'Star Wars' saga comes to an end-with jab at Bush

[three_sixty]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050515/ts_alt_afp/afpentertainmentfilm_050515191124&printer=1

'Star Wars' saga comes to an end... with jab at Bush's empire Sun May 15, 3:11 PM ET



The last episode of the seminal sci-fi saga "Star Wars" screened at the Cannes film festival, completing a six-part series that remains a major part of popular culture -- and delivering a galactic jab to US President George W. Bush.

"Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" was seen ahead of a celebrity-laden evening screening to be attended by its creator and director, George Lucas, and its cast, including Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen.

Reaction at advance screenings was effusive, with festival-goers, critics and journalists at Cannes applauding at the moment the infamous Darth Vader came into being.

But there were also murmurs at the parallels being drawn between Bush's administration and the birth of the space opera's evil Empire.

Baddies' dialogue about bloodshed and despicable acts being needed to bring "peace and stability" to the movie's universe, mainly through a fabricated war, set the scene.

And then came the zinger, with the protagonist, Anakin Skywalker, saying just before becoming Darth Vader: "You are either with me -- or you are my enemy."

To the Cannes audience, often sympathetic to anti-Bush messages in cinema as last year's triumph here of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" attested, that immediately recalled Bush's 2001 ultimatum, "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."

Lucas, speaking to reporters, emphasised that the original "Star Wars" was written at the end of the Vietnam war, when Richard Nixon was US president, but that the issue being explored was still very much alive today.

"The issue was, how does a democracy turn itself into a dictatorship?" he said.

"When I wrote it, Iraq (the US-led war) didn't exist... (but) the parallels of what we did in Vietnam and Iraq are unbelievable."

He acknowledged an uncomfortable feeling that the United States was in danger of losing its democratic ideals, like in the movie.

"I didn't think it was going to get this close. I hope this doesn't come true in our country."

Although he didn't mention Bush by name, Lucas took what sounded like another dig while explaining the transformation of the once-good Anakin Skywalker to the very bad Darth Vader.

"Most bad people think they're good people," he said.

The political message, though, was for the most part subsumed by the action and heroics the series -- set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" -- is known for.

And for fans hungry for a last look at "Star Wars" elevated above the disappointing two other films that preceded "Sith", it was satisfying closure.

"Whatever one thought of the previous two installments, this dynamic picture irons out most of the problems, and emerges as the best in the overall series since 'The Empire Strikes Back'," the Hollywood trade magazine Variety said.

The buzz meant the movie was the hottest ticket at Cannes this year. It also signalled the end of a cinematic era for a generation of filmgoers.

"Revenge of the Sith" is the last of three prequels to the landmark trilogy that burst onto the screens in 1977, 1980 and 1983.

It is in fact the middle episode of the epic story arc, explaining the events that led young Luke Skywalker to battle Darth Vader in order to save Princess Leia, before going on to vanquish the Empire.

Its success could be measured in the claps and smiles in the theatre, which were light years away from the tepid response engendered by the first two prequels, released in 1999 and 2002, widely panned for their boring exposition and wooden dialogue.

Christensen, who plays Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, and Portman, who plays his wife, gave mercifully improved performances, although they like the rest of the cast remained secondary to spectacular battles.

Audiences worldwide will be seeing the movie when it opens Wednesday and Thursday -- a chance to touch base one more time with a fantasy that has accompanied a generation.

[three_sixty]

http://www.rastafarispeaks.com/cgi-bin/forum/config.pl?read=55758

How do we fight this War?

Posted By: Eja
Date: Sunday, 8 May 2005, at 8:25 a.m.

To all the Foward Minds on this website
Honour

I'm relatively new on this site and after having spent more than a minute looking through the archives, I have been humbled and given to great pride by the wisdom and passion in wisdom that has characterised a lot of the postings. I have a lot of respect for the work brothers, sisters and elders have put into thier research and I am grateful for the generous spirit and love that has caused them to share what knowledge came to them.

I know that some of our African people are on a break, some are still celebrating 'jubilee' or 'ndependance'. Some of our African people believe themselves to be a part of 'global civilization' and are too busy enhancing what they think is thier life to notice what and whose agenda they are caught up in. Yes, a lot of our people are on a break and while they are on this break, they are busy breeding where they should'nt be breeding and creating another set of enemies.....

Which is why I'm asking this question as a matter of urgency. We are at war and a frontline of this war is in the field of information. Awareness. It is well and good that many of the people who vist this site are conversant with the major theses that explain our reality but how do we get this out into OUR mainstream? How do we change the background music that dictates the rhythms most of our people live thier lives by? Someone on another thread spoke of growing up watching 'tarzan' and westerns, of how he had sided with the cowboys and 'the lord of the apes'. This was (and probably still is) the situation with a lot of African youth growing up in hollywood's sphere of influence. I even remember been aged 10 and finding in my school library (in Lagos) a set of books that glorified the boer settlers in South Africa. The way those stories were presented actually made me see these genocidiares as heroes and later, when I first came into the west, I met people from the caribbean who had undergone similar conditioning. I particularly remember persons from Jamaica refering to an 'ugly' Black person as 'Shaka Zulu'.

We cannot underestimate the power of of the things that are labelled as 'leisure activities', things like historical fiction can have a greater impact on the formation of a child's view than a straight-foward presentation of dates, events
and personalities. Popular PC games like 'Full Spectrum Warrior' were developed by the usa military in order to mould the perception (and reaction to future events) of the large percentage of contemporary youth for whom gaming is an important everyday activity. And it goes on, disney and other myth-propagators take turns to subtly defame African history and culture (ref: lion king, prince of egypt, the character called donkey in shrek etc.). You also have the stargate franchise who annoint caucasian culture-heroes (odin, thor and the other inmates of asgard) as heroic aliens while those that originated in Kemet ( Ra, Auset, Maat) are evil aliens who once enslaved and still intend to enslave humanity. And what stands in thier way? The heroic military of the usa. The same military who in a future far far away are reincarnated as 'starfleet'(ref: star trek franchise) while the often proposed world government(aka new world order) is called 'the federation'. Do not underestimate the power of these projections of a possible future, thanks to the power of satellite TV, these shows can be seen every hour of the day in some part of the world. The child who grows up seeing a future where all humanity has signed up to the caucasian project will not put up much of a fight when called on to play a part in making this nightmare become reality.

I am not playing down the importance of fact based communications, in truth,these are the most vital component in the construction of a conscious mind that can operate effectively in the arena of reality. But, in my experience, most people need to be led (sometimes indirectly) towards the truth. This is not a statement based on arrogance, not me saying 'I and others like me are more able....' it is a recognition of the tools that are been used to great effect by the enemy. A vaccine is a non-lethal dose of the bacteria behind an infection. What I am calling for is more effort in the production of vaccines against the infection of African minds by the relentless propaganda of the enemy.

And I say relentless because sometimes, even what is produced as an effort to heal the African spirit is co-opted by 'whites' and misconstrued. A very good example that was pointed out to me a while back was the use of the phrase 'one love'. The person who showed me this truth spoke as an eye witness and she said that what had inspired Bob Marley to write the song of that title was the in-fighting between political factions in Jamaica at the time. You had Africans killing each other under the banner of the JLP (led by a syrian) and the PNP (led by an englishman). You had a scenario that was being orchestrated by the cia for the purpose of retarding the social progress of the country and that song was a call to Africans in Jamaica telling them to love each other as this was neccesary if they were to be successful in thier struggle for liberation. But, because of the skillful way the 'white' people have re-interpreted what Bob Marley meant(and stood for), the phrase 'one love' now has a different meaning.

And it goes on (ref: Nelson Mandela and all the photo calls).

There is a posting about donating books to a library project in Guyana. We need more of this happening all around our world. We need more people WRITING books that deal with our history, our present and our FUTURE in a language that youth of all ages will respond to. We need PC games developers CREATING games that promote positive concepts. There was/is a dream of 'white supremacy' and the events that seem to be leading to this dream becoming reality are not down to chance or luck. What passes for current affairs and 'history' were/are carefully planned affairs. From the days when the first greeks learnt of the wisdom and power in Kemet to when alexander the gay invaded and plundered, there was a plan. From the days when the roman empire tried and failed to conquer Ethiopia to when mussolini invaded and plundered Ethiopia, there was a plan. From the days when the first gold coins were minted in europe to when the british invaded and plundered the lands of the Ashanti, there was a plan. And while all these plans (or one big plan) unfolded, there was slavery, partial genocides and assaults on the African spirit/mind.

There has always been a plan and this plan - the entrenchment of 'white' supremacy on the planet earth(and beyond) - was/is communicated to the young members of the caucasian race initially through the medium of 'fairy tales', songs and latterly through cartoons, books, films and PC games.

We need vaccines to protect the minds of our young.

[Rootsie]

SPACE CASE
by ANTHONY LANE
“Star Wars: Episode III.”
Issue of 2005-05-23
Posted 2005-05-16

Sith. What kind of a word is that? Sith. I  sounds to me like the noise that emerge  when you block one nostril and blo  through the other, but to George Lucas it is  name that trumpets evil. What is prove  beyond question by “Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith,” the latest—and, yo  will be shattered to hear, the last—installmen  of his sci-fi bonanza, is that Lucas, thoug  his eye may be greedy for sensation, has a  ear of purest cloth. All those who concoc  imagined worlds must populate and nam  them, and the resonance of those names is  fairly accurate guide to the mettle of th  imagination in question. Tolkien, earthed i  Old English, had a head start that led hi  straight to the flinty perfection of Mordo  and Orc. Here, by contrast, are some Luca  inventions: Palpatine. Sidious. Mace Windu  (Isn’t that something you spray on colick  babies?) Bail Organa. And Sith.

Lucas was not always a rootless soul. He made “American Graffiti,” which yielded with affection to the gravitational pull of the small town. Since then, he has swung out of orbit, into deep nonsense, and the new film is the apotheosis of that drift. One stab of humor and the whole conceit would pop, but I have a grim feeling that Lucas wishes us to honor the remorseless non-comedy of his galactic conflict, so here goes. Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his star pupil, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), are, with the other Jedi knights, defending the Republic against the encroachments of the Sith and their allies—millions of dumb droids, led by Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) and his henchman, General Grievous, who is best described as a slaying mantis. Meanwhile, the Chancellor of the Republic, Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), is engaged in a sly bout of Realpolitik, suspected by nobody except Anakin, Obi-Wan, and every single person watching the movie. Anakin, too, is a divided figure, wrenched between his Jedi devotion to selfless duty and a lurking hunch that, if he bides his time and trashes his best friends, he may eventually get to wear a funky black mask and start breathing like a horse.

This film is the tale of his temptation. We already know the outcome—Anakin will indeed drop the killer-monk Jedi look and become Darth Vader, the hockey goalkeeper from hell—because it forms the substance of the original “Star Wars.” One of the things that make Episode III so dismal is the time and effort expended on Anakin’s conversion. Early in the story, he enjoys a sprightly light-sabre duel with Count Dooku, which ends with the removal of the Count’s hands. (The stumps glow, like logs on a fire; there is nothing here that reeks of human blood.) Anakin prepares to scissor off the head, while the mutilated Dooku kneels for mercy. A nice setup, with Palpatine egging our hero on from the background. The trouble is that Anakin’s choice of action now will be decisive, and the remaining two hours of the film—scene after scene in which Hayden Christensen has to glower and glare, blazing his conundrum to the skies—will add nothing to the result. “Something’s happening. I’m not the Jedi I should be,” he says. This is especially worrying for his wife, Padmé (Natalie Portman), who is great with child. Correction: with children.

What can you say about a civilization where people zip from one solar system to the next as if they were changing their socks but where a woman fails to register for an ultrasound, and thus to realize that she is carrying twins until she is about to give birth? Mind you, how Padmé got pregnant is anybody’s guess, although I’m prepared to wager that it involved Anakin nipping into a broom closet with a warm glass jar and a copy of Ewok Babes. After all, the Lucasian universe is drained of all reference to bodily functions. Nobody ingests or excretes. Language remains unblue. Smoking and cursing are out of bounds, as is drunkenness, although personally I wouldn’t go near the place without a hip flask. Did Lucas learn nothing from “Alien” and “Blade Runner”—from the suggestion that other times and places might be no less rusted and septic than ours, and that the creation of a disinfected galaxy, where even the storm troopers wear bright-white outfits, looks not so much fantastical as dated? What Lucas has devised, over six movies, is a terrible puritan dream: a morality tale in which both sides are bent on moral cleansing, and where their differences can be assuaged only by a triumphant circus of violence. Judging from the whoops and crowings that greeted the opening credits, this is the only dream we are good for. We get the films we deserve.

The general opinion of “Revenge of th  Sith” seems to be that it marks a distinc  improvement on the last two episodes, “Th  Phantom Menace” and “Attack of th  Clones.” True, but only in the same way tha  dying from natural causes is preferable t  crucifixion. So much here is guaranteed t  cause either offense or pain, starting with th  nineteen-twenties leather football helmet tha  Natalie Portman suddenly dons for n  reason, and rising to the continual horror o  Ewan McGregor’s accent. “Another happ  landing”—or, to be precise, “anothah hepp  lending”—he remarks, as Anakin parks th  front half of a burning starcruiser on  convenient airstrip. The young Obi-Wa  Kenobi is not, I hasten to add, the mos  nauseating figure onscreen; nor is R2-D2 o  even C-3PO, although I still fail t  understand why I should have been expecte  to waste twenty-five years of my lif  following the progress of a beeping trash can  and a gay, gold-plated Jeeves.

No, the one who gets me is Yoda. May I take the opportunity to enter a brief plea in favor of his extermination? Any educated moviegoer would know what to do, having watched that helpful sequence in “Gremlins” when a small, sage-colored beastie is fed into an electric blender. A fittingly frantic end, I feel, for the faux-pensive stillness on which the Yoda legend has hung. At one point in the new film, he assumes the role of cosmic shrink—squatting opposite Anakin in a noirish room, where the light bleeds sideways through slatted blinds. Anakin keeps having problems with his dark side, in the way that you or I might suffer from tennis elbow, but Yoda, whose reptilian smugness we have been encouraged to mistake for wisdom, has the answer. “Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose,” he says. Hold on, Kermit, run that past me one more time. If you ever got laid (admittedly a long shot, unless we can dig you up some undiscerning alien hottie with a name like Jar Jar Gabor), and spawned a brood of Yodettes, are you saying that you’d leave them behind at the first sniff of danger? Also, while we’re here, what’s with the screwy syntax? Deepest mind in the galaxy, apparently, and you still express yourself like a day-tripper with a dog-eared phrase book. “I hope right you are.” Break me a fucking give.

The prize for the least speakable burst of dialogue has, over half a dozen helpings of “Star Wars,” grown into a fiercely contested tradition, but for once the winning entry is clear, shared between Anakin and Padmé for their exchange of endearments at home:
“You’re so beautiful.”
“That’s only because I’m so in love.”
“No, it’s because I’m so in love with you.”
For a moment, it looks as if they might bat this one back and forth forever, like a baseline rally on a clay court. And if you think the script is on the tacky side, get an eyeful of the décor. All of the interiors in Lucasworld are anthems to clean living, with molded furniture, the tranquillity of a morgue, and none of the clutter and quirkiness that signify the process known as existence. Illumination is provided not by daylight but by a dispiriting plastic sheen, as if Lucas were coating all private affairs—those tricky little threats to his near-fascistic rage for order—in a protective glaze. Only outside does he relax, and what he relaxes into is apocalypse. “Revenge of the Sith” is a zoo of rampant storyboards. Why show a pond when C.G.I. can deliver a lake that gleams to the far horizon? Why set a paltry house on fire when you can stage your final showdown on an entire planet that streams with ruddy, gulping lava? Whether the director is aware of John Martin, the Victorian painter who specialized in the cataclysmic, I cannot say, but he has certainly inherited that grand perversity, mobilized it in every frame of the film, and thus produced what I take to be unique: an art of flawless and irredeemable vulgarity. All movies bear a tint of it, in varying degrees, but it takes a vulgarian genius such as Lucas to create a landscape in which actions can carry vast importance but no discernible meaning, in which style is strangled at birth by design, and in which the intimate and the ironic, not the Sith, are the principal foes to be suppressed. It is a vision at once gargantuan and murderously limited, and the profits that await it are unfit for contemplation. I keep thinking of the rueful Obi-Wan Kenobi, as he surveys the holographic evidence of Anakin’s betrayal. “I can’t watch anymore,” he says. Wise words, Obi-Wan, and I shall carry them in my heart.

Reprinted from the New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/articles/050523crci_cinema

[Rootsie]

This has been some week in the media: between the Star Wars thing, the Newsweek thing, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting thing, people might conclude that we have a free press and an unencumbered media healthily duking these things out: Lucas's film bashes Bush, reporters lash out at Scot MacClellan at a press conference about the Newsweek retraction of the Koran-in-toilet story, Tomlinson of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is trying to turn National Public Radio to the right...

The false dichotomy between 'liberal' and 'conservative' is just the flavor of the week.  Since when was NPR anything but a sugar-coated apologist for the government, just like the New York Times? Why did Newsweek fall all over itself apologizing for a story that's been around for years, and a well-substantiated one?  

And the real message of the Star Wars movie? Space weapons are cool, dude. Plans for them were announced today, the day of the movie's premier.  The  stark black/white  evil/good dualism--we are good and the
they are bad--that's the dangerous nationalistic crap people are being fed.

Issues of nationalism, capitalism, racism, and imperialism are obliterated behind the smokescreem of 'conservative versus liberal.'  Is there a democrat who discusses the limits to out-of-control growth?  A bunch of so-called 'environmentalists', even Stewart Brand, have come out in favor of a new generation of nuke plants. Who among these 'liberals' challenges the core assumptions of the neo-cons? None.

The issues before us are deliberately framed so narrowly that even people who consider themselves 'informed' are being bamboozled .

[three_sixty]

Tuesday, May 17th, angel of light posted:

George Luc(as)ifer follows through with typical aryan sentiments by splitting the world into a duality - this is the whole premise of his movies, right?

". . . coming from a guy who divides the Force into a "light side" and a "dark side". Was there a grey side of the Force I missed back there somewhere?"

- source: http://ridingsun.blogspot.com/2005/05/episode-iii-anti-bush-diatribe.html

Lucifer, like most Hollywood writers is right up there with the corporate/military/governmental complex - the story lines follow a certain programming - indoctrination tools for the masses.

Another example - no irony was lost on me watching "Lord of the Rings" - especially the installment curiously entitled 'The Two Towers'

Lucifer tows the same American dream bullshit line which seperates the "evil" of Bush from the 200 odd years of "democracy" in the U.S.

As you noted in your article "Hitler Won" -interesting parallels, no?:

"Anybody who has sufficiently informed herself knows that Hitler was no odd man out in European history. Like the centuries of European imperial bandits before him, he sought ‘breathing room’ for his cramped country. By the time he came along, the more exotic places like Africa and South America were taken, so he looked East. The idea of ‘racial purity’ was the one-note song of the previous centuries of European thought and action. Hitler neither invented the notions of Aryan supremacy nor of world conquest and the mass extermination of groups of human beings: 8 million in Leopold’s Congo, 50 million in South America and the Caribbean, 50 million in the years of the slave trade He had centuries of European science and philosophy to back him up. He didn’t have to dream up a thing."

We are reminded of the Harry Potter series - with its occult overtones reflecting the obsession of the British Empire with these concepts(remember John Dee was the father of the idea of "Britannia" or "British Empire")

I just don't buy Lucifer's sudden conversion to the "light side" of the force - he's been working with the "dark side" operatives his whole career - maybe George Soros has something to do with it - he is after all, an angel of light, right . . . ?!