5.19.05

A Renaissance of Quality?

Most of the time, I walk around expecting disappointment. Call me a pessimist, call me a realist, call me what you will. The sad thing is that you can rarely call me 'wrong'. Disappointment surrounds us; Politicians talk of peace and make war; New Yorkers talked of unity and now they're fighting over the WTC site like a bunch of junkyard dogs. Very little lives up to any sort of hype.

This is especially true in the entertainment world, where Hype with a capital H was invented and then ported over to international relations. Movie makers in particular unabashedly use hype as a money making tool. Creating enough buzz to make a lackluster film exciting enough to make back it's development budget. They spent a million dollars for example on a party on an aircraft carrier for the movie "Pearl Harbor", flying reporters and critics out to Hawaii for a weekend.

I say all of this to setup the fact that this evening I was expecting a lot, and when I walked out of the theater I had got what I expected and it felt damn good. I wasn't disappointed at all. I got my $11.50 worth. I'm speaking, of course, of the new Star Wars film "Revenge of the Sith" which opened last night at midnight. I'm of the age that quite literally grew up on Star Wars. If I had only seen the first three movies, and by that I'm referring to episodes IV, V, and VI, 200 times each it would probably be an understatement. So while Episode I was pretty bad, and Episode II a bit more than watchable, Episode III did a great job of tying up all the loose ends and creating the world in which my childhood fantasies existed. The colors, uniforms, ships, stories and worlds morphed from what we saw in II to what were knew from 1977. Mr Lucas, good job. Very well done.

So maybe this is the beginning of a new phase in the world. Maybe they've turned over a new leaf and Episode III is the first example of a New Renaissance of Quality in the world. The new Ben Folds record is also very good. Hmm.. maybe.... but the realist in my says 'probably not' and, as I said earlier, I'm rarely wrong.