The decision that ruined Anakin Skywalker

I'm watching Star Wars Episode III for the 58th time tonight. It is a really great story about letting your fear control your actions. The story documents the change that happens in Anakin as he goes from being a Jedi (good) knight fighting for justice to a Sith (bad) Lord fighting to keep control of others. The major decision that Anakin makes that screws him up, and it is a gradual decision, is that he decides to stop listening to the corrective voices of his masters within the Jedi and starts listening to the voice of Darth Sidious AKA Chancellor Palpatine who puffs Anakin up, telling him things he wants to hear. He progressively stops listening to the voices in his life that are questioning his motives and trying to guide him back on the straight path and starts listening to the voices that justify his action, paint him as a victim of injustice, and tell him how great he is. There becomes a point in Anakin's story when the good voices no longer even make sense to him anymore.
I think this is a constant struggle for all of us, to listen to the voices in our lives that are correcting us and that even feel like a punch in the nose and not to the voices that point the finger at others, justifying and condemning others.

MOVIES
I saw V for Vendetta the other night and enjoyed it. Topically it was similar to the Matrix movies, touching a lot on governments & control. This one was really more about one person deciding to become a symbol that would unite a country to bring about a value of the character, in this case freedom. It made me think about how Jesus kind of did the same thing through the Lord's supper. He became a symbol to unite a people to bring about kingdom on earth, God's kingdom. The strange thing is that this kingdom looks like freedom to those who understand the bondage that they used to be under, but it looks like slavery to those who think they are free already.
I also rented Seven Samurai a Japanese movie made in 1954 by Akira Kurasawa. His film work has inspired many American film makers. The Magnificient Seven is a remake of Seven Samurai, as is a Bug's Life. George Lucas also borrowed much from Kurasawa's work in the Star Wars story. Anyway, It was a great story of poor farmers who are raided annually at harvest by bandits. They go and hire 7 samurai to protect them against the bandits. The samurai of course kill all the bandits. The movie seemed kind of long and you have to be forgiving when you take 2006's movie sensabilities to watch a 1954 movie, but it was good all around and had lots of great quotes in it. Kurasawa also made another samurai movie called Yojimbo, which inspired a handful of Clint Eastwood's westerns, I want to see that next.

LOST
Last I am a huge LOST fan. This week we found a map of the Dharma stations on the back of a blast door scrawled in neon visible only with black lights. So it looks like who ever Desmond's partner had been he was trying to figure out a way to escape? Maybe he knew something was going on. It is designed in an octagon just like the Dharma symbol but has only 7 stations, "the Swan" being at the bottom. Is the question mark the "others" layer? Is there a connecting passage from "the Swan" to the center station? Will we ever find out? We also found out the prisoner who claimed to have crashed on the island in a hot air balloon was lying, almost certainly making him one of the "others" who seem likely to be Dharma Initiative staff. Last we found a parachute drop shipment of supplies which seem to have been intended for the Dharma Initiative folks. So has someone outside the Island been supplying them since the 70's? LOST is a great cliff hanger show. Its 4:08 AM so, until next time.