According to some Topp-style trading cards provided to Entertainment Weekly by J.J. Abrams and Co., the Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens characters are as follows: Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, John Boyega as Finn (British black guy with an Irish name…cool), Adam Driver as Kylo Ren (the black-cloaked bad guy in the snow-covered forest with the light saber), Daisy Ridley as Rey, and the little bowling-ball droid is called BB8. Excluding Harrison Ford‘s Han Solo, of course, along with various other holdovers (Hamill, Fisher) and freshies.
If you have a spare 50 minutes, please watch last night’s Adam Driver interview at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson asked the right succinct questions and stayed out of the way for the most part, allowing the Marriage Story star and Best Actor nominee to dispense his dry, amusingly honest, occasionally self-deprecating patter.
I was sitting in the third row and realizing that I’d never really paid attention to Driver’s interview shtick and muttering “wow, great stuff…he’s so smart and fleet and hip to the bullshit.”
The easiest way is to just watch Driver in action, but if you insist on a description…okay, here goes. He’s a brilliant raconteur. He’s also a clever and darting conversationalist, almost on the level of a stand-up comedian. He constantly digresses and frequently re-defines what he’s saying, and I mean in a way that’s very off-handed and matter-of-fact and quite funny.
Sample Driver riff, imagined by HE: “The guy looked like a walrus with long brown whiskers and the body of an under-inflated beach ball…well, not a beach ball exactly but he had what anyone would describe as exercise and dietary issues…well, I don’t really know what his diet is but if you told me he eats nothing but pasta and banana cream pies and pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream I wouldn’t be surprised…okay, maybe surprised as I don’t believe anyone could stay alive after eating that crap day after day but either way he looks like Mr. Creosote…I hope I never look that way.” **
No questions about “Please Mr. Kennedy” — too familiar, over-discussed.
I don’t care what Driver says about Kylo Ren. Trust me, he doesn’t miss him a bit. He likes the money but that’s par for the course.
Marriage Story costar Scarlett Johansson (aka “ScarJo”) was also supposed to sit down with Thompson, but she bailed at the last minute. She was in Santa Barbara yesterday afternoon, staying with b.f. Colin Jost at the five-star Miramar but became “violently ill” around dinner hour.
Whatever actually happened is her business, but I’m generally suspicious of people who use the term “violently ill.” It’s overly dramatic. Sounds like they’re trying too hard. I’ve been ill from time to time, but never “violently” ill. What is that anyway? You’re so ill you start turning over tables and slugging people?
I tried to file yesterday afternoon about Thursday night’s Renee Zellweger tribute, but I fell behind. She’s a very skilled performer in all senses of that term, social included. She’s unfailingly demure, gracious, low-key but always with a chuckle or a quip. She has the Best Actress Oscar in the bag so it’s all smooth sliding at this point. THR‘s Scott Feinberg handled the interview like a pro.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker director and co-writer J.J. Abrams explaining the brief surge of sexual-romantic ardor between Rey and Kylo Ren: “There is as much of a brother-sister thing between Rey and Kylo Ren as there is a romantic thing. So it’s not like literally a sexual, romantic thing, but it’s more like they’re bound together in this movie in a crazy, spiritual way that, again, felt romantic to me.”
IT WAS NOT A ROMANTIC KISS! IT WAS MORE A LEIA AND LUKE KISS. A SIBLINGS KISS.
AND REY AND KYLO WAS IN THE OLD DRAFTS SIBLINGS!
JJ I LOVE YOU!
ANTIS! WE WON!pic.twitter.com/GfGOrk1y89
— ً (@rizeofkylo) December 21, 2019
The look of contempt that Poe Dameron gives Kylo Ren at the 33-second mark is perfect. His eyes say three things: (1) “Is this cowboy-hatted dude…whatever he thinks he’s doing is lame”; (2) “Did he used to sing with the Jordinaires?”; (3) “And he’s recording with us?” I laughed at Oscar Isaac‘s disdain when I first saw Inside Llewyn Davis six and a half years ago, and I bought it all over again when I re-watched it last night. A 100% genuine moment, one human being to another. I’m sorry but it sank in more deeply than any single moment in The Rise of Skywalker. Plus the instrumentation sounds extra-great with headphones, especially with the stand-up bass.
Nine films were nominated for 2013 Best Picture Oscar, and Inside Llewyn Davis wasn’t one of them? Seriously? The Best Picture winner, 12 Years A Slave, is a masterpiece, but who re-watches the other eight nominees and to what extent?
I will never, ever watch Gravity again. (Sandra Bullock going “aagghh!” in a haunted house, and space is the ghost.) Nor will I ever watch David O. Russell‘s American Hustle again. (But I’ll watch Silver Linings Playbook any day of the week and twice on Sundays.) Captain Phillips was over-rated. Dallas Buyers Club is a good film — I’d watch it again. Spike Jonze‘s Her is also special, but I haven’t re-viewed. The best thing about Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska was that song, “Their Pie.” Dernsy screwed himself out of an Oscar by insisting that his grouchy old cuss was a Best Actor thang. Inside Llewyn Davis should have been nominated instead of Philomena. Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street is the 2013 Best Picture nominee that people will be re-watching 50 years hence.
Updated on 12.18, 9:15 am: There have been seven Star Wars films since The Empire Strikes Back, which opened on 5.21.80. For 39 years I’ve been hoping for another that would be as good. None of them have made the grade, and that includes Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which I saw yesterday afternoon.
I was talking with a critic friend a few hours later, and he said something I more or less agreed with. He said “it’s okay.” That’s a fair way of putting it. And not a put-down.
I didn’t mind the classic fan-friendly stuff (echoes and replays of A New Hope, Empire and Return of the Jedi). There’s a whole lot of this in the second half, but the first half…yeesh. Director J.J. Abrams pushes the action along in such a crazy-ass, pell-mell, Mexican jumping bean way I had a headache within minutes.
Then again Rise is a somewhat better film than Abrams’ The Force Awakens. Or the last 45 to 50 minutes are, at least.
But that first hour is rough. “I don’t think I can take this,” I was muttering to myself. “If it doesn’t slow down I might have to…I don’t know, hit the lobby, walk around, check my phone messages.” But I manned up and toughed it out.
The Rise of Skywalker finally slowed down and became more or less coherent around…oh, the 75-minute mark, somewhere around there.
I took some notes after it ended and sent them to a friend. I won’t spoil anything important, I promise.
“There was a 50something fanboy sitting behind me going ‘aahwwww’ when anything the least bit endearing happened. Or “hah-HAH!” or “whoo-whoo!” when anything the least bit exciting happened. He wouldn’t stop. It was all I could do to keep myself from turning around and giving him my death-ray look.
“J.J. levitated the [redacted] out of the water and used the exact same John Williams music…great!
“And he re-did the Return of the Jedi finale on the forest planet of Endor with love, joy, hugs and great relief. And he included a lesbian couple kissing and hugging. (A real quickie.) But he also brought back [redacted]! I thought I’d seen the last of those guys.
“And I loved returning to a certain desert-like planet…
“I still don’t get why Kylo Ren has to wear a face-shield helmet. Darth Vader did so because his face was disfigured; Ren has a huge schnozz but otherwise has nothing to mitigate.
“Who’s the overweight bearded guy who plays one of the rebel pilots?” It turns out he’s Greg Grunberg.
“Emperor Palpatine was thrown into a black void by Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi. Does anybody ever stay dead in these films? Back in the early ’80s dead Star Wars characters (such as Obi Wan Kenobi) would return as ghostly see-through figures with ice-blue lines around their edges. This happens again in The Rise of Skywalker but that’s all I can say.
This may sound like some kind of needlessly harsh, extreme prejudice dismissal, but it’s not intended to be that. I’m just honestly confessing that my primary reaction as I watched this Rise of Skywalker trailer this morning was “again?” How many more fierce light-saber duels am I going to have to watch? How many more scenes of evil Kylo, intense Rey, grumpy Luke, dutiful Finn, heroic Poe Dameron, demonic Palpatine, chubby Rose Tico, gender-fluid Lando Calrissian, etc.?
I’ve had it with this whole thing. I just don’t feel it anymore, and I was feeling it somewhat with The Force Awakens and to a slightly greater extent with The Last Jedi. But I’m all tapped out, man. My heart is spent. The legend has run out of gas.
I think it was that idiotic Last Jedi finale when Luke hoodwinks Kylo Ren with some of kind of projected film-flammery. At that moment something snapped inside. Or collapsed. I think I said from my seat in the Chinese, “Ahhh, fuck this noise.”
The big media-screening day is on Tuesday, 12.17. The commercial opening is on Thursday, 12.19.
Does mastery of The Force allow you to fly? Not the last time I checked. A Jedi master can move things by telekinesis and control the minds of dumb droids, but he/she can’t defy the laws of basic physics. Daisy Ridley‘s Rey therefore cannot make the kind of leap that she does in the new Rise of Skywalker trailer. I’m sorry but this is bullshit.
I’m also getting a little tired of watching Rey wear that clenched and adrenalized expression as she faces Adam Driver‘s Kylo Ren in a light-sabre battle….again.
I’m also looking at Driver and thinking, “Man, you just got divorced, you’ve sung a Stephen Sondheim song, you’re finally begun to settle into your NYC-to-LA and back routine, you’ve helped Leos Carax find his dog in Brussels, and now you’re thrown your engines into reverse and gone back to that tired old prince of evil routine? You’re contractually obligated to finish things off, I get that, but still…”
I feel the same way about The Rise of Skywalker as I did about Matrix Revolutions a month or two before it opened.
I’m impressed, however, by those heaving CG seas.
We caught Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story last night at…well, the Middleburg Film Festival schedule said 7:30 but it started at 8 pm. Par for the course. The second viewing played just as strongly for me as it did in Telluride six weeks ago, and Tatyana was deeply impressed. She prefers it to Kramer vs. Kramer, she said this morning.
The Best Actor competish is definitely between Adam Driver, who plays the diligent if stressed-out theatre director Charlie, and Joaquin Phoenix‘s Arthur Fleck. The latter is certainly the flashier, envelope-tearing contender while Driver’s performance is obviously more grounded in the recognizable day-to-day, and then there’s that scene where he sings Stephen Sondheim‘s “Being Alive.”
Baumbach showed up for a pre-screening bow and then returned for a q & a with John Horn.
I finally caught Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story Saturday evening. With all the buzz I was more or less expecting the moon, I suppose, but I wasn’t disappointed. It didn’t quite melt me down like Kramer vs. Kramer did 40 years ago, but it sure softened me up. Which it to say I felt “met” on adult terra firma, and within a fully recognizable realm.
It’s more Ingmar Bergman than Robert Benton-esque. But sensibly so. Like all fine, steady, smart films that open between October and December, Marriage Story delivers the goods in a way that seems to fundamentally apply. It’s “one of those.” And I didn’t think of it as Black Widow vs. Kylo Ren. Well, if their defenses were considerably lessened.
I felt vaguely unsure where it was going or what it was up to a couple of times, but I mainly felt like I was in good, safe hands — gripped, touched, respectful, comfortable (because it never goes crazy or overly dark, it never breaks the trust) and always recognizing the truth of what’s on the plate.
Marriage Story is easily Baumbach’s best film, above and beyond The Squid and the Whale, and surely contains the best, most fully felt, deep-from-within performances that Adam Driver and Scarlet Johansson have given thus far. It’ll be really, really difficult for them to top this.
Best Picture nom, Best Director/Original Screenplay noms (Baumbach), Best Actor and Actress (Driver, ScarJo) and maybe a Best Supporting Actress nom for Laura Dern because of a single, third-act rant she delivers about society’s unfair attitudes toward women in terms of idealized “male gaze” expectations, and probably a nomination for composer Randy Newman.
The costar performances are just right — Azhy Robertson as Henry, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta as attorneys with radically different styes, Merritt Wever, Julie Hagerty, et. al.
It’s an honestly felt, emotionally complex (and sometimes convulsive) marital-downswirl drama, but with a rather middle (moneyed) class attitude…acrimony tempered by sensible sensibilities. Fundamentally decent people with the usual issues and shortcomings, but nobody’s a raving lunatic Nobody throws up or gets busted in some lewd, embarassing infidelity or throws a frying pan or drives a car off a bridge or runs naked into a traffic jam.
Driver and ScarJo are the married, Brooklyn-residing Charlie and Nicole, the latter a successful theatre director and the former his star performer who feels overshadowed by Charlie’s egocentric attitudes and looking to possibly re-launch her acting career in Los Angeles with a promising TV series.
Random thoughts: (a) What is that, Wadi Rum again?; (b) Here we go again…more money, more legend-spinning, more earnest expressions; (b) I don’t get the leaping backwards into an oncoming bad-guy star fighter; (c) How come Oscar Isaac has no close-up?; (d) Nobody hates C3PO more than myself; (e) when, if ever, will Hollywood Elsewhere embark on a Lawrence of Arabia camel trip that will include camping in Wadi Rum for a couple of days?
HE to J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson: Luke Skywalker lives within the realm of The Force, but is otherwise dead. Rey is the inheritor but not his daughter or any immediate blood relation. (Or did I miss something?) There are no other Skywalker descendants, no Skywalker army, no Skywalker cult or tribe.
So what the hell does “The Rise of Skywalker” mean?
If it means Kylo Ren (grandson on Darth Vader) is going to turn from the Dark Side and became a last-minute hero…I really don’t care. I feel zero investment in the guy, and could never understand why he wore that Vader mask in the first place.
One implication is that Luke will return from the dead like Lazarus or Jesus but c’mon…is there any end to this? When Obi-wan died, he stayed a spirit and didn’t “rise.” Is there any such thing as any super-character in any CG-driven tentpole fantasy EVER ACTUALLY DYING? (Han Solo doesn’t count — he’s mortal.) Storytellers have to respect for what each and every living thing (human, animal, vegetable) has confronted and come to respect as natural and immutable, which is that when death comes calling and the curtain comes down, THAT’S IT. But the infantilizing of the fantasy realm by the Sons of Lucas (the original infantilizer along with Spielberg) constantly defaults to “NO, HE/SHE ISN’T DEAD…HE/SHE LIVES AGAIN!”
If Luke is indeed toast and staying that way, then I take the last paragraph back. But if it he’s toast, what does “The Rise of Skywalker” mean?
To go by the trailer, an alternate title could be “The Rise of Carrie Fisher.”
The thing that bothered me about Alden Ehrenreich playing Han Solo in Solo (i.e., zero resemblance between himself and Harrison Ford) is the same thing bothering me about 81-year-old Billy Dee Williams returning to plan Lando Calrissian in J.J. Abrams‘ Star Wars Episode IX flick — i.e., zero resemblance to Solo‘s Donald Glover.
I realize that prequels like Solo can’t hope to fully blend with the sequel trio — they’re parallel universes with their own biological compositions– but all these films have been produced by Disney and Kathy Kennedy, and after watching Solo I feel as if I’ve made an investment in Glover-as-Calrissian. But when Episode IX comes out I’ll be back with the old Lando again. And I don’t like it. Glover is 21st Century cool but Williams is the original cool so who’s da man?
From Ben Childs’ 7.11 Guardian piece: “The fear is that Disney-owned Lucasfilm is only wheeling out the 81-year-old [Williams] because it desperately needs original-trilogy cachet, and has exhausted the potential to cast Ford, Hamill or Fisher in yet another episode.
“Cynics will also complain that Williams ought to have been front and center in Abrams’ earlier effort, The Force Awakens, when he might have been paired successfully with his old buddy Han. But Lucasfilm has made a habit of keeping its classic cast apart in the new era, as if too much of a good thing might overwhelm us. Perhaps the idea is to retain the focus on fresher faces such as Daisy Ridley’s Rey and John Boyega’s Finn, so it is probably fair to say that the ploy has proved successful.
more or less.”
By the way: I’m not entirely sure if Luke Skywalker really and truly died at the end of The Last Jedi. He did, I know, but did he? I so hated the fact that Luke never left Ahch-To throughout the whole film, and that he died on Ach-To after the final confrontation with Kylo Ren even though he wasn’t actually fighting anyone — his “force projection” was. God, I hated that ending.
I’ve never had much interest in the fanatical anger that hardcore Star Wars fans have been venting since The Last Jedi popped last December, and especially (I guess) since the tanking of Solo.
And I’ve never felt anything but loathing for the haters who went after poor Kelly Marie Tran (i.e, “Rose Tico”), who handled herself pretty well in The Last Jedi, I thought. She’s a good actress who rose to the occasion.
But I was struck just now by a comment posted this morning (6.11) in a Deadline thread. By a guy named “James 1701.” (I think.) It seems to lay out all the basic beefs. I don’t give a damn about this stuff, but please read and comment — I’m curious what the HE crowd thinks. In fact, try reading some of the other comments first — they offer context.
“Not a hate bandwagon. It’s totally legit. Force Awakens was alright but forgettable. Not a great movie and they forgot to include any character development, backstory explanation, or originality. It introduced a Mary Sue for the main character and some ridiculous SJW ideals for everyone [else]. It murdered a beloved character [Han Solo] with no build-up or reason whatsoever, and it completely omitted the most popular character in the entire franchise. The other new characters were just straight-up awful and the main bad guy is an email.”
Kylo Ren is “an email”? I’ve never called anyone or anything that, but it’s kinda funny.
Back to James1701: “Rogue One continued this trend but was added a Darth Vader scene and a tie-in to A New Hope.
“The Last Jedi was horrendous and made The Force Awakens [seem] even worse. More character assassination, less back-story, more SJW bullshit, and it just killed off the most popular character while making him look like a fool.
“And then Solo followed in these footsteps.
“Rian Johnson, Kathleen Kennedy, Jar-Jar Abrams and the rest of Disney have crapped all over fans, insulting then and calling them racist and idiots. They’ve quite literally just killed the just successful movie franchise of all times. They honestly shouldn’t even make Episode 9. They should just start over and redo episode 7 with a totally new creative team and pretend The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi never happened.”
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