Word: jedi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...movies, three is rarely the charm. The final segments of film trilogies have brought us the now Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attempting to joke (T3: Rise of the Machines), Sofia Coppola attempting to emote (The Godfather Part III) and, most terrible of all, the Ewoks (The Return of the Jedi). This year has already seen the third and hopefully final Matrix film vanish faster than Carrie-Anne Moss's career, although nothing is likely to stop the last Lord of the Rings when it sweeps across cinemas like an army of ravaging orcs. In between comes Hong Kong's own Infernal...
...baggage. Too little story spread over too much movie? Check. Total narrative bafflement for those who haven't dissected the first two films? Check. An unshakable sense of fatigue for the directors and audience alike? Double check. Even without the furry merchandising gimmicks, IA3 is more Return of the Jedi than Return of the King...
...tradition. So, what did the brothers do for an encore? They spread the sequel over two feature-length films and, with all that time to fill, got a little gassy in their storytelling. The rebel fortress of Zion was a drab lair whose denizens engaged in way too much Jedi Council--style nattering. Then--as if producer Joel Silver had pleaded, "Could you please have somebody hit somebody?"--Reloaded 180'd into an action film, with the most elaborate car chase ever shot but without the first film's zip or resonance...
...played everything from a low-life English thief to an Arab prince to a Jedi sage, but in a 62-year career, Alec Guinness never played Alec Guinness. This most chameleonlike of actors did his best to keep his true self hidden from the camera and from the world. Three years after his death, biographer Piers Paul Read aims to explode that subterfuge in Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography (Simon & Schuster; 632 pages). He succeeds at a superficial level, uncovering plenty of unpalatable truths about Guinness. Sadly, Read brings us no closer to understanding the actor's art. The mask...
...Koran, and relies for religious authority on an Iran-based Iraqi exiled cleric, Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri. But he clearly believes he will himself assume the rank of marjah - the highest authority on religion and law in Shiism, in American pop-cultural terms a knight on the highest Jedi council. His father and uncle certainly provide him with an impeccable pedigree in terms of Iraqi Shiite martyrdom. Their names - along with Muqtada's - were chanted by thousands of worshipers making the pilgrimage to Karbala last week. He denies being too young to assume spiritual authority, explaining that his father became...