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Review: Muppets Haunted Mansion

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Muppets Haunted Mansion (2019)

review | Muppets Haunted Mansion

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Another uneven offering from the Muppets—entertaining enough, but it could have been a lot better

by Dennis Burger
October 8, 2021

The Germans, in all their linguistic inventiveness, need to coin a new word for the unique mix of eagerness and hesitation that Jim Henson fans feel when a new Muppets project is announced. The simple fact is the Disney era of the franchise has been a roller coaster, reaching heights of delightful silliness like 2011’s The Muppets and plunging to depths of pointlessness like 2005’s The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz. Thankfully, Muppets Haunted Mansion is far from the worst we’ve seen from the franchise this century, but it is a bit of a mixed bag.

Let’s start off with what doesn’t work about the hour-long Halloween special. For one thing, it all feels a bit formulaic in its structure and narrative. You could argue that’s a consequence of the premise, and you’d have a pretty good point. But I still miss the days when the Muppets were so utterly off the rails that you felt uncomfortable watching a new movie or TV show with kids, at least the first time around, for fear Animal or Floyd might drop an F-bomb. Not that they ever would, but the Muppets at their best once gave you the impression they might. And Muppets Haunted Mansion feels far too safe and by-the-numbers to even hint at such a possibility. 

There’s also the fact that some of the voice acting is just atrocious. This is the first major Muppets production since Steve Whitmire, longtime performer of Kermit the Frog, was fired and replaced by Matt Vogel (and yes, yes, I know about Muppets Now, but I’ve never been able to suffer through enough of it for it to leave a lasting impression). And no disrespect to Mr. Vogel—he does a perfectly fine Floyd and a darned good Sweetums—but he’s not and never will be Kermit. He just doesn’t get the character.

A problem more specific to this special is that the music is, for the most part, awful. There are a handful of original songs, and every time I could sense another one coming, my body tensed up in anticipation of the awfulness. There are two exceptions, though. The special opens and closes with a cover of King Harvest’s version of “Dancing in the Moonlight” performed by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. It’s simply fantastic and there’s really nothing else to say about it. It rocks. 

There’s also a really fun duet between Pepe the King Prawn and Taraji P. Henson, who stars as Constance Hatchaway (aka the Black Widow Bride from the theme park ride that inspired this crossover). Not only is the song well written and well performed, it also hints at the naughtiness of the Muppets at their best. 

But the best thing about the number is that it’s just a prime example of Pepe being Pepe. Seriously, every second that fuzzy little king prawn is on screen is pure comedy gold. It probably helps, that longtime Pepe performer Bill Barretta wrote the story for Muppets Haunted Mansion, and I could take issue with the fact that he gave all the best bits to his own character, but who cares, really? If you’re a Pepe fan, this one is a must-watch, even if it is a bit uneven, even if the music mostly sucks, even if Kermit has been replaced by a half-assed imposter. 

Another great thing about Muppets Haunted Mansion is that production values are through the roof. The special boasts a level of cinematography and special effects you’d expect from a proper feature film. Disney+’s Dolby Vision presentation is also so flawless that I was, at times, startled. The opening sequence, for example, features a particularly difficult-to-encode shot of Pepe and Gonzo driving to the haunted mansion in the midst of the sort of pea-soup fog HEVC would have nightmares about if video codecs had a subconscious. And while that shot is the most extreme example, there are a lot of sequences throughout that must have required a few passes through whatever video encoder Disney+ relies on. Unsurprisingly, given the subject matter, Haunted Mansion sports some pretty dark cinematography, and the Dolby Vision grading gives the imagery a lot of depth in the shadows while also leaving some dynamic range for the specular highlights of spectral apparitions. 

Production- and presentation-wise, the only complaints I have are related to the audio, which lacks a little in terms of dynamics and could have benefited from a bit more activity in the surrounds, or at least a bit more consistency in the surround mixing. Dialogue is always presented cleanly and clearly, and the music—whatever you want to say about its compositional quality—is always delivered with good fidelity. But whoever did the final mix for the special seemingly couldn’t decide between a full-on cinematic surround experience or a front-heavy TV-special vibe, and switched between those two extremes from scene to scene with apparently no rhyme or reason. 

For all the nits picked above, though, Muppets Haunted Mansion ends up being a pretty good time, mostly due to the antics of Pepe combined with the gorgeousness of the imagery. If you have kids, I’m also pretty sure they’ll love the whole thing. And that is the thing I like best about this special. Fun Halloween specials that can be enjoyed by the whole family are few and far between and it’s nice to see another one added to the mix, even if it’s not quite as good as it could have been.

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

PICTURE | The Dolby Vision presentation is so flawless it can be, at times, startling

SOUND | The audio lacks a little in terms of dynamics and could have benefited from a bit more activity in the surrounds

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Review: The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

review | The Nightmare Before Christmas

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This Tim Burton classic would seem like it would benefit from a 4K HDR upgrade but turns out to be almost flawless when seen in HD on Disney+

by Dennis Burger
December 22, 2020

In retrospect, it’s kind of amazing that The Nightmare Before Christmas works at all. The film, after all, wasn’t really based on a story so much as it was cobbled together from some poetry and sketches and ideas from Tim Burton, who intended to turn it into a half-hour TV special à la Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or maybe a children’s book, or maybe something else altogether. There’s also the fact that the screenplay by Caroline Thompson ended up serving almost more as a skeleton for the film than an actual script, given that much of the final product was developed visually by director Henry Selick and was constantly in flux. 

If anyone deserves the utmost praise for the success of The Nightmare Before Christmas, it would be Danny Elfman, who worked with Burton to flesh out something resembling the major story beats then wrote the soundtrack that, in the end, actually serves as the story rather than merely as accompaniment. So much so that Chris Sarandon, who was cast in the role of the speaking voice of Jack Skellington was left with very little to do. Elfman ends up being the primary voice of Jack, the spirit of Jack, and the driving force for the film, while Selick filters Burton’s aesthetic through his own similar style and every other aspect of the production just gets dragged along for the ride.

It ought to be a mess, and yet Nightmare remains one of the most charming and heartfelt holiday films I’ve ever seen. And, yes, it would be more accurate to call Nightmare a “holiday” film than a Christmas film because although it appropriates all the trappings of our modern commercialized, paganized melting-pot celebration of the nativity, the story makes it abundantly clear the trappings of Christmas are hardly the point.

Instead, Nightmare cuts to the heart of why this time of year has been the center of celebration for millennia, from Saturnalia to Yule to Hanukkah to Ayyappan to Calan Gaeaf to Yaldā Night to Christmas and so many other holy and secular holidays that I’m forgetting at the moment. It’s a recognition of the fact that this holiday season represents the return of the light after a period of encroaching darkness beginning around the harvest/Halloween/Samhain/Día de los Muertos. It goes straight to the cyclical and seasonal reasons for these festivals far too many of us have forgotten, living as we do indoors and disconnected from the earth. 

There’s also a thematic aspect of Nightmare that resonates outside of its connection to the holiday season, and it’s a theme few storytellers have explored so effectively. (Really, only Tolkien comes to mind, most notably with the story of Míriel from the Quenta Silmarillion and Morgoth’s Ring.) It’s the simple lesson that when we attempt to be who we are not, to defy our true nature, nothing good can possibly come of it. In attempting to assume the role of “Sandy Claws” merely as a means of rejecting or pacifying his own dissatisfaction with the doom and gloom of Halloween without truly understanding why or how people celebrate Christmas, Jack makes a mess of pretty much everything. And while the resolution of this story thread is all wrapped up a little too tidily, what more do you expect from a 76-minute cartoon? 

Any fan of the film probably already realizes all of the above, though, so why am I going on about it all? Because the original premise of this review fell out from under me. I had every intention of writing a scathing (and perhaps pleading) criticism about the fact that The Nightmare Before Christmas deserves a 4K HDR remaster more than just about any of the Disney animated films that have already received such. 

But when I sat down to watch the film again—mostly to take notes on all the scenes I thought would be improved by a modern home video transfer—I realized the current HD master (which has been with us since 2008) is pretty much flawless. Fans revolted when Disney dropped a 25th-anniversary re-release on the marketplace in 2018 with nothing more than a new singalong mode and a bit of extra bandwidth for the film itself. And I was right there, pitchfork raised alongside theirs.

But even the HD version of the film on Disney+ looks flawless. The limited color palette is presented perfectly. Blacks are richer than liquid gold and there’s nary a hint of crush to be found. Highlights don’t clip, midtones don’t seem in any way lacking in subtlety, and the level of detail is incredible. Simply put, all the shortcomings we now associate with HD video are pretty much nowhere to be seen. I think I’ve seen Nightmare on the big screen at least 10 times, and frankly even the Disney+ stream looks better than any of those commercial exhibitions, revealing fine textures and little visual Easter eggs I didn’t even notice in IMAX from the fourth row. 

Granted, the Disney+ version doesn’t include all the supplemental material that has appeared on various home video releases through the years. It does include several deleted scenes and storyboards, along with a few other goodies. But it lacks a couple of essential gems, namely the audio commentary by Selick, Burton, and Elfman, as well as Christopher Lee’s reading of Burton’s original “Nightmare Before Christmas” poem. You can find those on Kaleidescape, though, and they’re all worth a watch/listen.

More than anything, though, I wanted to point out that if you’ve been waiting on a UHD release of The Nightmare Before Christmas, you should probably stop. If it were going to happen anytime soon, it would have been two years ago. Given Disney’s penchant for tying home video releases to anniversaries, our next shot at a remaster probably comes in 2023. And that’s too long to wait before diving into this charming little holiday gem again.

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

PICTURE | The HD version on Disney+ looks flawless. The limited color palette is presented perfectly, with the blacks richer than liquid gold and with nary a hint of crush to be found.

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Review: Hocus Pocus 2

Hocus Pocus 2 (2022)

review | Hocus Pocus 2

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A step up from the original, the sequel is still mainly a nostalgic sugar rush that could have been thought through a little better

by Dennis Burger
October 6, 2022

Whether or not Hocus Pocus 2 is a good movie is hardly even a coherent question. Of course it isn’t a good movie. The real question is whether or not you’ll like it, and I think the answer to that is simple. 

Are you an elder Millennial who developed a Pavlovian affection for the original through repeated exposure on The Disney Channel in the late 1990s, and you now want to try to beat a love for it into the heads of your children? Or are you in the grips of Stockholm Syndrome after being forced to become familiar with the 1993 cult classic just to understand half the memes in Memeville? If the answer to either of those questions is “yes,” I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll get something out of this Disney+ original, which at times blurs the lines between sequel, reboot, and remake. 

It’s a better movie than the original—better acted, more artfully shot, with a more coherent script and more competent direction at the hands of Anne Fletcher (Step Up, 27 Dresses) but such praise is relative. This is still a glorified after-school special with a false edge, filled with out-of-touch musical numbers and lazy references to modern culture that will lose what chuckle-worthiness they have before the inevitable Hocus Pocus 3 comes out in a few years. 

The premise of the plot is also flawed from the foundation up. It all hinges up on the fact that the Sanderson Sisters—played once again by Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker—can only be conjured during a full moon on Halloween, and by a virgin at that. The sequel makes it quite clear that the last time the witches rampaged through Salem was in 1993, and it’s now exactly 29 years later. 

In other words, the script goes out of its way to set this sequel in 2022. And yet there’s no full moon on Halloween this year—nowhere near it. There was one in 2020 but a big whole-town Halloween celebration wouldn’t have quite made sense that year. There’ll be another one in 2039, but that wouldn’t quite work for a story whose novelty hinges upon evil women from ye olde tymes being baffled by modern technology and customs. 

Could they have just dropped the full-moon requirement and glossed it over with some retroactive continuity? Sure, that would have been the easiest way to make sense of it all. But this movie doesn’t give a hoot whether it makes sense, nor whether you care if it makes sense. It’s here to give you a nostalgic sugar rush and create an alibi for you to foist your childhood pop-culture fetish on a new generation. (And trust me: As a Star Wars devotee, I feel your pain.) 

Given that, the movie’s Dolby Vision video presentation on Disney+ almost seems wasted. The enhanced resolution is a mixed blessing as on the one hand the 8K source imagery and 4K digital intermediate allow you to appreciate some of the surprisingly nice set designs and lighting. But on the other, that resolution makes some of the constraints of the relatively meager budget a bit too apparent, especially in the compositing of some of the digital effects. 

Still, there are some details I would expect HEVC to struggle with at any bitrate, streaming or not, such as a few swirly, sparkly, extremely specular magical effects that require higher frequencies to render, all laid atop rather dark backgrounds that lean harder on the lower-frequency corner of the discrete cosine transform table. Content that demands equal reliance on high and low frequencies simultaneously is always the toughest for any hybrid block-based codec to encode and decode, and I was frankly shocked by how well Disney+ handled it. I never saw it struggle.

The Dolby Digital+ Atmos mix is best described as “perfunctory,” and if for whatever reason you plan on watching this movie in your home cinema, just know that it’s mixed about 2.5 dB below reference levels, so go ahead and turn the volume up. 

Again, though, you’d probably be better off watching Disney+’s Dolby Vision remaster of the original instead if you need to scratch this itch. It may not be as good, but at least you’re already addicted to it—otherwise, why are you even reading this?

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

PICTURE | The Dolby Vision presentation on Disney+ allows you to appreciate some of the surprisingly nice set designs and lighting, but the enhanced resolution makes some of the constraints of the relatively meager budget a bit too apparent

SOUND | The Dolby Digital+ Atmos mix is best described as “perfunctory”—it’s also mixed about 2.5 dB below reference level

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Review: Star Wars: Andor

Star Wars: Andor (2022)

review | Star Wars: Andor

Light on action and the slowest of slow burns, this Star Wars series still satisfies by delivering a master class in tension and suspense

by Dennis Burger
September 22, 2022

Despite its name, Star Wars: Andor is not Star Wars. And that’s totally appropriate since the movie in which the title character debuted—Rogue One: A Star Wars Story—bore only the most superficial, what-had-happened-was connection to the mythology of the galaxy far, far away to begin with. 

Here’s the difference, though. Rogue One was a cobbled together, oh-so-edgy pile of inconsequential grimdark fluff pretending to be a grownup and gritty Star Wars movie. In fact, it was reportedly barely even a coherent narrative until screenwriter Tony Gilroy was brought in to turn the footage into something resembling a movie in postproduction. 

With Andor, though, Gilroy has been working on the show since 2019, before the first frame was shot. And so, while it isn’t quite Star Wars, the series is a fascinating political drama that combines the best elements of the writer’s work on the Bourne film series (minus the action), Michael Clayton (minus the lawyers), and the neo-noir thriller Nightcrawler, which Gilroy produced for his brother Dan, who wrote and directed the film and contributes some writing to Andor.

The only real cinematic inspiration I’ve seen referenced for Andor, though, is Stanley Kramer’s 1960 adaptation of Inherit the Wind. I don’t think you’d pick up on that just from watching the show since it doesn’t seem to be narrative inspiration nor really even thematic inspiration. But as with that film, this series is, so far, a masterclass in tension and suspense. It’s the slowest of slow burns I’ve seen onscreen in ages. And yet, due to its pacing and its legitimate human drama, it doesn’t feel laborious. Each of the three episodes released thus far runs from 38 to 43 minutes and curiously manages to feel like a really satisfying and brisk two hours apiece. Watching the show is a fascinating experiment in the weird liquidity of time and our perception thereof. There isn’t a single scene in the whole affair that isn’t simultaneously gripping and deliberately measured, restrained, anticipatory.

I don’t want to gloss over something out-the-norm in that last observation, though. Unlike previous shows that carried the Star Wars branding, Andor’s first three episodes were released by Disney+ simultaneously. And in retrospect, there’s a good reason for that. The show was originally conceived as a five-season run, each season of which would jump forward a year in Cassian Andor’s life leading up to the events of Rogue One. At some point, Gilroy decided that was all just too much, and compacted each season into a mini arc. Hence, as best I understand it, the three episodes so far represent a condensation of what was originally conceived as Season One in Gilroy’s 1,500-page bible for the series, and the 12 episodes of this first of two seasons will get us about halfway through that tome. 

The consequence of that is that even if Andor goes completely off the rails as Book of Boba Fett did, or starts off with a bang and settles into predictable middlingness as Obi-Wan Kenobi did, we already have a fully fleshed-out arc with a beginning, middle, and end here, and it’s honestly the best onscreen Star Wars we’ve gotten since the last few seasons of The Clone Wars, despite hardly being Star Wars at all. 

You can probably skip this one if you’re into the franchise for its space battles, blaster fights, lightsabers, and space wizards. I love all of that stuff but there’s none of it to be found here (except for one action set-piece in Episode Three where shots are fired, but that ends up being almost more of an environmental ballet than an O.K. Corral homage). 

You can probably also skip the show if you’re looking for home theater demo material. Andor is a very bruised-looking work, high on contrast and largely devoid of dynamic range. Its Dolby Vision encoding mostly serves to keep details from being lost in the shadows. It’s gorgeous but never eye-popping. There’s more texture here than detail, more tonal richness than gamut-stressing intensity. And while the Dolby Atmos mix is simultaneously expansive and enveloping when called for, it’s predominantly a talky affair. Most of the channels aside from the center are filled with falling rain and the haunting, moody, brilliant-but-subdued score by Nicholas Britell (The Big Short). 

It’s odd. I went into Andor feeling almost obliged to watch it, given how little interest I have in the film that inspired it and the character at its heart but how much devotion I have to this franchise nonetheless. Now I find myself eagerly awaiting the next episode in a way that exceeds my anticipation for the next season of The Mandalorian. But with this one, I’m not watching it because it’s Star Wars. I’m watching it because, at least so far, it’s simply damned good cinema in an episodic-TV package.

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

PICTURE | The Dolby Vision presentation mostly serves to keep details from being lost in the shadows. It’s gorgeous but never eye-popping. 

SOUND | While the Atmos mix is simultaneously expansive and enveloping when called for, it’s predominantly a talky affair

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Review: WandaVision

WandaVision (2021)

review | WandaVision

Marvel takes its fans to places they’ve never been before with this surrealist send-up of classic TV shows

by Dennis Burger
January 18, 2021

Since the 2014 release of Captain America: Winter Soldier, Marvel Studios has built up a stockpile of trust with superhero-movie fans by pretty consistently cranking out entertaining action romps that span the genre spectrum from intense ’70s-style espionage thrillers to intergalactic comedies to dramatic epics. With WandaVision, the studio is spending that trust on an offbeat experiment that will, in retrospect, be seen as either a massive success or an embarrassing failure. And two episodes into its nine-episode run, it’s nearly impossible to tell which of those outcomes is more likely. 

The Disney+ limited series represents a few firsts for Marvel. It’s their first episodic short-form production (earlier, tenuously connected TV shows like the pointless Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were produced by Marvel Television, a separate subsidiary studio). It’s their first foray into the so-called Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and reportedly serves as the first in a trilogy of connected stories that will continue in Jon Watts’ upcoming Spider-Man sequel and conclude with Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It’s also the first MCU product of any sort released since 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home. 

But perhaps most importantly, it’s the first time Marvel has placed anywhere near this much trust in the intelligence and patience of its audience. And I say that because anyone who tells you they fully understand what’s going on here either has insider information or they’re lying their asses off. 

WandaVision is, in one sense, a portrayal of the supposedly idyllic home life of Wanda Maximoff and the Vision, two star-crossed lovers whose first big-screen appearance was in the otherwise forgettable Avengers: Age of Ultron (one of the studio’s few truly bad movies post-Winter Soldier). The problem, of course, is that we saw the Vision die an awful death in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War—first at the hands of Wanda herself then through some temporal trickery at the hands of Phase Three’s big bad, Thanos. 

So the fact that he’s seemingly alive and mostly well in WandaVision is our first clue something is amiss here. But it’s far from the last and hardly the biggest. A much more blatant clue that not all is as it seems is that the series is produced in the style of classic sitcoms, starting with a pitch-perfect homage to The Dick Van Dyke Show (Van Dyke himself was a consultant and influenced a number of creative decisions, including the choice to shoot with vintage lenses and lighting and to produce the first episode in front of a live studio audience), then bleeding into time-capsule recreations of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie and—if the series’ trailer is any indication—advancing forward in time as the story unfolds, paying loving homage to newer and newer half-hour TV shows until . . . 

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Where is this all going? What’s the point of all this classic-TV homage? 

Fans of the comics that inspired the series—most notably the fantastic The Vision and the Scarlet Witch mini-series from the ’80s, the heartbreaking House of M from the early aughts, and the brilliant-but-batshit-insane Vision standalone series from 2015-2016—certainly have a clue as to what’s going on here. Or at least we think we do. 

From my perspective, it seems obvious that WandaVision is a story about what happens when someone with the ability to manipulate the very fabric of reality becomes so stricken with grief that she forms a new reality around her. And there are clues sprinkled throughout the first two episodes that this is what’s going on. Wanda, unable to process the horror of losing her one true love—indeed, of being forced to kill him herself—has snapped. Unable to cope with the real world, she creates her own world to occupy, a world whose picket fences and goofball antics are all informed by the classic sitcoms she saw in her youth. It’s important to remember that Wanda grew up in war-torn Eastern Europe and as such never had the idyllic suburban life she’s attempting to fabricate. So any sort of normal life is, for her, purely fantasy.

So it makes sense that when reality begins to intrude upon that fantasy, she rejects it, once again reforming the world around her into something she can once again cope with. We see this at one point when she simply exclaims, “No!” and literally rewinds the tape on her sitcom life, only to reshape it into something a little more colorful and a little more congruous with her unexpected pregnancy. 

It all sounds a little trite, but series creator/writer Jac Schaeffer and Episode 1 and 2 director Matt Shakman so fully and sincerely commit to the classic Dick Van Dyke Show/Bewitched/I Dream of Jeannie tone, style, presentation, and aesthetic for so much of the running time—without a hint of spoof or parody—that you can’t help but be drawn into it. When the series ventures more toward Twilight Zone territory, as it does when Wanda’s grasp on her faux reality begins to slip, it’s as disconcerting for the viewer as it is for the characters. 

Of course, that’s simply my take after two episodes. It’s entirely possible that MCU mastermind Kevin Feige has constructed a trap for us comic-book fans, leading us astray with red herrings before yanking the rug out from under our collective feet, leaving us exactly as disoriented as I would imagine most casual viewers are after having sat through the first two episodes of this weird experiment. Maybe this isn’t all Wanda’s delusion. Maybe she isn’t shaping reality around her. Maybe it’s—who knows?—aliens tinkering with her brain. Or maybe it’s a Truman Show sort of thing. 

All I can say for sure is that, two episodes in, I’m utterly intrigued by WandaVision and can’t wait for it all to unfold. My first inclination was to think that perhaps Disney+ should have broken with tradition and dumped all nine episodes into our laps at once. The more I think about, though, the more I realize the weeklong break between episodes is an absolute necessity, giving me time to re-watch, ponder, reflect, and discuss what’s happened thus far before diving into the next chapter in this slow-burn psychological mystery. 

Again, by the time all nine episodes are available, it could all end up being one big exercise in pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook, à la Tenet, or it could be one of the most brilliant TV series to come along in years, and the wait to find out which it is consumes me like an itch I just can’t quite reach. But for now, I find myself in a Schrödinger’s Cat superposition of fascination and skepticism. It’s difficult to imagine any corporate machine pulling off an act of truly artistic surrealism of the sort WandaVision seems to be. But at the same time, I have to acknowledge that they’re pulling it off so far. 

And that’s largely due to not only the success of the aesthetic and stylistic conceit but also the delightful performances across the board. You could easily splice stars Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany into old footage of classic TV shows and anyone who didn’t know the actors already wouldn’t bat an eyelash. Kathryn Hahn is also an absolute tour de force in the role of Agnes, the nosy next-door neighbor who definitely has a major part to play in this mystery. (Indeed, most comic-book fans will have likely figured out who she is by the end of the second episode, but I won’t spoil that surprise.)

But world-class acting alone isn’t enough to sustain a series that’s attempting to take as big a bite as this one is. So, more than anything, I hope WandaVision doesn’t end up choking. Because if the MCU is to remain interesting, it absolutely must keep taking artistic risks like this. 

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

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Disney Plus Needs to Break Its Own Rules

Disney+ Needs to Break Its Own Rules

Disney+ Needs to Break Its Own Rules

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Rolling shows out slowly over time makes sense for some series—but not for all

by Dennis Burger
May 13, 2021

Throughout March and April, Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier dominated the pop-culture conversation. You might have noticed that we at Cineluxe weren’t part of that conversation but that doesn’t have much to do with the series itself. It’s a fine show—far from Marvel’s best work but also far from its worst. The series deals with a lot of big ideas, and although it doesn’t give them all the thorough examination they deserve, it’s still a solid continuation of the Captain America films just without the benefit of Steve Rogers, who hung up the shield at the end of Avengers: Endgame. 

So, why the radio silence? Because a discussion of what did and didn’t work about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier would sort of miss the point. Anyone who tells you they could wrap their heads around the show before it was available to view in its entirety is lying. The biggest thing holding the series back was that it doesn’t hold up as weekly appointment television. 

I’ve riffed in the past, about how Disney+ represented something of a revival of “water cooler” TV—how its weekly release schedule gave new shows some breathing room and gave audiences an opportunity to discuss new episodes one at a time in chat rooms, message boards, and around the dinner table. 

That really worked to the advantage of the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, and it was practically baked into the premise of WandaVision. Of course, it wasn’t merely a creative decision to release those shows one episode at a time over the course of a couple of months, it was an act of necessity, given that neither’s season finale was finished cooking when the first episode hit the table.

Forget the reasons for this anti-binging release strategy, though. The fact is that it works—except when it doesn’t. And The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is the perfect example of how a “this is the way we do things” mentality and a dogged adherence to tradition (no matter how new that tradition may be) can hurt a property. 

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is, at the end of the day, a pretty good five-hour-plus movie. And given its length, it’s nice to have it broken up into six chapters so you can consume it at your own pace over the course of a night or two or an entire week—whichever fits your schedule. But given that it’s effectively one cinematic experience chopped into six roughly equal parts, doling it out over a month-and-a-half of real-world time reminded me of Bilbo Baggins’ famous quote from The Fellowship of the Ring: It feels thin . . . sort of stretched . . . like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.

When Disney+ launched, the weekly release schedules were part of its still-forming identity. At this point, though, its identity is pretty well established. It surpassed 100 million subscribers sometime last month. Soon enough, its subscriber base will eclipse Netflix (although I hesitate to predict when, since analysts keep moving the goalposts and Disney+ continues to defy their wildest expectations in terms of growth). 

At this point, you have to acknowledge that Disney+ is, if not the leader in streaming, at least a leader. Good leaders adapt, though. They have a good sense of what works and what doesn’t. And while the appointment-TV approach has certainly worked for most of the service’s properties so far, we now have at least one example of ever-Friday releases negatively impacting a show’s effectiveness. 

There was literally no good creative reason to tease out The Falcon and the Winter Soldier over the course of six weeks. Six days, maybe? That could have worked. And the entertainment-industry headlines would have written themselves: “Disney+ Brings Back the Mini-Series with Special Falcon & Winter Soldier Event.”  

Disney+ has broken nearly every rule of the streaming marketplace. Surely it can break this rule when it makes sense, even if the rule is its own.

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

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The Mandalorian: More Than Just Star Wars

The Mandalorian (2020)

The Mandalorian | More Than Just Star Wars

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The first season of The Mandalorian is satisfying from start to finish, taking the franchise into intriguing new territory

by Dennis Burger
January 2, 2020

If you havent already seen Season One of The Mandalorian on Disney+, it stands to reason that youre simply not interested. You may even be sick of hearing about it altogether, given that its the only thing in 2019 that managed to out-meme that crazy woman from Real Housewives yelling at a cat eating salad.

Heres the thing, though: While much of the discussion about The Mandalorian has centered on its adorable baby-alien McGuffin or its ties to the larger Star Wars universe, or even on its everything-old-is-new-again weekly release schedule, there hasnt been an awful lot of talk about whether the series is actually good. Not as a Star Wars TV series. Not as a lore drop about one of the franchises most beloved and mysterious factions. Not even as a small plank in the bridge between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, chronologically speaking. But as, you know, just a TV show, a thing that exists in and of itself, independent of the fanatical fanbase or larger mythology.

The last time I wrote about the series, five episodes into its eight-episode run, I withheld judgment on that matter. Now that were a few days past the first-season finale and Ive had a chance to watch the season again from front to back, I wanted to step back and take off my Star Wars scholar hat and discuss the show on its own terms (not an easy task, since I once defeated the president of the Star Wars Fan Club in a trivia contest and still have the prize to prove it).

The Mandalorian is the love child of Jon Favreau, a name you definitely know, and Dave Filoni, who may be unfamiliar if youre not a big Star Wars fan. In short, Filoni was half of the creative driving force behind The Clone Wars, one of the best TV series of the past 20 years, but also one of the most criminally underrated, likely due to the fact that it was animated. 

That aside, though, theres one massive difference between The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian: The former assumed you were deeply invested in Star Wars lore and wanted to know more; the latter seems more interested in disassembling the elements that made the original Star Wars trilogy such a cultural phenomenon and reassembling them into something new—something that both pays homage and reinvents. 

You dont have to know much about George Lucas’s space opera/fantasy to know that this means going back to the wells of both Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone, the former of which influenced the latter and both of which inspired Star Wars in very different ways. Since The Mandalorian isnt about a larger civilization-spanning conflict, Favreau and Filoni leave other influences—like The Dam Busters and Tora! Tora! Tora!—on the table and bring in some new inspiration, namely Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojimas epic Japanese comic-book serial Lone Wolf and Cub and the film adaptations it spawned. 

The beauty of Favreau and Filonis new pastiche is that you really dont need to know any of that to enjoy it. Nor do you have to know that the shows producers have eschewed CGI as much as possible by going back and developing new techniques for photographing and compositing spacecraft models that are very much inspired by the techniques of ILM circa 1976 to 1983. Without knowing any of that, you can just feel it. Theres this wonderful mix of the familiar and the foreign that drives this series.

The Mandalorian: More Than Just Star Wars

And thats true of everything, down to Ludwig Göranssons incredible score, which may be my favorite thing about The Mandalorian. Instead of aping John Williams’ iconic themes, as so many other composers have done when playing around in ancillary Star Wars projects, Göransson gives us something new that isnt really new at all. Squint at it from one direction and theres an undeniable Eastern influence to the tones, textures, and overall structure of the music. Step back and look at it from another angle and it could just as easily have accompanied any of the misadventures of the Man with No Name. 

As with Williams, Göransson also sprinkles in the flavor of Holst and the spice of Stravinsky from time to time, but—at the risk of sounding repetitive—its the way he combines these influences, along with his own unique aesthetic, that results in something new and compelling that still feels familiar, even if you cant quite put your finger on exactly why.

I hinted above that The Mandalorian doesnt attempt to bite off more than it can chew, namely in the way that it doesnt attempt to mash up every classic work of cinema or serial that inspired the original Star Wars, and thats as true thematically as it is narratively and stylistically. There really isnt much here by way of spiritual rumination. The mystical is treated as a mystery and doesnt play heavily into the meaning of the series. 

Then again, it can take a while to really figure out what fundamental ideas the show is attempting to play around with, in large part due to its very episodic structure. In crafting this season, Favreau and Filoni seem intent upon letting the writers and directors of each 33- to 49-minute episode create their own little narratives, reminiscent in ways of David Carradine’s Kung Fu from the mid-1970s, and it isnt until the very end that one episode really connects to the next and a larger story arc begins to congeal.  

Taken as a whole, its not difficult to see a very simple thematic through-line woven into this collection of eight largely disconnected episodes: A tale of principles, honor, cultural (or familial) baggage, and redemption—all themes that resonate within the larger Star Wars mythology but that work just fine on their own. 

Technically speaking, The Mandalorian is beautifully shot, and honestly looks even more cinematic than its $15-million-per-episode budget would lead you to suspect. There has been some controversy over the fact that the show doesnt make use of the expanded dynamic range or larger color gamut afforded by its Dolby Vision (or HDR10, depending on your device) presentation. Gleaming specular highlights are nowhere to be found, and the lower end of the value scale can be a bit flat. Im guessing this was largely an aesthetic choice, as it does give the show a somewhat classic” look, especially in comparison to other contemporary series that do make more obvious use of HDR. 

I hesitate to accuse Disney+ of being dishonest in presenting The Mandalorians non-HDR cinematography in an HDR container, though, and that mostly boils down to a little-discussed advantage of our new home video standards in the era of higher-efficiency, lower-bitrate streaming: The minimization of video artifacts. 

On a lark, I disabled the HDR capabilities of my Roku Ultra and spot-checked an early episode, just to see what differences might pop up. In terms of color purity, shadow detail, overall brightness, and so forth, any differences were hard to spot. But without the benefit of 10- (or 12-) bit color, large expanses of clear, pale sky were occasionally rendered like sun-bleached sticks of Fruit Stripe gum, with blatant banding stretching from one side of the screen to the other. Say what you 

The Mandalorian: More Than Just Star Wars

will about the seriesoverall flatcolor palette and lack of value extremes, but simply packing it in a Dolby Vision box does keep visual distractions of that sort to a bare minimum. 

As for the audio, youll definitely want to enjoy The Mandalorian on the best sound system you have access to. One evening, whilst hanging out at a friends house, someone floated the idea of watching the most recent episode, which I agreed to despite having just watched it the evening prior. I found it a lackluster experience mostly due to my buddys inexpensive soundbar. And it wasnt really the explosions or gunfire that left me wanting more (although the sound mix does them justice), it was the presentation of Göranssons aforementioned score. Theres a dynamic drive to his musical accompaniment, as well as a rich blend of timbres and textures, that simply demands to be heard by way of a well-calibrated, well-installed, full-range surround sound system. 

But should you give it a chance to shine in your home theater or media room even if you care little for George Lucas’s galaxy far, far away? I daresay yes. At its heart, The Mandalorian is a delightful bushidō/gunslinger mashup that nods at fans quite frequently, but also quite slyly, such that youre likely to be completely unaware of any allusions or references youll almost certainly miss if youre not a franchise devotee, at least once you get past the first ten minutes of the first episode (the only place where blatant fan service really rears its ugly head).

Taken as a whole, it definitely does stand on its own, despite its tenuous connections to the larger mythology, despite its heavy nods to works of classic cinema and television, and (perhaps most importantly) despite the fact that everyone else on your Facebook newsfeed wont stop memeing the hell out of the seriesmost heartfelt moments or most quotable dialogue.

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

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Review: Obi-Wan Kenobi

Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

review | Obi-Wan Kenobi

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The early signs point to this Disney+ series being more substantial, and playing out better, than the misguided Boba Fett

by Dennis Burger
May 30, 2022

In my reviews of new Star Wars shows and movies in recent years, I’ve been relying on a metric I can no longer justify: Does this thing feel like Star Wars or not? That is no longer justifiable because it’s too subjective, but it can also turn on a dime. The Book of Boba Fett did a good job of feeling like it belonged to the larger Star Wars mythos with its first few episodes before devolving into, in my own words, “a bunch of middle-aged men playing with Star Wars action figures more so than any attempt at creating something compelling or comprehensible.”

Going forward, I’m more interested in whether new Star Wars properties make the Galaxy Far, Far Away feel larger or smaller (in addition, of course, to whether or not they’re good on their own merits). Consider the final episodes of Book of Boba. Everything got a little too connected. Fan-favorite characters were shoehorned into the action just because. Rogue One was guilty of this as well. Too many nostalgia bombs; too few excuses to care about any of what was going on based purely on the story at hand. In short, when Star Wars panders to its aging Gen-X fans, it starts to feel hollow.  

The good news about Obi-Wan Kenobi, the new limited series on Disney+, is that it makes the Star Wars Galaxy feel less like a playset and more like the mythological world it should. What’s interesting is that, perhaps more so than any new Star Wars property in the Disney era except for Rogue One, Obi-Wan had the most boundaries drawn around it from the get-go. 

The series was originally developed as a film to be directed by Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot) and written by Hossein Amini (The Wings of the Dove) before being rejiggered into a limited series directed by Deborah Chow (who helmed some of the best episodes of The Mandalorian), with some adaptation and additional scripting by Joby Harold (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword) and Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl). And throughout all stages of its development, it seems like the mandate from above was to function mostly as connective tissue between the original and prequel Star Wars trilogies. 

That required Ewan McGregor, now 51 years of age, to play Kenobi at the midpoint between where we saw him at the end of Episode III (32 playing 38) and where Sir Alec Guinness (58 playing 57) picked up the role decades before in Episode IV. Time is a weird soup, y’all, and it gets even weirder when discussing prequels and sequels and midquels and such.  

The point is, McGregor is technically too old now to be playing a 48-year-old Obi-Wan, but looks too young. And none of that matters once you get immersed in the experience of the show. That has something to do with the fact that, despite following the spirit of the law and delivering a new story that exists at the midpoint between two existing stories, Chow and Harold and the rest have proven that the line between Episodes III and IV isn’t as straight as we might have imagined. The most surprising thing about Obi-Wan Kenobi is that there are any surprises to be had at all, but there are. So much so that, in retrospect, the series’ trailer feels like one giant red herring. 

Thankfully, those surprises feel genuine, organic, the product of imagined history and genuine character interaction, not some cynical effort to pander to fans. Mind you, as I write this only two of the series’ six parts have aired and things could go kerflooey from here, as Boba clearly demonstrated. But so far, Kenobi is making all the right noises and almost none of the wrong ones.

Let’s deal with the not-so-great, because it’s a pretty short list. While Chow has done a great job of somehow creating a cinematic work that stylistically fits somewhere between the slick digital overproduction of Episode III and the down-and-dirty, low-budget grunge of Episode IV, there are still a few things I’m not quite adjusting to as yet. 

Some of the dialogue feels a little too natural—not quite stilted and pulpy enough. In other words, it doesn’t quite capture the “you can type this shit but you sure can’t say it” quality of Star Wars dialogue at its truest. Much of the delivery is a little too naturalistic, and when it isn’t, it’s more modern-theatrical than classic-B-movie-theatrical. 

The music, too, feels a little off. Even the new theme by John Williams is a bit generic and forgettable. It’s mixed well, with a solid Dolby Atmos soundtrack that works in service of the show without feeling the need to remind you of its channel count, and the sound effects are great. It’s just a shame that they couldn’t go a little funkier and weirder with the score.

The good? Pretty much everything else. The cinematography by Chung-hoon Chung (Last Night in Soho, Oldboy) is stunning, especially the composition and lighting. It does break from Star Wars tradition in that it doesn’t rely on quick cuts, wipes, dissolves, or anything of the sort. There’s also a subtlety to the movement of the camera I didn’t pick up on until a second watch-through. The framing moves with the deliberate pace of the show itself. And all of it looks amazing in Disney+’s Dolby Vision presentation—a bit dark but beautifully detailed, with highlights that feel more filmic than showy.

The biggest thing working in the show’s favor, though, is McGregor’s performance. It’s here where we can really see the benefits of the Volume (the microLED virtual sets employed first in The Mandalorian) as opposed to the wallpaper of green screens employed in the prequels, since you can see the environments surrounding Obi-Wan reflected in the actor’s eyes—both literally and metaphorically. Since McGregor isn’t being cut-and-pasted into this fantastical world but is rather immersed in it (albeit via screens), he has to imagine less. And that frees him up to engage more—with the world, with the characters around him, and with himself. There are character moments here that are utterly heartbreaking, and others that are genuinely thrilling.

That’s no mean feat given that we know the ultimate fates of nearly all the main characters involved. But the fact that Chow and company can make you forget what you already know—if even for a moment—is part of the magic of this show. The fact that Stuart Beattie, Hossein Amini, and Joby Harold were able to retcon some inconsistencies between trilogies without making them feel like retcons is another neat trick. (Seriously, there’s some subtle story manipulation here I don’t think will land with most viewers until the next time they watch A New Hope.) 

Now, here’s hoping they can keep this up for four more episodes. Because if this one belly-flops, it’s going to hurt. The off-the-rails disaster of Book of Boba is of little consequence because none of it really meant anything. Kenobi, on the other hand, means so much more. It’s Star Wars at its best—a morality tale wrapped up in a myth inside an action-adventure fantasy that pays homage to cinema of a bygone era (although it hurts my soul a little to know that films of the ‘90s and early 2000s count as classic cinema these days, but so be it). 

Perhaps the best thing I can say about it, though, is that I couldn’t in a million years even begin to guess where it’s going to go from here. And I thought I had it completely figured out from the first frame.

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

PICTURE |  Obi-Wan looks amazing in Disney+’s Dolby Vision presentation—a bit dark but beautifully detailed, with highlights that feel more filmic than showy

SOUND | The Atmos soundtrack is solid, working in service of the show without feeling the need to remind you of its channel count, and the sound effects are great

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Review: Turning Red

Turning Red (2022)

review | Turning Red

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The latest Pixar offering falls squarely into so-so territory, way closer to Luca than Soul

by John Sciacca
March 14, 2022

The term “dumping ground” certainly has negative connotations but it seems an apt description for how Disney has been using Disney+ for recent Pixar films. Once the crown jewel of animated titles, expected to generate upwards of $1 billion in worldwide box office per film, the past three Pixar features, including its latest, Turning Red (which debuted on Friday March 11), have all skipped the theater and been released directly onto the streaming service without even requiring the add-on “Premier Access” fee for early viewing.

One of the things you typically expect from Pixar is a multi-faceted story that appeals across multiple generations. At the studio’s best—Inside Out, Toy Story 3, Soulit creates stories and characters with so much depth and emotion it can bring viewers to tears. (I swear, the end of Toy Story 3 gets me every time.) 

While it was beautiful-looking, I felt Pixar’s last film, Luca, was an especially weak and overly sweet entry in its oeuvre, especially following Soul, which tackled such deep and heady topics. I’d like to say the studio returned to form with Turning Red, its 25th feature, but it just lacked the depth I was hoping for. 

Red is directed and co-written by Domee Shi, who previously helmed the 2018 Pixar short Bao, which I thought was wonderful. In that sub-eight-minute film, she gave us a full emotional story arc that made us care for a dumpling that served as a metaphor for the mother’s love for her son and him growing up.

Shi clearly understands and is interested in sharing Chinese culture, and she doesn’t stray from that here. Meilin (Rosalie Chiang) is an overachieving 13-year-old girl currently in Grade 8 growing up in Canada. She has a ride-or-die crew of three friends who are starting to notice boys and want nothing more than to see boy-band sensation 4*Town in concert when they come to Toronto during an upcoming tour. But, of course, Meilin’s tiger mom, Ming (Sandra Oh), has objections to this. Complicating things is that, due to an ancient family blessing/curse, Meilin—like all the women in her family when they reach a certain age—has started suddenly transforming into a large red panda whenever she gets too excited or is overcome with emotions. And, as a teenager, this is nearly all the time. 

In some ways, Turning Red reminded me of a different take or follow-on to Inside Out, however not as brilliant or entertaining. But this is more of an “outside in,” as we see all the external things Meilin is going through and how they affect her emotions. As the parent of a teenage daughter, there’s a lot that’s relatable here and the “not a girl, not yet a woman” purgatory that can be the teenage years. The film’s core message is about growing up, changing, and developing into adulthood and discovering your own self, but without disappointing family or leaving it behind. 

One area where I’m happy to say Pixar is still very much on point is picture quality. The studio seems to raise the bar on the technical capabilities of its computer animation with each film, and that is certainly on display here. Turning Red is visually stunning, and you could pick any frame and dissect the shading, texturing, lighting, and detail that went into it.

Taken from a 4K digital intermediate, the subtle textures really stood out. Things like the texture in a metallic name tag Meilin wears working at the family temple, the tight herringbone pattern in a hat, a rubber dodge ball, the fuzzy/furry textures of Meilin’s stuffed toy animals, or the natural shimmer and texture of the fabric on the emerald-colored blazer Ming wears. And the detail and movement in the fur work when Meilin is Red Panda is a clear evolution from Sully in Monsters Inc. 

The animators show incredible attention to even the smallest details, such as single strands of stray fabric on a hat or sweater or a loose strand of hair. In one scene, Meilin is shown in profile lit by moonlight through a window, and you see these fine tiny hairs on her chin and neck. Or notice the smoke curling off the incense sticks in the temple as it softly coils and winds its way towards the ceiling while slowly dissipating. 

There is definitely more stylized animation here. For example, when characters are overwhelmed by something’s cuteness, they will get large, starry manga eyes, and there are also a lot of lighting effects that are very anime-inspired. There’s a scene about 9:30 into the film where the dad is cooking that’s especially stunning, causing everyone in our family to literally say, “Wow!” at the same instant. It’s near photo-realistic animation that is just beautiful to behold, and I’d happily watch an entire show of nothing but the dad preparing a meal in that style and quality. Also, stay through the end credits for another scene that is incredibly lifelike.

There is plenty of red here, which is an extremely auspicious color in Chinese culture, and the HDR with Dolby Vision grade helps it to really pop, as do the many scenes around town colored with bright pinks and pastels. Also notice the color shading in Meilin’s red hair, with its blended layers and shades of red, orange, and yellow. Near the end, she visits a magical bamboo forest where there are a lot of vibrant and glowing lighting effects. 

The Dolby Atmos soundtrack has a good bit of atmosphere and immersion but, like with many of Disney’s recent sound mixes, I found myself pushing the volume knob about 5 dB louder than usual. The mix’s primary goal is clearly presenting the dialogue and it pulls that off well, but there’s a nuance to the quality of the audio here depending on the environment where characters are speaking. For example, voices in Meilin’s small, tiled bathroom have a completely different tonal quality than when they’re speaking inside the temple or shouting in the bamboo forest. 

Outdoor scenes have plenty of ambient surround effects such as traffic sounds, or thunder that cracks and rolls overhead, or the rustling of bamboo branches and leaves in a forest. Notice the calming Zen music and gentle, room-filling chimes, the winds that blow through the temple, the voices chanting all around you, or the arena atmosphere at the 4*Town concert. 

Your subwoofer gets a bit of work, giving some serious heft to the panda’s giant footsteps, or when Meilin poofs into the panda during one especially embarrassing moment at school, or for the panda’s booming voice, or during the concert.

Turning Red seems to have critics and audiences split, with critics giving it a 95% Rotten Tomatoes rating, matching both Soul and Wall-E, and audiences scoring it a more mediocre 66%, closer to The Good Dinosaur’s 64%. While I didn’t find Turning Red to be among Pixar’s strongest outings, it’s entertaining and looks fantastic, and certainly worth checking out for Disney+ subscribers. 

Probably the most experienced writer on custom installation in the industry, John Sciacca is co-owner of Custom Theater & Audio in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, & is known for his writing for such publications as Residential Systems and Sound & Vision. Follow him on Twitter at @SciaccaTweets and at johnsciacca.com.

PICTURE | Subtle textures really stand out in the 4K presentation, and the near photo-realistic animation is just beautiful to behold

SOUND | The Atmos soundtrack has a good bit of atmosphere and immersion but, as with many of Disney’s recent mixes, is about 5 dB softer than it should be

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Second Thoughts: The Book of Boba Fett

Second Thoughts: The Book of Boba Fett

Second Thoughts | The Book of Boba Fett

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Not only did this Disney+ series not live up to expectations but it devolved into grownups playing with action figures

by Dennis Burger
February 21, 2022

Rarely have I seen a series launch with so much potential and squander it so spectacularly as did The Book of Boba Fett. Reflecting on the show now that it has run its course, I still stand by my review of the first episode. It was a great slow-burn setup for what promised to be a fascinating character study and a rumination on how cultural forces shape the individual. 

But by the third episode, that promise was broken as the show devolved into a silly and chaotic biker-gang/cowboy/sci-fi mash-up action romp devoid of any real meaning or cohesion. And by the fifth of its seven episodes, it took a hard right turn and became the very thing I said it wasn’t in my review: The Mandalorian Season 2.5. 

Oddly, that episode was one of the best of the series, but only taken in isolation. Why it wasn’t simply the first episode of The Mandalorian Season Three is beyond me, as plopping it into the middle of this spinoff rendered the entire affair narratively and thematically incoherent. And things only get worse from there. By the seventh episode, The Book of Boba Fett came across as a bunch of middle-aged men playing with Star Wars action figures more so than any attempt at creating something compelling or comprehensible. And it became so bogged down by fan service that it’s nearly impossible to take it seriously. 

It’s borderline impossible to make any sense out of what this series is about, what we’re supposed to take from it, or how it in any way advances the post-Return of the Jedi storyline that continues to unfold on Disney+. Because, in the end, Boba Fett himself sort of meanders, and The Mandalorian’s storyline lazily reverts to the status quo ante, undoing all of the gripping character progression that happened in the second season of his own series. I honestly haven’t seen this concerted an effort to undo what came before since J.J. Abrams’ ham-fisted attempt at erasing The Last Jedi from existence with the hatchet-job whose name I will not utter here. 

If you’re a hardcore Star Wars fan, it’s a safe bet you’ve already slogged through this mess and my warning is too late. If, though, you’re a more casual fan who enjoyed The Mandalorian and want to stay abreast of what’s going on in that narrative thread, my recommendation would be to peruse the episode recaps on Wookieepedia and save yourself some time. None of it will make a lick of sense, but none of it made any sense in real-time, either.

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

Why “Second Thoughts”?

Reviewing series is always a challenge. If you weigh in after everything’s wrapped up, you run the risk of being late to the party and offering up your insights when the world has already moved on to pastures new. Ideally, you want to go on the record early enough to give the reader a sense of whether they should commit to something for its duration—but then the show might blindside you in a big way, for the good or the bad. So we’re launching this department to give our writers a chance to offer some sometimes badly needed additional perspective when a series doesn’t turn out quite how they expected. 

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