Tenser, said the Tensor

Revenge of the Sith

The Wife and I went to see Revenge of the Sith last Friday.  We had a good time, and I've been collecting my thoughts on it (and the rest of the prequel trilogy) since then.  I'll give you my short review before the jump—after that, it's going to be deep geekery, continuity spelunking, and I warn you, it gets a little bit negative and there'll be spoilers throughout (don't complain, you've had a week to see it).  I should mention up front that there's nothing language-related, so if you're here for linguistics, now's the time to sneak away.

RotS is easily the best of movie of the prequel trilogy.  It's full of amazing special effects, including some great lightsaber duels.  The things we've been waiting to see for twenty years—Anakin's turn, the Jedi purge, and most of all the duel over the lava pit—all deliver.  I was entertained pretty much non-stop, which is something I certainly can't say of the earlier two prequel films (especially TPM).  I've read some reviews that say RotS is better than RotJ, and I can almost see it, but I think I'd have to rank the whole series V-IV-VI-III-II-I.  (And I really didn't like the Ewoks.)  Still, I Lucas did a good job with this movie, which is saying something because this is the one he had to get right.

Sky Captain

The Wife and I saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow last week. I enjoyed it more than she did, but that's hardly surprising. Much like Star Wars (although it wasn't that good), Sky Captain seemed tuned to appeal to geeks of exactly my stripe. It pressed most of my SF/pulp/adventure buttons, while still managing to be a bit flat and lifeless in parts.

[Fair Warning: spoilers ahead]

Grammar and Swashbuckling

The Wife and I watched the 1952 version of Scaramouche tonight. I'd been wanting to see it, in part because it has a reputation as the Best Fencing Movie Ever. The fencing was pretty impressive all through, too. One of the DVD extras is an interview with Mel Ferrer, who said they never repeated a sequence of blade movements in any of the duels so that they wouldn't look repetitive. Still, I was always aware of the usual stage-fencing problem: the fencers always stood too close together, so it'd be over the first time somebody thought to lunge. Fencing aside, though, two language-related points came up during the movie.

Out-geeked

Over the weekend, I was sitting and watching TV with my wife. More precisely, I was watching TV and she was in the same room but paying attention to something else. An astronomy show I'd TiVo'd from the Science channel started playing, and without looking up, she said, "Is this about black holes?" I replied, "Yeah, how'd you know?", thinking she must have seen the flat green grid superimposed on a starscape, which always means "The Fabric of Spacetime" in that kind of show.

But she said, "Because I recognize the music". (Although she said it without the hyperlink.)

I surrender. I've been out-geeked.