The Bearded Trio

Following quickly on the heels of Intrada's release of James Horner's Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Intrada presents one of the most sought-after soundtrack expansions  – Horner's epic fantasy score to the 1988 film Willow. With the cooperation of Disney and Lucasfilm, Intrada has prepared a 2-CD set featuring a greatly expanded program of Horner's score. Up to that point, it was probably Horner's most complex work. The score features at least five themes, including a noble theme for Willow, a heroic theme filled with adventure and triumph, a beautiful love theme, a simple theme for the baby Elora and a serpentine motif for the evil Queen. It's a score that runs over 100 minutes, making it one of his longest works, featuring some of the longest and most cohesive cues of his career. It's no wonder such a massive, colorful and passionate work has been in demand for so long. While the original album featured a generous 73-minute program, Horner had chose...

My grandmother was fond of saying "the older you get, the faster time goes by." To her point, we are already just a few days away from the end of Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi , the limited series currently streaming on Disney Plus.  Part V set the stage for the finale, with Obi-Wan, Leia and the small Rebel cell led by Roken (O'Shea Jackson, Jr.) escaping Darth Vader and the Inquisitors. There are a multitude of potential storylines playing out in potentially many different ways in next week's finale. And that's exactly one of the things I am enjoying most about this series. We know what we know - Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, Owen and Leia all survive, obviously. But it's the question of "how" that intrigues me. It was the same dynamic as the Prequel Trilogy. We pretty much know the who and the what. It was the how that was endlessly compelling to me. There has been a lot of loud discourse around this series. Which is not a surprise to anyone who has paid atte...

Wednesday morning saw the beginning of the second half of Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney Plus, and Part IV advanced the plot significantly while providing a lot of fun look-backs at aspects of the saga as well as look-aheads for some of the characters in the show. There were so many neat callbacks, I decided to separate them into short lists. The Phantom Menace Obi-Wan swims underwater on the planet Nur to access the Fortress Inquisitorious. He uses the same kind of rebreather device we see him and Qui-Gon use to get to Otoh Gunga early on in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). Attack of the Clones I wonder if this bit will come up in one of the final two episodes. It also finds threads in two different Star Wars films. As Reva interrogates Leia on Nur, she covertly places a tracking device on Leia's droid Lola. Lola typically lights up with a blue light, but in the episode's final shot, her eye port lights up red, indicating it is in tracking mode for the Empire. In S...

I started to write a summary/recap of the first two episodes of Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi last week after they aired on Disney Plus back to back. And it just wasn't working, because 900 words in, I had barely touched the recap portion of the first episode. Now, we are three episodes into my most-anticipated Star Wars show to date, and it feels like a good time to (briefly) assess where the show is at and how it fits in within the overall saga. As a word of caution, Part III spoilers are below. Some have characterized this show as Star Wars: Episode 3.5, and it appears to fit that label perfectly. I love everything George Lucas did with Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005), and my love for the character of Obi-Wan made me anticipate this show unlike any other the past 17 years. Early in the first episode, Obi-Wan tells Bail Organa "I'm not the man I used to be" and we see those words supported by action throughout the first half of the season. From struggling to use...