Cinema Suicide

I’m pretty sure that on paper, my relationship with George Lucas looks a lot like an abusive romantic relationship. Back in the day, George and I had it going on. A New Hope, Empire and Jedi were three home runs that are easily the three movies that captured my imagination more than anything and transformed me into a fan of science fiction, specifically, but the magic of movies, entirely. It’s a typical story. Entire generations of movie goers feel the same way about them as I do. It’s the reason that Star Wars is such an institution. But somewhere in the 90′s, our relationship started to go south. George became a different man. A lot of the movies he had produced were proving to be critical failures and he became angry and unpredictable. I drifted away and to win me back he brought back the three movies that made me fall in love with him in the first place but the cracks in his sanity were showing. The original trilogy had been, I don’t know, spoiled. George added all these special effects that had no business being there. It was nice to fall back on familiar territory, though. He did something weird, though. He made it so that I could only see these new versions of the movies. I couldn’t buy the originals. It seemed strange to me but I didn’t mind the special editions.

Then he announces that he was making a new trilogy of Star Wars movies, a series that explored the origins of everything and told the story of Anakin Skywalker before all that Darth Vader stuff. Oh, happy day! I’d have my George Lucas back! Unfortunately, he’d clearly gone to the dark side because Episode 1, which I’d been so excited for, was like a slap in the face. Many slaps, actually. I left the theater with a false sense of satisfaction. While everyone called him an asshole, I steadfastly defended Episode 1 because I loved him but it didn’t take long for my actual disappointment to turn into anger and I cast him out. A couple of years later, George came back with a new and exciting trailer. It had Yoda fighting and Boba Fett. He promised not to hit me any more and I let him back in but as soon as I saw Episode 2, the hitting and slapping started up again. I threw him out and told him I never wanted to see him again but it wasn’t long before he was back with another trailer for the last movie. I was skeptical this time. George was hateful and violent but I’d invested so much time and money in our relationship that it was too late for me to stop. I had to see Star Wars to the end but this time I would keep my distance from George and keep my arms folded and eyebrow arched. The final installment didn’t fool me, though and it ended on a disappointing note that I was able to predict. George was surprised that I didn’t take him back immediately. I was done with him. Or so I thought. Soon after the close of the film series, Lucasfilm announced that a weekly TV series was planned and that it would fall between the two sets of films, chronicling the rise of the rebellion.

I was excited and ready to take George back again. The fool that I am. I am a sucker for George Lucas and always will be.

Unsurprisingly, production of the show is  now on hold. It was still in early phases of preproduction but according to Digital Spy, Lucas admitted at a recent screening of The Empire Strikes back that they weren’t sure how to proceed.

“The live action TV show is kind of on hold because we have scripts, but we don’t know how to do them. They literally are Star Wars, only we’re going to have to try to do them [at] a tenth the cost,” he confirmed. “And it’s a huge challenge, [a] lot bigger than what we thought it was gonna be.”

George may be a schmuck and his actions sometimes make me think he has Asperger’s but if you can count on one thing, the man doesn’t skimp on his vision, even when it sucks. Color me skeptical, though. How involved are these shows? Special effects on TV have been catching up to the big screen in a big way. CGI for shows like Firefly and Battlestar Galactica were astonishing and expansive. However, in typical abused spouse form, I’m going to defend Lucas in this instance because I’ll tell you what, whenever Industrial Light and Magic hit an effects roadblock, they always found an innovative way to make the magic happen and somehow change the entire industry in the process. So while the production is on hold, it’s a safe bet that Lucas and his people are busily working on finding a way to make Star Wars grade special effects happen on a TV budget scale.

Be patient.

Every now and then I get a reader tip. Friend of the site, Troy Z sent this trailer to me and it melted my brain inside my skull. A while back I reviewed a documentary about the growing film industry in Nigeria called Welcome To Nollywood (review). It highlights a couple of Nigeria’s then-hottest directors and their many, many movies as well as the central mechanic of the entire industry. This is relevant because whether or not you’re aware of it, Nigeria is third in the world behind the United States and India among the world’s biggest film industries. They crank out shitloads of those pictures! I’ve seen some footage and trailers of Nollywood movies, though, and as fascinating as the culture is, the movies don’t look terribly interesting; lots of shit about witch doctors cursing romances and stuff like that. That makes it sound a lot more interesting than it is, actually.

This trailer for a film called Who Killed Captain Alex, is not Nigerian, though. This is claiming to be Uganda’s first action movie. I guess that’s what all the high-pitched yelling is about in the trailer. That narration track, which sounds like an alien from the Star Wars cantina scene screaming about some hip-hop album, is telling you all about how awesome Uganda’s first action movie is but the proof is in the pudding and I’ll tell you what, that trailer makes Birdemic look perfectly competent. All that really terrible CGI, poorly staged fight scenes and the prospect of a disproportionately huge helicopter smashing a city to pieces via fly-by makes me want to check this out. Also, LALALALALA ACTION!! has the potential to be the next big internet meme.

I don’t know why I’ve been keeping mum about Machete. Every poster I see, every photo, every god damn trailer nearly makes me lost control of my bowels and bladder. Thing is, of all the Grindhouse faux-trailers, Machete wasn’t the one I most wanted to see. I was actually all about Don’t. From the looks of all marketing materials for Machete, it’s a movie about Danny Trejo killing everybody on Earth. And what a cast! Trejo, alone, is enough to make me want to watch the movie but somehow Robert Rodriguez talked Don Johnson, Cheech Marin, Stephen Seagal, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Michelle Rodriguez and Robert fucking DeNiro into being in his gory action movie. Yes, you saw it here, people. There’s a scene where Mahete rips a man’s intestines out and swings out a window onto a level below! HOW AWESOME IS THAT???

God, I fucking love Comic Con week!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, of all the premium cable horror TV on right now, which I guess is True Blood, Dexter is the clear victor. There isn’t a tighter script or better cast of characters out there. What a fucking show! Season 4 of the show, with villain played by John Lithgow, stands as one of the finest serieses I’ve ever seen and the finale was so shocking that I almost couldn’t handle it. So naturally during this gap between seasons, and a period where Michael C. Hall fought cancer, apparently, I’ve been dying for more Dexter. If you’re like me, this won’t ease the suffering since it, too, doesn’t land until later this year, but here’s another Early Cuts series.

Early Cuts is a motion comic/web series, chronicling Dexter’s earliest kills following Harry’s death but before he joined Miami Metro Homicide. This new one takes place during medical school where Dexter is spotted doing his dark passenger’s dirty work. Rather than being busted, the witness kicks up his own killing spree, copycatting Dexter’s style but without knowledge of The Code. We all know how this is going to wind up, the again, we always do. It’s the cat and mouse of the story that will thrill us.

Dexter’s fifth season kicks off September, 26th with Dark Echo following in October illustrated by one of my personal favorite comic artists, Bill Sienkiewicz.

I admit that I’m late to the bus on this one. By now, everyone who is interested in The Walking Dead has seen this. I passed on it because I have yet to be wowed by a motion comic. I’ve seen a few and most of them aren’t much more than static panels where a facial expression changes here or there. This one, however, from Juice Films, also responsible for the Watchmen motion comic, really knocked it out of the park. This Walking Dead motion comic is practically a cartoon with great music and voice acting (even if there isn’t much dialog). The animation is extremely dynamic and for a 2D presentation, it delivers a real feeling of volume and dimension. If this is the future of motion comics, I’ll start paying more attention.

AMC is going balls to the wall with the promotion on their new series. Comic fans are a fairly jaded lot and most horror fans burned out on zombies long ago but the usual chorus of disapproval that is hyper-critical of their beloved comics going to movies or TV have been nearly unanimous in their support of the show. As far as I see, The Walking Dead is already hit and it’s still a long way to October. This motion comic recounts the first issue of The Walking Dead, in case you’re just catching the wave and haven’t seen it before. It’s a great adaptation and their treatment of Tony Moore’s art is fantastic.