Did Boba Fett Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru?

In a rare case of me not doing my own writing, I offer a link for today since I found it terribly fascinating. Hopefully, it doesn't go down anytime soon.

In this article, the author offers a series of explanations rooted within the canon of the Star Wars universe presenting why he believes that Boba Fett was responsible for the deaths of both the Jawas and their Sandcrawler as well as the single biggest event to set Luke Skywalker on his Jedi path: the murder of his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru along with the destruction of their homestead.

If you've been in Star Wars since the beginning, as I have, and you know the movies inside and out, then you'll probably find this to be a very interesting read, and you know, some very good points are made throughout.

Top 10 Reasons Boba Fett Killed Luke Skywalker's Aunt and Uncle

Enjoy.

The Saw Project

So you may have heard of this series of movies called Saw. The opinion of these movies will vary primary depending on whether you've seen them or not. People who have not seen the Saw series generally refers to it in distaste. Those who have seen it vary between convoluted and genius, and they have about the same opinon on the movies too (zing!).

I'm one who has seen all six of the existing movies, and there is a solid reason why these movies have won awards for their physical effects. The scenes that Saw is known for (oh yes, there will be blood) are very graphic and extremely well done. There are even some that are cringe-worthy in nature that you honestly want to turn your head from because they are just painful to watch. But while the torture scenes might bring some people in, these are not the scenes that bring people back.

Saw is the story of a man named John Kramer. He was a guy who met the girl of his dreams, married her, helped her start a drug rehab clinic (who doesn't want to live that dream?), and meticulously planned for a child to be born in the chinese year of the pig. John was an engineer and even had a book about engineering. He bought a slew of old, abandoned buildings with a lawyer named Art Blank, and together, they planned on remodeling these building into low-cost housing. Even had several families lined up when tragedy struck. John's wife, who was seven months pregnant, ran into one of her patients while closing up the clinic, and he held her at knifepoint to break into the clinic to steal some drugs. He failed to pay attention to where she was on his hasty escape and slammed the door into her stomach causing her to lose the baby. John entered a deep depression, and dropped out of the project with Art Blank which left all the disrepaired buildings in disrepair. It wasn't long after that John was diagnosed with an incurable cancer, and he tried to kill himself by driving off a bridge. He survived, and after facing death, he decided this gave him a new appreciation of life. Looking around him, he saw that most people lived their life without any appreciation of the blessing they were given, and so he decided to give them the same "gift" he had been given: a chance to face death and realize what kind of a gift life really is. Problem is that most of his subjects couldn't pass their tests and were subsequently killed. Thus, the newspapers dubbed him "The Jigsaw Killer" since he cut a piece of skin out of his subjects following their death showing that they were missing a vital piece of their lives: the will to live.

The series is told in a combination of current events and flashbacks to fill in the history of Jigsaw, his apprentices, and his life. Each movie in the series has a major reversal, or twist, at the end of it that generally folds the movie back on itself and reveals secrets that you may have missed or that the movie deliberately concealed during its duration by misdirection. The twists have generally been immensely clever, fooling even die hard movie goers dsuch as myself, bringing a big goofy smile to my face. Thought I generally disliked the second movie the first time I saw it, I loved the twist(s) at the end. Thinking about it, the movies usually toss a two or three reversals there at the end, though the twists in 6 were a little weaker than most of the earlier ones.

So weird as it may seem, I've been working on a chronological cut of the six Saw movies (and keeping the project open to insert the seventh film next year when it hits DVD). Saw is the only movie that I've bought on DVD after getting a blu-ray player primarily because a) it's a gritty movie that works well on DVD and b) I don't have a blu-ray player on my computer so I couldn't copy the film over if it were on blu-ray. So I took my MPEG2's and loaded them into my movie editor and started cutting and moving scenes. I wasn't concerned over transitions or voiceovers, really (in most cases). It was more about the sequence of events.

The project has consumed my past month and I'm finally to a point where I can rip me a copy of the nearly 10-hour masterpiece. I'm not burning it to DVD since I don't want to waste the plastic disc (5 or 6 of them actually) on an unfinished item. Seven will come out and I'll just need to reopen it. So I'm making files of it to watch on my iPod to see how I did and make any necessary changes to it. It's just really easy to get lost in the events and a lot of them occur simultaneous to other events, so I've wanted to make a chronological cut of the movies ever since the mind-bending twist in the fourth movie. I started on the first four, but the editor I was using had trouble with the growing movie that was pushing 7 hours long at that time. So I stopped for awhile until I bought the last couple movies last month, and I started back in on it.

I had a lot of fun watching all six movies again, and meticulously going through it scene by scene to break it down. The movies are good enough to survive that sort of dissection, so if you've been curious about the Saw series, here's my thoughts for you. First, DO NOT listen to anyone who has not seen it for an opinion on "what they heard about it," especially if they just say it's disgusting. Yes, you need a strong stomach for it. I considered a "tame" cut of the movies so the Queen could enjoy it, but such a cut is not possible because of how everything fits together. A lot of horror flicks you can chop out the blood and guts and lose nothing of the story, but in this series, those bloody tests are integral to the plot, and they permeate almost every scene. It is very bloody and very violent. However, they have infused the series with a rare element in the horror genre: character. The characters drive the plot in these movies, and it is the tests that bring out the characters, which is another reason they cannot be just cut out. To fully appreciate Saw, you have to watch it in its entirety in order. You can't take a single out of the mix and view it. It's not James Bond. You also have to take it as a story, and not watch it for the "torture porn" or you'll miss the point. What is the point?

How are you living your life? Do you exploit others for your own benefit, or do you actually appreciate life for the gift that it is? Life is something to not be taken for granted, but something where every day is a blessing and living it should be a joy, not a chore. Are you grateful for another day or will you find yourself a subject of Jigsaw encouraging you to be grateful...once you pass his test?

An Update of Things

As usual, I post a lot, and then post nothing. A big reason for this was I ran into a lot of things I prefer to keep to myself and not have everyone out there know too much. I write a lot, sure, but there is a limit to how much the world needs to know. However, here are some bits of interesting-ness.

First, the issue with the Student Loan is taken care of. Yup, my number one prayer consideration is handled. I could afford $100 to throw at it each month, and we now owe $80 per month on it. God answers.

The press release on the book went no where. However, I felt lead to send query letters to agents again, but this time, I used the press release as a template for the letter. I sent the query to 20 agents and 6 summarily rejected it, leaving 14 that have not responded. Some of them do respond if they turn it down, while some don't. I struggled with whether that message was a leading or just my head talking again. I wrestled with it for a few days, and finally sent the letters using the method I'd done before the get name. But while before, I'd only sent to 4, this time, as I said, it was 20. We'll see what happens. It's always in God's hands.

The weirdest of the weird, however, was today. I was walking back into the area where I sit, and thought I should go ahead and walk the stairs. I like walking the stairs, but this time, I was in a state of total silence since my iPod was charging. I shrugged and went to the stairwell to walk. Down I went. 18 flights. When I walk the stairs, I pray for guidance as to what is next for me. I have plans, and questioned whether these plans were right for me or not since I realized that a lot of what I do is based on a heavy-duty resentment towards all the rejections I got from both shopping around my musicals and screenplays. I wondered whether the plans of self-producing the movies and musical concept recordings was within His will for my life. After all, my desire to go it on my own came out of sheer frustration and anger.

So at the bottom of the stairs, what thought comes into my head? Query on this fantasy adventure script I wrote couple years ago. I'm like, "what? Who am I going to query on this? I don't even know any addresses for people." The next thought was even more shocking. Query the guy I know at the Asylum. I stopped walking and again, was like "what? You've got to be kidding." 

If you've ever heard of the Asylum, you will know exactly why this was probably the most laughable idea known to mankind. These people have 5 movies in IMDB's bottom 50. They have most recently made their name producing what they call "mockbusters," which are movies similarly named and themed to major studio releases, such as The Transmorphers, Hillside Cannibals, Alien versus Hunter, and The Da Vinci Treasure, and Snakes on a Train. Their initial claim to fame was bad horror movies that focused on blood and boobs over plot and character. Uwe Boll would be at home here. 

So the thought of suggesting a special effects laden fantasy adventure story to them was nothing short of crazy talk. Of course, the thing is that the idea was so very far out that I figured I should probably do it. God suggests stuff that is really, really nutty at times and yet, it works out. I expect the guy there to reply with a no, but I included a way to find the script online in the simplest way possible: Google it.It's been posted for years, so it came up instantly in Google when I searched for it specifically.

That last bit is the real reason I decided to make sure I posted today. Strange things like that don't come up often, so I figured, "why not?" I would say "here's hoping," but my carnal mind still can't believe I suggested to him. I'm more of the persuasion to hide and watch to see how it will play out. How did I describe it in the email? I said, "I don't suppose you all are looking for a fantasy adventure script with an original story and a ridiculous number of special effects." Maybe he'll be endeared to my sense of humor.

Saw

I finally watched Saw V, the most recent installation of the Saw franchise that began only back in 2004, and has released one movie per year ever since. They've overtaken the Friday the 13th franchise which managed one movie per year for the first three (80, 81, and 82), but missed 83 before releasing the "Final Chapter" in 84.

The first Saw movie is, in a nutshell, one of the best psychological thrillers I've ever seen, and if you can stomach the graphic nature of the torture scenes, it's incredible to watch. As we've moved through the sequels, it turns into a mixed bag of sorts. The movies have a storyline that not only runs through them all right up to this fifth one, but it criss-crosses them and flashbacks to during and before the previous films. This fifth film had flashbacks to events prior to the opening scenes of the first movie.

And therein, in my opinion, is where the strength of this franchise lies (along with its priceless and legendary twists). It's a story that builds and builds through its sequels more fully defining the characters we've already met, their lives, and the events surrounding the films we thought we knew. The first movie opens up with two men in a room and moves through a series of flashbacks building to that event. Each film has added to that first event filling out more and more what head to it, and how certain things were put into place. Items that seemed of no importance or of strange placement suddenly fall into the limelight and light is shed onto them. This applies not only to obvious things, but other things that seem trivial.

And then there are the twists (and revelations in some cases). I will say that the twist in five was not as dramatic as the other four, but it wasn't bad. I won't describe them because it would take too long to realize the significance. But I didn't see the first four coming at all. The first one hooked me completely. I mean, the movie was brutal to watch -- beyond cringeworthy, but that final twist was out of nowhere and completely sensible (not to mention the two that came just before it). The second film zinged us with three little surprises all at once, and again, I was floored. The second film had a whole plot that was dubious at best, but it played into the final twist, no doubt.

Three was more of an inevitability followed by a surprise. Four zinged us yet again with two rather big surprises. Five played fair and yet played right into our bad guy's hands perfectly. I only saw through one plot point, but a larger piece brewed in the background and was well done also.

What most people remember about Saw, however, are also the hardest parts to stomach: those fabulous traps. These traps are only in part torture devices because an ideal Jigsaw trap provides its victim a chance of escape and ties into a weakness of that person's character. A person will only fail a trap if they cannot overcome their fear or weakness and play Jigsaw's game. They will also fail if they panic. Failure equals death in every case, and success often leaves a scar, but Jigsaw believes that scar is their rehabilitation and that they will remember that lesson for the rest of their lives. However, in the franchise, the traps have only yielded two (possibly four) legitimate survivors. The rest were unable to play their games, and they died.

You do have to have a strong stomach at times to watch the series because it gets very, very graphic in regards to the brutality of some of the traps, and the moviemakers do an exceptional job at making those physical effects very realistic. But if you can make it through that part, the horror is only in the brutality as it plays out as more of a sinister crime drama than any kind of horror flick.

The fifth film provided yet more info into the backstory of everything else and also served to move the series forward by changing the characters even more, bringing in fresh meat, and giving us a few unanswered questions that will plague us for the sixth film scheduled to come out, again, in October. Will that be the end, or can it continue indefinitely? Only time will tell (and whether Saw 6 effectively ends the story or not).

Fireproof

Last night, the Queen and I sat down to another movie (we like to watch movies at almost one a day recently), and this one was called Fireproof. I'd seen it in Blockbuster the day before we picked it up, and noticed the tag line was "Never leave your partner behind" with some firefighters on it, but the O's in fireproof looked like wedding rings, so I suspected partner had something to do with marriage.

I was right.

This was a very wholesome film with some occasionally clunky, training video-ish dialogue at times (that was what we finally decided it sounded like), but it was very good on the whole. It dealt with a firefighter and his wife who are having marital problems, and neither is willing to admit that they could possibly be the problem in the relationship. It hit some very hard issues that couples deal with in their married lives, and presented solutions to the big issue of how to love someone. How to *really* love someone.

The guy had talked to his father, and dear old dad made him promise to take a dare and wait 40 days before giving in to the looming divorce. The guy agreed, and dad sent him a diaryish book that gave him a daily challenge on how to show his wife that he did love her and that he wanted to give their relationship a chance. The problem was that she was as done with him and he was with her to begin with, and all of his half-hearted attempts to show her affection were ignored by her in favor of the doctor at work who was showing her some attention that she should have been getting from her husband. No, not sexual. It wasn't that kind of movie.

The way it all played out between them was very cool, and worked very, very well within its framework. It was one of those films that when it did work, it gave you that warm, fuzzy feeling, and made me really appreciate the relationship I have with The Queen. We know marriage is not always a walk in the park. You have two very different people trying to create a harmonious life together, and there are often more differences than similarities in decisions, opinions, and background that feel unresolvable without something being lost in the translation. But in everything, there's always that level of compromise that assimilates both sides of the situation and preserves the relationship. 

The movie demonstrates a classic case of a marriage gone wrong, and it boils down to where most marital problems seem to stem from (from what I've heard): selfishness which is little more than pride. Each party is looking out for themselves, but only by investing a part of yourself in the other person can any relationship survive.

If you're married, then this movie will likely touch some kind of nerve with you, whether good or bad based on current events in your life or situations you have already weathered. Our marriage has not always been a cakewalk or all wine and roses, but through every situation, we'd always pulled through and come out stronger in the end, so we're about as strong a couple as you'll ever see. I admit that we disagree sometimes, but hey, that's life. We deal with it, and move on.

That's love.

Dr. No On Blu-ray

So the comparison game continues with the movies on Blu-ray. This last weekend we watched Dr. No, the first James Bond film from 1962, wondering again just how much cleanup they could possibly do on a movie over 40 years old. I openly asked which scene we should go ahead and make the comparison with between the DVD version I've had for several years and the blu-ray we'd gotten on Friday or Saturday. The Engineer immediately piped up and said "the one with the naked woman." I'm sure it came as no surprise to the Queen that I knew exactly which scene he was referring to.

You see, there's a scene in Dr. No where it's widely believed that Ursula Andress displayed full frontal nudity in a little shadow in this PG rated film from 1962, which at that time would have been under the production code expressly forbidding such a view (not that this prevented the full rear nudity in From Russia With Love). Naturally, the filmmakers have always said she isn't naked in that scene, but on the DVD, you can't really tell one way or the other. You can clearly make out her skin tone top to bottom as she comes out of the radiation wash before she is placed in a robe. Are they just teasing us? Were the shadows done that well? What's going on there?

So we checked out the blu-ray version and everything became crystal clear. The scene, naturally, looked exceptional on the blu-ray disc. They cleaned up that picture beyond reckoning's imagination. It was incredible ... and it answered the question 100% as to whether Ursula Andress was fully naked in that scene. When she comes out of the radiation shower, you can very, very clearly see the shadows and outlines of a flesh colored one piece bathing suit covering her R-rated areas. The Engineer was very disappointed.

The Wonders of Blu-Ray

My first choice for comparing DVD to Blu-Ray on my new toy was the James Bond film From Russia With Love. The reason I had chosen this particular film was because the DVD copy I have of this one looks like a digital scan of an old film print without any cleanup work at all. It even has film imperfections preserved in glorious digital detail. 

I selected a scene that I thought would show off the potential of the high definition versus the "how bad can it be?" of the DVD copy. So I watched the helicopter scene near the end of the film where Bond avoids a helicopter trying to take him out. Naturally, he wins in the end, and the helicopter comes down in a glorious crash and explosion. 

After I watched the DVD, I put on the Blu-Ray version that I'd gotten from Blockbuster. Holy cow! The difference was absolutely unbelievable. I had wondered if they'd done any cleanup or found a cleaner copy for the HD transfer, but the clarity is beyond description. The colors were brighter all around, and they managed to increase the definition to where everything was clear right down to being able to make out the texture of the seat belt in the helicopter.

We subsequently watched Twister and had the chance to compare it to an SD version from shots within the documentaries on the disc, and it was so much sharper than we'd seen before. 

So there is a difference so far. I still want to make a comparison between a modern DVD and the Blu-Ray version that would have been released on the same day, instead of there being years between the releases. Hence, my next target for a direct comparison is Casino Royale, though I do want to compare The Polar Express as well. The up-convert of the standard to HD of that movie was actually really incredible.

I guess I'll see how they go when I get ahold of them.

Pulses

If you're only up on current movies, you may have seen a movie from 2006 carrying itself around as a horror flick called Pulse. That movie was actually the third film named Pulse, and was a remake of the second Pulse movie, which was a Japanese film. But let's take a few steps back and have a look at the point that all these films have in common: technology = bad.

In 1988, a film came out called Pulse. It was an American horror film that played out like a haunted house story, but had this theme of becoming the victim of our technological dependencies. The villain was simply the electricity feeding into the house, and it could increase itself to the point of taking control of the household devices and becoming destructive. The film opens with the guy across the street going "crazy" without explanation, and as luck would have it, some similar things begin occurring to the family that in central to our story. Each member of the family narrowly escapes death by electrical mishap, and their only hope of being safe? "Unplug everything," says the guy whose house is lit by kerosene lamps. But not just unplug it; get rid of everything that so much as receives a signal from the outside world.

Fast forward to 2001 when a Japanese filmmaker concocts a story to where people can communicate with the dead via a website. The site seems to have webcams showing people who don't look so well, but as people become obsessed with this site, something weird seems to happen to them. They become profoundly depressed and before long, they lose hope entirely and become black splotches on the wall. There's an odd theme about red rooms here and there, though little explanation is given of this, and people soom begin to actively kill themselves because of their depression. The solution? Well, it's hard to say. The red room seems to be a bad thing, and whatever's in there gets out and does something to you to make you lose hope. The heroes eventually leave Japan entirely to escape it.

After many failed attempts, 2006 brought us the American version of the 2001 Japanese film. This time, we get a rock solid explanation as to what's going on. The dead are trying to communicate or come back entirely through electronic devices. Anything the uses an electronic pulse to power it is an outlet for them. This extends to everything we have from radios to computers to cell phones. If you are even in range of a cell phone tower, you can be had. They attack and suck the hope right out of you. You sink into that depression while being slowly covered by dark lines before turning into ashes (the American idea of the black splotch). The solution? Unplug everything. Get out of the range of cell phones and everything to be safe.

Finally, though this is actually cheating my way into just complaining about it, we have Pulse 2 from 2008. This one uses the concept of the American Pulse and does little more than try to tell a story in that world. It doesn't further the original characters' story; it doesn't progress the battle against the dead; it doesn't even give us a worthwhile and endearing tale of bravery and hope. No, this one follows one of "them" searching for her child who ends up with her still-living husband. After a host of pointless scenes, we get a pointless ending where he and his daughter run to a bus to a refugee camp, and for some reason, they stop when dead mom appears. I'm sure it was supposed to be heroic and touching, but since they didn't have to stop, it came off as dumb. He didn't even try to escape.

Anyway, it makes you kind of consider in all instances just how much we have become dependant on technology for everything, and if one of these scenarios did occur, just how screwed we would all be. I know as a geek, I love my tech, but I also know I'm dependant on it. If I had to live in an environment or situation like it was 200 years ago, I would be in a world of hurt, because of how dependant on technology I really am. There are many things I can in all reality do without any problem...if I were ready for it. But there are other things that are difficult to do without.

I always think of the ice of 07 to consider doing without all of our modern conveniences. You see, while there are times that it's very easy to do without these things, the middle of the winter is not one of those times. Without electricity, we had no heat at all, and we were not very good at keeping a fire going in the fireplace. We still have a corded phone, so we were fine on the phone front, though I did take our cell phones to work to charge them. I used the computer at work to get my internet fix, but though I was at work all day in a heated building, being at home in the cold all night, I was constantly cold at work as well and maintained my layered clothing. But on the flip side, we did just put our refrigerated items outside since it was freezing out there and kept them just fine.

So quality of film aside, it did make me think about everything I have that would be vulnerable to the stories presented. Kind of an odd thought for a Monday, but it gives me something to ponder.