With [George Lucas]'s attention elsewhere during most of its production, The Star Wars Holiday Special metastasized into a monster. Two directors and much turmoil later, the finished special didn’t so much resemble its namesake as it did another science-fiction film: The Thing with Two Heads. Onto the body of Lucas’s sentimental and irony-free Wookiee plotline, the producers and writers grafted a campy 70s variety show that makes suspension of disbelief impossible. In between minutes-long stretches of guttural, untranslated Wookiee dialogue that could almost pass for avant-garde cinema, Maude’s Bea Arthur sings and dances with the aliens from the movie’s cantina scene; The Honeymooners’ Art Carney consoles Chewbacca’s family with such comedy chestnuts as “Why all the long, hairy faces?”; Harvey Korman mugs shamelessly as a multi-limbed intergalactic Julia Child cooking “Bantha Surprise”; the Jefferson Starship pops up to play a number about U.F.O.’s; and original Star Wars cast members Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill walk around looking cosmically miserable.
"For someone so careful as Lucas, the special was an incomprehensible miscalculation."
-
A minimalist story. (Or a minimal story. So minimal.)
Well! Well? ...well. That seems like a story. But one with no detail whatsoever.
-
LJ Idol, Week 4: Impossible
“The impossible is possible...” — The Smashing Pumpkins, "Tonight, Tonight" "Name's Imm. Imm Possible." "That seems...unlikely." "You just…
-
Tom Waits writes science fiction
On this world, it rains whiskey. Most everything that is liquid here stings. This world, Farrs Omres, is full of unexpected tastes: Our…
- Post a new comment
- 3 comments
- Post a new comment
- 3 comments