Posts Tagged ‘Lawrence Kasdan’
Friday, June 28th, 2024
June 24, 1994
It always seems to surprise people when I admit stuff like this, but until now I had never seen WYATT EARP. And when I was getting ready to watch it and do this review I worried I was gonna get myself into trouble because it came out six months after TOMBSTONE, and lived and died in its comparisons to TOMBSTONE, so I know everyone in the comments is gonna want to talk about that. And the thing is I still haven’t seen TOMBSTONE either. Yeah, I know. I’ll get around to it.
Initially I thought I should do that first, but then I realized it was a unique opportunity to be the one guy watching WYATT EARP on its 30th anniversary with zero instinct to compare and contrast to TOMBSTONE. I have been preparing three decades to be this specific guy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Baldwin, Annabeth Gish, Betty Buckley, Bill Pullman, Catherine O'Hara, Dan Gordon, David Andrews, Dennis Quaid, Doc Holliday, Gene Hackman, Ian Bohen, James Newton Howard, Jeff Fahey, Jim Caviezel, Joanna Going, Jobeth Williams, John Doe, Kevin Costner, Lawrence Kasdan, Lewis Smith, Linden Ashby, Mackenzie Astin, Mare Winningham, Mark Harmon, Martin Kove, Michael Madsen, Tea Leoni, Tom Sizemore, Wyatt Earp
Posted in Reviews, Western | 26 Comments »
Friday, May 25th, 2018
Note: I believe I’ve seen the Mario Van Peebles version, but I don’t remember it at all, so I won’t be able to make a comparison.
SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY is the movie about Han Solo when he was a little younger than in STAR WARS. This is a generalization, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that no one in their right mind wanted to see a movie about young Han Solo. The only exception is George Lucas, who actually had Lawrence Kasdan writing this before he sold everything to Disney. I’m guessing it was his idea of what the fans who hated his prequels wanted to see.
The trouble is that if there was one Star Wars character who would be the MOST difficult to recast, it would definitely be Han Solo. This is a character that’s all about the specific charisma of Harrison Ford. If Kurt Russell or somebody had gotten the part then it might’ve still been a cool character, but it would not be the same. And you can’t re-create that. You can’t reverse engineer it.
So, with that in mind Alden Ehrenreich (the funny cowboy actor from HAIL, CAESAR!) has done as good a job as one could hope in an impossible task. He only looks a little like him and only sounds a little like him, but he gets some of his mannerisms, some of his attitude, some of his charm without ever seeming like he’s doing an impersonation. (If there’s one area in which it’s an uncanny reproduction I’d say it’s in his gun poses, which always look ready for a promotional poster.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alden Ehrenreich, Chris Miller, Donald Glover, Emilia Clark, Jon Favreau, Jonathan Kasdan, Lawrence Kasdan, Linda Hunt, Paul Bettany, Phil Lord, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Ron Howard, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 113 Comments »
Thursday, May 24th, 2018
SILVERADO is Lawrence Kasdan’s upbeat 1985 western about some cowboys and, you know… they meet up and ride together and there’s guns and a jail and a saloon and a guy trying to steal land and all that. I don’t know, it’s a western.
This was Kasdan’s third time directing, after BODY HEAT and THE BIG CHILL. But consider that in the half decade before this he co-wrote THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and RETURN OF THE JEDI. This is his rare directing job that has some of the vibe of those George Lucas productions. He wrote SILVERADO with his brother Mark (CRIMINAL LAW) and all these decades later he wrote SOLO with his son Jonathan (who had a bit part in SILVERADO at the age of 14) so I thought it would be a good time to write about this one.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Wyss, Brian Dennehy, Bruce Broughton, Danny Glover, Jeff Fahey, Jeff Goldblum, John Cleese, Kevin Costner, Kevin Kline, Lawrence Kasdan, Lynn Whitfield, Roseanna Arquette, Scott Glenn
Posted in Reviews, Western | 39 Comments »
Monday, December 21st, 2015
WARNING: This is all spoilers, why would you read it without seeing the movie?
Previously on Disney’s Star Wars™: When it was announced that George Lucas had sold Lucasfilm to Disney and other people were gonna make new Star Wars movies, the world celebrated like the end of RETURN OF THE JEDI special edition but with the song from the original end of RETURN OF THE JEDI. I wasn’t so sure. I thought Lucas was a one-of-a-kind visionary whose works couldn’t be duplicated without his oversight, and I would rather see a flawed idiosyncratic Star War like his prequels than the potential mediocre one made by somebody else. But on the other hand as a huge Star Wars trekkie to the bone I couldn’t help but be excited to see Luke, Leia, Han, Sebulba and Chewbacca on the big screen again, something I never expected to happen. So when the trailers came out I was as down as anyone. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Driver, Carrie Fisher, Cecep Arif Rahman, Daisy Ridley, Harrison Ford, Iko Uwais, J.J. Abrams, John Boyega, Lawrence Kasdan, Mark Hamill, Max von Sydow, Oscar Isaac, Yayan Ruhian
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 435 Comments »
Monday, December 14th, 2015
BODY HEAT is a tight, atmospheric, sometimes literally steamy neo-noir from writer and first time director Lawrence Kasdan (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, CONTINENTAL DIVIDE). It pulls off the feat of having the protagonist seem reasonably relatable and likable despite doing the wrong thing from beginning to end (including but not limited to aggressively courting a married woman and then plotting to kill her husband and get his money).
He is Ned Racine (William Hurt, who at that time had only starred in ALTERED STATES and EYEWITNESS), a sleazy Florida defense lawyer renowned by his friends like District Attorney Peter Lowenstein (Ted Danson, THE ONION FIELD) and police detective Oscar Grace (J.A. Preston from THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR and HIGH NOON II: THE RETURN OF WILL KANE) for his sexual conquests, though not his competence as a lawyer. One night Ned sees Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner, a stage actress with one TV episode to her name) standing looking at the ocean, and it’s all over for him. She’s just standing there like a real sexy piece of cheese in a mouse trap, and a mouse is gonna do what a mouse is gonna do.
BODY HEAT is a good title, but this is another one that could be called KEEP YOUR DICK IN YOUR PANTS. In the noir tradition they verbally spar; he hits on her, she rejects him, then makes one unmistakably suggestive comment before disappearing like Batman when Ned’s not looking. Might as well have thrown down a smoke pellet. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: J.A. Preston, Kathleen Turner, Keep Your Dick In Your Pants, Lawrence Kasdan, neo-noir, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, William Hurt
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 26 Comments »
Thursday, December 10th, 2015
Have you guys seen this RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK movie yet? I was always under the impression that it was pretty well known, but then they changed the title to INDIANA JONES AND THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK so I guess it must’ve been one of those BY THE BOOK/RENAISSANCE MAN or EDGE OF TOMORROW/LIVE DIE REPEAT type of situations where it didn’t do well enough so they changed the title. The last resort of the marketing scoundrel. Anyway, this is the movie that Steven Spielberg made because he was sad they wouldn’t let him do James Bond and he wanted to make the fuckers pay dearly. He and George Lucas were kickin it V.I.P. style on the beach in Hawaii right after STAR WARS came out. They were probly like wearing cool shades, just hanging out pumpin some jams on the boombox, it was alot like this song is how I picture it, and it is said that the volleyball scene from TOP GUN was based on them. So George is spotting while Steven is doing some bench presses in my opinion and George starts talking about this old script he wrote with Philip Kaufman before STAR WARS, a thing called THE ADVENTURES OF INDIANA SMITH that’s kinda in the style of the old cliffhanger adventure serials. After they got home they ended up reworking the whole thing and having this guy Lawrence Kasdan (who was writing STAR WARS’S EMPIRE STRIKES BACK) do a new script.
So they got the ideas and production of Lucas plus the supreme directing chops of Spielberg, and they made a great movie. I love that the opening shot is the Paramount logo dissolving into an actual mountain. It’s a signal that they’re taking extra special care from the first frame on to make every detail great. I know there are exceptions to this rule (DOOM), but usually when the filmatists even put thought into how to make the studio logo cool that means there’s gonna be some serious elbow grease in this movie. No laziness. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: adventure, archaeology, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Lawrence Kasdan, Lucas Minus Star Wars, Philip Kaufman, Steven Spielberg
Posted in Action, Reviews | 106 Comments »
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014
Man, I don’t want them to make a chump out of me and do STAR WARS: A NEW BEGINNING or GEORGE LUCAS’S NEW STAR WARS, but let me just say that this part 6 really seems like the end to the whole saga. SPOILERS: Anakin is unmasked and apologetic, he finally gets the sense to throw fuckin Ted Palpatine into a bottomless pit, he dies, Yoda dies, Luke becomes a Jedi, the Empire is defeated, the people celebrate on multiple planets, they knock over a statue, they even blow up the Death Star again just to be sure. Or to pump up the crowd.
I feel like they’ve wrapped up pretty much all of the loose threads, other than the thing in part 5 where Yoda says “No. There is another hope.” I thought he meant Leia, but then it never became relevant. So either there could be some other potential Jedi out there for a part 7 or it would just be about Leia carrying Luke around in a backpack and doing flips. Either way it would be a terrible idea. Don’t do it, Mr. Lucas! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alec Guinness, Billy Dee Williams, Carrie Fisher, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, Ian McDiarmid, Lawrence Kasdan, Mark Hamill, Richard Marquand, Sebastian Shaw, Warwick Davis
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 21 Comments »
Thursday, May 22nd, 2014
STAR WARS PART 5… okay, admittedly you’re stretching it by the time you get to a part 5 that doesn’t have a “FAST” in the title. Even a prestigious series like DEATH WISH is gonna be a little goofy in part 5, it’s gonna have a part with a remote controlled exploding soccer ball. FRIDAY THE 13TH had to be “A New Beginning” because they claimed they were gonna stop at 4. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET had to get a baby involved, but STAR WARS sorta already did that in part 4. It had Luke “A New Hope” Skywalker using The Force and the lessons of Ben O.W. Kenobi to blow up the Death Star and defeat Darth Vader and the Empire, a great ending.
But oh, great, now the fucking Empire strikes back. How convenient. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams, Carrie Fisher, David Prowse, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, Irving Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan, Leigh Brackett, Mark Hammil
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 37 Comments »
