Verizon gives me bonuses when I pay my smartphone bill on time. Two months ago Verizon gave me a $3 Starbucks discount coupon. I logged in again on Sunday, hoping to snag another one. Instead, I found out I have a free one-year subscription to Disney+. That’ll show me for not allowing Verizon to send me any promotional emails. I promptly download the Disney+ app and perused the show selection. The movies are impressive. There’s movies I still haven’t seen, including “Frozen” and the original “Lion King.” The series selections are less impressive. Jeff Goldblum is interesting so I suspect his documentary series will be interesting (the first one I’ve watched, on basketball shoes, was good, not great). But I decided to take the plunge on “The Mandalorian.” The first episode is fantastic. It’s the best “Star Wars” product since “The Empire Strikes Back.” Writing credit goes to Jon Favreau. He’s a talented guy, but I’m guessing there were a lot of fingers in this writing pot. Past “Star Wars” movies have hinted at being the new western movies. “The Mandalorian” jumps right in. There’s little doubt about it. When the Mandalorian creeps up to look over a ridge, it’s a scene from any number of John Ford or John Wayne movies. The Manalorian speaks with a Clint Eastwood growl. A scene in the penultimate show is straight out of “Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid.” Not all are allusions to westerns. Another scene is a throwback to “Return of the Jedi” with essentially the same payoff. I was happy to see Gina Carano in the film. She is part of the Carano family that owns casinos in Reno (and elsewhere now), although her time in Reno was limited. She’s more a product of Las Vegas and Texas. She had the starring role in Steven Soderburgh’s “Haywire” in 2011 and she was not up to the task. Carano was quite wooden. Among her other films were “Deadpool,” which wasn’t much of an acting challenge. She’s grown and shows much greater range of emotion in “The Mandalorian.” The special effects are generally first rate, although there were a few places where they seemed to be cutting corners. When “Howard The Duck” came out, George Lucas talked about the importance of getting the eyes right in non-human characters. He didn’t do it with the duck, but Baby Yoda is well done. I wonder how many millions of dollars of profits they lost by not having a Baby Yoda doll for sale at Christmas. I liked the humor as well. The discussion of bored Imperial Troopers was a great touch. And the droids/robots were often good for laughs. IMDB lists a second season coming some time in 2020. I look forward to it.
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAH5J8yyXd%3D_DrK6Z0ZnAMya6kKgCmQjfyhY%3DMHuVdh3hh1Wu9w%40mail.gmail.com.
