Episode III...

There may be a few spoilers here, I will try to be as spoiler free as possible.

The Good...

As usual the visual effects are amazing and mostly seamless. CGI is getting better and better.

The scenes between Anakin and Chancellor Palpatine where all is revealed. A nicely done dialogue scene, probably the only good one in the movie, where the camera rotates around the two characters as they are speaking...It is one of the few scenes with little or no CGI in the movie and it works.

Mace Windu's final scene in the movie...One of the better types of this scene in the prequel trilogy. I always thought most of these were done in a way which were very anticlimactic.

Chewbacca! A Star Wars movie without a major Wookie presence always seemed wrong to me. These sequences could have been longer.

"Luke"

"Leia"

No Jar Jar Speaking role!

The Cartoon Network Clone Wars Cartoon that falls in between EP2 and EP3...Jedi Knights portrayed the way they should be: Total Badasses!

The Bad...

The first half of the movie looks pretty, but completely filler. There is nothing here to advance the plot. It doesn't get any better until that Palpatine scene and that is over an hour into it.

Very wooden acting and dialogue...I've seen a lot of these actors in other movies and I know they can be better.

General Grievous...A coughing droid Jedi Killer...What does he have, a computer virus? Also In Clone Wars, he was a badass jedi killer and here he keeps running away like a coward.

The Ugly...

Obi-Wan riding that lizard thing...This is why I called the CGI "mostly" seamless earlier. This just was stupid and looked bad, like they did it just to sell a toy.

There were a few more things that bugged me, but overall, I would give it a C or C+. I was disappointed and I purposely tried not to have high expectations.

Perhaps this is not my Star Wars, but a Star Wars for another generation. My friends 5 year old seemed to like it.

New York, New York...

I just got back from a very cool trip to the Big Apple, and I had a lot of fun, Checked out a lot of Architecture and Museums, and Architecture of Museums.

I also had the wonderful opportunity to see two Broadway shows, Wicked and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and see an amazing Jazz concert put on by an 87 year old piano player (I hope I am that nimble-fingered when I get to that age).

I also saw the Yankees and the Mets play, walked through central park (the fact that it is entirely man-made blows my mind) and saw the offices of the big two comic book companies...Yes, it was much like a pilgrimage to my own personal Mecca, If only the Skywalker ranch was there, the circle would have been complete. Also saw the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and visited scenic Hoboken, NJ, which is actually a pretty nice place.

The best part of the trip though was getting to hang out with my cousin, who despite growing up thousands of miles away, and not seeing each other hardly ever, we have an incredible amount in common, as well as seeing an old coworker of mine who is doing very well for himself, and is still the same low-key nice guy he was when he was broke.

It's nice to see that money doesn't change everybody.