Right on! Now I want to see that movie!

We usually don't go posting video game trailers on Cinematical, but this happens to be Star Wars related and it also happens to look hella cool. Entertainment Weekly has posted the first trailer for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a game in which you play as Darth Vader's apprentice -- kicking ass, taking names. It also seems like a pretty cool story, one I bet a lot of us would've liked to see up on the big screen. Based on the trailer, the game looks to feature a reversal on the Anakin Skywalker story. Instead of a main character who's eventually seduced by the Dark Side, we have a guy who starts out bad and eventually turns against those who taught him, like Vader.

I have a bunch of Star Wars video games in my collection, most of which I never finished because those damn games distract the hell out of me. And then I don't write. And then you don't get movie news. And then the world collapses and we all wind up selling turtle droppings on the side of a road in New Mexico somewhere. But anyway, I really liked the Revenge of the Sith video game because you got to go nuts with the lightsaber. The Force Unleashed looks similar and, well, I don't know about you, but anything featuring Darth Vader wins some of the money in my wallet.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed hits shelves September 16. Will you be making the purchase?

Happy birthday Star Wars toys! 30 years ago, you came into our lives, and 30 years later, we're all kicking ourselves for not hoarding you away, keeping you in pristine condition and eventually getting rich by selling you to the highest bidder. Fortunately, there are more of you being made today and the London Times has declared which of you recently released, still-cheap items are likely to go up in value.

The spotlight is part of a list featured in today's Money Central section of the Times. Titled "The top 10 Star Wars collectibles," the list includes 30-year-old, super-rare action figures like Kenner's Darth Vader with double-telescoping light saber (currently valued at £5,000-plus, or almost $10,000 US) and this year's Lego version of the X-WIng Fighter (currently sold for £150, or $293 US). Coming in at #10 are the two-year old, "too cute" Galactic Heroes line of figures from Hasbro, which are currently only "the price of a rip-off sandwich" (£3, or $5.86 US).

Speaking of "too cute", I'm personally going for the plush SD Darth Vader (pictured) that the Times lists at #9. But I actually haven't learned anything from the past 30 years and so I'm going to actually play with it. Or use it as a stress reliever whenever I see articles telling us to invest in action figures. See, I believe toys are for playing with, comic books are for reading and collectibles made solely to be collectibles are a waste of space.

For images of all the toys listed in the Times article, check out the gallery below. I also included the unmentioned Galactic Heroes Darth Vader Unmasked toy, because it fits with the criticism that these toys are "too cute." What person who'd seen Jedi as a kid would have ever expected a cute version of the unmasked Vader/Anakin?



[via Fark.com]

This video is a little absurd; most of the re-dubbed dialogue makes little sense; and I can't help but feeling there could be more done with the idea, but isn't it the funniest Star Wars mash-up you've ever seen? A-ha! It's scenes from Star Wars with Darth Vader's lines replaced with those of King Jaffe Joffer from Coming to America. It works because James Earl Jones, who plays Joffer, was also the voice of Vader. But wouldn't it have been more logical to have the whole looking for his son thing to pertain to Luke Skywalker? Well, all mash-ups can't be perfect. Fortunately all the repetition of "A-ha!" and "and ... " makes Star Wars come across as a Monty Python movie, so it is at least hilarious. The only thing better would be if the "Yakkety Sax"-scored clips of Star Wars were combined with this video. That would be even sillier than this other favorite (and official) Star Wars video.

So, I guess there could be more of these mash-ups employing the dialogue of other James Earl Jones roles. Some that I would like to see would feature the lines of The Lion King's King Mufasa, The Sandlot's Mr. Mertle, Field of Dreams' Terrence Mann, Soul Man's Professor Banks and of course Conan the Barbarian's Thulsa Doom. Here's one that would be perfect for Leia's prison scene: "Next time you get arrested, use it to call me. I'll bring you your books. You can study in jail." And this would be appropriate for any old scene dealing with Vader and his minions: "I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. I want my privacy." OK, I've got the ball rolling; now someone get me those mash-ups. "I'm prepared to compensate you ... Shall we say one ... A-ha!"

Imagine a villain who's like a female Darth Vader, only more evil, and she'll invoke the worst nightmares for children since the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This is how Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw has described Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter in his review of The Golden Compass (aka His Dark Materials: Northern Lights, as it's titled in the UK), which he's given a rating of four stars. As if that's not appealing enough, he also claims the character is Kidman's "juiciest" role since To Die For. According to Bradshaw, it seems Kidman is the main reason to see the movie. His only other highlight is the look of the movie's universe, which he calls "wonderful" and "Gilliamesque." He also points out how it's obvious the movie is aiming for association with Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. Well, that isn't very surprising.

For a "four star" movie, The Golden Compass, according to Bradshaw, sounds like a mess plot-wise. Aside from looking nice, the movie's universe is apparently "crowded" and "alienating" and the audience is expected to get used to it as best it can, despite a lot of missing background material included in the book. Also, it's apparently more "absurd" than the source novel. Of course, confusing plots and universes aren't always a bad thing to audiences -- just look at the Pirates of the Caribbean series. What could be bad for the movie's box office is its violence; Bradshaw claims a significant polar bear battle could be too much for younger viewers. I have a good feeling that other critics will be less favorable considering the faults that this review seems to address, but of course even with terrible reviews, The Golden Compass could be a hit -- again, just look at the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Oftentimes Hollywood's lack of originality leads to overexposed trends. Remember when every action movie seemed to be easily defined as 'Die Hard on a ...'? Remember when disaster movies were all the rage? And then twenty years later when they were all the rage again? Remember when there were like a hundred body-swapping comedies? Well, there appear to be fewer trends these days, or maybe it's just that Hollywood turns trends into full-blown practices, as in the case of sequels, comic book movies and fantasy films based on literary franchises. Nowadays even a promised trend, like the one involving religious Passion of the Christ copycats, isn't necessarily going to happen. But despite there being so few here-today-gone-tomorrow film fads, there's at least seven bad ideas currently in vogue in Tinsel Town, and all of them need to disappear soon, lest they too become permanent.

1. Torture Porn

I'm going to start with an easy, surely obvious one. Torture porn is the latest trend in horror, a genre that changes its predominant style every few years, and it may be the most despised -- at least by us non-horror junkies. I miss the days when a friend, an actual junkie, could drag me to a harmless scary movie that provided a few screams, a few laughs and afterward, at the most, a few silly nightmares. Now, with each new horror movie there's promise of a seriously depressing experience. After watching The Hills Have Eyes, I realized I hadn't been frightened at all. Instead I wanted to cry my heart out. I haven't been to a horror flick since, and my friend is going solo. Sure, I hear that Eli Roth's movies are a lot more enjoyable than watching a young woman raped while watching her father burned alive and her mother raped and then shot in the head, but I just haven't been in the mood to find out.

Apparently the torture porn trend is already on its way out. Hostel II performed poorly at the box office and Captivity may have peaked too soon, reaching maximum tastelessness before even opening in theaters. So what will be next? I'm rather looking forward to when slasher movies are in fashion again, when I can delight in seeing sinful human beings killed off quickly and deservedly by an implausible maniac. Which brings me to the next trend ...

Police in Hickory, North Carolina, are investigating a robbery that occured Thursday night, in which a Hickory man unwittingly allowed some strange burglars into his home. The victim initially opened his door to a woman requesting to use a telephone, and after showing the woman to a bedroom phone, the Good Samaritan exited the bedroom to find himself facing two robbers, one of them wearing a Darth Vader mask and brandishing a chrome-plated pistol. The victim was ordered to hand over his wallet, which contained about three-hundred dollars, and was then pistol-whipped. There was no serious injury. The victim also reports that the trio went through his home looking for something, but didn't take anything.

The Darth in question is reported to be only 5'7, which would make him considerably shorter than actor David Prowse, who played the character in the original Star Wars trilogy and stands 6'7. If nothing else, this Darth-mask robbery is a refreshing change from the never-ending string of Scream-mask robberies that have seemingly gone on since the Scream films first hit theaters. The most recent one, reported on February 19 in Mansfield, Massachusetts, saw a Scream-killer robbing the Rockland Federal Credit Union and making off with an undisclosed sum of cash.

Normally I have a pretty low tolerance for the fan-made movie parodies that you find littered all over iFilm, YouTube, MySpace, and SheHulk. If I'm sitting at my computer, it probably means I'm working, and I don't always have an extra seven minutes to dedicate to someone's homemade Requiem for a Dream spoof.

But David Poland's Hot Blog just posted a downright hilarious clip called The Vader Sessions, which is hosted (of course) on YouTube, the world's breeding ground for funny video stuff. The clip is just under ten minutes long, and it's basically a bunch of Darth Vader scenes from the original Star Wars. But some clever kooks went and replaced all of the Sith Lord's dialogue with passages from other James Earl Jones performances. And since the actor's voice is so darn distinctive, you'll have no trouble buying Darth Vader as a stone-cold pimp with a stanky backhand.

And remember how I said I'm usually pretty busy in front of my computer? Well, I just got done watching The Vader Sessions twice. Freakin' hilarious!

The "new" Vader spouts dialogue from Field of Dreams, Coming to America, Soul Man, The Great White Hope, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, and (I believe) The Hunt for Red October. Can you name the other ones?

 
It's been like ten years since every hipster worth his/her weight in punk rock cred had one of these plastered on their messenger bag; now the next generation can raise another big guy on an equally distorted countercultural pedastal. A designer at Lucas Film made a page full of "Vader Has a Posse" stickers and sent them off to BoingBoing. As Bonnie Burton tells Xeni, 220 lbs marks Vader's "weight with the suit on. Keep in mind how much of his body was burnt off from that little lava incident on Mustafar."

When a massively popular film grosses nearly $200 million in one weekend, bizarre unlicensed products will follow. For instance, while reading Cinematical (yeah, I read the website even when I'm not working for it) I noticed a tiny Google text ad for Star Wars Contact Lenses. Now every superfanboy can have eyes just like Darth! Or, if you want to splurge, plunk down the $169.99 for a pair of Sith eyeball covers, as I like to call them. And if you're a myopic, astigmatic fanboy, fear not. All contacts are available in prescription strength.

During the scene of Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, there is a close up shot of Anakin's face just before his helmet is put in place. All of his face is shown as being badly burned with the exception of his eyelashes, which are still impossibly there. Subjecting one's face to any heat source hot enough to sear it will also burn away one's eyelashes as well. This is just one of the many mistakes in Revenge of the Sith catologed at MovieMistakes.com. Right now they have 16 mistakes for Sith - let's watch as the list grows.