The STAR WARS Saga: A History

This post was originally posted as a review for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on my Letterboxd film-watching diary. It turned into a little history lesson about the entire saga. 

All right, let’s put this all into perspective.

The underbelly of STAR WARS and the conversations that arise from it: the love and the hate, the this vs. that, the fan service vs. risk-taking, etc. it seems to me this is partly based on an expectation that Star Wars, as a story, is like a sprawling and perfect saga that its creators always knew everything about from the very beginning: well defined and coherent, with all of its rules firmly in place.

But it’s not. It never has been. It started as an experimental film by imperfect people that became a phenomenon by accident.

Covered in Wonder: The Dark Crystal - Age of Resistance

One of the most pleasant cinematic surprises of 2019 came in the form of the much-anticipated prequel series for Jim Henson’s 1982 masterpiece The Dark Crystal. The 10-episode saga Age of Resistance debuted on NetFlix in late August, delighting fans worldwide with its innovative puppetry and epic storytelling. The original film is like a poem, and this new series is like a novel, described by many as “Game of Thrones with puppets.”

 As a lifelong obsessive devotee of the original Dark Crystal since the age of 7, I was thrilled to discover that Age of Resistance not only honored its source material, but expanded it with new layers and improved upon its various characters, set pieces, and nuances. If you haven’t looked upon its wonder yet, it is worth your time in every frame. Spoilers lie ahead, so if you’ve enjoyed the series already, continue to read my “words that stay” and dreamfast with me.

Make Your World In Its Light: The Story and Structure of Jim Henson's THE DARK CRYSTAL

Another world...another time...in the age of wonder. 

Such was the age of wonder I was in myself, at age 7, when I first heard those words in a dark movie theater for my first viewing of The Dark Crystal - a film I was already obsessed with before walking into my seat. Seeing the movie poster advertisement in the newspaper and hearing that the same guy who made The Muppets had a new movie with things called "gelflings" was one of those formative moments in my life, and the obsession hasn't really stopped. So read on whilst I geek out a little bit with a few ponderings...

The Dark Crystal has a fascinating history behind the mere making of it, which is outlined in full detail through documentaries, books, and rare TV spots on YouTube. (Of which my favorite is embedded at the end of this article - watch it later, and all the way to the end)

Apocalypsis: An Interview with Eric Leiser

Apocalypsis is the newest film by Eric Leiser, who collaborates with his brother, composer Jeffrey Leiser, to bring surreal spiritual imagery and storytelling to the screen. In years past, I've been invited to interview them about their previous feature films Imagination and Glitch in the Grid.

With their new film, the Leisers have crafted an action-packed psychological thriller that explores the Book of Revelation in a poetic montage of imagery and intrigue. What I appreciate about their work is their ability to combine ingenious sound design and experimental animated imagery with intimate explorations of relationships between characters in an on-going narrative. If you are looking for something out of the box, these are films worth looking for and supporting.

Apocalypsis is out now for viewing on screens large and small (including Amazon and iTunes) so here is my newest conversation with Eric Leiser, what inspires his vision, and what's coming next.

Reflections on The NeverEnding Story

Posted on the 30th Anniversary of the release of "The NeverEnding Story" (July 20th, 2014)

1984. I was 9-years-old, sitting in a dark Michigan theater with my dad and a bag of Twizzlers, and before me on the screen was a story that would begin to speak to me...and literally never end.

As a young boy who was not only obsessed with what the '80s brought to the world for fantasy cinema (stuff like The Dark Crystal, E.T and Ghostbusters), but also loved to read books and write my own stories, this strange German production of The NeverEnding Story touched a nerve with me like many others I know who grew up with it.

Exactly one year later, my family bought our first VCR and this was one of the first movies we "recorded" off ShowTime on cable TV. (On the same video cassette were The Muppets Take Manhattan and The Last Starfighter.)  To this day I vividly remember laying on my stomach on the carpet of our family cottage in the woods "up north" in Michigan, and re-watching those opening scenes of the Rock Biter in the Howling Forest with its brooding musical score as he spoke about The Nothing. Meanwhile, a thunderstorm literally began brewing outside and a warm summer breeze rolled in through the screen door.

30 Years Later: The Last Starfighter

Posted on the 30th Anniversary of the release of "The Last Starfighter" (July 13th, 2014)

Any boy who grew up in the 1970s or 80s understands the impact that Star Wars had on our generation and the way we lived. For us, the school playground at recess and the backyards & basements of our homes were not merely steel structures, expanses of grass and cement or cozy rooms, but were in fact the corridors of the Death Star, the forest of Endor in the summer and the icy sprawl of Hoth in winter. That fictional universe somehow meshed with ours and we played and lived in it as if it were as real as the gravel beneath our size-5 shoes. It seemed to call us to a sense of adventure beyond our reality, but we reached out for anyway and pulled it close. 

So it was, in the context of this frame of mind for me as a 9-year-old boy in 1984 that another little story captured my imagination as well. This one was different, in that it didn't take place exclusively in a galaxy far, far away, but brought that other galaxy and our own planet, the Heavens and the Earth as it were, together. By telling the tale of a boy who lives in a trailer park on Earth and is carried off to outer space and back again, it also showed how these two worlds depended on each other, and brought the adventure home. It suggested the reality of that other world was not as far away as it seemed. That story was told in The Last Starfighter, which I first saw in a tiny theater with my dad in Traverse City, Michigan, one hot summer day in 1984 with a bag of Twizzlers in my hand. It blew me away, and 30 years later, it's still one of those films that found its way into my DNA and stayed there.

Sometimes the Sky Calls: The Auralia Thread

I was on an airplane en route to New Zealand when I finally arrived at the conclusion to Jeffrey Overstreet's fantasy novel series The Auralia Thread. As I looked out my window after reading the final sentence of the last book The Ale Boy's Feast, I just happened to be coming out of a misty white fog similar to that which was described in the book, and the beautiful green shores of the North Island were just coming into view. It was breathtaking, and my spirit was uplifted by the perfect timing of these two journeys. Upon settling in Auckland, I found it fitting to celebrate with a good dinner at a restaurant called "The Shakespeare," for as the king in Hamlet called out "Give me some light!" I felt this is exactly what The Auralia Thread had done.