Dantooine Free Press

Did you ever hate a TV show so much, that you had to keep watching it, so you could have a complete and accurate list of all the reasons you hated it. But by the third episode, you finally admit to yourself, "Darn it, I like this show."  Yeah.  For me, that was "Harley Quinn." This cartoon is over the top graphically violent.  So much so, that even it's characters get sick upon seeing the blood and guts.  Profanities everywhere.  And it's so irreverent with its subject matter.  I mean, this cartoon is in your face with everything your parents taught you was bad. And it's wonderful. Basically, it's the story of a psychopathic, young, attractive, former psychiatrist coming to terms with the fact that allowed herself to get involved in a destructive co-dependent, violent relationship with the king of violent, narcissistic psychopaths.  And along the way, realizing that her romantic partner never really loved her, but loved his violent, psychologic...

The cartoon series, "Star Wars: Resistance" tries to tell us how we got here, with respect to the state of the galaxy before the first of the Disney films, "The Force Awakens."  It is a children's cartoon, and certainly not as action-packed as "The Clone Wars."  The first season attempts to fill in some of the gaps left by "The Force Awakens," and give its audience a better understanding of the origins of the New Republic, the First Order, and the Resistance The cartoon follows the adventures of Kazuda Xiona, a young Hosnian pilot, sympathetic to the Resistance's cause, who happens to run into Poe Dameron in one of his missions.  Poe is impressed with Kaz's skills, and recruits him to act as a spy for the Resistance.  One problem is that Kaz's father is a Senator of the New Republic, which currently has its capital on Hosnia Prime. Kaz, deciding to be his own man, accepts the mission of trying to blend in on the Colosu...

Disney has released its sequel to its creative twist on the Sleeping Beauty story, Maleficent, on its streaming service, Disney+.  Is the second movie, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil worth your time? The original Disney movie, starring Angelina Jolie in the title role, focused on the story of a young naive faerie, who fell in love with a human.  That human just happens to be the self-centered and ambitious Stefan, who violently betrays Maleficent in order to become king.  Understandably, rage over this betrayal infects everything this magical faerie does, up to and including turning the magical kingdom over which Maleficent rules, the Moors, dark, and cursing Stefan's daughter, Aurora, to die by pricking her finger on a spinning wheel when the girl is to turn sixteen.  Maleficent watches over Aurora, played by Elle Fanning, as she is raised in the woods, eventually comes  to recognize the young girl's innocence, and attempts to undo her curse, but to no avail....

I used to have this need to own, in one form or another, every chapter in the Star Wars movie universe.  Episodes four through six, I have on VHS.  I have the DVDs for episodes one through six.  I own online streaming versions of episodes four through eight.  I even own online digital versions of "Rogue One" and "Solo." Yet, for some reason, I was in no rush to own a version of episode nine, "The Rise of Skywalker."  Rather, I was very much content to wait until episode nine was available through Disney+ before I watched it again. This is not to say that I think episode nine is the worst in the series.  That honor goes to episode eight, "The Last Jedi."  It's just that I was in the hospital for an extended time recovering from surgery when "The Last Jedi" was released, and the fastest way for me to watch the movie was to purchase the online digital version.  If you could return a movie to get a refund, believe me, I'd want...

Let's get this out of the way.  Yes, the final Star Wars trilogy was pretty bad.  It started off promisingly enough.  I liked "The Force Awakens."  No, it wasn't the most original or creative of the saga's movies.  But it was entertaining, and coherent enough to allow Lucasfilm to build an extended story line from it.  Things went bad with "The Last Jedi." What became clear with "The Last Jedi" was that there was no unified vision of the last film trilogy.  While people like to complain about J.J. Abrams, he set up a number of interesting questions for subsequent films to explore.  They included Rey's parentage, the origin of Snoke and the First Order and could Kylo Ren be redeemed.  Rian Johnson decided to throw all of that away, and gave us a cynical story where the Resistance survived in spite of the saga's overarching hero, Luke Skywalker.  "The Rise of Skywalker" suffered, in large part, because Abrams had to undo muc...

It is an ambitious endeavor.  Season seven of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" takes place simultaneously with the prequel film, "Revenge of the Sith."  It is an attempt to address the plot holes and generally bad writing of the film, and tie it to other entries to the Star Wars genre. For example, this season tries to explain better the descent of Anakin Skywalker to the dark side of the Force, and connect that to the universe we see in the movies "Solo" and "Rogue One," the cartoon "Rebels," as well as the Disney+ series "The Mandalorian." One of the keys to the success of this endeavor, is the appearance of Darth Maul. Darth Maul serves as a prime illustration of one of George Lucas' most egregious sins, the under-utilization of a compelling villain.  Reaching back to the time just before "The Phantom Menace" was released, the hype leading up to the film, which was the first Star Wars film in the sixteen years ...