Episode III goof: Ring around the collar

This has been bugging me ever since I caught it the very first time I saw Revenge of the Sith. The scene where Anakin is on the slab, getting rebuilt into classic Darth Vader. Here's three cuts in succession. Notice anything wrong here?Give up?

Okay, in the top image there's Anakin in most of the Darth Vader armor (for the first time I'm noticing that he's not wearing the gloves) and the droid is lowering the facemask down onto Anakin's head. The next panel shows us Anakin's POV as the mask turns on, giving us the only glimpse in any Star Wars movie of how Vader sees the world behind the mask. The bottom image is just before the mask clamps down with the helmet completely sealing the head.

The "collar" that the mask hooks onto is missing in the first image, even though the mask is already on its way down onto Anakin's face. It mysteriously materializes around his neck just in time for the whole thing to come together around his head. The collar should be there during this entire cutaway to Palpatine's medical facility, but it ain't.

Maybe this'll be something they digitally fix for the forthcoming DVD release. Or for the "Ultimate Edition" six-episode multi set that you just know George Lucas will someday release with EVERYTHING corrected and amended per his grand master vision :-)

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New toy to play with

Lisa found me a 256 MB flash drive. Previously I was using a 128 MB one. I know they make them much bigger (like a gig or so) but I still think it's a pretty neat gimmick to mess around with. I find it amusing that this is 80 megabytes bigger than the hard drive in my very first computer. First things I put on it was the medium-sized Quicktime of Forcery and a Quicktime installer, so I can carry around a much larger version of my own movie with me. Lisa's gonna be using the 128 version for school stuff from now on. Anyhoo, just thought this would be a neat thing to mention getting, if nothing else than for my own sake :-)

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Four years ago today al Qaeda defeated the United States

Osama bin Laden got pretty much everything he wanted. The country that existed prior to 9/11 is gone now. In its place is a land where no-warrant searches take place, where you can be locked up indefinitely without being charged or put on trial, where our women and children are fondled obscenely at the airport, where guns are now seized from average citizens, where Big Brother monitors all of our communications (if you don't think the government isn't interested in what you are writing or reading, you're dead wrong), where it's all to easy to lie and deceive people into a horribly executed abortion of a war, where our military forces are stretched to the breaking point, where we are practically surrendering our southern regions to illegal immigration (California to Texas will be northern Mexico at this rate), where citizens do not matter so much as corporate interests...

Dammit, this isn't the America I grew up reading about. I really do wonder if that America can even come back, or if it was ever really here at all.

Do you think that America is a much greater country today than it was four years ago, before the planes hit?

We reacted the wrong way totally. We should have been like the British, treating this like an enormous act of criminal minds and proceeded to punish the guilty as necessary. Instead we got a country that punishes everybody. Well, everyone except those with power and affluence, 'course. When they got bombed this summer the people of Britain were stalwart. We have been nothing other than coward.

We let them win, because we allowed them to make us destroy who we are as Americans. We gave al Quaeda the biggest victory of its existence, and we dare pat ourselves on the back for being "good American patriots" even as we give away one freedom after another for sake of "security" from the government.

H.L. Mencken was right: "Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses". I know exactly who the jackals are. The problem is there's too many jackasses in this country ruining it for those of us that still care about these things.

I don't feel any bit "patriotic" on this fourth anniversary of 9/11, because there's precious little left to this country to feel proud about. And I refuse to be a hypocrite about it. We've been destroying ourselves ever since. There won't even be an America like this in another five years, the way things are going. You tell me how that's something to honor with empty words and useless gestures.

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This church's pastor is an idiot

From KLTV.com come this heartwarming story of Christian "love":

Local Church's Sign Offends Evacuees

A confrontation this morning between an East Texas church and an evacuee from New Orleans. It centers around a sign out front of Woodland Hills Baptist Church on Old Jacksonville Road in Tyler, about a mile inside the loop. Some say the message is offensive.

"I drove by that sign and was just horrified when I saw that," says Kelly Jackman who now lives in Tyler but used to live in New Orleans.

That sign at Woodland Hills Baptist Church reads ,"The big easy is the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah."

Kelly along with her sister Robin Lafont, an evacuee from New Orleans, showed up this morning at the church to talk to the man who put it up, Pastor Wiley Bennett.

During a heated discussion, Robin asked, "What's the point of the sign out there?" Pastor Bennett replied, "The point of the sign is New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and New York City are some of the most wicked cities in America."

Robin, who still has family members unaccounted for in New Orleans, is offended by the sign. "I'm telling you. This hurts. Why would you want to put more hurt, more salt in my wounds and why would you want to do this to me?"

Kelly adds, "And to go by and see this church saying that God did this to destroy these people and basically they're celebrating that by putting that sign up there saying look at what God has done. He has destroyed the city of New Orleans because it is evil."

Pastor Bennett says, "Anybody that's ever visited New Orleans, the very name its self - Big Easy - denotes that it's easy to find sin there..."

WRONG!! You wanna know where the nickname "the Big Easy" came from? Black musicians from the east and further up the Mississippi used to consider New Orleans to be maybe the one place that they could always find work. It was almost too easy to be a paid musician there, and so it is that they came to consider New Orleans the "Big Easy". There was nothing vulgar about the term, and if it weren't for it being so attractive to black musical artists there never would have come the unique sound of jazz (although I've heard some preachers rail against jazz itself as being "evil" but that's a rant for another time...)

Anyway, the pastor of this church... is acting like an idiot, to be nice about it. See, this is what happens a lot when some Christians take it upon themselves to be more an authority on God than anyone else. This guy relishes hurting people, though he won't admit it. Take a looksee at his church's website: obviously a "King James only" outfit. Which explains the horridness of it: King James only churches usually have some of the worst websites I've ever seen. Whenever a church is King James only, that pops a big red flag in my mind: they see that as a license to inflict all the pain they want to, in the name of the Lord. Believe you me I know.

Anyway, I don't believe that Katrina was a punishment from God on New Orleans alone: the most "sinful" part of town escaped practically unscathed. And the "Southern Decadence" gay pride parade went ahead as scheduled, by the way... not that I think anything highly of that (I don't) but that fact alone smacks this notion that Katrina was "divine retribution" upside the head.

Okay, enough ranting here. Time to get ready for church, and who knows if I won't rant about this there either...

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Interdictor blog has been the site I've most visited the past two weeks

There's going to be a movie made about these guys someday, bank on it.

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It was four years ago tonight...

...that I started writing the script for Forcery. Feels so curious now, to finally have that behind me.

Two days from now will more or less be the official start of pre-production of our next project. Which will be something of an experimental way to make a movie. I'm really excited about what this is going to be, all the things that are going into making it.

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KWerky Productions website is still down

No, we ain't out of business (yet :-), we're just working through the intricacies of a physical relocation of our server. Should be back up soon (along with news on our next project or two). It'll be at the usual address when it comes back online.

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"It can't happen here"

Avearge American citizens are being removed from their homes by force, are having their weapons seized at gunpoint, and are being removed to government-run shelters "for their own protection", in a major American city. A federal court just ruled that the government can detain anyone it calls a "threat" for however long it wants to.

All of this is happening under a Republican President, by the way. You know... the party that this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen from.

For anyone who's been paying attention to these sorts of things, Claire Wolfe is more or less admitting that "it's time" now. "I'll never argue with anyone who says the time is already here," she writes: "The only question now is how to be effective. But it's now absolutely imperative to find the way."

I hope and pray she's right.

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Another Saturday so you know what that means...

Another solid piece by Kyle Williams that WorldNetDaily refuses to put atop their front page.

To their credit, the pieces by Dr. Kelly Hollowell and Jerry Falwell are pretty good this week. Hollowell is contrasting the tragedy of Katrina with that of abortion, while Falwell is generously offering free tuition to students who came out of Katrina at his Liberty University, which I've heard firsthand over the years is a pretty good school, despite some misgivings I've long had about Falwell. I'll still contend that of the three main columnists that WorldNetDaily has on Saturdays, that Kyle Williams's is still the deepest and most articulate. And why WND isn't putting him on the forefront of things anymore, I've no idea.

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Red Dawn over New Orleans

Well, this is a post I never thought I'd ever have to make...

About twenty years ago there was a movie called Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell. Maybe you've seen it before (probably during one of those hundreds of times that TNT used to run it back in the late Nineties) so you already know it's horribly dated by today's standards. But if you haven't: it was about the Soviet Union dropping paratroopers into the American heartland as part of a massive invasion, which Swayze and Howell and Charlie Sheen and a bunch of other kids take up guns and fight against in guerilla warfare. It was like The Breakfast Club starting up its own militia. For its time it was a dark, morbid flick (it held the Guinness record for "Most Violent Movie" for several years afterward). For two hours it was the kids' turn to kick Russkie butt and take names. Little wonder that it became something of a favorite for adolescent viewers.

I wanted to bring up a scene from Red Dawn, just after the Russians and Cubans and other Communists have taken over this town where Our Heroes used to attend high school and play football. The commanding officer of the invading contingent gives orders to his men to go to some building in town, where it's known that gun registration records are kept. The soldiers then take the records and proceed through town confiscating all the guns that are listed in the registry. It's the most efficient way of stifling opposition before it has a chance to really start. All the guns get taken away from the good American citizens (except for the ones that Patrick Swayze and his gang use to open up a can of whup-a$$ on the Soviets with). Hence, hardly anybody has a chance to fight against the oppression.

That scene from Red Dawn was the very first thing that crossed my mind when I read this news coming out of New Orleans. From the Associated Press via the Houston Chronicle:

Authorities confiscating guns from homeowners in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS — Soldiers and police confiscated guns from homeowners as they went house to house, trying to clear the shattered city of holdouts because of the danger of disease and fire. Police today also marked homes with corpses inside, with plans to return later.

As many as 10,000 people were believed to be stubbornly staying put in the city, despite Katrina's filthy, corpse-strewn floodwaters and orders from Mayor Ray Nagin earlier this week to leave or be removed by force. By midmorning, though, there were no immediate reports of anyone being taken out forcibly, police said.

Police are "not going to do that until we absolutely have to. We really don't want to do that at all," Deputy Chief Warren Riley said...

...Police and soldiers also seized numerous guns for fear of confrontations with jittery residents who have armed themselves against looters.

"No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons," Riley said.

On Thursday, in the city's well-to-do Lower Garden District, a neighborhood with many antebellum mansions, members of the Oklahoma National Guard seized weapons from the inhabitants of one home. Those who were armed were handcuffed and briefly detained before being let go...

I've seen numerous reports that the authorities are going by gun registration lists, exactly as was done in the fictional movie Red Dawn.

One of the most obvious questions that pops into mind is, will the confiscated weapons ever be returned to the rightful owners? Somehow I doubt that they will be.

I understand that New Orleans isn't the healthiest places to be at the moment, but the risk of contracting cholera isn't going to marginally increase simply because one is the owner of a firearm.

All things considered: these are American citizens that are being deprived - unlawfully, and unconstitutionally - of their right to self-defense and self-preservation. For no logical or apparent reason whatsoever other than because those who assume to be the "authorities" have decided that these citizens are incapable of taking care of themselves without "government assistance". Considering how the "authorities" completely imploded last week, I'll trust Joe Sixpack's judgement over that of the chief of police and mayor of New Orleans, thankyaverymuch.

This is the kind of thing that revolutions are started over. The bloody kind, mind you.

I had to make a note of this, if for no other reason than because of my own conscience. This confiscation of guns from what would be normal Americans in any other circumstance in New Orleans is wrong, no matter how it's looked at.

I almost want to say it's funny: I've seen things from some movies actually come to pass. I never thought that one of those movies would be Red Dawn though.

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I've never even watched Firefly before...

...but I found this to be pretty darned cool. Wish I had that many bricks to play with :-)

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AAAAHHH it's a Crazy Frog, SHOOT IT SHOOT IT!!

This is supposed to be a big thing over in England and the rest of Europe. I guess it'll be catching on here pretty soon: every decade sees America getting some imported "cuteness" from elsewhere. In the Eighties it was the Smurfs from Belgium. Then the Nineties it was Pokemon from Japan. So Ed came by earlier tonight for dinner and afterward he showed me Crazy Frog, which is a cellular ringtone with a music video that started out in life as an imitation of a two-stroke moped engine and then a Lightwave animation. Or something. It's a blue frog. With a motorcycle helmet. And genitalia of some sort it looks like. This thing's ringtone was the #1 selling musical number in Great Britain for awhile (Coldplay even complained about its popularity). There'll be a videogame of this soon. I'll wager an RC Cola and a Moon Pie that we'll soon be seeing cutesy little stuffed animals of the Crazy Frog and t-shirts with this annoying amphibian on them. America will go nuts for the Crazy Frog. There will be a Crazy Frog movie. And then we'll all wake up the next morning like from a bad hangover and wonder why in the world did we spend bajillions of dollars on all the Crazy Frog stuff that's littering our houses. Just giving you guys advanced warning on what might be coming our way, is all. Do a Google search about the Crazy Frog to find out more.

And when you're finally sick and tired of the bloody thing, aim your shotgun and blast the frog away with the "I Hate That Frog" Flash game. I got as far as 92 meters playing it: how far can you go?

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Will the big rigs put on the brakes?

WorldNetDaily has a story today about commercial truckdrivers possibly staging a strike in the very near future, to protest the rising cost of fuel. I've heard this talked about for at least the past month or so and... well, I'm of the mind that this is altogether possible. Not to mention easily understandable given the frustrations of these truckers. Most of them are independent contractors who have to purchase their own fuel, and a lot of 'em are running in the red right now. I don't blame them at all but it must be admitted that in the wake of the blow this country's taken from Katrina, a trucker's strike all over the place would be a severe test of the tipping point on a lot of things.

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Katrina victims to get $2000 debit cards from U.S. government

From the Associated Press...

Katrina Victims to Get $2K Debit Cards
Sep 07 3:42 PM US/Eastern

By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer

The federal government plans to hand out debit cards worth $2,000 each to families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff, under fire for his agency's response to the disaster, held a conference call with governors of states with evacuees and described the plan. While many details remained to be worked out, the plan was to quickly begin distributing the cards, starting with people in major evacuation centers such as the Houston Astrodome.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the cards are aimed at providing "some immediate cash assistance to those who are in shelters, those that were evacuated."

Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who participated in the conference call, said the cards will be offered "to people in shelters as well as people who are not in shelters but who have evacuated the area and need help." He said the hope is the cards will encourage people to leave shelters voluntarily.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is administering the program. FEMA officials said the program is aimed at those most in need, so not all families that fled their homes will be eligible...

At the risk of being called cold-hearted: this is a really stupid thing to do. There's going to be all kinds of abuse opening up with this scheme. And what happens to everyone else who becomes a victim of a hurricane? Do we give them two thousand dollars from the public coffers also?

This smells too much like a political ploy, if anything.

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Bush kept cancer patients from getting chemo?!?

Unbelievable, but apparently true.

Someone is probably going to jump flunky on me for posting this though, likely tell me something like "Bush was there to boost patients's morale" or something.

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Gilligan has left the island. Maynard G. Krebs has banged his bongos for the last time.

Just hitting wires that Bob Denver - forever stranded with the rest of the Minnow crew on Gilligan's Island, not to mention wondering if he should "Work?" as beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis - has died here in North Carolina.

Nothing else to say, 'cept another legend has left us. Say hello to the Skipper and Thurston Howell III up there, little buddy.

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So, ummm... you saying the hurricane was GOOD for some people?!

Barbara Bush said this today at the Astrodome, no joke:

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this... this is working very well for them."

Now, what kind of person is it that would divy-up the victims of something so impartial into either "privileged" or "underprivileged"?

I'm almost reminded of the "steerage" passengers aboard the Titanic.

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