George Peppard

Battle Beyond The Stars

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Battle Beyond the Stars. New World Pictures 1980.

Before watching the movie:

The Seven Samurai has been remade and recontextualized and homaged many, many times. Its best known remake is of course the Western The Magnificent Seven, but pretty much every “go put together a group of mercenaries to save the hometown” story is probably based on Seven Samurai. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie do it so blatantly that the tagline itself invokes Magnificent Seven. Apparently Roger Corman wanted to do something like Star Wars and decided to do a sci-fi interpretation of Seven Samurai. So he did.

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Breakfast at Tiffany’s

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Breakfast at Tiffany's. Paramount Pictures 1961.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Paramount Pictures 1961.

Before watching the movie:

Apparently this is about a socialite falling in love with a writer. I don’t see from that description why this is one of Audrey Hepburn’s most iconic films. I expect that must be coming from the writing and the performances, because the synopses I’m seeing aren’t particularly persuasive, and nobody ever talks about why this is such an enduring movie, they just namedrop it and others are expected to know. The least glowing reference I can think of is the couple in the song of the same name agreeing that they “both kind of liked it” as the first common ground they can think of to save their relationship. And there’s an entire, very catchy song about that. Continue reading →