Moving

The name of this place no longer makes sense for what I want to post, so go here instead.

Winona as Amanda?

The news from that film factory down south, the vast wasteland known as Hollywood, just keeps getting worse, and I'm not talking about the writers' strike. No, I mean the word that Winona Ryder has been cast as Amanda Grayson, mother of Spock, in the 2008 Star Trek film, the 11th in the series.

My stomach actually lurched. Most of the cast just looks dreadful, but their acting talents are -- to me -- generally unknown, so they might surprise me. That's not the case with Winona, and there's just no freakin' way she can do Amanda Grayson, originally played by the wonderful Jane Wyatt, any sense of justice. This is just frighteningly bad, almost worse than that Speed Racer trailer thingee.

The casting of Simon Pegg gave me hope. Now hope is crushed. What's terrible is knowing that it can get even worse, that they can come up with a real crappy re-design of the Enterprise.

Dear God, no, not Speed....

I take some time off just for the sake of sanity and The Woman Who Currently Wants to Monopolize Me (and may I just say, "Yeehah"), and what do I discover...?

Good Lord, no, stop this thing from happening.

"Move it, Speed, it's getting ugly out there." Well, yeah. Can you hear Don Davis echoes of The Matrix in the music? Can you see the garish color schemes, a la Dick Tracy? Can you sense the deep, probing, inquisitive acting, the sort that makes you long for the soaring talent of, say, Keanu Reeves (can you smell the sarcasm?)?

I hope they refine the CGI because even that looks lousy. Watching this actually make my skin crawl. A mere trailer hasn't done that since, well, the first teaser for Wall-E (and please be good, Wall-E, please, please please).

Nicki Finke has a list of titles for screenplays read and reviewed by varied and sundry Hollywood studios during 2007. The titles on that list sound better than this Speed Racer thingee (it's not really a movie, is it?).

The original Fright Film....

Happy Halloween!

How animation should be done

I grew up in a household of animation. By that I mean that animation was never "cartoons" and never just for kids. My dad worked in film in the San Francisco. For a brief while he owned and operated a small production company. His notable productions were a series of ads for Rice-a-Roni -- which meant we ate lots and lots of Rice-a-Roni for a while -- and a multi-part syndicated history of California.

But his first love was animation. His closest friends and colleagues all worked in animation, either as producers, artists, or animators. I worked with him for close to 10 years and was a very crackerjack animation stand operator. Given a little more ambition and willingness to travel (i.e., to Los Angeles) I might have made it a career. Alas, it was not to be.

I mention all that by way of preface. Because of all that, I love a good animated show. In the United States, unfortunately, this almost always means kids' flicks. In this country we maintain the prejudice that if it's animated it's a cartoon and cartoons are meant for kids. The rest of the world doesn't agree with this, especially Japan.

"Anime" is the name often given to animated films coming out of Japan but I find the name vaguely derogatory. Anime, as a term, seemed to surface as a response to the flatly insulting "Japanimation". Japanimation, in turn, was genuinely lousy animation. Oh, it could be very pretty to look at but the actual animation, the movement, was terrible. Anime was an attempt to improve the product, to improve the animation while maintaining the art. As a term it also was used to separate the Japanese product from its American -- and elsewhere -- counter-part.

But because it came from that entire pit of Japanimation, "anime" always carries with it a certain veneer of cheapness. Anime fanatics will now attempt to murder me in my sleep, but sorry, that's just how I feel. If it makes you feel any better, that's not how I feel about the actual products, the films themselves.

For me, the revelation of anime came with Akira. Real long-term Japanimation/anime fans might point to an early film but for me (and, maybe, most others) Akira is the eye-opener. Released in 1988 it is mostly the result of 100% hand animation. There's nothing computer-generated, though a computer might have been used to calculate some of the actions. Using classic painted animation cels, Akira is a thing of beauty and wonder that earns its R rating the old-fashioned way, by being violent and profane. It's about as far from a kiddie cartoon as a film can be.

And it's animated.

More films followed along, including the Ghost in the Shell films and TV series. The latter rivals any season of 24 yet it's all done with voice talent and drawn images. I'm not enthusiastic of every animated project that oozes from Japan, and some of their shows that are actually aimed at kids are downright awful, but the films, the stuff for the big screen, are just marvelous.

Since winning the Oscar for Spirited Away, most publicity seems to focus on Hayao Miyazaki, but lately I've come to admire the genius of Satoshi Kon. His trifeca of films -- Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Tokyo Godfathers -- demonstrate the talents of a man who loves to make motion pictures. His production timelines are more in line with regular film productions (taking a couple of years as opposed to, say, the 10+ years production schedules that Akira director Katsuhiro Ôtomo took for something like the marvelous Steamboy). Indeed, Satoshi makes regular yet brilliant films; he just happens to use animation instead of actors. Perfect Blue is film in the Hitchcock tradition of psychological thrillers, while Millennium Actress is an exploration of motivations and desires.

As good as those two are, and Perfect Blue is excellent, Tokyo Godfathers is the stand-out. The set-up is simple: Three homeless bums discover an abandoned infant. From that discovery, Satoshi spins a tale of reconciliation and redemption, all so appropriate since it happens on Christmas Day. As is appropriate for the season, there's even a miracle or two. Laced with humor throughout, Tokyo Godfathers nonetheless packs an emotional wallop of the sort similarly themed films desire but never achieve.

And so, since the powers that be never saw fit to release Satoshi's latest in a theatre even remotely near me, I am in anticipation of November 27, the official release date for the DVD of Satoshi's latest, Paprika. This film delves straight into the world of science fiction and the power of dreams and, as with his other films, probably could have been made with live actors working in a CGI world. He remains true to his roots, however, and I anticipate a wild and entertaining ride as a result.

Prestige Pictures

Dirty Harry asks What Happened To The Prestige Picture? and has an answer:

When you look at the best Picture nominees of the last three years it’s astounding to realize that of the 15 nominations, only three cracked the $100 million mark — two by a whisker. The average box office gross of the 2006 nominees was $59 million; in 2005 it was $49 million. Another way to look at it is that 98% of the population just wasn’t interested. 

While there’s still plenty of prestige films left to be released in 2007, as of now things are looking even worse: Michael Clayton, In The Valley of Elah, Lust Caution, Sicko, The Brave One, Eastern Promises, Into The Wild, The Darjeeling Limited, and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, have each been, or are looking to be, very expensive flops… Or, are they?

To call these films failures is fair in the sense that audience indifference is quite spectacular, but not when you take into account that audience reaction had little or nothing to do with their conception. Prestige films are no longer produced for public consumption by moguls eager to feed a public hungry for smart challenging stories –instead they’re produced by Hollywood for Hollywood, and to impress critics, festival-goers, and awards’ judges. It’s easy to blame this shift on an American people eager to see their Transformers, but in fact it’s Hollywood that’s changed.

Nice post, interesting points.

Right, uh-huh, no media bias

This is how the speech is reported:

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) - The U.S. mission in Iraq is a "nightmare with no end in sight" because of political misjudgments after the fall of Saddam Hussein that continue today, a former chief of U.S.-led forces said Friday.

Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded coalition troops for a year beginning June 2003, cast a wide net of blame for both political and military shortcomings in Iraq that helped open the way for the insurgency - such as disbanding the Saddam-era military and failing to cement ties with tribal leaders and quickly establish civilian government after Saddam was toppled.

But that's not the opening subject of Sanchez's speech, this is (original in all-caps, changed here for clarity):

On the other hand, unfortunately, I have issued ultimatums to some of you for unscrupulous reporting that was solely focused on supporting your agenda and preconcieved notions of what our military had done. I also refused to talk to the European Stars and Stripes for the last two years of my command in Germany for their extreme bias and single minded focus on Abu Gharaib.

And:

This is the worst display of journalism imaginable by those of us that are bound by a strict value system of selfless service, honor and integrity. Almost invariably, my perception is that the sensationalistic value of these assessments is what provided the edge that you seek for self agrandizement or to advance your individual quest for getting on the front page with your stories! As I understand it, your measure of worth is how many front page stories you have written and unfortunately some of you will compromise your integrity and display questionable ethics as you seek to keep America informed. [...] For some, it seems that as long as you get a front page story there is little or no regard for the "collateral damage" you will cause. Personal reputations have no value and you report with total impunity and are rarely held accountable for unethical conduct.

This, of course, was not worth reporting.

As for his military assessment of Iraq, I think Allahpundit says it best:

It’s like saying, “Victory is within reach -- if only the American people were completely different.” Thanks for the helpful advice, General.

Arguably the Best Casting Decision in Film History

From Ain't It Cool News, comes this:

Fucking Yippee, Harry Here!!! Ok - I'm in. Simon Pegg as Scotty is as wonderful as an Asian Girl Sandwich night. I'm fucking deliriously happy. This is the first piece of STAR TREK casting that JJ has done that has made me drool with anticipation. The word is that the budget has gotten bigger and bigger and that for the first time in the history of the franchise, STAR TREK is being given a truly epic budget to recreate, conceive and explore Gene's universe. That news and SIMON "fucking" PEGG - make this the happiest day in Trek geek life, other than the day STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN was released.

Sorry, had to leave all the F-bombs and R-spikes in there because it's obvious that Harry is ecstatic, and so am I. The rest of the casting for this film has left me cowering in a corner in fear. This single move, even if of a secondary character, might just save the day.

Yes, I think Simon Pegg is that good.

I Wanna New Phone

I put it in those terms because while my Treo 650 is beginning to show its age, it still (mostly) works. It does randomly stupid things, such as resetting while sitting on the table not being touched, and sometimes the call volume is ridiculously low (though that could just be my ancient and aging ears).

My needs are relatively simple. Anything I buy must do a desktop sync with Outlook. (Don't give me any grief, Outlook works just perfect for me.) I make this demand because I don't want to rekey all my contacts into a new phone, let alone my to-do's and calendar. If it syncs with Outlook then, voila, the phone just populates itself from my existing data.

After this comes my wish list. I'd like to be able to write and edit on any new device. This might be something as simple as entering a note and syncing it into the aforementioned Outlook, or something more complex like Documents-to-Go on the Treo (though Documents-to-Go frankly sucks and was the source of 99% of my Treo problems...until I just deleted the junk).

It would be nice if it played music, but I don't use that feature on my Treo. Thus, a lack of tunes would not cause me to pause. (Speaking of tunes, I'm listening to Steve Jablonsky's wonderful score to Transformers. Perfect music for the film and not half-bad to listen to all on its own.)

My shortlist of finalists includes the Helio Ocean, the T-Mobile Wing, and the forthcoming Sprint Touch. A dark horse candidate is a refurbished 4GB Apple iPhone. Why so specific? Because the theoretical price of such a device would be $250, and that's damn tempting. Of them all, though, the Touch causes me to drool the most.

For instance, the iPhone has some major drawbacks, primarily no solid support of 3rd party applications. Look at the fiasco with the latest 1.1.1 firmware update. It semi-bricked a slew of phones and killed any hacked apps. I don't question Apple's right to do this, since they gave fair warning that such hacks weren't supported, but it accentuates the developer-hostile attitude Apple currently has toward potential iPhone programmers. Things will change, but right now it's a huge red flag waving me away.

Meanwhile, the Ocean syncs with Outlook only on a very basic level and only from a distance. You go through some hoops involving exporting your Outlook contacts to either your Helio web account or another online service (such as Gmail) and then import them into the Ocean. It's a kludge but it works, and there's every potential that in the (near) future Helio will offer full desktop sync between the Ocean and Outlook. But that's speculation and/or wishful thinking.

Which brings me to phones running Microsoft Windows Mobile. Since I want to create and edit documents that narrows me further to the Professional version, which includes, among other things, mobile versions of Word and Excel. (This requirement also excludes the otherwise wonderful T-Mobile Dash.) If high-speed networking isn't an issue, then the Wing wins. Nice touch-screen, neat slide-out keyboard. Memory expandable via some variation of SD chip (micro? mini? whatever?). This is close to being a perfect little smartphone.

I'm less enthralled with some of its cousins, like either the AT&T 8525 or Tilt, or the Sprint Mogul, mostly because of the data plans those companies mandate. This is especially so for AT&T. The cost for each easily exceeds $80 a month for unlimited texting and unlimited data. In contrast, T-Mobile runs around $60 a month, including unlimited text/data. Of course for the extra money both AT&T and Sprint offer much faster data networks, or at least in theory as far as AT&T is concerned. AT&T doesn't offer high-speed networks in my area, so they're pricing is outrageous.

So you might think the Mogul is perfect, but it's heavier than the Wing and costs wads more.

Which returns me to the Wing and the Touch. The Wing would be cheaper to feed each month, i.e., a lower monthly bill, but the Touch is...well, the Touch is just damn gorgeous. To my very biased eye it makes the iPhone look like a hack. It's small, it's elegant, offers full sync with Outlook, gives me access to Mobile Word and Excel (and more), has a useful and (again) elegant home screen, and offers as that brilliant little final touch (ha!), the Touch-Flo interface.

The largest complaints about the original HTC Touch center on the included RAM, the processor speed, and its touchscreen keyboard. The Sprint version offers double the RAM, double the processor, and three keyboard layouts. And if none of those is satisfactory, there are at least two other options available for download and install, either of which looks really, really sweet.

Which, btw, gives a final reason to ignore the iPhone for now. The touchscreen keyboard in the iPhone is very nicely done, in contrast to the standard Windows Mobile software keyboard, yet while Apple actively loathes and shuns 3rd party developers, Microsoft embraces them. Thus HTC was free to develop its Touch-Flo interface on top of Windows Mobile, while other developers were free to develop better software keyboards.

In short, I think I'm willing to pay the higher monthly fee for the Sprint Touch because Sprint offers its high-speed data network in my area, and the Touch meets all my needs. As a bonus, it is just plain geeky cool, hated only by those who are utterly and insanely committed to the Apple iPhone.

The only question is what the initial purchase price will be like, and that should be revealed shortly as the rumored release date for the Sprint Touch is November 4, 2007. If it's too high, well, there's always the Wing to fall back on, and it, too, can use those same software keyboard add-ons. Thus I'm in a win-win situation.

I hope my Treo won't get too depressed.

DVD: Black Book (Zwartboek)

I confess, I am a Paul Verhoeven fan. Even when he stumbles, I'm still entertained. All right, I've never seen Showgirls, so it's possible, even probable, that he's made at least one totally irredeemable film. That said, I'm still a fan.

I discovered this wholly by accident. I saw Robocop, was surprised how much I enjoyed it, and saw that Verhoeven not only directed Robo but had also directed one of my favorite war films, A Soldier of Orange. I hadn't paid attention to who directed Soldier, and so this all came as a pleasant surprise. From then on, I kept a watchful eye for the next Verhoeven film, carefully avoiding Showgirls (which may or may not suck, though I am given to believe that it sucks pretty damn hard, pun possibly intended). And so I got a little depressed when he left the US in search of his cinematic roots. I heard about his next big thing, but until the DVD I wasn't able to at last catch up with Black Book (Dutch title, Zwartboek).

Black Book tells the tale of Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten), a Jewish woman hiding in occupied Holland during World War II. Everyone is on pins and needles in anticipation of the coming Allied liberation. Our heroine is no different; she's riding out the last days of the war hiding in a barn. (Her protectors, btw, are Christian. Their brief moments together are quietly touching.)

All of this comes to an end, though, when an Allied B-17 bomber rumbles overhead, pursued by a German fighter. To shed weight and climb to safety, the bomber is dumping its bombs, and one kills Rachel's benefactors and destroys her hiding place. Lucky for her, she'd just started flirting with a man who now takes her to his place to hide. From there she is lured to a boat that is ferrying Jews out of the country. This goes horribly wrong and she winds up with the Dutch resistance. Yes, it happens just about that fast and easy.

But that's all right because now the story really begins. Black Book is a story of betrayal, and not just a single betrayal but a succession of them. The film proceeds in straight, linear fashion, the twists and turns of the plot revealed to the audience as Rachel experiences them. There's very little that happens that we're allowed to see that she isn't. As a result, Verhoeven forces the audience to go through the same travails as our heroine.

She's not particularly admirable. For the most part, she just wants to stay alive. As a result, she's buffeted by demands on all sides, yielding to those which have the best chance of seeing her survive the day. This slowly becomes not enough and the plot evolves from survival to discovering who is the genuine traitor in their midst.

It's all great fun, in that in-your-face-brutal way that Verhoeven has. Verhoeven has never shied from violence, yet I've never found his films exploitive. Black Book is no exception. There is a particularly brutal and nauseating sequence involving Rachel, as degrading as it can be. What Verhoeven does with such material is present it in a direct, matter-of-fact fashion. He doesn't let his camera linger and he avoid slow motion like the plague that it is. The result is that's he's second only to Michael Mann in realistically depicting violence on the big screen.

That said, Black Book is not Verhoeven at his best, but it is certainly a return to form. It's an intense experience and one fans will applaud. Newcomers might be a little put off, but I think they'll find the experience worthwhile. I was happy to see him present a straight story, and never mind the half-baked allegories or analogies that weaken so many of his films. (For instance, did you know that Starship Troopers was satire? Didn't think so.)

I have a few complaints. First, the film opens in 1956 Israel, with Rachel living in a kibbutz. From there the film is a long flashback. I dislike this film technique in general because it shows a lack of faith in a film's actual opening act, and here it destroys any suspense that should have been growing from Rachel's worsening predicament. We already know she survives, so why should we worry when she's caught, tortured, etc.?

Second, Rachel seems a little too willing to go from one step to the next. Hide? Sure. Hide here? Sure. Jump on that boat? Sure. Join the resistance? Hey, it's the thing to do! Seduce and sleep with a Nazi? Oh, heck yes! On and on. Eventually you come to understand that this is her character, but at first it just seems oh ho-hum and convenient. You actually cheer when she finally says, "Hey, enough!"

Last, Verhoeven very deliberately has the Nazis refer to members of the Dutch resistance as "terrorists". This is in stark contrast to history and reality. It's a less than subtle way of making the inane and insane statement that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". It's stupid, morally bankrupt, mentally lazy, and condescending. Every time a Nazi said, "Terrorist!" I was jarred straight out of the film.

I managed to make it through the film by mentally substituting "member of the resistance" whenever a Nazi said "terrorist". By ignoring the backhanded slap at the United States, I enjoyed Black Book as Verhoeven returning to form and style. If he can avoid silly political commentary, which was just as unsubtle as his films usually are, Black Book may mark the return of a great director.

Iowahawk, Sewer Side Chat

Iowahawk, Sewer Side Chat:

Questioner
Hi, I'm Josh Markin of the ESU Progressive Student Alliance, and I'd just like to say that as a campus activist for peace and justice, that I am totally down with how you have stood up against the fascist neo-Jew GPA thugs at A E Pi, and their plans for busting every grade curve on this campus.

Gromulak
Moje vznášadlo je plné úhorov Gromulak! Pun jegulja loma-làn!

Interpreter
These words please Gromulak! Continue your tribute, Hu-Man!

Questioner
Awesome! But I do have one problem. Warren continues to blame you and the mutant community for the sewage explosion that destroyed Baxter Hall in 2005, even though all the evidence points to an inside job! For example, did you know that sewage doesn't burn? Why did A E Pi have advanced warning? And what about the damage to Rec Building 7? All the facts are in this pamphlet! Why won't you come out and tell the truth that you are innocent, and that Warren's thugs blew up Baxter so he could plant illegal monitoring devices at the sewage pit, and jail mutants without a warrant, and...

Gromulak
Mia kusenveturilo estas plena da angiloj skeertuig is vol palings, loma-làn! Lije k'o iz kabla R'Qqharbok!

Interpreter
Your words grown tiresome like vines of cess algae, Hu-Man! Feast now on his pallid flesh, minions!

Questioner
Whoah! Don't eat me bro! Aaaaah! AAAAAAAH!!

 ROFLMAO!

Amazing article

The New York Times has dropped its "Times Select" subscription nonsense and, as an added bonus, opened up its archives. Which means I can finally link to an amazing article from 2005:

To More Inmates, Life Term Means Dying Behind Bars

Which contains this fascinating insight:

Indeed, in just the last 30 years, the United States has created something never before seen in its history and unheard of around the globe: a booming population of prisoners whose only way out of prison is likely to be inside a coffin.

"Unheard of around the globe"? And precisely what is a "life sentence" supposed to be if it's not life imprisonment? Last, doesn't this undercut the entire argument that life imprisonment is the humane alternative to the death penalty?

I was amazed when I first read this and felt compelled to share.

Never Forgotten

POW's Prayer
By Jean Ray and L. Vancil

Father,
Your own Son was a prisoner.
Condemned, he died for us.
Victorious, He returned to bring us the gift of life everlasting.
Comfort us now in our longing for the return of the Prisoners Of War and those Missing In Action.
Help Us Father;
Inspire us to remove the obstacles.
Give courage to those who know the truth to speak out.
Grant wisdom to the negotiators, and compassion to the jailors.
Inspire the media to speak out as loudly as they have in the past.
Protect those who seek in secret and help them to succeed.
Show us the tools to do Your will.
Guard and bless those in captivity, their families, and those who work for their release.
Let them come home soon.

Thank you Father.
Amen.

(For more information, click here.)

Who is Paul Haggis and why should I care?

Actually, I don't and there's no reason I should. I'm just marveling at how well regarded he is and comparing that to how mediocre his work is. Maybe I'm jealous.

Haggis makes Message Films, and he makes them like that, with capital letters. He's like the noob who discovers the rocket launcher in Quake and that's all he'll ever use. He's like someone who has just discovered all the font possibilities within Word, so he uses all of them.

Consider Million Dollar Baby, written by Haggis. He got an Oscar nomination for the screenplay and the film went on to win the golden guy for best picture. Now I was attracted to see it because a) it was directed by Clint Eastwood and b) I find Hilary Swank to be very gentle on the eyes, even when she's all buffed up as an unstoppable female boxer. That this film should have been great was a no brainer.

Instead, the film literally had no brains and, much worse, assumed the audience had none.

I can't authoritatively comment on the boxing sequences. Some thought they were ludicrous but from a filmmaking point of view they were gorgeous. Tom Stern's photography is above reproach. I was mesmerized.

Then...The Accident. Just like that, with capital letters. Contrived, sure, but here's where the movie goes straight to hell. Swank's character has been portrayed as unstoppable, the sort of person who doesn't believe in giving up. She's a fighter from her toes to her fists to her head. Now...she just quits. I didn't buy it. This change was completely, utterly, and thoroughly not fitting with the character she just oh so carefully crafted.

Worse, she is -- as stated in the movie -- put in this superb extended care facility. And they let her get gangrene and have to amputate her leg? Uh huh, sure. Can you say "automatic malpractice"?

It keeps getting worse. This is in the here and now, in California, and she wants to die so Eastwood must kill her? No, no, no, no! It's a complete lie.

Do you know what it takes to be taken off life-support in the US of A today? You turn to your doctor -- as Swank's character could have -- and say, "Turn that damn thing off."

Done. Switch thrown, plug pulled, adios, senorita, vaya con dios.

In the end, Million Dollar Baby is a huge mess which makes no sense whatsoever. There's no point to any of it. The assisted suicide -- actually murder -- is unnecessary. The end is a fundamental lie.

Haggis returns to this form -- of building a morality tale around a lie or series of lies -- in his Oscar-winning fiasco called Crash. The entire film is contrived, with impossibly over-the-top racist incidents and characters, that come together and equal less than zero. Early on there's a sequence with Larenz Tate and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges that is brilliant. It plays on every racial stereotype applicable at that moment and turns them all into brilliant satire. It made me hope and pray that this was how the entire film was going to go, and that would have been a magnificent thing, but no, it was but a fleeting moment, a golden opportunity lost.

And so now Haggis parades his "technique" and Message again with In the Valley of Elah and by all accounts it's the same crap again: An artificial morality tale spun out of a tissue of slanders and lies.

Who needs this crap?

But this isn't surprising. What's frightening is that he's listed as the screenwriter for the next Bond film. Which only proves that in Hollywood, nothing is sacred.

Maintaining Focus

Mary Katherine Ham remembers September 11, 2001, in visceral terms:

On that day, 19 young men--inhabitants of our country, recipients of our hospitality, beneficiaries of our prosperity, wearing modern clothes to cloak a primitive hatred--turned planes into missiles, passengers into war casualties, and a beautiful Tuesday morning into a day that changed the world forever. They were driven by a radical ideology, a charismatic leader, the funding of villains, and the protection of rogues. They killed 3,000 people that day.

Anna Quindlen remembers to takes advantage of the sixth anniversary of September 11, 2001, to attack Bush. As is the norm, she does so in haphazard fashion, but it was this bit that caught my eye:

Instead of trying to understand and therefore counter the mind-set of those who hate us, and to rally our allies in their communities, American jingoism has produced an ugly strain of anti-Muslim thought and chatter.

For myself, I'm tired of being told that I must try and understand Islamofascists, members of a cult of death. I'm tired of the moral equivalence. I'm tired of hearing the left cry that September 11, 2001, was our fault, that we somehow deserved it. Martin Amis, in remembering the day and describing those who cry for "understanding", writes:

We are drowsily accustomed, by now, to the fetishisation of "balance", the groundrule of "moral equivalence" in all conflicts between West and East, the 100-per-cent and 360-degree inability to pass judgment on any ethnicity other than our own (except in the case of Israel). And yet the handclappers of Question Time had moved beyond the old formula of pious paralysis. This was not equivalence; this was hemispherical abjection. Accordingly, given the choice between George Bush and Osama bin Laden, the liberal relativist, it seems, is obliged to plump for the Saudi, thus becoming the appeaser of an armed doctrine with the following tenets: it is racist, misogynist, homophobic, totalitarian, inquisitional, imperialist, and genocidal.

We are engaged in fighting World War IV. Iraq is not the war, it is a front within a larger conflict. It is no more the entire war against terrorism than the Mediterranean front was the entire conflict during WW II. WW IV is nothing but asymmetrical warfare and it involves ideologies. It is not a case of state versus state, as in WW I, II, and III, but rather it is truly a conflict of civilizations.

On one side is the dark ages proposed by the Islamofascists, as described above by Amis: racist, misogynist, homophobic, totalitarian, inquisitional, imperialist, and genocidal.

On the other is everyone else, which includes Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc., and even atheists, and all their attendant values and beliefs.

September 11, 2001, was not the opening shot of the conflict. Islamofascists had been striking against the west for at least 30 years leading up to 2001. September 11, 2001, was, however, the loudest shot. It was and should remain a clarion call, a brilliant flare revealing the true nature of civilization's dark and loathsome enemy.

I do not have to denigrate Islam to identify the radical ideology hiding within its folds; the villains trumpet their sick interpretations daily. I do not have to invent the hideous nature of the enemy; he reveals it daily with the horrific methods he uses and the innocent targets he selects. I do not have to fabricate his motives; I just have to read his own writings, listen to what he says.

This is nothing new for western civilization, or the United States in particular. There were serious doubts we would prevail against Hitler, yet we did. President Kennedy cautioned about the "long twilight struggle" against Communism, and it was a long struggle, yet in the end, Communism collapsed.

I believe we will prevail again. If we quit Iraq, however, victory will be a long time coming because we will have handed the forces of darkness a tremendous victory. And then one day, be it next year or next decade, they will deliver another blow against our country, something that matches or exceeds September 11, 2001. When that happens, if you actually listen to the Islamofascists, you will hear them say how inspired they were by their defeat of the United States in Iraq.

I wish many of our popular icons would look beyond their hatred for President Bush, the United States, and capitalism in general, and see this. I will not hold my breath waiting for them to open their eyes.

Remembering

There's something about date/day anniversaries that always haunts me. It's one thing to recognize the date; it rolls around every year. But when the date corresponds to the day of the week of the event, the memory is somehow stronger.

Thus, when December 7 rolls around on a Sunday, Pearl Harbor takes on greater meaning. And today is the sixth anniversary of September 11, 2001, and it's on a Tuesday, just as then.

The casualties should have been worse. There have been so many complaints about things that went badly that day, yet the simple fact remains that over 50,000 people could have died, yet so many were saved by planning and training, and quiet acts of anonymous heroism.

The office where I work sits under one of Sacramento International Airport's departure routes. There's always something flying overhead. And that morning I looked up into empty, blue, silent skies.

Evil visited the United States that day, and a clear line was drawn. For over 30 years the United States had stood mute and opted to handle terrorism as a criminal act. For the first time we had a president that said no, that this required a stronger response than issuing an arrest warrant.

So many things went wrong that day, and so many things have gone wrong since then. Yet I thank God for President George W. Bush, flaws and mistakes and all, because he knows the nature of the evil we face, and what must be done to destroy this evil. I agree completely with Dirty Harry:

Six-years later I find comfort in just one thing. The one thing that has kept us safe. It's imperfect, this thing, it makes mistakes. But the only effective weapon we have is George W. Bush's determination to completely and forever destroy the ideology that committed this horrible crime. Knowing that as I write this brave men and women are fighting them where they live means something to me. Means everything.

Today, the animals who hit us six-years ago can be found in Iraq. Al-Queda is in Iraq. Al-Queda is fighting and dying to win Iraq.

God bless our President. God bless our troops.

Amen.

Brian De Palma, BDS victim

Right off the bat I have a confession to make: I think most of Brian De Palma's films are crap. They stink, they're horrible, they're ungood and unwell made. When he makes a good one, it's generally very good, but they are rare exceptions. For every good De Palma film there are several that suck. For every The Untouchables there's...well, everything he's made since, and that's been twenty years.

His latest film, Redacted, premiered at the Venice film festival and left audiences sobbing. What is the source material for this inspirational presentation? The story of several US soldiers in Iraq kidnapping, raping, and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl. As De Palma puts it, he read that account and knew he had a story.

Isn't that nice?

On the surface it sounds like a thin re-tread of his snoozefest, Casualties of War. It, too, involved rape, torture, and murder. It painted the picture that one good soldier comes forward to confess and he's the villain to the "military establishment".

De Palma apparently thinks less of the US military than he does of women, no mean feat. At least with Redacted he's close to telling a true story. But he doesn't make any bones about his intent, which is to smear our troops:

I have done something that just cannot be done. You can never say anything critical of the troops.

He also states quite clearly that he believes his film points out the "truth" of what our troops are doing in Iraq:

The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people.

[...]

The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war.

Will his film point out that the soldiers in question -- those involved in the heinous crimes that inspired his fictional rendition -- were caught, tried, and convicted. The minimum sentence handed down was five years, the longest is 110 years, which I'm pretty sure translates to life imprisonment. I also believe at least one is facing execution. (This reality, by the way, utterly discredits his portrayal of the US military in Casualties, an irony I'm sure he'll miss.)

It's amazing to me that so many filmmakers take the De Palma tack. They see a criminal act and that inspires them to tell a story. Countless acts of common heroism don't. The parade of sacrifices that are quietly made by our men and woman in uniform don't. The mad acts of criminals do. The abusive and criminal behavior of a few attract their eye, while they are blind to everything else. Then, to their shame, they weave tales that imply that the aberration is the norm. (Why am I surprised? They believe how they think and act are the norms.)

A new wave of crap is coming from Hollywood to round out the year. It will be high quality crap. That is to say, it will be well-made, but it will still be crap because most will be based on a fundamental lie. The lie? That the few aberrant members of the military represent the military as a whole.

This is Hollywood's mantra, its creed, its belief. The participants, like De Palma, are clueless and wonder why they are treated with disgust and disdain.

The Smugness of Apple

Steve Jobs danced across the stage today, introducing a new collection of iPods. There weren't many surprises. Actually, were there any surprises?

Well, yes. The prices were surprising. First, wow, what a slap to anyone who ran out and bought an iPhone. A wait of 69 days saves you a cool $200! At $399, the 8GB iPhone begins to look attractive. It's biggest failing, for me, is the inability to create Word or Excel documents. You can look at them, but don't touch, let alone create. This is just a software revision away, but since the iPhone is a closed development environment -- unless you want to hack it open and risk voiding warranties, etc. -- I'm not holding my breath.

Still, even lacking that the iPhone is now a serious contender as Bob's Next Phone. I gave up on Documents to Go on my Treo 650 since it was the source of almost every problem I had on the Treo. Since then, I haven't edited much of anything on the Treo. If the iPhone has some basic editor, something to jot little notes into that will then sync with Outlook, I might be tempted. Absent that, the music and video features of the iPhone aren't enough to stop me from leaping to T-Mobile (I'm currently an AT&T subscriber) and grabbing a Wing (for $100 after assorted rebates).

In fact, on ninth thought, if I do that I'll have $300 for a portable media player (PMP), assuming I want to spend as much as on an iPhone alone. That means the newly revised and re-priced and re-named iPod Classic 80GB model is within range. $250 for 80 gigs is better than great. Off the top of my head I can't think of another PMP that matches that capacity for that price.

For that price and with that capacity I might opt to re-rip my library into Apple lossless format (ALAC) and fit a fair amount of my stuff onto the iPod. Or I can leave well enough alone and bring roughly 90% of my entire library into the iPod. Or I can get ornery, install Rockbox, and re-rip everything into FLAC. Oh, the vast temptations.

Or I can save some money and just get a new 4GB iPod Nano. Leave well enough alone on my file formats, which sound just fine on my system and to my ears, and save $100 in the deal. Oh, I bet Apple is just smug as a bug in the rug seeing me seethe with this many options.

Me, looking at an iPod. Who knew?

AFP demonstrates how well they check facts

I mean, this is hilarious!

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia plans to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2025 and wants to build a permanent base there shortly after, the head of Russian space agency Roskosmos said Friday.

"According to our estimates we will be ready for a manned flight to the Moon in 2025," Anatoly Perminov told reporters. An "inhabited station" could be built there between 2027 and 2032, he said.

The only moon landing in history is NASA's Apollo expedition in 1968.

(Emphasis mine.)

First the unfired bullets that were "shot" at the old woman's home, now this. And in case you just tuned in, December 1968 was when Apollo 8 first orbited the Moon. The US landed on the Moon in July 1969. We did it again five more times, the last one being Apollo 17, in December 1972.

So if the illustrious French news agency can't get some basic, obvious, simple history right, what does that say about the rest of their "reporting"?

And I thought reading about pompous and obtuse Brian DePalma was funny.

HT: Hot Air.

Olive Opus No.5 = Heaven on Earth

I want one. Simple as that. Once acquired I'd just have to piece together a worthy stereo. Click logo to see why.

The dissident frogman instructs AFP

I short while ago, AFP posted a bogus picture from Iraq, complete and utter hogwash to anyone who knows even a little about guns and bullets.

The Dissident Frogman shows us how and why it was bogus, plus instructs AFP on how to minimize future bogosity, with his posting Like a suppository, only a bit stronger.

Excellent. 

Martin Lewis calls for a coup d'etat; what a maroon!

He asserts to General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs:

You can relieve the President of his command.

Not of his Presidency. But of his military role as Commander-In-Chief.

You simply invoke the Uniform Code Of Military Justice.

He tries to dodge accusations of a coup by writing:

To be crystal clear - I am NOT advocating or inciting you to undertake any illegal act, insurrection, mutiny, putsch or military coup. You are an honorable patriotic man.

I am NOT advocating or inciting you to interfere with any of the civilian duties of the President. That would not be a legal action by you.

His bio reads:

Martin Lewis is a British-born, Hollywood-based humorist, commentator, producer and radio host.

Maybe I should be kind and just consider this a pathetic attempt at humor. He is, after all, a humorist, oh haha, it is to laugh. Absent humor, though, I'm left with only one conclusion, that he's an an idiot.

Captain Ed neatly sums up why this is so:

Lewis quotes extensively from the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but clearly his scholarship does not extend to the Constitution. The command of the armed forces follows from the president's election to office, and cannot be separated from the office itself. Bush isn't C-in-C because he got appointed to that position, but because the American electorate voted him into that role. In other words, the military cannot arrest the C-in-C but leave the President in power, and to argue otherwise is to demonstrate complete ignorance.

Captain Ed also points out that this is the sort of thing that gives banana republics a bad name.

This is just another example of what I keep seeing from those on the left. They advocate the most horrendous things because they don't act from principle, but from their loathing of President Bush. Indeed, they eagerly sacrifice all principles in an insane desire to see Bush destroyed.

Fooles!

UPDATE: Ah ha, it was a joke. Oh ho ho ho. I love his implied comparison to Swift. Now that is funny! Of course, if I understand his allusions to Swift's A Modest Proposal, when Lewis writes:

To be crystal clear - I am NOT advocating or inciting you to undertake any illegal act, insurrection, mutiny, putsch or military coup. You are an honorable patriotic man.

I am NOT advocating or inciting you to interfere with any of the civilian duties of the President. That would not be a legal action by you.

...he is advocating the undertaking of illegal acts and is inciting Pace to "interfere with ... the civilian duties of the President." (See Wikipedia's illustration of Swift's device in slamming the very reforms he was advocating.)

All of this, of course, undercuts any claim of, "Oh ha ha ha, wingnuts can't take a joke, just kidding, guys, titter giggle." It does, however, illustrate that he is singularly lacking humor. And confirms he's an idiot, just as a bonus.

Just so we analyze our satire properly.

Bond versus Bourne

First, let me note that this is a thought exercise about fictional characters. There is no real "James Bond", there is no real "Jason Bourne". You could argue that Bond is closer to reality since author Ian Fleming based much of his writing on his own experiences, but that's a stretch.

What makes this interesting, though, is that the debate keeps cropping up. Matt Damon was quoted in the UK, at the opening his the third Bourne film, saying that Bond sucked. I don't know if anyone solicited a response from the current Bond actor, Daniel Craig.

Then a commentary on MSNBC declares essentially the same thing, that Bond is a has-been and that Bourne more accurate reflects our modern, complicated world.

I gag.

I haven't yet seen the third Bourne film. I'll probably wait for the DVD, since that's how I've seen the first two. I enjoyed the first and was pleased with the second. I have mixed feelings about the third. Why? Because near the beginning of the second they killed off Maria (Franka Potente). From perusing the novels I knew this was a change made by the screenwriters, since she's a character in the third novel. So what would they do to the book in order to make it work?

Also the stridently anti-American tone gets nauseating. The Bourne movies trot out the usual leftist nonsense that capitalism is inherently evil. The CIA brainwashes "recruits" and turns them into lethal, unstoppable killers (via Project Treadstone). Every mission of Bourne's that we're given insight into is a political hit job, an inconvenient African dictator here, a Russian reformer there. Meanwhile, there are corrupt CIA officials at every turn, driven by personal greed, and even the Russian capitalist is horribly corrupt.

Clear message: The CIA sucks, the US is horrible, capitalism is the root of all evil.

Pay too close attention to these details and the Bourne movies become boring. Ignore them and the films are, at the very least, entertaining. The least offensive is the first, the second is tolerable, I am in fear of the third.

Compare this to Bond. First, there's sheer longevity. Damon's pontifications remind me of some young buck in a high school boxing ring talking smack about the current heavyweight champion of the world. Maybe he'll have something to say when the 20th Bourne movie is completed. Until then, there is no other movie series on Earth (that I'm aware of) that matches the Bond series. It even survives regular infusions of new talent, i.e., new actors playing Bond. That's usually the kiss of death. For Bond, it's business as usual.

Now Bond has had its string of silliness. The worst of the Bond films all involve implausible attempts to take over the world. The formula was silly from the beginning and only got worse. But even accepting these, one thing always stands clear: Bond stands for something, and it's always for the right.

What modern critics and actors find deplorable about Bond is that he is a member of Her Majesty's Secret Service and is loyal to his country first, freedom second. Compare this to Bourne, who is loyal to...partying? I mean, once he gets the CIA off his back in the first film he's off to hook back up to Maria and get down to some serious "living".

Wow, inspirational.

Bond, you see, is a hero, while Bourne, you see, is a victim. In today's world, we seem driven to praise victims and throw away our heroes. We call them archaic and out of date. Puts me in mind of the C.S. Lewis quote: "We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

Not that Bond is always acting honorably. He is, after all, a government-sanctioned assassin (what it means to be a "double-oh"). But consider that all we see Bourne doing is either acting at the behest of evil men or being purely reactionary to someone attempting to kill him. Bourne stands for precisely nothing, and we absolve him of his loathsome past because he can't remember it. I imagine that's some mild comfort for his victims.

I have read that in the third film Bourne can't remember the names of any of his victims but he keeps seeing their faces, and these memories torture him. He feels remorse, as if that's the important thing. In contrast, say these same critics, Bond is like an impersonal robot, killing without feeling or remorse. This is the meme that the left prefers, emotion over reality. Bourne feels remorse so he is absolved, despite the inherent evil behind his deeds; Bond doesn't express remorse so he is evil, despite the inherent good behind his deeds.

From everything I've read about actual combat, from talking with people who have actually killed someone while in some form of combat, Bond is closer to reality than Bourne. At the time of the event there is no time for remorse, no opportunity to second guess. You perform as trained and, if you do it right, the other guy is dead and you are alive. Later, afterwards, at the debrief or at home, you'll drain and run through the event a few hundred times. But during the job, while on the mission...a professional hasn't time for such things.

But then, Bourne isn't a professional while Bond is. It may come down to nothing more complicated than that. I prefer the dedicated professional, and so Bond always trumps Bourne.

A fable too over-the-top for Hollywood?

 I had to wonder when I found this jewel:

Most of us, myself included, tend to take our democratic institutions for granted. They were there when we were born. They were there for 200+ years. The idea that the US could somehow no longer be a representative democracy does not resonate at the gut-level, even when events should demonstrate the vulnerability of our system.

Yet, twice in the last 4 decades, the US Constitution has come very close to extinction. Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, each occurred in the setting of a war begun with a series of lies, and continued beyond the point when everyone knew the ultimate outcome would be unaffected, but was pursued just for the vanity of those in power.

He is, of course, referring to then-Nixon and now-Bush.

He starts his hyperbole by praising a judge for getting angry and imposing a maximum sentence as a result of that anger. Given almost any set of principles, no one would support a judge acting out of anger. The reality is that they do, but it's not something that is praiseworthy. Yet this guy does find it praiseworthy because he isn't commenting from principle, he's just anti-Republican so he doesn't care why the judge acted like he did.

As a result of the judge's anger, varied and assorted people turn on Nixon, and Watergate comes to light. All fine and good until...

Without Judge Sirica, there would have been no John Dean, no special prosecutor, and no impeachment.

Uh, Paul, there was no impeachment, with or without Judge Sirica. Nixon wasn't impeached. Maybe I should say that a third time: Richard M. Nixon wasn't impeached. There is evidence to support the position that he was about to be impeached, but he resigned before it could happen, so it never happened. There was no impeachment. Those leaning leftward ho like to ignore that because they can't stand the fact that the only president impeached in the 20th century was, ahem, a Democrat.

It was clear I was reading a tale from an alternate universe. I read on:

Dallek's book, "Nixon and Kissinger", indicates that both realized they could start ending the Vietnam war in 1971, but wanted to wait so it would not impact Nixon's re-election chances---i.e., ~20,000 additional Americans lost their lives for Nixon's re-election.

Uh, that's not right either. It's unclear where he starts/stops his calculations, but according to Wikipedia US KIA's in Vietnam from 1970 through 1973 were less than 10,000. (There entry, inexplicably, then totals casualties from 1974 through 1998.) If you don't include 1970 then US KIA's were less than 3,000. So where in the wide, wide world of statistics does this guy get his figure of 20,000?

Who knows? He never sources anything. Besides, it soon became clear that he was too busy fabricating a vast right-wing conspiratorial coup attempt that was thwarted...by Hurricane Katrina.

That's when I realized I was reading the outline for a work of alternate reality fiction, so I stopped. It was so boringly familiar, but even by the standards of today's Hollywood, it's all so very over the top.

When did Macs become cost competitive?

Well, actually they haven't, but Mac software is. No, it's more accurate to say Mac software is kicking Windows ass.

Microsoft has a pricing plan for Vista that can charitably be described as a "scheme". It also doesn't make a lick of sense to me. To make matters worse, the reality is that if/when you buy a copy of the software you get all versions on your DVD. Your activation code determines which version installs, that's all. What this means is that at any time you can pay for an "upgrade" and unlock additional "features".

What this means is that MS is leveraging their vast majority share of the operating system market. They are also complicating the hell out of buying decisions.

In contrast, Apple is suddenly becoming nimble (in addition to already being arrogant, smug, and conceited). The latest Mac operating system retails at around $150. Period. End of story. Does MS Windows Vista Ultimate Mind-boggling Confused Version do anything that one-size-fits-all Mac OS X doesn't? Not that I've seen. Well, the box is a little spiffier.

This last week, Apple announced an overhaul of the iMac line. It's impressive, but not the big story to me. That rests with iWorks '08, a suite of applications in the same vein as Microsoft Office. Certainly it was originally meant to complete with the crippled and rotten MS Works, but iWorks '08 appears, on first blush at least, to aim right at Office.

And again, it's one-size-fits-all...for $80.

The cheapest version of MS Office 2007 is the Home and Student version, which runs $150 (hunt around and you get can find it for $110). For half the retail price of H&S, a Mac user gets everything Office has to offer and maybe more. Suddenly there's no great worry that MS has delayed the next rendition of Office for Mac.

So when did this happen? Mac hardware is overpriced, period. You can argue that it's elegant, stylish, sweet to touch and use, and smells great after taking out the garbage, but so what? Same may be said about a Lexus, but not all of us live on a Lexus budget, and my VW does the job, thank you very much.

And yet, Mac software, at least in terms of OS and basic applications, is priced at budget-friendly levels. Why the contradiction?

I think it's because making stylish aluminum computer shells can be pretty expensive. There are all sorts of flourishes on an iMac, for example, that must just drive the price upwards. Some are needless complications that while elegant merely add to the possibilities of hardware breakdown (slot-loading optical drive, for example; oh joy when the feed motor breaks down). Also driving the price are the display sizes; the smallest is now 20 inches.

In terms of software, however, we're talking about packaging bits. Literally. And I think the Apple software developers spent their time and effort not expanding features, but paring features down. They cover that essential 10%, that portion that all users need and use all the time, then added just enough to make the package attractive.

Of course, the low cost of the software may be attributable to the high cost of the hardware. I am not going to buy either OS X or iWorks to run on either my DIY desktop or Gateway laptop because Apple says, "Nyet! Not allowed, nekulturny!" Only a Mac user is going to buy either, and Apple has already sucked their marrow via the hardware cost.

Alas, this is all a thought exercise since I'm not about to jump to MacHardware soon, if ever. When it comes to actually doing something they don't do anything I don't already do on my Windows XP PC's. This statement of fact annoys Mac fanboys, who cry, "Begone, foul one!"

Must see film of the year?

Oh yeah, time is running out...

Ban dihydrogen monoxide now!

Priceless...

HT: HotAir.

For more info on the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide, go here. If you're not laughing, then go here for research on "sense of humor".

My blog is rated...

Wow, right on target...

Man on the Moon

38 years ago yesterday, we landed on the Moon. Ever since, the space program -- around the world -- has gone backwards. Almost immediately after Neil Armstrong transmitted, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. Eagle has landed", President Nixon started hacking at NASA's budget. Congress followed suit and that's been the trend and pattern ever since.

The engineering nightmare known as the space shuttle was the result, an under-funded, under-engineered, over-wrought, half-assed manned space vehicle that has never lived up to a single promise. Most stories in the press blame NASA but the real blame lies with the political leadership of the United States. NASA said the shuttle would cost X and Congress told NASA it could have three-fourths of X. NASA cowered and said, "Okay." Congress then gave them one-half X. On and on, asking for more while paying less. NASA's "fault" lay in never saying, "Well, that's not enough to make this thing work."

You can tell just how lousy the shuttle is by looking at its proposed replacement, the Ares (I, IV, and V) launch vehicle and the Orion crew capsule, which looks suspiciously like the very successful Saturn/Apollo combo.

Today the Moon is lost. Bush talks about returning, but there's no fire to the proclamation or the project. No one is trying to grab the public's imagination about space. It's as though the combined efforts of Star Trek and Star Wars were focused on making space boring. For many there's a sense of "been there, done that". Other trot out the old crap about how we must focus our efforts here on the ground before we return our attention to the stars.

Oh my and wow, that's inspirational.

Burt Rutan pegged it 100% when he said that NASA screwed the pooch when it dismissed the "Face on Mars" as a trick of light, shadows, and weather. If they had played it as a mystery to be solved NASA would have had funding for a hundred years.

We need a Delos D. Harriman, The Man Who Sold the Moon (by Robert A. Heinlein). We need that fire, that passion, that desire, and that obsession.

We live on a pale blue dot, floating in the vastness of space and time. Microscopic brains maintain we must focus on the here and now, but the Apollo program was a vision of the future. One that we turned away from.

I watched the US space program evolve as I grew up. It was a natural progression, from simple ballistic shells to the ability to travel to the Moon. It just required an application of national will. It seemed natural that having landed on the Moon we would exploit that knowledge. Something like the now-proposed Ares spacecraft would have been a natural, something larger and more capable than the Saturn.

The old adage is that once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere. The most difficult part of any space mission is getting off the planet, out of our gravity well. If we had continued to explore the Moon we would have had to develop a more permanent presence there. Once that was done, materials from the Moon could have been "dropped" into Earth orbit for building...anything. Much easier to drop from the Moon than lift off Earth.

Again, this would have required vision, dedication, and the will and desire to achieve. Instead, we walked away. Apollo 18 sits on the lawn in Houston, a fully operational Saturn V rocket unused and wasted.

I scan the news in vain to see something commemorating this date in history. Nothing. Ares and Orion are an effort to return us to where we were 38 years ago. Someone should take note. If all goes as planned, we'll have lost 50 years on our quest into space.

If.

I look around, listen to our national leaders, see the trend towards introspection toward no end, with no purpose other than narcissism, and a turning away from exploration, from the thrill of discovery. I am not optimistic.

Harry Potter and the Transformers

A two-fer deal here, since neither is very long....

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books. I've tried, and a friend gave me a paperback copy of the first, but it fails utterly to grab my interest. The first two films are snooze-worthy. While the first does a decent job of introducing everyone, the second isn't worth remembering. I didn't bother to see the third at the theatre because the second was so...dull.

That was a mistake. The Prisoner of Azkaban was superb and proved that the problem with the first two films was the director. The Goblet of Fire, the fourth film, continued the trend with yet another director, and now I'm completely hooked. Happily, The Order of the Phoenix, the fifth film, continues the trend. Mostly.

I qualify that because not a lot really happens. Indeed, in terms of the series as a whole, Order completes its task within the last half hour or so. Most everything else is just fluff. Thankfully, it's pleasant fluff and David Yates does a decent job of it, though he's no match for either Alfonso Cuarón (Prisoner) or Mike Newell (Goblet). Some little but key details get introduced, including the creation of Dumbledore's Army.

The film belongs firmly to Harry Potter which is good and bad. I've come to believe that Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Grainger are to the Potter universe what Kirk, McCoy, and Spock were to the original Star Trek, and the stories work at their best when the three work together. Here, Potter takes center stage and that leaves Ron and Hermione in the wings, gathering dust. Sad and hopefully corrected in the next film.

And having seen all this setup here, I'm ready for The Half-Blood Prince, also being directed by Yates. Alas, we must all wait until November 2008. And even longer for The Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final film.

Transformers

I hated these toys when they were big and famous. I loathed the TV show. It made my skin crawl when my young son played with these things, coddled in his desire by his mother and cruel grandparents (j/k). Transformers, more than meets the eye my left butt-cheek.

But this film.... Oh. My. God.

Shallow characters? Yes. Beyond simplistic plot? Yes. Ridiculous situations and dialogue? Yes. Doesn't matter, don't care, ate it up, loved it.

First there are the visuals. ILM goes beyond great here. You watch this film and you know that has to be a CGI special effects shot because cars just don't do things like that, like change into two-legged robots complete with cannons and rockets. Yet there is never a moment when the VFX fails and jolts you out of the film's reality. You just accept the fact that there are these enormous robots that can fold themselves into the shape of cars. You start to wonder how Michael Bay et al managed to get their hands on such super-secret military hardware.

Speaking of Michael Bay, he was either born to direct this film or was genetically engineered to do so. I'm not a huge fan of his work. The Rock, er, rocks, while Pearl Harbor, well, just sinks. Here, though, there's evidence that Steven Spielberg reined him in just enough to make it all work. Bay films have always portrayed the US military in a good light, and this film is no different. And it just all works because paper thin plot and all, everyone is working the problem and politics are completely tossed into the shredder.

The film bombards you with Moments. Just like that. Moments, with a capital "M". You see a lot of them in the various previews, clips, and trailers on the Internet. A stand-out occurs during the climatic firefight on a city street, where an Autobot (Transformer talk for "good guy") fires into the ground to launch himself into the air, up and over an innocent bystander, who gaps in ultra close-up horror as this multi-ton thing flies just over her hairdo and onto the other side while twisting in air, transforming an arm into another weapon to block and incoming round from a Decepticon (Transformer talk for "bad guy"), and while doing that returns fire all done in perfect slow motion, and I generally hate slow motion but not here.

The film does stunts like that all the time and gets away with it every time. Some have complained that the action is filmed too close-up, so that often the fights look like rolling heaps of trash cans lacking form or definition. I agree, to an extent. I think the intent was to film those moments from the point of view of the humans involved, and looked at that way it works perfectly.

That's my quibble for Transformers. The film flat-out rocks. No, it's not as good as Ratatouille (But really, what is?), but it's a very good summer action film that delights the eye and captures the imagination.

How did they know...?

I'm a Porsche 911!

You have a classic style, but you're up-to-date with the latest technology. You're ambitious, competitive, and you love to win. Performance, precision, and prestige - you're one of the elite,and you know it.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Talent, Lifer, Mandarin...?

I'm a Talent!

You're a risk-taker, and you follow your passions. You're determined to take on the world and succeed on your own terms. Whether in the arts, science, engineering, business, or politics, you fearlessly express your own vision of the world. You're not afraid of a fight, and you're not afraid to bet your future on your own abilities. If you find a job boring or stifling, you're already preparing your resume. You believe in doing what you love, and you're not willing to settle for an ordinary life.

Talent: 59%
Lifer: 31%
Mandarin: 41%

Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.

Misery Business

Awesome, simply awesome....

New style of remake: Steal, no credit

Or at least, that's how it appears at the moment.

You have the latest Jodie Foster film, The Brave One, which looks an awful lot like an old Charles Bronson film, namely Death Wish.

The setup and premise is a virtual carbon copy: Loving couple broken apart when one spouse is brutally killed. In the case of The Brave One, they're out for a walk and get mugged; in the case of Death Wish, it's a home invasion robbery. Foster's character is unsatisfied with the "progress" being unmade in finding her husband's killer, so she goes on the hunt herself, popping bad guys while seeking The bad guy. Bronson was more straight-forward; he just starts striking back at muggers and the like and by accident -- or so it seemed -- he does eventually kill his wife's killers.

Death Wish was raked over the critical coals as providing provocation for vigilantes. Since The Brave One has a more A-list director (Neil Jordan), plus stars Foster, it will probably get better treatment.

The point here, though, is that I don't see any credit being given to Brian Garfield, who wrote the novel Death Wish, or Wendell Mayes, the screenwriter. And it's not as if the similarities aren't obvious.

I was going to name The Invasion as another example, but then I jumped to the IMDB entry and, voila, my worries were unfounded. Jack Finney and Invasion of the Body Snatchers get full and proper credit.

Still wondering about Foster's film, though.

iDon't Want One

As I've mentioned, Jeff Kirvin and I don't see eye to eye on politics, but when he's buzzing on technology, he's spot on more often than not. In The iPhone is a bad phone he writes:

Let’s look at this objectively. This is, at minimum, a $500 phone that has no tactile feedback for dialing, no voice dial, no smart dial (ie dialing 5478 to narrow your contacts to KIRV), no Bluetooth stereo headset support, no dial-up networking support for an attached computer, 2.5G data that is normally about 2-3 times dial-up modem speed, no video recording, no MMS for sending pictures, only takes pictures at 2MP and automatically resizes them to VGA for email (no way to override either of those sizes). The SIM card is removable and will work in other devices, but other SIMs will not work in this GSM world phone, so you’ll have to pay AT&T roaming charges to use this outside the US. Unlike every other phone available today, there is no free 14-day grace period and if you buy an iPhone today and return it tomorrow, you’ll have to eat a 10% ($50-60) restocking fee. The battery is not only not removable, and when it dies (after 300-400 full charges) you have to send it back, for a fee, to Apple and get it replaced, meaning you’ll be without your cell phone for Apple’s standard 3 business days. And as for talk time, Mobile Tech Review reports that an hour long call dropped the battery to 15%.

And in his follow-up, iPhone Hands-on, he goes on...

In many ways, the iPhone reminds me of the HTC Touch in reverse. While both devices sport finger-friendly and artistically gorgeous home screens, on the Touch you find yourself digging for the stylus and familiar Windows Mobile complexity once you get past the veneer. On the iPhone, by contrast, once you get past the beauty and style of the UI, you pretty much have nothing.

Like Jeff, I don't understand the insane desire for an iPhone that grips these people. Then again, I didn't understand the insane desire that gripped people when they had to have a Mac. It's a purely aesthetic appeal that appeals to me not.

There's little that the iPhone does that my 2+ year old Treo 650 can't do already, including suffering with AT&T EDGE connect speeds. This first generation iPhone is horribly crippled, yet the style conscious line right up. Remember the striper in Independence Day, as she looked up at the alien ship and cooed, "Pretty!" And then she and the rest got blasted.

The iPhone is a barely adequate phone and it doesn't do any of the things I assume a "smartphone" should do (e.g., create and edit Word and Excel documents). Thus, as my Treo begins to flake and I approach the end of my indentured servitude with AT&T, I look elsewhere, and the current gem in my eye is the Sprint Mogul. The Mogul is a true smartphone, does pretty much everything the iPhone does (albeit without the same grace and style; whoop), plus: accesses a true 3G network; edits/creates Word, Excel, and even OneNote files (once you install the OneNote app, included when you buy the desktop version); costs $100 less than the iPhone; and has a data plan that's a shade more expensive than the cheapest AT&T iPhone plan, but that includes unlimited text messages, unlimited data access, plus a slew of other features either not offered or unsupported on the iPhone.

All I "lose" is the 4GB/8GB internal memory, a problem that is cured, as far as I'm concerned, by the the MicroSD slot built into the Mogul, for effectively unlimited memory expansion.

Hmm, let me think. Cheaper, faster, more capable, better phone and data plan for about the same rate.... Tell me again how great the iPhone is(n't).

Jetsetters Pave, er, Save the Planet

Oh, I feel so relieved. For a moment there I almost thought that there was an issue with climate change, global warming, and catastrophic weather change. But given the number of "Live Earth" concerts that are going off, apparently all is well. I come to this conclusion by the simple logic that if things were really, really horrible, the concert participants -- good little stewards of the world that they are -- wouldn't be barfing so much carbon into the air as they go about lecturing the rest of us. With song.

I don't give a fig about "carbon offsets" and being "green". My lifestyle is more green than any of those involved in this fiasco; every Greenpeace test I take tells me so. That's irrelevant, however. The problem with carbon offsets is that they don't address what is purported to be the issue, i.e., pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That you can offset this by purchasing an indulgence from someone else misses the point. You're still dumping the stuff into the atmosphere, which the harpies say is bad, bad, bad, get it!?!

The Goreacle's home electrical bill is higher than the average American pays in a couple of years, yet he pleads "green" because he can pay someone else to assume the punishment for his carbon sins. Everyone involved in this entire Live Earth fiasco behaves the same way. They zoom about in their private jets, limos, buses, trucks, and cars (oh my) and scream, "Green!" because somewhere someone else is paying the price for their fun in the sun.

It's a corrupt system built for hypocrites. If the problem is that humans are dumping too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the solution is to reduce the dump. This is what they scream. Hell, that will be the message on endless parade during the concert(s). The entire affair will involve a small circle of elitists lecturing us, the great unwashed, on how we should behave. We must reduce our carbon footprint so they can fly with Gulfstream pride.

These same saviors of the planet dismiss any suggestion about adaptation. If I take everything they say as true, then the change is upon us; the disaster has happened, we'd better get used to it. If Kyoto were fully implemented it might have an effect in 50+ years, and more likely wouldn't make a difference until 2100 (assuming Kyoto becomes the norm, rather than -- as currently written -- expiring in 2012). In the meanwhile...?

And I haven't even gotten into the hubris these righteous folk display in declaring that the weather they grew up with, that they enjoyed last week, is how it must be and ever shall remain.

For some strange reason, I grew up learning the notion that the weather changes, that the planetary climate is always in a state of change. I never expected that how it was when I was a lad was how it would be today. Somehow I remember all the lectures about the "little ice age" and solar variances and how the planet was sweltering hot at times in the past and frozen solid at others, and that our planet would continue to change until the day our sun swells up, cooks us, and dies of boredom. It was and is a given that we must adapt to the planet.

Now we have these enlightened souls who declare that we have altered the planet and that we have the power to alter it back. What a quaint notion. Never mind that the cost (both in terms of lives lost and money spent) for "correcting" the "problem" is greater than the cost (both in terms of lives lost and money spent) imposed by the "problem". And heaven forfend if we should discuss adaptation rather than offsets.

Meanwhile, their actions belie their words. Have a great concert, hypocrites!

UPDATE:

Courtesy of the Brits...

A Daily Mail investigation has revealed that far from saving the planet, the extravaganza will generate a huge fuel bill, acres of garbage, thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions, and a mileage total equal to the movement of an army.

The most conservative assessment of the flights being taken by its superstars is that they are flying an extraordinary 222,623.63 miles between them to get to the various concerts - nearly nine times the circumference of the world. The true environmental cost, as they transport their technicians, dancers and support staff, is likely to be far higher.

The total carbon footprint of the event, taking into account the artists' and spectators' travel to the concert, and the energy consumption on the day, is likely to be at least 31,500 tonnes of carbon emissions, according to John Buckley of Carbonfootprint.com, who specialises in such calculations.

Throw in the television audience and it comes to a staggering 74,500 tonnes. In comparison, the average Briton produces ten tonnes in a year.

Hey, hey, hey, their intentions are good. They just have an issue practicing what they preach is all.

(HT: Hot Air.)

The wonder of Ratatouille

I have this fantasy. I imagine the day when US animators start treating their art like their Japanese brethren, as a means of making film that isn't limited to a kid's audience. Consider Paprika, a very R-rated animated film, or Akira or the entire Ghost in the Shell series. The mind boggles at what might result if a talent such as Brad Bird, backed by a studio like Pixar, took on a more adult project, like Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light. (An interesting story of a cancelled film version may be found here.)

Until then, we have Ratatouille. It might be an over-statement to call Ratatouille the best film of the year, but not by much. Certainly if Beauty and the Beast can get such a nomination, this film can because it is far more deserving. Ratatouille raises the bar in so many ways it's amazing to consider that it is "merely" an animated film. Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) rules animation the same way that light and air rule your life; there really is no substitute.

Plot-wise, this is not a complex or subtle film. It's message is plainly stated: "Not everyone can be an artist, but an artist can come from anywhere." From that simple premise, Bird weaves a story that is only predictable in the sense that it will have a happy ending. Beyond that it is always inventive and visually rich beyond words. There are lovely touches everywhere and while we expect high standards from a Pixar film, this production goes even higher. In so many ways it makes Pixar's past triumphs, even Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc., look like little more than paint-by-numbers.

For instance, there is a moment near the end of the film that is pure and visual, making a point without a word being spoken. Yes, it's cliché, but it is "told" with such exuberance and joy that cliché is tossed into the trash and you laugh out loud at what you're seeing. It's clear in that moment, and throughout the production and in his past works, that Brad Bird doesn't just enjoy making animated films, he loves them. He revels in animation in ways no one else in the industry does. Other Pixar animators obviously enjoy the craft, but there is so much love and grace and beauty and talent in Bird's films that all others are left at the starting gate.

Yeah, I'm that big of a fan.

Peter O'Toole has a promising new career as voice talent for animated films. His performance as Anton Ego, lethal food critic, is priceless. He's backed up by a marvelous character design and a series of deft touches: When viewed from the back, parts of Ego's typewriter form the shape of a leering skull; when looked at from above, his room is shaped like a coffin. On and on, each visual cue adding to the personality that O'Toole's voice is building.

In comparison, everyone else is merely great, and this includes Patton Oswalt (who?), Lou Romano, Brian Dennehy, and Ian Holm. No one slacks and no one's character is completely predictable. Each takes a subtle turn or change and each turn or change is perfectly keeping in character. It's a lovely ensemble, spoiled only by one: Janeane Garofalo.

Including her risked ruining the film because she is humorless and vacuous in spectacular ways. Luckily for us, the film is saved by her putting on so thick a French accent that she's unrecognizable.

But back to the good stuff: Ratatouille is fantastic. It completely redeems Pixar for making Cars. (Of course, the included teaser for 2008's Wall-E fills me with dread. The teaser is so lacking spark, energy, or life that I cringed.) And Brad Bird is a national treasure. I loved the little credit at the end, declaring that the film is 100% animated, no motion capture used. Ladies and gentlemen, that is love and devotion to a cinematic art.

C'mon, Brad, Lord of Light calls.

Oh, anticipation

Arguably the happiest words I've read in years:

The French have a word to describe "Ratatouille," the tale of a provincial rat named Remy who becomes a great Parisian chef. The word is "génial." Not genial as in cheerful, though Pixar's latest animated feature is certainly that, but génial with an accent, as in brilliant, or inspired. The characters are irresistible -- why would anyone want to resist a hero who so gallantly transcends his rattiness? -- the animation is astonishing and the film, a fantasy version of a foodie rhapsody, sustains a level of joyous invention that hasn't been seen in family entertainment since "The Incredibles."

If, after I see the film, I feel the same way then Brad Bird will be enshrined as an animation and film god. (Actually, he already was. Both The Iron Giant and The Incredibles are just that good.)

Coming soon: I Am Legend

This looks neat.

Apparently based on the book by Richard Matheson, it ends up looking like a version that starred Charlton Heston, namely The Omega Man. We shouldn't forget, however, that there's an even older version titled The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price in the lead.

If the trailer is accurate, the premise of I Am Legend follows that of The Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth. Namely, a plague gets lose. A good chunk of humanity is annihilated, while most of the rest...mutate. Standard zombie movie stuff, really, except that in Matheson's book -- and pretty much in the previous two movie versions -- things are more complicated. In both the book and the Vincent Price film, survivors mutate into vampires; Charlton Heston didn't face vampires so much as albino religious fanatics who can't tolerate daylight.

What makes all interesting to me, however, is Matheson's underlying question: If everyone has mutated, isn't the lone "normal" man the aberation? I can't recall if there are any other "normals" in the Price film, or the novel for that matter, and there are precious few in the Heston film. Again, though, the queston we keep returning to is just what is normal?

I wonder if the 2007 rendition of I Am Legend, now officially titled after the book and complete with Will Smith, will ask the same question. Somehow, I doubt it.

Film: Nancy Drew

I was going to write a review, but then I read this one, with this summary:

Nancy Drew is wholesome, entertaining, imperfect fun. It’s also the first time since 300 I didn’t check my watch. I don’t oppose female empowerment films. I think women should be empowered. But while a film like Gracie beats you over the head with the lazy liberal ideal of feminism (Men. Are. Bad.), Nancy Drew presents a smart, strong, sweet, polite, likable character whose radical individuality is found in her unwillingness to conform to the radicals. Nancy Drew is a nice young lady. And in today’s world isn’t that really the new counter-culture?

...and I agree with that 100%, so why re-invent the wheel? I saw this with my 21+ year old daughter and we both enjoyed it, despite all the flaws that Dirty Harry accurately lists.

Needless to say, I'm amazed how much I liked it.