05/25/2002 Entry:
"Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones - George Lucas (2002)"

I was really as interested in going to see how George Lucas' new hi-def digital video cameras looked being digitally projected as anything else. Answer: not as impressed as I thought I would be. I sat second row, and there were noticeable jaggies in almost every scene. This is supposed to be a step forward? Whenever there was text on the screen it looked even worse. Lucas was smart enough to choose a font with nice thick lines though, the trailer for Matrix: Reloaded used a thin serif font that was so jaggie it was unreadable.

The movie itself was crap, but I realized two things. First, I hate digital effects. Everything in this movie looks more fake that anything in the original Star Wars. It is not organic, it doesn't look alive. Things don't really move that smoothly. Ever since Jurassic Park came out, I've felt that digital effects have always been too pefect. The muscles on the dinosaurs ripple so smoothly and neatly, nature isn't like that and someday maybe that can come up with some algorithm that makes it looks right, but that day is not today.

Second, I keep hearing comments about the characters' wooden acting (all true) but Bethany pointed out that the digital characters are actually much more interesting and lively. Wonder why? Well how would you feel if the only place you ever acted was in a big studio in front of a green screen? No set, half your fellow characters aren't even there, how can anyone get into an acting groove inm that situation? I'm all for digital filmmaking but this is just a huge step backwards in every way.

On the plus side, it was nice to see Yoda kick some ass (even though he looked stupider than the puppet Yoda.)