"You are so...beautiful."

"Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" was officially released today on DVD! I just spent a much-needed evening relaxing and watching it. I'd only seen it once before, in the theatre on opening weekend.

At lunchtime today (well, Tuesday, it's now Wednesday), I strolled up to the Borders at Columbus Circle to buy my copy. And how gorgeous Monday and Tuesday were: high 60s for the high with lots of sunshine, and it may have even been a little warm to be wearing a wool suit coat. What a far cry from most of October, which was the wettest month for much of the Northeast (and correspondingly cool). Central Park, not far from where I work, had the heaviest rainfall, 16.73 inches. The previous October record was 13.31 inches, set in 1903.

Episode III's "love scenes" (if you can call them that) weren't as bad as I remember, but at times their dialogue was silly enough. In real life, Anakin should have been given an F for such an unoriginal line, but I suppose the effort was worth a C-minus. (The only time I've said such a thing, I said she was "the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." With that specification and my sincerity, no one should be surprised that my compliment was far better received than a silly cliché.) Then Padmé replied, "It's only because I'm so in love." And he countered, as if he were the Eliza AI satire of years ago (bonus points to whoever remembers that), "No, it's because I'm so in love with you." Yuck, George!

Still, I loved Episode III. It's not the best of the six, but as a pure tragedy, it's my favorite of them all.

My previous entries on Star Wars:

• Awesome the movie shall be, if decent Hayden's acting is (my thoughts prior to III's theatre release, after I had read Matthew Stover's novelization)
  
  
• Obi-wan is a neo-con (my review after seeing it in the theatre)
  
  
• "The Jedi are not to be trusted"? (a critique of Tyler Cowen's criticism of the Jedi)
  
  My friend Chris Masse wrote in his description for Marginal Revolution: "Tyler Cowen recently wrote a beautiful piece about the public choice economics of Star Wars, just to get proved wrong from A to Z within the next week by an unknown babyface blogger from the Big Apple. (The readers of the otherwise outstanding Marginal Revolution blog will of course never get the chance to get enlightened by Perry Eidelbus' magic.)"
  
  
• The Emperor is less forgiving than I am (unrestrained bashing of two Slate writers who clearly are ignorant of Star Wars, and far from the fans they claim to be)
  
  
• I hope the Professor is more forgiving than the Emperor (criticizing an Empire-apologist that Professor Bainbridge linked to)
  
  
• The Organa Connection (disagreeing with Professor Bainbridge in that I say the Empire effectively committed terrorism by destroying Alderaan)

Update: I forgot to include this atypical PG-13 entry, in which I merely featured this screenshot of how my friend Jackie Passey views Obi-Wan: