The Last Jedi

First of all, let me make a comparison: 

The Force Awakens (2015) -- 2 hours, 18 minutes

The Last Jedi (2017) -- 2 hours, 32 minutes

The Rise of Skywalker  (2019) -- 2 hours, 21 minutes

All of those movies are long. The Last Jedi is, in fact, the longest, but the actual time difference is not as long as it feels.

When I thought about how long it felt, I would generally focus on the casino scene. Finn and Rose wander around a place that feels "alien" to all we have seen of Star Wars so far (though there was a casino on the star cruiser in the 1979 Brian Daley book, Han Solo's Revenge), with a lot of nonsense about how to look for a guy they never find, getting arrested over parking, and I cannot even remember whether they successfully disabled the tracking device. The way other things went, I am not sure that mattered. It gave them a chance to work in Maz Kanata, but it felt pretty forced.

When I think more, I remember other scenes that took too long and were not worth it:

• Poe continually restarting the message to annoy the First Order ship
• A newly-revived Finn walking around naked in something that appears to be a bacta suit (completely impractical), instead of a tank like Luke in The Empire Strikes Back
•  Rey and Kylo Ren's telepathic talks where she keeps asking him to put on a shirt

The scenes with Poe and Kylo Ren have to do with some other flaws that will be treated in other posts.

For Finn, that may have been partly a way of trying to draw similarities between him and Luke Skywalker. It did show that he is recovering from his severe injuries from the previous film, and it gives him a chance to reconnect with Poe, but mainly is played for laughs. 

It's not funny enough for the time involved.

Hearkening back to The Empire Strikes Back, there was humor, but generally just quick quips that played into the existing points.

• "Laugh it up, Fuzzball."
• "I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee!" "I can arrange that."

Those scenes didn't break the dramatic tension.

Rian Johnson might not specialize in dramatic tension.

I like the Knives Out films a lot, but despite there always being a mystery and at least two murders, they are not action or suspense films. They explore things with humor.

They explore important things, too, and I sympathize with what the Canto Bight scenes are trying to do.

They are establishing that there are people whose wealth allows them to lead glamorous lives, without having to worry about what's going on in the rest of the galaxy or the welfare of those who serve them. 

That is reasonable, but it doesn't connect. While a lot of that situation could lead to a French Revolution-style uprising or a Bolshevik to Soviet path, the First Order seems more fascist; it would have different roots. If you can establish the roots maybe there is a point there, but it feels disconnected when it should be connected.

Then, with the children, they are also trying to establish that force prodigies can come from anywhere; you shouldn't overlook anyone. 

That is also not connected enough. If Rey being a nobody from nowhere and having the force strong in her does not show that; seeing the kid with the broom for a moment won't.

Then they had to decide that Rey was not that either. 

Focus on Minh Lê and Dan Santat

I didn't want to call this a spotlight, because separately they both have several books that I have not read.

This happened by accident.

If I recall correctly, Drawn Together came up when I was searching for something else and looked interesting. A grandparent and grandson have language barriers, but are able to connect through drawing. 

I liked it, but I didn't think about it much beyond that. However, I am not the only person in this household who goes through a lot of picture books. The other one brought home Built to Last (the structures two friends build in play always get knocked down, but their friendship doesn't) in April. 

Those names sounded familiar so I looked. It had been almost a year, but yes, this was the same pair. 

In looking to see if there were other collaborations, I found one, but I also saw that they have both done many superhero comics. 

That made it a good time to read The Blur. A bittersweet story about how fast children grow up, much of it is communicated in superhero metaphors.

At that point I did think that I should do a spotlight, but that can get tricky with one person; for two it would be much harder. 

I decided to look up at least one work by each of them. Without planning, they both ended up having a common theme.

2014 Caldecott Medal Winner The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend has one of the potential imaginary friends on the island where they are born get tired of waiting to be dreamed up. He travels across the ocean to a crowded playground and is eventually spotted and named.

Nine years later, Real to Me was published. Written by Minh Lê and illustrated by Raissa Figueroa, a furry green creature with big teeth and a long tail misses the friend who others insisted was imaginary and whose sudden disappearance makes him wonder whether she was ever real. He makes new friends eventually and is happy to have the memory.

Bittersweet, perhaps, but probably not as bad as Bing Bong in Inside Out.

I don't know what follows. Reading more from either of them seems likely; reading all from them would be a pretty big effort. 

That being said, I like their sensibilities. 

I don't know if they are friends who will be looking for more collaboration or it all came from publishing decisions, but I think they do good work together.

I am glad these books came my way. 

Minh Lê and Dan Santat Together:

Drawn Together (2016)
The Blur (2022)
Built to Last (2024)

Separately:

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat (2014)
Real to Me by Minh Lê and Raissa Figueroa (2023)

The editing we deserve

I had thought I would complain a little about the latest Star Wars trilogy -- primarily The Last Jedi -- and that would be the end of it. 

I find I actually have a lot more to say about the trilogy than I realized; I should get more into that next week. 

For now, that title was the note I had. I can write about that today because it was not just that movie.

I really enjoyed the Paul Feig Ghostbusters and a lot of Spy, also by him.

What I most disliked in Spy was a tendency to overindulge in anything that seemed clever or fun to explore. 

I would say what I hated most were the specific streams of profanity, but I think that was also an aspect of the self-indulgence.

Good examples would be when they are messing around with the loss of gravity in the plane or when Rayna can't remember Susan's last name (no, my name is not Susan Groupon) or when Susan is being really mean to Anton right before he gets killed.

It's not that there aren't any humorous elements to them. Actually, I think Björn Gustafsson injected a fair amount of pathos into Anton for the limited screen time he had. Still, at some point it becomes a distraction. 

It may be something that's funny in a comedy, or something that has a lot of emotion in a drama, but can still detract overall.

The fist time I remember seeing extras was on a laser disc for Austin Powers: Man of Mystery. There were scenes of friends and family getting notifications of the deaths of evil henchmen. Specifically, they were the one who loses his head to ill-tempered mutant sea bass and the one crushed by the slow-moving steamroller. In addition, there was a scene where Number Two tries to team up with Austin by offering him a briefcase full of money, but it is not the full amount, because he took some out to buy the briefcase, a Fendi.

They ranged from funny to interesting (maybe a little sad for the one henchman's wife and stepson), but they absolutely would have slowed down the film. The movie worked better without them.

This is also true of the extended version of The Lord of the Rings. Yes, we know there is a lot more that could go in there from the books, but putting all of it in there loses dramatic momentum.

Interestingly, it felt like Peter Jackson forgot everything he knew about wise editing choices based on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The two Austin Powers sequels were much more self-indulgent and proportionately less funny.

That may be a trend.

Ages and ages ago I read about the proposed final scene for The Sixth Sense. There was an extended conversation between Malcolm and his sleeping wife, where he got to say more of what he needed to her. Her breathing became less visible, indicating that the cold that he brought was receding, driving home more that both of them were able to be at peace now. 

M. Knight Shyamalan loved it, but it didn't work in the movie, so he cut it.

Again, you can lose knowledge that you have. I suppose that gets to the heart of what "deserve" meant.

What about Hedy?

I thought this would be the simplest post, but it's not.

I left one note about Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, a 2017 documentary about the actress and inventor.

"I wish she could have just done science."

She was really brilliant, but she was discouraged from pursuing that because she was a woman. Then, as a beautiful and famous one, we would rather you use your influence to sell war bonds than give us this frequency hopping technology for torpedoes.

Her worst problems in life seemed to come from her husbands, but after the sixth divorce she stayed single for thirty-five years and that didn't fix everything.

Plus, she was the one to initially pursue acting. I think she would have liked to do both.

It was the acting that drew the attention of her first husband, the controlling arms dealer who didn't let her act anymore. It was also through that marriage that she got some of the early knowledge for the frequency-hopping idea.

Maybe if she had been in a technology path she would have come across that anyway, but would she have met a composer who added the technology for synchronizing player pianos? 

(Or would her work have been done on behalf of the Germans?) 

Her film career also allowed her to cross paths with Howard Hughes, who was very supportive of her inventing.

People are complicated.

Those complications cause a lot of the problems that other people will encounter, but there will be problems even under better circumstances. 

Then, regardless of the circumstances, it can be hard to untangle things later.

I wish things had been better for her, but even more I wish for better times now. 

So many women get pushed out of science and technology. They may do things now to encourage girls in STEM, but if they don't do anything about the men who will disregard and downplay work, still credit, and harass women right out of the field, we are setting those girls up for failure.

We are also setting ourselves up for failure through the knowledge and skills that get lost.

Hedy Lamarr got to do more science than a lot of people; there's something to be said for being grateful for what you have.

That's not a reason to stop hoping for better. 

So NOT creative

That title sounds like I am going to go off on AI again, but not this time. 

I've decided to get to my other three movie notes this week. I think it will lead me back into talking about the current political situation and dominator culture.

This first one also comes from distinct works with similar source material. Instead of Walter Mitty, it's P. T. Barnum.

Back in the day (it was 1989), my high school put on a production of Barnum! for the spring musical. Many of my friends were in it, so I saw it and heard them talking about it.

One thing I do remember is that some of them got together to watch the movie and were disappointed. I was surprised, because I had enjoyed their performance. One of them said that they did a great job with maybe not great material. I don't know if they had noticed an issue with the material before they saw someone else's version.

I also do not know whether they saw the stage performance led by Michael Crawford and filmed in London or the made-for-TV movie led by Burt Lancaster. I did not know there were multiple versions. I now know that both of those came out in 1986. They may have been part of why the drama department chose it, but the stage musical only debuted in 1980, so it may have still felt kind of new and exciting.

Having enjoyed it but learned that there could be disappointing versions, I was interested in what was going to happen with The Greatest Showman when it came out in 2017.

I did keep thinking of it at "Barnum!" but it was its own thing. Again, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was one of the last movies I took my mother to see in the theater.

The thing I hated most about Barnum! was the subplot with his affair with Jenny Lind, that rat.

Except, he didn't. There are no indications that there was ever any romantic intrigue between Barnum and Lind. They ended their business agreement because she was somewhat uncomfortable with the relentless (perhaps crass) commercial promotion side; she wanted to be more about the art and philanthropy. 

I think the business relationship was beneficial for both, probably beyond the time it lasted. They parted amicably.

I mean, how can you write a splashy musical number about that? 

The credit I can give The Greatest Showman is that they did not make Barnum a cheater; they just made Lind a clingy, delusional mess.

They probably didn't think anyone would buy Hugh Jackman as someone who would leave his adored wife and the mother of his children for... never mind.

In The Greatest Showman it still caused marital discord because it reminded Charity of her husbands monumental self-absorption and selfishness. Of course he didn't love Jenny; he couldn't love anyone!

It's a good line, though I don't think accurate to either the real or the movie people.

I don't know that you can successfully make an accurate musical about anyone. We know Hamilton and Night and Day didn't... that list could go on and on.

It might be better to make fictional ones that remind you of real people but leave some room to maneuver. 

Mainly my frustration was the way the material goes to cheating over and over again. There can be so much conflict without that!

Then my other frustration, possibly connected, is that it's something that happens in real life so much too.  

Children's books for AAPI Heritage Month

Once you start one thing, it can always lead to other things.

As it happened, many of the ghostly children's picture books I read could fit in this category. 

Boy Dumplings: A Tasty Chinese Tale by Ying Chang Compestine and James Yamasaki 
Ghosts in the House by Kazuna Kahara
Gracie Meets a Ghost by Keiko Sena
So Not Ghoul by Karen Yin and Bonnie Liu

The most surprising for me was Boy Dumplings. 

A boy gets caught by a ghost who is going to eat him, but the boy convinces him that he should make a better meal. I thought that would go the route of the other ingredients being delicious enough that the boy was extraneous, but it was just that it took long enough for the sun to rise and the ghost to become trapped. 

There's more than one way to avoid becoming ghost food.

I used "could" fit into the category because there can always be questions about categorization.

For example, Keiko Sena was just Japanese, not Japanese-American. However, if I wanted to read more of her work and see her influence on children's books, she has about 100 other titles.

(This year I am worrying about tracking down origins a little less, though I will discuss that more when I get to the music.) 

Speaking of reading other books, Karen Yin has a book coming out that could apply, Nice to Eat You -- inspired by the story of Hansel and Gretel -- but it is not expected until July. I did read one of her other books:

Whole Whale, illustrated by Nelleke Verhoeff

That is mainly about all of the animal illustrations you can fit into a single book. So Not Ghoul is about the struggle to fit in at school and meet parental expectations, hard for a traditional ghost who looks vaguely like Samara from The Ring, except her long hair is in pigtails. Tradition versus assimilation, but with teenage ghosts.

Another book about tradition takes place at the Mid-Autumn Festival as a grandmother tells a story to two sisters.

The Shadow in the Moon: A Tale of the Mid-Autumn Festival by Christina Matula and Pearl Law

While the festival and moon cakes come up a lot, I had not read that particular story before. It was a little wordy, but I do like learning new lore.

Otherwise, there were two biographical and two that were a little less serious. The two biographical ones were both written by Songju Ma Daemicke and illustrated by Lin.

Grace Lee Boggs: Gardens of Hope
Tu Youyou's Discovery: Finding a Cure for Malaria

I had also read a book of Boggs' writings, which will come up later. It was one of two books in a short time period that dealt with dialectics as part of its philosophical underpinnings. Connections happen in all sorts of ways.

(Speaking of that, there is another pair that I am going to explore further next week.)

For the two less serious ones, both by A.N. Kang...

The Very Fluffy Kitty, Papillon
Papillon Goes to the Vet 

I thought they were very cute, but for me cats are an easy sell. 

Viewing nostalgia

One of the recent drivers of Twitter discourse was this post:

https://x.com/upstatefederlst/status/2047910544611430889 

People out here acting like 80s and 90s kids regularly watched movies from the 50s and 60s. 

He was responding to a post about the lack of film literacy -- and literacy of any kind is always going to bring lots of responses -- but in this case it became its own thing because, yes, we did.

Disney would periodically release classic films. I definitely saw Snow White and Alice in Wonderland in theaters, even though their original releases were long before my time. 

There were some films that were broadcast every year, like The Wizard of Oz and The Ten Commandments, where it was a big deal. This was before home video so you had to watch it then or you would miss it.

There were only three networks and usually one or two local channels; they played a lot of old movies on weekends.

(The three networks also meant that a lot of us watched the same current shows, even though there were choices.) 

My father did not always consider the appropriateness of the movies, so I remember being deeply disturbed by scenes from The Green Berets, Hang 'Em High, The Dirty Dozen, and A Fistful of Dollars. (Clint Eastwood is overly represented, it is true.)

To be fair, I often did not understand what was gong on in the films, but I saw them.

Even as the situations and availability started to change, it led to more watching of old movies, not less.

Once everyone had VCRs, in addition to finding random old tapes and checking them out, there was also a weekend ritual of going to the video store and seeing what looked interesting. Sure, sometimes it was a popular, recent title, but sometimes you discovered gems you could have easily missed.

Cable played a lot of old movies, but also a lot of old television series.

I was reluctant to go back to school after one summer when I had really started to enjoy watching The Addams Family. On a sick day I learned that it changed with the fall and they were showing The Munsters instead. Not that I haven't enjoyed episodes of both. 

Before cable we had somehow managed to watch a lot of I Love Lucy, but it was after cable that my family started watching a lot of The Jack Benny Show and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. (That was on a Christian channel, which was very obvious from the commercials.)

Even with the Disney Channel, which had plenty of Disney content, I remember being introduced to Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees and Ball of Fire and Dana Andrews in Ball of Fire and The Best Years of Our Lives.

(And of course, Danny Kaye: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/04/three-lives-of-walter-mitty.html) 

There are other topics that come up with this, like how that forms collective thought and whether that is necessary. That may connect to the posts from Tuesday and Wednesday as well.

Today, though, I just wanted to enjoy the memories of good times, and also marvel in what a ridiculous assertion it was in the first place. 

You could potentially argue that kids in the 80s and 90s watched more films from the 40s and 70s than the 50s and 60s, but the idea upstatefederalist was trying to convey with disdainful certainty was just laughable.

Maybe it's because of Stranger Things showing kids roaming outside until dark, periodically stopping to drink from the garden hose. That happened too. I remember once arguing that it wasn't actually dark yet; it only looked dark because there were some clouds (the logic wasn't flawless). 

My youth did involve a lot of tag and hide and seek and swimming and biking, but it also involved a lot of watching television. Much of it was media made before I was born. That apparent dichotomy is just fact. 

I admit I have not seen anything from the French New Wave.