Man I love Felicity. It’s simply one of the greatest shows ever created. Now you can imagine why Keri Russell getting the lead female role in the next Mission Impossible movie can be so damn exciting for me. Why we haven’t seen her in more roles lately is beyond me. I have a feeling that’s going to change after this next movie. Just remember, I love her first!

Instead of staying up and writing about it as soon as I got back (like I did for Episode III), I decided to sleep on it and write a quick review of Batman Begins this morning. I can tell ya right now that I did enjoy it and it is a much better Batman movie with promise of even better sequels. Still, I felt like for everyone one thing Begins did right, it did another one thing wrong.

I’ll start with the good. Christian Bale is the definitive young Batman. There is no one else who could do this character better. Batman is a tough character to play because there are these two entirely different personalities involved to do it right. Bale plays the rich smug playboy Bruce Wayne and the tortured Batman perfectly. The performances from everyone in this flick are very good. You really don’t expect anything less from the list of grade-A actors and actresses involved and they all deliver.

The first hour of the movie is of the all about a younger Bruce Wayne and the events that eventually influence him to become Batman. In fact, there is no Batman in sight for all of this time. We get to see why he is the man he’s turned out to be and the things he does to suppress or enhanced his fear. These were, by far, my favorite parts of Begins.

Time for the bad. After the first hour, it seemed as though the studio suits stepped in and said, “Enough is enough. Bring in Batman.” It’s almost as if another movie starts at this point. You get bum-rushed with Batman, how he gets his toys, and bad guys doing their bad things. The whole last half of the story was just too rushed. On top of that, the plot the bad guys think up to destroy Gotham City is just to far fetch for me. It’s ridiculous to the point where all I could think about were the older movies and their stupid plots. Here you get this first great hour. A very realistic, believable, and human story about this guy and it paces well. Then you get this next hour very rushed with a story that’s not very believable at all. It just doesn’t fit.

You would think a Batman movie would have to have some great action in it. Well, this one definitely has a lot, but it’s just so poorly produced. The shots are too quick and too tight. It seemed to me that they were purposely hiding the fact that no one could move naturally in that batsuit. The only exception to the poor action sequences were the sequences with the batmobile. I had some reservations with the batmobile when I first saw the trailers, but I came out surprisingly impressed with it. No reason to hide a car, so these shots were wider and the cuts were longer.

In the end after all of the issues I had with the flick, it still turned out to be a case of the positives outweighing the negatives. It’s a good flick, but it could have be so much more. The end sets it up for many more movies to come. I think they were feeling out the audience with Begins and it’s definitely a step in the right direction. The bottom line is that Batman Begins a great start to a great franshise and I can’t wait to see the sequels.

Casino: 10th Anniversary Edition and Hitch on DVD today. The Shield season finale tonight at 10pm and then Batman Begins at midnight. I feel another good day coming along.

Well, it looks like the Apple/Intel rumors that we’ve been hearing for several years have finally been confirmed as real in Jobs’ keynote this morning. How awesome is this? I think it’s a great thing. Not that it ever needed it, but the playing field sounds like it’s gonna level out here pretty quick. I can’t wait for 2007.

I forgot I had a web site these last couple of weeks (something that a lot of people did many years ago). There’s nothing I’ve been doing worth mentioning. Most of it is a mess of Star Wars Galaxies and motorcycle riding. Actually, the motorcycle is good because it takes me outdoors a lot more than I ever thought I’d be going. Too tired right now to write anything more than this so I’m heading off to bed. Maybe when I wake up tomorrow, those happy Apple/Intel rumors will be true.

It’s some god awful time in the morning and I have to get up for work in a couple of hours. If it were any other weekday morning, I’d usually be asleep in bed or roaming around my room looking like a zombie and wondering why I’m not asleep already, but not this morning. If you could see me right now, you’d see the biggest damn smile you’d ever seen. After all, I just got back from the midnight show of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith.

Alright. Let’s get to it. Revenge Of The Sith completes the story of Anakin Skywalker’s tragic fall to the Dark Side. ROTS is also used to bridge the gap between the new trilogy and the holy trilogy. It’s the culmination of everything a Star Wars fan has wanted to see for years wrapped up into one big movie. There are no surprises here. You’re gonna see Anakin turn. You’re gonna see Jedi slaughtered. You’re gonna see Obi Wan and Anakin duel it out. All of the images I’ve only been able to imagine in my head are right there on screen. It’s simply breathtaking and, to a certain point, surreal.

First off, this flick is beautiful. Creativity oozes from every landscape, every spaceship, ever character in sight. None of it ever seems sloppy, out of place, or overlooked. The visual effects are plentiful and down right awesome. Environments portray the feeling of the scene perfectly. The movie starts off in brightly lit day time scenarios that just glow with life and action. Towards the middle we get brought into dark scenes that are uncomfortably calm. Drop in massive amounts of action and you got yourself a very good thing here. Lots of blasters. Lots of explosions. Oh yeah, and lots of lightsabers. In fact, these are the absolute best choreographed lightsaber fights ever. You don’t really expect anything less when you go into the flick, but it still knocks you on your ass when you do see it. The visuals are reason enough to see this movie. It’s not like wow. It’s like… whoa!

Not sold on visual alone? Ok. Let’s talk about the acting, a huge problem I had with Episode I and II, and how that problem is pretty much non-existent in ROTS. Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan steals the show, hands down. He is the Master Jedi we all expected him to be and that means you just don’t fuck with Obi Wan. You can forget about the laughable performance of Hayden Christensen as Anakin from Episode II. He erases most of the suckness from the last flick and turns in a performance that is scary and believable. Another notable favorite for me was Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine, evil and manipulative in only the purest of form. This film does something that no Star Wars film since Return Of The Jedi has done for me. I actually care about these characters. This is largely due to the acting issues being addressed in a major way. Someone definitely slapped Mr. Lucas over the head with complaints about the dry performances from the past films and it seems as though he’s done his best to clean and tighten it up. Everyone has. There is a definite sense of awared improvement. Anyone who was a little phased by the acting in Menace or Clones, I tell ya, give Sith a chance. You wont be disappointed.

This movie is great because of so many different aspects, but one resounding reason stood out before anything else. The story. It was so strange. I knew the story going into the movie. I knew it and I didn’t want it to happen! I knew that when Obi Wan and Anakin said their goodbyes, it would be the last time they see each other as friends, and I felt sad for them. I sat there physically hurting with Anakin as he struggled to hold onto the good in him. Padme’s ultimate fate was easily seen, yet I just sat there watching and hoping it would never come. I even found myself hoping that maybe everything I knew about the story would be wrong and the flick would end like every other Star Wars movie with everyone standing together as friends. I watched these terrible things happen to these characters I so deeply love and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it! The story wasn’t a surprise, yet the emotions it provoked in me were completely unexpected. I really threw aside Lucas’ comments about ROTS being a “heartbreaker”, but my god, it’s so beyond that. It takes you to places you don’t want to go. Very dark places that you would never expect to see in a Star Wars movie. I simply wasn’t prepared to feel the pain and suffering you aren’t use to feeling from a Star Wars flick. With my heart aching and my head hung low, this was just not a movie to cheer for in the end. It’s a complete tragedy through and through, and it comes together brilliantly!

I’m in awe. I’m absolutely speechless now. I don’t know whether to be extraordinarily happy or incredibly sad. On one hand, I just saw the holy grail of sci-fi fantasy stories. On the other, it is the last of the Star Wars movies. This is obviously not the end in any way, but I definitely feel like a large part of my Star Wars existence has found closure. I’m simply done. I could die now and it would be fine. Alright, let’s see if I can wrap this up.

Revenge Of The Sith is the pinnacle story in a very long Star Wars timeline that takes place over thousands of years. We’ve all roughly known about this tale for over 20 years and now we don’t need to visualize it in our heads any longer because it’s there. It’s right there! It’s on the screen, larger than life itself I tell you! It’s the perfect period to a chapter we’ve been dying to read all of our lives. All of the imperfections of the past, forgotten. Any little spat I had about something, pushed to the side. Redemption is found here! Revenge Of The Sith is not only a superb movie, it’s the greatest of all stories from the greatest of all sci-fi fantasies and that also makes it the absolute best Star Wars movie ever created.

Wow!

I wanna rub it!

The most beautiful girl in the world showed up to the Cannes Film Festival with a buzz cut, and she’s still absolutely hot beyond belief!

This is the greatest week ever! I have Revenge Of The Sith tonight. I have ROTS again tomorrow night. Then I have all Friday off for E3 at the LA Convention Center. Star Wars and video games. It just doesn’t get any better than this. I’m sure I’ll throw up a quick review of ROTS when I get home after the midnight show tonight. God bless Star Wars and video games, everyone.

I figure I’d kick off opening week of Revenge Of The Sith with a new title image. I’ll probably do a new one every day this week just because I’m so damn high with the Star Wars drug right now.

Man, the Xbox 360 is damn impressive. Good thing I already got my pre-order in yesterday. Kinda stupid looking with a stupid name, but the specs are what matters and it’s damn impressive.