Well, that was interesting

I'm not a huge Star Wars fan. I saw the first three movies, including the very first in the series on its release day (I went with my fiance, the future Mrs. Paco). I liked them, and was blown away by the special effects (now, I'm led to believe, completely overtaken by technological developments in movie making in the last 30 years). But I was never obsessed with the series.

Number 1 son, however, had a hankering to watch the Disney Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, and I confess, I rather enjoyed it, primarily because it struck me as an intergalactic reworking of the traditional western (bounty hunters, gunslingers, desert landscapes, the lone hero with his personal code of honor, etc.). One thing that startled me, though, was to learn over the course of the last two episodes that the primary villain is apparently...Cab Calloway.



That is, of course, Giancarlo Esposito, in the role of Moff Gideon - but when I first saw him emerge from a crowd of Stormtroopers, I half expected him to say, "Hi De Ho, hep cats and kittens!"

Update: We also watched Scorsese's The Irishman, starring Robert De Niro as hitman Frank Sheeran, Joe Pesci as mob boss Russell Bufalino and Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa. If the point of the movie was to highlight the banality of evil, then it succeeded admirably, because I've rarely seen a collection of more banal, awful human beings. The flick does give what I think is a realistic portrayal of the gangster psyche and culture: maudlin sentimentality spread thinly like icing on a poison cake; everything - love of family, love of friends, personal loyalty - everything trumped by the lust for power and money; pathological narcissism supported by amazing brutality; all topped off by the pursuit of the gaudy and tacky, in suits, houses and women. Hoffman's portrayal of Hoffa strikes me as over the top (more of a caricature, really), but he does undeniably get across Hoffa's arrogance and almost willful blindness to the danger his actions ultimately brought down on him. De Niro's pretty much typecast now as old school gangster, and he lived up (or down, depending on your perspective) to that persona in the movie. There was some new technology used in the film to "de-age" a few of the principals in order to show them in earlier days, but I didn't think it came off too well. De Niro, especially, just looked like an old guy with nice skin (the new technology apparently can't do anything about his old-man shuffle and arthritic mannerisms, which give the game away).

This project probably would have worked better as a mini-series; still, overall, I'd say worth watching once.