Dear Darth...

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]
To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]
First email!

Dear Darth,
Glad you finally got yourself an email address. I’ve had one a while now, and I’ve found it really handy. You should too, especially with the trouble you have on the phone. No offence, but all that wheezing can be hard to work through, so this should really help.
So, how are things? I’m glad you’re keeping busy; I put you on the battle station project because I think you needed a focus after the whole thing with that girl. I know she was your ‘One True Love’, but you really should try to move on. It’s been a while now; perhaps it’s time to start dating again? Don’t let being half-machine put you off; lots of people live full and happy lives without most of their extremities.

Now, I hate to bring this up, but my personal cybernetic surgery took quite the beating after we worked on you. I know you were pretty upset when I told you about Padame(?), but it’s really no excuse to throw a Force-tantrum on my robo-doctor gear. That stuff's pretty expensive, so if you don't mind I'd really appreciate a cheque. Thanks.

Sincerely yours,
P


From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]
To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]
Re:First Email!

Darth, I'm sorry we couldn't get you a quieter mask, but you might remember you were rolling around in molten lava there when we found you. I realise breathing through a radiator grill sucks (ha ha), but everyone at the last quarterly meeting was a bit put off when you kept clearing your sinuses like that every time it was your turn to speak (don't deny it, I know it was on purpose). Those interstellar phone hookups are expensive, and I don’t like spending a million credits per minute to listen to a noise like a bantha sucking runny custard through its trunk. I know it’s not perfect, but I think my guys did a pretty good job bringing you back from the brink of death, so you're welcome.

Yours,
P

PS one more thing. The battle station is looking good (I love what you've done with the tractor beam control stations: a thousand foot drop and no guardrails! Brilliant!), but I'm not sure we need a gun so big we can blow up planets. I know I'm a pitiless despotic monster but...yeah, blowing up planets. Not cool. Can we just back it off a notch? Maybe make it so it'll fry a continent but leave it intact? Be nice if we could drop in a mall and a condo for the stormtroopers once the dust settles.

PPS Is that an exhaust port I saw on the blueprint? You're going to stick a lid on that thing, right? Don't want anyone falling in ha ha

PPPS Send me a copy of the plans once you’ve made the changes. I’ve attached details of my preferred couriers. Great little Bothan company, very reliable.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Battle Station Launch

Dear Darth,

Well done! Pass on my congratulations to the crew. You should put on a celebration for everyone. Don’t let things get out of hand though; the last thing we need is a battle station full of drunk stormtroopers out looking for some action ha ha.

Also, we still need a name for the thing. I value your input, but I don't think "Death Ball" is really all that terrifying. "Evil Star" is quite good, but my PR office is telling me it'll cost me a few billion votes at the next sham election. Maybe we could combine them? What about "Evil Ball?"

Just one other thing while I think of it. This probably won't come up again, but should any hothead Jedis try to bring a violent end to my reign in future, feel free to step in straight away. I really appreciate you cutting off Windu's arms that day, don't get me wrong, but if you'd stepped up a little sooner I might not have ended up with a face like Yoda's scrotum (and yes, I do know what that looks like. You'd think someone who jumps around that much when he fights would wear something under those baggy hippie pants, but nooo). I was at the Imperial masquerade Ball last week (pun intended), and I got chatting with a very attractive little twi'lek ambassador. Really, you should have seen her: green skin, cleavage like Beggar's Canyon, just gorgeous. I know some people are put off by those head-tentacle things flailing about when they get their groove on, but I rather like that. Anyway, things were going great, we were really getting on, I was even thinking I might invite her back afterwards to check out the Imperial Tower ha ha. But when we unmasked at midnight, she took one look at me and suddenly there’s a diplomatic emergency she needs to attend to!
Anyway, yeah. Not blaming you for it, but a little quicker on the draw next time?

P

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

URGENT: Couriers

I almost forgot. Seems my ‘preferred courier company’ are a little more sympathetic to the rebels than I’d like. Many Bothans are about to have a very bad day if you know what I mean.

You haven’t sent those plans yet, have you…?

P

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Urgent:Couriers

Right. Best we keep this between ourselves for now. See if you can’t find them yourself.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Re: Urgent: Couriers

Well…alright, yes. You can take a Star Destroyer.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Missing plans

Any luck?

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: A couple of leads

Tattooine again? What is it with that place? Sure, follow them, do whatever it takes. If they get a look at those plans they might find a weakness we missed. Lucky I spotted that exhaust port when I did.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Alderaan

Really? What are you doing there? Never mind; while you’re there, pick me up some of those nice fruit jellies they make. My secretary loves those and for the life of me I can’t think what else to get for her birthday.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Alderaan

I cannot believe this. Check your emails, I told you to get rid of that thing! What am I going to get my secretary now? And no, I don’t care how “cool” it looked, I’m not going to be much of an emperor if you blow up my subjects a billion at a time! And don’t go telling me it was Tarkin’s idea; the guy’s, what, five foot three? You’ve Force-choked your way through half my officer corps, you couldn’t give him a little Sithly persuasion too?

Please tell me this had nothing to do with a girl.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Leia Organa

Goddamit Darth. I don’t care if she looks a bit like your last girlfriend, oh that’s right your ONLY girlfriend. You’re old enough to be her father! Seriously, it’s just creepy. And what made you think she'd be impressed if you blew up her home planet? No wonder you're still flying solo. Now throw her in that cell block next to the garbage compactor, slap a termination order on her and find those plans!

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Millennium Falcon

Well, I guess those tractor beams just paid for themselves. Good work. And Obi Wan was there! He must be, what, a hundred and fifty by now? Can’t imagine he had much fight left in him. Now, if we can just find Yoda, that should wrap the whole Jedi thing up nicely. Unless you’ve got any kids you don’t know about ha ha.

And yes, whatever planet the rebels turn out to be on, you can use the giant laser on it. But then you get rid of that thing! Or people might start thinking you’re compensating for something…

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re:Yavin?

Hi Darth. No, never heard of it. Just blow it up.

 P

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Re: Yavin

I do NOT believe this. How did they get past the turbo lasers? How did they get past the fighters? WHY DIDN’T YOU USE THE TRACTOR BEAMS ON THEM? And how did they do it? That thing was perfect, I checked it myself! Other than that exhaust port, the thing was impregnable! And you fixed that weeks ago!

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Exhaust port

Goddamit Darth. Goddamit.

Wall Street 2: Wake up, Money!

Caution: Wall Street 2 spoilers ahoy! Quick, grab the DVD, watch it and come back. It's cool, I'll wait.

Remember Wall Street? Greed is good, Michael Douglas in ugly '80s shirts puffing cigars the size of Manhattan and sneering contemptuously at the camera? Now THAT was a cool flick, right? It was powerful, well-executed and equally well-received, both for its storytelling and the underlying message. It's a slice of Hollywood history now, and is counted amongst the better films made by the actors involved.

The sequel came out recently. I might have paid to see it.

It wasn't a bad movie. Not really. It wasn't particularly good either. It felt like another sequel-for-dollars, a chance to make some bucks on the cachet of the original. Luckily they had Shia LaBeouf, unquestionably the most powerful character actor of the decade on board, delivering complex dialogue with absolute conviction.
Less luckily, I didn't particularly care for the story being told. It was a bare-bones romance tale at its heart, clumsily examining the effect of greed on personal relationships. Just to punch up the emotional payload a bit, Oliver Stone also heaped a steaming wheelbarrow load of mawkish father-son metaphors on the interactions between LaBeouf and...well, pretty much every other bloke on screen. None of them ever went anywhere, so it just left me wondering what the overall message of the film was meant to be ("'Be true to your father'? No, 'money changes everything'. Wait, um, 'Lays chips lead to suicide'? Uh...")

Shia LaBeouf''s Wall Street Guy character is implausibly paired with a (naturally) pretty girl who runs a not-for-profit environmental crusade website. She is, of course, Gordon Gekko's daughter, providing the tenuous emotional link to the earlier film. It seemed like an interesting setup, but rather than exploring the clash of values between Wall Street Guy and Enviro Girl, the story clumsily whitewashes over their contradictory value systems by having Wall Street Guy fight for investment bucks to fund a clean energy project (fusion, hurray!) Which totally makes sense, right? Because dozens of companies have made their fortune building fusion power plants (hint: no they haven't). For the first half of the film, Wall Street Guy stumbles through a weirdly rushed tale of corporate chicanery in the name of revenge, doing some clever financey stuff that ends up costing his mentor's nemesis millions. Enraged, Nemesis Guy wreaks a terrible revenge on Wall Street Guy by offering him a high paying job. And a motorbike.
I confess I spent the second half of the film imagining how much better it would have been with Transformers in it, but I did get the gist. Gordon Gekko came back, conned Wall Street Guy into handing over the hundred million dollar trust fund he gave his daughter (which she, of course, refused to touch, because she was a Complete Idiot), then buggered off with the cash and picked up where he left off, cigars and ugly shirts and all. Dispirited by the complete lack of robots in the movie, Gekko's daughter dumps Wall Street Guy and goes back to her teepee to weave blankets for orphaned badgers or something. She refuses to see him again, despite his strenuous efforts, and repeated assurances that Transformers 3 would be a way better movie. ("Seriously, Optiums Prime breakdances! And, uh, Mechatron is my father!")
Wall Street Guy fixes everything though. He sends Gordon Gekko videos of his unborn child (I tells ya, those ultrasounds creep me out. I always think of Alien). Gekko's heart melts at the sight of a flickery black and white cross section of a human foetus, and he comes back to talk to her. He happens to lob just as she is being hounded by Wall Street Guy again; the very moment she is making it clear they can never be together, Gekko meerkats into the frame. He says some stuff that didn't matter, then says how cool families are, and sorry about all that other stuff, and can we be friends? It's the climax of the film: Gekko retreats from his 'Greed is Good' mantra, admitting that family matter more to him. Wall Street Guy and Enviro girl reconcile and everyone lives happily ever after in a fusion-powered future.

So the apparent message in this movie is that it's not about money. You can survive jail, rebuild your fortune, see your enemies crushed beneath your chariot wheels, succeed in every way. But none of it is worth so much as the love of your grandchild. It's a powerful message, and one that compels Gordon Gekko to reconcile with his daughter.
But why did he come back to see her?

So he could give back the money.

And despite the lead couple's apparently irreconcilable differences, this one act brings them together where love and the impending birth of their child could not. Granted, it was an enormous sum, but to suggest that makes a difference is to say that money IS the only thing that matters to everyone; it's just our price that varies. Before she had the hundred mill back, she wouldn't even touch Wall Street Guy, but the moment she saw the cash? Bam, back in his arms. Granted, the money went to his pet fusion project, but nothing about him had changed. She walked away from him because, she claimed, her father would hurt them. She was right, but the way he hurt them was to steal a trust fund she had decided never to touch (wait, what?) Resuming her relationship with wall Street Guy because her father came back into their lives flew in the face of her own values. And common sense. It muddied the morality-over-money message that Stone was reprising from the first film.

Or maybe the message is that greed is good? Charlie Sheen's character in the original was torn between his blue-collar roots and the siren-call of high finance; the sequel's protagonist is Wall Street from his mousse-laden up-and-comer haircut to his thousand-dollar shoes. Michael Douglas paid for his greed in the first one with a lengthy jail sentence. This time round, stealing the hundred mill form his own daughter left him rich, powerful, popular and still part of her life. No consequences whatsoever for his actions. Maybe Oliver Stone's telling us that the system is so broken, that morality is now so compromised that even at the movies, the bad guy gets away with it. Maybe he's saying we all need to stand up and say "Enough, Wall Street! No more bonuses for crooked investment bankers! No more free rides for fat cats, no more bailing out the corporations with our taxes!"

Or maybe not.

I tried to see a message in this thing. I really tried. But when I walked out, I was convinced that Oliver Stone was simply saying "Look, I got a bunch of chimps and filmed them flinging bananas at each other. Gimme fifteen bucks and I'll let you sit in a sticky popcorn-strewn seat and watch it. And if you don't like it, go blog about it or something. I'm rich and you just gave me fifteen bucks, so who's laughing now, smart guy?"

And if you still think this guy was trying to stick it to The Man On Wall Street with this movie? Take a good look at the product placement. Every phone was a Blackberry. Every motorbike was a Ducati. Every beer was a Heineken, the whisky was always Johnny Walker Blue (and check the Chinese business delegation's reaction to receiving a bottle: "We will not agree to this deal!" "Wait, here is some Johnny Walker Blue!" <gasp> "Minion! Where is my checkbook?"), and the suicidal father-figure chose Lays chips as his final meal (and we don't just get a product shot, we get a voice-over announcing the brand! You can't BUY that kind of publicity. Oh wait, yes you can.). Now, I'm cool with product placement. I get a phone with my job, I don't eat chips, beer tastes like vat scrapings to me and I would still have bought a Ducati if they were twice the price and I had to fistfight the salesman for it, so pummeling my subconscious with product sightings is about as effective as hitting Mike Tyson with complex double entendres. But when it's so blatant that it distracts from Shia LaB's subtly nuanced performance, it's time to back it off a notch.
I dunno, maybe mister Stone needed a new wing on the mansion, or the carpet in the private jet was getting a bit threadbare. Whatever the reason, I hope the poor guy managed to scrape up enough coin from this film to cover these essentials. I'm just kinda peeved that he did it by banging loudly on my iMax glasses and shouting "Hey! HEY! Buy this stuff!" every three minutes twenty seconds.

But I showed him. I used a discount voucher and saw the movie for ten bucks. Who's laughing now, smart guy?

Observations, in no particular order

Compiled whilst tracking about a mine site one moonless evening with a laptop and an intermittent connection...

-playing Scrabble can be more intense than watching footy. Especially if you use Scrabble's optional tackling rules
-doing IT means being happy with saying "Cool, it worked!" even though it totally shouldn't have.
-putting 'le' before any adjective makes the sentence sound French. Which is le weird.
-putting 'der,' 'die' or 'das' before the adjective just makes you sound angry, not German.
-IT is one of few jobs you 'do.' ("Me? I do IT.") Other jobs you're 'in' (the police), you 'practise' (doctoring), or 'am' ("I'm regular army'). The only other things you 'do' are drugs and time.
-Krispy Kreme: they're just donuts, people!
-Snoop Dogg has only one talent: dressing like a clown and looking sleazy behind white chicks in videos. Or is that two talents?
-since the election, I can't remember our government doing anything except not stop people smugglers and not fix bank collusion on interest rates. I tell a lie: they have also not stopped Japanese whaling.
-unlikely things I have laughed at lately: a flightless New Zealand parrot trying to mate with a zoologist's head, a giant zit getting squeezed ("Ew, it's like a brain!"), two inattentive girls almost leaving their heads behind when the roller coaster started ("Hey, why's that voice counting down?"), a joke about an eewee.
-Safri Duo: Played Alive. Hit this thing and tell me it doesn't make you wanna dance like an idiot.
-I think the wrestling is fake
-but you still wouldn't get me in the ring with a four hundred pound bloke in tights and makeup
-there is no such thing as Karma. The universe is NOT keeping score. Nor should we.
-things that have not made me laugh: Adam Sandler's latest film, two Avatar sequels, the Tea Party, any Adam Sandler film, not taking my camera out of the pocket before I washed my jacket.
-things that will make me buy Pentax again: the camera still worked.
-although the pictures looked a bit <drum roll> washed out.
-dancing to Safri Duo: Played Alive next to a lit building on a dark minesite means several dozen truckies, dirt bosses and drillers for an audience
-you can get an entire blog entry up in the time it takes a Cisco 3750 switch to reboot. Unless you go on too lo