George lucas

Saturday

Alexander Larman

Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg’s outsized impact on 1970s cinema

For any serious lover of cinema, the 1970s were both a golden decade and the beginning of the end of film as an art form. After the permissiveness and countercultural impact of the 1960s, a whole generation of new filmmakers emerged, many of whom remain household names. These men – and they were almost exclusively men – produced work that shook up expected norms and took the medium in new, thrilling directions. It is impossible to list all the pictures and their directors who made this difference, but there are good reasons why they remain celebrated today. And then Star Wars came along in 1977 and changed the trajectory of the industry forever.

coppola

Friday

Alexander Larman

Good riddance, Kathleen Kennedy

The news that the producer Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down with immediate effect as president of Lucasfilm, to be replaced by Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan, may not sound especially consequential; film executives come and go all the time, and their arrival and departure is normally only of interest to those in the movie business. Yet Kennedy, who has run Lucasfilm – home of Star Wars, Indiana Jones and a great deal more – since 2012, and been in sole charge after the departure of the company’s founder George Lucas the same year, is the most consequential Hollywood studio head of the past couple of decades. And, her millions of detractors would argue, the most destructive, too.

kathleen kennedy

Thursday

William Newton

Why are there no paintings in Star Wars?

Why are there no paintings in Star Wars movies? The question occurred to me recently, rewatching The Rise of Skywalker. I’m old enough to recall seeing A New Hope in a drive-in in summer 1977, as well as the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special on television in 1978. Over time, my interest in Star Wars has shifted into something akin to nostalgia, so it may not be surprising that this question never struck me before. What is surprising, however, given their glaring omission from the films, is that the man who created the Star Wars universe happens to be a major collector of art — including paintings — and is due to open the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles by 2025.

Star Wars

Monday

Will Lloyd

Disney and the imagination recession

Only in retrospect does 1999 appear to be the last imaginative year of mainstream American cinema. From Cruel Intentions to Being John Malkovich, American Beauty to American Pie, The Sixth Sense to Eyes Wide Shut, Election to Magnolia, and Fight Club to The Matrix, it was, as Esquire magazine put it, 'the last great year in movies.' In the year 2039, if anybody is able to tear themselves away from insect burgers and the lurid projections of VR pleasuredomes long enough to reflect on the movies of 2019, what will they have to rhapsodize about? They will look back and see a cultural landscape monopolized by one company: Disney.

disney