The movie is called Dnevnoy dozor, Day Watch in English. It’s the second film adapted from a series of Russian novels, and isn’t available here in the U.S. yet. However, the first movie Nochnoy dozor, Night Watch, is. After a couple of weeks of trying, the first time it arrived in the mail the disk was cracked all the way through, I finally got to watch it this weekend.

Without giving away any spoilers, the story is basically about a group of people with superhuman abilities called Others who have to decide whether they are going to be on the side of light, or on the side of dark. This all revolves around an ancient truce. Each side has their own sort of police force that monitors to ensure that the truce is being kept. The Night Watch patrols for the light side, and the Day Watch works for the dark. The interesting part of the story is that even though the Others have segregated themselves into two unique sides, it’s not cut and dried that one represents good and the other represents evil.

Night Watch is a pretty good film, especially considering it’s foreign origins. Day Watch is supposed to be released in the U.S. on June 1st. It’s going to be a limited release and I can’t find any information on whether or not it’s going to be in any theaters near here. Definitely looking forward to it though.

Update: Took me a few minutes to figure out, but here’s the feed to subscribe to if you only want posts of his labeled “steampunk star wars.”

At the start of Jedi only Han Solo is in Jabba’s custody. Now that all of his friends are locked up, Luke can finally make his grand entrance. The plan, if you can call it that, calls for Luke to walk right up into the Hutt’s palace unarmed. Then, he stands on the trap door which will plunge him into the pit with the rancor. This is still part of the plan, because killing the rancor is what is going to inspire Jabba to take Luke and all his friends to the Sarlacc pit where R2 is going to toss Luke a lightsaber and he’s finally going to get to work.

As viewers, we’re supposed to just accept all this on it’s face. Nevermind the fact that Luke could have probably pulled off a nearly identical feat by sending R2 to Jabba alone. Then, he could show up, kill the rancor, have R2 toss him a lightsaber, and the two of them escape with Han after killing Jabba and his whole gang. Of course, the beauty of my plan is that Luke isn’t whoring out his sister to a giant slug or putting any more of his friends in harms way than are absolutely necessary.

There is only one acceptable reason for George Lucas and company to develop this unforgiveably complicated series of events into the first act. It’s probably the reason that I haven’t questioned the whole sequence until this morning. That reason can be summed up in four words. “Carrie Fisher gold bikini.”

Update: Luke didn’t actually know that Leia was his sister until after he returned to Dagobah.