I can articulate my disappointment about Hitchhiker's Guide. In the scene in which Ford runs up to the soon ex-site of Dent's home with a cart full of beer, then takes Dent off to the pub, there are some jokes from the book which were omitted. These were taken out in favor of the joke "BEER! Huh-huh-huh." It seems to me that if you feel that "BEER!" is a funny joke, you can laugh your way through the movie quite safely. It contains many such jokes, among them "NOKIA;" "TWO-HEADS;" and "HE GOT NO LEGS!"
I say Americans are smarter than that. I say we've come very far since the stereotype was true and we would actually laugh because somebody had beer or a phone. I say as a society we're as smart as the British Disney jerks who wrote the movie, and probably as smart as the British jerks who laughed at the Hitchhiker's Guide when it was a radio play. Hell, we're among the smartest jerks on the planet, no matter what those other jerks say. We can handle a movie where the guy doesn't get the girl, and we can handle the idea that the government is out to get us and hard to deal with. I say Americans could handle a horrible bureaucracy scene in which the horrible bureaucracy was actually hard to deal with, and in which the forms did not take six to eight seconds each to fill out.
That's what kicked my ass about the movie. I think the average American moviegoer is capable of laughing at convolution and able to leave a movie without rioting, even if the guy doesn't get the girl.

"I don't get it, Maw. Sure, he was a whahny jerk, but whah didn't he get tha girl in tha end of tha movin' pitcher?"
"Don't worry, Hammie. Jus' keep laughin' about tha beer."
"A-huh huh. Beer. That's funny."

Staying on top of the news is increasingly important these days and here on Public Television, we're trying to help. Tonight on Newswatch, we'll kill two daed frogs.

I saw Episode III. Lord help me, I enjoyed it.
Bad stuff first: They need to make light sabers out of something besides Water Weenies. Something you can, y'know, hold on to. The question isn't 'will he drop his weapon,' it's 'who drops his weapon first?'
The names are stupid, but after "Dooku" who's surprised? I mean, sure, the bad guy is a Bond villain and his name is "Grievous." OK, whatever.


I-III are pretty. The paintings are good, the sets are neat and the people are movie stars. But, y'know, I like dirty muppets. I think that having a real actual thing is usually better than having a computer-generated thing. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I've seen the first two Terminator movies again since they were new. The effects are laughable. It's not that they are bad, it's just that they look crappy compared to what we're used to seeing now. Tosha pointed out, the star-fight sequence already looks a little dated and the technology is, what, as much as a year old? I don't quite agree with her. I thought it was pretty, and I enjoyed the opening scenes.
I just found that if I sat back and told myself "try to enjoy it," I usually could.
I think the move to go ahead and play off the revelation that Palpatine is Sith (I know, I'm sorry. I should have put a spoiler warning on this. Sorry) is either a really smart move or a really dumb one. I think Lucas is thinking like a Presidential candidate and so is worried about how future generations will view the movies. It's possible that, seeing the movies in order, a new viewer will be surprised. It does, however, kind of clash with the slow revelation of the emperor in the second, older trilogy.
You know what? This is still about the best series in movies (OK, it is if you count it as a nine-episode series with Indiana Jones as the third trilogy, which I do). Say what you will about Lord of the Rings, I love the pulp and this is the king of pulp.
They promised us "fell into a volcano" and they didn't give it to us. But they promised us "Darth Vader as a boy" and they delivered in spades. Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman deliver moments of Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher that show that at least somebody showed these kids the older movies and explained why these things were important.
And they don't let JarJar talk. That's good, right?
I dunno. It's a movie. You've already seen it. What am I doing talking about it?

My Rambunctious, Influential brother has started upon the path to music production. He and Orville produced a 6-song EP for Hope Irish. It's really, really good. I'm in the process of copying a pile of them for her. Good stuff.

Show was good.
King Kong for Christmas.
I gotta write a buncha songs this summer.
Oh, yeah, and that whole 'get married' thing, too.

Hey. Songs of the Pogo's available in rerelease. There's a link on Amazon here. An stuff.