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So a few weeks ago, I stumbled across this title at the local Borders bookstore: Star Wars on Trial: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Debate the Most Popular Science Fiction Films of All Time After months of listening to the rabid S.O.A.P. fans rattle on about their movie (no comment on how that translated to actual success of said movie) I have to acknowledge the power of a really cheesy title. And this one ranks right up there, I think. I've got to admit I picked this one up and set it down several times, over several trips to the bookstore. But eventually I succumbed to the lure of topics like "The Politics of Star Wars are Anti-Democratic and Elitist" and "Women in Star Wars are Portrayed as Fundamentally Weak." Then I read David Brin's intro. And Matthew Woodring Stover's intro. And I realized that, despite the extended conceit of putting the Star Wars saga on trial (complete with a droid judge to oversee the proceedings), there was some serio

The gist of it is, this really was the point I was trying to make here (read the comments). Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Fuels Terror It just carries a bit more weight when it's coming from the people who really know what's going on there. (Meanwhile, of course, Pollyanna is in full denial mode . Of course, the point isn't that Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism existed before 9/11. It's that what's going on in Iraq today is making it worse. And no amount of Bill Clinton blamestorming is going to change that unpleasant fact.)  

Channel surfing tonight I came across Spielberg's War of the Worlds just in time for the scene that ruined the movie for me. Understand that, overall, I think they did a really nice job of updating the story, making it contemporary and relevant without losing any of the major beats of Well's original . The aliens and their machines evoke Well's story while not feeling out of place in our era, the human drama is foremost and, as it's told exclusively from Ray's (Tom Cruise's character's) point of view, immediate and often chilling. But I just can't get past the set-up to this great big bug-eyed monster from outer space extravaganza. The aliens are first revealed as one of their war machines corkscrews out of the earth, underneath a main intersection in Ray's neighborhood. He watches, stunned, as the ground begins to rotate, shearing off the fronts of buildings and collapsing structures as the ground falls into the center of the hole that's being

The first thing that strikes me about these two movies was how the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was really all about Charlie, while last year's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was really all about Willy. (Just look at the character arcs in both movies… who really changes the most in each? You'll see what I mean.) The next thing I realized is how amazingly "safe" this new version of Roald Dahl's story is. And the last thing that occurred to me as I saw Charlie this afternoon was that I really dislike this remake. In 1971's Willy Wonka, Gene Wilder's Willy seems a bit of a cynic, is untrusting and suffers from feelings of superiority to the rest of the world. He's also vaguely threatening, or at the very least, apparently uncaring as to the well-being of these annoying people he's subjected himself to. For the majority of the movie, he's simply not a very nice guy. Meanwhile, Charlie is a quiet child, but obviously on the advent

Noir is in, right now, judging from this and this week's Black Dahlia . Sadly, that may be an unfortunate thing. (And yes, if you haven't seen it yet, consider yourself warned… I'll probably talk about the ending. That makes this the only SPOILER ALERT you're going to get.) Hollywoodland is one of those movies that I look at and think "the whole was definitely less than the sum of its parts." It's got a great cast with Adrian Brody, Diane Lane and Bob Hoskins taking their respective noirish roles of noble PI, dangerous monied dame and older, mob-type husband. And Ben Affleck really steps up this time as the "victim" in this sad little tale. On the heels of my " kiss of death " post last week came the news that he'd received the Venice Film Festival Best Actor award. And I think it's a well-deserved award. This may be the most interesting and was certainly the most believable performance I've seen from Affleck. (I found on

A while ago, I bemoaned the loss of my art-house pretensions. I'd been to several movies on the art-house circuit that I just didn't get or was simply unimpressed by and realized that my tastes were probably more mainstream than I liked to pretend. (The first two that come to mind are Ghost World and The Station Agent , but I'm sure there are others.) But in recent weeks, I've caught a few movies that were firmly stuck in the art-houses this year that I've really enjoyed. (Now, some of this may have to do with where I'm living these days. Downey is not exactly a hot-bed for cutting edge movies, and anything outside of the all important weekly top-10 box office reports is likely to entail schlepping to Hollywood, Santa Monica or Pasadena, but some of these I'm SURE never got outside the art-house circuit.) The first of these was, arguably, the least art-house of the bunch. But I never got a chance to see it in the theatres and it's Woody Allen, so while

I saw countless previews articles on Hollywoodland that talked about Affleck playing Superman (George Reeves, actually, but they apparently loved that angle). But it's opening tomorrow, and he's conspicuously absent from all the media… no mention or screen time in the TV spots, no mention in the radio spots (even though they do play a brief clip of him in those), and they've even redesigned the posters from the first one I saw to move his pic into the background. I understand that, with the whole Hollywood noir approach to the story, his role might be a relatively minor one. Let's face it… he's gonna die off early in the film, so he'll probably be seen more in flashbacks than anything else. But it's still gotta suck to have a major role in this film, BEEN a marquee name for years and find yourself not even getting mentioned in any of the ads. I've never been a huge Affleck fan (and I'm beginning to wonder who, outside of Kevin Smith, ever really was

"And speaking of…" seems to be a theme for the week. But when the President's doing his impersonation of the Iraqi Defense Minister (you remember, the guy denying the whole invasion of Iraq, while American tanks were rolling into Baghdad), how can I resist? From his weekly radio address , after the Pentagon released their latest comprehensive assessment of security in Iraq, comes this gem: "Our commanders and diplomats on the ground believe that Iraq has not descended into a civil war. They report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, while the overwhelming majority want peace and a normal life in a unified country." I have no doubt the overwhelming majority of Iraqis want peace and a normal life. Don't the majority of people everywhere want peace and a normal life? It's governments and the people that want to overthrow them that are planning and prepping and executing the violence. Jesus, what meaningless pap.

Rumsfeld Likens Iraq War Opponents to Those Who Appeased Hitler I've got ample amounts of contempt for the Bush administration to go around, but there seems to be just that little bit extra reserved for this son of a bitch. I think it's his combination of willful arrogance combined with apparent incompetence. While I'm sure that there are things that have happened in Iraq that no one could have expected, I'm thinking that the blissful ignorance expressed prior to our invasion might have more than a little to do with the difficulties we're facing right now. ("The Iraqi people will greet us with flowers in one hand, waving American flags in the other" was one moronic statement I heard expressed in the ramp-up to war.) But I'm not really interested in debating policy here. I hate the fact that we went to war in Iraq, I hate the fact that we trampled international law with the flimsy notion of "preventive war" and I despise the loss of life on bo