Time for holiday movies.... like "Star Wars"?

Most of today was spent cleaning and otherwise prepping for Christmas - which it looks like will be a white one, oddly enough for Dallas.  Left the TV on in the background throughout the afternoon, on Spike which was showing the original Star Wars trilogy.  Twice.  We jumped in partway through Return of the Jedi, made it through the original ("A New Hope"), and are now midway through The Empire Strikes Back.  I guess Spike figures that Christmas movies or not, the beauty of showing these is that on a day when people are busy with so many things on and off, (a) everyone knows these well enough to jump in at any point and (b) they're instantly engrossing.  Well played, Spike.

I guess I should clarify my comment that they were showing "the original Star Wars trilogy."  By that I mean "Episodes IV-VI" as opposed to the "new trilogy" (a.k.a. the "not-nearly-as-good-as-the-original-but-Lucas-needed-to-put-an-addition-on-his-mansion-or-something-so-he-popped-out-another-three-Star-Wars-movies trilogy").  But of course they're not really the "original" version of those movies, they're the redone versions.  Which inevitably raises three "Star Wars special edition" points in my mind (avoiding any mention of Greedo, or the obvious point that the original Star Wars was a landmark film and it would be really nice if Lucas would continue to make it available as it was originally released, as an object of study if nothing else):

1) The scene with Jabba in the Millenium Falcon's hanger is stupid, looks terrible, and adds nothing to the movies - in fact, it takes away from them.  I wasn't even in the room when it aired this time, but it's very existence continues to bother me to no end.

2) Hayden Christianson now at the end of Return of the Jedi.  Discuss.  (For my money, it makes as much sense as any other actor being there - at least in this case it's someone else who played Anakin Skywalker....)

3) The new music at the end of RotJ.  I think (based on completely unscientific anecdotal evidence) that I may be in the minority on this, but I totally prefer the original, more campy music.  It sounds like what this celebration might have actually been like, rather than simply "score music" which is what it is now.

I realize that in my last post I mentioned that I would be catching up on this year's movies, and here I am posting about movies from thirty years ago.  For this I can only offer the following explanation:
a) I felt like posting something, and in my defense this is the first time I've posted on Star Wars...
b) it's a busy time of year and I haven't made it to the theaters again since Precious
c) part of the reason I haven't made it to the theaters is that I've been busy playing GTA IV, which I also promised in my last post to do.  So I wasn't totally lying.  That game deserves a more detailed posting - which it will get - but suffice to say I'm thoroughly impressed by the complexity and completeness of the world Rockstar has delivered.  And I'm glad that I've progressed far enough in the game that I actually have some "real" ways to make money (granted, most involve criminal activity, but at least I'm being hired for such activities rather than just beating people up in the streets and hoping they have a couple bucks so I can buy a hot dog, which is where I was at in the game a few nights ago).

Okay.  Back to Empire Strikes Back and/or GTA IV for me.  Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night-of-movies-and-video-games-or-whatever-entertainment-floats-your-boat!