Coyote Blog

First, I must confess that I have been to opening day of every Star Wars movie, and I have tickets for opening day of this last one.  Yes, I am kindof a geek, but no, I am not a total geek:  I did not sit up all night in line or anything for these movies. 

This is actually a bit of an accomplishment, because I don't think many people saw the original Star Wars movie on the first day.  One thing that I think a lot of people don't remember, given all the Star Wars hype and success, is that the original movie opened without much hype or expectations.  I was with my family visiting LA, where we were staying in some hotel in Century City  (maybe the Century Plaza - I remember it seemed pretty nice).  Anyway, my dad was on business and my mom and sisters were shopping so I walked over that morning to see what was playing at the Century City movie theater.  It was in that way I accidently saw the first showing on the first day of the original Star Wars.  It was me and about 7 other people in that huge theater.   I was so blown away that I stayed for a second showing.

Anyway, time passes.  Empire Strikes Back was great.  I thought at the time that Return of the Jedi was pretty mediocre, but that was before I saw Clone Wars which I thought was visibly stunning but really bad.  I cringed every time there was any substantial dialogue, particularly  when Padme was on the screen.

Anyway, I take this review pretty seriously, because they seem to have had the same reactions I had to the previous movies.  The Good news:  visually even more stunning, cool fight scenes, and a better all around movie than the other prequels.  The Bad news:  the Padme dialog still sucks, maybe even worse.

I really enjoyed watching Revenge of the Sith. And yes, it is quite a good film.
However, the scenes with Padmé alone are enough to give you flashbacks of the
worst parts of the first 2 sequels, and thus lower your overall enjoyment ofthe
movie.

Still... it is a strong film with a strong story, great effects and much
improved dialog (with the exception of anything with Padmé in it). Star Wars
fans should be quite happy... and non-Star Wars fans will enjoy as well.

Overall... I give Revenge of the Sith a solid 7 out of
10 (would have been a 9 if they just totally took out Padmé or
re-wrote all her pathetic dialog).

It gets much worse treatment in other venues, but for roughly the same reasons.

UPDATE:  Here is my review

By the way, Darth Vader has a blog now.  We learn a lot from it about the daily trial and tribulations of being a dark jedi master (thanks to VodkaPundit for the link):

Due to the haste with which we are proceding through the
latter phases of this battle-station's construction we have been forced to
employ scores of civilian contractors from across the galaxy in addition to our
own Imperial Corps of Engineers. This had led to a certain clash of working
cultures.

For instance, this morning I critiqued a tragically sub-par
piece of workmanship on a tractor-beam repulsolift inversion assembly by
snapping the neck of the site supervisor and throwing his limp corpse down a
disused elevator shaft.

Imperial engineers would have snapped to crisp
attention, of course, but all these civilian contractors did was give me was
grief. "Oy, you do that again and I'll have the union on you!" barked one
red-faced buffoon.

"It is vital that you enhance the inter-departmental
syngergies of your operation," I said. And then I killed him.

I can relate.

This (Link courtesy Professor Bainbridge) is a pretty funny parody based on a scene from the original Star Wars movie that has famously been changed a couple of times by George Lucas in reissuing the movie.  It is especially funny in light of today's CBS memogate report.  If you don't know the story behind the changes to the movie, they are summarized in the intro page, or you can just dive into the comic by pressing "1".

Merry Christmas, and I hope everyone is having a happy version of whatever holiday they celebrate. 

Around our house, I am always the tech support guy, fixing issues ranging from computers to hitting all the right buttons on the home theater.  Because my wife has a Mac and I and my kids use a PC, just trying to keep everyone playing nice over the home network is hard enough (god, this is starting to sound like a Chaos Manner column).  Usually, this duty is spread pretty evenly through the year, but on Christmas day, our household has an influx of technology that often needs support.

Yesterday was no exception.  First, with the arrival of yet another new mini iPod, this one for my son, a new user partition had to be created on my wife's Mac.  Later in the day I was back on the Mac, helping my son when iTunes inevitable Christmas Day server overload caused him to have a few songs disappear on him during download.  In between, I was on the PC helping my daughter with Zoo Tycoon 2, given to her because Santa knows that she loved the first version. 

Finally, towards the end of the day, I was helping my son with his Star Wars Battlefront game install.  Unfortunately, the install code on the back of the CD box did not work, so with my son panicking when I told him he would have to wait 2 WHOLE DAYS for the the tech support people to come into the office, I swallowed my scruples and went to one of the pirate sites that publish registration codes for games and successfully used one of those to get the game started.  Unfortunately, those sites slam you with pirate-ware, so first I had to fire up my backup computer I use for such grossly unsafe surfing.

Whew.  I can relax now, everything is up and running.  Imagine my relief this morning when my kids wanted to play something low tech - Yahtzee.