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It was 30 years ago today that “Star Wars” was first released in theaters. I’ve done at least one entry that I can think of regarding the film’s importance to me, so I’m not sure I need to do another. But I at least wanted to mark this day somehow as this event has sent ripples through my life that are still influencing me and an entire generation today.

I wonder what this generation’s cultural touchstone will be. Or will anything like “Star Wars” ever come about again? With our entertainment options being so varied and splintered like they are today, between TV, the internet, movies, DVDs, and music, maybe the climate that existed that made “Star Wars” such a phenomenon simply doesn’t exist anymore.

On the one hand, that thought is somewhat thrilling. To know that our culture cannot be so easily dominated by any one entity is wonderful. It allows people to experiment, to explore, and to discover things that matter to them, rather than be force-fed what the corporations would like them to ingest.

On the other hand, I find it sad to think that we as a people are isolating ourselves even more from one another to the point that we don’t have common interests. Everyone knows a little something about “Star Wars”. But not everyone knows about Homestar Runner, LOLCats, or Daxflame. Nor do they all listen to The Decemberists, Arcade Fire, or The Arctic Monkeys. Or hang out at MySpace, Facebook, or Friendster.

Youth culture used to be a very narrow field. It was a club anyone could belong to as long as they paid attention to one of the four TV channels or listened to the pop/rock radio station in town. Now there are so many venues for kids to get their entertainment and interact that it’s impossible to be up on the latest trends.

I know its weird coming from a 32-year old guy that sounds like a Grumpy Old Man who just wants those damn kids to stay off his lawn, but I actually kind of worry for the upcoming generation. They don’t have the kind of unifying culture that I did growing up. Sure things started to splinter in my age, what with cable becoming the norm (and, boy, did I feel left out when all my town friends were watching Nickelodeon and I just had PBS), but things are much more shattered today than they were even 10 years ago, let alone 30 when “Star Wars” came out.

Then again, the internet is such a vast world of knowledge at your fingertips that it could go in the opposite direction, too. Maybe no one will ever know what it’s like to be left out of the loop as long as they have Google and Wikipedia. Maybe we won’t have the same kind of isolated Trekkies and Star Wars geeks that we did before, because now the idea of having one primary interest seems ridiculous when we have the internet and all the things it offers. Maybe it will bring about a utopia where everyone can learn to appreciate other’s interests because they’re all bound by this common experience online. Maybe the internet is the new cultural touchstone that I’m looking for.

The world – and entertainment especially – moves quickly nowadays. We can download music rather than wait for hours to hear it on the radio. We can download or catch up on TiVo if we missed an episode of our favorite shows. The internet might be a gathering place for people, but I don’t think it will ever really provide the sort of narrow focus that the world did back in 1977 when the only movie anyone wanted to see took place in a galaxy far, far away.

For better or worse, “Star Wars” might have been the first and last truly worldwide phenomenon. It came about at the right time, in the right place, and the world was ready for it. And that’s something that this world might never know again.

Flags of Our Fathers
The raising of the flag at Iwo Jima is one of those iconic pictures that is engraved in the minds of all Americans. The real story behind the photo, however, is not so well-known. The image was used by a desperate war department to help sell bonds that would support a battle that Americans were growing tired of. Just as it used the image, so did it use the men who were a part of the photo (and even some who were nowhere near the flag that day) as the pitchmen. The three that traveled the country to raise sales each dealt with their newfound celebrity in different ways. Flags of Our Fathers attempts to tell this complicated chapter in WWII, but, unfortunately, it has a hard time focusing on which part of the story it wants to tell. Sometimes it wants to tell the battle of Iwo Jima. Sometimes it wants to tell the story of the men who toured for the war department. Sometimes it wants to tell the story of the son of one of these men. Somewhere in the middle of these three stories is a solid film. Unfortunately this lack of focus leaves us feeling hollow, never being able to latch on to any characters long enough or deeply enough to get to know them, and therefore care about them. Thankfully there are moments of excellence, which makes this one at least worth seeing, but probably not worth remembering.
3/5 bananas

Shogun Assassin
There’s a history in Hollywood of cutting up old foreign films and repackaging them for a quick, cheap buck, usually with less-than stellar results. This flick is no exception in that it takes two films from a Japanese samurai series, “Lone Wolf and Cub”, and slices them together into an incoherent mess. However, it’s an entertaining incoherent mess, using only the best fight scenes from the two films to make what is essentially a greatest hits mix tape. I’ve heard the Lone Wolf and Cub films are much better on their own and I don’t doubt it at all. The manga the series is based on is very famous and well-respected, so it wouldn’t surprise me that the films are great. But if all you’re looking for is a fun 90 minutes of great sword fights, cheesy fountains of blood that Tarantino would later give a nod to in the Kill Bill films, some poor dubbing, and a pretty trippy soundtrack, you can’t go wrong with Shogun Assassin.
3/5 bananas

Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill!
Speaking of grindhouse films, this is one of the granddaddy’s of them all. Faster, Pussycat is the perfect specimen of mid-60′s underground cinema, featuring hot women (even by today’s standards) who are hell on wheels and in the sack, violence, fast cars, lesbian undertones…what more could you ask for? Really, I think the best way to fully appreciate how awesomely cheesy, but incredibly entertaining, and way ahead of its time this film really is, you just have to watch the trailer.

4 / 5 bananas

The Fountain
The films of Stanley Kubrick were rarely appreciated in their time. It often took time and perspective for them to be truly understood and seen for how important they were. I predict that this film by Darren Aronofsky, director of “Pi” and “Requiem for a Dream”, will be like 2001, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut – someday it will be vindicated. The film is complicated as it deals with three separate stories intertwined, all featuring the same main character played by Hugh Jackman, each man trying to find a “cure” for the disease of death. I really can’t even begin to describe much more without going into a 4-page essay on what it all means. The film features some of the most stunning images you’ll ever see. Gold hues wash through nearly every frame, giving it a very angelic and otherworldly glow. The settings are beautiful, the acting is quite good, and the overall theme of the film – life, death, rebirth, and our spiritual journey through each – is very engaging. This is one I’m going to buy for sure at some point because it’s one I’m going to want to visit again and again. This one won’t be for everyone, but if you’ve had any interest in it, check it out.
4.5/5 bananas

Rocky Balboa
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film where the plot and the film itself so closely mirror one another. The Rocky franchise started out strong, had a few bumps along the way, gave the world Dolph Lundgren, and then mercifully fizzled out (Does anyone remember part 5? I didn’t think so…). So when I heard Stallone was doing another one I thought to myself, “It’s over, Rock. Don’t even bother. No one cares anymore. Your time is in the past; leave it there.” However, I kept hearing more and more positive reviews of the movie, so I decided I’d download it from Amazon’s Unbox service directly to my TiVo (Ain’t technology grand?). I wasn’t expecting much from this old codger of a film series, but figured I’d give it one last shot at glory. Similarly, Rocky is a washed up boxer whose glory days are far behind. His wife has died, his son is ashamed and sick of living in his old man’s shadow, his old cronies have day jobs, and life has been reduced to retelling the same old stories to the patrons in his restaurant, to the point where they can finish them for him as they roll their eyes. But when a fantasy sports show on ESPN puts old school Rock up against the current heavy weight champ, the computer figures Rock would have won. This sparks the idea for a real-life match, which gives Rock a reason to make a brief, final comeback. Again, I went into this fully expecting it to be a sad, last hurrah at a dying film franchise, much like everyone expects Rock to get the shit beat out of him by the much younger champ. However, Rocky makes his comeback much to my surprise and to the ringside crowd. This is a film about age. It’s a film about missed opportunities, bad decisions, and a sad realization that time marches on. While the comeback might be a bit silly, for whatever reason you root for Rock through the entire match. Maybe its his “aw shucks” nice guy attitude throughout the film and his desire to rediscover his dignity that make you care. Whatever the reason, this film shocked me like a film hasn’t in quite a while. I definitely thought this was going to be a real stinker and it has wound up being a film I’m still thinking about almost a week later.
4/5 bananas

The Omen (2006)
This was a total morbid curiosity for me and, well, as with most such films, this one lived up to its bad reputation. I don’t mind if you remake a film as long as you do something interesting with it. For example, “The Thing From Another World” became “John Carpenter’s The Thing” and it’s at least ten times better. However, when you remake a film and don’t do anything new or interesting, then I don’t really see the point. Such is the case with the 2006 remake of Richard Donner’s classic, “The Omen”. The new version is scene-for-scene practically the exact same film. Lines are directly lifted from the original. I just don’t see the point of it all. And, well, neither did anyone else as it was considered a pretty big bomb and ranks as one of the worst reviewed films of the year. Remakes are fine as long as they serve a purpose. If they’re the same movie, then what’s the point?
Even though its virtually the same as the original film, I’m only giving it 1/5 bananas.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Nothing really new on this one – it’s still a fun jaunt that’s probably about 20 minutes too long – I just wanted to get a refresher course so I’d be up to speed for the sequel that comes out this weekend. I will say, though, that the film looked mighty nice on our plasma TV…
3/5 bananas

Lord of War
You kids of the ’80′s will remember when, at the end of every episode of G.I. Joe or He-Man, the show would try to shoehorn in some moral of the story or a safety tip that was meant to make the program qualify as “educational”. The 20 preceding minutes were nothing more than a glorified toy commercial, but you get Lady Jaye telling us not to talk to strangers in the last 30 seconds and suddenly the show was supposed to have a deeper meaning. Even as kids we never fell for it. Lord of War spends the first 121 minutes of its 122 making us wish we were international arms dealers like Nic Cage’s character, Yuri. Yuri has a fleet of private jets, marries a supermodel, gets rich giving people the means to kill each other, and makes it look as cool as humanly possible. Even the classic crime story moral – “Crime doesn’t pay” – winds up being untrue as Yuri is coated in Teflon thanks to his dealings with the US Army brass. So after this brash, slick, 121 minutes, the film ends with an epilogue of text over the screen that tells us that arms dealers like Yuri are real, that they’re profiting off the lives of people, that the US government and its allies are the biggest arms dealers in the world, yada, yada, yada. Nice try, fellas, but we know BS when we see it. The entire film does its best to make the world of Yuri enviable by everyone, minus a few setbacks that could plague any one of us whether we were selling AK47′s to Liberia or not. The movie is cold, lifeless, staid, and, quite frankly, boring. We never care for any of the characters, not even to like them as we are obviously supposed to do with Yuri. For what could have been a pretty fascinating look at the ups and (real) downs of life in the international arms syndicate, instead we get a film that tries so hard to reach people with its flash and panache, that it winds up glorifying the thing it is trying to pass judgment on. This one’s not worth your time. So now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
2/5 bananas

This was my first full week off from school and, well, I’m suffering from withdrawal, for lack of a better term. It usually takes me a little while to sort my head out after school is over. There’s always that feeling of loss when not having anything to do. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of things for me to do around the house. But there’s always a period of detox after school is over where I have to come to terms with not having to read 50 pages of a novel for this class, read 5 poems for that class, and work on mid-term papers for both of them. It takes a while to get used to having free time.

So I’ve been sort of down this week because of it. Again, it’s withdrawal symptoms. You have this thing in your life that is a constant source of worry and busy and then suddenly it’s gone. It’s liberating and awesome, but it leaves you empty at the same time.

As with any addiction, being conscious of it is the first step to recovery. This week was sort of a wash, filled with the novelty of watching our favorite TV shows live (rather than TiVo’d) and being able to go out for dinner during the week. I’ve watched about 4 movies this week to boot (“The Fountain”, “Flags of our Fathers”, “Shogun Assassin” and “Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill!”, look for reviews later). All this while dishes piled up, dirty clothes weren’t getting washed, and various projects I’ve been wanting to work on while in school have sat untouched.

The weird thing is, this is what most people do when they come home from work. They sit in front of the TV with their dinner, watch American Idol, watch the news, and go to bed. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just not the lifestyle I’m used to anymore. It used to be my life, but that was also one of the most unhappy periods of my life. Nowadays I feel bad when that’s my evening, as it has been this week.

However, starting this weekend and going into next week, I’m going to make some changes to my after-work life. I have to remember that I’m at work eight hours of the day and am awake at home for another eight. I can get plenty done in the first eight, so there’s no reason I can’t get plenty done during the second eight. I’m still going to watch some TV and maybe a movie every night, but I also want to pick up the “piano” again, do the dishes, do the laundry, go to the gym, and other things that can happen now that I don’t have to read another Walt Whitman poem for a while (hopefully never, frankly). It’s not going to be easy when the recliner and TV are calling my name, but I have to do something to break out of this funk.

Urban Amoeba