May The Stores Be With You

I went out shopping last weekend, mostly for the usual kind of stuff ... and for no apparent reason, it ended up being a Star Wars kind of day. I unexpectedly found a few decent bargains, and they all happened to be of a Star Wars nature. Here's what I got:

The Star Wars Poster Book (by Stephen Sansweet and Peter Vilmur, published by Chronicle Books) -- This isn't a collection of posters that you can hang on your wall, as the title might imply. Instead, it's a lush, illustrated history of Star Wars poster art, carrying the reader through all six movies, and the plethora of promotional tie-in art in between. Quite a few of the posters we've all seen before, but there are many rare, weird, and wonderful oddities to be found as well. This one, a big, hardcover, "coffee-table" book, was in the bargain bin for an unbelievable $5.99 (publisher's price: $50.00)! At first glance it didn't have any damage other than a slightly tattered dust jacket, but after I got it home and looked more closely, I could see the reason for its rock-bottom price: some asshole Sith apprentice had gone and torn three pages out of it in various locations. I'm not complaining -- for six bucks, how can you -- but at some point I'll definitely go seek out a higher-quality specimen, 'cause I can picture myself browsing this one again and again.

Star Wars Omnibus: A Long Time Ago... Volume One (published by Dark Horse Comics) -- This is a trade paperback collecting the first 27 issues of the original Marvel Comic book series, which launched with a six-issue adaptation of the first movie back in 1977. I'd had my eye on this one for quite awhile, and when I found the one and only copy on the shelf, in excellent condition, for 20% off at the Waldenbooks store-closing sale in the local mall, I decided it was time to pick it up. I'd never bought or collected that comic series when it was being published, so I'm going to enjoy reading this.

Star Wars: Infinities - A New Hope (published by Dark Horse Comics) -- This is another one that had caught my eye when it was published several years ago. I've always liked "what if" stories, and this is one that suggests what might have happened if Luke's proton torpedo run at the first Death Star hadn't succeeded. This was probably the sweetest deal of the day ... its original price was $12.95, and I got it for just $3.99! It'll be quite fun to read this one too.

So, as you can see, The Force was definitely with me during my shopping rounds last weekend ... and now I've got plenty of reading material to tide me over for quite awhile ... if I can ever remember to read during my idle time, that is.

Irvin Kershner: 1923 - 2010

Sad news: Irvin Kershner, most famous to us as the director of The Empire Strikes Back and RoboCop 2, has passed away at the age of 87. He was also an instructor at the USC film school, and none other than George Lucas was amongst his students. May the Force be with you, Mr. Kershner.



















(Photo found by way of BrickTuts.)

Starcruiser, WHOOSH!! Starcruiser, CRASH!!

Does anyone else fondly remember that pair of Ewoks TV-movies that aired on ABC back in the mid '80s? For some reason, silly as they were (but not nearly as painful to watch as the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special), I videotaped them when they aired and watched them repeatedly over the ensuing years ... and yes, I even bought the double-feature DVD -- containing the original 1984 movie Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, and its 1985 sequel Ewoks: The Battle For Endor -- after it was finally released in 2004.

For the unfamiliar, the first movie involves a family whose spaceship has crash-landed on Endor. The parents are abducted by a five-storey-tall baboon, and it's up to the kids -- teenage boy Mace (not Windu, rather a white one with hair) and his little sister Cindel -- to rescue them ... with the help of their new friends the Ewoks, natch. Fionnula Flanagan (How the West Was Won, Lost, and an occasional Star Trek guest) and Guy Boyd (Black Scorpion, Hyperion Bay ... aw hell, just look him up) play the hapless parents, and Mr. "Holly Jolly Christmas" himself, Burl Ives, is there to narrate the story and drive home the obligatory moral lesson in courage, perseverence, and the power of a loving family ... eesh. But at least Eric Walker was there for me to crush on ... not that I knew it was a crush at the time, mind you.

But wait, the sequel is even better! Presumably in a move to counterbalance the revolting cuddliness of the first movie, this one turns way darker. A gang of oafish, quasi-frat-guy lizard-dudes invades the Ewok village, taking all the Ewoks prisoner and flat-out killing off Mace and his parents -- so much for that "power of a loving family" crap. Anyway, Wicket and Cindel narrowly escape their vicious captors and soon happen upon an old curmudgeon (played by Wilford Brimley -- what a stretch for him) named Noa, a space pilot marooned on Endor many years ago. After Cindel is kidnapped by the lizard-dudes' inexplicably non-lizard-looking sorceress (played by Siân Phillips) -- hey, they couldn't be allowed to whack a little moppet like her, it's a broadcast network for cripe's sake -- Noa, Wicket, and Noa's pet whatever-it-is Teek, set out to open up a can of Quaker Oats and whoop-ass -- and Noa's fresh out of Quaker Oats! -- on the castle full of lizard-dudes. Hey, he's got a harpoon gun, so I sure wouldn't mess with him.

Despite how nauseatingly cloying little Cindel was -- can you picture an '80s effort at reincarnating a young Shirley Temple? -- the movies had their moments. The music, by Peter Bernstein, was particularly memorable, and I even have the soundtrack album (I think it was only ever issued on vinyl). The stories were okay -- in the second movie, the power source for the family's spaceship kind-of ties the plot together, in case you might have been wondering (since I left it out of the last paragraph). As much as he has become a kind of caricature of himself, I've always liked Wilford Brimley, so the interest in the second movie I might have lost with the early offing of Eric Walker's character was made up for by the entertaining presence of "grandpa Witherspoon" (and no, I've most definitely never crushed on him, so don't worry). But by far the most unintentionally funny moment was during the buildup to the jailbreak in the lizard-dudes' castle, when two of the guards were playing cards. I swear to you, if you listen closely, you can hear one of them say "chicken shit" ... in a family movie!!

Sure those movies were silly, the general disdain for the Ewoks notwithstanding ... but then, they were made for the kids out there rather than the teens and twenty-somethings who dug the Classic Trilogy during its theatrical run. And there are the obvious questions that these movies bring up -- What happened to the lizard-dudes between that movie and Return of the Jedi? Wouldn't the Empire or the Rebels have at least stumbled upon them or their remains? To say nothing of Teek's race, who could have joined the Ewoks in the Rebels' fight against the Empire... -- but of course we're not supposed to think about that ... although you'd have thought that with all the screwing around Lucas did with the Classic Trilogy, the whim would have struck him to insert a new scene or two to retcon all that junk. Oh well ... at least I'm not disturbingly preoccupied by the whole Endor thing like this guy....

So anyway, if you're a Star Wars completist, or even if you're not so much and just want some silly entertainment, you might want to pick it up -- oh, that is, if you can. (It's out-of-print? Oh, the humanity!!!) And while you're scooting about on the web, I just found out that Eric Walker is all grown up and has his own website. Go, Mace!

A Long Time Ago, In a CD Box Set Far, Far Away...

Well, here I go again ... nothing reeks of laziness more than writing one post that will update two blogs at the same time. Well, maybe waiting a freakin' month to make said post is just as lazy. But I warned you not too long ago that this blog was probably going to get quiet. I honestly haven't been in a blogging mood much lately. But with any luck that'll turn around after my vacation at the end of this month (during which, yes, it'll be really quiet ... but not like that's a big change, right?). Anyway, I hope you enjoy my latest topic, as it's close to my heart....

Before Greedo shot first ... before Han stepped on Jabba's tail ... before the digitally-botoxed "Special Editions" turned them into Episodes IV, V, and VI -- in other words, before George Lucas got all full of himself -- they were just Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. As relatively recently as those days were, it's already getting hard for me to remember them. It's also hard to believe that, until the 1993 box-set release of "The Star Wars Trilogy: The Original Soundtrack Anthology", most of the music from this phenomenally successful movie saga had never been available on CD before.

The original CD issue of the Star Wars soundtrack was a generous, two-disc, track-for-track replication of the vinyl release, but the Empire double-LP's run time was chopped nearly in half when squeezed onto a single CD, and Jedi only ever saw a skimpy one-disc release on any format. And those were the only compact disc releases that these awesome scores saw for nearly ten years, until this lush cornucopia of audio bliss came along. Sure, there had been a few other albums featuring music from all three films, but those were re-recordings by other orchestras ... and as any film music buff or Star Wars fan -- both categories in which I freely admit that I belong (albeit to different degrees now than I did back then) -- could tell you, they just don't hold a candle to the actual soundtrack recordings.

Not only did this release give us the second Cantina Band song in its entirety for the first time, as well as the haunting male chorus during Luke's final furious duel with Vader under the catwalk in the Emperor's throne room, but it's noteworthy for other reasons too. It was the last release of the original soundtrack recordings before the "Special Edition" revamping of the movies in 1997, which means that the Jabba jam "Lapti Nek" and the original tribal-drum vocal version of the Ewok Celebration got their final album appearances here before being usurped by the silly "Jedi Rocks!" and the tepid instrumental "Victory Celebration" (sorry, John Williams, I love your stuff, but the original source music was better).

But there's a more subtle aspect to this release that makes it a bittersweet one. Since 1997, the Star Wars soundtrack releases seem to have been preoccupied with delivering the music in an "as heard in the film" fashion, which to my ear makes the compositions flow much less gracefully. I don't know if it's the obsessive film music snobs out there who are to blame or if it's Lucas, but I find so much more beauty in the thematic structure of the pieces on these earlier discs. Who cares if they're arranged more for a concert hall performance than for accompaniment of the visuals in the movies? That's kind-of what I buy soundtracks for in the first place: to hear the music in a way I didn't hear it in the film ... after all, it'll still remind me of the fun I had watching the movies, which is the real point in a soundtrack release.

For a while, I did own the two-disc releases of the Star Wars Trilogy: "Special Edition" soundtracks, but I found them far inferior to the music on this collection and I ended up trading them in. For those of you who don't have the "Star Wars Trilogy: The Original Soundtrack Anthology" box set, believe me that you'd be doing yourselves a favor picking it up ... it's out of print, but still reasonably available from third-party sellers on Amazon and eBay. After all, nobody doesn't like Star Wars, and anybody who doesn't like the music of Star Wars -- well, they just shouldn't be taken seriously about anything, now should they?

Us versus Them

So, a friend and co-worker decided a couple of weeks ago to whimsically put on her computer, as her wallpaper, the picture shown here. Now, normally I would probably ignore the ages-old "Star Trek versus Star Wars" debate -- let's face it, we've all seen the "Why [this universe] is better than [that universe]" email lists circulating ad infinitum in all their various forms, and it really is an argument that has no definitive answer since it really can't be examined with complete objectiveness ... but my fingers have been itching ever since that image started taunting me. Sheesh, it's still taunting me even though she replaced it a week ago with a really cool American Revolution themed painting that's been altered to show both sides' soldiers armed with lightsabers, and even a half-finished Death Star in the sky above.

But anyway, back to the point. Here's my take on Star Trek versus Star Wars ... and I've deliberately tried to avoid looking at any of the existing lists so as to ensure as much as possible that I'm not re-hashing them. In other words: any similarity to any pre-existing lists is purely coincidental and unintentional. And I'll try to be as unbiased as I possibly can here ... but don't hold your breath.

Data vs. C-3PO -- Okay, sure, Threepio can interpret six million languages, but every comm-badge in Starfleet has a little chip in it that can do that instantaneously: it's called the Universal Translator. And maybe Data's components are a bit more fragile than Threepio's, but when the going gets tough, Data could dismantle Threepio and use half of him to power his phaser and the other half of him to enhance his tricorder's functionality, all without batting an eye. And just try and get Threepio to calculate the travel time to the nearest starbase at Warp 7. Advantage: Star Trek.

Chewbacca vs. Worf -- They're both big, hairy, and strong, no doubt about that. But if you gave me the option of going into battle alongside either a bat'leth-wielding Klingon or a Wookiee with a laser-crossbow, I wouldn't have to think twice. Wookiees are decent warriors, I'm sure, but I'd bet all the gold-pressed latinum, Republic credits, or wupiupi I had to my name on Kronos whipping ol' Kashyyyk's butt any day of the week. (And what's with all those friggin "y"s in the name of that planet, anyway?) Advantage: Star Trek.

Neelix vs. Jar-Jar Binks -- Okay, we've talked about some of the good parts of the two franchises, now let's take a look at one of the less flattering ones. Who would you rather be trapped in an elevator for three hours with? Tough call, I know. They can both be rather annoying little pricks, to be sure. But whereas Jar-Jar is by and large just a clumsy buffoon who speaks in irritating, probably-racially-offensive-but-nobody-knows-for-sure jabberwocky, Neelix is an optimistic, imaginative guy who honestly tries to make everyone feel better. Besides, that Talaxian can cook. Advantage: Star Trek.

Anakin Skywalker vs. Wesley Crusher -- I guess we could call this one "Battle of the Brats". Each one has been more annoying than the other at particular points, and when you think about it, they could both be dangerous if they threw enough of a hissy-fit: Anakin could seriously mess people up with The Force, and Wesley could get creative in Engineering and blow up the whole Enterprise. But really, folks, when it comes down to attitude, we really have to give this one to Anakin. And then there's the question of who I'd rather be trapped in an elevator for three hours with, but for an entirely different reason in this case. No contest: Anakin circa Attack of the Clones ... or, more to the point, Hayden Christensen ... oh yeah, baby. (But before he got the mechanical arm, 'cause that'd just be gross.) Advantage: Star Wars.

Khan vs. Darth Vader -- As much as I'd like to give this one to Khan, it just ain't that easy. Khan may have the charisma, but Vader has The Force. They've both mastered the art of their mere presence instilling fear in people, but Khan's exotic Latin accent is no match for that spooky mechanical breathing sound. Not to mention the fact that Vader can suffocate people just by thinking about it, but Khan can't be bothered to lift a finger to torture or kill his enemies and has to get one of his minions to do it. Khan gives great speeches (the "he tasks me" one from The Wrath of Khan is great), but that's his problem: he talks too much. And we all know what Vader would do to someone who talks too much ... it would probably involve his thumb and forefinger in a "pinching" motion. Advantage: Star Wars.

Star Destroyer vs. the Enterprise-D -- Of course, this is the one that's depicted in the picture that started this whole mess. My co-workers had their arguments (really, in a kamikaze run, enough damage is done to both ships that nobody wins), but here's mine: In The Empire Strikes Back, one puny asteroid lopped off the whole command tower section of the Star Destroyer (certainly crippling it), but the Enterprise's deflectors and shields could just bounce those meddlesome things out of its path. And what about the weapons? The Enterprise has both phasers and photon torpedoes, but the Star Destroyer only has "turbo-lasers". As has been established in Star Trek, lasers are a far inferior technology to phasers, and I rather suspect "turbo-lasers" are about as much of an improvement over the original technology as "light" cigarettes. Advantage: Star Trek.

Captain Kirk vs. Han Solo -- Far be it from me to reduce this to a contest of macho swagger (indeed, I've always found the scenario of men needing to behave "like men" quite amusing), but consider the following: Kirk "bagged a babe" (as Anthony Michael Hall's character in Sixteen Candles so poetically put it) nearly every week, but Han Solo pined away for nobody but Princess Leia halfway through the Classic Trilogy. Not only that, but while Solo was "captain" to a crew consisting of one solitary Wookiee, Kirk confidently commanded an unwavering crew of four hundred. Don't get me wrong, Harrison Ford is one of my all-time favorite actors, but Shatner minced no words in Free Enterprise, when told by a boy that his schoolyard tormentor said that Han Solo was cooler than Captain Kirk: "Kick that little f**ker's ass." That was all the motivation the little guy needed ... let's see Ford pull that off. Advantage: Star Trek.

Just to be a good sport here, I'm not even going to tally the scorecard in this post. Besides, I have the distinct impression that this topic will carry forward into a second post sometime in the near future, so I'll just say the race is too early to call. And anyway, though I am more of a Trek fan now, I've never stopped being a Star Wars fan, and probably never will. Each one has its advantages and its drawbacks, and is loved by different people (and in many cases the same people) for different reasons. But it's still fun to debate, though, isn't it?!