Hi, Alex.

>< FLAME SUIT ON >
>I always wonder why you guys are raving and ranting about the plot of the movie and everybody and their mother, here and elsewhere I read, raves about how great it is when, as cinema, it is mediocre at best.

Well, I saw the people on the release date, invited by MSDN with all the MVPs and contributors. I have to say I liked the pop-corn. 8-)

>Sure, the special effects are first class. Visually is wonderful and engrossing.

Yes, I also consider Lucas a great productor, but a director... I didn't really see any good movie directed by him. But I guess this series is a cultural event more than a cinema thing.

>But for the life of me I cannot understand why:
>- Lucas, with the budget he has, cannot pick better actors.

I don't think this is a budget issue. Good directors can work miracles with the worst actors. As ol' Hitchcock used to say: Actors are cattle.

>Anakin is wooden. Natalie Portman is one of the worst actresses I've ever seen.

Again, I don't think its her fault. Or maybe the age doesn't fit her. Can you remember her playing Matilda in Leon, The Professional. She was incredible!

>- As a SF fan, I fault this as it is not SF but fantasy, as it has too much flying and defying of physics.
Well, I guess this is Space Opera at its purest, and of course, it is quite away from hard SF, new wave, cyberpunk or any of the SF literature corpus.

You know, it is quite difficult to produce really good movie series like this. I guess I know very few exceptions. The only one I can remember now could be The Godfather.

Regards,