How 1973’s “American Graffiti” created a ripple effect still felt over 50 years later…

*****TWIN BARREL-CARB SPOILERS!***** After the arguably unjust box office failure of his arthouse-dystopian sci-fi film “THX-1138” (1971), George Lucas was challenged by his mentor and American Zoetrope producing partner Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather” trilogy, “Apocalypse Now”) to do something challenging to his own avant-garde sensibilities, which, for young George Lucas, meant creating a warm,…

The final few episodes of “The Clone Wars” brought me back…

Return to the Jedi. I know that “May the Fourth” has now passed (if you don’t know the meaning of that, you might want to stop reading now), as has “Revenge of the Fifth” (I never got that one; wouldn’t a better title be “Revenge of the Sixth”?).  Nevertheless, I decided to throw out a…