General Movie Thread

Beer & Queso
241

Christensen, Prowse or Shaw?

242

Prowse, I’ve heard, in that scene.

243

Yeah, I had tongue planted firmly in cheek.

At the end of the despecialized “Jedi”, when Vader returns as a Force ghost, it’s Sebastian Shaw, which is satisfying because it makes pure sense. When Lucas slapped Christensen in there in his splattervision edition, it made no sense.

It made no sense that Vader was de-aged to his prequel character, but Kenobi wasn’t. It would make no sense to anyone new to the movies who hadn’t yet watched the prequels (because you can’t because they’re so spoilery). It made sense only because Lucas knew that fans of the OT weren’t fans of the prequels, and so decided to fuck with us.

I know Dave Prowse was unhappy that it wasn’t him under the mask, the same way he was unhappy it wasn’t his vocal performance throughout. But his gentle west country English accent was not at all scary, and he didn’t have the acting chops to carry off that scene. So with it being Shaw revealed as Vader, it has to be Shaw as Vader’s Force ghost.

I just can’t with the special editions…

1 Like
244

“Nobody” is like if Kevin McAllister grew up and became a suburban dad. This is not a bad thing.

245

John Wick with actual acting skills and personality. I’m happy they’re making a sequel.

1 Like
246

“Promising Young Woman” on HBO is very good. It’s a black comedy and, be warned, some of the elements are very, very dark. You might want to have something more cheerful lined up to watch afterwards, like “Seven” or “Platoon”.

247

“Free Guy” is really funny. Just watching the game characters doing stupid stuff in the background is worth the time.

248

The Batman is good. It has two or three too many endings, but the first half is so fun I didn’t care.

1 Like
249

Went to Return of the Jedi at the Houston Symphony last night. A few things stood out:

  1. I knew not to expect a chorus joining the symphony, but man does that throne room duel miss it. The arrangement just couldn’t make up for it.

  2. Adding the “Little Shop of Horrors” Seymour mouth to the Saarlac was a terrible idea.

  3. I never noticed it but I swear Mark Hamill breaks character to start laughing at Han during the scene where the Ewoks capture them.

  4. Vader’s “NOOOOOO!” in RotS was very bad, but choosing to double down by dubbing a bookend in when he throws the Emperor is so, so much worse.

  5. My streak of Houston brass players cracking a note in a John Williams performance continues.

  6. Amazing note the conductor pointed out - the final 54 minutes of the movie (including credits) is non-stop score.

1 Like
250

You need the Despecialized editions. All such nonsense erased from history, like the non-existent prequels.

251

Ugh. I forgot about the “Nooo” in the new ROTJ edition. Just insulting to the audience. Yeah, we really needed some clarity on what Vader’s thinking there. I’ve been lost since 1983.

1 Like
252

My orchestra performed Star Wars on Saturday night as well. I assure you the Houston brass were in good company.

1 Like
253

The Austin Symphony performed the score of West Side Story a couple of weeks ago, and it was great. I lost myself in the music several times and could have sworn what I was hearing was a part of the movie I was watching.

1 Like
254

For me, there really isn’t anything quite like attending the symphony. We are going to get season tickets next year.

1 Like
255

I had season tickets to ASO for 20+ years but dropped them a couple of years ago in favor of increased financial involvement with Zach. I miss ASO, and Peter Bay is a wonderful conductor.

256

Our youngest daughter was an intern at the Alley Theatre for most of a year when in college about a decade ago and we ended up with all sorts of freebie tickets to the Alley and to the symphony. We were going to one or the other several times a month, it was great. We kept it up as much as we could afford afterwards (though nowhere near several times a month). We haven’t been to the symphony since Covid unfortunately, but hopefully that will change soon.

257

I love classical music and have played in an amateur/volunteer orchestra for the last few years, but until last fall it had been probably 15-20 years since I’d attended a live, professional symphony performance. Austin Symphony performed Ravel’s Bolero and The Planets in consecutive months and both were very moving experiences. I had forgotten how much nuance is lost in orchestral recordings.

We had to miss Beethoven’s Fifth in November, and I’m still kicking myself about that.

1 Like
258

I went to that, and it was great! Hated to miss Bolero, though.

259

The way Waldo talks about performing Star Wars is how I felt playing pit orchestra for West Side. Such beautiful but demanding music.

260

Thing I somehow did not know until recently: Beethoven had an unfinished 10th symphony.