Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace

                And so it begins.

   >Deep Breath<

   *Siiiiiiiiiiiggggghhh*

                So, the title crawl:

   War! Oh, sorry. Wrong one.

                Okay, okay. I’ll stop procrastinating, but can you really blame me? You can? Well, I don’t care what you think.

                According to the title crawl, there is trouble in the Republic on account of taxation of trade routes. People apparently hate it. So, the Trade Federation acts calmly and rationally about it and—blockades the planet of Naboo with deadly battleships!?

 

                Well, the Federation IS run by aliens; I’m sure the humans will act much more reasonably.

Star Wars: Introduction

               I hereby start my long review saga. It will cover all six Star Wars films. Why include the original trilogy? Because, for one thing, no movie is perfect, and also for completion’s sake. And to complain just like everyone else about the CGI additions.

                I wish George Lucas were CGI.

Star Wars Project Update

Although clearly no one is reading this blog yet, or even cares to comment if they do happen to run across it, I will explain why the Star Wars Project, which I've randomly decided to call it just now and only for this post, never to be mentioned as such again, has not yet begun.

Quite simply, I don't have Episodes I or II. Since I intend to do this in internal chronological order of the films, I have to wait until I get a chance to go to the library or Blockbuster (so what if I'm behind the times--deal with it!).

In the meantime, I have been, in my spare time (I go to college, too: yes, a fictional cosmic being with the power to repair whole multiverses of timelines is going to school--meta humor and all that), reading Blogger Beware.

As if you didn't already know, Blogger Beware is a blog reflecting on the popular Goosebumps children's horror books of the 90s. Now, I never read them as a child (obligatory TV Tropes reference) but am finding them amusingly stupid. As the author of the blog said in his Let's Get Invisible post, R.L. Stine seems to be the Tommy Wiseau of children's literature.

And we all know how hilariously amusing he is...

Anyway, HORROR!!!!! Yay!!!

A Change in Format

Starting with the upcoming Star Wars reviews, I will be changing how I review material. Up till now I've been giving basic, traditional reviews about what was good or bad about the work. But in order to establish certain elements that will factor into my theory about the continuity inconsistencies and the unexplained bits of the prequels, I will be moving to the recap format, popular among many video reviewers, as well as text-based ones.

Now I will be going through a run-down of plot and characters and continuity as I summarize each film or book or whatever. That way, it will give readers who aren't familiar with the works more context for my continuity entries, and it will remind those who are of certain elements important to my theories.

That is all for now.

From the Dust Returned External Continuity

*SPOILERS*

There is so much to talk about.

To start with, A Thousand Times Great Grandmère is often called the Dust Witch. Maybe Timothy should think twice about listening to her...

Okay, maybe it's not a big deal. Obviously she's not Madamoiselle Tarot or the time travelling tattoo artist. Moving on...

In "Make Haste to Live" the character of Angelina Marguerite is a Time Lady. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. The evidence is that she is unfathomably old, she gets younger-looking all the time, and at one point is called a "daughter of time".

From the Dust Returned Internal Continuity (SPOILERS)

Surprisingly, especially for a book that was worked on over 55 years, this book has issues within itself, which must be dealt with before figuring out how exactly it fits with the others.

Fortunately, there are only a few things, so it won't be a long post.

The first couple have to do with  the character of Cecy, who can move her mind out and enter other beings or even inanimate objects to see what it's like to be them.

First of all, in the chapter entitled "Homecoming", at one point Cecy dreamily tells her brother Timothy that she's in the mind of a lonely woman in California. Moments later, the woman walks into the mud pots near her house, allowing herself to be engulfed by the mud and the sulfurous fumes. When this happens, Cecy quickly moves into the mind of a bird and flies off. Just seconds later, there is a smack as a bird hits the attic window and Cecy announces that her mind has fully returned to the House.

From the Dust Returned Review

If you're getting tired of me solely reviewing Ray Bradbury books, don't panic. I'm doing something different this month. Unfortunately for you (if you're tired of Bradbury reviews, that is) this is one of the former.

This time, it's From the Dust Returned. This is a fix-up novel that has been in the making since 1946. In fact, it started as a few short stories, but now it is finished (well, finished ten years ago...) as a "novel".

Because of its history, it doesn't fit together structurally as cohesively as, say, Something Wicked This Way Comes did. That is not to say, however, that it is a bad book. It's simply not a convenional novel. To be sure, it has an overarching storyline, just separated into short stories and shorter, connecting, chapters.