say, a political documentary.