Saturday, April 24, 2021

Ave, Charles!

My buddy Charles writes on the topic of serenity, with some time spent mulling over the famous serenity prayer ("...the wisdom to know the difference") in both its modern and original incarnations.  Upshot:  stress not over that which you cannot control.  Charles notes that such wisdom sounds trite when you express it. But like most good wisdom wrapped up in proverb form, it's profound once you experience its truth and make it yours.

As a completely non sequitur aside, I'll note that my favorite non-biblical prayer is the prayer of Saint Francis.  The words of that prayer actually made it into my long, long review of "The Last Jedi."  Scroll down, way down, to find it.



4 comments:

Charles said...

Yeah, I remember that long, long review. Incidentally, I think that was probably the deepest and most thought-provoking review of TLJ that I ever read.

Kevin Kim said...

My feelings about TLJ have probably become more negative over time, but that's partially because of the movie that came after it. Taken as a whole, the trilogy was decidedly not greater than the sum of its parts, and for me at least, the saga went nowhere. JJ Abrams yanked the stream of the narrative away from the creative destruction of Rian Johnson, slapping a series of "course corrections" on the whole thing, resulting in a disjointed, patchwork, sloppy narrative that (1) didn't tie up certain important loose ends and (2) introduced a lot of uncomfortable questions that also went unanswered.

At the time I saw TLJ, though, I was both disappointed by some of Johnson's directorial choices and also fascinated by the ways in which he explored and expanded the Star Wars lore. I hope that that feeling comes through in my beast of a review.

Thanks, as always, for the comment.

Charles said...

Yeah, I was very disappointed with TLJ, so much so that it was in fact the last Star Wars film I ever saw and probably ever will see. I didn't bother with the Han Solo spin-off, nor did I see The Rise of Skywalker. I guess I just realized that I was done with Star Wars, at least in film form. I still do want to see The Mandalorian, though.

But your feeling of fascination did come through in the review of TLJ, and it gave me a better appreciation for a film that I had originally dismissed.

Kevin Kim said...

I reviewed the first two seasons of "The Mandalorian" a while back, but if you're planning to watch the series, you might want to avoid the review until you've seen the episodes.