No way

Why did this need to be released in cinemas? If this film's low box office takings are any indication, it looks like movie fans worldwide are asking this very question. 

The dark times

Today marks exactly 21 years since the release of the first teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. At the time, it was believed that it would be the final Star Wars feature film. Considering the mixed reception the sequel trilogy received, perhaps it should have been. 

Hello there

Sunday night institution

Forget Marvel, National Geographic, Pixar, or Star Wars. This is the real reason to subscribe to Disney Plus. For the first time, you can see two of Kurt Russell's Dexter Riley movies, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969) and The Strongest Man in the World (1975), in widescreen aspect ratio, and in one sitting and without commercial breaks. For some reason, the second Riley movie, Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972), is not yet available.

Towering strength

Another part of my childhood ended with the announcement overnight of the passing of the original Chewbacca, Peter Mayhew. Chewbacca was one of the most beloved Star Wars characters, appearing in A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Revenge of the Sith, and The Force Awakens.

A few years ago I had the privilege of hearing him speak when he appeared at a pop culture convention in my city. Perhaps the next Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, will be dedicated to his memory.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/02/chewbacca-peter-mayhew-dies-aged-74

https://www.starwars.com/news/peter-mayhew

By [1], Fair use, Link

Never tell me the odds

From memory, this report came from a financial analyst, commenting on the disappointing box office results for the Star Wars spinoff film, Solo. Despite mostly positive reviews, it was let down by a poor pre-release marketing campaign. One hopes that the quality of the financial advice provided by this investment firm is better than the the proof reading in their reports.

Holy is his name

I picked up this postcard at a church over the weekend. As you can see, it is a painting of Mary holding the baby Jesus. Mary looks uncannily like actress, Natalie Portman, in costume as Padme from the Star Wars prequels. Unfortunately, both mother and child look Caucasian in appearance, and not even slightly Jewish. Presumably, the artist wasn't going for historical accuracy. 

Eight channel stereo sound

This is a nice piece of nostalgia. Using 16 bit animated pixel art, a creative person has created an animated video of the battle scene between Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi. It reminds me of the Super Star Wars games that were released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System between 1992 and 1994.

Mature age Skywalker

The Bible has a canon. Some church denominations have canon law. Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D Major is often used for wedding recessionals. Star Wars also has a canon. After Disney purchased Lucasfilm, it established a new canon. Existing extended universe materials were recategorised as Star Wars: Legends. I didn't know that Star Wars had laser canons. I hadn't heard of those before. 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/12/14/star-wars-the-last-jedis-6-biggest-wtf-questions

Pile of shame

I recently finished reading the book, 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.

Of the games in the book, these are the ones that I have played, but I haven't actually completed all of them:

1080 Snowboarding
ActRaiser
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Another World
Assassin's Creed II
Asteroids
Axelay
Banjo-Kazooie
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Battle Zone
The Beatles: Rock Band
Beyond Good & Evil
Blast Corps
A Boy and his Blob
Breakout
Breath of Fire II
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
Bubble Bobble
California Games
Call of Duty
Call of Duty 2
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Choplifter
Chrono Trigger
Columns
Contra III: The Alien Wars
Cybernator
Defender
Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf
Diablo
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Country 3
Double Dragon
Dr Kawashima's Brain Training
Dr. Mario
Duke Nukem 3D
EarthBound
Earthworm Jim
Ecco the Dolphin
Fallout 3
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fight
Flashback
Forgotten Worlds
Frogger
F-Zero X
Gauntlet
Ghosts 'n Goblins
Ghouls 'n Ghosts
God of War: Chains of Olympus
GoldenEye 007
Gorf
Gran Turismo
Guitar Hero
Gyruss
H.E.R.O.
Halo: Combat Evolved
Ikari Warriors
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Jet Force Gemini
Kid Icarus
Killer Instinct
Klax
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja
The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
LEGO Star Wars
Lemmings
Luigi’s Mansion
Machinarium
Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle
Mario Kart 64
Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Metal Slug
Metroid Prime
Missile Command
Monkey lsland 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Moon Patrol
NBA Jam
New Zealand Story
Operation Wolf
OutRun
Pac-Man
Paper Mario
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Paperboy
Perfect Dark
Pilotwings
Prince of Persia
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Punch-Out!!
Resident Evil
Revenge of Shinobi
Rolling Thunder
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Secret of Mana
The Secret of Monkey Island
Shadowrun
Shinobi
SimCity
Singstar
Skies of Arcadia
Skool Daze
Smash TV
Snake
Snake Rattle 'n' Roll
Sonic Adventure
Sonic The Hedgehog
Sonic The Hedgehog 2
Space Invaders
Spider-Man 2
Spy Hunter
Spy vs. Spy
SSX Tricky
Star Wars
Star Wars Jedi Knight ll: Jedi Outcast
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
Starfox 64
Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
Strider
Summer Games II
Super Castlevania IV
Super Hang-On
Super Mario 64
Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros.: The l.ost Levels
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Super Mario Sunshine
Super Mario World
Super Metroid
Super Punch-Out!!
Super Tennis
Tales of Symphonia
Tetris
Theme Park
Time Pilot
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Transformers
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Uniracers
Wave Race 64
Wii Fit
Wii Sports
Yoshi’s Island
Zombies Ate My Neighbours

I doubt very much that there's anyone who, when they're lying on their deathbed, will regret all the video games they never got to play.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1001_Video_Games_You_Must_Play_Before_You_Die

I'm special, so please affirm my uniqueness

I wish to invite my reader into the murky world of Internet conspiracy theorists. Conspiracy theorists are nothing new, having existed for many decades, but the Internet has given them a wider audience to disseminate their ideas to. I find them too frustrating to engage with directly. Writing about them on here is the only way I can comprehend what influences them, on my own terms. By choice, I have had little to do with such people, keeping my distance from them, and only read their ideas to inform myself about them.

If memory serves me correctly, my initial exposure to conspiracy theorists happened one day I was walking through a pedestrian mall in Melbourne's central business district. Various groups are permitted by the city council to set up trestle tables to distribute literature to passers by. I was bailed up by a member of the Citizen's Electoral Council (CEC). He persuaded me to pay ten dollars of my hard earned money for a copy of their monthly news magazine.

On April 28, 1996, Australia's worst ever gun massacre took place at Port Arthur, Tasmania, when a lone gunman killed 35 people. The magazine claimed that the gunman was brainwashed into carrying out the massacre by an intelligence agency. After the massacre, the federal government passed gun control laws, outlawing semi-automatic weapons. These were the same types of weapons that the gunman used in the massacre.

The CEC is a controversial political organisation, described by its opponents as racist and anti-Semitic. It isn't hard to put the pieces together, and see that this is not slander. It is true. They claimed that the Port Arthur Massacre was a false flag operation, deliberately staged by the Australian government so that it could pass laws to disarm citizens. The CEC opened my eyes up to the worldview of conspiracy theorists.

I now know that the CEC is not the only group to promote these ideas. It also had a counterpart in the Australian League of Rights. I thought that they might have folded, but they maintain a (badly designed) website, so I guess that they are still active. Fast forward a few years, to the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the subsequent emergence of the so-called "truther" movement, which claims that the attacks were an inside job, used as a pretext to start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to curtail the civil liberties of American citizens. These truthers are another subgroup within conspiracy theory circles.

Every time a shooting massacre takes place, or an act of terror takes place, Internet conspiracy theorists take to social media platforms to predictably and sensationally claim that these are also false flag operations. These are designed to move the world towards one world government. This happened again in the days after the recent Las Vegas massacre. As of today, I have yet to find a satisfactory answer why this line of thinking only seems to apply when these things happen in the United States, and not outside the Western world, or the Anglosphere? In the minds of these people, what is so special about the United States?

I had to ask myself this question. Is there a common thread that links groups like the CEC, and internet conspiracy theorists? Doing a bit of research shows that whether they realise it or not, these conspiracy theories originate from the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This is a fraudulent document that appeared in the early 20th century. It outlines an alleged Jewish master plan to dominate the world. It was further promulgated by Nazis, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, and in parts of the Arab and Islamic world. Disarming the populace and creating false flag terror events are two aspects of this so called plot.

It is not palatable to explicitly name Jewish plotters in these theories, hence the need to refer to them using veiled references to international bankers, the Illuminati, or the New World Order. This doesn't make them any less offensive, not just to Jewish people, but also to all the victims of shooting massacres and terrorist attacks.

What motivates these conspiracy theorists, then? They're not all racists or anti-Semites. According to a recent article in Psychology Today, "people are drawn to conspiracy theories because of an underlying need for uniqueness. In other words, a need to be different from other people by embracing beliefs that are out of the ordinary. Just as this need for uniqueness can cause people to develop unusual hobbies or seek out experiences that set them apart from the crowd, conspiracy believers adopt unusual beliefs about the world that make them feel special or above average. Our sense of social identity comes from the groups to which we see ourselves belonging."

Additionally, "for conspiracy theories, one of the factors that makes their belief so strong may well be the sense of personal identity that comes from belonging to a particular group, i.e., the minority that "knows" what is really going on, may cause them to reject any evidence that might shake that belief. This can also cause them to look down on people who may not share their beliefs, i.e., "the sheeple" who are easily fooled."

I also wonder if at least some of these people are isolated loners, and spread these theories to get attention from their peers, who them affirm their self perception of themselves as being special or above average for having this special knowledge about world events. I also have no doubt that some of them must also suffer from paranoia. If that is the case, they don't need encouragement, but compassion, to be carefully challenged and rebuked, and treated.

https://www.culteducation.com/reference/larouche/larouche9.pdf

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2265/abstract?campaign=wolearlyview

http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p13661/mobile/ch07s03.html

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201708/what-makes-conspiracy-theories-so-appealing

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/International_Jewish_conspiracy

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007058

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Truth_movement

Geeking out

After the huge success of the first Star Wars spinoff film, Rogue One, the internet is abuzz with speculation about the plot of the Han Solo spinoff, which is due for release in 2018.

All that is known is that it will be a Han Solo origin story, and it is also possible that it will be a trilogy rather than a stand alone movie. Lead actor, Alden Ehrenreich is reportedly contracted for three movies. There definitely is ample scope for compelling stories to be told across multiple films.

It could explore Solo's friendship with Lando Calrissian, who will be played by Donald Glover, and how he won the Millennium Falcon from him in a game of chance, or his association with Jabba the Hutt.

No doubt fans are also itching to see how he met Chewbacca, and rescued him from slavery, events that have been written about in Star Wars spinoff books. The pair formed a lifelong friendship that ended when Solo was killed in The Force Awakens.

These stories are probably too big to be told in one movie. I'm sure it has never occurred to Disney, parent company of Lucasfilm, that it will be more lucrative to make three movies rather than one.

http://au.ign.com/articles/2017/01/04/star-wars-han-solo-movie-release-rumored-to-move-to-christmas-2018

Wipe your mind of this one

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has grossed $1 billion in ticket sales after twelve days of release. After the divisive prequels, we have a movie that manages to recapture what made the original trilogy enduring classics. While it's not perfect, it got a lot right. CG wasn't over used, the dialogue and performances were good, and the plot focussed on character development and action without getting bogged down in politicking and excessive exposition.

The Force Awakens was almost called Shadow of the Empire.  I'm glad they didn't go with this title. It would have been too similar to Shadows of the Empire, Lucasfilm's 1996 multimedia project which was intended to fill the gaps between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

It spawned a mediocre video game which was released on PC and Nintendo's Nintendo 64 console, and a badly written novel, a graphic novel, toys, and a soundtrack. The main character was smuggler Dash Rendar, a Han Solo clone who, after helping Luke Skywalker find where bounty hunter Boba Fett took Han Solo, was killed off at the end of the novel in order to preserve the continuity of the movies.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4137&p=.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Shadows_of_the_Empire

Delayed gratification

Having a new Star Wars movie to look forward to takes me back to my childhood. While I'm not one of those die hard fans who will be going to a midnight screening so that they can be among the first in the world to see it, I've been talking with friends on social media and my brother about whether or not Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be any good. I think it's almost certain to be better than The Phantom Menace, and that's all we need to worry about.

George Lucas has minimal involvement in the The Force Awakens. Before he sold Lucasfilm to Disney, he wrote story treatments for a new Star Wars trilogy, but pretty much none of his ideas were used in the final script. Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the scripts for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, came back to write the script for The Force Awakens. We will be spared the at times clunky dialogue of the prequels.

Secondly, in J.J. Abrams, we have a director who is actually a people person, and understands the process of acting. In the interviews with the cast members on the DVDs of  the original trilogy, they consistently said that they found George Lucas hard to engage with. I am sure that in person he is actually a nice man, but he's introverted.

Thirdly, unlike the prequels which relied too heavily on CG characters and digital sets, The Force Awakens has scaled back slightly on the use of CG, and uses built sets and actual locations. It should make for more real looking movie, just like the originals that captured my imagination when I was in primary school. Roll on this weekend.

Where's Luke Skywalker when you need him?

Here it is; the final trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. All I know is that it's set 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi, and that as well as some returning characters from the original trilogy, it has some new heroes and villains in it.

It will be released on December 17, which is just under two months away. It takes a tremendous amount of willpower to avoid reading spoilers. There will be battles with explosions, and lightsabre duels. People will die. There will be surprise revelations. That's all I need to know.

What's wrong with this picture?

Within the geek subculture is a large cohort of action figure collectors who are usually of adult age. Factory production error figures are often highly sought after by this collectors. Either there are mistakes made with the manufacture of the figure itself, or it has been packaged incorrectly. I have no children of my own, nor am I an uncle. That doesn't stop me from looking at toys occasionally.

I was in a department store the other day when I came across this. I didn't buy it as I try to avoid impulse purchases. Any Star Wars fan will know that this is not Luke Skywalker. Either that, or Star Wars has jumped on the transgender bandwagon. This is actually Toryn Farr. She helped coordinate the Rebels' evacuation of Echo Base in one scene in The Empire Strikes Back.  

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Toryn_Farr

Not anymore

Leonard Maltin

Generations of film buffs have loyally read film critic Leonard Maltin's annual Movie Guide. Yesterday America's answer to Bill Collins announced that due to dwindling readership and declining sales, the 2015 edition of this essential reference work will be the last.

Maltin is known to Australian audiences from his appearances on Entertainment Tonight, and also from his three part interview with George Lucas on the 1995 VHS release of the Star Wars trilogy.

Mr Maltin didn't review every movie in the guide himself, but oversaw a team editors and contributors. Part of the fun of reading this guide was the four point rating system, and at times irreverent writing style, which gave films scores from BOMB to four stars. 

The poorly reviewed If Lucy Fell (1996) was slammed as a vanity project for its director, writer, and star Eric Schaeffer, but the guide marked it up because Schaeffer wrote himself a scene in which he got to kiss his co-star, Elle Macpherson. 

While I'm no Luddite, it increasingly seems that the market for printed reference works aimed at a popular readership is disappearing. The print media is going through a transition phase, and this is another casualty.

Of all people, I hope that Christians are still in the habit of consulting reference books, Christian and otherwise.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Maltin's_Movie_Guide

http://deadline.com/2014/08/r-i-p-leonard-maltins-movie-guide-internet-kills-iconic-print-paperback-after-45-years-821849/

http://www.movingpictureblog.com/2014/08/hale-and-farewell-to-leonard-maltins.html

Jedi slime

General Grievous

A good way to cope with stress at work (which is more of an issue than some people might think) is to find little things in the day that you find amusing. I thought I would share one of them with my reader(s). Yesterday whilst doing some cataloguing I came across this tome, The Memoirs of General Grivas (London, Longmans, 1964). Who was this General Grivas? After a bit of digging, thanks to the good people at homework website Factmonster (a division of Pearson Education) I discovered that he was George Grivas (1897-1974). My home city of Melbourne has one of the world's largest Greek communities outside of Athens, but I have never studied Greek history, so I had no idea who he was. One thing is clear, however. Grivas is not to be confused with General Grievous, who was the commander of the Separatist droid army during the Clone Wars in Star Wars.

George Grivas (1897-1984)

Grivas on the other hand was a Greek and Cypriot general. Some people regard him as a national hero. He may not have killed scores of Jedi knights and kept their lightsabres as trophies, have four arms, speak in a raspy voice, or own a personal star ship named the Invisible Hand, but from what I have read about Grivas, he sounds like he was just as ruthless as his fictional counterpart.

Factmonster states as follows:

"He joined the Greek army and early became an advocate of enosis (the union of Cyprus with Greece). After the Second World War, he played a sinister role in the anti-leftist repression that helped bring about the Greek Civil War. In 1954 he returned to Cyprus to head a guerrilla army (EOKA), which conducted struggle against the British in Cyprus from 1955 to 1959. He opposed the 1959 agreements establishing the independent republic of Cyprus. In August, 1964, after fighting broke out between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, he commanded the Cypriot national guard and headed Greek forces on the island. Grivas was forced to leave Cyprus, however, in November 1967, after a number of Turkish Cypriots were killed in a battle with Grivas's national guard. In 1971, he returned secretly to the island, launching a terrorist campaign against the government of President Makarios. Shortly after his death, his movement succeeded in temporarily overthrowing Makarios, thus opening the way for a Turkish seizure of the northern third of the island (July, 1974) and its defacto partition."

"http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/.html." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.

© 1994, 2000-2006, on Fact Monster.

© 2000–2007 Pearson Education, publishing as Fact Monster.

13 Feb. 2011

A good day to be a Star Wars nerd

Force Unleashed II dated for October News | Eurogamer

LucasArts continues to milk the Star Wars cash cow, announcing a sequel to 2007's spectacularly successful spinoff video game, The Force Unleashed, imaginatively titled The Force Unleashed II. Who could blame them for wanting to exploit their most lucrative intellectual property?

If you played the original game, you'd be aware that it was set in an alternative Star Wars universe. In the years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, Darth Vader takes a secret apprentice named Galen Marek. Vader dispatches Marek around the galaxy to hunt down and kill the remnants of the Jedi Order, which he does in spectacular fashion, slashing, electrocuting, and throwing his enemies around the screen. All of this carnage was animated using ground breaking physics effects. The previous game had a branching storyline, which culminated in a climactic battle between Marek and Vader. The game gave you the option to either kill Vader and become the Emperor's apprentice, or spare his life and be killed by the Emperor instead.

This sequel's continuity obviously assumes that you chose the latter option, otherwise there wouldn't be another game, would there? Unless they've worked out another way to bring him back, since the game ended with him being very definitely killed. Not much is known about the game's storyline. However, some teaser artwork has been released showing Marek on the planet Dagobah, with Yoda's hut in the background. Does this mean that Marek will battle Yoda? Roll on October 26.

Avert your eyes

The end of a decade is always a time of reflection. Film reviewers from the AV Club have compiled a list of what they consider to be the worst films of the 2000s. You won't find much to disagree with on this list. I'm not alone in saying that I'm glad to see that Battlefield Earth made the list. Back in the days of VHS, my brother Scott and I spent an excruciating 2 hours on a Saturday night watching this film. We made the experience slightly more palatable by making sarcastic comments all the way through.

To summarise, in the year 3000, Earth has been invaded and conquered by giant dreadlocked aliens from the planet Psychlo, who have enslaved the remnants of the human race. One man, Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler (Barry Pepper) is depicted as a quasi-messianic figure. After escaping his alien captors, he assembles a band of resistance fighters who rise up and defeat their alien overlords using jetfighters, which despite having been locked away in a hangar for 1000 years, are still in pristine condition.

Apart from the fact that it's adapted from the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology (aka an elaborate scam to rip off gullible, insecure celebrities) you may ask what's wrong with this film? Where do you start?

For one thing, someone should have a quiet word to the film editor, and told him that editing a film is not like editing a book, where for the sake of consistency, you use the same font on every page. Hence the same wipe effect is used for every scene transition. Along with the text crawl during the opening titles, the use of this technique suggests that the producers and director envisioned this film as a science fiction epic in the vein of the Star Wars saga. They were wrong. It's not.

As for the cast, most of the actors make the most of the material they've been given. We haven't heard from Barry Pepper for a while. John Travolta is simply unconvincing as the lead villain, Terl. I've never been a fan of Travolta. Villains are supposed to be evil and menacing, he comes across as fey and campy. By comparison, Kenneth Williams was far more convincing when caled upon to play villains in the Carry On seem films. It can only be assumed that Forest Whitaker only took a role in this film for the pay cheque, or that his agent gave him bad advice. At least he has since become a widely respected and accomplished actor.

The screenplay is largely confusing and incoherent. The plot, such as it is, is riddled with holes. Watching films often requires the viewer to suspend disbelief, but it stretches credibility to ask us to accept that 1000 year old fighter planes are still airworthy. To make matters worse, the dialogue is so bad that you wonder how the actors can recite it keeping a straight face. The Psychlo characters speak using nonsensical compound words like "breathe-gas" and "man-animal." These also appear in Hubbard's novel. Did anyone ever think to tell him this wasn't a very good idea? Apparently not.

Many of the scenes are filmed on an angle and using a blue filter. You can also pick at the bargain basement special effects. The film's grainy look is achieved by having production hands stand out of shot and throw handfuls of dirt across the screen. These elements are supposed to evoke a dystopic vision of the future, but all it does is give the viewer a headache. If you can make it through this film in one sitting, then you should be affirmed for your resilience in the face of adversity. If not, I suggest you write an angry letter to Mr Travolta, and ask him to give you back the two hours of your life that you wasted watching this travesty. It's his vanity project, so he should accept responsibility for inflicting it upon the world. Look for it in the weekly section of your local video store.