I can’t really say I’m crying much about this. Veronica was always a merry-go-round between in-love-and-kinda-tortured and on-the-outs-and-kinda-tortured but always utterly self-possessed, and that’s how the series ended: Veronica standing alone and us waiting to see what round she would take on the chin next. A movie would do …. what? Serenity cleared up one large Firefly plot device (Reavers) with aplomb, but also, oh yeah, killed not one but two major characters while it was at it, because Joss is something of a sadistic mofo when he wants to be and hey! life never changes on a dime and if actors say they’re not going to do any more Firefly movies, well then, by gad, kill their characters quick because they’ll never change their minds.

Okay, maybe I have a small issue with movies meant to wrap up TV shows. But in the case of Veronica Mars, what is there left to wrap up? There will be a mystery, and there will be the side-issue of Veronica’s love story. Will they bring back Duncan in yet another improbable twist–reconciliation, with his kidnapping of his daughter and his commissioning of the murder of Aaron Echolls hanging over him? They lose all the Logan-Veronica shippers that way. Will it be a happy ending for Logan and Veronica instead? Unlikely, given Rob Thomas’s preference for keeping them on-again, off-again. So what’s left? The mystery. Rob Thomas had one awesome idea, the solution to question of Lily’s murderer in season one, and he played it out masterfully over the course of the full season. The other two seasons, not so much with the awesome ideas. What’s left to do? Veronica ended on a noir-ish note of standing alone with things going wrong, but with the idea that Veronica would pull through as she always does.

At this point I just don’t think there’s much more to say of her than that.

H/t: J.

Paper. Can you believe these Star Wars models are made of paper? You can download the instructions and make your own. In my next life, maybe, where there will be twin suns and more hours in the day and more days in the year. Wow.

Beware, some these models are somewhat difficult to build.

You don’t say!

H/t: J.

…Barack and Michelle are “the black Rob and Laura.”

Groan.

According to Patrick Goldstein at the L.A. Times, the reason Disney pulled out of the making of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was bad blood between them and Phil Anschutz of Walden Media:

According to multiple sources, the once-close relationship between Disney and Walden began to unravel when, after the first “Narnia” film cleaned up at the box office, Anschutz essentially put a gun to Disney’s head and demanded that the studio renegotiate its deal with Walden. Anschutz insisted that Disney either gave back a sizable chunk of the studio’s lucrative distribution fee or Anschutz would distribute the “Narnia” series on his own.

This is the part where I get Blogger’s Swelled Head and assume I could do a better job than this if I could get a call through to any of these people. Did Disney and Walden have a contract? If so, how could Anschutz unilaterally decide to “distribute [Narnia] on his own” without getting sued? And if not, how could it have taken “a gun to Disney’s head” to get them to negotiate non-contracted terms for the next film? “Oh, the film did well–what do you mean you want more favorable terms next time?” Does it sound like somebody at Disney needs to grow up?

Regardless, I hope if Walden’s at fault they’ve learned their lesson for making nice with the next prospective buyers. Because Voyage of the Dawn Treader will, as the Times’s Mary McNamara points out, make a good movie right out of the box, although Goldstein’s numbers worry me a bit–if Caspian cost $225M and Dawn Treader is just as rife with special-effects moments (Eustace and the dragon, the Monopods, the three sleepers, the sea serpent, Aslan’s Country), it’s difficult for this filmmaking ignoramus to see how feasible it is to bring the new one in at $140M. There will also be a new director (Michael Apted), and no screenwriters are attached per IMDb. I hope they keep the overall look, but the script would benefit from some punch. Edmund, in particular, could do with some lines after his morose turn in Caspian.

I saw Prince Caspian last week. For those of you who know me from ye Olde Skool, hold your breath: This purist liked the very altered movie. A lot.

**SPOILERS** for Prince Caspian below. (Oh and by the way, I came across Lost spoilers in the public news-feed area of Facebook today–i.e. somebody in my friends list just plastered spoilers in her status, and when I complained, said that she considered anything fair game after the time of the episode airing. WTF? Unless you have some special powers or access, you can’t possibly possess any spoilers BEFORE it airs, so your breathtaking courtesy in witholding what you don’t have is, shall we say, a little lost. And you really should catch up to the era of TiVo and realize that not even TV Guide puts spoilers into headlines any more, for those of us with a schedule that doesn’t care to adhere to the network’s air time. Thus endeth passive-aggressive rant.)

(more…)

Plus a few more speechless moments. I don’t think I’d have included Pulp Fiction but otherwise pretty darn good.

Pinched from Average Gay Joe.

A Ghostbusters sequel at this hour? After The X-Files and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, will this make three for three or success as a refreshing change of pace? Apparently, though, so far, it’s just talk.

Via Ace.

“You know you’ll see it anyway.”

Will not. Won’t even watch the trailer. The outrageous stunts of the last couple of films, including and most especially the death of Data and his oh-so-stupid replacement by an oh-so-stupid lookalike, years ago turned me off to any more Trek. The glory days of the shows with continuity and similar look and just enough recall of the old show, i.e. the TNG, DS9, and Voyager triumvirate, are gone. And frankly, even without that, I’m just not into prequels, actor changing, and most especially not into Sylar as Spock. Forget it. I’m not even going to watch the trailer. I’m just not as easy-going a person as Lileks, who seems to take the new manifestations of things in stride even as he meticulously catalogues and dreams of the old. If you can’t bring it back, and you can’t, let it die in peace. And if you try too hard, may you die violently, instead, new Trek, after one spectacularly failed flick. I know, I know: Dream on.

I’m home. And tired. Which I shouldn’t be, so much, because I slept on the plane–determinedly, so that I wouldn’t watch too much of the soundless miniature Prince Caspian playing on the video monitor above my head. I tried listening through the earphones–“Maybe it won’t be so bad to watch it on the plane!”–but the tiny sound still managed to be screamingly shrill, so I ripped off the earphones and shut my eyes. By the time I woke up, Caspian was conqueror and king and, on the DVD player in the next seat over, JFK was dead but not buried, and we were flying over eastern Oregon. Mission accomplished.

Apparently Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens will reprise their writing duties from Lord of the Rings for the two Hobbit movies. Good for the consistency of the films–consistency that’s been worrying me, given that they’re going to have to swap out actors for primary characters; bad for the general writing quality, which I was willing to largely forgive during Rings for the stunning visuals. Notably, though, I have not felt any urge to go back and re-watch them since the last time I wrote about them. This is a laugh, though:

While looking for another writer, however, Jackson and Del Toro found openings in their schdules, realized how much they loved the material, and decided there was no time to bring in someone unfamiliar with Middle Earth.

Wow. They realized, after Jackson had previously made three gazillion-dollar movies off it, that they love the material? Does anybody really believe that anybody on that production was seriously considering bringing in a writer unfamiliar with Middle-earth, no matter how much time was or was not available? If that really was the case I’d have to say taking it on themselves dodged them a few bullets, cornball writing or no.

…till the fans quit ticking? How many times does Joss have to say it before people believe it?

There will be no Serenity sequel. Believe it, people.

And the new Padawan–sort of a Jedi intern–is a girl in hot pants and halter top and do-me boots whose dim one-liners put her right up there with Jar Jar and Ziro in the anti-pantheon.

–Kyle Smith on the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated movie.

I am beyond tears with this man.

“The franchise [of Indiana Jones] really depends on me coming up with a good idea.”

—

… wait for it …

—George Lucas

You know, I’m kind of sure that was sort of true. In about 1986.

Maybe if he got Lawrence Kasdan, or even Frank Darabont, to write everything else once he’d come up with “a good idea,” it would actually stay good. Hell, I’d like to get a peek at Tom Stoppard’s efforts, too.

More head-scratchers in the piece:

The filmmaker scoffed at the possibility of passing the famed fedora from Ford to Shia LaBeouf, the 22-year-old actor played Indy’s son Mutt Williams in this summer’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

“He is Indiana Jones,” Lucas said of Ford. “If Indiana Jones wasn’t in it, you’d have to call it ‘Mutt Williams and the search for Elvis.’ … “Yeah, it’s ‘Mutt Williams and the Search for Elvis.”

So … smoking something, then, were we?

“I have an idea to make Shia [LaBeouf] the lead character next time and have Harrison [Ford] come back like Sean Connery did in the last movie.”

I get that “lead character” is not the same as saying Shia Labeouf will be Indiana Jones, but it sure sounds the same as “New Lead Character and the Search for Elvis.” And even if he does call it Indiana Jones and the [Whatever], I stand by my statement that we don’t want it and that I, at least, won’t watch it if he’s not the primary lead. Says the girl who didn’t even watch the last one.

Not the only howler in the piece, either:

Lucas plans a live-action “Star Wars” TV series as well, and he’s also looking into re-releasing the six “Star Wars” films using new 3-D technology.

God have mercy on Anakin Skywalker’s soul. I don’t even own the original three on DVD. How sad is that, for a girl who was in love with Han Solo from age five? Fie on thee, Lucas.

And lastly and bizarrely unrelated, this charmer:

“Like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, I’ll go out and adopt twins if they’ll pay me $14 million to do it.”

Jerk.