X-Men: the Last Stand

X-Men: the Last Stand blew the Da Vinci Code which is as it should be. Regardless of freedom of speech, it is still rude to make a blockbuster movie with the premise that one of the world's biggest religions was all a lie and that the world's oldest religious organization (the Catholic Church) has been covering this up for 17 centuries.

But I was talking about the X-Men.

Several reviewers felt the new director, Brett Ratner, ruined the franchise. I don't agree. Although good, Bryan Singer's had flaws of their own. The original movie spent so much time with Rogue and Wolverine that the other characters are glossed over. X2 didn't need to spent time introducing the characters but had a confusing plot. The invasion of Xavier's school, while dramatic, had nothing to do with the eventual plot which was to get a mind-controlled Professor X to kill all mutants (then Magneto switched things so that all humans would die instead). The plot about Wolverine's background was sort of tacked on. It just happened that the person who created him decided that mutants should die and used the same headquarters. Nightcrawler's attempted assassination of the President had little to do with the plot except to get it started.

X3 is more tightly written and easier to follow (my wife commented on this). It is also closer to reality although many reviewers missed this aspect.

At the heart of X3 is a vaccine that will "cure" mutants. Ian McKellen saw this as cure for homosexuality and played it accordingly. Chances are fairly good that there will be some sort of cure or genetic test for homosexual behaviour within the next generation so these questions are relevant. Even more relevant are the current issues about cochlear implants and "deaf culture" with some deaf activists insisting that being deaf is not a disability, it is a culture that will be destroyed by widespread use of implants to cure deafness.

Questions about the cure are raised within the movie. To mutants like Storm who can pass for human, there is nothing to cure. The Beast who is blue and furry is not so sure. Rogue who can kill with a touch sees her powers as a curse. Although it doesn't come up, Cyclops felt the same way in the original comics written by Stan Lee and would have jumped at a cure.

This issue is posed in a different way with the resurrection of Jean Grey as Phoenix. Her powers are very strong and uncontrolled. This raises the moral issue - was the Professor right to block Jean's access to the greater portion of her powers when she couldn't control them?

A few other issues are raises. One is if it is ethical to use the vaccine as a weapon. Another is how mutants should treat one of their own who was forcibly given the vaccine.

In the end, Magneto maintains ethical high ground on the vaccine. He refuses to use it.

The movie has a few problems. The final battle has some personal match-offs (Storm vs Callisto, Iceman vs Rusty, and Kitty vs the Juggernaut!) but it also has a lot of Wolverine tearing through faceless mutants with his claws.

I am not pleased with the way that Phoenix is shown. rather than a fiery being of great power and mood swings, she gets quiet and her veins show.

A bigger problem is Storm. Halle Berry demanded more screen time but she doesn't use it to establish Storm as an interesting character.  The comic book character was worshiped as an African god before coming to America and was written with a combination of regalness and cultural naivety. Berry plays her as Halle Berry in a white wig. Worse, in order to make room for Storm, Cyclops is barely in the movie.

Even with these drawbacks, it is still a good movie, certainly better than last Summer's Fantastic Four.

Now we will see what Singer did with Superman.

Nearing the End

With only one two-hour episode left on Lost what did we learn last night?

Much of it was a confirmation of what we had already guessed. The others did snatch Michael. They did make a deal with him to release "Henry" and lead some others into a trap in exchange for Walt. From Miss Clue's questions, we got confirmation that Walt has mental powers including being able to project himself where "he shouldn't be".

A few new questions - Michael was given a list of four people to lure into a trap. Why those four? Previously the others claimed that they were only taking the good ones but how does Sawyer qualify as good? Or even Kate? Henry said that he had come for Locke - was this a lie or did they give up on him?

Michael was clearly acting irrationally (unless you knew about the list). He insisted on taking Hurley who would be low on my list of people to have in a gunfight, but he refused Sayid. Since Jack, Sawyer, and especially Hurley all have better reasons for wanting revenge than Sayid, Michael's argument falls flat on its face. I'm surprised that Sawyer didn't notice it. Jack usually notices these things, also.

The others knew Sawyer's and Hurley's real names. They might have gotten them from the passenger list, remember they had an inside man in the first season. Otherwise it raises the possibility that they were responsible for bringing the airplane to the island and breaking it up. Chilling but it explains how they could have had people ready on the spot to infiltrate the two groups of survivors.

We know that the others don't always dress in worn clothing and, except for "Zeke", the men have neatly trimmed beards instead of long bushy ones - beards about as long as the survivors. Walt confirmed this in his three minutes with his father.

Charlie kicked his habit for good, tossing the last of the statues into the ocean. Was this a sign of personal growth or a side effect of the injection he gave himself?

Did the others send the sailboat or was this another amazing coincidence?

Spoilers - Next week we are supposed to get an answer about why the plane crashed, what the Swan hatch is for and what happens if the button is not pushed (I'm betting that it isn't good). According to one interview, one more cast member will die in the final episode. I'm betting that it is Michael.

Locke and Eko Switch Places

If you aren't up to date on Lost then you are going to see some spoilers.

Last week's episode - when a friend with a gun says "sorry", duck. I wonder how long before someone notices the flashburns on Michael?

This week's episode - When Locke and Eko first met, Eko handed Locke a scrap of film that he had found, hidden in a Bible in an abandoned hatch. Locke saw this as so unlikely, something had to have caused it. Eko's reply was, "Don't confuse coincidence with fate."

Now, the plane containing Eko's brother crashed on the spot marked on Locke's map with a "?". Both Eko and Locke dreamed of Eko's brother telling them to find the station. This does seem to go beyond all coincidence, even for this show.

Eko took this as a sign that the message his brother said in a dream - that the work being performed in the Swan Station is very important - was the truth.

Locke, on the other hand, decided that he has been tricked. He had been doubting since "Henry" said that he hadn't pressed the button and nothing happened. The orientation tape for the new station, the Pearl, indicated that it was all a test to see how the people in the Swan Station would react.

When Locke saw the orientation film for the Swan his first reaction was, "We're going to have to watch this again." After watching the tape for the Pearl Station, Eko asked if he wanted to see it again and Locke said no.

So it appears that Eko will take over the button.

But, are things what Locke thinks they are? There were six TVs in the Pearl station. Only the one for the Swan worked. The tape said "one of the other stations" but did not say which. Since he could see that Swan was being monitored and it fit with pushing the button, Locke assumed that this was the task in the tape. It might not have been.

Pearl has its own camera so somewhere, someone was probably monitoring the people in Pearl as they monitored the people in Swan. This is important. There was a study in the 1980s in which monitors were supposed to ask volunteers questions and give them electrical shocks when they answered wrong. The study was actually about how people react when they can administer pain anonymously. The real subjects were the people giving the shocks, not the people being shocked (even that was a fake).

This might be going on in Pearl. The real study might be how "monitors" will react when they are told to record the actions of people who they think are performing a meaningless task. It might be the people at Pearl who were being studied, not the ones in Swan.

Given everything that we have seen, it is probably better to keep pushing the button for now.

Judging Reality

After my post last week on Texas Ranch House I found this article. It contains a transcript of a call-in show with the show's producer and participants Lisa Cooke and Nacho Quiles. Both Lisa and Nacho confirm what I suspected, that the TV show is not a totally accurate view of reality. Lisa complains that on their first night the cowboys brought them dinner then left them alone to settle in. The show presented it as the Cooke's decision not to eat with the hired help. Nacho complained that he prepared much more variety than was depicted with fresh meat once a week. He also complained that his kitchen was much cleaner than depicted and pointed out that he didn't have the fly problem. (Note - Mrs. Cooke said in the interview that the kitchen was even worse than shown.)

I think that the producers wanted to have a story-line. They wanted to show us how things led to Nacho being fired and to the cowboys quitting. Accordingly, they included lots of cuts of people complaining about Nacho's food and even more cuts showing friction between the Cookes and the cowboys. The Cookes and Maura the maid complained quite a bit about their treatment by the cowboys but we never saw a single instance of this. Since it made the final evaluation, it is hard to imagine that it was all in the Cooke's imagination. So the producers must have cut it to make the cowboys more sympathetic.

Probably Robbie the foreman caused some trouble himself. There was a cult of personality around him because he was the best and most experienced of the cowboys. This led him to make some statements about bringing in Maura. He was upset that Mr. Cooke hired her, feeling that this should have been his decision. When the cowboys left, they said that they felt like they worked for Robbie, not Mr. Cooke. In fact, they did work for the Cookes and Robbie was only their supervisor.

On the other hand, it is hard to let the Cookes off the hook. Mr. Cooke could never gain the same type of respect that Robbie had but an employer gains respect by how he treats his employees. We saw the Cookes being inconsistent and dictatorial.

At one point Cooke called the cowboys together and read them the riot act. According to the narration, this happened immediately after their most successful roundup to date and happened because his wife was mad about drinking and not bringing in the goats. If true then the timing for this talk was incredibly bad. Worse, he didn't try for any buy-in. He didn't lay out the problem - not enough cattle - and ask for a solution. Instead he told them that they were not working hard enough.

Had I been one of the cowboys I would have agree to whatever was said and change nothing about how I worked. While the Cookes insisted that they saw improvement after this, the cowboys insisted that they did not change their behaviour.

The final pay-off was handled very poorly. Some of this was because of the set-up of the show. Everyone knew that they were in their last couple of days. Had this been real, Cooke would have tried to keep on most or all of the cowboys. He might have offered some sort of signing bonus or increased pay for the ones he wanted to keep. Instead he offered them horses at inflated prices and belittled them when they made honest offers.

Then there is how he treated Jared. While I understand 21st century logic about not bargaining with kidnappers, it gave the cowboys the impression that he didn't care about their safety. He was taken in by the Indians - given three new horses plus the one Jared was riding when he thought he was buying four new horses. Since the Indians had sold him Jared's horse, Cooke announced that it was his and Jared was out both the horse and the money. This was the wrong thing to do for several reasons.

First, even in the 1860s, buying a horse that you knew had been stolen from someone else did not give you title to it. It made you a horse thief.

Second, if anyone besides Jared had been involved or if Jared had been riding a different horse then Cooke would not have tried to take recoup his losses at the cowboy's expense. he should have treated it as a cost of doing business. As the evaluators pointed out cattle were replaceable.

Third, If Cooke had intended all along that the horse was his then he should have informed Jared earlier. As it was, he got Jared's services for a cattle drive under false promises. As word of this spread he would have found it impossible to find new workers.

Finally, everyone was paid at the end of the cattle drive. In order for Mr. Cooke's logic to hold, he would have had to have paid Jared prior to the drive. The impression given was that Jared would take a horse rather than pay at the end of the drive. This means that the horse was still Cooke's property until payday. The fact that he incurred extra expenses in keeping the horse was his problem, not Jared's.

This made Cooke look bad. Mrs. Cooke telling him that he did good made her look worse. Cautions by Mrs. Cooke that the cowboys, especially Jared, were a threat to her daughters made her look even worse and these were scattered through the series. No wonder the cowboys didn't talk to the girls.

Surprisingly, there was little complaining about how hard life was. Maura was the only one to voice such feelings. At one point she even worried that she was losing her identity. One wonders what a woman like that expected? She went into the show thinking that she might be a cowboy and instead was a lowly maid. That has to have been exactly what the producers were looking for - they set her up by casting her in a role she would be uncomfortable in.

Which brings me back to my original question - what is the point of the show?

Reflections of Reality

I've been watching PBS's new reality show, Texas Ranch House. This is the newest in a series of "House" shows. The first, "1900 House" was a British production that was supposed to see if a modern family could live as they did 100 years ago. It was very popular and spawned both English and American follow-ups.

The set-up of the original 1900 House was very artificial. The family was supposed to live as if it was 1900 but they had no outside world to interact with. The husband adapted best. He was allowed to continue with his job as a military recruiter. The kids continued with school. The mother, on the other hand, found herself trapped in the house, worrying about dust bunnies. One insight was that the mother, a very modern woman, could not bear to keep a servant.

For the follow-up, the producers came to America and created a small community on the frontier called "Frontier House". This one featured three families including a newly-wed couple. A lot of the show was about the rivalry between the other two families.

Back in England, they did "Manor House", a recreation of an early 20th century country house complete with servants. Not surprisingly, the people living as lords found it a much easier existence than the servants. In fact, they had a couple of scullery maids quit.

The next American one was "Colonial House". This was their most ambitious. They created an small 1630s settlement complete with governor.

There were a couple of other English ones that I found unwatchable. One was about living in London during the Blitz and the other had something to do with the courting rituals of the upper classes. Both were too entrenched in British culture to play well in America.

Which brings us to the current one.

Since seeing the original shows, I have found out more about what was going on in the background. It turns out that the producers have been influencing the show in order to have a more interesting storyline. For example, in Frontier House, at the beginning a couple of women confessed at the last minute that they had sewn secret pockets into their skirts for cosmetics. It turns out that this was the producers' idea. Much of the rivalry between the two families was stoked by the producers who came through the settlement prior to the filming.

I've talked with people peripherally involved with Colonial House. They said that the producers were interested in the reactions of the people, not the 1630s experience. It showed. In fact, I suspect that several of the participants were cast specifically to produce conflict.

One example is the governor and the minister. The man appointed governor was an ordained Baptist minister in real life. The man appointed to be the minister was a professor of divinity. The producers probably expected religious conflict between these two. Instead, they became very close.

Where there were sparks was between a militant atheist and the colony. I am not sure why someone who refuses to attend a church service would sign up to be part of a 1630s Puritan settlement but I am sure that this is what got her accepted to the show. Plus we got glimpses of her skinny-dipping.

This desire for conflict is common on reality shows. I saw the Mythbusters in a live show over the weekend. They said that during the first two seasons their producer tried to stir up anger between them. American Chopper was a hit and the producers figured that they needed to imitate the conflict in that show.

Which brings us to Texas Ranch House. The social dynamics are similar to Manor House. There are two camps. One gets to tell the other what to do but is totally dependant on them to make the show a success. In this case we have the Ranchers, the Cooke family, and the cowboys. The Cookes employee the cowboys and keep demanding respect. The cowboys feel, with cause, that all of the real decisions come from Mrs. Cooke. Also, Mr. Cooke feels the need to micro-manage and Mrs. Cooke refuses to look at the job the cowboys are doing as a whole. Instead she looks at what they did as it relates to her.

The foreman, Robby, is an experienced cowboy and the other cowboys have a great deal of respect for him. The Cookes feel that this undermines their authority.

Mr. Cooke's mind is easily changed. He will agree with his wife about something, talk with Robby and agree to something else, then change again after being brow-beaten by his wife. This frustrates Robby who feels that once you have said you will do something you have given your word and should not lightly change it. Did the producers know that Mr. Cooke would have so much trouble asserting his authority or did they just get lucky?

Then there is the servant, Maura. She describes herself as having a strong rebellious streak and has competed in equestrian events. So what did the producers do? They cast her in a role where she had to watch others riding constantly and was to answer to everyone. So is anyone surprised that a great deal of conflict centered around her?

So, what's the point of all this? Do the producers stir up conflict to get us to watch in the hopes that we will learn something about history? Or is the historical angle there just to stir up conflict?

Since this is a distorted view of reality, should we just stick to watching Lost?

UPDATE - After watching the final episode, I lost any lingering respect I had for the Cookes. After getting less than he wanted for his cattle and a bad deal with some Indians, he descided to get his own with the cowboys. He offered to sell them horses but his opeing price was twice what he had paid. Worse, he had previously agreed with Jared, one of the cowboys, to sell a horse at a good price. Instead, he informed Jared that the Indians had stolen his horse and it was now Cooke's.

Mr. Cooke should have counted the transaction with the Indians as a cost of doing business instead of trying to recover his losses at the expense of one of the cowboys. Or he could have offered to split the difference with Jared. Worse, when Jared objected to the deal he ended up firing Jared and giving him a half hour to clear off of the ranch. This part was his wife's contribution. Mrs. Cooke suggested that she and her daughters weren't safe around Jared.

Furious at how Jared was treated, the rest of the cowboys quit. When the evaluation team went through a couple of days later the descided that this would have meant that the Cookes would have lost the ranch the following year.

The producers were probably thrilled at how the show ended but it sure turned bitter for the participants.

Civil War

Marvel's summer cross-over event is Civil War. The premise is that the government decided to force superheros to reveal their identities to the government and become supervised government agents. Those who do not will be hunted down and imprisoned. The idea is interesting. In real life this would probably happen. After all, you cannot just buy a gun and start hunting down evil-doers. If you do and you keep your identity concealed, you will probably be hunted down yourself. If you give your identity, you will most likely end up in court at some point.

 

Bounty hunters are probably the closest thing to super-heroes and even they are operating under some restrictions.

 

Of course, things are more complicated in the Marvel Universe. Many heroes have special status - they are a foreign head of state, they are from a different world, etc.

 

But regardless of the issues involved, I have no intention of trying to follow every part. I cannot afford it. According to Wikipedia, there are 74 official Civil War comics including four miniseries and two one-shot comics. In addition, there are seven issues in the "Road to Civil War" series including a one-shot. That's 81 comics at $3 each or $243 for the entire series, assuming that none of the specials cost more than the standard price.

 

This is why the comic companies love cross-over events. They are trying to get people to buy more comics. That's also why I don't like them. They interrupt normal continuity in favor of marketing.

Graphic Novels

TCS Daily has an article about graphic novels. Among other things, it points out how much comic book readership has fallen. In 1945, half the country read comic books. Now, the top seller moved 140,000 copies. According to a talk by Steve Englehart, when he was writing in the 1970s, he was told that 200,000 sales was the magic number. If a comic sold fewer issues than that it was cancelled. That means that no comic book today is as successful as any 1970s title that wasn't cancelled.

Go back a decade to the height of the Silver Age and Superman and Batman could sell as many as a million copies.

This is one reason that comic cost so much. But then, the cost hurt sales.

According to the article, the solution to all of this is the graphic novel. These have a lower cover price and you get a complete story, something that most comics no longer do. In fact, many plot arcs are obviously produced as a serialized graphic novel.

Book stores are much more open to graphic novels. They don't expire like comics do so they get wider distribution.

Also, "graphic novel" doesn't carry the stigma that "comic book" does.

Is this the salvation of the industry? I don't know. Book stores themselves are being squeezed. Between Walmart and Amazon, traditional book stores have lost a lot of market share.

I will admit that I have re-read a few of my favorite story lines as graphic novels. Just trying to assemble the individual issues can be a pain otherwise.

Dr Who

Britain started seeing new episodes of Dr. Who last year but, typically, it took until last month before they showed up in the US on the SciFi channel.

For those who don't know what I am talking about, Dr. Who was a long-running science fiction show on British television. It started in the 1960s and finally wrapped up in the 1990s. The main character is called the Doctor. He is a Time Lord, traveling in time and space with a tardis which looks like a 1960s police call box. The tardis is larger on the inside than the outside and contains living areas, stores of clothing, and all sorts of useful stuff. Unfortunately, it is not very reliable. It often turns up in the wrong year or place.

The original show was able to run so long because the Doctor, who is not human, can regenerate. If you kill him he comes back as a different actor. I think the show went through seven or eight different Doctors during its original run.

The most popular Doctor was Tom Baker. While some Doctors were grouchy, Baker's version was nearly always up-beat. Originally, only the Baker version was broadcast in the US and it was a revelation when fans discovered that there had been three previous Doctors. This turned into a bit of disappointment when fan actually saw the early episodes. While the special effects in the Baker version were cheap, the effects in the 1960s consisted of special lighting. In fact, it took some time before the tardis was even introduced.

After an absence of more than a decade, the Doctor is finally back. Surprisingly in a show that was out of production for so long, it feels just like the old show. The new Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, has the same energy that Baker had. The effects are cutting-edge (for television) but still manage a bit of cheesiness.

Then there is the Doctor's new assistant. Like Sherlock Holmes, the Doctor always has to have an assistant to explain things to. This is usually someone from modern-day England and most often a woman. Note - there has never been a hint of sexual tension between the Doctor and his assistants. Even the current one, Rose, is indignant when someone suggests that she and the Doctor have a relationship.

A few things have been updated. The Doctor accidentally brought Rose back a year after they left instead of a few minutes later. She found her mother had been posting "missing" signs and her boyfriend was under suspicion. That never happened in the original.

A recurring set of villains in the original series were the Daleks - a sort of high-tech fire hydrant, These were a bit of a joke. they were supposed to have conquered Earth in the future but they couldn't climb stairs. In the new series, the Doctor found the last Dalek in a collection of alien artifacts. After the Dalek was revived (of course), he showed why his kind was dangerous. He had a force field and could levitate up stairs.

It was always understood that there was some sort of life-form inside the fire hydrant. We finally got to see one after Rose convinced it that it felt good to stand in the sunlight.

Fearing type-casting, Eccleston has already left the series. His replacement and the actress who plays Rose have both been signed through the third season.

Healing and the Hatch - more Lost blogging

We just finished a low-key but important character arc for John Locke. During the first season and half the second season, Locke was normally calm and collected. He had good reason to be. From the flashbacks we found that he had been confined to a wheelchair and led a rather pitiful life. His past was full of abandonment issues. His father betrayed him and the love of his life left him because of his father issues. His had a boring job, supervised by someone half his age. His pleasures came from fantasy - war games and phone sex. He had tried to go on "walkabout" to test himself and been turned down because of his legs.

Then he crashed on the island and found that he could walk. The island became his walkabout. He tested himself and found that he was everything that he had hoped. With noting but a hunting knife, he could kill a wild boar or make a cradle.

He found the hatch which hinted at new mysteries.

Then things got frustrating. Locke and Jack started having problems. Locke found that he couldn't trust Jack and both were taken in by Sawyer.

Then they inherited a prisoner calling himself "Henry Gale". Gale very subtly sewed a few seeds of dissent, asking if it was alright for Locke to make decisions without Jack's approval. Locke got frustrated.

Then came the lock-down. While Locke was trapped, Gale went through the air vents. The alarm went off then everything went back to normal. At first Gale said that he entered the code and pressed the button. Later he said that the hatch was a joke and that the system reset on its own.

This bothered Locke. In addition, he totally lost control of Gale. Rather than being Gale's jailer he now has to ask permission (which can be denied) to see Gale.

There was always the possibility that the hatch is a fake - nothing more than a test to see how long the creators can get someone to press a button. If Gale is to believed (a bad assumption) then the hatch is a fake.

On top of everything else, Locke was hurt and has to use crutches. He almost ended back in the wheelchair.

His walkabout seemed to be nothing more than a trick and he was back where he started. He left the hatch, intending to let the alarm go off and do nothing.

Then he talked with Rose. We learned from her flashback that she had been dying from cancer and was healed by the island. She reminded Locke that they both knew that the island heals. That part is no hoax.

The next time we see Locke his calm is back and he is reconstructing the diagram he saw during the lock-down. He believes again.

Rose and Locke don't know it but the island healed Jin, also. Prior to coming to the island he couldn't father children but now Sun is pregnant and swears that he is the only possibility.

Jack continues to shoot down Kate whenever she gets romantic. She thanked him for taking her along to meet with the Others. He replied that she was there because they didn't want her - they had her and gave her back. She still stole a kiss when they were both trapped in a net.

One of the show's running gags - whenever it looks like these two might start getting physical, something happens. This time Michael reappeared.

As leaders go, Jack is pretty poor. Kate withheld information from him because he kept her out of the loop. Hurley made the same complaint earlier. Add in the friction between Locke and Jack, Sayid working Gale over against Jack's wishes and Jack's failure at organizing an army and Jack's leadership looks pretty poor.

Several people on the island have had visions of one kind or another. Jack's dead father led him to the caves. Boone had a vision of his sister being taken by the monster. Hurley saw an imaginary friend from his time in a mental hospital. Shannon saw Walt talking backwards. The island may heal the body but it is tough on the mind.

Finally, the diagram that Locke saw showed six labeled hatches with a seventh labeled with a question mark. So far we have seen three hatches - Locke's hatch, a long-abandoned one, and a recently abandoned medical hatch. Do the Others know about Locke's hatch? Do they know about all of the other hatches? How are they related? There's enough there to keep the show running for at least another couple of years.

Kong

Writing in Slate, Stephen Metcalf offers some reasons why the new King Kong bombed.

Cooper's original isn't simply racist. In fact, the opposite could be argued: Where Ingagi played upon white America's deep fear of racial mixing, King Kong took that race fear and converted it into an allegory for civilization in all its discontents. For Cooper, Kong wasn't a surrogate for black people, with "black" as a virtual synonym for savagery and uncontrollable sexual urges. No, Kong was a symbol—a clunky one, but a symbol nonetheless—for the anti-social alpha male, with all his animal desires and animal jealousies, residing in each of us. Thus Cooper made the death of Kong a tragedy and converted a degrading fear into an ennobling pathos. Now, to the degree this conversion worked, it worked because in 1933 memories of the Victorian world of gentlemen adventurers were still living memories, gorillas had been exhibited only scarcely in the West, and because white people still primally feared black people. Racial and sexual fears may still be depressingly persistent, but they no longer lie so near the surface of American life. Without those fears to play off, Jackson appears lost.

Ignoring the question of how a movie that grossed a half billion dollars world-wide could be called a bomb is Metcalf's analysis of the original accurate? No, not even close. Accodring to Metcalf, the movie only worked because of the period it was released. By that reasoning, the original should bomb today and the remake would be a hit in 1933. We will never know about the latter but the original still resonates today.

I first saw the original around 1974. at that time, I did not fear black people nor did I remember Victorian adventurers but the movie still worked for me. It also worked for Peter jackson who grew up in New Zeland and first saw it in 1969. The parts up to Kong's first appearance are dated and a bit silly but once Kong takes over, the movie is timeless.

Metcalf does have one good point. In the original, the Carl Denham role was directly inspired by the director, Merian C. Cooper. Cooper was an adventurer who made animal pictures. when Denham talks about needing a girl in his pictures or being his own cameraman, he is releating incidents from Cooper's own career. In the original, Denham is larger than life, willing to take chances that often turn out badly. In the remake, Denham is more con-man than director, bringing down anything he touches.

But that's only one problem with the remake. Another problem is the fight with the bugs. It goes on far too long and it doesn't move the plot. A similar scene was cut from the original. Jackson should have taken that advice.

The biggest problem is that the original is not a love story. Ann Darrow feels nothing but fear of Kong. She's still suffering Post Tamatic Shock when Kong is revealed to Broadway. As Kong tears his way through New York we feel shock as his victims pile up. We don't feel much sympathy for Kong himself until he is pitted the against the airplanes - a foe he cannot touch. Instead of trying to save him, Ann escapes to the arms of her human lover.

Note - this was a recurring theme in the classic monster movies. The monster pursued an unwilling heroine, often to him doom. Looked at this way you can see why Kong was so popular. Where Dracula flits arounds as a bat, Frankenstein's Monster lurches, and the mummy shuffles, Kong goes out in public. Not only is Kong unafraid, he kills anything that gets in his way, even an elevated train.

Jackson transformed Kong from a monster in the city to an endangered species trying to get back home. That's why one showing was enough for me.

Ice Age 2

Ice Gae 2: The Meltdown was the #1 movie for the weekend taking in over $70 million. It was the best March opening ever and nearly double what the original movie brought in. In the meantime, what did the critics recomend? Slither which came in at #8 with $3.7 million.

That puts Ice Age as the third biggest animated film opening weekend (it's tied with the Incredibles but ticket prices have gone up since then).

What happened? Probably two factors. The first is that the original movie and Robots were both well-made, entertaining movies. The other factor is that nearly everything else released this year stank. Ice Age was the first movie released this year aimed at the entire family where the movie-goer had an expectation of seeing a good movie.

And it is good. While both Ice Age movies are road films featuring three mismatches animals puncuated with mini-shorts featurig Scrat, the squirrel/rat, the two movies have different plots. They also have diferent supporting casts. This is important. Too often a sequel either puts the stars in a completely different situation or puts them in the same situation along with all the extras.

The original had three animals who didn't really like each other forming a friendship while racing to return a human baby to its tribe before witer set in.

In the new movie, the three are friends who have to excape a valley before it is flooded. Each of the anomals has his own personal growth but the movie doesn't hit you over the head with it. Manny the mamoth has to get over the death of his family. Diego the saber-tooth tiger has to get over his fear of water. Sid the sloth has to earn some respect.

Along the way they are joined by a family of possums, one of whom looks a lot like a momoth. The possums are almost as much fun as Scrat. Almost but not quite. Scrat's quest for the acorn would make Chuck Jones jelous.

The creators, Blue Sky, have shown that they have a vision of their own. Pixar goes for more serious, character-driven plots. Dreamworks does lighter ones with lots of topical references. Blue Sky aims somewhere in between. Their movies are lighter than Pixar's but without the constant topical references. It makes for a nice change of pace.

"Lost" Connections

Everything on Lost seems to be connected. In last night's episode, we see Locke inspecting a house for Sayid's missing girlfriend. We also find out that his father is a con man.

Now - think about con men. Sawyer is one and has spent much of his life looking for the con man who caused his parents' death. What are the chances that Locke's father isn't that con man?

Various spoilers:

It is no surprise that Gale isn't really Gale. He acted too suspicious. Why make Locke and Anna Lucia swear to protect him no matter what unless he knew that he might be discovered? They threw us a curve ball by showing us the balloon before he asked for this promise but it was still a telling request.

A few episodes back (with all the reruns, I forget how many), Sawyer conned Jack and the others. This week, Jack repaid him. Jack knew that when he gave Hurley advice on playing poker, Sawyer would take it as a challenge. Jack pulled the same trick later, forcing Sawyer to bluff rather than fold in front of an audience.

Jack is the leader who no one follows. Hurley complained about not being in the loop but jack is right - there is no loop. None of the principals follow him. They do what they think is best. Sometimes it is the same as what Jack wants but often it is not. This includes big things like moving off of the beach (what ever happened to the settlement at the water hole?) when Kate and Sayid refused.

Jack is also an untrustworthy leader. He breaks his word. He did it to Kate when he took the dynomite and to Locke when he promised not to open the weapons locker without consulting Locke.

This is the second or third time Kate made it clear that she was available and Jack turned her down. She was clearly impressed by the poker game. She fluffed her hair and started to follow Jack to the bunker "for a shower". A lot more was implied. Jack poured some cold (muddy) water on this and offered to escort her back to camp, instead. Jack probably didn't want her near Gale.

Back when they first found the water hole, Kate asked if Jack was checking her out. Had he said yes - who knows. Instead he showed that he wasn't even thinking of her.

Answered questions:
The bunker was running out of food. Now we know how it was resupplied.

Unanswered questions:

Sawyer asked Jack why he didn't play for the guns? Jack said that when he needed the guns he would have them. Does he mean that he is sure he can manipulate Sawyer or that when he needs the guns it will be so obvious that Sawyer agrees?

What triggered the "event" in the bunker? At first it seemed like something was shorting out but there was a lot more to it including the hidden map on the blast door. Since the PC showed a command prompt first, this probably triggered it. Did "Gale" do something to start this? Did Michael or one of the others start it from a different bunker? Is it part of a timed routine to test the people on duty in the bunker? We still don't know if the button does anything or if it is a test to see how long someone will push it on faith. Is it is a test, then the whole lock-down could be a different test.

A lot of other bunkers showed up on the map. We already know of three, two of them abandoned. How many are there? They seemed to be in a circular pattern.

That balloon was not big enough to cross the Pacific. doing that takes a gondola the size of a garage and a huge balloon to lift it. Was the balloon they found part of a re-supply drop? And where did the real Henry Gale come from?

Finally, We know that Hurley was institutionalized but we don't know why. From the preview, it looks like he is going to have a relapse.

New Costumes

Recently Spider-Man got a new costume. He is now a part of the Avengers and is living in their tower along with his wife and Aunt May. Tony Stark took a special interest in Peter and, when his supply of spare costumes ran out, made him a new one. The new one is red and gold (like Stark's Iron Man's armor) with scanners and armor. It even lets spidy glide for short distances.

Depending on how you count it, this is Spidy's third or fourth costume. His original costume is rather striking. It is unusual in a few ways. The back is completely different from the front. Where the front has a small black spider on red, the back had a large red spider on blue. The sleeves have red stripes along the top with webbing and he is not wearing trunks. All if the full-head mask and the under-arm webs and you have a very striking costume.

Every so often Jack Kirby's heirs revive Kirby's claim that he created Spider-Man instead of Lee and Ditko. The costume, all by itself, refutes this claim. Kirby's costumes were usually simple and either left the character's head uncovered or had a simple helmet or mask. What's more, Kirby's characters almost always had trunks, even the Silver Surfer. As the Watcher's gown grew shorter, you could see some trunks peaking out from under.

Anyway, with the exception of the under-arm webbing which most artists didn't want to draw, Spider-Man's costume stayed unchanged until the Secret Wars cross-over. This was comic's first big cross-over event and every character or group came back different in some way (or had a major change while Secret Wars was going on). In Spider-Man's case, he came back with a black and white costume (different from the one from the Spider-Man 3 still).

Of course, this turned out to be a symbiont who eventually became Venom so that didn't work out well for Peter. It worked out great for sales, though. Venom was very popular.

During the period between Peter separating from the symbiont but him returning as Venom, Peter alternated costumes between the old red and blue and a cloth version of the black and white. Once Venom made his appearance, it was back to the original suit for good.

During the clone wars, Peter lost his powers and retired. His replacement started out as a new hero, the Scarlet Spider, but switched to Spider-Man fairly quickly. His suit was based on the original but given a slightly edgier look. It also was front/back symmetric.

So, how long will the new costume last? I'm betting it will not be long, mainly because of the marketing that went into the old costume.

Not that other Marvel heros haven't changed costumes. Iron Man has gone through three major changes and lots of minor ones. His original suit was clunky and iron grey. He quickly painted it gold and a few months later replaced it with a red and gold version. This was the standard for decades. After a major plotline, he came up with a new gold and red version that has set the standard since.

Other heros' costume changes didn't last. Both Dr. Strange and the Sub-Mariner changed costumes in an effort to prevent cancellation. Neither effort succeeded and both characters went back to their classic costumes when they were revived.

Dr. Strange did switch from a plain blue to a fancy red cape back when he was in the back of Strange Tales and this change took.

Daredevil did a similar change. His original costume was outright ugly - yellow tights with black trunks and muscle shirt worn over. It probably threatened his identity since it had to have been designed by a blind man. After a dozen issues and a couple of years (many Marvel comics started as bi-monthly) he quietly changed to a black costume with red highlights. Wally Wood, the artist who designed this costume was thinking of a velvet shirt he owned. Later artists changed it to a straight red costume.

In the 1990s, in a bid to increase sales, Daredevil switched to a grey, high-tech costume. Fans hated it. The writer kept insisting that, by calling the costume "memetic" it made it cool. All the readers cared about was that the "man without fear" was now hiding in a bulletproof suit.

Henry Pym has probably changed costumes and identities more than anyone - so much so that I'm not sure what to call him. He started as Ant Man in a red and black costume. At that point, he could shrink and talk to ants. In an effort to increase sales, he was changed to Giant Man and could both shrink to ant-size and grow to 12 feet. His costume was redesigned at this time although this seemed to depend on the artist. His base costume was red with blue trunks, gloves and boots. As Ant Man, he had a couple of large circles on his chest and some stripes over his shoulders. As Giant Man, the circles were dropped, sometimes looking like suspenders and sometimes like a big black "Y". Eventually his costume was redesigned again by adding a blue over-lay to his chest and helmet. A few issues later Giant Man was cancelled and replaced with the Sub-Mariner (who was given a costume in the late 1970s to increase sales).

Pym came back a year later in the Avengers as Goliath in a yellow and blue costume. For some time he was permanently 10 feet tall. When he regained his ability to shrink and grow he switched to a red and blue version of the same costume. Even later, he changed identities completely to Yellowjacket in a yellow and black costume.

After a divorce, breakdown, disgrace, further breakdowns he became Doctor Pym - sort of a take-off of Doctor Who with an overcoat full of miniature inventions that he could make grow. Pym resumed a couple of previous identities before retiring along with the Wasp who only held one identity but, for a long time, changed costumes with every appearance.

Lost and B5

Lost is beginning to remind me of Babylon 5, and not in a good way. There are several comparisons I could make - both have intelligent scripts with a continuity that promoted character developement. Both have Mira Furlan playing an intense character from a different culture (France and the planet Mimbar). Both have story arcs that hint bigger things are coming.

But that's not what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of all the damn reruns.

Most shows are shot out of sequence in order to build an inventory of episodes. It usually takes longer than a week to produce a new TV show so they intermix new and inventory episodes. This makes continuity a problem which is why most shows limit changes to the continuity to specific months, usually a sweeps month.

Babylon 5 was run on a different basis. Episodes were normally shot in the order they aired. The few exceptions had extra effects and needed additional time for rendering. With no inventory, they would air what was ready then go into reruns, air some more episodes, etc. To make matters worse, the distributor felt that they had to save the last couple of episodes of the season and air them just before the next season. This meant that they could not be rerun (at least not until the next season). With 52 weeks to fill and a couple of episodes subtracted from reruns, that meant that other episodes were run three or four times.

And that brings us to Lost which has just rerun the pilot and two other 1st season episodes for the third or fourth time.

The networks seem to have abandoned the long-standing tradition of a fixed schedule. Instead all but the most popular shows vanish from the schedule for months at a time so that special, limited-run shows can have a slot. While this helps the network pump up their ratings during sweeps month, it has the long-term effect of separating the audience from the full-season shows. It also means that a show that does not vanish from the schedule is caught short of episodes.

The one good thing to come from this - we can go back and look for inner significance in details we originally missed.

In the show they aired a week ago, I just now caught an in-joke. In a sub-plot Sayid and Shannon are trying to translate some French notes. Shannon finally realizes that the words are song lyrics written over and over by Dannielle. The joke is that, while the song was written in 1960, it was used in the closing credits of Finding Nemo. The plot of the movie, a parent trying to find the son who was separated from him, echos Danielle who is still hoping to find her daughter.

Oscar Aftermath

The Oscars have been presented. There was only one surprise in the entire ceremony - Crash beat Brokeback (two surprises if you count Jon Sterart's performance but I'll get to that later). Every other major award went to the person it was expected to go to. Even the ratings went as expected - the second lowest ever.

Looking over the results, there was no trend. Of the six big awards (best picture, director, and four acting awards), no two went to the same picture. Only the best actor was even in a nominated movie. Then there are the technical awards - art direction, sound, etc. A big winner pics up several of these. This year they mainly went to Narnia and Geisha (three each).

This raises a few big questions. Did any of the nominated movies really count as "best"? Was the best movie of the year snubbed in the nominations? Should Walk the Line, Narnia, Geisha or some other movie have been nominated? Or was it just a really bad year for movies?


As for Jon Stewart - the best hosts, the ones who are invited back, are stand-up commedians who have a solid film career. Think Bob Hope or Billy Crystal. Stewart's specialty is political satire. His film roles have been bit-parts in bad movies. He doesn't even live in LA. He's from New York and he's only known for a basic cable show. What were they thinking making him host?

There's always next year. Maybe this year will produce a good movie to nominate.

Oscars - Who will win? Who cares?

Brokeback is going to win best picture and best director. Everyone knows it? So why are there rumors that Crash will win? It's partly because Crash's studio is mounting a marketing campaign but I think it mainly comes down to ratings.

The Oscars is a long boring show. It always runs long. It gets its highest ratings when either a very popular picture is likely to win (such as Lord of the Rings) or when there some real controversy about which picture will get win.

None of this year's nominees are popular. Brokeback has a box office gross of around $75 million. Figuring $8-$10 admission (probably closer to $10 since it mainly played in big cities for half its run) then fewer than 10 million people have seen it. In a country with a population of 300 million, that means that fewer than 3% have seen it. If only the people who saw Brokeback watch then the ratings will be a disaster. Even if everyone who saw all five movies watches and no one else, the ratings will be terrible.

So the powers that be came up with some drama. Crash had a last minute surge and could win after all.

Does Crash have a chance? Not likely. It wasn't even supposed to get a best picture nomination. It took the slot that was supposed to go to Walk the Line which did have a shot at best picture.

About the only real drama is if the Oscars will be a clean sweep for gay-themed movies or if Reece Witherspoon will get it. I don't plan on watching just for that.

Darren McGavin

The actor Darren McGavin died over the weekend. Most news services listed a quick biography for him but they left out some important accomplishments.

I became a fan of McGavin during his short-lived series The Outsider. McGavin played a seedy ex-con turned private detective. This was 1967 and the tv networks were trying to reflect reality better than before. In the opening sequence, McGavin's character was shown drinking milk from the carton before realizing it was sour. This "life can be sour" image typified the show, but it was a footnote in a long list of roles that McGavin played.

In 1970, McGavin played a Marine drill sergent against Jan Michael Vincent's hippy draftee in Tribes. This was a cult hit during the height of anti-war feelings. McGavin had the difficult part of making a tough marine still seem sympathetic.

Two years later he was in Nightstalker. Most of McGavin's biographies mention the series but none of them mention the original movie. This is a major oversight. The series is a cult-classic but the movie was something else - it was an event. It scored the highest ratings a made-for-tv movie had ever recorded, a record which stood until Roots.

McGavin played Carl Kolchack, a seedy reporter similar to the detective he had played in The Outsider. The plot involved a serial killer in Las Vegas and the authorities' attempts to cover it up. Along the way it turned out that the killer was a vampire and Kolchack was the only one to believe. Considering the subject matter, it is not surprising that the producer was Dan Curtis who's soap opera, Dark Shadows, had just ended.

McGavin made one more classic, A Christmas Story which is probably the only memorable Christmas movie made in the 1980s. In the two decades since it was made, Christmas Story has achieved classic status. A good bit of this status is due to McGavin's over-the-top portrayal as the "old man".

Creating a Classic

The first time I read Lord of the Rings I was struck by how the tone changed when they reached Rivendel. Tolkien's son published all of the fragments and early drafts that his father went through while writing the novel. After reading this I understand what happened.

The Hobbit was so popular that the publisher asked for a sequel. Tolkien wasn't sure. He felt that he had done about everything he could with hobbits but he tried anyway. The plot was a problem. Bilbo was supposed to have lived happily ever after which precluded further adventures.

Tolkien started by writing the Long Expected Party. He was vague about who was holding the party and why but he liked it. Originally Bilbo was holding the party before going off in search of more money or a wife or both. Later he and his wife had gone off and his son, Bingo, was throwing the party. Bingo became a nephew instead of a son and in some versions Bilbo threw the party and in others Bingo did. By this point it was clear that it was Bingo's story but Tolkien had no idea what that story would be.

At first Bingo was going off in search of gold and adventure. The ring got mixed in with it in a fuzzy way - possibly it made the owner want to go looking for dragon gold.

Regardless, the party was held by someone for some reason and Bingo departed with some friends. They didn't get very far before they realized that they were being followed and hid. Their pursuer was a figure covered in black so that not even his nose could be seen but it turned out to be Gandolf.

Scratch that. Tolkien immediately changed it to something worse. He wasn't sure what, yet nor was he sure how many riders there were. At one point the dark riders were barrow wights.

By the time they met Tom Bombadil and made it to Bree, Tolkien had worked out that the riders were wraiths and that they were after the ring for some reason.

Bree was a town of hobbits. Even the mysterious ranger they met was a hobbit - Trotter - who wore wooden shoes. They never found out but Trotter was a long-lost cousin of Bingo's.

Bingo was attacked at Weathertop and they finally made it to Rivendel. Bingo recovered and it was time for some revelations.

Except Tolkien didn't have them. He realized that it was time to figure out what was going on. While he was at it, he realized that he had too many hobbits so Bree became a village of men with a few hobbits, and Trotter the hobbit became Strider the man.

While he was at it, Tolkien changed the group of hobbits. He considered renaming the main character "Frodo" but he was too used to "Bingo".

Where Bingo had been accompanied by three young and interchangeable hobbits before, he cut that down to a pair of younger hobbits and added Sam Gamgee.

The ring became THE ring. The seven dark riders became nine nazgul.

There had to be some sacrifice on Bingo's part so he still had money but he had to leave the Shire because of the ring. There had to be a reason for him to go (Gandolf would never have left him if he had known that the Nazgul were abroad) so Gollum was brought into the plot. Bilbo was given a reason for handing over his ring.

Things were shaping up.

Lost Agenda?

Is Lost pushing an agenda? It never occurred to me until a few weeks ago when the local TV writer complained about the baptism episode pushing religion down our throats. This caught me totally by surprise. To me, the episode was "Charlie goes crazy, has visions, and totally screws up." That it ended in a baptism was a minor plot point. Lots of people are baptized and you expect that on an island with a priest (sort of) that this will come up.

Granted one of Charlie's visions had some religious significance but the others didn't. My bigger question was if he had kept his word and had not broken open any of the statues or if the visions were drug-induced?

The next new episode was straight-forward, Sawyer conned everyone with Charlie's help.

Then we come to the Sayid episode. [spoiler] The backstory is how Sayid came to be a torturer. During the first Gulf War, the Americans needed to know what happened to a downed flier. They found out that Sayid spoke English and sent him in as translator, except we discover at the end that the commanding officer speaks perfect Arabic. What the Americans needed was someone they could outsource torture to.

The situation was a bit contrived. The Iraqi officer was not only uncooperative, he was also responsible for using poison gas on Sayid's family, not that coincidences are unusual in Lost. One of the soldiers was Kate's adopted father.

The outsourcing of torture has bee an issue in recent months which makes its inclusion in Lost questionable. The other question is what we are to make of it? Should we be outraged at the trick that the Americans played on Sayid? Should we look at this as an example where someone needed torture even if we are not allowed to do it? Or did they simply toss it out as an example of what happens in war?

It has been noted that Americans are often outraged in principal about torture but we expect our TV and movie heroes to do whatever it takes. This appears to be such a situation.

A few other observation:

Jack is a losy leader. He cannot be trusted. Not long after agreeing with Locke that neither would open the safe without consulting the other, Jack broke his word. If Jack could be trusted then Locke would not have felt the need to move the guns. Jack also broke his word to Kate about who would carry the dynamite. He is ready to start a war with the others but is not ready to torture a possible other to verify his identity.

It appears that you have a few seconds to press the button after the counter counts down but something was happening. We saw hieroglyphs and it sounded like the blast doors were closing.

Sayid blames the others for Claire's death. He was also conducting a poor interrogation. This may be because he was rushed but the proper way would be to ask lots of questions while taking notes and keeping the prisoner on edge. If the prisoner was lying then his answers would not be consistent.

Speaking of the prisoner, Henry Gale, I think that he was lying. Crossing the Pacific in a balloon is not something that you do for a lark. It is very difficult and dangerous. It can only be done with a high-altitude balloon and a pressurized gondola. Gale didn't mention that. You also have to have a ground crew constantly tracking you since chances are pretty good that something will go wrong. Also, when asked how he became rich Gale answered that he was into mining. Minnesota Mining (aka 3M) is the state's best known business. That seems like word association.

Finally, Sawyer does not get along with the island's wildlife. First a wild boar messes up his camp and pees on his stuff, then a tiny frog drives him crazy. Chances are that the island will get him back for crushing the frog.

LoTR to Kevin Bacon

There is a theory that if you take everyone you know and everyone they know, etc. then by the sixth iteration you have included everyone in the world. This is known as the Six Degrees of Separation. There is a related trivia game known as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. This says that you can take any actor and by linking everyone he has stared with and everyone that actor has stared with, eventually you get to Kevin Bacon.

Here's the link for the Lord of the Rings.

The original novel inspired a wicked parody, Bored of the Rings. Instead of hobbits, this had boogies who were often petty criminals. Strider the ranger became Stomper the Lone Ranger. You get the idea.

The two authors of the book went on to found the National Lampoon in 1970. This was such a success that it spun off a few stage productions. The ensemble cast from this and National Lampoon's managing editor went on to found Saturday Night Live.

Which eventually had Kevin Bacon as a guest.

Side note - best line from Bored of the Rings. During the guessing game with Gollum, Bilbo asks what is in his pocket. He then pulled out a gun and shot Gollum.

"He would have finished him off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It's a pity I've run out of bullets, he thought, as he went back up the tunnel..."