Is it just me, or is the blog not a very interesting medium?

Call me old-fashioned, but I long for the days of goofy-ass webpages with their homespun look, embarrassing photos, and random links. The thought that we're moving into an online world where the rule will be endless columns of spew (no matter how excellently formatted) is not a very appetizing one. I know, I know, the blog is the future, man, and the rest of us dinosaurs who look to "more traditional" online content providers will soon be shown the error of our ways, and in those final hours when all the bloggers have been taken up in the Rapture and we poor fools are left to suffer The Years Of The Beast, we'll sure be sorry, won't we? Sorry, I don't buy it. The blog is a cute little gimmick, but it's 99% hype and 1% paradigm-shift.

Speaking of 99% hype, I saw Attack Of The Clones. George Lucas has managed to pull the ultimate Jedi Mind Trick, with a final forty-five minutes so dizzyingly action-packed and exciting that you completely forget the fact that the first hour and a half was a load of garbage. Sadly, the opinions I've solicited about this film have confirmed for me what was only a suspicion before - that there has been a Great Schism between Those Who Like The New Star Wars Movies and Those Who Don't, which is clearly not going to be bridged by any future film coming out of the Skywalker Ranch. When The Phantom Menace began the retroactive abortion of our collective childhood in 1999, I as well as many others comforted myself with a few soothing mantras:

George just needs his timing back. Empire was the best of the Original Trilogy, so the next movie will be the best of the new series. Maybe he'll listen to the fans and hire someone to write his dialogue for Attack Of The Clones. Maybe I was just a cynical bastard and not in the proper "childlike" frame of mind for The Phantom Menace, and the next film will somehow recapture the magic for me if I just let go of my critical habits and approach the movie like a kid.

I was still mumbling these platitudes to myself as I munched on my popcorn and waited for the magical moment to arrive, but alas, it wasn't really worth the wait, in the end. Sure, there are some wonderful action sequences, and the battle scenes are enjoyable in and of themselves, but you don't want to walk out of a Star Wars movie thinking that there should have been more whizzes and bangs to distract you from the fact that the plot is a joke, the dialogue abominable, the acting criminally bad (George Lucas should be tried in the Hague for wasting both Samuel L. Jackson and Natalie Portman not one but two movies in the row!), and the attempts at humor so god-awful that you actually find yourself laughing at the film, not with it.

And yet there are those out there who are lapping this stuff up, and begging for more. If it were just the so-called "fanboys", I would understand, but there are good people out there who like this movie. Intelligent people. People whose opinions on things I would otherwise respect. De gustibus non disputandum, they say, and yet I feel that's taking the easy way out on this one. It's a bad movie, and I don't think taste has anything to do with it. If this puts me on the other side of the Great Schism, well then so be it - I'll just have to remember to avoid all talk of religion, politics, and Star Wars the next time I'm having dinner with friends!