Father Issues

Let's see if I can remember all of the characters in Lost with father issues starting with the mildest.

• Walt - Didn't know his father (Michael) until shortly before hey crashed on the island. Often thinks that his father is overbearing. Michael often acts overprotective and jealous of Walt spending time with anyone else.
• Hurley - resents that his father disappeared for 17 years.
• Alex - thinks that her father (Ben) is manipulative. Also, he sent her boyfriend to some sort of conditioning program.
• Claire - She thought that her father died when she was a child until he appeared after her mother was in an accident. He wanted her to pull the plug. She told him to go away and didn't even find out his name.
• Sun and Jin - issues with her father disapproving of her marrying someone beneath her.
• Desmond and Penny - same problem as with Sun and Jin except Penny's father is not willing to make something of Desmond.
  
• Jack - argued with his father a lot. Jack turned in his father for doing surgery while intoxicated.
• Sawyer - his father killed his wife and himself while Sawyer was hiding nearby.
• Kate - When she learned that he mother's second husband was her father she blew him up.
• Locke - His father coned him out of a kidney. Later Locke's father faked his own death as part of a con. Locke's involvement in this lost him his lover. Finally, his fatehr tried to kill him by pushing him through an 8th floor window. Locke spent four years in a wheelchair because of this.

To cap this off:

• Claire and Jack have the same father and don't know it. His body is still somewhere on the island.
• Locke's father is being held by the Others. Want to bet that he turns out to be the guy that Sawyer has been looking for for 30 years?
  

And a few mother issues:
Boone and Shannon - didn't get along with Shannon's step-mother.
Anna-Lucia - lived in her mother's shadow in the police force.
Claire - she wished that her mother was dead and a moment later mom was in a coma.

Heroes Equivalents

The powers that the people in Heroes possess are not that unusual. I saw this questioned in a comic book forum and came up this list:

Claire - (healing) Wolverine before the claws
Sylar - (killing people and taking their power)
Peter Petrelli (duplicates powers) - Duplicate Boy (from LoSH - the Legion of Superheroes)
Nathan Petrelli (flight) - Angel
"Claude" (The invisble man)- Invisible Kid (LoSH)
Parkman (telepath, surface thoughts only) - Saturn Girl (LoSH)
Nikki Sanders (super strength/split personality) - Ms Marvel had a split personality for a while with only one personality having super powers
Issac Mendez (paints the future) - Dream Girl? (LoSH)
Ted (Radioactive Dude)- Radioactive Man (Thor villain)
D.L. Hawkins (phase through objects) - Shadowcat, Phantom Girl (LoSH)
Candice Wilmer (shape-shifter) - Chameleon Boy (LoSH)
The Haitian (steals memories, blocks telepaths) - Professor X
Eden McCain (command voice) - The Purple Man
Claire's biological mother (flames) - Fire Lad (LoSH)

Here are the people I can't place:
Hiro (manipulates time and space) -
Micah Sanders (cyber kninetic)-
Hanna Gittleman (Wireless Girl)-

Relatives:
Angela Petrelli (no known powers but may dream about the future) - Dream Girl (LoSH)
Kaito Nakamura - No known powers but related to a hero
Kimiko Nakamura - No known powers related to a hero

Others
Ando-No known powers
Horn Rims Glasses Guy- No known powers
Mohinder - No known powers
Mr.Linderman- No known powers


Notice how many have their closest equivalents in the LoSH. This group tended to have single powers. With a huge cast, they came up with lots of individual powers. Also, like Heroes, few of the LoSH member were very effective on their own. It was the combination of powers that made it interesting.

The Flame Goes up in Flames

Lost blogging:

In the March 7th episode a small party set on rescuing Jack comes across a station. Officially it is the communications hub although it looks more like a farm.

We finally got one big question answered - where Kate's horse came from. We also found out that the Others have a submarine.

We also met eyepatch guy who might be named Mikhail Bakunin. He claimed to be the last member of the Dharma Initiative but he lied about that so he might have given a false name, also.

The Flame Station was tantalizing. There was a communications dish. It might not have worked, but we know that Sayid could have fixed it. There was also a basement full of tapes and manuals. Probably a lot of answers were there.

But Locke blew it up. He discovered that winning a computer chess game gave access to a set of options and codes. Most of them were broken but there was one to use if hostiles gained control of the station. No surprise - it blew up the station.

My daughter's reaction was "stupid Locke" but there is more to it. On the dramatic level, the producers aren't going to give us answers that easily. One the practical level, they couldn't have held the station. It was not defensible. It was surrounded by hills and tall vegetation grew right up to it. If they had stayed it would have turned into a trap. By blowing it up, Locke respected the wishes of the Initiative and denied the Others further use of the station. This may hurt them in the future.

Assuming that at least some of what Mikhail said was true, there was a war between the Initiative and the Others some time before. This still leaves several questions.

1) Who is dropping food and supplies?
2) Who recruited Juliet? The implication was that the Initiative was killed off longer ago than the three years that she was on the island.

Could it be that the Initiative still exists on the mainland and doesn't know that the Others have taken over completely?

Mikhail mentioned that the Others have been there a very long time. Do some of them date to the Black Rock (the slave ship they got the TNT from)?

The show is beginning to feel more like itself again.

Lost Visions

[note - for some reason this post didn't take the first time so I am posting it after the Feb. 21 episode instead of just before.]

It's almost time for a new Lost and I haven' said anything about the last one, yet.

First the reruns. ABC has been saying that they will never shw a rerun of Lost ever again. Instead they scheduled Lost "encores". At 9:00 they show the episode from the prior week.

Huh? How is this not a rerun?

As long as they are showing "encores" it would be nice to show an older one. The Feb 14 episode was all about Desmond. It would ave been nice if they had repeated the season 2 cliffhanger instead of the Feb 7 show. The much of the Feb 14 episode referred to the cliffhanger which we only saw once, eight months ago. Instead they repeated the only episode we have seen this year.

Anyway...

All three survivors of the hatch explosion have had visions that seemed to involve direct communication with the island through some sort of spirit guide. Locke induced a vision through his sweat lodge. His spirit guide, Boone, gave him a symbolic view of everything going on in the island.

Eko's vision was induced through his delirium with his brother as spirit guide/judge.

In the middle of a temporal fugue, a spitit guide in the form of a jewelry dealer stopped to explain the workings of the universe to Desmond.

I feel a little better about the season after realizing this.

Things that worry me about the season:

The rules of the universe as explained to Desmond sound a lot like Final Encounter - a set of B-grade horror movies.

The show was always about the relationships between characters with each episode changing the mix. None of that has happened this season. Most of the episodes have either been about Kate/Sawyer and Jack/Ben/Juliet. The exceptions have been single character episodes. The backstories in the episodes featuring Locke, Eko, and Desmond crowded out the current story. I want to see more time on the island and less time in flashbacks.

Ratings have suffered. At its peak the show had 20+ million viewers. It was down to 14.5 million on Feb. 7 and 12 million on Feb 14. At this rate, the producers will not have time to tie things up before the show is canceled.

Updates on the Feb 21 episode:
They promised to answer major questions. I'm not impressed. What did we learn?

• The others live on the main island and work on the Hydro-base island. This was obvious.
• The kidnapped passengers are ok. They said this several times. Now we know for sure.
• Jack's tattoo says, "“He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us.” This was very low on my list of mysteries. In fact, the show could have ended without revealing this and I never would have noticed.

A few new questions that probably will never be answered:

• Since when is tattooing a near-religious rite in Thailand?
• Why does someone who is "reading" and "marking" people in a near mystical rite dress like a hooker?

Not LOST, just delayed

Last Fall the producers of Lost said that they would wrap up the second island plot by the end of the mini-season. Instead they ended on a cliff-hanger. What happened?

I think that the bosses at ABC decided that they wanted to start their new series early. They must have had high hopes for it. So they cut Lost's Fall season short one episode and moved it to the Winter.

Bad move. After a three month gap some of the plot points were a little hard to follow. I have a great memory for plot details but when Alex popped out of brush my first reaction was, "Oh yeah, she's here, too." It's been close to six months since Karl made his first and only appearance so he was even more obscure.

So, now we are at a fairly good point for a break. Kate, Sawyer, and Karl are on their way back to the main island. Jack's fate is on hold for a while. There is enough of a break in the minute to minute continuity to stop for a breath but still enough to pull you back.

Except they showed it at the wrong end of the break.

Also, this was the first time one of the Others had a flashback. The flashbacks in the mini-season were all for people who have already had multiple flashbacks. Including Juliet's flashback would have helped with the staleness I complained about recently.

So the producers erred by focusing too much on Jack, Kate, and Sawyer and ABC erred by being too eager to premier a show that flopped.

BTW, the rig they had Karl in was reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange. In this movie, a violent, antisocial gang leader is given a special treatment to make him incapable of further violence or violent sex. He is strapped down with his eyes clamped open and forced to watch clips of violent movies while being given a drug that makes him feel sick. The idea was to build an association so that further violence made him sick. The character's name was Alex which is probably a coincidence.

Presumably we will learn something from Karl about what they were doing to him and why. It looked like they were trying to force good citizenship on him.

So Alex is Ben's daughter. As far as we know, she is also Danielle's daughter. In the 9 o'clock clip show they reminded us that Danielle claimed that she had never seen the Others, only heard them. Was she lying?

And what was a fertility specialist doing on the island?

Sword Blogging

Normally I don't buy movie tie-ins just because I like the movie. I've made an exception on some of the Lord of the Rings merchandise, particularly some of the weapons. There are a few reasons for this. First, I like both the movie and weaponry. Just as important, the weapons are well-made. These are real swords. Finally, I found a really cheap source.

The weapons I have gotten are not licensed movie reproductions. I suspect that they are identical to the licensed ones except without the licensing costs and huge mark-ups. I have a whole collection for what one licensed sword would cost.

Here's what I have and my impressions.

Ranger's sword
In the book, Strider only carried one sword and it was broken for half of the first book. In the movie the idea of a ranger running around with nothing but a broken sword to defend himself was rejected. They gave Strider a rather plain sword and he carried it until Elrond presented him with the reforged sword in the third movie.

This is a copy of the sword that strider carries most of the time. It is a solid broadsword. Like many of the LoTR's swords, it has a two-handed grip. This gives it a good balance when used one-handed. It's a bit short for a two-handed sword but it works well as one.

Ringwraith's sword
The edges of this sword are uneven. The idea was that the Ringwraiths left their swords sitting around, unattended for hundreds of years. This sword was originally wider and some of the edge has rusted away. Regardless, the sword is still sharp and dangerous. You can see this sword held by the flying Nazgul who confronts Frodo in The Two Towers.

This is a real two-handed sword. It is longer than the Ranger's sword but made with a thinner blade. Even though the edges are uneven, they managed to arraign it so that the sword is still perfectly balanced.

I have two complaints about this sword. One is that there are points going up the blade from the pommel. These do not touch the blade but the blade is flexible enough to bang against them.

The second complaint is that the blade is a bright stainless steel. It does not look like something that rusted away. I fixed this by treating it with soldering flux multiple times. This is a mild acid that is corrosive. After several treatments it started to look rusty.

Witchking's sword
In my favorite scene in the book, the orcs have broken the gate to Gondor. Instead of rushing in, they fall back so that the Witchking can be the first in. He is riding a horse. His hood is pulled back and his crown appears to be floating atop his invisible head. He draws his sword and pale flames flicker along the blade.

Opposing him is Gandolf. Before they can meet, the horns of Rohan are sounded. The Witchking hurries back to his flying steed.

In the theatrical version, this is cut completely. In the extended DVD, Gandolf is hurrying to save Faramir when he is confronted by the Witchking with his flaming sword. He shatters Gandolf's staff but hurries away at the sound of the horns.

This is the sword. It's a bit shorter than the ringwraith's sword but it is still a two-handed broadsword. Like the other swords, it is light enough and well-balanced enough to be used one-handed.

Unlike the ringwraith's sword, this one has a special finish that looks just right.

Sting
Since hobbits are so small, what passes as a sword for them was originally a long elf-made dagger. Unlike all of the other elven weapons in the movie, this has a straight, leaf-shaped blade.

The reproduction is about right as a long dagger. This was the first LoTR weapon that I bought and I was surprised that it was a real weapon. The shape of the blade gives it enough weight for cutting.

The handle is painted (as it was in the movie) and I assume that this would rub off eventually. A bit of elvish starts on the cross-guard and runs down the blade naming the sword.

There is also a convincing plastic version of this sword. When you flip a switch the blade glows blue. I've never seen this for less than $50 so I don't have one.

Aragorn's dagger
Galadrial presents gifts to the nine as they leave Lothlorian. Strider gets a dagger. This is used several times. In the fight at the end of Fellowship he loses his sword and uses the dagger. Later an orc throws the dagger at him. Finally, he re-sheaths the dagger as he says, "Let's hunt some orc." In The Two Towers he stops Eowyn's sword with the dagger.

The dagger is a cross between an over-sized bowie knife and a short scimitar. The handle is a nice red wood. Elvish is painted on the blade and it came with a nice leather-covered sheath.


Daggers of Legolas
When he is not using his bow, Legolas draws a pair of daggers. The rest of the time you can see them sticking up from his quiver.

These are unusual-looking daggers. I mainly got them because of the greenish wood handles. For daggers, these are pretty long. If you put your thumbs along the handle they have the feel of a machete. There is enough weight in the blades for cutting as well as stabbing.

Saruman's staff
The top of Saruman's staff has points duplicating the top of Orthanc. It has a marble ball that is reminiscent of the tower's Palantir.

The reproduction took a few shortcuts. The points are made from thinner metal, they used a glass ball instead of a marble one, and the ball is loose.

I considered replacing the ball. Instead I used a felt furniture pad to keep it from bouncing around. I put a red LED in the pad with a hidden battery and wires so I can press on the right place and it lights up.

To make shipping easier, the staff unscrews into two parts. The joint is not obvious.

Gandolf's staff
Gandolf actually has four staffs in the movie. The first one looks like a small tree grew out of a hill. The roots that form the top all go in one direction. There is enough room in between them to hold his long-stemmed pipe. You can see it clearly when he is talking with Saruman. There is also a thong hanging down that he can tie his bag of pipeweed to. Sauruman takes this staff.

Later Gandolf has a similar staff but without the thong.

After his death and resurrection, Gandolf has a new, white staff. It appears to be carved from wood and has a fancy head. In the book, his white clothing was given to him by the elves of Lothlorian. Presumably they made this staff, also. During siege of Gondor, the Witchking shatters this staff. Gandolf grabs a lance from a soldier for a bit but he has a new white staff by the time they attack Mordor.

Mine is based on the white staff. The head it cast metal, screwed into a steel shaft. Like Saruman's staff, this one splits in half. Unlike that one, the seam is obvious.

This was the most disappointing reproductions. The head is made of four cast pieces and they do not fit together well. The seams are obvious. On top of that, it was painted in a high-gloss white paint that made it look cheap.

I fixed a lot of that. After filling the seams with putty, sanding the paint, and putting on a new coat of flat white it looks a lot more like it should.

I may mount a blue light in the head.

Update: I should make it clear that I have no illusions about ever using these weapons for real. It is more fun to get a workout practicing weapon drills than doing calisthenics. I do get satisfaction from going to Renaissance Fairs and beating up people half my age with practice swords but that's as far as it goes.

Eragon - What Went Wrong?

Because of poor reviews, we waited until Eragon hit second run before seeing it. In retrospect, this was a wise choice. The movie has all of the elements of a good fantasy tail, but it just feels off. In going into the problems, I'm going to give several spoilers. This shouldn't affect enjoyment of the movie since most of the surprises are telegraphed way ahead of time, anyway.

The plot is very similar to Star Wars - Eragon, a 17-year-old being raised on his uncle's farm finds a dragon. In short order his uncle is killed and he is hustled off by Brom, who knows all about being a dragon rider and teaches Eragon. Along the way they rescue a princess, Bron dies, Eragon picks up a sidekick, and they join the rebellion.

Despite the similarities, I don't think that it is a direct Star Wars rip-off. This general plot is too common to science-fiction and fantasy novels aimed at teen-age boys. George Lucas claims to have derived his plot from classic myth structure.

Anyway, the general plot isn't the problem. It is the execution.

At the beginning of the movie, the princess has just stolen a "stone" which she sends to a safe place by magic. The script dances around exactly what the "stone" is until it hatches but the audience knows that it must be a dragon egg.

The baby dragon is cute and we see a bit of its childhood. This seems to last two or three days. Eragon helps her to take her first flight. While in the air, she transforms into a nearly-grown, telepathic dragon with more wisdom than you would expect from something only-days old.

This is my first complaint. I would have liked to see the dragon growing up. This in-flight transformation seems like a cheat. It was probably done to account for the fact that the princess was being held prisoner and tortured. The plot dictated the speed that the dragon grew. The same is true of the rest of her growth. When Brom first looks her over he talked about "when she is fully grown." As it turns out, this only takes a week or two. The same is true for Eragon's abilities as a magician (being a dragon rider gives you magic abilities).

Then there is the princess. We never learn much about her. Why did she send the egg to Eragon? She has a telepathic connection to him from the beginning. Why?

I mentioned plot twists being obvious. Brom is the worst example. He has books on dragons. He knows all about them. He has a bit of magic of his own. The movie stops just short of hitting us over the head with a bat labeled, "Brom is a dragon-rider." Still it takes most of the movie before this comes out.

Star Wars gave us Darth Vader - one of film's most memorable villains. In Eragon, we have King Galbatorix, the last dragon-rider but he spends the movie lurking on his throne. Instead he sends Durza who is more unusual than threatening, even when he emulated Vader and kills the head "urgle"  (SP?) and promotes a different one. Near the end of the movie Durva's appearance suddenly changes. Is there a cut scene explaining this? Just one more problem.

The acting is OK. The special effects are great. Too bad the plot is such a mess.

Lost is coming - who cares?

It will not be long before Lost returns to ABC for an unbroken string of new episodes. Why don't I feel more excitement? I can think of two reasons.

1) The season so far. Of the six episodes shown so far, most featured Jack, Kate, and Sawyer to the exclusion of the rest of the cast. For a show with a huge ensemble cast, this is a bad thing. They could have off-set it by telling us more about the Others. They didn't. We now know some names and faces, we know that they have some sort of contact with the outside world but they seem to be stuck on the island. We learned this in the first episode. Reportedly, ABC executives are also upset about the way the first six episodes were handled.

2) The format. This is a much bigger problem. The format of the show is to have split plots - one on the island and one told through flashbacks. This was a great gimic during the first season. we had no idea who these people were and many were surprises. The scary guy with the suitcase full of knives who killed wild boars turned out to have been a paraplegic who only dreamed of adventure. The laid-back, fat guy was a cursed millionaire who had spent time in a mental institution. The Korean couple had their own issues.

By now we have had flashbacks for all of the principal characters. In most cases we have had multiple flashbacks. They are no longer telling us who the characters are. They might fill in some gaps but they don't serve any other purpose. We already knew that Jack was obsessive and had a bad relationship with his father. His flashback just told us that again. We knew that Sawyer was a con man, we didn't need to see him do another con.

The flashbacks are growing stale. Unless they start giving us some interesting flashbacks on the Others I don't see them getting much better. Granted they did slip a couple of new castaways into the cast and they will get their own flashbacks eventually but will this be enough to keep the show interesting?

The producers need to move away from the flashbacks. More is happening in the "present" (now more than two years ago). They need to spend more energy telling us about the island and less repeating stories about the characters' past.

Superheroes without the Tights

Slate has an article tying in the show Heroes with some newer comic books that feature characters without costumes. I think that they are overlooking a lot.

Back when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby re-invented the superhero, they tried to have heroes without costumes. Their first effort, the Fantastic Four, wore coveralls in their first couple of issues. It was only in issue three, after unprecedented fan response (in those days, any fan response was unprecedented) that they introduced uniforms for the team.

Stan and Jack kept the idea of team uniforms instead of individual costumes when they introduced the X-Men, also. Even then, they slipped in quite a bit of time when the heroes were out of costume. In one issue in particular, the X-Men were racing to find a new mutant before Magneto could recruit him and went searching for him in their civilian clothes. While the rest of the team eventually got into costume, Cyclops was still wearing a business suit at the end of the fight.

The real purpose of the costume on a comic book hero is to make him instantly recognizable. Some characters are recognizable enough on their own that they don't need costumes. The Hulk and the Thing are examples. The original Ghost Rider wore the same outfit most of the time. It just looked different when his head caught on fire.

Some normal-looking characters are recognizable enough that they didn't bother with costumes. Professor X and the Charles Cauder from the Doom Patrol were both in wheelchairs so they didn't need costumes.

Then there are special cases. When he first appeared, the Phantom Stranger wore a black suit with an overcoat and hat. Outside of his eyes always being in shadow from the hat, he was wearing contemporary clothing. Later they modernized him, replacing the dress shirt and tie with a turtleneck and pendant and the coat with a cape. Still, it was the 1960s and he still would not have attracted a second glance in many places.

Deadman had sort of a reverse costume. He was the host of a circus aerialist who appeared in the costume he died in (he was sure that the audience only came to see him die and wanted to rub it in their faces). Normally he was invisible and intangible. He could only affect the world by possessing people so, when he used his powers, he looked like a regular person.

In honor of their 20th anniversary, Marvel invented a new universe that was closer to reality than other comics. It was basically our world except for a "white event" which gave some people special abilities - very similar to the way that people suddenly started exhibiting powers in Heroes. While some characters had distinctive clothes, most did not. They wore regular clothing.

Finally, if we go back decades, we find the Spirit. His creator, Wil Eisner, didn't like costumes either so the Spirit's only concession was to wear a domino mask with his suit. But then, the Spirit wasn't a super hero. He was a (sort-of) costumed detective.

DRM and Music Players

First some ancient history.

When the Apple II was introduced in the 1970s, it was a totally open system. Everything about it was documented. This is one of the things that made it popular (along with Visicalc, the first spreadsheet program). While this openness helped sell a lot of Apples, it also meant that there was a big market for hardware that Apple did not make and did not profit from.

Steve Jobs saw this as a problem, When the Macintosh was released, t was the opposite. It was a totally closed system. Just attaching a non-Apple printer to it violated the warranty. Also, in order to make money from developers, Apple required them to buy a $10,000 LISA computer to compile on. (Later they also allowed developers to get by with two Macs.)

The results were predictable. The open IBM PC became the standard but IBM lost control of it. Apple's market share dropped into the single digits.

All of this might happen again in digital music. There are several formats in common usage The most common, MP3, is proprietary but easily licensed and carries no Digital Rights Management (DRM). Windows has its own format which, currently, can compress files better than MP3 and supports DRM. Microsoft licenses their format but there have been problems with the DRM.

Apple and ITunes use their own format and DRM. This cannot be licensed. If you want to buy music from ITunes, you have to play it through your PC or buy an IPod. (There are ways to get around the DRM but they are beyond many people and can result in loss of fidelity.)

One reason that Apple and Microsoft support DRM is because the music labels insist on it. They are sure that open tradig of MP3s hurt their business. This is known as the Napster Effect. Outsiders point out that there are other factors that hurt music sales besides Napster and other follow-up MP3-trading sites. These include major competition for the entertainment dollar such as the introduction of DVDs and several new game consoles. In addition, the decline in sales happened right after the music labels stopped selling the CD singles and raised the average price of CDs to $20. They also cut back on the number of CDs produced annually and, according to most critics, the quality of the music itself went down. The music labels are in a state of denial about any of this.

So, the music labels want to keep any music they sell locked down at tight as possible, What they would really like is to be able to charge you on a per-play basis. What they settled for is selling timed rights. You can listen to their entire library as long as you pay a monthly fee. Once you stop paying, you cannot listen any longer.

Apple talked them into going with ITunes which doesn't tie down the music as much as they would like but still limits it more than a CD does. In exchange, Apple is handing over nearly all of the profits from ITunes. Apple makes their money by selling IPods which you need if you are going to use ITunes.

Personally, I don't like any of this so I avoid it as much as possible. My Sansa does support Microsoft DRM but I'm not using their format. I want as much freedom as legally possible when listening to my music. I want to be able to listen to it on any device I own at any time without having to transfer licenses. I suspect that most people feel the same way.

My personal feeling is that the music labels should sell MP3s for a low enough price that people do not feel the need to pirate them. Apple's price is around $1 which is comparable to CD prices. This is too high. If I buy a CD, I actually have a piece of plastic in my hand. The manufacture and distribution of this is a significant part of the cost. If I am buying a digital version, there is very little manufacturing cost so I should see a corresponding reduction in the digital price. I think that it should be no higher than $0.75. I can see very popular songs being more but older and more obscure music should be a lot less. Basic economics says that they will make a lot more money this way but it is such as change from their normal way of thinking that they have always rejected the idea.

The music companies might finally be coming around to this thinking. According to Wired, they are thinking of giving up on DRM and going with a very low price,

Which Scrooge is the Best?

I know that Christmas is over but I'm doing this one anyway. I spent Christmas Day watching the George C. Scott version of a Christmas Carol. I really think that this is the best although there are some close runners-up.

During the 1970s CBS had an annual tradition of showing the musical version "Scrooge". When they announced a new, non-musical version people asked, "Why?" Aside form it being the first serious remake in a generation, the real answer comes from watching it. It is really good. I was never a fan of Scott but I really liked him as Scrooge. Many other cast members were also fairly distinguished. The script is very true to Dickens with many of the lines being copied straight.

There are some other versions that deserve mention. I always enjoyed the Mr. McGoo version and it holds up surprisingly well. The Muppet version was very enjoyable and Bill Murray did a good job of updating the role for the 1980s.

I don't care a bit for the 1938 or the 191 versions and I was disappointed by the Patrick Stewart one.

There are innumerable other versions. This is one of the two most overused plots for Christmas specials (the other is It's a Wonderful Life). Interestingly, both involve time-travel and alternate worlds. As a twist, in Blackadder's Christmas Carol, Blackadder starts as the nicest man in England and changes when he sees his past and future. In the WKRP version, Mr. Carlson, the station manager, has visions after eating some questionable brownies. Other version are more strained.

My New Sansa

Instead of talking about media, I'm going to review a media player. I got a Sansa media player for my birthday last week. This is not my first MP3 player but it has a number of differences from the others I have owned.

The biggest difference between this and the other MP3 players I own is how songs are organized. The others either put songs in the order they are copied to the device or in alphabetic order. The Sansa ignores all of this and reads the MP3 tags. This surprised me the first time I ripped a CD, copied it, and played it. I was expecting the tracks to be in alphabetic order. Instead the Sansa recognized that they were all from the same album and played them in order by track.

While a great improvement over other MP3 players, this does have a downside. Not all of my MP3s have full tags, especially ones I had recorded from LPs. I had to use an extra program to fill in the tag information. Many of my MP3s came from free downloads from the old MP3.com and other sites. Most of these do not have genre filled in.

All of this is mainly a one-time chore. Once the MP3 tags are filled in they stay filled in.

Beyond that, the Sansa is a good player. It is flash memory-based so it does not have the huge capacity that the iPods or the Zune have. At the same time, it is cheaper and smaller. Mine is the low-end 2-gig model which is more music than I normally listen to in a month.  I can always move songs back and forth between the Sansa and my PC. For those who need it, it can go up to 8 gig plus additional memory can be added through a micro-SD slot in the side.

I loaded it with a gig of Christmas music, plugged it into a set of amplified speakers and played it most of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Then I removed all of that music and loaded my normal selections.

Sound quality is very good. The controls are fairly simple to figure out. I haven't bothered to look at the manual for this yet. I played with a friend's iPod last summer and had a more trouble figuring it out.

The Sansa has a small, color display. This normally goes dark after a few seconds of inactivity. It comes back on when any control is touched and shows the song, artist, the amount of time elapsed and remaining on the song, battery charge, and which song out of how many this is.

You can also use the display to show photographs and movies. These come out pretty tiny and this is not the first use I would make for the Sansa.

Like most MP3 players, you have to have a PC to use it. Unlike most of them, there are no special drivers to attach. You plug it in and it shows as a drive. You then use the Windows Explorer to copy files to and from it. Pictures and movies require a special converter. It also has a different connect mode in case you are using music protected by Windows DRM (Digital Rights Management). In this case you use the Windows Media Player to move music back and forth. I have not tried this.

In fact, DRM is why I went with the Sansa in the first place. The iPod uses DRM that ties it to a particular computer and essentially takes over your music collection. The Zune does something similar. Also, the iPod has a dark side - the batteries die and are hard to replace. The Sansa makes the batteries easy to get to.

The earbuds that came with the Sansa sound fine but hurt my ears after a while. I switched to a pair of Koss ones that I already had. The Koss earbuds go partway into the ear and sound great. On the other hand, the stock earbuds are better if you are going to spend most of your time wearing them. With the stock ones I can hear other people and carry conversations. With the Koss I have to pull out at least one.

The Sansa can receive and record FM radio. It can also record voice. I tried this during an Irish session and was surprised at how good the quality was - much better than other digital recorders I have used. This is recorded in .wav format.

All told, the Sansa is a good device.

Fantastic Four II

I saw the trailer for the new Fantastic Four movie, Fantastic Four, the Rise of the Silver Surfer. It was really good. I was smiling all through it at how cool the Surfer looked. The trailer had more excitement than the entire first movie combined.

BTW, the trailer can only be seen with Night at the Museum which is really funny and much better than the critics will admit.

LoTR Extended vs Theatrical Releases

THe cable channel TNT has been showing the Lord of the Rings the last two weekends. As it happens, I've been watching the extended versions. While I have seen both versions before, I have not seen them so close together so I was struck by how different the extended editions are.

Most DVDs contain deleted scenes but these are normally shown separately, without context. It is up to you to figure out how they would have been incorporated into the original movie. The Extended Edition of the Fellowship of the Ring changed this. Peter Jackson re-edited it and had it re-scored. The result was a move that could have been a theatrical release very similar to the director's cuts that are sometimes made.

Now, in the Fellowship of the Ring, it didn't make that much difference. We saw a longer opening with some background on Hobbits and a few other scenes that added depth but slowed the pace of the movie.

The Two Towers was a little different. Most of what was added was fun but optional. We saw Merry and Pippin spending the night at Treebeard's place and drinking his special Ent brew. Later we saw them stumbling on Sauruman's larder. More important, we saw what really happened to Sauruman's army of orcs - they were killed by an army of trees from Fangorn forest.

But these are nothing compared to the Return of the King. That movie was judged too long for theatrical release so some important scenes were cut for time. This was obvious in two places in the final version. In one, Gandolf and company go to confront Sauruman but then leave. Much later, Aragorn leads his commanders to the gates of Mordor. The gates open and he runs back to his army. Obviously something happened here.

In the Extended version we see the confrontation with Sauruman and the Mouth of Sauron.

A lot more is there in the Extended version. A number of connecting scenes are restored. Battles are longer. In at least one place, the order of events is changed.

In the theatrical version, the orcs are breaking into Minas Tirath. The orc general is ordering his troops to kill anyone they meet. Then horns blow and the Riders of Rohan appear. Back in Minas Tirath, Pippin finds Gandalf an fetches him to save Faramir.

In the extended version, the orcs are breaking into Minas Tirith and the general is instructing his troops. Pippin fetches Gandalf. On their way to save Faramir they are confronted by the Witchking. He breaks Gandalf's staff but is distracted by the horns. We see the general turn then we see the Riders of Rohan.

BTW, Gandalf goes through a lot of staffs. Sauruman takes the first one. The second is lost in Moria. The Witchking breaks the third. When Gandalf saves Faramir he has to snatch a guard's pike.

There are also scenes showing Aragorn and company attacking the revers and curing the people who were sickened by the Nazgul.

In all, after seeing the Extended Edition of the Return of the King I have trouble enjoying the original version.

The Not-So Funny Pages

The comic section is going be a bit less comic next year. Fox Trot is cutting back to Sunday-only and For Better or Worse is rumored to be ending later in the year.

There aren't that many strips that are consistently good and these two are in a short list at the top.

A few other strips continue to be funny. Zits and Sherman's Lagoon are the most consistent. Get Fuzzy and Agnes are uneven but stand-outs when they score (which is more often than not). Stone Soup can get a laugh.

Then there are the strips that used to be funny. Doonesbury was really funny when it started in the early 1970s but turned into a liberal rant before the end of Nixon's administration. It's hard to believe but Garfield was really funny when it started. For the last decade or two it has been the laziest strip in comics. The repeated jokes about boredom mirror the content of the strip.

Dilbert continues to be amusing but narrowed its focus to office humor a few years ago. When it first started it was broader and funnier.

Then there is Funky Winkerbean. This started out as a kids-in-high school strip with formulaic jokes. Many jokes were repeated in different forms. Often a week was devoted to inanimate objects such as the school rock, a school wall, or the last leaf of autumn. Then, following Doonesbury, it suddenly jumped ahead a few years. The regular cast was now older and had jobs. It became a continuity strip, often covering uncomfortable territory. The title character got married then divorced and developed a drinking problem. Other characters married and coped with problems such as cancer. One character is slowly dying. It's not that much fun any longer.

Then there is the strange case of 9 Chickweed Lane. For years it was about a Juliette, a university professor who lived with her mother and daughter, Edda. Other characters included Milo, the daughter's nerdy friend and the staff of the Catholic school where Edda and Milo went. Then, two years ago, everything changed. Edda and Milo moved to New York and started making out. Juliette stopped teaching, bought a farm, and married her long-time boy-friend. Unlike Funky Winkerbean, the tone of the comic never changed.

For an object lesson there is Bloom County. One of the best strips of the 1980s (it won a Pulitzer Prize) Berk Breathed, the creator became tired of doing it and replaced it with a Sunday-only strip called Outland. This started out completely new except for one or two characters from Bloom County but eventually morphed back to the original. Then it quit. More recently, Breathed felt that he missed having a voice so he revived it again, this time as "Opus" but still Sunday-only.

I can't canvass the comic strip without mentioning Peanuts. Currently, at least in my paper, they are reprinting strips from the late 1950s. Many of these have lost their punch. Things have changed over the last half-decade. The last weekly and Sunday strips were memorable because they carried on the tradition of bitter-sweet comedy that was Peanuts' trademark.

And finally there is Calvin and Hobbes. It was always funny and it ended too soon.

CGI - Is the Free Ride Over?

There is an AP story going around that CGI movies are no longer as popular as they were (Sorry - no link, I read it in dead tree format.). It points out that none of this year's CGI releases earned as much as Shrek 2 or the Incredibles. It goes on to say that the novelty of CGI is gone.

There are two problems with this and they both relate back to the fact that you cannot force people to go to a bad movie.

First, with the exception of Pirates II, no movie released so far this year has made as much as Shrek 2 or The Incredibles. It has been an off year for movies. Of the movies that have been released, 16 count as CGI. Of those, three are in the top ten for the year and five are in the year's top 20. Further, with $100 million earned in its first two weekends, Happy Feet is likely to join the top 10.

Cars is the solid number two movie for the year so Pixar is still doing quite well.

What about the other 13 CGI movies released this year? Some of them did well, some did not. Too many seem to be recycling the same furry animal plot. The CGI releases that did well tended to be original. Either they featured animals in a different plot (Ice Age 2, Happy Feet, Over the Hedge) or they did a better job with a tired plot (Open Season).

The rest of this year's CGI movies prove what John Lassiter of Pixar always maintained - It's not enough to be CGI, you have to make a good movie.

Yes, Toy Story benefited from the novelty of being the first CGI movie. It's also a good movie, worth watching several times. I watched the Incredibles again last Summer and was struck by how good it is.

Even Antz which is usually forgotten when talking about early CGI movies was entertaining.

On the other hand, the Ant Bully looks like a retread of Antz.

CGI does have one thing going for it. Adults, especially teenagers, stay away from hand-animated cartoons. There was a period in the late 1980s through the early 1990s when Disney escaped this stigma but a lack of creativity ended this phase and it never really spread past Disney.

Pixar could have settled into this rut and taken all of CGI with it. Prior to the Incredibles, their movies tended to be oriented more to kids. Dreamworks saved them from this. Shrek was aimed at adults and established the genre as adult-friendly. Ice Age also deals with rather adult themes.

But, CGI movies do stand out. People are unlikely to go to two in one weekend so a glut can hurt even well-produced ones like Monster House (which also suffers from a slow start).

So studios that rushed into CGI expecting a guaranteed return will be disappointed but the good ones will continue to do well.

Happy Feet

From the ads, you would think that the new CGI movie Happy Feet was nothing but dancing penguins. The reviews give the impression that it is mainly plot. The actual movie is half-way in between. It has plenty of song and dance routines but there is also a lot of plot.

The plot itself is pretty familiar. It's pretty much the same as Rudolph - a character is dorn different, his father is ashamed and encourages him to hide his differences. When he reaches adolescence he is excluded and finally expelled. Eventually he returns to save the day with his special talent.

That said, Happy Feet is a much more satisfying version of the plot. The setup is that Emperor penguins find a mate by signing their "soul song". The trouble is that Mumble, the main character, can't sing. In fact, he's so bad he disrupts everyone else.

What Mumble does do, is dance. He was born with "happy feet". But he is the only penguin to do the soft shoe (claw?). The elders are wary.

Then there are the aliens who abduct animals, probe them, and release them with strange things attached to them.

The movie does graft in an ecological message but it's pretty weak (don't fish).

Where the movie really stands out is the quality of the CGI. The animals look photo-realistic. Even the few humans seem to be on the right side of the uncanny valley.

All told, this should be a good contender for best animated movie of the year.

Lost by the Network

After tonight, Lost will vanish from ABC for three months, appearing in February and running for an uninterrupted 17 weeks. If you add together the six episodes from the Fall (including tonight's) and the 17 in the spring, you see part of why the show seemed to be in reruns so often. With 23 episodes total trying to fill 52 weeks, something has to give. If you also figure in that they only ran the last few episodes once, you see why fans grew upset with ABC over the number of reruns.

ABC heard the complaints but got the wrong message. They now have an policy that says that only new episodes of Lost will be played. If you missed it or there are details you forgot, tough. You can buy the DVD or download it and play it on your PC.

This is not my ideal way of handling Lost. With heavy continuity and foreshadowing, some episodes gain from being shown more than once. The complaint comes when they show more reruns than new episodes or show an episode for the third time.

I am aware that Lost reruns do not have the same ratings as new episodes but they were never handled right.

My ideal season would be to run new episodes from late September or early October through mid-December with a possible break at Thanksgiving. After some preemptions for holiday specials, bowl games, etc. they would start up again in mid-January and show the rest of the season. Then they would play the season again, in order with the season-ending cliff-hanger playing just before the new season starts.

NBC gets it - at least so far. They have run Heroes unbroken since September. This is important with shows featuring heavy continuity like Lost and Heroes. If you play a half dozen episodes followed by eight reruns, people lose track of what is going on. It hurts the show.

On the other hand, if you have huge gaps between episodes then people lose interest.

I hope that ABC doesn't end up hurting Lost.

Something else that may hurt Lost is the focus on Kate, Sawyer, and Jack. Kate was edgy in the first season as the sweet-faced fugitive. That went nowhere in the second season. Sawyer is best as a supporting character. he is too annoying to be a lead, week after week.

So far we have not learned much about the Others. we learned more about them before the opening credits in the first episode of the season than we have learned since. In the meantime, the more interesting characters have gone starved for screen time.

Then there is the clumsy introduction of the new castaways. They were just suddenly there. We are supposed to think that they were always there, we just overlooked. them. This would be fine if they had emerged from some crowd scenes. Instead, they are hanging around with a small group of regulars. The producers could have spent less time on Sawyer and more time introducing the new folks.

Tonight's episode is supposed to change everything. We will see.

Who Conned Who?

The finale to the mini-season of Lost wasn't what we could have hoped for. Nothing was resolved and most of it concentrated on the love-triangle of Jack, Kate, and Sawyer.

Even though it was a Kate episode (she got the flash-back), Jack's plotline was the important one.

Previously Ben had explained that he had a plan to make Jack want to help him. That plan went out the widow when Jack saw someone's X-rays and got Ben to admit that they were his. The question is, how much of what happened next was planned by Jack?

Ben and the Others showed that they could out-con Sawyer, but Jack has conned Sawyer, also.

First, Jack needled Ben, telling him how he would die, and letting him know that there was not enough time for Ben's clever plan to work anyway since Ben's tumor would be inoperable within a week.

If Jack was thinking ahead, he knew that the next step would be to bring Kate. This didn't go as planned since it was obvious that she was attached to Sawyer. Ben tried to take advantage of this by letting Jack "accidentally" see Kate and Sawyer together on a monitor. With no ties to the island, Jack was more likely to do the operation. Jack seemed to take the bait and agreed.

As we found out, Jack had his own plans and had not given up on Kate.

Then there are the unknowns. Jack does not know that they are on a smaller island. Ben didn't know that Pickett would decide to kill Sawyer as soon as Ben was unconscious.

There are also some knowns and almost-knowns. Kate knows that Alex managed to get to the smaller island. She may be able to use this. Jack knows that some of the Others want Ben dead.

And Locke got a message from above in the form of Eko's Jesus stick being dropped on his head and then seeing what appears to be a relevant passage written on it.

It's going to be a long 13 weeks.

Goodbye Mr. Eko

The monster in the forest has been in Lost since the pilot but we don't know much about it. When we first saw it, it killed the last survivor of the flight crew. Later it blew trees out of the ground and nearly pulled Locke into a hole. Somewhere along the line we saw it as a tendril of smoke.

We still don't know what it is but we got a much better look at in in the last episode of Lost. Mr. Eko appeared to be delirious, seeing his dead brother and other figures from his past. This has happened before. In the very second episode, Jack followed the ghost of his father to the water supply in the caves. Hurley was visited by an imaginary friend. Kate saw a horse. Locke not only saw the dead Boone as his spirit guide, he also saw Eko's brother in an earlier episode. There are probably more examples I am forgetting (not counting the backwards-speaking Walt).

We have been writing these off as visions or hallucinations but what if there is more to them? What if they are caused by the smoke monster? There are indications that there were more to these apparitions than seemed. Kate's horse was seen by Sawyer. Locke and Eko shared a vision. In Locke's vision, Boone seemed to know more about what was going on than Locke possibly could.

Then there was the fire. How could a vision set Eko's shelter on fire?

Of course the tip-off came when "Yemi" said that he was not Eko's brother. Then the smoke monster appeared and smashed Eko against a tree.

So far we have seen the smoke monster in three forms - a small, quick swirl of black dust, a tendril of thick black smoke, and now a huge, monstrous cloud.

During the first season we assumed that the cloud was related to the others. That no longer seems true.

As for Eko, the episode was about his refusal to confess his sins and his insistence that doing was was needed was no sin. The implication was that the monster killed him for not confessing.  It could as easily be that the monster was planning to kill him regardless and was offering him a chance at last rites.

We know that Eko will confess and do penance when he thinks that he has done wrong. After killing three others, he was silent for 30 days (10 each) as penance and he confessed to Henry Gale (Ben) in the vault.

With Eko dead and Jack on a different island, Locke is now the undisputed leader. He seems to be better at it than Jack was. Jack didn't keep anyone in the loop and everyone was complaining during the second season. Not long after they discovered the bunker, Jack refused to tell Charlie  about it but Locke willingly told him everything.

People seem happy about the changes, at least the new couple does.

Also, Locke has his island mojo going again. He is a man with a purpose.

At the end of the second season Jack worried about a "Locke problem". If he makes it back with the others he will find that it is now a Locke regime.