A New Hope

by Christopher Stipp

It's the second week of November and it's about damn time Lucas showed up with the trailer for STAR WARS: ATTACK TO YOUR POCKETBOOK. In all fairness to the guy, and to show how smart he really is, I added a little bit to his coffers when I bought a REVENGE OF THE SITH T-shirt when I was at the Comic-Con this past July in San Diego. What can I say in my own defense other than I am a hapless souvenir hog and I wanted a shirt to commemorate my long sojourn from Arizona in a little Ford Fiesta in some fashion and they were all sold out of those sweet Superman Comic-Con í04 shirts? Oh well, I keep giving the man money this year, it seems. First the shirt, then for the DVD of THX 1138, and then the STAR WARS DVD box set. Even though they are the ones that completely don't jive with how they were when I initially saw them as a kid they will have to do until I get my grubby paws on the ones circulating on eBay that were taken from the laserdisc version. The marketing for this thing will be just as heavy any air raid happening now overseas to some mud village in Afghanistan so be forewarned that late spring '05 will belong to Lucas.

So now we come to the trailer. First, the teaser poster threw thousands of geeks into such a tizzy that I've read that some have yet to come out of their basement apartments. I can't say I blame them as the design looks like a cross between a fairly cool comic book cover that's way too right-justified with a billowing cape with the image of Vader ostentatiously present in the center which looks like a 4-year-old impressionist did it with white crayon and who just happened to have a seizure midway through the thing before getting hit by a bus before putting the finishing touches on it. The trailer, however, was released last Thursday and I have to say the last third really delivers on a level that I hope materializes six months from now. Any and all thoughts that I bring up in the trailer's review below should be sent to me as I look forward to commenting on all the subsequent trailers from here on out right in this very space.

In less mass hysteria news I have to give personal thanks to filmmaker Kevin Kerwin. He's no one youíve ever heard of but the guy sent me a trailer of the film heís done called FILMIC ACHIEVEMENT. In the span of just a couple of minutes the man has stoked my desire to see this film. While this doesn't seem like much to any of you out there it means a great deal to me because I have been exposed to the worst of the worst it seems this season with the kinds of trailers that major studios are trying to push down my throat. You would think it would be easy to con someone to see a trailer and think a crappy film would actually be interesting to see and you're right for the most part; thanks to the lemmings out there that make us collectively groan on Monday mornings when we see that CRAP FILM PART 2: THE BENDS is number one at the box office these kinds of things will perpetuate. Thankfully, most of the love I've given out in the past 11 months has gone to worthy films and this one is no exception. It takes a satiric look at film school and I found some genuine humor brimming in most every scene given. Give it a look this week if for no other reason than to email me and tell me that my taste sucks and that this guy sucks too and that he'd be better off to kill himself than continue making movies. However, I liked it enough to give it some space and let the teeming masses out there know that this film exists and that the trailer is well executed.