My site is now complete

Yes, my Death Star is now fully operational. All of my reviews are on my home page. This was no small thing. I've been coding my brains out for two weeks, trying to get them all up before TV Tome went down. I just missed it by about two days.

Please stop by and check it out, if you haven't already.

Billie

My review of Episode Three

I just saw Revenge of the Sith, and I can't get it out of my head. For me, it's up there with Empire, which has always been my favorite. This one is darker than Empire. It had to be. George Lucas deserves some heavy-duty praise after all the well-deserved criticism he took for Episodes One and Two.

There are some pretty disturbing images in this movie, and I'll describe the worst one below. I wouldn't take a small child to see it; the PG-13 rating is appropriate.

During Episodes One and Two, I had some distance; I enjoyed them, but I couldn't stop obsessing about what was wrong with them and they didn't stay with me. They never felt like real Star Wars to me.

But not this time. I was hooked from the first moment, and stayed completely absorbed until the final credits. Lucas gave us every single moment that we needed to see, tied up every loose end, and made it riveting at the same time. No stupid pod races, no Jar Jar (well, one second of Jar Jar, which was about right). The effects were out of this world, but they were there to support the story, which is what they're supposed to do.

It wasn't a fun ride. I felt dread almost immediately, and just kept feeling it. It grew throughout, as we watched that beautiful young man lose his soul out of fear of losing his love. I was surprised that I desperately didn't want Anakin to turn into Darth Vader, all the while knowing that it was inevitable. And I cried, twice. So did Dan, which almost never happens.

Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman are big talents that were pretty much wasted in Episodes One and Two, but their talent certainly wasn't wasted here. And Hayden Christensen -- it's really his movie more than anyone else's, and frankly, I thought he was awesome. My heart just bled for him. Ian McDarmid, as the Emperor, was also very good, as was pretty much everyone else. There were no bad performances, or at least I didn't notice any. The stilted Lucas dialogue was present, but it didn't bother me because this was Star Wars. It really was.

The most disturbing scene was so hard to watch that Dan actually looked away (this was his second time, my first). It was seeing Anakin dismembered and burned. Extremely graphic and very disturbing, pretty far out there for a Star Wars movie. But again, it had to be. We all knew that there wasn't much left that was human, after all.

There was a lot of stuff that could be taken as criticism of the Bush administration, and I never get tired of that. (At one point, Padme says, "This is the way liberty dies. With thunderous applause.") Palpatine literally tore up the Senate, and I couldn't help thinking about what's happening in the U.S. right now. I hope we don't have to wait twenty years for the Republic to return.

Anyway, I cried, and I really can't get it out of my head. Those are the two major signs of an outstanding movie, as far as I'm concerned. I even want to go see it again in the theater, and I honestly don't do that much any more. I can see the critics finding something wrong with it and they may even be right, but frankly, if people don't find this movie totally engrossing, then they probably never really liked Star Wars in the first place.

Billie Doux, the Blog

I'm Billie Doux, and I review sci-fi (and mildly sci-fi related) shows for several web sites. I've been doing it since 1997. Currently, I review Lost, Alias, and The Dead Zone. I used to review Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

I was a featured reviewer on TVTome, which used to be a huge, wonderful, fan-run site. It was the easiest site to navigate, a reliable archive for my reviews. Unfortunately, TVTome has been sold and has become TV.com, a commercial site. Early reports that it would turn into a free-for-all piece of dreck have been confirmed. Which means I need a new place to archive my reviews.

So I've expanded my home page, BillieDoux.com, to include all of my episode reviews, so my readers won't have to hunt around for them any more. And I'm going to post pretty much everything here on my blob. Er, blog.

Stay tuned. And please bookmark me. I'm so needy.