pres.umptuo.us

• Do I even need to explain this?

  Monday April 30, 2007

• Lucky Us. I want a big painting of this.

  Wednesday November 1, 2006

• Star Wars On Earth. Like Camelot, it’s only a model.

  Thursday July 13, 2006

• Yoda Plush Backpack. Must…control…geek urges…

  Wednesday May 24, 2006

I first learned of Oddica when I saw the link on Dan Cederholm’s site. At first Oddica looked like all the other (nearly) indistinguishable t-shirt sites on the web such as Threadless and Busted Tees, but Oddica is focused a lot more on the artists than the consumers.

Continue reading “Thread- who?”

• Star Wars Wii Game to be Revealed at E3. If I hear the words “online jedi lightsaber battle,” I am so sold.

  Monday May 8, 2006

• Star Wars Original Unaltered Trilogy on DVD. I hate George Lucas, so much. I’m gonna send him a bill for all the money I’ve wasted on his clever marketing.

  Wednesday May 3, 2006

Next to that age old question we all ask ourselves at one point or another in our lives, “How did those AT-ATs get down to the surface of the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back,” another, maybe more important, question arises:

Is Mace Windu dead?

Continue reading “Mace is Dead”

• Ryan vs Dorkman. Damn.

  Tuesday March 14, 2006

• Natalie Raps on SNL. Holy crap. I think her opening monologue was better though.

  Sunday March 5, 2006

The funniest part in Return of the Jedi has to be when you see the black pilot die during the space battle, and not a second later the asian pilot goes too.

This is going to be filled with spoilers, so don’t click below if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

Where to begin? I’m just gonna launch into it and hope my thoughts make sense.

Grievous. He is taken out far too easily. Trained in the ways of the Jedi? Not too well trained, apparently. This is even more true for people who have seen the Clone Wars cartoons, but I won’t cite them cause that’s being a bit unfair. But really, without the context Grievous is never seen as a real threat. I’d go more into how he served almost no purpose at all in the movie, but let’s move on.

Padme’s death during labor. As I recall from Return of the Jedi, Luke asks Leia if she remembers anything about her mother, her real mother, and Leia says she does and gives him some vague memories. But nope, according to Lucas, who decided to ignore this, her memories were false.

Vader’s yell. No explanation needed on this one.

The totally random comment about Qui-Gon. This one is just pathetic. On another note, I don’t even know why Qui-Gon was in the prequels. In The Empire Strikes Back, Obi-Wan tells Luke to seek out Yoda on Dagobah, the Jedi Master that taught him. Yoda should have been Obi-Wan’s master in the prequels. Another example of Lucas forgetting what was in his original movies.

Luke being sent to live with his family on Tatooine. Someone explain to me how this is a good idea.

“Hide the children from Vader we must.”
“Let’s send Luke to be with his family.”
“Smart idea this is. Jedi master you should be.”

Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side. Or to put it more accurately, his decision to join the Dark Side. You don’t just decide to join the bad guys. A Jedi needs to taste the power, be seduced, and fall. One moment it’s “Don’t kill Palpatine!”, the next he chops off Mace Windu’s hand, then he says with lament, “What have I done?” and finally it’s, “Yes, my master?”

His decision to join was based almost purely on the desire to learn the “trick” to save his wife. He isn’t even evil yet at the point where he joins Palpatine. Palpatine then commands him to slaughter the Jedi to become stronger, and he does it. Once again, not cause he’s evil, but because he wants to learn a trick. This is not compelling storytelling.

Obi-Wan beats Anakin because he holds the higher ground. What kind of bull is this? It’s such a lame reason for Obi-Wan to beat Anakin that Lucas has Obi-Wan actually explain to the audience. “It’s over, Anakin. I hold the higher ground.” Well, gosh, if that’s all it takes to defeat another Jedi, why didn’t he just stand on the table in the room where they were fighting earlier? Hey, there’s a ramp, go stand on top.

“Hey Obi-Wan, tell us again how you defeated that Sith Lord.”
“I was standing two feet higher than him.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m just gonna walk around on stilts from now on.”

The final confrontation between Obi-Wan and Anakin should be the epitome of Dark Side vs. Light Side. Light should triumph over Dark because of some flaw in the Dark Side, not because the Light Side holds some lame tactical advantage.

Yes, I’m being extra picky on some points. But anyone who defends this stuff is either a misguided fan or not a fan at all. This stuff does matter when you’re writing a story that must accomodate predefined material.

All of this is focused mostly on ROTS itself. I won’t go into stuff that I don’t like about the prequels, like inconsistencies with the clones, Yoda and the Emperor moving super fast and using lightsabers (Think about any kung fu master, like Pai-Mei from Kill Bill, Chow Yun-Fat from Crouching Tiger, and even Neo at the very end of the first Matrix), the prophecy about Anakin and making him super powerful, recurring characters throughout all six movies and spanning 20 years (The droids, Chewbacca, Boba Fett…), and the random twirling and spinning during lightsaber duels.

I’m done ranting. I hope I got it all out.

I’m always a bit hesitant to give out my screenname/website because it leads into the embarassing story of where the name “Valloq” came from. The short answer is it’s just a name I thought up that sounded like something that would come from Star Wars. The long answer goes back to when I first got on the web.

Command and Conquer was one of the first games I played online. The joy of blowing up enemy stealth tanks, the struggles at the age of 14 to work as a team to destroy the opposing team’s Temple of Nod.

The company that put out C&C, Westwood, included a chat client that was used to set up online matches. I got hooked on it fairly quickly, chatting away with other nerds and 14-year olds to compensate for our lack of friends in our youth. Mind you, someone even suggested using the code “PAW” to alert whenever Parents Are Watching to keep the chat content civil.

I started using the chat client when it was still in its early stages, and when it went official and more people joined, they forced users to register a screenname. At this point I came to realize that I couldn’t just keep calling myself “Jedi5″, or whatever number worked (I once accosted the user with the handle “Jedi” in a chatroom and berated him for taking the coveted title). And so I decided to create an alter ego for myself that was unique and would not have to worry about it being used elsewhere.

I’m drawn to the letter “V” for some reason. Victorious. Valiant. Val Kilmer is a cool name. Somehow I got Valloq (Pronounced “Val” as in Val Kilmer, “loq” as in lock). Treldon just sort of flew out behind it, and behold I had my alter-ego to exist within the Star Wars Universe (This was before Lucas ruined it. Star Wars was still cool in my mind at this point).

And thus is explained my bit of geekery, which I’ll say has worked for me so far. I get the screen name anywhere I go where a sign up is required, so if you ever run into Valloq while playing an online game or in some forum, odds are it’s me. No need to tack on the dates of my birthday or pager code for “Hoochie Mama” and get all confused. Who else has that luxury with their screen name?

Dear George Lucas,

Please stop messing with my childhood memories.

Thanks,
Eric Lim

I’m sure mostly everyone has been the trailer for Revenge of the Sith by now. Impressive. Dark. Jedi-y. My hopes are up a little, but I’ll still go in expecting to be disappointed. I won’t bother linking to the trailer since I think it should be fairly easy to find.

Spike Jonze does a commercial for Adidas.

For those people who don’t know, Lucasfilm announced a little while back that the original Star Wars Trilogy would finally be coming to DVD. Not the originals really, but the Special Editions that came out in theaters several years ago. But what’s even more surprising is that George Lucas has gone back and changed even more stuff!

It’s nothing major this time, which is good, but more like little things. Fixing lightsabers. Making hallways look longer. Sharpening the image. Most of these things are actually pretty cool and don’t change that much, nothing that irks me as much as the changes that were made in the Special Editions. But still. Friggin’ George Lucas, that revisionist bastard.

Ooh, Star Wars Republic Commando looks promising. Nice squad action that doesn’t take a lot of micro-management. I love the little feature of how the alien blood splatter gets cleaned off the visor. Make sure to watch the gameplay videos on the side to get an idea of how the game looks.

What’s this? Natalie Portman playing a stripper in the movie “Closer” with Jude Law, Julia Roberts, and Clive Owen? And a trailer that shows her doing uh…stripperly things? Best. Movie. Ever. You can get the trailer from here or here.