Eddie on Film is encouraging readers to vote on the ten worst Oscar winners of all time.

Go to his site for a complete list of all Oscar winners.

Crossposted

Newsweek has a review of the "United 93" trailer--not the movie--the trailer.

If movie trailers are supposed to cause a reaction, the preview for "United 93" more than succeeds. Featuring no voice-over and no famous actors, it begins with images of a beautiful morning and passengers boarding an airplane. It takes you a minute to realize what the movie's even about. That's when a plane hits the World Trade Center. The effect is visceral. When the trailer played before "Inside Man" last week at the famed Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, audience members began calling out, "Too soon!" In New York City, where 9/11 remains an open wound, the response was even more dramatic. The AMC Loews theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side took the rare step of pulling the trailer from its screens after several complaints. "One lady was crying," says one of the theater's managers, Kevin Adjodha. "She was saying we shouldn't have [played the trailer]. That this was wrong ... I don't think people are ready for this."

Not ready for this?

I found that a little weird considering that I live in Utah and Larry Miller got international criticism for not ramming graphic depictions of homosexual copulation down the eyesockets of his largely Mormon family audience. In that case, we just didn't want to see it and Larry didn't want to waste good screen space on a film that his target market wasn't going to see.

That was a movie--this is a trailer.

Presumably they aren't playing the trailer before the latest Pixar animation, so what would be objectionable about a preview of an event in this country that was not just widely but exhaustively reported on the evening news?

Reminding people that it isn't safe to elect Democrats?

No one said much about Fahrenheit 9/11, a blatantly partisan political swipe at the President in an election year and if you didn't like it, you simply didn't fork over the eight bucks. The objection here though is that this is quite obviously a much more honest and thus far more powerful message. Real Americans were on that plane, real Americans rushed the hijackers and died fighting terrorism. They didn't cut-and-run and they didn't pretend that it would turn out OK.

The were "real" Americans.

Well we can't admit that, so perhaps its just insensitive?

Writer-director Paul Greengrass ("The Bourne Supremacy") has gone to great lengths to be respectful in his depiction of what occurred, proceeding with the film only after securing the approval of every victim's family. "Was I surprised at the unanimity? Yes. Very. Usually there are one or two families who are more reluctant," Greengrass writes in an e-mail. "I was surprised and humbled at the extraordinary way the United 93 families have welcomed us into their lives and shared their experiences with us." His team's research was meticulous. "They even went so far as to ask what my mother had been wearing on the plane," says Carole O'Hare, whose 79-year-old mother, Hilda Marcin, died on the flight. "They were very open and honest with us, and they made us a part of this whole project." Universal, which is releasing the film, plans to donate 10 percent of its opening weekend gross to the Flight 93 National Memorial Fund. That hasn't stopped criticism that the studio is exploiting a national tragedy. O'Hare thinks that's unfair. "This story has to be told to honor the passengers and crew for what they did," she says. "But more than that, it raises awareness. Our ports aren't secure. Our borders aren't secure. Our airlines still aren't secure, and this is what happens when you're not secure. That's the message I want people to hear."

Gosh, seems pretty sensitive to me.

In any case, you can see the trailer here and decide for yourself.

The Cannes premiere for the Da Vinci code didn't get the enthusiastic reception film promoters would have hoped.

"I didn't like it very much. I thought it was almost as bad as the book. Tom Hanks was a zombie, thank goodness for Ian McKellen. It was overplayed, there was too much music and it was much too grandiose," said Peter Brunette, critic for the US daily The Boston Globe.

Sadly for the critics, they are irrelevant. This isn't just a book or film, its a phenomenon and nobody cares what the critics have to say about a phenomenon.

I read the book a couple of years ago and then "Angels and Demons" as well. The books are virtually identical and yet Da Vinci Code triggers a firestorm of word of mouth that eventually sold fifty million books---fifty million! Ironically, Angels and Demons was the earlier book, and while it did well enough to merit writing the Da Vinci Code, it was hardly noteworthy (it enjoys a revival as readers of the Da Vinci code inevitably seek out Brown's other work...). I mention this because "Angels and Demons" and " the Da Vinci Code" are virtually identical books--like two girls in the chorus line except one is blonde and the other brunette.

So why did "the Da Vinci Code" explode into a cultural phenomenon while "Angels and Demons" lanquished in relative obscurity?

If you had the answer to that, you'd be very rich. Dan Brown probably doesn't really understand himself, but he'll still cash the checks.

There is something about grand conspiracies that seems to be irresistable to some. The idea that you know something nobody else knows. Yet what makes "the Da Vinci Code" particularly successful is that he's made it so plausible that this time you actually do know something nobody else knows.

It works because most of us know just enough about art history and Christianity to be dangerous, but not enough to recognize the fallacies.

The whole thing reminds me of our political discourse--a mirage.

I saw the Superman trailer over the weekend and noted that the producers are overtly playing up the messianic elements of the Superman story.

Jor-el intones--"For this reason, above all--their capacity for good. I've sent them you--my only son."

Does the ACLU know about this?

Superman as archetype is nothing new, but its rather odd to see a theme of exceptionalism--something liberal decry so vehemently, reflected in movie after movie.

I noticed it first with "The incredibles", which dealt overtly with the question as the central philosophical conflict, as distilled in the villain's observation, "when everyone is super, then no one will be super..."

The current X-Men film also deals with the problems presented by the alienation produced by possessing exceptional abilities--How very Ayn Rand.

Yet Superman has gone well beyond this--transcending the philosophical question to address the political one--the American messianic myth--exceptionalism from culture and destiny. Lois Lane even takes the role of left-wing icon, writing a book on how the world doesn't need a Superman (or America?).

Does the Michael Moore crowd know about this?

And glad I didn't take this six months ago.

Your Job Dissatisfaction Level is 19%

Sure, no job is perfect - but yours is pretty close. You're resepcted by your co-workers and boss. Plus, you usually get credit for your succcesses. Don't quit, unless you know you've got something better lined up.

A Shakespeare First Folio was auctioned for $5m today.

Sotheby's English literature specialist Peter Selley said: "The First Folio preserves 18 of his plays, including some of the most major, which otherwise would have been lost for all time...."

There is no evidence that Shakespeare took any steps during his lifetime to publish these unQuartoed plays.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Fuhgeddaboudit.

Like.Oh.My.God.

My son rented Syriana mostly because it had Matt Damon and George Clooney in it. He handed it off to me with the comment, "Dad, this might be more up your alley..."

The movie isn't half bad, the performances are good, but its very much in the tradition of "the China Syndrome"--a film that establishes a set of premises that are never discussed and never challenged in the film itself.

Clooney does a remarkable job, going so far as to gain 30 lbs, shave his hairline and grow a beard to look like a normal middle-aged schlub. Matt Damon reprises his role as the eager young naif. The real revelation here is Alexander Siddig, formerly Siddig El Fadil and best known for his role of Dr. Julian Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Its a remarkably nuanced characterization of the dark, brooding Arab with the western education that manages to avoid the stereotype. I expect his career will improve as a result.

The minor roles in the film are filled with immediately recognizable high-profile Hollywood actors, a fact attributed by George Clooney to "the cause"--more on that later.

Where the film fails is in editing, which can only be described as jarring. All I can do is give my impression because its hard to nail down precisely what is wrong. It may simply be impossible to adapt a book like this to film without making it four hours long or completely changing the structure.

The film is based on a Robert Baer book called "See No Evil", but significant changes have been made to drive home some ideological points. That's too bad really, because omitting the liberal reflex for sermonizing and fixing the editing would have made for an amazing and very enlightening film (Yes, I know, it was nominated for Oscars as is, but its clear that was a matter of Hollywood considering the film "important" as a reflection of their own left-wing politics).

Having watched the film with the background of Israel's war against Hamas and Hezbollah (or Syria and Iran if you prefer), the self-righteous pedantics are just plain laughable.

There are two premises for the film that are never discussed or challenged.

First; the free market doesn't work. Oil pricing is "wrong" because it isn't properly allocating a scarce resource. The film drives the point of oil's imminent exhaustion often and hard. Now it is possible to argue that the petroleum market isn't in fact "free", but that's a complex discussion that doesn't serve the simplistic political goals of the film and portends to create some complications with the left's rigid opposition to the democratization of Iraq.

Second; The failures of middleeastern regimes can be laid at the American threshold. One of the story lines is a federal investigation of a oil company that paid bribes to obtain business in the middleeast, which results in one of those strawman screeds the left loves so well (remember Wallstreet and Michael Douglas' "greed is good" speech?). Tim Blake Nelson, so memorable as Delmar in "O Brother, Where Art Thous?" sings the praises of corruption--middleeastern despot corruption. For an actor, its a great speech, for the movie its terribly over the top.

Orson Scott Card has written a couple of books about writing and I recall one particular observation that a real storyteller never preaches--he (or she) allows the audience to draw the moral lesson from the story. I guess Soderbergh and Clooney didn't read that book.

The premise is ridiculous on its face. What we call "corruption" has been part of the Arab culture for millenia. It is as ingrained as the concept of freedom is for Americans.

The film is an object lesson in why the liberal-left find themselves on the political ropes. No one can say that they didn't "get their message out" in this film, and consequently its easy to see that the problem is the message itself.

When I hear a ridiculous argument, especially one that has been disproven over and over again (remember how we were going to run out of oil by the year 2000?), I usually assume that its a stalking horse for another objective. We see that more clearly now on the "tax cuts for the rich" argument. The rich are paying more taxes than before, tax revenues are up and the economy has grown by leaps and bounds (even if you want to substract inflation...), yet the left won't abandon the argument. Some will go so far as to concede that it has helped the economy and then add the perplexing proviso--"but at what cost?"

Ah, there's the rub.

The issue was never the tax cuts, but what the implications of the tax cuts for their real concern--the ever expanding nanny-state.

They can't sell the nanny state, so they resort to appeals to our darker nature--envy of the wealthy.

Health care, global warming and of course oil are all stalking horses for the same thing--give up your freedom and we, the liberal-left elite, will insure your comfort and security.

I've been to France. No thanks.

Calista Flockheart, formerly of "Ally McBeal", will be playing a conservative TV pundit in an upcoming new series on ABC.

Asked to describe the pundit, producer Ken Olin (formerly a star of “Thirty Something’) said, "She's not Ann Coulter. She's not insane."

Writer Jon Robin Baitz added, "No, I think she's a thoughtful conservative. She's ideologically, in some respects, very much in mind with the older parts of the party, the sort of Eisenhower Republican, the William Buckley conservative. She's also a humanist.

"She's not someone who is apologetic about being a conservative. But it's very, very interesting and compelling to us to try and understand this, to leave behind some of the smug presuppositions of the two coasts, . . . to look at evolving patriotism and evolving traditionalism," he said, according to an article by Dave Walker of New Orleans’ Times-Picayune.

"For years and years, the left has looked at the right in complete incomprehension and felt, 'We just can't connect.' And maybe there's an effort in the show to try and bridge that in some way.”

The left is funny even when they are not trying to be. Unable to "connect with conservatives", they've simply invented their own...a kindler, gentler conservative who isn't mean to liberals. No doubt the show hopes that liberals will come off a lot smarter than they do in an Ann Coulter tome.

Good luck with that.

Hollywood liberals keep trying to create an entertainment mythology of a strong, wise and yet compassionate liberal leadership, starting with "The American President" (...and we're going to get the guns...), finding some success in "the West Wing", and trying again with Commander-In-Chief. Clearly we aren't going to see the necessary inspiring statesmanship from guys like John Kerry (this wouldn't have happened if I was president...) and Howard Dean, so it becomes necessary to employ a little fantasy, to recall Camelot and a more hopeful time for liberals.

Its all rather pathetic.

Star Trek has been pretty much written off as a franchise after the failure of the motion picture Star Trek: Nemesis, which was just terrible, and the last television series--Enterprise, which seemed to wander aimlessly from season to season.

Now, surprisingly perhaps, Star Trek may be making a comeback far sooner than anyone might have guessed.

Star Trek XI is in pre-production with the same team that brought us "Lost" and "Alias". J.J. Abrams is producing with an option to direct as well.

The real surprise though is that Matt Damon may be playing Captain James Tiberius Kirk, although this isn't certain at this point. No script exists, but the rumor is that Star Trek XI takes place between the Enterprise era, and that of the original series.

If Abrams succeeds in capturing another generation's imagination, Star Trek will live again, hopefully resurrected in a dynamic and imaginative form that will attract yet another generation of fans.

Its now possible to watch the original series, DSP and STNG all in the same day, and its interesting to see how the contemporary social and political environment was reflected in the various "Enterprises". I would expect that the same pattern would extend to Star Trek XI as well. The question is whether taking a particular philosophical path in an era of massive political polarization, is a winner or the final nail in the coffin.

Kirk was a product of the WWII generation. A lover AND a fighter. Picard was a liberal ideal--a pacificist who resolved problems with alien savages and malovalent God-like entities with "ethics"--at least until he meets the Borg--Star Trek's own version of 9/11.

I have little doubt that Abram's version of Star Trek is going to deal with an implacable foe reminiscent of Islamic radicals,, but the philosophical elements of how the Enterprise (assuming its the Enterprise) deals with the challenge is a mine field in this political polarized environment. I would guess it will be closer to post-Borg Picard than to Kirk.

Paul and Heather McCartney are impressive people, but their divorce is doing to them what divorces do:

"Sir Paul ordered all the locks on his properties to be changed after the phone at his Peasmarsh estate in Sussex was bugged earlier this year — and the tape strangely ended up in Heather’s hands. She challenged him over a conversation he had had with his daughter Stella, in which Stella had attacked her stepmother."

May they act with grace. That would be a blessing to them and their daughter. Divorcees know the risks of a downward spiral once lawyers and advisers are involved.

Heather Mills was once a prostitute, which she seems to have lied about to Paul. That's an honest and useful profession and it's tough on her that she's being humiliated. The cruellest commentary comes from women maybe because fucking for money makes plain to men and themselves that swapping sex for stuff is much of the underlying deal, whereas love, which is real too, is optional rather than primal, but it binds a man to a particular woman and to their children against his own merely reproductive interests.

[A propos -

A woman can have about 1 child per year for 30 years.
A man can have about 1,000 per year for 60 years.

and

There is no reciprocity.
Men love women.
Women love children.
Children love hamsters.]

I wouldn't choose the expensive wedding they chose - in contrast to Paul and Linda 38 years ago when he was still more famous; flashy wedding, trashy divorce. Maybe the flashy wedding compensates for an emptiness in the spiritual wedding. The flash says 'Look at me, look at us, we look married so we are married, here's stuff to prove it' when all that's needed at a wedding is true minds. The stuff is impediment.

The Rolling Stones have done very, very well over the years, producing a number of extremely successful tours, yet nothing lasts forever.

The Stones, almost all of who are in their sixties and one of which is in his seventies, appear to have outlasted their audience, who have come to prefer a nice quiet evening at home to the inordinate decibels of a Stones concert.

Incredibly for the biggest grossing tour band on earth, hundreds official tickets are still available for their Twickenham concert on Sunday and next Tuesday as well as their concerts in Cardiff and Glasgow.

Many more are also languishing on the internet auction site eBay with bids starting at as little as one penny.

Promoters have taken the unusual step of erecting hastily arranged billboards on the main roads into London advertising the shows - and are also taking out newspaper adverts to shift them.

But perhaps most embarrassing of all for the band who have a combined age of 249 is that cut-price tickets are also being sold to pensioners through the company Saga.

Saga, a company offering value-for-money services for the elderly has stepped in to offer half-price tickets to see the band during the European leg of their 'A Bigger Bang' tour.

Stones tickets unsold? It boggles the mind.

On the other hand, I have to ask myself the last time I saw a concert--James Taylor five years ago. Yeah, its sad, but I have to be in the right mood for Van Halen, ZZ Top, much less the Stones, and increasingly that's an infrequent occurance.

The other element of this is that James Taylor, bald and avuncular, doesn't look odd singing his hit songs.

A friend of mine, a younger friend of mine, bought big money tickets to see Van Halen and meet them backstage. His first comments about the show were, "man, these guys are really old..." Wrinkled skin, age spots, reading glasses---ewww.

The magic was gone. You can't go home again. My friend is unlikely to see another Van Halen concert--ever.

The Stones problem is probably a lot like Farah Fawcett's problem. If you are a certain age, you'll remember Ms. Fawcett as a seventies sex symbol of surpassing intensity. Millions of girls emulated her hairdo (some still do...). Of course, beauty, like youth is fleeting, but efforts to recapture it are well...creepy. This is a 60 year old woman trying to look 30ish (40ish?) What does this do to your youthful fantasies?

Yeah, I thought so.

I didn't see the film in the theater, but I rented the DVD and watched it tonight (stuck in a Chicago hotel room...).

It doesn't take long to recognize it as a radical left-wing wet dream, a caricature of the Thatcher government of the 1980s (what terrible years for England).

The film adaptation was done by the Wachowski brothers, with a few modern updates so you can't miss the allusions to the Bushnazi administration.

I'm not going to complain about that but merely point out some of the interesting fallacies that find analogues in the epistemology of the modern moonbat.

1. There is this curious romanticized "Che Guevera" identification--a deep sense of justification for their opposition to the establishment. Everyone is a political prisoner.

2. The government's efforts to establish order and security is simply dismissed as a pretext for amassing power. There simply never is any real threat to our security. In fact, in a nod to the wide spread belief among the moonbats that George Bush and the Jews really blew up the Twin Towers himself, a massive bio-terror attack that kills 100,000 British was actually engineered by the government to produce the political climate in which they could consolidate their power.

3. The "crimes" the government prosecutes are of course, not really crimes. They are represented as romantic homosexual love, forbidden literature, "dangerous" ideas--nothing serious and of course nothing meriting fascist repression. Mentions of "progressive" policies that produce crack babies and soul-killing dependancy on welfare are absent.

4. The usual bigotry is evident in clearly identifying the high chancellor as a conservative Christian. John Hurt plays the character as a one dimensional madman, which is pretty par for the course--only the terrorists and Che Guevera types are presented as symathetic three-dimensional characters. Poor John Hurt--130 films and reduced to this...

5. Many allusions to eavesdropping, spies and other means used by the government to control the populace. NSA wiretapping anyone?

What is really disturbing though is the adolescent revenge fantasy that permetes the film and the left-wing. Its not called Vendetta for nothing. The main character is motivated by the terrible things "Mommy and Daddy" did to him and vows to extract his revenge at any price. He blows things up, he murders people (but as in the "True Lies, "they were all bad.") and the entire film builds to a climax of destruction with absolutely no thought to what happens afterwards (except for romantic clap-trap about a new world...).

There is some attempt to redeem 'V' and ironically his repentance comes as a result of the example and rhetoric of his protege (Natalie Portman), who in turn learns just the opposite lesson, and after the death of her mentor, the destruction of the antagonists and the victory of the "people" over the government (the Guy Fawkes masked populace storms the city, passing right through the ranks of the soldiers to fill the streets), she still sends an explosives-laden train through the tube to blow up the Parliament buildings--why?

These morons differ little from the kids who egg my house because one of my sons talked to their girlfriend--emotion driven insanity with no thought for the consequence to others.

It gets worse.

There is an incredible naivete about the human nature--the "good guys" may do some questionable things (like murder people...) but they are simply misunderstood, or motivated by more complex forces. The "bad guys" are evil personified. No doubt after High Chancellor Sutler is removed, a thousand year reign of peace begins.

P For Proganada. No wonder it bombed...

On live British TV I watch soccer highlights and that's it. Maybe I became saturated with The Simpsons when Haloween seemed to come round every month. I should take another look. After all Homer is, well, Homerically great.
I watch a few US shows on DVD, often with a glass of whisky at 2 am seeing that 'alcohol is the cause of and solution to all of life's problems' - H.Simpson. Maybe it's a golden age for American comedy. By Series 2 the US version of The Office became richer and funnier than the original with delicious supporting roles and it's just poignant in places. I re-watched some of The Larry Sanders Show. It's like comedy heaven to me, up there with Fawlty Towers. But Arrested Development may be up there too. The LSS and AD have Jeffrey Tambor in common. Also in common is the brevity of these shows - all around 24 minutes or less. 'Brevity is the soul of wit' and the lack of it undoes many shows and movies. Desperate Housewives and The Sopranos are just too long, too padded. Curb Your Enthusiasm is very decent, but too linear on Larry David. The other characters are stifled, tho they have real potential. Also it's 5 minutes too long. Am I the only person who doesn't get "24"? My highly intelligent male American in-laws love it. I re-sample for 10 minutes and give up; the characters and plotting seem so lame. And where did "Duckman" go ?

I must plug CSPAN Book TV, an amazing free resource on the web. The Afterwords and In Depth Archives are rich,rich,rich..VD Hanson, Tammy Bruce, Newt Gingrich, Bernard Lewis, Charles Murray, C Hitchens and on and on. Long, uninterrrupted conversations with intelligent, articulate, alert minds. There are plenty of liberals too plus writers of the standing of Updike and Wolfe. An unexpected gem is the interview with Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin on his book "Shooter" about sniping in Iraq.

In Budapest a couple of nights ago I was playing chess with a friend from Houston, sitting outside a tex-mex, when a few thousand rioters sauntered by our table. Hungarian rioting is rather genteel :

Almost nothing happened. Budapest was calm. We were by the tv station and parliament, the epicentre of "Budapest burns".
The next day it was calm. It was a peaceful democratic demo with a teeny bit of action staged for photo-ops.
It brought home to me how much of the "News" is phony and amplified.

We also played chess in outdoor hot baths and moseyed around the banks of the Danube and a Totalitarian Sculpture Theme Park:

The Totalitarian theme has potential for an OzymandiasWorld, with smashed, colossal, mossed over. stone limbs and heads; theme experiences to include show-trials and queueing for bogroll and soap.

Ashton Kutcher, probably best known by my generation as Bruce Willis' successor in Demi Moore's romantic life, recalled his meeting with Bill Clinton.

Kutcher says Clinton didn't say one word to him the whole evening as he was so engrossed with Ghost actress Moore.

"I met Bill Clinton once but he didn't really talk — he was hitting on my wife," Kutcher told Leno.

The 28-year-old Butterfly Effect actor — who celebrated his first wedding anniversary with Moore, 43, on Sunday — said Clinton completely ignored him as he chatted to Demi.

"I don't think he looked at me the whole time," Kutcher said.

"I was like the guy that wasn't there."

I don't know that I can really blame Bill for this one...

George Lucas thinks the future of entertainment is in internet distributed "small" features.

Spending $100 million on production costs and another $100 million on P&A makes no sense, he said.

"For that same $200 million, I can make 50-60 two-hour movies. That's 120 hours as opposed to two hours. In the future market, that's where it's going to land, because it's going to be all pay-per-view and downloadable.

Aside from the fact that Lucas is authoritive on such issues, its intuitive as well.

I went to the video store the other evening and cruised the racks from A to Z and found not one thing I wanted to watch. The lovely bunny brought over a copy of "Poseidon" to consider, but in the end we decided we already saw that movie back in the 1970s.

"Poseidon" illustrates Lucas' point extremely well. Made for 160 million, it had a U.S. gross of 60 million. If you have 160 million to spend on a movie, wouldn't you expect to spend it on a more imaginative property? Did they see the 1972 version? That one wasn't very good either.

From my point of view at least, what is being done on television is significantly more compelling than what I'm seeing in the theater these days. I just saw an excellent program on the Mexican War--no doubt on of those "50-60" small projects that could be done for what one mega-picture costs these days. Lucas extrapolates the two remaining problems--marketing and delivery. I think its inevitable that we will have internet-based entertainment in the very near future--the technology exists right now. As far as the marketing goes, Lucas knows that branding is going to be the solution to the obscurity of too many choices. Would you watch a Lucas production that you could download from the web?

Absolutely.

I would really hate to be one of the paleomedia crowd right about now...

I watched "The City On The Edge of Forever" in digitally remastered form over the weekend.

Its not a noticeable difference, except the quality of the broadcast is better--brighter and truer colors. It sort of reminds me of the Dick Tracy movie that came out in th 1980s with its stylistic use of primary colors. I suppose Star Trek was originally filmed in just bright tones to make it pop on the new-fangled color TVs people were watching in the early 1960s.

The digital effects are subtle, and not really much of an improvement over the original--at least from what I can tell from this one episode (which doesn't have much in the way of special effects). It was only really obvious to me with the establishing shot of the Enterprise orbiting the planet--the ship was grayer, in deep shadow, as one might expect to see it in space. A later establishing shot of the planet was more obviously remastered--the original planet shots were always lame, particularly when contrasted to the shot of earth we got during the Apollo program. Unfortunately, one of the special effects scenes that I recall in this episode was cut--McCoy arrives in a Depression-era U.S. city still maddened by his overdoes of cordrazine and collapses at the feet of what we would now call a homeless person, but what in the day was called a "bum". The bum rolls McCoy and starts fiddling with his phaser and shortly vaporizes himself. It could be argued that the scene doesn't advance the story, but it was part of the original story, and so should have been retained.

I looked at the title sequences again, and it looks like they did some work there as well, but I have to question whether it was worth the effort.

The original Star Trek is archaic, and we like it that way. It strikes me as ridiculous to update the special effects in an artistic work that reflects the time of its creation in every other way.

I think its fine to restore the series to its original glory, but leave well enough alone...

I remember when Paul McCartney was ridiculed for being so joined-at-the-hip with he late wife Linda Eastman. She was very candid about her lack of muscial pretensions, but Sir Paul wanted her up on stage, so she learned to play piano tolerably well, and sing background vocals.

How un-rock-star of him.

Now I'm expected to believe that he beat his one-legged wife and his beloved Linda as well.

Obviously I don't buy it, but I am mystified how a man who seems to have married so well, appears to have such colossally bad judgment in female companions now. Lady Heather has a history of prostitution, identity theft and soft porn movies--now to some that might be reason enough to want to spend some time with her, but to marry her?

The heart isn't a rational organ.

Loneliness appears to be a very powerful incentive to seek companionship and sometimes even a one-legged former hooker will do.

Justin Long, who plays the anthropomorphism of the Mac in the popular series of Apple commercials, has been replaced.

I'm not particularly surprised, since as the Wired Cult of Mac column notes, the PC is the more compelling character in this series. John Hodgman, who now appears on the Daily Show, just steals the show. (The Hodg-man blogs too...)

I don't know if replacing Long is going to make a big difference--liberal slackers just aren't funny, on TV or in real life. There is just too much studied insouciance in the whole schtick. Remember stubble from the eighties? What used to be a matter of "too lazy to shave" became a fashion statement that required special shaving equipment to maintain.

Its hard work to be a liberal.

I recall telling skeptical friends about the great new science fiction series I'd found and then having them come back later wide-eyed with excitement at how good this "Babylon 5" was. It was like video cocaine.

While the series was visually stunning to look at, the real innovation was the "big story", episodes might deal with minor crises or focus on a specific character, but through almost every episode, the viewer was moved along the big story, season to season until the finale.

That's now standard practice but at the time it was revolutionary. It was also a gold mine for the series syndication prospects. I recall telling a friend about it and he was hooked after only one show.

Now its back, actually in production as I am writing this, with many of the original cast--Bruce Boxleitner, Tracy Scoggins and Peter Woodward (Galen).

Sadly, we'll never see G'Kar again due to the death of Andreas Katsulas earlier this year.

Its direct to DVD, but considering the audience the show has developed, its essentially about as sure an investment as you could make.

“We are very excited to be releasing this new made-for-video release filled with original content for ‘ Babylon 5’, one of the most successful science fiction series of all time,” said Jeff Brown. “This popular TV show which has been off the air for a few years continues to have a strong loyal fan base that is hungry for more content. This is the first time we’re utilizing one of our popular TV franchises as a made-for-video title, and we have a strong commitment to the growth of this sector.”

The lovely bunny and I saw it yesterday evening...

Like a lot of people I suppose, I'm a big fan of James Bond, although I clearly favor some incarnations of Mr. Bond over others. I had no use for Timothy Dalton at all--I'm not sure why, I'm sure he's quite a pleasant fellow. I suspect that it was simply a case where he didn't meet my expectations of what 007 would be like.

...which brings me to Daniel Craig.

Comparisons might help if you haven't seen the film. Craig shares the physicality with which Sean Connery (and George Lazenby IMO...) played the role; the shear athleticism one would expect from someone who had spent time in the SAS. He also has the intensity of Pierce Brosnan, whose pell-mell pace through action scenes I greatly enjoyed. What he lacks is charm.

Daniel Craig's Bond is a killer, pure and simple. He's a scary guy--more like the terminator than Fleming's vision of a proper British gentleman. All business, and a bloody business it is. There are two--count 'em, two Bond babes, and Bond doesn't even sleep with one of them, absconding before the payoff because he has someone to kill.

For my taste, his main bond-babe is attractive, but not really in the babe-class. Even odder is the fact that Bond falls in love with this girl and quits the mayhem business to do laundry with her.

Yes folks, its a different kind of bond, a more ruthless, more dutiful, less liberal Bond but one who can commit to a woman. The girls are less stunning, and always fully clothed--which reminds me of the other odd aspect of this film--Daniel Craig is the T&A in this film. He walks out of the water in a manner identical to Halle Berry in the last film, and with the same effect. My wife was duly impressed, and no doubt the Brokeback Mountain audience will find it all very appealing.

Would I recommend it? Of course--its a Bond film--even a bad one is worth seeing. However, be prepared for something completely different--this is a violent film, not a sexy one, and the violence is graphic and personal. Explosions are at a minimum, there are no car chases worth a damn, but there is a foot pursuit early in the film that will blow your mind.

I'd give it a 6 out of 10, but relative to the recent offerings from Hollywood, its going to be among the top 2 or 3 films playing currently that merit the 18 bucks.

Michael Richard's best known as Kramer on Seinfeld, has, in the words of fellow comic Paul Rodriguez, "stepped over the line".

"Once the word comes out of your mouth and you don't happen to be African-American, then you have a whole lot of explaining," he said. "Freedom of speech has its limitations and I think Michael Richards found those limitations."

Rodriguez was referring to a number of racial slurs Richard's used in responding to a couple of black hecklers while doing his comedy routine.

Two things occurred to me almost immediately. Will his spokesperson claim he was drunk and that he is currently unavailable for comment because he's in rehab, and second; is it really true that there are things you can't talk about in a comedy club?

I don't go to comedy clubs frequently, but I have been to a few, and it seems a little odd to me that racial slurs are out of bounds when every other subject, no matter how offensive, is perfectly acceptable. I guess its funny what shocks people--make fun of Muslims, gays, conservatives, Christians, women, men, whatever and its just big yucks. Utter the word n_gger when you aren't black---ooooh!

I'm beginning to think that political correctness is a function of how likely it is that you'll get beaten up for saying something.

Gwyneth Paltrow likes her new home in Britain.

"I love the English lifestyle, it's not as capitalistic as America. People don't talk about work and money, they talk about interesting things at dinner," she told "NS," the weekend magazine supplement of daily Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias on Saturday.

"I like living here because I don't fit into the bad side of American psychology. The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans," the 34-year-old added.

M