Tag / George Lucas

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Book 6 (of 52) – Silver Screen Fiend

Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life From An Addiction To Film - Patton Oswalt

Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life From An Addiction To Film – Patton Oswalt

In the late 90s, Patton Oswalt, having recently moved to Los Angeles, found himself at the New Beverly Cinema for a double feature.  Thus started a four year obsession with film that, in some cases, took over his life.  The comedian’s memoir of that time in his life touches on his anxieties about his comedy and his short tenure writing for MadTV.

I went through a similar, though not as high falutin, obsession with movies at around the same point in my life, which was a year after Oswalt’s obsession died, thanks to George Lucas and Episode I.  Over the course of the 365 days of the year 2000, I managed to see 351 movies.  To this day, I can’t fathom how I managed this.  I certainly could not recall specifics about the films or where and how I saw them, unlike Oswalt.  Thankfully, I burned out much more quickly, as this was by far the most I had ever done in a single year.  In fact, if you add up 1999’s and 2001’s totals, you would still be 100 films short.

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Concert Flashback: Star Wars In Concert

09starwarsIn 2009, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra went on tour performing the music from John Williams’ Star Wars scores, featuring edited footage from all 6 films and narration from Anthony Daniels, who played C-3PO.  Given the early December date of the Chicago performance, I planned on getting Danny tickets for his birthday.  In a twist of fate, there were plans afoot to get me tickets for my birthday as well.  So, we got a set of 4 and split them up, 2 for me and 2 for Danny.

As the date of the approached, an interesting conundrum popped up.  I was offered a trip to Belfast for work, but would need to leave the day before the show, on December 5th.  Initially, I turned down the trip, but was eventually able to finagle my way into a Sunday afternoon flight, which meant heading straight to O’Hare from the United Center and arriving in Belfast Monday morning, heading straight to the office.

The concert itself was a faithful recreation of the score from the favorite films of my childhood (plus the later 3 abortions).  The mixture of the film clips worked well given they were the original source of the music, and Anthony Daniels led the proceedings with the familiar voice we had all come to know and love.  This was my first, and so far only, concert at the UC.  It doesn’t seem to be the best venue for it, but it got the job done.

It turns out that George Lucas himself was at this show, only the second time he had seen it in person and the first time in this country.

 

by jim

30 Day Movie Challenge Day 17 – A Movie That Disappointed You The Most

16 years after Return of the Jedi, a new Star Wars movie was heading to the big screen.  It’s hard to describe how excited I was for this.  A big part of my childhood was coming back, and I was young enough to enjoy it and old enough to support that enjoyment.  I bought the new toys, books, comics… pretty much anything leading up to the premiere.

Then, I saw the movie and it was… dull.  Boring.  Had I outgrown the franchise?  Or had George Lucas finally put toys and video games ahead of making a good movie?  To be honest, I’m not sure if I’ve figured out that answer nearly 13 years later.  I can say it did affect my enjoyment of the series going forward.  I did see the next two films, but didn’t buy into the hype (or the toys).  Fast forward to last year, where the entire series was released on BluRay for the first time, and it never even occurred to me to purchase them, either the full set or just the original trilogy.  Not to mention the re-release in 3D on the big screen a few weeks back, which I have also decided to skip.