Harry here and WHOA! This sounds freakin awesome! WANT TO SEE NOW!!! Spies out there... I'll be hitting L.A. on the 18,19 and 20th... If you can help me see the light that is STAR WARS EPISODE 2... A thousand Bothans will be mutilated and arranged into a fancy chandelier for your home. I'll throw in Moriarty's couch and Henchman Mongo's big rubber chew-bone. A pair of John Robie's stuffed underwear. Well, beware of spoilers.... there's a ton. Here ya go....

OK, I shoulda written you guys as SOON as I got home, but other pressing duties kept my attention. Still, I CAN'T believe that AICN hasn't posted anything from Rick McCallum's speech at ShoWest. I figured someone, somewhere woulda sounded off on what they saw. So, lemme possibly be the first ...

First, I was at the convention and, specifically, McCallum's speech on digital film, through my employer. (How's that for cryptic?) In fact, the only reason I was at ShoWest was to hear what McCallum had to say and to see the goods he brought with 'im. And man, did he deliver.

McCallum talked to a crowd of movie-theater owners, industry types and media -- around 250-300 in all --for about 30 minutes. He was playing up how great digital filmmaking is and will be. Obviously, there are some major financial hurdles for most unincorporated theater chains to get through 'fore they even consider switching over to digital. But McCallum is convinced it's what the people want, "it" being the best film-viewing experience possible. He also said that it's imperative that filmmakers make the best films possible and listen to what the public wants. So, after seeing new Attack of the Clones footage, it‚s safe to say Lucas has heard the rants o‚ fans.

It was roughly 10 minutes of various scenes in chronological order McCallum said that no one outside Lucasfilm had seen until now.

Christ! I feel for the janitor who had to clean up the auditorium later that night. The images I saw -- sans sound except for music -- were ungodly (meant in the best possible way). George L. has reached into his bag o' tricks and pulled out creatures and battle scenes and planets and everything the eternal 10-year-old boy in me could want.

There was way too much for my feeble mind to digest, but some of the images that stand out are:

1. Yoda apparently (at least, from what I could glean from the coupla seconds they showed of this scene) catching blue lightening in his hand, holding it and then blasting it right back at its creator. The mighty green midget had a serious Don't Fuck With the Master! look on his face while doing it. I'm sure the scene has to do with Yoda's (SPOILER) showdown with Count Dooku at the end. (END SPOILER)

2. A sequence where Anakin and Amidala fall onto a giant conveyer belt. The two are quickly separated, with Amidala having to go through a series of bone-flattening metal pressers, much like a Warner Bros. cartoon come to life, while Anakin is battling buglike creatures with his saber. From the looks of it, this will be intense.

3. Obi-Wan walking through the corridors of Kamino and seeing the clone-development plants.

4. The chase scene on Coruscant. I've heard it plays out like a similar sequence in „The Fifth Element.‰ It was very impressive here.

5. The finale when all hell is breaking loose in the arena. There was too much eye-candy to focus on one element only, with superdroids, Jedi swingin' their blades and all sorts of creatures runnin' around. This will hands-down be the most action-packed ending to any of the films.

All in all, even without the sound, there was a definite darkness to the tone of the film.

It's easy to see why the first prequel was called Phantom Menace, since there was never any tactile sense of evil in the movie, much to the film's determent. And the action was confined to a race and lightsaber duel.

After seeing this new footage, I can see why the word Attack is part of the title. Episode II is all about action, contrary to what the „love trailer‰ may suggest. In fact, from what I gathered, it seems like the film‚s love theme is merely an after-thought, a transition from action point A to action point B. Of course, not having seen the film nor read its script, I'm only opining from the 10 minutes of footage I saw.

Oh, and then there's the new trailer Sunday can't come soon enough for most o' you. I won't go into too much detail since you'll be dissecting the trailer frame by frame in five days, but it features some great dialogue snippets, UNBELIEVABLE action sequences from the film's finale and a great closing line from Yoda.

In summary, I suffered through Phantom like everybody else. A good film, at times borderline great, it never reached the summit it attempted to climb; instead, settling for a, "Well, we're high enough, let's go back down now the mountain and try again a few years later" approach. It seemed that Lucas got lost in character introduction and neglected to infuse life into their dialogue and situations. I think he forgot that it's not enough to have guys with unusual names standing around cool-looking sets doing relatively little. We want action! We want jaw-dropping effects! We want to be transported from our measly li'l world for two-plus hours to another time and place ...

From the 10-plus minutes of footage I saw Tuesday night, Lucas has delivered on those three film qualities and much, much more. Rest assured Star Wars dorks, geeks and nerds, the Force is again strong with this one.

Call me Believer.

Hey folks, Harry here... Saw some of you doubting the above report... well Mighty Mouse, who has never written for me before under this name, but who I've known for years wanted to write in and confirm the above report... Ok you Fox Executive that knows who you are.... You said if I ever wanted anything, to ask... I'm asking... I'll be in town the 18, 19 and 20th... I wanna see. We can do this where we saw that.... yeah, that. Ok? I know it isn't safe to contact you at your company, but this is a test of your power.... if you ain't chicken, let's see what you can show me. Here's Mighty Mouse...