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Luke's portrayal and scenes in TLJ are among my favorite in the whole saga, whereas his scenes in TROS were just plain embarrassing

Luke's portrayal and scenes in TLJ are among my favorite in the whole saga, whereas his scenes in TROS were just plain embarrassing

Luke's portrayal and scenes in TLJ are among my favorite in the whole saga, whereas his scenes in TROS were just plain embarrassing

Luke's portrayal and scenes in TLJ are among my favorite in the whole saga, whereas his scenes in TROS were just plain embarrassing

The prequels on all counts. In terms of scores, it's not even close, in terms of movies, the prequels are entertaining crap and the Hobbit is boring crap

Small Soldiers, I would say

Small Soldiers, I would say

Speaking of which, over the last three weeks or so I rewatched all the Potter films, for the first time since I switched to Blu-ray. With a distance of some 10 years, their flaws have only become more obvious. I re-read the books about two years ago, and while I've already forgotten much of the details again, it is disturbing how much of what made the books so good was simply dropped for the films.
 
One thing becomes apparent: Since fantasy plots are usually based on… fantastic elements and plot devices, what makes them work is integrating all those uncommon elements tightly into the rest of the story, so that when they finally become important, you accept them, because you're not taken unawares. Remove that tight integration and reduce it to one block of in-your-face exposition, and the whole thing becomes painfully simplistic. Repeat it multiple times per story, and you turn a dynamic plot into a checklist of plot devices. Try to shake things up by dropping some of the explanations or moving them *after* their plot changing event*, and you've devolved a successful eucatastrophy into a primitive deus ex machina.
 
*) The books have a lot of after-the-fact explanations, but they usually explain things that have been hinted at for several hundred pages before, which makes all the difference between feeling surprised and feeling cheated.
 
I'd say this alone sums about 80% of the film series. It bothered me, when these films first came out, when I had the books fresh in mind. When less focused on the books, they don't bother me any less, because without my brain automatically filling in the blanks in the story, even more of Rowling's original vision is lost - without the books as backup, these are not much more than big budget blockbuster renditions of flat and rather primitive stories, that try to hard to make up for the missing bits by making the Important Bits stand out more, often turning them into painful cliches. (The books are full of cliches, but they're intentional and well integrated, which again makes all the distance).
 
Ultimately, the only really successful entry in the series remains Azkaban. The first two films get half of their impact from introducing us to the magical setting, but once you're used to that, that all too easily turns into sugar overload (which I suppose includes the scores, at least to an extent, simply because they are very much in tune with the films). By contrast, the post-Azkaban films try to counter that by pretending to be more "mature". But they mostly fail to offset the "wonder of magic" by showing magic as an everyday thing, preferring to not show much of it at all - yet when they do, they still can't resist turning it into setpieces, which makes those moments stick out even more. That, and the way the plots and expositional elements are streamlined from the books' organically intertwined structure to a list of exposition scenes and setpiece payoffs, makes many of the scenes, and the dialogue, and by extent the acting (even of the most accomplished actors) seem awkward and artificial. In general, the pacing and timing within scenes is very uneven in most of these films.
 
And while the Yates entries are partially successful in taking the series into a "darker", more teenage-angsty direction that is in line with the later books (although Azkaban was quite successful in also being dark in the right places), they still suffer from those same problems cited above, and botch up their impact by watering down their payoff (Order of the Phoenix's finale, which turns from the book's nailbiting tension (because you're invested in the characters' stakes) into a visual effects extravaganza) or just leaving it out altogether (despite its other problems, Half-Blood Prince's finale, with
and the following battle with Harry & Co trying to hunt down the invaders, could have had a lot of impact - but the first point wasn't half as intense as in the book, and the second point was reduced to Snape and Harry running). After a series of films where too much happened in too little time, nothing at all seems to happen for most of Deathly Hallows Pt. 1's running time until a confusing and logically dodgy ending. For the last entry, so many plot checkboxes are left to tick off that the big visual effects battle doesn't leave any time to identify with the characters (or even follow their motives), and the Big Emotional Moments are again placed awkwardly and emphasised so much that they too mostly turn into very shallow cliches.
 
That's not to say that they don't work at all - each of the films has moments that work, and even move me. But many of those are just aspects of the story and characters that (at least if you know them from the books) still come through, even if the respective scenes often don't work well.
 
As for the music, each score has its moments, but none after Williams' entries come close to even the most by-the-numbers moments of the second score. Some might find all the sugarcoating in the first two scores too much for their tastes, but even then there's no denying that it's high quality sugarcoating. Few moments in the post-Azkaban scores rise above functional underscore, and when they do they're short bits of nice melodies, or technically accomplished set pieces (Desplat has a few) - but hardly anything that would provide something truly memorable (thematic or otherwise). Williams, on the other hand, showed in Azkaban that he was perfectly capable of taking (some of) his themes and maturing them for the darker stories to come, mixing them with (relatively) avant-garde bits and also scoring against the scene when appropriate - both the spotting and choice of mood and themes in that score are unusually inspired. Some of the "season changing inserts" (with the Whomping Willow catching birds etc.) are actually "defused" by the score to not take you out of the darker mood of the surrounding scenes. It's the only film in the series that manages to organically carry a mood across multiple scenes, even if they contain lighter moments in between, and a good deal of that is thanks to the score.
 
Despite having the highest stakes and the resolution in the final films, even Desplat (who does have some inspired and accomplished bits in the first of his two scores), fails to provide anything I would lastingly associate with the stories. Williams' music for Harry's first confrontation with Voldemort in the first film remains a darker and more impactful portrayal of their overall story than anything that came later. Naturally, this means they had to end the last film with Williams' original music (both for the last scene and the first part of the credits). There was nothing in the scores after Azkaban that could have served (tracked or redeveloped) as a worthy conclusion. Williams himself could have written one, that much is certain.

Which is also why the Potter films had to seriously dumb down and simplify the stories by removing most of the narrative devices. And yet most of them either feel rushed (because they try to cram too much story into too little film) or drag (because they attempt to not rush by adding awkward character/exposition scenes that don't work half as well as the stuff they've dropped). Tintin is easily a better paced and balanced film than most of the Potters.

In Spielberg's defense, Tintin's books are far shorter than Harry Potter's and there isn't much of  continuous story thread running through them, so I thought they did well to combine the books the way they did. It's not jarring to me at all and I have loved those books since I was a kid. 

1 - The Last Jedi - the only Disney era production I would consider good (although not great). Has some incredible moments (some of which provided JW with a fantastic canvas to paint in, they were really conceived to allow the music to carry them), a very striking look and does something interesting  things with some of the characters. The last Star Wars production to have characters in it
 
2 - The Force Awakens - It's alright, not great by any means, but it has nice energy and enthusiasm to it, a very good cast and fantastic closing scene that really allowed JW to shine
 
3 - Mandalorian Season 1 - Fun, looks great, although it's a bit too slight and disposable
 
4 - The whole thing is very meh, saved only by the great visuals and cinematography, plus the best space battle since ROTJ. Everything else is forgettable
 
5 - Mandalorian Season 2 - I rank it lower than Season 1 because it has all the same flaws (and thus makes even more apparent, minus the novelty factor)
 
6 - Solo - Great score. Loved the whole concept and design of Lady Proxima. And there's all there is to it
 
7 - Rise of Skywalker - Again, like Solo, great score. And Babu Frik. And it is my least favorite of all Star Wars movies. I only watched it once 
 

In Spielberg's defense, Tintin's books are far shorter than Harry Potter's and there isn't much of  continuous story thread running through them, so I thought they did well to combine the books the way they did. It's not jarring to me at all and I have loved those books since I was a kid. 

In Spielberg's defense, Tintin's books are far shorter than Harry Potter's and there isn't much of  continuous story thread running through them, so I thought they did well to combine the books the way they did. It's not jarring to me at all and I have loved those books since I was a kid. 

1/ THE LAST JEDI
 
Er...um...that's about it, really.
TFA is Star Wars' Greatest Hits. It adds nothing to the story, but it's fun.
TROS is a complete mess. The best thing that I can say about TROS is that it seems to be cobbled together from two-plus hours of deleted scenes. I'm certain that somewhere, there is a decent film trying to get out.
Haven't seen THE MADALORIAN.
ROGUE ONE could be the best of the lot...but probably isn't.
SOLO is plain embarrassing.
 
This is what $4,000,000,000 laughing, sounds like.

Come and See is absolutely unforgettable. I cannot imagine anyone being indifferent to it

The Alan Rickman/Emma Thompson does gives us the two best scenes in the movie, IMHO. The scene when he is buying the necklace from Rowan Atkinson and her scene crying in the bedroom

The Alan Rickman/Emma Thompson does gives us the two best scenes in the movie, IMHO. The scene when he is buying the necklace from Rowan Atkinson and her scene crying in the bedroom

Hayden doesn't have the build, the height, the walk nor the voice to play Darth Vader. Does this even make any sense?

I bet they’ll do some Kylo/Rey thing where they talk through the Force and so it’s Vader but in Anakin form, through Obi-Wan’s eyes. Or maybe a dream device so it’s one-sided and technically doesn’t mess with the canon.
 
 
We all knew Force Awakens was the last time a Star Wars movie would have that aura. I remember all the hype at the time and thinking, this is it, enjoy this.
 
I’m not even eulogizing. Star Wars and the faint of heart will survive. These things will either be fine or crappy or whatever, somebody will eventually stumble on some great take and that’ll be a good show or movie.
 
But obviously there’s nothing particularly unique about it when it’s one of many in a conglomerate. Now we’re so used to going “Uh huh, yeah, Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Pirates” it doesn’t register. Lucas’s independence was the magical and inscrutable thing about it even though it wavered between transcending or stooping to commercialization like any other franchise. The only difference is now it just sits at the same table as everything else (and these days it’s kind of the runner-up.)

Villeneuve's essay on the HBO deal:
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/dune-denis-villeneuve-blasts-warner-bros-1234851270/?fbclid=IwAR2kDHHPeBRqaFPFf44P9IvX3rllKboVxjgFqjcY7tVC0uIaBUjU_cZ_zKc
 
 
Of course it will. Why would anyone want to take their family out to the theaters and pay 5 x $15 to watch a film on the big screen when they can settle for their family room screens for their regular monthly streaming fee? No real "additional money" is being made here, except that Warner Bros' parent company (AT&T) wants to find a way to both consolidate the lacklustre HBO Max market performance and WB's growing debt crisis with a single power move.
 
I mean, Disney charged an extra fee for Mulan, and they still didn't end up making nearly as much as they would have with a proper theatrical release.
 
 
Because a case-by-case scenario, as Disney is taking, is driven by necessity. This unilateral "one size fits all" solution from WB sets an incredibly dangerous precedent for the industry. WB should taken it case by case, rather than putting their whole roster on the line.
 
 
That wasn't my point. Just think about Netflix's production model. They only ever pour out massive $100 million budgets to recruit the big league directors/actors onto their catalogue (Scorsese, Fincher, Russo Brothers, etc) and then make a million other films for nothing to just generate content to be consumed. They're temporarily in debt for brand investment.
 
But if this WB deal sets a precedent for other studios to just start throwing all their films onto streaming sites, why should the Netflix types continue to dump all that money? I mean there's only so much return with a fixed price model. No more gargauntan budgets pictures like Dune or Nolan epics. The thinking of the past was that those films would guarantee a minimum billion dollar return in the box office. That's obviously not how streaming works, so it's natural that traditional budgets are just going to get slashed across the board. It's not a comment on Netflix quality so much as it is practicality.
 
And independent films are going to have a harder time than ever in finding an audience.
 
This, of course, all depends on whether this WB deal pays off. If it is successful, then it's only going to encourage more of this kind of thinking in the industry for the future.

Hayden doesn't have the build, the height, the walk nor the voice to play Darth Vader. Does this even make any sense?

Just watched the second half of Batman and literally this second the main titles of Batman Returns play. 
Still the best Main Title cue of Elfman's career and one of the best of all time. 

Here's one I'd wanted to do for a while...and it's a big one 
 
 

Now you know what us Europeans have to go through with the shipping costs. I wish all labels could ship from different parts of the world