Month: May 2002

• Impressive special effects alone do not a movie make.
• For a film created almost entirely by computer, it seems awfully unrealistic.
• Remember how they once used miniatures and filmed on location in exotic places like Tunisia? Wasn’t that cool?
• Remember when Yoda was a puppet? Did Frank Oz develop arthritis or something?
• George Lucas apparently never met a wipe edit he didn’t like.
• Worst love story, ever.
• “I don’t like the sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything’s soft… and smooth.” Oh dear god, kill me now.
• We’re not supposed to be happy when he goes over to the dark side, are we?
• It has often been said that acting is reacting. Reacting to imaginary images can’t be easy. Kudos to those brave few who can pull it off.
• There is absolutely no reason for C3PO to leave Tatooine except to serve as comic relief.
• Boba Fett looks cool and is a fan favorite, but he really isn’t that important to the story of the first (or, rather, last) three films. He’s just a bounty hunter in a neat costume who happens to deliver Han Solo. Turning him — or at least his genetic material — into such a pivotal character is a little like including a senate delegation of E.T.s in Phantom Menace — true believers will love you for it, but ultimately it doesn’t make much sense.
• Okay, let’s say you’re the Jedi council. You’ve successfully traced the plot to assassinate Senator Amidala to the planet Kamino, where apparently they’ve spent the last ten years building an army of clones using bounty hunter Jango Fett as the model. They seem to that think they’ve been building this army for the Jedi on behalf of the Republic, but this is the first you’ve heard of it, and you quickly come to the conclusion that Fett is himself connected to the attempt on Amidala’s life. You eventually track Fett to Geonosis, where you learn that he is apparently in league with Count Dooku, a former Jedi and leader of a growing separatist movement, who is apparently building a droid army of his own. To combat this army, the Chancellor (who has just been given supreme power) calls on — you guessed it — the clone army to protect the Republic. And this whole thing doesn’t seem even the slightest bit odd to you?

1. What’s the last vivid dream that you remember having?
I have interesting dreams and dreams I remember, years later, but they fade quickly and get so jumbled together it’s hard to remember any one as particularly vivid. Last night, I dreamt that my sister had published a book of short stories, and I was vaguely jealous because they were so good. My sister is not a writer.

2. Do you have any recurring dreams?
Not so much a recurring dream as a recurring type of dream. I sometimes dream that I’m at a final exam for a class I haven’t attended in months. This may have something to do with the fact that in my senior in year of college I had a final exam for a class I hadn’t attended in months. I also had a Statistics class where I went into the final having missed the first midterm. I think I still managed a B, but showing up to an exam unprepared is now how anxiety is usually expressed in my dreams. Even some three years after graduating.

3. What’s the scariest nightmare you’ve ever had?
Again, dreams fade, and what seems terrifying in the middle of the night or in those first few moments after I wake up is usually forgotten before I take my morning shower.

4. Have you ever written your dreams down or considered it? Why or why not?
Once or twice, if the dream was particularly interesting and I feel I absolutely must write it down. The details are never as interesting on paper, though. That would require embellishment and the addition of plot.