Star Wars spoilers ahead.

I like the new iBook. It works pretty well. I'm still getting used to some of the peculiarities of Apple. For example, the toolbar on a given program application is not attached to its window; it always stays at the top of the screen, and changes whenever you click on a different application. That took some getting used to. But, so far, I've used it for email, for writing, for blogging, and it seems to be all good. I haven't yet played with the DVD or anything. I will soon I am sure. (how ironic is it that the spellcheck on this blog posting doesn't recognize "blogging" as a word . . . very, to answer my own question.)

As far as The Lord of the Rings debate, I'm probably in the middle between Dan and Mark. I like the book very much, and I like the movies very much as well. Sure, they cut stuff out, they changed stuff, etc., etc. I don't really care, when it comes down to it. I think the books are good enough that if the films capture even 50 percent of it right they are entertaining and worth watching, and I think the films got about 70 percent of it right, so I'm happy with both.

I saw Star Wars recently, as my last blog admits, and I liked it. I think there are even bits where you can see why Lucas chose Haydenson (sp?) to be Anakin, but those are brief and flighting moments . . . the rest of the time he sucks. Natalie Portman, does she just totally suck, or is it just in Star Wars? Sure, I will consider the argument that she couldn't do much with what Lucas gave her, but shit, it seemed like she was even worse than the material. I'm not convinced she's not a shitty actor all around. But, then again, Ewan MacGregor (sp?) managed to suck pretty bad too through much of the movie, so I don't know. What Greg and I found most troubling about the film was the way in which the Jedi get wiped out. Pretty lame. They are just sort of walking around in the battlefield and the Stormtroopers blast them in the back. Shouldn't their Jedi powers have sensed this? What kind of Jedis were they? The shitty ones? I think it's even more disappointing because Lucas gets a freebie, right? The image of the Jedi has been accumulating all this cultural capital since 1977 and here he just sort of offs them nonchalantly. I realize they have to go, via the story arc, but the way he half-asses it is pretty disappointing.

That wasn't two cents, it was a buck-fitty!