(no subject)

I have just seen Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

Brilliant visuals -- quite possibly the most visually stunning movie ever made. Between Hayden Christensen and all the technogadgets and landscapes, it's dizzying to look at.

Great story -- your average Hollywood action movie is on long paean to fascism. It's nice to see one that goes the other direction. There were all the elements of Aristotelian tragedy, there, too.

Almost half the actors could act -- they even seem to have given a few lessons to Christensen, though sadly not to Portman.

The dialogue -- Lucas should have contracted out for the dialogue. Or maybe he did contract out to the zombie of Ed Wood, I'm not sure.

Seriously, 20 years down the road, they're going to digitally remaster and upgrade the special effects, and leave dozens of unintentionally funny lines intact. What I want to see is the series scripturally remastered -- keep Lucas on the special effects, give him control over the overall story, and hand the dialogue to someone who can handle it.

The Conservative Party gets even scarier...

Well, as if there weren't reasons enough to dislike the Conservative Party of Canada, it's now official:

The Christian right is taking over the party, and pushing the last remaining fiscal conservatives out in favour of antigay candidates, in a bid to destroy same-sex marriage.

Now this isn't really news in this country, to anyone who lives here and is paying attention. What's worrying is that the fundamentalists have gotten more media savvy:

Mr. Emmanuel runs the Equipping Christians for the Public Square Centre, which teaches people of his faith to become political. He is reluctant to say how many adherents have obtained Conservative nominations because he is afraid the news media will portray the campaign as the infiltration of the party by "right-wing fanatics."

This suggests that they're going to go in as Trojan-Horse candidates. They'll talk about cutting taxes and corporate tax breaks and the economy, then wait until they're a majority, and try to turn queer people in this country back to second-class citizens:

"There is a desire to see pro-marriage nominees as candidates right across the country. We know that we have 141 pro-[unequal]marriage MPs now and our hope is to achieve a pro-marriage Parliament."

They're right. Parliament is close enough now to falling over the edge that a few more votes could swing things in their favour -- 141 is too close to the halfway mark (154). I think the Conservatives have passed the peak of their power, but things change quickly in politics.

The story ought to be spread as far and wide as possible in this country. There are too many people out there who still believe Harper is just a Libertarian, and his party is just about tax cuts.