Big 6: JEDI changes rebuttal, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS essay, more

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Stop hating George Lucas, and stop loving Star Wars so much: Why it’s time to grow up

The reason why our first response is to hate George Lucas is not because Lucas is ruining our childhoods. Far from it. Lucas is, perhaps accidentally, forcing us to admit two things: First, that our childhoods are over; and second, that the things we enjoy when we are children tend to be silly.  Read the full EW post

Friday Night Lights: Very Deep in America

The series wants Dillon to function as a microcosm of larger working- and middle-class America: it takes its fifty or so hours and opens a window on American family, education, community race relations, athletics, social class and its various brokennesses. But lest you go away, it keeps you involved with the drama of high school—its romantic student soap operas, its tense and dire administrative politics, plus the multigenerational home life that has dads in prison, dads in Iraq, dads gambling and drinking and roaming around the country while Grandma sits in the front room. This is where the role of the coach as holy father (not for nothing does he lead the team in prayer before each game) is underscored… Read the full New York Review of Books essay

Critic’s Notebook: The Help goes beyond stereotypes

That’s the inherent difficulty of deciding what is and is not a stereotype. How we view any character is grounded in personal experience — what you know well you see differently. What plays as exaggeration, even parody, can reveal deeper truths. And that was the case for me with The Help.  Read the LA Times article

Colin Firth says film industry underestimates audiences’ intelligence

It is a film which demands concentration and is far from fast-paced – the polar opposite of a Bond or a Bourne spy movie. But Firth said: “I do think there is a tendency to underestimate audiences, I do think there is an appetite to be stretched. I do think people want to hear language at its best on the screen. I’m optimistic about it having an enormous audience.” Read the full Guardian article

Steven Soderbergh Now Denying Retirement From Filmmaking

A few days after saying he was planning to retire from directing to become a painter, Soderbergh is now insisting that he isn’t ready to completely leave Hollywood just yet. “It’s less dramatic that it sounds; it’s just a sabbatical,” the director said at the Venice Film Festival, where his latest movie, Contagion, premiered Saturday.  Read the full THR article

Hiding Up in Telluride, Silver on Screens

Speaking of illusions, the tendency to find themes in film festivals probably belongs in that category, along with the notion of Mr. Clooney as a schlub. But when you see a lot of movies in a short span of time, a kind of mental word cloud starts to form. This year there seemed to be a lot of movies about parents and children, actual and symbolic.  Read the full NY Times article

THE BIG 6 is a daily collection of film stories and features from around the web. If you have a something to add, leave a comment below.