Re: CHAT: I saw it! I saw it! I saw it!

Tom Wier wrote:
>
> Sally Caves wrote:
>
> > Tom Wier wrote:
> > > Oh, sure, I agree with that.  For all their other preparation, they don't
> > > seem to have gotten a good language consultant like the Star Trek movies
> > > did.  I was only speculating about the concultural reality, not the real
> > > reality. :)
> >
> > Oh I know... considering what it is we do, this is just natural.  But
> > the evil critic in me emerged (I liked the special effects of the movie and
> > found everything else about it--except for some of the aliens--fairly
> > wooden).
>
> Well, I didn't go into it with the IMO excessively expectations that
> some were, and so I came out liking it, quite a bit.  (For me, movies
> that I bother to go to are by default good unless something makes it
> bad -- if I have reason to think it might be bad, I don't go to it at all.
> Alas, the duties of time management.).
>
> > Sally (still ducking!)
>
> Sally, I don't think there's any need to fear reprisals here about your
> belief in Star Wars  -- I'm sure there are plenty here who'd agree with
> your assessment.
Oh, I'm kidding a bit, Tom... but thanks!  No, like you, I didn't go
into it thinking it was going to top the others.  But at LEAST I didn't
come out of it all miffed and uppity about the "innate racism" of the
dialects.  The amount of fluff that was spent on that in reviews and in
learned conversations by academics on other listservs has made me want
to
gag.  I really liked the aliens in this film; it never ONCE occurred to
my naive brain that Jar Jar was Jamaican with ears that looked like
dread-locks and a dialect that mocked Haitian etc. etc. etc. and that
that was BAD.  It was the aliens that stole the show!  I just
loved that Gungan emperor who kept shaking out his lips.  No:
it was the wooden Queen that bothered me.  Do something, emote
something, crack a smile, give an ironic glance, toss out a quip...
if you haven't seen the movie stop reading RIGHT HERE:



it was so clear that she was groomed as a mannequin so as not to take
any affectionate attention away from the real Queen-- who wasn't the
spunky Princess Leia.  Too pretty, not feisty or funny enough for me.
And I didn't much care for Anikin.  The future Darth Vader should have
been older, and there should have been something darker about him,
something that would have justified Yoda's sense that he wasn't right,
something that made him a more interesting wundorkind than that
cute button-nosed little thing saving the day all the time.  Marketing.