Well, it's about that time...

• Episode III (which was great)

Ok, Episode III. Well, having read the novel (parts that I just couldn't wait to see) and read the 'Making of Revenge of the Sith' book, as well as playing the Episode III game on my new xbox, there wasn't much to be surprised about with seeing the film. That's not to say I wasn't looking forward to seeing it...in fact, I really couldn't wait.We had tickets for two showings on that Thursday. 10:30am, which was a digital screening at the Disney West Side theaters, and 10:30pm at the Muvico 'Giant Screen' IMAX theater. We got there about an hour and a half early for the first showing and there was already a good-sized line.The first two guys in line had brought a laptop and were watching the Clone Wars - Season On DVD. That's dedication. They were even watching it in the theater before the movie started. For those of you playing along at home, I call that 'going too far'.

The movie itself...the opening sequence was absolutely amazing. It was a VERY large space battle, one that will help me better visualize the space battles that show up in Star Wars books (expanded universe) all the time. Lots of great lightsaber battles in this one. Anakin/Dooku, Obi-Wan/Grievous, Mace/Palpatine, Yoda/Palpatine, Anakin/Obi-Wan....absolutely amazing. The speed was fantastic. Nick Gillard did a hell of a job with the choreography of those battles. A friend was thinking they were computer-enhanced in terms of speed, but stuff in the 'Making of' book makes me think that the actors (or stunt people, in a few cases) were just that fast.

The story really doesn't have any slow points...maybe a bit of a slow-down when it comes to Padme and Anakin I should say. There really aren't any of the boring 'senate' scenes that show up in the other two prequels.

There's really only one senate scene and it covers the conversion of the
Republic into the Empire...it comes right along with the scene of the Jedi purge and it's very powerful. The senators clapping while the Emperor basically proclaims himself top banana for life while padme says "This is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause" was pretty telling--especially in terms of what's going on in our country these days. I have a few favorite scenes...Obi-Wan confronting Anakin on Mustafar while Anakin and Padme are talking...Yoda doing a few cool things like throw two Royal Guards against a wall with a flick of the wrist and throwing his saber into the chest of a clone trooper then leaping onto his chest and pulling it out. Awesome. At the end of the film everybody ends up where they belong until the beginning of Star Wars (A New Hope), basically.

The dialogue was a lot better than I'd thought it would be, it's the best of
the prequels. It seems a lot of the clunky lines that are present in the film in the 'Making of...' book got cut out. Some bad ideas were dropped (young Han Solo? No thanks) and some good ones were too (Darth Plagueis being responsible for Anakin's birth? How cool is that) but that's too be expected. Artoo has some GREAT moments and Threepio is the Threepio of the original trilogy rather than the prequels...he just seemed more like 'Threepio' in this film...and it can't just be the normal Threepio gold-coloring showing up for the first time. Even the voice seemed more Threepio-like even thought it's been Anthony Daniels throughout the whole saga.

I thought the film was great. It met expectation and probably surpassed them. It's hard to judge these things and I'm extremely biased. I've seen it three times and haven't been board at any point. There just isn't time to be bored during Episode III.

• Hooper and giving him a smidge more responsibility
  
  

Ok, so before we left for AZ last week Hooper had really been coming into his own and growing up in terms of being housebroken and not destroying anything in the house. He's well-behaved and I've wanted to give him some more trust around the house. Basically, penning him up in the kitchen rather than his cage when we leave, stuff like that. A lot of nights where I fall asleep in the chair he falls asleep on the couch and stays there for hours until I get up to go to bed and then I put him in his cage. I was afraid that being at the breeder's while we were gone would 'break' him, or get him to pick up bad habits at least. Though I'm not sure they followed all of our 'rules' for him while they had him, he didn't come back psycho or anything. He will need to be groomed since he was around other dogs and now he stinks like a dog.

I figure a few more weeks and we can stop keeping him in the cage at night. Also, I usually have him penned in the front bedroom here with me while I work. If he does his business while we're out getting the mail I just give him free roam of the house for the rest of the day. He's taken to eating Boots' food now so I'm not sure how fast we'll move with that. We'll see.

• Neighbors and their wrong-ness
  
  

The other day our left-side neighbor (looking at the house) came up to me and asked me to be sure to pick up after our dog. I said, "We always pick up after him" and she seemed to dismiss that saying she'd found dog mess over by the side of their house and stuff...pretty much insisting I was lying about picking up after him. Well, two things. First of all, I *ALWAYS* pick up after the dog, even though I really HATE doing it and it's pretty gross. EVERY TIME I take him out I take 2 of these brawny paper towels napkins out with me and I pick up whatever he does and cart it back to the house. This happens every time. Court does it too. So you can imagine how much fun it is to cart that crap (literally) back to the house and flush it down the toilet just to have somebody accuse you (even in a nice way) of not doing that.

Secondly, he doesn't even do his stuff over by their house. He does
that twice a day...usually by the FAR side of our pond walk (of course, so I have to carry it ALL THE WAY BACK) and the second time is during our night walk where he always goes within 3 feet of the same spot that's way on the other side of our complex. He doesn't crap anywhere near their house. She should try blaming the damn raccoons for her crap problems.

More on that other stuff later...