May 19, 1999.

It actually is Episode 523, you know, if you count all the Greek Drama entries. I suppose I'll have to denote a fundamental split when I changed diaries...there were 297 entries before the change and 225 after...so I guess we could say...

Forget it. No one is interested in this crap other than me. And my whole point was that I saw the Phantom Menace last night.

Wow. And again: wow.

Before a bunch of people start in on all the things that sucked (and there were quite a few major things: the dialogue, for one, and the offensively stereotypical Jar Jar race for another), let me just point out that many many many things in the other three movies sucked pretty hard. Luke's annoying brattiness on Tattoine. Carrie Fisher's coke-addled performance in Jedi. The fucking Ewoks, for pete's sake, sucked like an electrolux. But every one of those movies has brilliant things in them, and so does Phantom. We're talking about a space fable here...not the latest adaptation of Middlemarch.

It was exciting. It was disappointing. It was poignant. It was puzzling. At times, it was downright ridiculous and demeaning (the way of tao is not based on microscopic symbiotes, I don't care what Liam Neeson said). The animation was dazzling, but at the same time all they really needed to kick-start the drama was that bad-ass Sith Darth Maul grinning & swishing back and forth like a tiger. It was - in every sense of the word - amazing.

I just wish that I could've had more than 4 hours of sleep to face the day. Today was really frustrating, and I had to keep hold of my temper with both hands...but then I'd think of that ridiculous bloated mosquito trader shooting down Liam:

"I don't take Federation credits."
Liam makes the mind trick pass
"You find the credits acceptable."
"No, I don't take federation credits."
Another mystical gesture
"You find the credits acceptable."
"No, I don't. What do you think you are, some kind of Jedi? Those mind tricks don't work on my race."

And he floats away. Somewhere, Alec Guiness is laughing.