Return of The Star Wars Trailer

Guess who's back to uh, strike back? The new Star Wars Episode II trailer is now available over at Apple.
When I first heard about the proposed title for this episode, I had to triple-check sites all over the net just to make sure it wasn't just some baseless rumor. I'm sure this issue is pretty much considered a dead horse these days, but back then, Christ. I wanted to stick a 2 x 4 up George Lucas' ass.

Jesus, someone stop that guy, please! He's destroying every bit of imagination and wonder from my childhood with each new prequel he makes. This new episode ... i don't know. I hope I'm wrong, and Lucas remembered to write a script for this one, instead of just drawing storyboards for special effects shots. Somehow I doubt it though. He's gotten too fat and too rich to be bothered with unimportant things like plot and character development.

Still, it's this sort of eye candy-centric moviemaking that make for some really cool trailers, so I guess I should consider myself lucky. Check it out, and see what several trillion dollars worth of CGI can get you.

Turn Out The Lights

We just experienced a 4-hour island-wide blackout here, and I'm still squinting and hissing amidst all the bright lights.It struck me, while driving home in total blackness that there is no real meaning to life. I don't know why that suddenly occurred to me, or even why I'm relating it to you, whoever the fuck you are, but it was like ... I dont know, a drug-induced white light of self-discovery.

Sudden, unexplained blackouts happen pretty often in the Philippines, which is why I've had to replace the power supply on my PCs about 3 times in 2 years. The last time we had a genuine blackout was early this year, when a jellyfish found its way inside a fucking dam. A small spineless featherweight creature caused an island-wide blackout that lasted more than 6 hours.

Today's blackout was a bit shorter, just over 4 hours. I guess maybe the jellyfish's girlfriend came looking for him.

There is no real meaning to this article.

Thank you.

Kevin Smith Strikes Back

In the fifth entry in Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse, audiences are treated once again to the decidedly silly antics of Jay and Silent Bob.

I'm not as interested in reviewing the film as I am about wondering why he keeps making them. I understand that Smith likes working with friends (hence the constant reappearance of familiar faces like Ben Affleck and Jason Lee), but you have to ask yourself, when is enough enough?



Don't get me wrong, I like the Smith films (Chasing Amy is my absolute favorite), but Jay and Silent Bob were lovable only because they contrasted so sharply with everyone else around them. When they become the rule instead of the exception, IQs start dropping.



The movie basically has two things going for it, 1) Jason Mewes' fuck-this-fuck-that delivery and 2) Smith's unexplainable fetish for real-life-imitates-film jokes. I counted 3 separate occasions where the characters would face the camera and look directly at the audience in a theatrical aside. I've never liked that technique, and I've never liked films that use them a lot. It's just ... I don't know, weird.



I'm not sure if Kevin Smith will every completely leave the little world he's cobbled together in the years since Clerks, but I hope he finds another angle to bounce his stories off of in the future.