Fall of a Saga - Chefelf.com Night Life

QUOTE (Chefelf @ Sep 5 2004, 09:55 AM)

Any movie where the lead character has to sink ten baskets on a basketball court in order to avoid death has got to be good, right?

... right?

Guys ... ?

That's actually the only good scene in the whole film, IMO. I think that ought to have been in something like BLUE CHIPS or WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP. Because it looked pretty hard, and I'd like to see it done by a real basketball player, or at least an actor who can throw a ball, all in one continuous take.

For those who haven't seen it, it's not just ten baskets; he has to cross court between shots, alternating baskets, with I think ten seconds per shot (is it fifteen? I think it's ten). So he's got ten seconds to get the rebound and cross the court to the next basket. Predictably, the last shot is a cross-court impossibility. Again, I'd like to see Shaq do it without the cutaways.

Anyhow, seconds after he's done, and seconds before he starts, the movie is pure shit. All other moments equally so.

Wicked. I must say that the very notion of George Lucas's charging around his house in his nightshirt and brandishing a revolver is more entertaining than anything in "The Phantom Menace". I also like that Lucas in the film still uses a portable, manual typewriter. I own one myself still and occasionally bash out a letter on it because I like the old-fashioned feel; perhaps I'll use it write a space opera myself one day.

Lucas as a yellow-toothed burger pusher was too much, though. Lucas wasn't a superstar before "Star Wars" but he'd succeeded with "American Graffiti" and he was right in the thick of the movie business with other hot '70s directors, like Spielberg and Coppola. In an alternative universe someone is watching "Apocalypse Now" written by John Milius and directed by George Lucas and made in the early '70s. Would it have been better or worse? Maybe I'm crazy to think this but I think it might have been better; Coppola went completely off the rails in making that film and it shows. (And Brando ruins the end almost single-handed. What a waste.) And what a difference it would have made to Lucas's career! He may never have made "Star Wars".

So, what's the "Massachusetts project"?

And, as many fans have pointed out, signs of rot are already in "Return of the Jedi". So was the Devil already whetting his appetite by then? ;)