Personal Dork Assistant

Went to see Star Wars.

Went to see Star Wars. Walked up to the ticket window for the 3:00PM matinee ten minutes before showtime and waltzed on in. True, the local theater doesn't have the super-duper THX sound system and stadium seating, but it was Good Enough, although I do have to say that my own speakers do sound a lot better. Can't beat the big screen, though. I can always catch it again at the digital-projection-equipped theater downtown. No reason to be first in line there.

I don't go into the big summer movies with big expectations, so I'm not let down by entertaining mediocrities like Attack of the Clones. I do have to say that Natalie Portman > Carrie Fisher. Now if only Senator Amidala would deliver her lines in ways other than a stern monotone (blame Lucas for that one). The Anakin guy seems to be constipated rather than being consumed by the Dark Side, but I guess that's what Episode 3 is for. The CG visuals are noticeably more impressive than even Episode 1, thanks to Moore's Law, and the plot is interesting enough. I admit that I got a big kick near the end when the clones were on their way off to war and the Imperial March starts playing in the background. Kitschy popular entertainment at its opiated best.

I kept my movie karma in balance by going to see a film presented by the Critical Gender Studies Department, about a Sri Lankan woman returning to see her children after working in Greece as a housemaid for ten years. In all that time, the only communication has been by letter, and more importantly, by the money she sends back. Ironically, the manual labor of the men is not in demand in the global marketplace, so it's the nurturing skills of the women that's become the primary export. Of course, I knew about Mexicans in the U.S., the Filipinos in Japan and Taiwan, and Eastern Europeans going west, but it boggled my mind the threads of human commerce linking places as disparate as Greece and Sri Lanka.

Watching Star Wars actually made me appreciate the little documentary a lot more. They're opposites in many ways. One has gorgeous Hollywood actors speaking painfully stilted lines in front of computer-generated scenery on high-definition digital cameras. The other is filmed on a fuzzy 16mm camera featuring a heavy-set Sri Lankan woman, telling a painfully honest story. Each effective in their own way, but being effective at sucking $6.50 out of my pocket seems a little empty, far as Higher Callings go.