I was actually surprised when George Lucas accepted a deal with Disney to give away the entire Star Wars franchise in October 2012. I guess everyone has a price, but perhaps Lucas didn’t think through what it was going to be like to see all the things that Disney will do with Star Wars. He might hate the story ideas, or the story arc or even the toys that Disney might sell. Of course the only company in the world that he would sell to would be Disney, but once you sign on the dotted line, your idea that has been yours for 40 years is gone forever.

Everyone is hoping that the new 7th Star Wars movie that opens on December 18, 2015 is going to be an exceptional movie and definitely all owners of Disney stock are hoping for this as well. JJ Abrams, the writer and director of this movie is under a tremendous amount of pressure for this new movie to not only be great and make huge amounts of money, but for him to really succeed this movie has to set all time box office records. From the trailers I have seen it certainly looks like a great movie but the main issue is the story. If This movie has great special effects and a great story, then it will break those box office records. Otherwise it will fall short of what Disney will need to recover that 4 billion dollar deal with Lucas.

George Lucas Disney Deal

The book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book about a true story about a very large white whale that destroyed a whaling ship in 1821 and is the story that lead to the novel Moby Dick, which was a fictional accounting of this incident that was released in 1850 and written by Herman Melville.  Many people who are going to see this new Ron Howard movie are probably going to think that this is a movie about the novel Moby Dick and they will be disappointed because this story is completely different the original Moby Dick novel and 1956 movie starring Gregory Peck.

At times I found parts of this movie rather boring, especially when the remaining crew was stranded at sea for over 90 days and I thought that there was no need to drag on this part of the story for about 2 thirds of the entire movie to watch the crew slowly dying of starvation and exposure.  The special effects were good but did not do a great job showing the whale destroying the boat and some of the smaller boats and killing many of the men in the crew. I actually thought that the original movie Moby Dick with Gregory Peck was a much better movie and had better special effects even though this movie was made in 1956 and fictional Moby Dick story is more interesting than this depressing true story.

Additional thoughts concerning this movie include several of the actors, especially the lead actor Chris Hemsworth, who lost over 30 pounds, living on 500 calories a day to make their survival at sea more believable. Clearly the fact that this is only a movie never occurred to these actors who risked their long term health for a long period of time just to make a movie. I have never understood why actors in Hollywood take risks like this just to make a movie.

In conclusion I expected a great movie here and only got a marginally good one. If you are fan of movies at sea this the movie for you, otherwise this one can be missed.

In the heart of the sea

Ron Howard Credits IMDB

In 1998 the Academy Awards gave best picture to “Shakespeare In Love” when it was up against arguably the greatest movie about the realities of war ever made, “Saving Private Ryan”.  Without a doubt this is the biggest injustice I have ever seen in any award show. Last years “The Birdman” winning for best picture was something that most people did not understand as this movie was at its best just strange and definitely not a good movie.   Since that time, I have witnessed a lot of insanity in Hollywood and in the many award shows that are televised this year, but I would have to say that this time around, with the Golden Globe nominations this year could be the most insane ever.

First of all, the movie “The Martian” is not a comedy or musical.  The movie “Mad Max: Fury Road” was a bad movie.    How could this movie be nominated and “The Danish Girl” not be nominated?   The movie “Spy” was at best a very average and forgettable movie and I was very surprised to see this movie nominated. Why was Tom Hanks not nominated for “Bridge of Spys”, or Johnny Depp for “Black Mass”? Hopefully the Academy Awards will have a return to some kind of normalcy and we will see the some nominations that at least make some sense.