Year 13 is upon me, and so are the annual writeups of what I’ve caught. I’ve slowed down my pace a bit, and downgraded myself back to a Film Pass, but I’m still doing it. No volunteering yet for me this year, but I’m still considering it, depending on how the demands on my time go next year. Mindy has continued to be very supportive of my traditional habit of nearly disappearing for a week every year for this event. Right, so here’s what I’ve seen so far this year.
Friday March 13
“Strongman”
Honestly, I’m not sure what attracted me to this one in the schedule. Perhaps the potential for it to be an entertaining freak-show doc, the kind that so often seem to show up at SXSW, drew me in. It turned out to be a quasi-cinéma vérité style documentary, just following the aging “Stanless Steel”, whose ambition is to continue to be, well, a strongman in the carnival sense, though not literally in carnivals. The
My position? I’m not a huge J.J. follower, so I can’t really bank on that. The trailers are blipverty, so again, not much help.
I can’t help but feel they should have let the franchise rest a little longer a-la Doctor Who. What I don’t want to see is yet another ill advised, half-baked Hollywood fishing expedition through TV shows of yore. I couldn’t bear watching Star Trek become a parody of itself. I guess we’ll see next Summer.
OK, as if the prequels weren’t enough of a heartbreaking insult to my childhood, this has to happen. Meesa wantsa be clawing meesa eyes out.
See especially the AICN review. If one of the biggest fanboys in the world can say this publicly, Lucasfilm, it’s probably time to wake up and smell the bantha poodoo. Look, good things are made by people who care, not by sycophants and group-thinkers, and the latest wares you’ve been pushing smell suspiciously of the latter. Go look at how Nolan rescued Batman from the empty-headed “nipples & neon” era we suffered at the hands of (speak not his name) Joel Schumacher and get a hint.
Let’s face it, the latter SW should serve as a warning to the future that fabulous effects and design doesn’t cover for fundamentally bad storytelling, even if it’s a franchise as classically story-rich as the SW universe once was. The contrast couldn’t be clearer considering the startling (esp. compared to the prequels) magnificence of what Tartakovsky et al. did with their rendition of Clone Wars a couple years back. Lucasfilm, there really is no excuse.
Sadly, I still feel the need to see this at some point, if for no other reason than to be conversant in what continues to be so frustratingly wrong with Star Wars. Maybe I can sneak in some how so I don’t help fund this kind of apparent atrocity any more than I’ve already been complicit in. People depend on me to be informed on the important issues, you see.
Mindy & I spent the 4th of July weekend out there both visiting the city and my friend Dita down in South Bay over as a final rest before our final push on pre-baby business. Enjoy the Flickr set here.
