A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

On Tuesday, March 27, Buena Vista Home Entertainment (the Walt Disney Company subsidiary that distributes home media products such as DVDs and Blu-rays) released writer-director Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi on Blu-ray disc (BD), 4K UHD Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download copy. As in previous BVHE releases such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Johnson's blockbuster entry in the Sequel Trilogy comes in several combinations, including: Target Exclusive Digipack  (BD, DVD, Digital HD) available only from Target Best Buy Exclusive SteelBook (2 BDs, 1 4K UHD, Digital Copy Codes for iTunes and Movies Anywhere) available only from Best Buy Target Exclusive Digipack (2 BDs, 2 DVDs, Digital Copy Codes)  Disney Store Exclusive/Pre-Order Lithograph Set: (2 BDs, memorabilia included) Blu-ray + Digital HD Two-Disc Set: (2 BDs, Digital Copy Codes), the wide-release standard edition Several other variants exist, includin...

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) (AKA Star Wars - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi ) Written and Directed by: Rian Johnson Starring: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong'o, Domhnall Gleeson, Gwendoline Christie, Anthony Daniels, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, Benicio Del Toro, Frank Oz Luke Skywalker: What do you know about the Force?  Rey: It's a power that Jedi have that lets them control people and... make things float.  Luke Skywalker: Impressive. Every word in that sentence was wrong. On December 15, 2017, almost two years after director J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiered and over 40 years after Star Wars: A New Hope kicked off the sprawling Skywalker saga, Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm released writer-director Rian Johnson's epic space-fantasy Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Set three decades after the events of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, the film ...

I've been enthralled by John Williams' scores for the original 1977-83 Star Wars Trilogy ( A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi ) since I first owned the 2-LP original soundtrack album from the first installment of the saga. For instance, I have bought the original 1977 recording in all available formats, from LP, eight-track, cassette, and compact disc. I also have the slightly expanded variation available in The Star Wars Trilogy Soundtrack Anthology four-disc box set and the even more complete Special Edition 2-CD set. So it shouldn't be a jolting shock to you, the reader, that I bought Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace' s 1-CD original soundtrack recording on the very day of its release (about a month prior to the premiere of Episode I). Like many Star Wars fans, I'd waited for 16 years for a new movie -- the 1997 Special Edition really didn't count as new movies -- since Return of the Jedi 's theatrical run ...

Pros:  Martin's script and performance. Schepsi's directing. Nice supporting cast. Cons:  Predictable in spots. Otherwise, none. It's hard to believe that 31 years have passed since Columbia Pictures (now part of Sony's multimedia empire) first released director Fred Schepsi's Roxanne, a gentle and offbeat adaptation of Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac penned by its leading man, Steve Martin. I've never seen either Rostand's play on stage or the straightforward movie adaptation which starred Jose Ferrer back in the 1950s, but this 1987 romantic comedy takes its basic plot of an intelligent, romantic poet-swordsman who falls in love with a beautiful woman and attempts to court her despite having a longer than normal nose and updates it to 1980s America as a vehicle for Martin ( The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid ) and the lovely Darryl Hannah as the titular love interest, Roxanne. In Martin and Schepsi's tale, the guy ...

Pros:  Gene Hackman's reliable acting Cons:  Everything else, from cheesy effects to bad acting and a lousy script. After the lackluster box-office performance of 1983's misbegotten Superman III and the less-than-warm-welcome for their failed franchise expansion, Supergirl , Alexander and Ilya Salkind decided that enough was enough and stopped making films based on Jerry Schuster and Joel Siegel's Man of Steel. The franchise, which had started out strong with Richard Donner's 1978 Superman: The Movie , began a qualitative decline as soon as director Richard Lester moved away from the "verisimilitude" ethos Donner had adopted for the first two films before the Salkinds fired him in the middle of shooting the second chapter in the series. Instead of a "realistic" approach, Lester emphasized lightweight comic elements that bordered on self-p...