WP-SlimStat
Wanna save 30 bucks? Use WP-SlimStat for your WordPress blog instead of Mint.
Gross misuse of tags
Have a gander at this persons gross misuse of tags on Flickr. Before you ask, all her photos have all those tags.
Jay Thomas’ Lone Ranger story
Here’s some video of a funny story, told by Jay Thomas, about a car accident and the Lone Ranger.
Line Rider, get ready to waste a couple hours
My first knowledge of this new craze (or soon to be craze) came from Brian Ford via his Newsvine article titled “This Holiday season, I give you the gift of Line Rider!” It’s now 45 minutes later and here I am posting about another site with all types of Line Rider videos.
From what I can gather, this “game” was posted to DeviantArt by someone. Since then I’m not sure and I don’t really know the reason, if anything other than fun, it was created. The physics Line Rider uses are pretty good and there are some truly awesome and elaborate “courses” you can create using this tool. Record your course, throw in some hip music with a good beat and you might have the next YouTube hit.
In an effort to be productive today, I’m going to limit myself to only watching a few of these videos and attempt to remove Line Rider from all my thoughts. Whether you choose to do the same is up to you. Either way, you definitely need to do yourself the favor of at least checking it out for a couple minutes.
New Transformers trailer
A new trailer for The Transformers is out and it shows us glimpses of the ‘bots. Get to Yahoo! movies and watch the trailer now!
Re-watching Star Wars: Episode III
Out of the first three movies, Episode III was the one I looked forward to watching the most. To catch you up to speed, I’ve covered Episode I and Episode II already - and I’m re-watching the entire series in chronological order and jotting down my thoughts quickly as I do.
Through the first two parts of this series I focused much on the genius of Senator turned Chancellor Palpatine and I think it is warranted to continue this trend. In Episode III he manages to get the entire Republic to turn all executive powers (not just emergency powers as in Episode II) over to him - making him the first Emperor of the Galactic Empire. Let’s examine how he was able to pull this off.
First I have to mention the opening scene. The opening scene of Episode III is huge. Perhaps not as shocking as when A New Hope’s opening first hit the big screen in 1977, but still pretty big. It is definitely a wild ride for the first few minutes. After watching it on DVD I can honestly say that ILM did a fantastic job.
Palpatine has been kidnapped by General Grievous and Count Dooku. Palpatine orchestrated this in order to show the Republic, and the Jedi, how grave a threat the separatists were. There is no explanation as to how they were able to pull this off, or why they hadn’t simply jumped into hyperspace the moment they had him aboard, but it was pretty easy to see that they had little or no escape plan. Which is probably why the Jedi (Obi Wan and Anakin who were on the mission to rescue the kidnapped Chancellor) smelled the trap from the very beginning.
The kidnapping also served another purpose. Having Anakin save Palpatine and kill Dooku would only solidify their relationship. Palpatine knew Anakin would kill Dooku. Even when Dooku was defeated (I mean the guy had no hands) Palpatine convinced Anakin he was too dangerous to live. Whether or not he knew Obi-Wan would be unconscious during this or not, is inconsequential. Now Palpatine had even more about Anakin in his pocket. His ordeal with the Sand People and his mother and now the death of Dooku.
Now that the Republic, and the Jedi, were easily convinced that Grevious had to be stopped, it forced a galaxy-wide search for Grevious which effectively spread the Jedi out pretty thin. This gave Palpatine some time with Anakin, away from his Master Obi-Wan, in order to discuss things like the abilities that the Dark Side supposedly has that “average” Jedi-powers do not. Anakin’s interests were peaked when he learned that a Sith Lord could learn to save someone from dying. Once Anakin learned that Palpatine was a Sith Lord, he knew that he had to turn him over to the Jedi Council for trial (he continuously said that the Jedi’s loyalty was to the Republic and to Democracy). However, Palapatine would not be taken into custody, so Mace Windu would be forced to try to kill the Sith Lord. When Anakin felt this - he rushed to the rescue of Palpatine fearing that if he died the secrets to saving Padme would go with him.
Queue Meatloaf’s “I would do anything for love (but I won’t do that)” though there wasn’t much Anakin wouldn’t do to save Padme. This was the final push that Palpatine needed with both Anakin and the Republic. Show that the Jedi were not willing to fight for Democracy and show that they wanted to take over the Republic for themselves. Anakin would do anything (even kill young children) in order to preserve the Republic and Palpatine in order to save Padme. In Lucas’ own words via Padme, love blinded Anakin and the fear of loss led him to the Dark Side of the Force.
With the Jedi spread out, and Grevious killed by Obi-Wan Kebobi, Palpatine called out Order 66 (the order that was preprogrammed into the Clones to kill the Jedi). Catching the Jedi off-guard and spread out like this was pretty much the only way to kill so many of them. Yoda being as in touch with the force as he was enabled him see what was coming and feel the hurt of his fellow Jedi before he too was killed. Obi-Wan simply got lucky and fell into the water. This might be a matter of opinion but I feel the Jedi “got away with one” here. It was a plan that was nearly perfectly executed short of killing these two Masters.
So now Palpatine had the strongest and most talented Jedi turned to the Dark Side in the form of Darth Vader, an entire army of clones and battleships built at the cost of the Republic needing to fight a separatist army (that he created) and was the Emperor due to his maneuvering himself into power via Senator Amidala and Jar-Jar Binks - all while devising a plan to off the Jedi. Remarkable.
There has been much debate about the fights at the end of Episode III. How Yoda and Obi-Wan should have taken Sidious on together, rather than fighting Vader and him separately. I have some thoughts on this. Jedi are not perfect, and neither are Sith. Each of them made their share of mistakes during this entire ordeal. Anakin’s love and fear of loss blinded him from the truth. Obi-Wan’s friendship and loyalty to Anakin kept him from thinking that Anakin could possibly turn to the Dark Side - or perhaps even so far as to think that he could “save him” from it. You can feel the regret of Obi-Wan all the way up to the point where he leaves Anakin on the side of the lava-river to die. Yoda, in my opinion, was somewhat arrogant in thinking that he was more powerful than Sidious. His years of training should have told him that the Jedi’s strength is in having other Jedi to help. Sith seek nothing but power, constantly killing each other off to get up the ladder. Their power is in their singularity and as such are “more” powerful than Jedi. But Jedi are willing to be a team. They serve others, etc. There is a difference between confidence and arrogance and I think Yoda may have had a hint of arrogance in him when facing Sidious. Perhaps you have other thoughts on this?
All-in-all the first three movies were awesome. Although I’ve had complaints in the past (probably due to waiting in-line for days upon days to see Episode I to wind up seeing Jar-Jar), but after re-watching the first three episodes I have almost no complaints at all.
I’ve already watched Epsiode IV, and will be writing that up soon. Please jot down your thoughts of Episode III in the comments.
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Sara Bareilles' "Between the Lines" is the Song of the Week for April 20 to 26.
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