TOP TEN STAR WARS MOMENTS
Ahead of the release of the new Clone Wars animated movie, our film critic gives us his top ten Star Wars moments...
1. Death Star Assault (A New Hope)
Vader’s paternal revelation at the end of Empire is probably the saga’s most famous scene, but it’s the end of A New Hope that best sums Star Wars up. From John Williams’s driving score to the brilliant effects of a young ILM, the destruction of the Death Star is just, well, it’s just awesome. There’s no other word to describe it. Even to this day, I still feel captivated as Luke fires that last gasp shot, still sense that deathly breath on the back of my neck as Vader homes in on his prey, and still jump for joy as Han swoops in right at the last second. It’s what cinema was made for, and nothing before or since has come close to matching its unique adrenaline rush.
2. “No, I am your father…” (Empire Strikes Back)
Well duh.
3. Battle of Hoth (Empire Strikes Back)
It’s the AT-ATs. The second those mechanical behemoths move gracefully through the Hoth fog, you know you’re in for something special. Beautifully crafted by ILM they’re probably the series’ most impressive effects achievement, and lend the Battle of Hoth a grandeur that most other Star Wars war sequences lack. Throw in vicious wampas, those nifty snowspeeders and the nicely tense relationship between Leia and Han and you have the perfect opening to the deepest and darkest of all the Star Wars films.
4. Darth Maul vs. Qui Gon and Obi Wan (Phantom Menace)
Arguably the coolest (though not necessarily the best) lightsaber fight in the saga, this is all about the visuals. Because while it’s impossible to invest much emotion in what’s going on - what with Qui Gon and Darth Maul being mere fillers designed to flesh out Episode I’s scant story - it’s still undeniably cool watching a big red evil guy fighting two Jedi with a double-ended lightsaber. And with John Williams whipping up a storm on the music front, you can even ignore Jar Jar Binks’s wacky antics and just sit back and enjoy some classic Star Wars escapism.
5. Zam Wessell Attacks! (Attack of the Clones)
For my money, Attack of the Clones is the best of the prequels, boasting as it does some of the finest action the modern trilogy has to offer. The coliseum battle, the Jango Fett versus Obi Wan fight, and the sight of Yoda arming-up for his duel with Count Dooku were all contenders for a spot on this list, but the chase for bounty hunter Zam Wessell takes the crown. Delivering both eye popping spectacle and some pretty well-written banter between Anakin and Obi Wan, it’s a great way to open the film and prime the audience for a long-awaited roller-coaster ride after the staid exposition of Menace.
6. Order 66 (Revenge of the Sith)
Lucas has often said that he thinks of Star Wars as a silent movie, and while that goes a long way to explaining the verbal diarrhoea he calls dialogue, it also contributes towards scenes like this. Palpatine is on his way to becoming Emperor and as he executes Order 66, the directive that turns the army of Clones against the Republic, Lucas shows us Jedi across the galaxy meeting their maker. The fact that their names are known only to the most ardent of Star Wars geeks doesn’t really matter. This is all about sound and vision, with Williams’s haunting music setting a tragic tone and the astonishing CGI vistas for once coming up trumps.
7. “How about…sister?” (Return of the Jedi)
Another example of Williams’s fine music, this is the high-point of the lightsaber battle between father and son that concludes Return of the Jedi. Trying to work out a way to finally lure Luke to the Dark Side, Vader turns his attentions to his friends and, in particular, his sister. His threat to seduce Leia encourages Luke to attack his father and Williams’s guttural music (in what is arguably the finest of his Star Wars scores) is suitably epic accompaniment for one of the series’ most emotionally-charged moments.
8. The Rebel Fleet (Empire Strikes Back)
Before The Dark Knight, this was the darkest ending any blockbuster had ever seen. A lot of its bleakness is due to the set-up, of course, with Han encased in carbonite, Luke’s hand located in Cloud City several hundred parsecs from the rest of his body and Chewie and Lando heading off to Tatooine to take on the might of Jabba the Hutt. But there’s also a lot to be said for the scene itself. Kersher shoots a simple wide shot which has Luke and Leia looking out into the bleakness of space, their futures undecided. Star Wars wouldn’t be this depressing again until Episode I.
9. Twin Suns (A New Hope)
It’s hard to believe that the guy who filmed this iconic shot of Luke staring meaningfully into Tatooine’s two suns is the same man who drenched the prequels in messy CGI, because what makes this sequence work so well is its simplicity. Stripped back to its bare components - just the scenery, the actor and the music - it’s one of the banner moments of A New Hope, and acts as a reminder of what Lucas seems to have forgotten: that he’s an incredibly talented visualist even without all his technology.
10. “Begun the Clone War has…” (Attack of the Clones)
As well as being jam-packed with action, Attack of the Clones is the only prequel which neatly connects with the original films (Sith is a little too ham-fisted for me). We see some of Anakin’s anger and arrogance bubbling up to the surface, the origin of Boba Fett and the start of the Clone Wars. Time will only tell if the campaign is worth fleshing out in the latest no-honest-this-really-is-the-last-ever-Star-Wars-film film, but the start is stunning stuff. Look at all those Clone Troopers…
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT... ISAAC HAYES RIP
For most people of my generation, Isaac Hayes is the guy who played Chef in South Park and sang about his chocolate salty balls. Sadly, he's also the guy who seemingly couldn't take jokes about Scientology and quit the show because of it, amongst various rumours about exactly who was making his decisions for him. That was pretty much the last thing he did that hit the headlines, so it's a shame they were mostly negative, with accusations of hypocrisy from the show's creators, as he'd been happy to make fun of other religions, but drew the line when it came to his own.
But Ike won't be remembered for that in years to come, he'll be remembered as one of the greatest musicians ever to walk this earth, with his output from the late 60s to the late 70s breaking new ground for black culture. Even if you only know Theme From Shaft, you can appreciate just how incredible his talents were, as it's a song that shatters all kinds of boundaries and defies all kinds of conventions for the way it uses orchestration in the lengthy and famous intro.
The Shaft soundtrack was an incredible achievement, arguably making the film more famous and important than it actually deserved on its own merits, but his greatest work was probably the album Hot Buttered Soul, which demonstrated his ability to take pop songs and turn them into funk-soul epics. The album starts with Walk On By, lasting over 12 minutes and incorporating more great pop hooks than most artists can manage in their whole careers.
Across the next four or five albums, Ike proved himself time and time again to be a genius arranger and composer, even if many of his most famous tracks were covers. Along with David Porter, he co-wrote and performed on so many of Stax Records' biggest hits (like Soul Man, for example), and his legacy is an incredible one, even if his later work didn't match up to his golden years. Ike's gone, but he won't be forgotten.
For most people of my generation, Isaac Hayes is the guy who played Chef in South Park and sang about his chocolate salty balls. Sadly, he's also the guy who seemingly couldn't take jokes about Scientology and quit the show because of it, amongst various rumours about exactly who was making his decisions for him. That was pretty much the last thing he did that hit the headlines, so it's a shame they were mostly negative, with accusations of hypocrisy from the show's creators, as he'd been happy to make fun of other religions, but drew the line when it came to his own.
But Ike won't be remembered for that in years to come, he'll be remembered as one of the greatest musicians ever to walk this earth, with his output from the late 60s to the late 70s breaking new ground for black culture. Even if you only know Theme From Shaft, you can appreciate just how incredible his talents were, as it's a song that shatters all kinds of boundaries and defies all kinds of conventions for the way it uses orchestration in the lengthy and famous intro.
The Shaft soundtrack was an incredible achievement, arguably making the film more famous and important than it actually deserved on its own merits, but his greatest work was probably the album Hot Buttered Soul, which demonstrated his ability to take pop songs and turn them into funk-soul epics. The album starts with Walk On By, lasting over 12 minutes and incorporating more great pop hooks than most artists can manage in their whole careers.
Across the next four or five albums, Ike proved himself time and time again to be a genius arranger and composer, even if many of his most famous tracks were covers. Along with David Porter, he co-wrote and performed on so many of Stax Records' biggest hits (like Soul Man, for example), and his legacy is an incredible one, even if his later work didn't match up to his golden years. Ike's gone, but he won't be forgotten.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
WATCHING, READING, LISTENING TO
The staff of Entertainment Manchester reveal what's been entertaining them over the last seven days...
THE WRITER
WATCHING: The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. The Mummy franchise is one of the better Indiana Jones rip-offs and this second sequel to the 1999 original is a solidly entertaining piece of fluff - despite its flaws. Rachel Weisz replacement Maria Bello is a particular problem as she grapples unconvincingly with an English accent, while Mark Millar and Alfred Gough's screenplay is limp and uninspired. Still Brendan Fraser's on top charismatic form and there are enough wildly OTT action scenes to make this a worthwhile Friday night out.
READING: Goldfinger. Last summer I decided to work my way through all twelve of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, and I‘m currently on book seven: Goldfinger. I've heard that it gets a little silly towards the end (although it's hard to see anything being dafter than the giant squid at the end of Doctor No), but I'm only half-way through so far and at the moment it's quite a low-key head-to-head between 007 and Goldfinger. They've met twice, first in a Miami card game and then for a few rounds of golf, and Fleming has built a taut, gripping tale of two men trying to get the better of each other. Let's hope it doesn't slip quite as badly as its reputation suggests.
LISTENING TO: I've had two albums on my iPod recently: Coldplay's Viva La Vida and The Dark Knight soundtrack. The former is an entertaining but frustrating listen. It certainly has the variation that X&Y lacked and there are some fantastic songs on there. But it feels like the band are trying too hard to defy their critics and I'd prefer them to go back to the maligned but more satisfying 'indie schmindie' of Parachutes. Meanwhile, James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer have created another corker for The Dark Knight. It incorporates the epic grandiosity they perfected on the Batman Begins soundtrack, but fittingly for something Joker-related, it possess a vicious twist that cuts through you like a certain criminal's famous pencil trick.
THE EDITOR
WATCHING: No thanks to Richard Branson, I've been watching The Wire and Dexter on FX, which has now disappeared from Virgin's cable TV just after the new series of both of them had started. Thanks for that, Dicky. Luckily my parents are now recording them off Sky for me. The most recent episode of The Wire was awesome, and while Dexter isn't quite up to the high standards of the first series, it's still better than most other things out there.
READING: Taking a break from Sherlock Holmes, I read Grace After Midnight, the autobiography of Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson from The Wire, where she plays, erm, 'Snoop'. She was born a crack baby in Baltimore, grew up on the streets and was sent to prison for killing a woman in self-defence before getting spotted by the guy who plays Omar on the show and getting hired to basically play herself. Not your usual actor's story, then.
LISTENING TO: Sometimes, you can forget just how great an album really is, and I 'rediscovered' Curtis by Curtis Mayfield this week when it came up on my iPod. Every single track is genius personified, with powerful socio-political lyrics, funky soulful pop hooks and such dense and varied instrumentation that new sounds appear to you every time you listen to it. The man really was a legend.
The staff of Entertainment Manchester reveal what's been entertaining them over the last seven days...
THE WRITER
WATCHING: The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. The Mummy franchise is one of the better Indiana Jones rip-offs and this second sequel to the 1999 original is a solidly entertaining piece of fluff - despite its flaws. Rachel Weisz replacement Maria Bello is a particular problem as she grapples unconvincingly with an English accent, while Mark Millar and Alfred Gough's screenplay is limp and uninspired. Still Brendan Fraser's on top charismatic form and there are enough wildly OTT action scenes to make this a worthwhile Friday night out.
READING: Goldfinger. Last summer I decided to work my way through all twelve of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, and I‘m currently on book seven: Goldfinger. I've heard that it gets a little silly towards the end (although it's hard to see anything being dafter than the giant squid at the end of Doctor No), but I'm only half-way through so far and at the moment it's quite a low-key head-to-head between 007 and Goldfinger. They've met twice, first in a Miami card game and then for a few rounds of golf, and Fleming has built a taut, gripping tale of two men trying to get the better of each other. Let's hope it doesn't slip quite as badly as its reputation suggests.
LISTENING TO: I've had two albums on my iPod recently: Coldplay's Viva La Vida and The Dark Knight soundtrack. The former is an entertaining but frustrating listen. It certainly has the variation that X&Y lacked and there are some fantastic songs on there. But it feels like the band are trying too hard to defy their critics and I'd prefer them to go back to the maligned but more satisfying 'indie schmindie' of Parachutes. Meanwhile, James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer have created another corker for The Dark Knight. It incorporates the epic grandiosity they perfected on the Batman Begins soundtrack, but fittingly for something Joker-related, it possess a vicious twist that cuts through you like a certain criminal's famous pencil trick.
THE EDITOR
WATCHING: No thanks to Richard Branson, I've been watching The Wire and Dexter on FX, which has now disappeared from Virgin's cable TV just after the new series of both of them had started. Thanks for that, Dicky. Luckily my parents are now recording them off Sky for me. The most recent episode of The Wire was awesome, and while Dexter isn't quite up to the high standards of the first series, it's still better than most other things out there.
READING: Taking a break from Sherlock Holmes, I read Grace After Midnight, the autobiography of Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson from The Wire, where she plays, erm, 'Snoop'. She was born a crack baby in Baltimore, grew up on the streets and was sent to prison for killing a woman in self-defence before getting spotted by the guy who plays Omar on the show and getting hired to basically play herself. Not your usual actor's story, then.
LISTENING TO: Sometimes, you can forget just how great an album really is, and I 'rediscovered' Curtis by Curtis Mayfield this week when it came up on my iPod. Every single track is genius personified, with powerful socio-political lyrics, funky soulful pop hooks and such dense and varied instrumentation that new sounds appear to you every time you listen to it. The man really was a legend.
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