film
Neverending Star Wars J.J. Abrams jolts the Franchise Awake By Br yan VanC ampe n Star Wars: The Force Awakens, co-written and directed by J.J. Abrams, playing at Regal Stadium 14; Jedi Junior High, directed by Heidi Burkey & Tim Larson, on VOD.
Star Wars. These characters are as awed by the universe as we all were back in the day, and Abrams spends most of his energy and will connecting us back to what it was about Star Wars that we loved and dreamed about. So there’s no boring council meetings, no Jar Jar and none of our favorite characters rendered as kids. I don’t want to get into the story except to say that like all good stories, it’s one that you don’t mind hearing again. If you’ve seen the trailers and been on the web in the last year, you know who’s been cast in the movie returning for the first time since Return of the Jedi, but it’s the way Abrams brings them back that is so delightful. There are dozens of neat touches layered throughout: I appreciate the practical look of the effects, and a shot of spaceships flying with a documentary style snap zoom with the camera to give the shot more life and immediacy. It also contains Harrison Ford’s most engaging performance since The Fugitive. It may not be best of the year caliber,
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’m borrowing the opening line of Janet Maslin’s review of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to describe my feelings about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “Now that’s more like it.” I don’t want to waste my space here grousing about how much I hated George Lucas’s last round of Star Wars prequels. Just know that I’m an old school Star Wars fan, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens feels like the old-school movies that I love. What J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt have done is create engaging new characters in a desert scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley), a droid dubbed BB-8, a storm trooper (John Boyega) who quits his job, and others, and then sends them off into what amounts to a loose remake of the first
Chewbacca and Han Solo in “The Force Awakens” (Photo provided)
but the new Star Wars is a lot of fun to watch. • • • There are tons of Star Wars documentaries out there, but check out Heidi Burkey and Tim Larson’s Jedi Junior High as a companion to the seventh SW film; it’s as good and compelling in its way as Jeffrey Blitz’s Spellbound. Burkey and Larson follow the epic struggles of a California junior school musical production of The Empire Strikes Back, from auditions to opening night. I’ve been a theater rat all my life, and I’m sure you could make a real nail-biter documentary about the mounting of any school show. I remember running to the Kulp Auditorium corkboard to see if my name was on the cast list. I don’t think you’re ever as nervous as you are about your first high school show. After that, it gets easier.
NEW YEAR’S EVE DINNER
I also remember my own versions of the kinds of roadblocks, challenges and impediments to getting the show going: illness, injury, cluelessness, and enormous changes at the last minute. Burkey and Larson break up the narrative of the production with chapters on the young performers, and I am starting to believe Doug Kenney and P.J. O’Rourke’s contention that schools have been populated with a set number of “types” since the beginning of American life. The kid playing Luke is the school heartthrob, and another kid is the one who spends all of his spare time doing magic. The cast ranges from talented to hopeless, but at that age, it’s not really about talent. For some of these students, their time on the boards will be one of many activities that they will try their hands at, and a certain percentage will love it and do it for the rest of their lives. •
FARM TO BISTRO
Join us for a five course dinner menu by Executive Chef Richard Brosseau, $60 per person, plus tax and gratuities. Limited seating, please call for reservations.
Later, bring in the new year with a midnight champagne toast, free flatbread station and live band: NeoProject. Tickets $20 at the door. Discounted overnight rates available at Hotel Ithaca (just across the street).
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Now taking dinner reservations on-line or by phone
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