Welcome, ASV readers!

Thanks to Michele for the link. I have indeed been blogging a storm about Star Wars lately, so feel free to look around both on the front page and in the archives. I have a few older Star Wars-related posts permanently linked in my sidebar (see the section labeled "Notable Dispatches"), as well as the most recent two entries in my "Exploring the CD Collection" series and the most recent post in my "Great Love Dialogue" series. I also like this post, in which Emperor Palpatine makes a customer service call. (Fans of The Lord of the Rings may enjoy the post titled "Diary of a Ring", also linked in the sidebar.)

My general attitude on Star Wars can probably best be summed up thusly: I consider The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones to be good movies. Not guilty pleasures, not bad movies with a few good spots, but actual good movies.

For those new to my blog, my politics are obviously liberal, but this is not a politically-centered blog, not by a long shot. If I'm really in a political mood, the percentage of my postings centering on politics might reach twenty percent; so if you find something that annoys or offends, just keep clicking and scrolling. I really try to not foam at the mouth in this space. There's also some information about me linked by the photos near the top of the sidebar, if anyone's wondering. Comments threads here tend to be (a) short, and (b) fun and respectful. Nothing here goes on like what you'll see on an open thread over at, say, Atrios's blog. (At least, not that I know of. I haven't read one of those free-for-alls in months.)

And yes, I'm going to a midnight showing of THE FILM, but before that I'm showering, going to dinner with the family, picking up a friend to go to THE FILM with, and planning war with Guilder, so I'm swamped. This will be today's final post. I'm not sure what tomorrow will bring, since I have a couple of important errands to run before seeing THE FILM again (yes, I'm seeing it twice in twenty-four hours) and then seeing who wins The Apprentice while taping Quentin Tarantino's stint directing CSI, so there might not be much activity here tomorrow, either. I may post a brief something about THE FILM, but I'm going to hold off on a big, spoiler-filled posting blowout until I've had a few days to digest the plot. (One problem I have with a lot of the anti-Star Wars brigade is that George Lucas's plots often need a bit of digesting before one realizes how finely constructed they are, and too often they're just champing at the bit to bitch about stilted dialogue and the like.)

Obviously I fell well short on my hopes of posting on the subject of each Star Wars filmscore by the time of Episode III's release, but I will get those done sometime. Star Wars may be done in one sense, but it ain't going anywhere, folks.

May the Force Be With You!

So that's where matte painting artists go!

In this post from yesterday in which I kvetched a bit about one of my Daughter's childrens books, I noted that the book has some really nice artwork (that makes Jesus look like Bo Bice, coincidentally enough). It turns out that the book's artist is one Frank Ordaz, who used to paint matte paintings for Industrial Light and Magic. You can see Ordaz's work in such films as, you guessed it, Return of the Jedi.

You know the reactor shaft in the Death Star into which Emperor Palpatine is given an involuntary nudge by his one-time Sith apprentice, Darth Vader, after Vader suddenly realizes that he's gone perhaps a wee bit too far around the bend with this "Dark Side of the Force" thing? That shaft is a matte painting by Frank Ordaz. So you all know his work. And he had others in the movie as well, such as the landing platform on Endor when the AT-AT comes up alongside it after Darth Vader arrives. Cool, eh?

Matte painting artists don't really exist anymore, since digital composition has become all the rage. So Frank Ordaz is doing art for children's books now.

Balanced, all right (with a big thumb on the scale)

Today while at lunch at the Cafe in The Store, I overheard FOX News on the TV overhead doing some kind of segment on Revenge of the Sith, and sure enough, they were referring to the snore-inducing idea that the movie is actually an anti-Bush allegory. And they brought in an expert to discuss this:














(wait for it)














Michael Medved.

Yup, there was good old Medved, smiling that ever-present pompous smile of his as he announced, "Of course the movie is an attack on Bush!" Luckily, the interlocutor FOX News supplied to counter Medved's idiotic claims said...oh that's right, FOX didn't supply anyone else at all. Just Medved.

I think I might need to return my dictionary to the bookstore, on the grounds that "fair" and "balanced" seem to be defined incorrectly therein....

Aww man I think the clock is sslloowww....

Folks, there is nothing that makes the day at work creep by so slowly that I thought The Store might have forgotten to pay the time bill like the prospect of seeing a new Star Wars movie nine hours after the work day ends. Jee-bus, that was a long day at work.

Oh, and here's another sign of my Star Wars-induced dementia: I spotted the word "Tuscan" on a bottle of something in our Italian foods section, and I actually thought to myself, "Idiots, they misspelled 'Tusken'."

Oh, oh man.

O for the subtext-free days of youth....

The Daughter, at bedtime tonight, asked me to read from The Very First Easter, which I didn't even know she had. We're about halfway through it, and it's an OK, straightforward telling of the whole Easter tale. The paintings are really good, even if I find the Jesus of the book disturbingly similar in appearance to Bo Bice of American Idol.

But I found the book's very first page really odd. I mean, downright strange. The book's framing device is that a boy's father is teaching him about Easter, so there are questions-and-answers throughout the book, interspersed throughout the story. Here's the text of that first page:

Christopher sat at the kitchen table, dyeing Eater eggs. "Mom, I just love this time of year, especially the jelly beans and chocolate bunnies," he said. "Remember when I used to think that red Easter eggs came from red chickens? Some kids at school told me that was a myth -- whatever that is."

"A myth? Well, that's like a fairy tale," said Mom, smiling.

"Oh. But remember, Mom? I don't like fairy tales anymore," Chris sighed.

"Oh, that's right. You only want true stories -- like the one I told you about the birth of Jesus." Mom rescued several eggs from getting dyed to death, then her face brightened with an idea.

"Chris, why don't we read the true story about the very first Easter?" Mom asked. "It's much more important than the Easter bunny, colored eggs, or even jelly beans."

"Splendid idea, dear!" Christopher's father said as he walked into the kitchen.

"Hi, Dad!" said Chris. "Hey, you used to be a teacher. Maybe you should tell me about Easter instead of Mom."

"Okey," Dad agreed as he sat down next to Chris. "Since Easter is next week, let's read about it tonight."

That night after supper, they sat down for evening devotions. "Chris, this has been called 'The Greatest Story Ever Told'," Dad began. "Do you remember how you and your mom read from the gospel of St. Luke to learn more about the birth of Jesus?"

"Sure! But I read more of it than Mom did!"

"Good for you! Well, let's continue reading from Luke."

And so on.

First of all, I know this is a children's book and it really isn't the place to get into what myths really are, but did the author have to give an answer to "What is a myth" that was this simplistic?

But what really put me off on this passage were the two little digs at the kid's mother. Learning about Easter is Mom's idea, but the kid ditches her the second Dad walks in -- "Hey, you should do it instead of Mom!" "Great idea, son!". (And in the book, this passage is opposite a painting of Dad and the Kid sitting at the table while Mom stands behind the kitchen counter, grinning like June Cleaver.)

And a bit later on, Dad mentions that the Kid and Mom read some of the Gospel of Luke, but the Kid immediately jumps in with, "I read more of it than Mom did!" "Good for you, son!"

I found this all condescending and, well, almost subliminally sexist. Was this really necessary?

Holy Crap.

Via Andrew Sullivan (in turn via Kevin Drum), I see that someone named LaShawn Barber writes this:

Let me clear up one thing. Whether Americans flushed the Koran down the toilet is irrelevant. Newsweek should not have reported it, even if true.

I honestly cannot believe this. It completely staggers me. The press is not to report any facts, any facts at all, that might paint a less-than-favorable picture of America. The only acceptable role of the media to the most vocal members of the Right is that of distributor of pro-American propaganda. Anything else, and they immediately start bleating about "liberal bias".

You know the old saw, "My country, right or wrong"? That's not actually the entire thing. The whole thing goes, "Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right." We're a great nation, but we're not a perfect nation, and to insist on a media that pretends that we are is the height of stupid hubris.

Read the entirety of Sullivan's post, which makes clear that the Right simply doesn't care about the facts in any case. The facts, whether accurate in the case of Abu Ghraib or inaccurate in the case of the Newsweek fiasco, just don't matter. America can never be allowed, in their eyes, to be the villain; never mind the unpleasant reality that since America is an imperfect country run by imperfect people, sometimes America actually is the villain.

Lance Mannion has more. He's quite a bit more forceful about it.

First learn Chronology, THEN learn Continuity.

Following a series of links from Michelle to Glenn Reynolds* to Professor Bainbridge, who thinks that George Lucas is betraying continuity in the new film in order to "score cheap political points". (Which, as I pointed out yesterday, Lucas planned to score all along seeing as how they have always been part of his story, from the 1970s when he started writing the damn thing.)

First of all: bad guys have been making the "You're either with me or against me!" charge in movies for a long, long time. Just because George W. Bush said something very similar in a very important speech a few years back doesn't make every subsequent appearance of the "you're with me or against me" thing in a movie a transparent homage, spoof, attack, parody, or pastiche on George W. Bush. OK?

Second of all: Prof. Bainbridge can claim to be inured to Bush-bashing from Hollywood, but (and this is a really minor point) George Lucas is not a Hollywood filmmaker. Lucas moved to Marin County and set up his own shop because he hated Hollywood's internal politics.

Third of all, and Prof. Bainbridge's main point: Apparently in Revenge of the Sith, Obi Wan has this line: "Only a Sith thinks in absolutes." This is, apparently, a betrayal of Lucas's continuity, since Lucas later establishes Yoda as clearly believing in some kind of absolutes.

OK. Dealing with that, I have several main objections:

1. "Only a Sith thinks in absolutes" does not necessarily imply "Jedi only think in terms of relativism".

2. Prof. Bainbridge is correct that the sum total of the Star Wars saga is that the Force has a yin-yang aspect which the Jedi and Sith have ignored. But he's wrong in what happens: Luke isn't the one who restores balance. Anakin Skywalker is. And that's an important point, because it establishes that for all of Yoda's and Obi Wan's warnings about the Dark Side and how Darth Vader is forever beyond redemption, they are both wrong.

In fact, when you think about it, the Force is restored to balance and everything turns out right despite the fact that the Jedi basically make one blunder after another. They consistently make the wrong prognostications, their wisdom leads them to utter ruin, and then they continue to be wrong. In ROTJ, both Yoda and Obi Wan believe that Luke must kill Vader and the Emperor if things are to be set right. But Obi Wan, if Vader is to be believed in ROTJ, didn't even always believe that: he specifically says that Obi Wan once thought that he could be turned back to the Good side, a possibility that Vader totally discounts until the actual moment of his turning. Note that: a Sith thinking in absolutes.

And besides: the lines that Prof. Bainbridge cites from Episodes V and VI as being contradictory to what Obi Wan says in Episode III are interesting because they are said over twenty years later, in story terms. Lots of water flows under a lot of bridges in that time, and I can only assume that both Yoda and Obi Wan come to think of things quite a bit differently. Lucas isn't betraying his own creation; he is depicting characters changing over time, and he is depicting his own characters being stone, cold wrong.

This is no continuity error and no betrayal of key Star Wars philosophy. It's a blatant misinterpretation of the film on the part of Prof. Bainbridge. But then, he's in good company; people have been misinterpreting George Lucas for years.

* And I have to note Glenn Reynolds's timeliness in his choice of news articles to link. That article, about annoyed Latinos watching Star Wars, sounded familiar to me, and sure enough: that article appeared in 2002 at the release of Attack of the Clones, and yours truly posted a rejoinder at the time. Nice to see that Instapundit is right on top of things as always.

Foolish Mortals!

Those of you who failed to read Chapter Ten of the blog-novel in progress, The Promised King, will pay the consequences. And if you didn't read Chapter Ten because you didn't read the first nine chapters and thus would have little idea what's going on, well, all the chapters are archived! So get over there unless you want Tom DeLay and Nancy Pelosi to do something really offensive on your front lawn.

Harumph.

Yet again, I miss the memo....

I'm not sure what "Leftist" means in this post, linked for reasons passing understanding by Andrew Cory:

If you are a Leftist, you MUST be anti-American. You MUST oppose the idea that is America, because that idea is utterly opposed to collectivism and statism, and opposed to the belief that our rights are granted by government, or that the interests of "society" are worth the sacrifice of the individual. Many Leftists won't honestly acknowledge their enmity, but resort to sneaky formulas. and claiming to be "against nationalism" is one of them. It's a lie of course, none of them are bothered by French nationalism, or Swedish nationalism, or criticize when a Russian proclaims her love for her "Motherland."

I'm on "the left", and I not only do not consider myself anti-American, I stand up proudly and proclaim my love for America. This is my country, and it is my home, and I am sick unto death of being told that since my personal beliefs as to what makes this nation such an amazing place don't match up with someone else's beliefs as to what makes this nation such an amazing place, I therefore must be "anti-American".

I do not for one second believe that "America" is "utterly opposed" to "collectivism and statism". On a basic level, I can't believe that, since I'm not even sure what "collectivism and statism" are in the first place. But I know that whenever I've encountered those words before, they've been on the lips of a Libertarian, and I've long rejected any idea that America was meant to be some kind of Libertarian wonderland. Sure enough, reading the response in Andrew's comments, I see the standard formulation that "Leftists ALWAYS believe in government over the marketplace". That's classical Libertarian-speak: reducing it all to "real Americans" versus the Marxists.

I also don't know what this "where our rights come from" stuff is about. I honestly don't know where our rights come from; I don't know if they're bestowed upon us by our creator or whether they only exist because we mutually agree that they do. But I believe that they exist, and that our government exists not as an intended impediment to those rights, but as an effort to ensure the proper exercising of those rights. That's why we don't have a monarchy, and why we enumerate our rights in the most basic documents of our land. What tends to frighten me these days, and many people on the left with me, is the idea that our government is treading on our rights in the name of "security". I may not believe that my rights are granted by government, but I sure as hell fear that my ability to exercise my rights may be seriously abridged by my government. There's little functional difference between removing a right and preventing a person from ever exercising a right, but there's a real philosophical difference between the two, which the poster seemingly ignores.

And yes, I do believe that at least sometimes the interests of "society" are worth the sacrifice of the individual. Or, at least, I think that I sometimes believe that, since this is a nice-sounding phrase, but a pretty sloppily expressed idea: Are we referring to the individual's sacrifice of something, or are we referring outright to the sacrifice of the individual? Either way, I guess it doesn't really matter. As Andrew notes, sometimes we do sacrifice individuals in war for the greater good of our society -- in fact, sometimes for our society's very survival. (That Andrew's interlocutor argues otherwise in his comments thread makes me wonder just what he thinks "society" even is.) But as for individuals sacrificing occasionally, well, I pay my taxes, and that's certainly a sacrifice on my part: I sacrifice part of the fruits of my labor so that my town can have streets and a library and schools and firemen and so that my country can have soldiers and so that my country's elderly can have some guarantee of income. That's a sacrifice I make in the service of "society", and I'm proud to make it.

I guess that if we define "America" as a land that is concerned with the individual and nothing but the individual, I might hate it. But I see no reason to grant that as my definition of "America". But then, I don't see much reason to define "America". To define something is to limit it, and I think that America is large. It contains multitudes.

A sock in it, you shall put.

In the course of reading reactions to Revenge of the Sith, I'm seeing something odd: conservative commentators bitching about the film because they've chosen to read it, much in the same way that they read seemingly everything, as an anti-Bush polemic.

To which I say, oh, shut up already.

Way back in 1977, the original damn film -- before Lucas even retitled it A New Hope and appended "Episode IV" into the opening crawl -- established that the Empire arose from the ashes of a failed Republic. It was always going to be about a democratically-elected leader making himself an Emperor through war and nefarious action.

Which, I suppose, makes Lucas a friggin' genius. I mean, this filmmaker from Modesto was so prescient that he was able to start laying the groundwork for a allegorical space-opera polemic about our current President, over twenty-five years before our current President was ever elected!

I guess these folks are mad because Lucas had to trim a subplot from Attack of the Clones, in which a Coruscant news reporter named Rath Danner is disgraced and forced from his job, for running-time reasons. It didn't advance the narrative. You know, the "narrative". Wink wink.

Paying the Price for his Lack of Vision

The dastardly Mr. Jones posts on the topic of his Revenge of the Sith anticipation, with the upshot being that he gets to attend not one, but two, advance screenings of the film.

Well now.

No, I'm not jealous. Really, I'm not. I'm actually far more excited about what the communal event of seeing it at 12:01 on Thursday morning is going to be like. Part of it is that this is the last Star Wars movie; part of it is that unlike when I attended a midnight opening day showing of Attack of the Clones, to which I went alone, this time I'm going with actual people, including one guy from work who's just about as keyed up for this movie as one can get. I just like the idea that I'll be seeing the film as part of the first paying crowds -- and that as I exit the theater at around 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. (depending on previews and whatnot), the folks paying for midnight screenings in Portland and Seattle and San Francisco will just be taking their seats.

Back when The Phantom Menace opened, the Wife actually got to see an advance screening because she worked for Pizza Hut (I had already left the Hut), and PH was one of the restaurants involved in the licensing blitz for the film. I had to work on the day of the screening, though, so the Wife got to see the first Star Wars movie in sixteen years three days before I did. Was I mad at her? Not really.

Now, the guy at The Store who was going to join our Opening Night party and then had to bow out because one of his college profs rescheduled a big exam for Thursday morning? That guy has a legitimate beef. Sounds to me like a certain prof is in need of a bit of Force-choking, because his lack of faith is disturbing.

The Part of Tens

Chapter Ten of The Promised King is now up. In this chapter, a villain is met. Heh! So go read it. Chapter Ten. Now.

As always, this post is being kept up top, so if you're seeing this, keep scrolling down as newer content will appear beneath it sometime later on.

And for regular readers of The Promised King, note that the posting schedule -- with new chapters going up on the first and third Sunday of each month -- will result in a three week break before the next chapter appears, as opposed to the customary two. But it's not like Chapter Ten ends on a cliffhanger or anything. Heh!

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

I'd just like to take a moment to thank this guy for the creation of his that's provided me with so much inspiration throughout the years.

Thank you, Mr. Lucas, and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

Burst of Weirdness (and, really, a bit of Coolness, too)

Check out the harpsichord pictured here. Really. Check it out.

It's fully functional, fully playable -- and with the exception of the strings, it is completely made of LEGOs.

(via Will Duquette)

Sentential Links

I'm not sure if "Sentential" is a word, but hey, who cares, right? Anyway, here are some sentences that recently caught my eye from blogs I read. If you want the context, click the sentence. OK? OK.

:: To be a biologist at the dawn of the 21st century is to be a librarian in the last days of Alexandria.

:: I would imagine that the new series CSI:Wichita will solve that little problem by having the crime scene investigators simply pray for the suspects to confess.

:: Am I the only one who feels the need to sing at the top of my lungs when alone in the house and drinking?

(No, you're not. That's the only time I ever dance.)

:: The way I see it, women fall into two categories: thong wearing and non thong wearing.

:: People stink and they are stupid.

:: Reverend Dimmesdale, unsurprisingly, was unavailable for comment.

:: Why are axe-murderers distinguished as such?

(Hell, I dunno. PZ Myers labeled me as an axe-murderer, and I don't even own an axe. I have a saw that I have used seven times: to cut the bottom couple of inches off our Christmas tree trunk each year.)

:: We're supposed to believe that the nation's millionaires, having already had their tax rates slashed by a third over the past two decades, are still being bled to the bone by federal taxes.

:: The literary critic Harold Bloom once said that we weren’t fully human until Shakespeare began writing: that Shakespeare completed our sapience. Which is both interesting and stark, utter bullshit.

Good sentences, from better paragraphs and posts.

I'm shocked -- Shocked! -- to see that gambling is going on here!

New York State has a program that provides money grants to businesses that promise to add jobs. Now it turns out that many of those companies cut payrolls instead:

Gov. George Pataki's administration gives millions of dollars every year to businesses that promise to hire more people or retain jobs. It's a promise that is often broken. Almost half of those companies helped by New York taxpayers fell short of the job targets that are part of their deals with the state, records show. In fact, a quarter of the businesses took taxpayers' money and loans, then cut jobs.

Maybe if they spent some of that money not on grants to existing businesses, but maybe on tax breaks for people trying to launch new businesses -- you know, cultivating some entrepreneurship -- things might be going better.

It seems to me that what New York needs to do is worry less about propping up existing, and floundering, businesses and make it easier for new businesses to take root. The alternative doesn't seem to be working so well:

Take the case of Ingram Micro, a global computer-parts wholesaler with a distribution center near Buffalo. In 1999, it accepted $675,000 in taxpayers' money and promised to add 542 workers. Instead, it cut its workforce by nearly 400. The state demanded a penalty of $176,985, but an Ingram spokesman said it has not paid and is negotiating with the state. Last month, Ingram Micro announced it will lay off another 120 Buffalo workers and send the work overseas.

I don't have a problem, in principle, with government money being used to help businesses and to generate jobs and whatnot. But it seems to me that such activity should, you know, actually generate jobs. That doesn't appear to be happening here.

(BTW, I'm no expert on these things, but the Syracuse Post Standard seems to often have pretty good business and economics reporting, with particular focus on Upstate NY. I haven't lived in Syracuse for over two years, but I still check that site at least three times a week.)

This is absolutely nauseating:

The shots came from nowhere and within minutes the young Turkish mother standing at the Berlin bus stop was dead. A telephone call from a relative had brought her to this cold, unforgiving place. She thought she would only be gone for a few minutes and wore a light jacket in the freezing February wind. She had left her five-year-old son asleep in his bed. He awoke looking for his mother, who, like many Turkish women in Germany, harbored a secret life of fear, courage and, ultimately, grief. Now her little boy has his own tragedy to bear: His mother, Hatin Surucu, was not the victim of random violence, but likely died at the hands of her own family in what is known as an "honor killing."

A Muslim woman, killed for abandoning the fundamentalist version of Muslim life. And the worst thing is, this is not an isolated case: this may actually be a trend in Europe.

I believe that religious fundamentalism -- no matter which set of Scriptures is at its heart -- may be the ugliest aspect of human activity today.

(via Rox Populi)

Had a condo made of stone-a!

I've been forgetting to link this item for a few days now: apparently modern science has settled the thousands-of-years-old mystery of what killed Egypt's King Tutenkhamen. It turns out that King Tut was not murdered, but rather suffered a leg fracture which led to gangrene. It turns out that there was no one standing on the sandy knoll after all.

Also, computer imaging technology has produced an image of what King Tut looked like. He doesn't look much like Yul Brynner, but what are you gonna do.

(Second link via Darth Swank, who's been blogging quite a bit lately and who demonstrates his pop culture skills in selecting a title for his post. Back at ya, Greg!)

Throwing Darts at a History Book

Kevin Drum posts on the topic of a list of 100 Greatest Americans someone collated for the Discovery Channel. Apparently it was a call-in poll thing, which explains why it's such an oddball list. I mean, consider:

1. I looked for Leonard Bernstein, and did not see his name. So I looked for Aaron Copland, and did not see his name. So I looked for Charles Ives, and did not see his name. You can see where this is going: not a single American classical musician on the list.

2. Jazz fans need not apply either: no Louis Armstrong, no Miles Davis, no Duke Ellington.

3. Sports heroes: I agree with Kevin's take on this -- surely Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan belong. But if we're also going to include a football player, should it really be Brett Favre? Yes, he's had a magnificent career, and he will make the Hall of Fame the first time he's eligible. But what about Joe Montana? Terry Bradshaw?

4. Presidents: Each one since FDR is represented, even Carter. Before that, we have Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. That seems odd.

5. Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger, and no Humphrey Bogart?

6. Writers: No Walt Whitman. No Henry David Thoreau. No Thomas Pynchon.

7. John Edwards?! A one-term Senator and failed Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee? I like Edwards a lot and think he could have a bright future in politics, but come on!

I know, bitching about stuff like this is counterproductive and dorky. But those are two words that apply well to blogging a lot of the time, right?

The finger pointing at the moon....

Via MeFi I see that there's a new movie screenplay site called, creatively enough, the Internet Movie Script Database. And available for perusal on this site is the script for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. No, I haven't read it. I'd like to be surprised by some things on Wednesday night, after all.

But in the ensuing MeFi thread, I found this comment that demands response:

A child could have written this hokey, bantering, creaky screenplay (from scene 39:"Anakin and Dooku continue their fight. It is intense!").

Apparently this commenter is of the idea that this bit of description is somehow problematic. Maybe he was looking for something along this line:

Anakin stares Dooku in the eye before lifting his lightsaber above his head and smiling. There's something in Dooku's eyes that suggests raw fear of this young Jedi, now no longer the easily-beaten boy of two years before. And when the fight begins again, it is of such intensity that the folk-singers of the Galaxy begin spinning their lyrics almost immediately....

Or something like that. I mean, as an action descriptor, this certainly brooks no comparison to, say, William Shakespeare's description of the stage events. Here's how the Great Bard did it, from the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet:

They fight.

Ummm...that's it? "They fight"? That's not very poetic, is it? Well, how about this, from the last scene of Hamlet, when Hamlet and Laertes are dueling:

LAERTES wounds HAMLET; then in scuffling, they change rapiers, and HAMLET wounds LAERTES.

A tiny bit better, but not by much. "They change rapiers"? How would that happen? Is there some custom whereby at some point in a duel, the combatants exchange weapons? Or do they both drop their arms and then, recovering them, pick up each others' blades? Probably the latter, but that's my point: A script is mainly a blueprint, and it's up to the director to figure it all out. It's up to the director to "bring the script to life". A script's purpose is to provide structure, not to spell out every single detail along the way.

Or, to take a more contemporary example: the West Wing episode "Posse Comitatus". At the end of this episode, President Bartlet is at a theater watching a play when he slips out into a corridor to order a shadow operation to assassinate a foreign official who is also a terrorist. Bartlet's been struggling with the morality of this decision all through the show, but now he "pulls the trigger" and heads back to his theater seat. In the episode, we see Bartlet's silhouette cast upon a light curtain as he returns to his seat, clearly a visual metaphor for the "shadow operation" he has just ordered. It's one of my favorite visuals from the series. Here's how Aaron Sorkin, however, writes this moment in his teleplay:

BARTLET's still standing at the back of the mezzanine listening and watching. BARTLET looks over at the shaft of light that's been made by LEO opening the door. LEO looks over at him. There are people who've killed people and people who haven't and BARTLET'll never be in the second group again.

That's it. No mention of silhouetted shadows on curtains at all. That, apparently, was a decision made by the director or production designer or whomever.

Screenplays don't tell you everything. There's no way they can.