When you’re out promoting a movie, you’re often asked to do a lot of things, most of them pretty silly. With the amount of press the cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was being asked to do, there were asked to do a lot of silly things, none perhaps as silly as going on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and singing a medley of Star Wars music a cappella. But the entire cast — including Harrison Ford! — actually commits, and it actually turns out to pretty fun.
The original Star Wars was driven by nostalgia for pulp magazines, Saturday-morning serials, and a simpler era with clear-cut heroes and villains. The new Star Wars is driven by nostalgia for the original Star Wars, and a simpler era when that title evoked words like “adventure” and “excitement,” and not words like “the taxation of trade routes,” and “Jar Jar Binks.” The characters in Star Wars: The Force Awakens are all searching for something of great importance to the galaxy far, far away. I won’t reveal what this MacGuffin is, but I will tell you what it represents: that old Star Wars magic. Can director J.J. Abrams and the rest of the saga’s new creators find it?
Harrison Ford appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night to talk publicly for the first time about breaking his ankle on the set of Star Wars, crashing his plane and how Star Wars: The Force Awakens is an “incredible” movie. Oh, we should also mention he did all this while dressed up as a hot dog.
'42' looks fascinating, and not just for Harrison Ford's weird make-up. Relaying the biography of Jackie Robinson, it shows how the star baseball player (played by Chadwick Boseman) had to struggle against the prejudices that didn't want to see professional baseball become integrated. Now there's a featurette that plays up Robinson's historical significance.