A Few Things on Star Wars Episode III....

And its a friday!

hold on. Is friday supposed to be written with a bit "F", or a small "f" is fairly acceptable? I seem to remember being told during grade school that days of the week should be written in upper case ... some sort of proper noun maybe?

Can someone clear this up for me?

Anyhoo, its a "Friday" and supposedly Revenge of the Sith's started showing yesterday. During times of new Star War episode releases, fans flock to reserve the earliest movie tickets. Although I'm not a big Star Wars fan, I enjoy the trilogy (or quinology? sextology? a friend of mine kindly supplied a possible list of correct words, but I cant make up my mind which one is correct. Can someone please help me?) so yes, in case anyone is asking, I AM planning to watch the movie. Of course, I didnt really make advance arrangements like a couple of people i've read over the news. (Lining up a month or 2 before the theater that will be showing the premiere? uhm, no.) Actually, I know of a friend during the days of Episode 1 who arranged his class schedule so that he'd have a big break in between classes to head off to the nearest mall on the first day of the showing (of course he made sure ahead of time what day its going to be shown; then he tries to arrange his T-TH or MWF schedule coincides with this date). So he had to put up with that kind of schedule the whole semester just for Episode 1. Its an amazing thing. Admirable even, to go through great lengths to be able to watch a much anticipated movie. Now when a release comes out, or Star Wars gets mentioned, i instinctively remember him. Funny how we come to associate things with people.

There's a thing I'd like to comment on though. I love movies, tv and music like a lot of other people out there. We borrow DVDs, CDs and games from friends to try out the latest stuff, and sometimes we record tv shows on the VCR so that we can watch them on our own leisure time. There's this big thing with piracy these days, and the entertainment industry regularly complains about this issue, and sues, even. There was Emule, napster, then kazaa. Recently there's a popular file sharing called bittorrent, and I guess I've peeked through the file availability listings on some sites (which has been brought down, if you were wondering) and I was surprised to find copies of Episode 3 available so fast, almost immediately right after the worldwide opening. Regardless, it was just a curiosity peek, so I didnt even attempt to download it.

Its free, so why not? You say.

Well, there are a lot of reasons: You dont want to get caught doing an "illegal" file download, You dont want to get sued by copyright owners, or put simply, you just really dont want to get jailed or bailed for doing it. There's really lots of reasons, but I think these are reasons based on fear. Fear isn't really the best reason to stop you from doing something. You've seen or read movies or histories or real life stories about people who live in fear or rule in fear, and its not really a good thing, its not sane, and its not logical. Its reactive.

The only reason why I didnt do so? Because I heard it was a good movie.

And good movies these days are hard to come by. Blame it on the director, or the scriptwriter, or the actor, or the producer, for those lousy movies that you paid good money with. You end up feeling cheated away from your money when you step out of the moviehouse. Sometimes you dont even wait for the movie the finish, you just feel you REALLY had enough, and sometimes you're just embarrassed for the movie itself for even having the balls to put it out into the market.

Let's admit it. Sometimes these movies hype themselves up, and they make fancy looking trailers to attract the viewers, they get rave reviews from prominent publications with quotes like "Three thumbs up!" or "Riveting performace..!" or "[Enter director name here] has done it again! It will blow you out of your seats!". And lets face it, as viewers, we dont want to feel like we were suckered into watching a shitty movie, regardless if it was a marketing hype,or such. I wouldn't care much if the movie didn't earn much, but it pisses me off that some movies make money out of low quality films with big budget production names. Us consumers just give them back more money to make more crappy films. And the cycle goes on and on until we get to the point of becoming victims of our own actions.

But good films, on the other hand, come once in a while. And its depressing to find out that sometimes they don't make as much money as the "blockbuster" hits that make millions. Thing is, you want to make these film makers realize they're going a good job, and give them the money to make a new one. Its movies like these that really make up the industry. And piracy isn't going to help a good low budget movie have a make or break; The movie's already on low budget constraints, and add in piracy, and its bye bye for whoever did a good job on them. Out with the good stuff, in with the bad.

I'm proud to own three original Extended Platinum Edition DVDs for Lord of the Rings. Frankly, I think its one of the best adaptations there is. I could've probably bought a pirated version when China is just a step away (and even then, I dont think there is a shortage of pirated DVDs in Hong Kong, either) but I didn't. Maybe some people would think its a waste of money, but I actually feel good when you just plop a DVD into your player and watch the movie with the original version. You probably wouldnt be able to tell the difference between a pirated one and an original one, but you know that you did in your small way tell the producers that this is a good movie, it has a great director, so the next time the same director puts up a "great" idea, you might just want to think twice before turning it down. Lets face it, financial success is one of the more persuasive indicators of a successful movie, and you dont want to give your money to someone who's going to possibly make crap in the future.

So for those of you out there who have the money to spare, and the thought of putting the industry into the right direction, I'd suggest you spend away... Because there's nothing better than a good movie to watch on a great Saturday night.

*I'm not saying Episode 3 is a good movie, but it looks better than most! Can't help but have some lying, devious movie slide into my good movies list, but it pays to weed out incredulously horrible ones.