Windows vs Mac

Last week I wrote about the iPhone and issues that I see with owning one. I noticed a recent column in ZDNews about why Windows users in general  don't switch to the Mac. This in turn leads to an earlier column on the same subject on a pro-Apple site. I thought I would add in my own observations. Unlike the columns I mentioned, I am not a Mac user. I have used a Mac a few times. The most I have done was some trouble-shooting on why a Mac wasn't connecting to the Internet properly (it was using the wrong name-server and I had to open a unix prompt to figure it out). I will also note that I have extensive Unix and Linux background. Basically, this is why someone who is not afraid of new operating systems does not switch.

Let's get the big reason out first - money. I've priced at Macs. They start at around $1,100. I can get a perfectly usable PC for half that. I realize that I can get a Mac mini for a lot less and hook up my own peripherals. It's still a lot of money since a comparably-priced PC will include everything.

Mac users can argue that their boxes are better built, will do more, etc. I don't care. A BMW owner could make the same points without getting me to buy a new, more expensive car.

This dovetails into the second big factor - OS/10 may be great but Windows XP is good enough. I can do everything I want a PC to do on XP. some things may be easier or work better on the Mac but it is not enough difference to switch.

There are hidden costs to making the switch. If I buy a new PC I can usually run all of my old software. If I buy an Apple I have to get new software. Some products don't have an Apple version. There are replacements but this could get expensive quickly. I have a lot of graphics software (all legal). Some I bought. Some I got free through special offers. I am sure I would lose a lot of it if I switched to Mac. Yes, thee is boot-camp. I could buy a version of Windows and run it on the Mac. All of my software would work but I'd be left with an expensive Windows PC. I think I could run it in a virtual session at a performance penalty and I'd probably still have to buy Windows.

A different hidden cost - hardware upgrades. I've gone through several PCs and I usually stretch their life by upgrading the disk, memory and possibly the video. I'm not sure how possible this is with the Mac.

Apple's ads don't help their case. They have several that imply that PCs can only be used for business. One in particular has the Mac guy showing off his digital pictures while the PC guy shows a spreadsheet graphing how much fun he had. This ad was so over the top wrong that my wife even complained about it. This raises the question - if I know that Apple is lying in some ads, why should I believe the other ads? Even without that, the PC guy is more likable than the Mac guy.

Then there is the whole cult of Steve thing. I have it on good authority that Steve Jobs is a jerk to work for. He is a control freak. usually this only affects people at Apple but sometimes this bleeds into the product. Look at the fights over the iPhone. You may buy it but Apple thinks that they still own it. Back when they introduced the Mac, around 25 years ago, they tried to control it the same way. You violated your warranty just by plugging in a hard disk or printer that someone besides Apple made. More recently they've done it with music. Music you buy on iTunes will only play on an iPod. Apple will not license anyone else. Real Media made a way to convert files to Real's format without removing copy restrictions. Apple had a fit because people could then play music they bought from Apple on players from someone else.

It seems like buying an Apple includes a commitment to join the Cult of Steve. This includes putting up with the stuff I just mentioned and more. There also seems to be a requirement to evangelize. All of that is a lot more commitment than I want to put into an operating system.

So, why would I want to switch? Graphics? Yes, they are nice. Vista is better and Linux has some snazzy effects that will run on low-end hardware. There are a lot fewer viruses for the Mac but that isn't a big issue for me. I have good anti-virus software and I know what not to run. If I was really worried, I could move to Linux and keep my existing hardware.

Bottom line - I'd be paying money to be cool. That just isn't me.

Whose iPod is It?

I lost my Sansa MP3 player while on vacation. I was seriously considering until Christmas to replace it and asking for an iPod Touch but Apple's recent antics with the iPhone have scared me away. While I understand why they did some of their actions their attitude still leaves me cold.

First there is the "iBricking" of the iPhone. A recent firmware upgrade disables iPhones that have been "unlocked" from AT&T. I can sort of understand this. They got a great deal from AT&T. Apple gets a portion of AT&T's monthly charge for the life of the contract. The update might not have even been Apple's idea. Someone from AT&T might have called Steve Jobs and reminded him that it was supposed to be impossible to switch from AT&T. There might even be a penalty clause in their contract.

But there are reports that there are flaws in the update and some phones that were never unlocked are also nonfunctional. That's not good.

Then there is Apple's undisguised greed. They started out by charging a lot more for the phone than they planned to sell it for. Why? Because they knew they have a devoted core that would buy it at any price. Once they worked through that core they lowered the price down to the real one.

This also shows up in the way they handled ringtones. Apple wants you to pay twice for each ringtone. First, you have to buy it from iTunes, then you have to pay to have it converted to a ringtone. Some people figured out how to get around this but the steps are too technical for most people. Regardless, Apple has changed the firmware around a few times to lock people into Apple ringtones. I can't image why they would bother except for the possibility of losing a few dollars licensing.

Beyond all of this, there is the insistence that every aspect of the iPhone should be controlled by Apple through iTunes. The phones have at least 8 gig but none of it can be accessed by the user. You cannot run third party applications on it. There are ways around this and Apple disabled them with the last update, also.

Supposedly the embargo on 3rd party software and storage is part of the AT&T contract. They didn't want a virus getting into the phone system. I might buy that if it were not for the iPod Touch.

In theory the iPod Touch is an iPhone without the phone part. I'm not sure if it is also missing the camera, Apple's web site mainly talks about the new features (the ability to buy music at Starbucks). So you might think that Apple would run more things on the stand-alone iPod than on the iPhone, right? Wrong. Some features are missing. At minimum you cannot update your calendar. Also, these are the only two units in the iPod line that will not let you use as a general purpose USB drive.

What I would like is a music player that lets me store files locally and access the web. The iPod only does some of this and I suspect that I would get frustrated before I got my money's worth.

In the meantime I picked up a Sansa Express. It's tiny - arounf 25% longer than a USB drive. It has all of the features of the bigger one except the screen for pictures and movies. Since I mainly use it for music, that's fine. It doesn't have the scroll wheel so navigation is a bit slower but otherwise it works just the same. One nice touch - it has a built-in USB plug and a short extension in case it doesn't fit. Like the other Sansas, I can use the Media Player to synchronize music or just copy and paste.

There is a reason that Sansa jumped to the #2 slot in MP3 players in a year. They don't have the cult appeal of Apple, they just work.

Vampires on TV

CBS has a new show about a vampire detective. How original. This has almost become a genre. Here are some previous shows with a similar premise:

Forever Knight
Nick Knight has been a vampire for 800 years and regretted it for most of that time. In the 20th century he decided to help people by becoming a policeman. The show started as a 1989 movie called Nick Knight staring Rick Springfield. In 1992 it was picked up as a series under the new name and with a new cast.

The show swiped a lot of its format from the better Highlander. As Nick investigated crimes in the present he would remember something from his past that had some bearing on the current case.

As a vampire, Nick could fly (usually implied by a shaky camera), had supernatural strength and could hypnotize people. He was immortal but had to avoid the sun. He got his blood supply from a pretty coroner who was trying to cure him.

Despite the main character, the show was primarily a detective show, not a vampire show.

Angel
A spin-off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel was a vampire who, after more than a century of depravity, had been cursed by having his soul returned. Feeling regret for all of his past sins, he sought redemption by helping people. He ended up founding a detective agency with some friends.

The show ran for five seasons on WB. It changed focus a few times. A principal character was killed off half-way through the first season and replaced with another Buffy alumni. Other characters came and went.

Unlike Forever Knight, Angel's premise was saving the world from the supernatural and an evil law firm.

As a vampire, Angel was immortal and had supernatural strength. He had to keep out of the sun or burst into flames. He drank animal blood.

Blood Ties
This series is still running on Lifetime TV with the first season starting last March. It is based on a series of books by Tanya Huff featuring a private detective, Vicki Nelson who keeps running into supernatural cases and enlists the vampire Henry Fitzroy to help her.

Henry was strong and fast and fell asleep during the day. The sun could kill him. He got his blood supply from willing donors. In the book he was bi-sexual but in the TV series he is hetro and little is said about his source of blood. Henry is the illegitimate son of Henry VIII.

The focus of the series is solving supernatural crimes. Henry's main motivation for getting involved is his relationship with Vicki.

That brings us to Nightlife.
The vampire is a private detective. We don't learn why in the pilot. He is 90 years old and immortal. He get blood from a contact in the coroner's office. The sun makes him feel ill. He can move quickly and can identify people by scent.

The focus seems to be a detective show featuring a vampire. This brings up full circle back to Forever Knight which also started on CBS.

A look Back at Heroes

The second season of Heroes starts tonight. While this became one of the best shows on TV last season, it got off to a rocky start. I'm hoping that they don't repeat that this year.

The show managed to ride the popularity of last year's X-Men release. The premise is pretty similar - people suddenly discover that they have super powers. In the X-Men they are mutants. In Heroes, they are "heroes".

The first few episodes were pretty grim and the characters were unlikeable. We had an arrogant politician, his bitchy mother, and his wimpy brother. There was an internet stripper who killed people in grisly ways. There was a junkie who painted disturbing visions of the future There was a serial killer who cut people's heads off and skooped out their brains. And there was a cheerleader who was apparently trying to kill herself and failing. The gore factor was the highest in any regular show I can remember. This reached a peak when Claire, the cheerleader, woke up in the morgue after an autopsy had cut open her chest (it was also the least convincing effect since the latex appliance didn't bent right when she sat up).

The main redeeming feature was Hiro - a Japanese office worker who discovered that he could affect time and space. After turning a clock back one second, he decided that he had a duty to help the world. Soon after, he traveled to New York's future and saw a major explosion. He quickly made it his mission to prevent the blast, dragging his co-worker along.

Ironically, Hiro has yet to accomplish any of his missions. He did not save the cheerleader, Peter did. He didn't stop the explosion, Nathan did. He hurt but didn't kill Sylar. He didn't even save a doomed waitress although he did make her last months more pleasant.

Several of the character's story threads never jelled. The telepathic cop started out as a major character but faded into the background. His main contribution was to show that making a loser telepathic doesn't change the fact that he's a loser. The same is true for Nikki and her family. One month she's hiding bodies, the next she's hunting her husband and child, then she's in jail, then she's a hired assassin, then she's trying to get her son back.

On the other hand, Peter became much more interesting as the show progressed. Besides Hiro, he is the only one who tries to help others with his gifts. Unlike Hiro, he did save the cheerleader.

The producers say that they listened to fan complaints and will address them in the new season. Story arcs will be shorter and fewer characters will be appearing per episode allowing more time for the characters who do appear. I hope that they got the right message. Lost claims to have heard viewer complaints about reruns but they got it wrong. We didn't want the show taken off the air except for new episodes, we just wanted more new episodes in a row.

We will see how Heroes does in season two.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Sept. 19 is Talk Like a Pirate Day. I'll use this as an excuse to comment on the Summer movies, one last time. The top three were Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, and Pirates 3 in that order - domestically. Internationally, they switch. Pirates came in at number one. Granted it's box office was $50 million less than Pirates 2 but that doesn't seem very important when the total take is around $950 million vs around $1 billion for the previous release.

I'm mainly bringing this up because various critics called Pirates a disappointment because its domestic take was down quite a bit. This was meant as a reflection on both movies. Since the overall take was up, that means that overseas ticket sales made up the difference.

Consider that a shot over the bow to the critics.

The iFiasco

I know a couple of people with iPhones. One of them stood in line on opening day to get it.

They are proud of their gadgets. They show them off. They pull up YouTube videos or take your picture and show how they can link it to your phone number so it will show when you call. Sometimes they even make phone calls with the things.

I was never interested. At $600, I could buy a new PC and a new MP3 player and possibly have money left over for a low-end digital camera. None of those would obligate me to sign up for an expensive phone service (and pay a cancellation fee for my current service).

The iPhone owners didn't care about any of these things. They had their toys. But some discontent bubbled out out out the masses of iPhone owners. It turns out that the iPhone is a lousy phone. My dedicated phone is small, the battery lasts all day, and I can operate it one-handed. For commonly called numbers I can turn it on with my thumb, hit a button with my middle finger and tell the phone who I want to call and it will dial for me. With the iPhone, you have to use both hands and go through several motions.

Then there is AT&T. Their Internet service is dead slow, possibly too slow to be usable for many web pages. Their reputation took a major hit when it got out how poor their coverage is. Some states don't have any coverage to speak of. Others do but suffer from dropped calls (a columnist at Huffington complained that his conversations always ended with "Hello?" "Hello?")

Some people were buying the iPhone just to use as a wi-fi Internet device. I thought that it might be useful like that but the price was still much too high.

It turns out that a lot of people think like I do. Apple just introduced an iPod that is an iPhone without the phone part and it is only $300. That's still a lot of money to me but it is no longer out of the question.

It also appears that sales must have spiked then dropped fast because Apple dropped the price by $200. The phone that cost you $600 in June now costs $400. That has a lot of loyal Apple customers upset.

Everyone knows that technology changes. What is on the market today will either be cheaper next year or replaced by something more powerful. People accept that and factor in the cost of waiting when deciding to buy. The thing is, people expect these drops to take a year or more, not a few weeks. Apple has always charges a premium price but this time they admitted that the price was in the gouging range.

Keep in mind that Apple could sell the iPhone below cost and still come out ahead. They get a cut from AT&T's monthly bill so you continue to pay Apple as long as you keep your phone contract.

Apple set the original price too high. They want to attract the people who are not willing to pay $600 for a poor phone with a great interface.

There is no graceful way out of this. It only took a day for them to announce that current customers would get a $100 credit. Considering their margins, that probably will cost them at most $50 per phone. That's not very generous. And the group they offended includes the hard-core Apple fans. It's a wonder that their stock only dropped a little.

Summer Review

The Summer movie season is over. The results are interesting.

Revenge of the threes. Six movies were the third installment of a series. Half of these ( Spider-Man, Shrek,and Pirates) broke $300 million. Of these, none were the best example of the series and none made as much money as the second installment but they still brought in just under a billion dollars in the US alone. Strangely, only Pirates has been singled out as a disappointment even though all three made the current top 10 box office with their second release and the box office of the three is within 10% of each other. Also, Pirates was the only one of the three that had a better third movie than the second.

Of the other 3rds, Bourne might break $200 million. Ocean's 13 only brought in $118 million - not bad but not what they were hoping for. The same is true for Rush Hour 3 at $118 million which is still pretty good for a 50-something action hero.

Along the same lines, Harry Potter 5 failed to break $300 million despite massive publicity from the book release and a solid movie but, at $280 million, the franchise hasn't run out of gas.

Source material. All of the top movies were adapted from some other medium but this year is surprising for the sources. We have Spider-Man (comic book), Shrek (children's book), Pirates (amusement park ride), Transformers (toy/comic book/tv show), and Harry Potter (children's book) before we get to the first original production - Ratatoille. The next two after that are Bourne (spy novel) and the Simpsons (cartoon) before adult films Knocked Up and Live Free or Die Hard . Clearly the days when studios had to release a violent R-rated movie in order to score big at the box office are over. Only one of these was rated R although most of the rest were PG13.

Disappointments. Ocean's 13 made money but didn't live up to expectations. Audiences didn't want to see remakes of the first movie. Evan Almighty did even worse, not quite breaking $100 million. No surprise here since the original had a different cast and premise and was a chick-flick/date movie. Evan had a completely different cast (the star was a bit-player in the original) and premise. It was aimed at families and Christians. Sicko was probably the biggest disappointment. It only brought in $23 million and failed to make national health care the topic of the year.

Overlooked. Ratatoille might break $200 million but it made less than Cars which made less than The Incredibles which made less than Finding Nemo. Ratatoille deserves better. Stardust has only brought in around $27 million. It is much better than that - one of the best movies of the year.

Stardust

We finally had a chance to see Stardust this weekend. I would rate this as the summer's most overlooked movie and possibly its best (although I still rank Ratatouille pretty high).

The plot is complex. We have Tristan who is trying to win Victoria by fetching a fallen star for her. It turns out the fallen star fell in a magic kingdom where stars look like people, but with some unusual properties.

There is a trio of witches who want the star for some of these properties. There is also a quartet of princes (down from seven) who are fighting over who will inherit the kingdom.

The paths of all of these characters cross repeatedly.

The plot twists aren't that hard to see coming. I saw one of the biggest coming two hours before it happened. This doesn't matter. It's not the destination, it's the journey and this one is a lot of fun.

My prediction is that 20 years from now, this is the movie coming out in special collector's edition, not any of the big blockbusters of the Summer. This is the one that will attain cult status.

The Best and Worst of Time on TVq

I saw a local newspaper column yesterday complain about this being TV's dead month. It may be if you limit yourself to network TV. Most of the good shows have been retired for the Summer and the replacements aren't any good.

Basic cable, on the other hand, is at its best. There's at least one good thing on every weeknight.

Monday:
History Detectives. I'm cheating a bit here since this is PBS instead of cable. The show takes four experts from Antique Roadshow. Each of them investigates an item with an interesting story to see if the story is true.

Tuesday:
Eureka. The adventures of a sheriff in a small town, but, unlike Mayberry, this in the smartest town in the country full of people doing top secret and dangerous work for the government. THings go wrong regularly and the sheriff has to figure out how to clean it up, often saving the town or the world in the process.

Wednesday:
Mythbusters. Still going strong.

Thursday:
Who Wants to be a Superhero? The best reality/game show on TV. It's goofy enough to work as a parody of Survivor but the contestants are so likable you hate to see anyone eliminated (except the bald guy - you don't back-talk to Stan Lee).

Friday:
Dr. Who. More fun than the original series (that one's tough) with great production values but still enough cheese to be enjoyable.
Flash Gordon. I missed the pilot so this one is still a question
Monk. The best detective show since Columbo. The show has been on the decline, concentrating more on putting Monk in uncomfortable situations than in having a real mystery.
Psych. The second best detective show since Columbo. A fake psychic and his buddy Gus solve crimes while pretending that the answers just come to them.

No wonder network TV is having trouble. They no longer have a monopoly on quality programming.

Who Wants To Be A Superhero?

The second season of Who Wants to be a Superhero started last week. The show is off to a good start. To me, this is the perfect reality show. The people are not in it for the money - there isn't any. They are not making alliances or practicing politics. Most important - they are being judged on their character.

One woman slipped and fell during a test. She was distraught. Later, Stan Lee singled her out for praise. Yes, she slipped, but she got right back up again.

This show is tricky. The tests are seldom what they seem and often they are not even announced.

At the same time, the whole show has a silliness to it that keeps it from getting grim. You just can't take most of these heroes seriously. Heck - one of them is dressed as a french maid.

RIP Birdman

The Cartoon Channel killed Birdman last night.

The character began in the 1960s when superheroes ruled Saturday morning. Space Ghost was Hanna-Barberra's first realistic superhero. He was a big success and the next year saw nothing but superheroes. Space Ghost was in the future so they flipped it and gave us Mightor, a caveman with a club that could project energy beams. There was Shazam, a genie who fought evil sorcerers; the Herculoids a group of super-powered animals who fought off invading aliens; Atom Ant, an insect-sized hero; the Incredibles, a super-powered rock band; Frankenstein Jr, a super-powered robot; the Galaxy Trio; Underdog; Mighty Mouse; and Birdman.

Unlike other heroes, Birdman used wings to fly. He was solar-powered, able to project energy beams and force fields. He received assignments from a James Bond-inspired character with a tuxedo and an eyepatch who went by the code name Falcon 7. Birdman also had an intelligent eagle helper and both a Birdboy and a Birdgirl.

None of these series lasted to the following year. They were all canceled after an outcry about violence on TV.

Years later Space Ghost reappeared as a talk show host. Two of his villains were with him, one as the musician and the other as the producer/director. The show was a hit and launched Cartoon Chanel's Adult Swim. Birdman popped up a couple of times as a down-on-his-luck hero who needed a job.

Years later Birdman got his own show. This time he was Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. He worked for Phil Ken Seben (Falcon 7). He handled cases for the rest of the Hanna-Barberra universe. Boo Boo Bear was arrested as the Unibooboo Bomber. Fred Flintstone was a mob boss. It was often (but not always) brilliant.

But all good things come to an end and they gave him a great send-off. First, because of a technicality, he had to re-try all of his cases at once. Then he had to revert to being a superhero to fight a major villain.

Then he got run over by a bus.

Good bye, Harvey. I'll miss you.

Rats!

Disney hyped the new Pixar release so hard that we were in no hurry to see Ratatouille so we waited until the 4th of July. In fact, we almost went to see Pirates again.

The quick take on Ratatouille is that Pixar has the animation Oscar in the bag. This is the best animated movie to come out in years - possibly the best since director Brad Bird's Incredibles.

You've seen the previews (if not the movie) so I don't have to say much about the premise. A gifted rat named Remy wants to cook. He joins forces with a low-level employee of Gusteau's, a formerly five star restaurant that now only has three stars.

The action scenes are amazing as is the animation. CGI has moved a long way past Toy Story. The movie captures the best of traditional animation and CGI.

While most of Pixar's movies have humans in some capacity, this is only Pixar's second movie to feature humans (and Brad Bird directed both). Hopefully this is will be a trend in the future. Too many CGI movies feature talking animals because it is easier.

One interesting conceit in Ratatouille, the rats can talk to themselves and understand humans but humans cannot understand rats. When humans are present, the movie uses rat sounds. Last year's Happy Feet did something similar.

Pixar's dedication to their art is impressive. They studied with real chefs and all of the food looks like what it is supposed to be. Watching the movie is guaranteed to make you hungry.

PotC Inspirations

I was watching 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and I was struck by the number of images from this movie that were repeated in last year's Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man's Chest. Both feature a ship that resembles a fish and can move beneath the ocean. Both Davy Jones and Nemo have a large organ in their cabin which they play for consolation. Both movies feature an attack by a giant squid. We even see the mouth of each.

Surprisingly, both movies have cannibals and a scene with the cannibals chasing the hero across a beach.

20,000 Leagues was a big Disney hit when it came out in 1954 and inspired one of the rides at Disneyland so it is not surprising that the writers worked some of it in.

Fantastic Four II

I finally had a chance to see Fantastic Four II, the Rise of the Silver Surfer. I was a bit disappointed. After thinking about it, I realized that the premise of the movie was problematic.

In the comic, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wanted to do something special for the 50th issue. They came up with the idea of someone who eats planets (Galactus). The way that they did the comic was to have a story conference where they came up with a general plot. Jack would come up with the detail plot and do the art. Stan would then add the dialog.

When Jack turned in the first of the three-part story it had an extra character. "Who's this?" Stan asked. "I figured that someone this powerful needed a herald," Jack answered. Stan named him the Silver Surfer.

The story started with the FF returning from the Inhuman's city. The sky suddenly filled with fire, causing mass panic. The fire disappeared and Reed locked himself in his lab. Next, the sky was filled with boulders. Sue burst in on Reed and found that he was with the Watcher, an advanced being whose purpose was to watch and record the development of the human race. The Watcher had caused the phenomena in order to hide the Earth from the Silver Surfer.

It didn't work. The Surfer threaded his way through the rocks, landed on the Baxter Building, and signaled Galactus. A moment later the Thing knocked him across town.

Galactus landed at the source of the signal and began setting up his planet-eating apparatus. The FF tried to stop him but they were like insects to him - he used cosmic ant spray on them.

In the meantime, the Surfer fell through Alicia's skylight. In a brief conversation, she awakened the Surfer's humanity and he left to challenge Galactus.

While this was going on, the Watcher sent the Torch to Galactus's home to retrieve the Ultimate Nullifier.

The Surfer lost but before Galactus could kill him, Reed threatened Galactus with the Nullifier. Appalled at the thought of such a weapon in the hands of a human, Galactus agreed to spare the Earth in exchange for the Nullifier. As he left, he imprisoned the Surfer on Earth.

When they adapted the movie, they decided to shift the focus. Galactus is more of a cameo than a major character. The movie is about the Surfer.

That meant that they had to pad the plot. What took around four pages in the comic had to be stretched out.

Spoilers ahead - you've been warned.

The Surfer caused a number of sink holes. This was never really explained. It was suggested that Galactus used them but they were really there as a plot device. They gave the Surfer something to do between his arrival and Galactus's.

The wedding didn't really add much, either. Again, it filled time.

Doom stealing the Surfer's powers was an ok plot point. It gave the FF a chance to bond with the Surfer and it was one of the few things in the movie that came from the comic.

I wanted to see an actual fight between the FF and the Surfer. The closest we got was the Torch chasing the Surfer. I thought that we would see a fight in London but instead we got a lame rescue.

I can see why they had the Torch fight Doom using all of their powers. It got around the problem of non-flying characters trying to keep up.

Things I didn't like:

• Doom - his whole characterization.
• Sue acting like an airhead over the wedding. In the first movie they tried to convince us that she has multiple degrees. Ha!
• In the comics, Johny could be hot-headed but he was never a greedy jerk. I realize that they were setting up for him to redeem himself at the end but it didn't really work out.
• I don't understand the General's treatment of Reed. They came to him then pushed him out. Doom did little except show a home-movie but he got access to the board.
• Galactus as a god-like being is a lot more impressive than as a really big, hungry cloud.

Regardless, it was still better than the first movie. It is too bad that this series has been hampered by bad writing. In the 1960s, this was the premier comic book and one of the biggest influences on the industry since Superman. Now, my daughter's reaction is "It was kind of cheesy but I thought that's how the comic book is."

Hulk Vanish!

It's been a while since I said much about comic books so I'm going to talk a bit about the Hulk.

This character has probably gone through more re-inventions than any other. In the short run of his original comic book he started out as a cross between Frankenstein, the Wolfman (or maybe Dracula) and Mr. Hyde. At night he turned into something that looked a bit like Frankenstein's monster but had the personality of Hyde.

Because Marvel used a cheap printing process back then, the Hulk's gray didn't reproduce well so he was green by his second issue. THen he went from fairly smart but mean to nearly brainless and under the mental control of Rick Jones. Then he got Bruce Banner's intelligence and became almost a normal hero - something would happen and Banner would run to his gamma ray machine and turn into the Hulk. But something happened and the transformation stopped being reliable. And all of that was on only a half dozen or so issues.

Hulk moved into the back of Tales of Adventure as the back-up for Giant-Man (and later for the Sub Mariner). By this point he changed into a dumb Hulk when angry and changed back when he calmed down. This went on for a couple of years until Banner got shot in the head. Rick snatched the body and managed to trigger the change back to the Hulk. With a bullet in his brain, the Hulk had Banner's personality again but if he changed back he would die. A few months later the Leader dissolved the bullet but gave him such a high dosage of gamma rays that he was permanently the Hulk. Until a few years later when a radioactive pool turned him back into Banner.

Exposure to a radioactive missing link caused a one-time change to Banner with the Hulk's personality.

For the next several years it seemed like the Hulk had found his niche. He was a dumb but well-meaning guy with a bad temper and a liking for beans. Sometimes he changed back into Banner but it never lasted long. Also, the phrase "The madder the Hulk gets, the stronger he gets," became a major plot point. The Hulk could beat anyone if he got mad enough. In a cross-over, he knocked Superman into orbit. Something had to change.

One day, after a fight with an extra-terrestrial energy being and a trip back to Earth, Banner woke up in the Hulk's body. This was different than before. Usually when the Hulk had Banner's intellegence he still had a different personality. Not this time. He was pure Banner. Banner went back to inventing stuff.

It didn't last. In about a year the Hulk's personality was coming back and Banner withdrew completely. The Hulk became a mindless, savage beast. He was banished to a mystic crossroads int he hope that he could find a new home dimension that he liked.

None of this was well-written and the strip was turned over to John Byrne to jump start.  Byrne split them into two beings - a smart but crippled Banner and a savage but stronger-than-ever Hulk. Banner formed a group of Hulk-busters to hunt down and kill the Hulk. This didn't work out either and the strip was turned over to Peter David who had the longest and best run on the strip to date.

David started out with a clean slate. Banner and the Hulk had been broken apart and put back together. This appeared to cure Banner of being the Hulk but it turned out it only regressed him. He became the gray Hulk at night. For extra fun, Rick Jones turned into a green Hulk for a few issues.

The gray Hulk was smaller and weaker than the green version. He was also smart, or possibly "sly". He was no longer the strongest so he won some of his fights by outsmarting his opponent.

This phase was followed by banner becoming the gray Hulk full-time. Taking the name "Joe Fixit", the Hulk got a job working security for a Las Vegas casino.

Eventually Banner re-emerged and they went back to Banner by day/Hulk by night. Then the green Hulk showed up during the day. Dr. Sampson figured out that banner should be regarded as suffering from a multiple personality disorder with a different physical form for each personality. He managed to merge the personalities into a new being. This new Hulk had all of the green Hulk's strength, Banner's intellegence, and the gray Hulk's slyness. He joined up with a high-tech bunch of demi-gods. This lasted for a few years and is often regarded as the Hulk's best run.

Eventually the demi-gods were broken up and the Hulk went into hiding with his wife Betty. There were several more shorter story arcs before Betty was killed and Peter David left the book.

The Hulk broke back into four versions on a rotating basis. Plus Banner found out he was dying. Eventually he died but, like most Marvel deaths, it didn't take.

Marvel had just killed most of its non-mutant heroes (actually sent them to a pocket universe) then brought them back with a flurry of #1 issues. They decided to start the Hulk over with his own #1 issue and turned it over to John Byrne again. This only lasted a few months.

Apparently one goal at Marvel was to make the character more like the one in the movie (the movie that tanked). Bruce Banner was to be the lead with the Hulk acting as a supporting character. The storyline veered into a long spy plot. Banner was on the run. He had shaved his head as a disguise which proved that skinny white guys look bad with a shaved head. It didn't look good on the Hulk either although this was minor. We only saw the Hulk for a page or two per issue - maybe eight panels at most.

Then the Hulk totally vanished from his own book. Banner was shot with a long-term sedative that prevented him from getting mad enough to hulk-out. New characters were added, shot in the head, then returned months later to explain what had really happened. This went on for months.

Somewhere in this mess I realized that I didn't much care for Banner and I disliked the new supporting cast so I quit reading it.

Years later they resolved the plot, somehow - I don't care how. Peter David came back for three issues then they started the Planet Hulk story arc. The Hulk was sent to a different world because he is too dangerous to stay on Earth. He was supposed to got to a pleasant but unpopulated world but ended up on a desert world. At first he was a gladiator then he led a rebellion. It worked and I started reading the book again.

All good things come to an end. The new story arc - World War Hulk - is off to a terrible start. In the kick-off issue, the Hulk only appeared in one panel in a flashback. The rest of the book was about his cousin, the She-Hulk. Except Iron Man infected her with nanites so she was human except for a page and a half. This looks bad.

What does the opening weekend say about Pirates 3?

Here's a movie critic who finds justification in Pirate's opening weekend.

So when does $114 million lose an argument?
When its predecessor made $135 million in 229 fewer theaters.
We got our share of threes last month, didn't we? First Spider-Man 3, then Shrek the Third, then this thing. Each set a box office record. Spider-Man 3 set the weekend box office record ($151 million), Shrek the Third set the weekend box office record for animated features ($121 million) and Pirates 3 set the weekend box office record for Memorial Day ($153 million). Remove Thursday night's previews and Monday's numbers, however, and you get Pirates' dinkier $114 million total. I know: "dinkier."

Even so, when one of your franchise movies underperforms you have questions to answer.

Box Office Mojo attempted to answer some of them for Pirates 3 . They wrote, "Among major franchises, the norm is for the third movie to gross less than the second." (Except Spider-Man 3, X-Men 3, etc. etc.) The second movie, they wrote, "satiated" demand, and marketing made the third film look like "the same thing audiences experienced just ten months ago."

I.e., "2" performed too well and "3" wasn't marketed well enough. It had nothing to do with the quality of the product.

Here's my thought. Maybe it did have something to do with the quality of the product. Maybe quality matters, just a little. Just enough to not set box office records.

By the way: I'm not referring to the quality of Pirates 3. I'm referring to the quality of Pirates 2.

Before I go any further I will admit that Dead Man's Chest was not as good as Curse of the Black Pearl. That said, it does not account for the drop in box office between the two. Pirates 2 made a billion dollars worldwide. More than 100 million people paid to see it. You don't get numbers like that unless a movie has good word of mouth and a lot of repeat business.

So why didn't World's End do as well or better? There are several reasons that have little to do with relative quality.

First - last year was the year of the pirate. It seemed like every store and catalog had some sort of pirate-related merchandise. Most of it wasn't licensed. They just slapped a skull and crossbones (or crossed swords) on something. By the time Pirates 2 came out it was an event. Disney couldn't do that again so soon. It's been less than a year. The pirate boom is dying out and it is too soon for a new one.

Then there was timing. When Pirates 2 came out, its main competition was a disappointing Superman movie. Pirates 3 had to compete against two other successful franchises.

Then there is the problem of a holiday weekend. It throws off the traditional Friday-Sunday count. People are not as likely to go to movies on Memorial Day weekend.

Oh, and the Thursday night take does count. That's money that the movie would have brought in over the weekend otherwise.

Plus, Pirates 3 beat last year's X-Men 3 handily. That really argues against Lundegaard's point since X-Men 2 was better than X-Men 3.

What really counts is how much the movie brings in total, not what weekend it brings it in. Pirates 3 is approaching a half billion world-wide. It may be that it will not make as much as Dead Man's Chest, that Disney saturated the market by releasing the two too close together. It doesn't prove much overall.

The Children of Hurin

I finally got a copy of the Children of Hurin last week. This is the first new novel by J. R. R. Tolkien since the Lord of the Rings. That said, I want to be clear what this novel is and what it is not.

It is not a light happy work like the Hobbit. It isn't even a serious work like Lord of the Rings. It is high tragedy.

People who have already read the Silmarillion will be familiar with the story since it contains a shorter version. Tolkien's son Christopher wanted a version that is more approachable.

A little background:

The novel takes place thousands of years earlier than the Lord of the Rings during the war between the elves and Morgoth. Morgoth is sort of an evil god. He stole the Silmarils - three gems glowing with a godly light. They were made by the same elf who created the pallantirs in LOTR. The theft of the Silmarils triggered a long war between the elves who had journeyed to the undying lands of the west and Morgoth. Many of the elves returned from the west in pursuit of the gems. Most of the elf kingdoms mentioned are this group. There is also Thingol who rules Doriath along with his wife, Melian who is a maya - sort of a lesser god (Sauron, Gandolf, and the balrog are all maya). Doriath is protected by the Girdle of Melian which prevents anyone from entering the kingdom without permission.

Besides Doriath, the other two great elf kingdoms are Gondolin which is hidden in the mountains and Nargothrond which is hidden underground in the manned of a dwarf kingdom.

Shortly before the novel begins, the human Beren finds his way through the Girdle of Melian and falls in love with Luthien, the daughter of Thingol and Melian. In order to rid himself of Beren, Thingol gives him an impossible task - to bring one of the Silmarils. With much aid from Luthien and others, Beren eventually succeeds. He dies in the effort but is restored to life for a short time at the entreaty of Luthien. She becomes mortal and marries Beren, producing a daughter who is Elrond's grandmother.

The Children begins shortly after Beren and Luthien recover a Silmaril. This leads the elf kings to decide that it might be possible to defeat Morgoth after all. A great battle is held. Morgoth is triumphant and Hurin is taken prisoner. Morgoth tortures him by setting him in a chair where he can see all that takes place. Morgoth then curses Hurin's line.

Most of the book follows Hurin's son, Turin. Turin is sent to live in Doriath where he is welcomed as a kinsman of Beren. His pregnant mother has to stay behind in occupied territory and Turin eventually looses all contact with her. As with Anakin Skywalker, worry over his mother leads to bad things. Turin is always well-meaning and is a great warrior. His fatal flaw is that he constantly underestimates the power of Morgoth. Because of his prowess, he becomes a leader wherever he goes but he is at war with an enemy who cannot be defeated. Worse, Morgoth's curse brings about some tragic coincidences.

The book is full of heroic deeds and great sorrows. Despite the subject matter, it is a quick read. It is 313 pages but they are small with a large font plus there is an introduction and appendix.

People who are looking for another LoTR will be disappointed but anyone who wants to know more about Middle Earth history should enjoy the book.

The real influences on Star Wars

As part of the Star Wars 30th anniversary, the History Channel has been airing a special on Star Wars. Various politicians and celebrities talk about how George Lucas went back to mythic tradition in creating a new mythic structure. This is not new - Lucas has been saying this for years. The thing is, it isn't really true.

I don't argue that many of the themes in Star Wars can be found in myth. My point is that these mythic structures are common to an entire class of literature. I think that Lucas simply drew on the literature of the day and later tried to elevate his movies by pointing out mythic elements.

Lucas himself used to point to other influences, ones that are no longer mentioned. The biggest of these was the Saturday morning serials. Lucas wanted to recreate the serials with high production values. We need look no further than the first few seconds of the original movie to see the influence. The narration scrolling past is straight from the serials. This is also where the structure of the movies comes from. Each of the six movies is divided into three "chapters".

The other acknowledged influence was Japanese culture, especially the films of Akira Kurosawa. The Droids were probably inspired by two supporting characters in The Hidden Fortress.


As for Lucas's other inspirations, most of these came from the paperback racks of any 1960s and 1970s bookstore. The most common plot in science fiction novels at the time had a young man, either through knowledge or heredity, suddenly taken from his boring life. After spending some time with a mentor, he went out to save the world. Along the way he won the love of a woman who would normally be hopelessly above him. Lucas simply gave his own spin on the details and we have the original Star Wars.

Note that there was a radical shift in the characters between the first two movies. In the original, there was clearly a mutual attraction between Luke and Leia. By the second movie Lukas and his writers had redefined the relationship between Luke, Leia, and Vader. To keep things from being creepy, Leia treated Luke as a brother (how about that) and only showed romantic affection for Han.

In the second movie we see more of the Japanese influence. In most Japanese stories, a young man would train to be a samurai by studying under a master. The master would be an old hermit. He might not even be recognized as a master at first. The training was different than we would expect. The student was taught to be a samurai through everyday activities. The movie the Karate Kid is also based on this tradition. In it, the kid learns basic moves by waxing a car and painting a fence.

Lucas made the old hermit into a shrunken muppet. In keeping with the Japanese tradition, we see Luke running through the swamp with Yoda on his back and doing other physical activities but we never see him taught to use the lightsaber.

The big twist in The Empire Strikes Back is Vader's real relationship with Luke. This one is a slight stretch, but a possible influence for that was the master of adventure, Rafael Sabatini. Sabatini wrote dozens of adventure novels, many of them best sellers. The best of these were reprinted and widely distributed in the 1970s. Sabatini pretty much invented swashbuckling adventure and some of his best novels revolved around a hero who finds out at the last chapter that his nemesis is actually his father. It is unlikely that neither Lukas nor Leigh Brackett (who wrote Empire) had never read Sabatini.

For Return of the Jedi, I can find a couple of likely influences. One is Alan Dean Foster. A prominent science fiction writer at the time, he wrote the first authorized Star Wars novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Foster had a recurring theme in his novels - primitive natives overpowering high-tech invaders. The fight between the Storm Troops and the Ewoks was classic Foster.

In a bit of irony, Lucas was his inspiration for Jedi. In the novel (written by Lucas from his screenplay) it was clear that the X-Wing fighters were actually flying through the Death Star. The special effects people at ILM were unable to figure out how to do this so it was changed to an equatorial trench in the movie. By the third movie, Lucas had the budget and technology to go back and redo the fight the way he originally envisioned it. Thus, Jedi featured a battle to eliminate a second Death Star and this time they flew right through it.

So, where does this leave us? I think it is clear that Lucas was adapting genres of popular fiction rather than drawing from myth. As far as the end product goes, it doesn't matter. Prior to Star Wars, no one had done a good job of putting science fiction on the screen in an approachable form.

Just don't try to find deep insight in it.

Thirty Years of the Force

Star Wars turned 30 this weekend.

Wired's Luddite saw it for the first time recently and didn't like it. It is impossible for me to judge the original movie, I've seen it too many times. I know that at the time I loved it as did the rest of the world. The Luddite's reaction is not uncommon for people who did not see it when it was new. This is partly a measure of its success.

Here's a list of everything released in 1977. There are several memorable films. Anne Hall won best picture and influenced fashion for years. Close Encounters cemented Speilberg's reputation as a populist director. Still, Star Wars is the one remembered thirty years later.

I will admit that some of the dialog is bad. We could forgive it then because people expected bad dialog in science fiction movies. The fact that we expect more from science fiction now is part of Star Wars' success.

If you look over the list of movie from the 1970s, you find a few things:

1. Most science fiction was poorly done. The movies were slow and unapproachable.
2. Special effects were poor.
3. Action movies in general were at a low point. Most featured a single anti-hero and a lot of car chased. Examples are Smokey and the Bandit and The Gauntlet.

Star Wars was a throw-back to a style of adventure movie that vanished in the 1960s - a clearly defined fight between good and evil with a lot of action thrown in. To this classic formula it added a level of special effects never seen before.

Star Wars made a lot of money. Studios noticed and tried to copy it. Most attempts in the 1970s and early 1980s flopped. There is a lot more to making a good adventure movie than special effects.

Eventually a new generation of directors figured it out. The current blockbusters, movies like Spider-Man and Pirates of the Caribbean exist because of this.

That's why it is so hard to judge the original Star War now. It no longer stands out. It redefined the adventure movie but many of its successors hold up better.

But, how many of them will be noticed when they turn 30?

Third Time's the Charm

After the disappointing Spider-Man 3 and Shrek the Third, I was worried about Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I shouldn't have worried. It was much better than Pirates 2.

There is a good reason for this. Spider-Man and Shrek were made as individual movies. The writers and director threw everything they had into the sequel without worrying about holding back for a third movie. Pirates 2 and 3 were made as a package.

The original Pirates had a strong back-story even if it was only hinted at. By the end of the movie, there was no back-story left to draw on. The solution was to use the second movie to create a new back-story to be resolved in the third movie.

The result was that the second Pirates felt light-weight. Plot was replaced with complicated fights and set-pieces. Also, Jack's character never seemed quite right. Depp went through all the right motions but it just didn't quite take. I think that the problem was that we always knew Jack's motivations. He was betraying everyone in an effort to save himself from Davey Jones. This is in contrast to the first movie where he always seemed to be trying to do right by Will and Elizabeth, as long as he ended up with the Black Pearl.

Jack is back to normal in the third movie. Of course, for him normal means off-kilter. At minimum he is occasionally delusional but he is still functional. As in the first movie, he is helping Will and Elizabeth, even if he has ulterior motives.

I'm not sure if this is as good as the original Pirates. I'll probably have to see it again to decide. It is slower at spots and much darker. The body count in the first few minutes is higher than the first two movies added together. Some principals die, also.

By the end of the movie things have been wrapped up pretty well. Depp has allowed as how he would be interested in doing a fourth movie although it will have to be without Knightly or Bloom. Both of them have other projects. That's ok. Will and Elizabeth may have been integral to the trilogy but it wouldn't be a Pirates movie without Jack.

Heroes

Heroes wrapped up their first season last night with a strong ending. I've been watching it since the beginning and I saw many of the episodes again over the weekend during a marathon on the Sci-Fi channel.

It actually had a shaky start. The people they focused on were not all that pleasant. We had a loser cop who started reading minds, a cab-driver from India who was trying to figure out what happened to his father, a cheerleader who kept trying to kill herself and failing, a junky who painted the future, and an internet stripper with a second personality who tore people apart. There was a lot of blood - especially after they did an autopsy on the cheerleader. The only bright spot in those early episodes was a Japanese office worker who managed to stop a clock for a second.

The show improved a lot. By the second episode we had an idea of what the show (or at least the season) would be about - stopping New York from blowing up.

Other things improved. The gore level dropped. The scary guy in the horn rim glasses warmed. The cheerleader stopped trying to hurt herself. People met each other. Coincidences abounded. Through it all, the Japanese office worker, Hiro, remained the center of the show. He was the one who knew that there was a mission - save the cheerleader, save the world.

After the Christmas break the show shifted into high gear. Some of the less sympathetic characters either moved into the background or became more likable. The cheerleader was saved but we didn't know if the world could be saved.

Interestingly, they dropped a clue that the future could be changed in the second and third episode. In the second episode, Hiro called his friend Ando who said that he had disappeared weeks ago. But Ando accompanied Hiro on his quest starting with the third episode. The future had already been changed.

By the end, the writers were juggling nearly every character as they converged on the Kirby Building (named for Jack Kirby, the creator of the Fantastic Four and other?). Each of them had different motivations and they switched groupings several times. The whole thing was carried off quite well. They even worked in that serial-killer Sylar came to the plaza to stop Peter from blowing up, not to blow up the city himself.

They also left plenty of plotlines dangling for next season. Sylar survived, we now know that there is someone worse than he is out there, and Hiro is in the 17th century.

As endings go, it makes burning a raft or imploding a hatch seem second-rate.

Shrek and Sequels

Shrek the Third did great business its opening weekend, taking in more money and drawing slightly more people than the second movie and doing a lot better than the original.

So, how does it compare? Like Spider-Man 3, I thought that it was better the the first but not as good as the second. The first was a children's story with a light plot. Dreamworks added in some topical references and a Disney parody. More than one critic described it as an extended "Fractured Tairy Tail". The second movie upped the anti. Shrek moved on to a bigger kingdom with a larger cast and a more complex plot. For the third movie, the plot is simplified. Instead of a new kingdom we get a couple of scenes in a high school. We got a few new characters - mainly some princesses and a slightly boring Arthur.

It's not unusual for movie franchises to bog down after a while. There are exceptions. Movies based on book series do well. The Lord of the Rings probably doesn't count but the 3rd Harry Potter movie was a significant improvement over the first two. Of all the James Bond movies, Goldfinger was one of the best. The first two were smaller, the following ones were over the top. In many ways, Son of Frankenstein was the best of the series. Of the Star Wars movies, Return of the Jedi was not as good as The Empire Strikes Back but Revenge of the Sith was the best of the prequel trilogy.

Often, when a successful movie is adapted from a single book or character, it starts to run out of steam by the third installment. Both Superman and Batman were showing signs of wear by the third movie and died after the fourth installments. X-Men 3 was better-plotted than X2 but the high body count left a bad taste in my mouth.

We are not finished with the 3s yet. Pirates 3 starts Friday and Rush Hour 3 comes out next month (to say nothing of Harry Potter 5). We will see how these hold up.

Spider-Man 3

I'm going to assume that anyone reading this has already seen Spider-Man 3 or at least has heard all of the plot elements. I'm just going to comment on some themes that the reviews I've seen missed.

Primarily this is a movie about facing your dark side. Peter does it through the black costume. Granted, the costume brings out the worst side of him, but he puts it on knowing this will happen. As Dr. Jekyll is drawn to the freedom of being Hyde, so is Peter drawn to the black suit.

That much is obvious about the movie - it's a major plot. But the villains have to face the same choice. Near the end of the movie, Harry has to face the fact that his father despised him and was responsible for his own death. Considering what has happened by that point, can he forgive Peter?

At the beginning Sandman says that he isn't a bad person but then we find out that he killed Uncle Ben. Not to mention that he is a rampaging pile of sand. He faces what he has done at the end.

Finally, there is Eddie Brock. It turns out he likes being mad. Out of the four, he is the one who fails.

So, was it a great movie? It wasn't bad. I didn't like the Green Goblin in the first movie. The costume and the solid helmet just were wrong for the character. On the other hand, I really liked both Doc Ock's personality and upgraded tentacles in the second movie. Given that background, I would put Spider-Man 3 somewhere in-between. I liked it better than the first but it wasn't as polished as the second.

My main complaint is that they stuffed so much into the movie. Three different villains plus the black suit was a lot. Some characterization got skipped - especially on Sandman and Venom.

I suspect that Sam Raimi assumed that this would be his last Spider-Man movie so he stuffed it full of his favorites. He could easily have paced the Venom plot and saved it for the next movie.

That said, I have to give him credit for not turning the movie into a mish-mash like Batman and Robin.

Since Spider-Man 3 has broken all previous box office records, there will be a lot of pressure on Raimi to do Spider-Man 4. Good thing Spider-Man has a richer group of villains to choose from than many heroes.

Lost in Purgatory

Are the people in Lost actually in the afterlife instead of being on an island? They dropped a couple of strong hints that this is the case. Locke's father said that his car was rear-ended and he was put in an ambulance. The next thing he knew he was on the island. Plus, the survivor of the helicopter crash said that flight 815 had been found at the bottom of the ocean. Remote cameras showed that everyone was on board when it went down.

This is a red herring. Ben's people caused the car wreck, drugged Locke's father, and brought him to the island under anesthesia. They did the same thing with Juliet. The difference was that she knew she was taking sleeping pills and they allowed her to wake up as the sub landed. We don't know why they went to so much trouble for Locke, but they did.

As for the plane wreck - it's pretty convenient that it was found in a location so inaccessible that nothing could be recovered from the plane. Any other crash and investigators would pull every scrap of metal out of the ocean and reassemble it. And, of course, rescuers would keep searching for a long time unless the plane was found. So Ben's people faked finding the plane. That shows that they are high-placed and powerful.

One other observation - this episode's flashbacks were just days earlier. It gave the show an almost continuous narrative. Contrast this with most episodes where the "A" plot is either the flashback broken up by current time or current time broken up by flashbacks. The flashbacks and the current plotline seldom work together to form a tight narrative like we saw this week.

I've been saying most of this season that the flashbacks were a good device the first season but they get in the way more often than anything else now.

Rumor is that five people will die in May. That's one down. This is their chance to kill of the characters whose backgrounds have been plumbed too deeply. That would be Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Charlie, Sun, and Jin. We haven't learned anything new about these characters in over a year. Any future flashbacks would be a waste of time.

Of course the producers think that Jack, Sawyer, and Kate are a lot more interesting than I do. They devoted half the season to them to the exclusion of the rest of the cast.

So what's coming? The first season was about building the raft and they burned it at the end. The second season was about the hatch and they imploded it at the end. The third season has been about the Others so Ben had better look out.

Kryptonite?

Scientists announced that they discovered kryptonite!

A mineral found by geologists in Serbia shares virtually the same chemical composition as the fictional kryptonite from outer space, used by the superhero's nemesis Lex Luthor to weaken him in the film "Superman Returns."

{...} Stanley, who revealed the identity of the mysterious new mineral, discovered the match after searching the Internet for its chemical formula — sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide.

"I was amazed to discover that same scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film 'Superman Returns,'" he said.

But what about the "tar" in the artificial kryptonite in Superman III?

Of course, it isn't kryptonite unless it is green (or red, white, gold, or blue) and glows. More importantly, it can't be kryptonite unless it comes from Krypton.

The comic books were always a bit vague about what kryptonite really was. It usually came to earth looking like a chunk of rock but it could be melted and made into other objects like metal. It was treated as an element. Possibly, just as uranium will become plutonium when exposed to the right radiation, most other solids will become kryptonite when properly treated. Additional treatments cause it to change into red, white or gold varieties. Blue kryptonite is an imperfect copy of green and will kill Bizarros.

As you would expect from something glowing, kryptonite was radioactive although it did not bother terrestrial life (except for the white form which kills plants). It could be harnessed as a power source which Metallo did.

Originally the explosion of Krypton transformed all of the planet's fragments into kryptonite. The young Kal-el's spaceship opened a wormhole to Earth and a significant amount of kryptonite followed through this.

Besides killing Superman and powering cyborgs, kryptonite had one other interesting use - it was not affected by the heat of entering Earth's atmosphere. It might have made a good coating for the space shuttle except, as soon as someone did that the shuttle would have failed (with Lois aboard) and Superman would have to rescue a craft that could kill him.

Kryptonite could also protect an inhabitant of Daxam from lead poisoning. In the 30th century, Mon-el had to take kryptonite pills regularly to stay healthy.

Kryptonite could also impregnate a living being. One such was the Kryptonite Kid who could not only kill Superboy with a touch but could also transform anything he touched into kryptonite.

When Superman was re-created by John Byrne in the 1980s the source of kryptonite was changed around a bit. Centuries before terrorists had tried to destroy the planet. They were stopped but not before they started a process that converted much of the planet into kryptonite and caused it to explode.

Originally kryptonite could kill Superman but it did not remove his invulnerability. A kryptonite bullet would bounce off of him the same as a lead one. The revised Superman could be shot with a kryptonite bullet (probably because his impenetrable skin was replaced with a force field which failed in the presence of kryptonite). Also, long-term exposure to kryptonite turned out to be fatal to humans as Luther found out after wearing a kryptonite ring for years.

Robin Hood through the ages

I had the unusual experience of seeing three different interpretations of Robin Hood last week. That inspired me to give a quick overview of Robin Hood in movies and TV.

The character of Robin Hood has been popular for 700 years and has been through countless interpretations. One of his better appearances in literature was as a supporting character in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. This was cast as a Saxon/Norman fight.

There were several versions of Robin Hood in early cinema but the best one is Douglas Fairbank's version. I saw a screening of a shortened version of this with live accompaniment. It's over the top in many places but still a fun version. Fairbanks played Robin Hood as enjoying himself even as he fought evil and was Fairbank's most popular movie.

Errol Flynn played nearly the same character. Like Fairbanks, Flynn played a Robin Hood who enjoyed the fight. Again, this was one of Flynn's most popular movies.

There was a British TV series in the 1950s. It was strongly influenced by the Errol Flynn movie. I remember seeing it a few times but I don't remember any details.

In 1975, Mel Brooks did his first take on Robin Hood with the TV series When Things Were Rotten. It was amusing but was canceled after a few months.

In 1976, Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn played an aging Robin and Marian. Robin returned from crusade after King Richard's death to find that everything was back like it had been. Worse, Marian had taken the veil and was now a nun. Robin had to regroup his merry men and lead a new revolt.

There was a British series, Robin of Sherwood, in the 1980s. I only saw one episode which seemed ok. The series was available on one of the premium channels in the US and gathered a following.

Then came Kevin Costner's Prince of Thieves. Slow and dreary, it was poorly received. They didn't even put Robin Hood in green. For some reason they insisted that green hadn't been invented yet or some such excuse.

The only good thing to come out of Prince of Thieves was that it gave Mel Brooks an excuse to do the character again. This time he did a theatrical version - Robin Hood, Men in Tights. While not Brooks' best, it was still far better than the Costner's version.

This brings us to the present. The BBC has a new Robin Hood TV series. This has a rather grim Robin Hood who seems too young. His character's motivations is somewhere between noblesse oblige and Marxism. He's a bit of a wimp. He went to lengths to convince the Sheriff that he was capable of killing although I'm not sure that he's even wounded anyone yet. Marian has been reinvented. She is the daughter of the previous Sheriff. She disguises herself as the "Night Watchman" and does her own good deeds.

The costumes are wretched, far worse than any other version, even the Costner one with the scarves. The chain mail looks like molded vinyl and some costume pieces that Marian and Sir Guy wear could pass for modern fashion.

Clearly, the best interpretation of Robin Hood is the slightly over-the-top one. He needs to enjoy himself as do his companions. After all, they are "merry men" (but still butch).

TMNT

A new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is out. That gives me a chance to examine their origins.

The Turtles have been through so many media it is hard to remember that they started as an independent comic.

A sidebar on independent comics - they started in the 1960s as "underground comics". These mainly featured drug and sex jokes and were sold through head shops. By the 1970s, some comic fans were beginning to publish out of their own pocket. Between falling costs for printing and the rise of comic book stores, these turned into a minor industry by the 1980s. Many titles had decent sales and a long run. The longest, Cerebus the Aardvark, is still running. To save printing costs, most of the independent comics were printed in black and white on cheaper grade paper.

This is where the Turtles began.

The Turtles were part joke, part homage, and part serious comic.

The joke came from the top selling comics at the time. These were dominated by the X-Men and its spin-offs. The top selling comic was Frank Miller's version of Daredevil. At the time, Daredevil was fighting a group of ninjas alongside Electra who was a ninja herself.

The joke was that a comic book featuring ninjas and teen-ager mutants would be an automatic best-seller.

The homage was a sly tie-in with Daredevil. Daredevil was blinded when he saved a man from being hit by a truck. Daredevil was struck in the face with a radioactive isotope that fell off of the truck. It seems that the isotope drained into the sewer where it mutated some turtles.

Daredevil's other senses were enhanced by the isotope and he learned how to handle this from a ninja called Stick. Later Daredevil and Stick fought a group of ninjas called the Hand.

The turtles learned ninjitsu from a rat named Splinter and later fought the Foot.

All of that was the draw, what sold the first issue. What kept people coming back was the storyline. It was intense. The original movie did a fairly good job of adapting the comic book but even that was toned down a bit.

The Turtles quickly became a sensation, setting sales records for independent comics. The first few issues were reprinted several times with total sales surpassing most mainstream comic books.

The FF at 45

Around 45 years ago a new comic book appeared on the stands. Labeled "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine" it featured a new superhero team, the Fantastic Four. The members weren't very original. Their powers (stretching, invisibility, fire, and a hideous monster) had all been used before. Still, there was something different about the team.

Not all of the original stories were gems. It took a couple of years for things to really gel. Some of the early villains weren't worth remembering and not all of the plots made sense. For example, a statue was brought to life and went on a rampage. The Torch burned it up, proving that it was still just plaster and wood. Eventually it turned out that the villain was a hypnotist who made people think that he had done these things. Which begged the question - if the statue never really came to life then how did the Torch burn it up some distance from where it was originally standing? For that matter, how did people in the street get hypnotized?

The interesting thing is that people wrote in and complained about this sort of goof. The creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, never made that sort of stupid mistake again.

Within a couple of years both Lee and Kirby had grown as story-tellers - an interesting feat since both had been in the industry for years. The stories became "cosmic", the characters came into focus. Kirby became a major influence on new artists.

The public reacted and sales went up. Who wanted to read about the Justice League fighting the Queen Bee when the Fantastic Four had to take back their headquarters from Doctor Doom without their powers? Who worried about a giant startfish when a giant in armor was planning to eat the planet?

Along the way they populated the Marvel Universe. The Kree, the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer and the Black Panther, even the golden guy who eventually was named Adam Warlock were all introduced in the pages of the Fantastic Four.

As the stories got beer, the audience got older. 45 years ago the average comic book reader was grade school age. Now he's college age.

While I wasn't there at the first issue, I was reading the FF partway through their second year. It's scary to think how long ago that was.

How "Lost" is Juliet?

In last night's Lost, Kate was gassed by the Others. When she woke up, she was some distance away from their village and handcuffed to Juliet. After a long trip back they found the guys (Jack and Sayid) still sleeping from the gas.

So what's going on? Why send the girls off to the wilderness?

Plus, part way through we found out that Juliet had the key all the time.

This implies that she was somehow in on the whole thing. She wasn't just gassed and dumped like Kate. She may have helped them carry Kate out then locked on the cuffs herself.

Why? The obvious reason is to have a chance to bond with Kate or at least let her know that she eliminated herself from the running with Jake when she had sex with Sawyer. Jack certainly acted that way. He insisted that Juliet come with them and fell in beside her, ignoring Kate.

The guys were not a part of this so they were given a stronger or second dose of the gas. The were still out the next day, at least 12 hours after Kate woke up.

So the Others have a spy in the midst of the castaways. Again.

Other events - Hurley came pretty close to telling Sawyer that he was going to be voted off the island.

Hurley says that sawyer is the new leader (how will Jack react to that?) but Hurley seems to be the one who really runs things. He's the most organized. He's the one who gets the others to do stuff. He's the social director. But he doesn't like conflict so he sets others up as the official leader.

He's also able to con Sawyer. That's twice (the ping pong game was the first).

Jesus in a Cape

Easter is almost here so I thought I would review Jesus figures in superhero comics. Usually these are tastefully done. The exception was National Lampoon's Son 'O God Comics. The premise was that this is how a comic book about a modern day incarnation of Jesus would be handled if it was published by Marvel Comics.

As a parody of Marvel, it was perfect. The art was by Neil Adams who had just done some memorable work at Marvel. The feature included a letters page with promos for future stories.

Meanwhile, over at the real Marvel, Jesus did make an occasional appearance. In the early 1970s, Satan appeared so often he counted as a supporting character. Writer Tony Isabella felt that there should be a counterweight to this. In one episode, Satan was about to collect Ghost Rider's soul when a bearded stranger intervened and saved him. The stranger's identity was never given and Isabella himself only referred to him as "JC" in private conversations.

More common was the Christ-like character. The Silver Surfer was often depicted this way, especially since his recurring enemy, Mephisto, was obviously a version of Satan. This was most pronounced when the Surfer met Dracula. At the time, Dracula was living in a de-consecrated church. He had married, his wife was pregnant, and he was gathering a cult. A portrait of Christ still hung in the church and the Surfer made his entrance by phasing right through it. Twice. Dracula survived, mainly because of the intervention of Dracula's wife.

In the same plotline Dracula fought a golden-skinned creature. Dracula kept calling him a demon but he was obviously an angel (in spandex). At the end of the issue, the angel died but his essence apparently went into Dracula's pregnant wife. When their child was born, it had golden skin. Unfortunately, the comic was canceled around then so the plot was never really resolved.

Then there was Adam Warlock. This character started as an artificial life form created by a trio of scientists. They referred to their creation as "Him". When we first saw Him, in a Lee/Kirby issue of the Fantastic Four, he was still developing in a cocoon. When he finally hatched he was a perfect being with blond hair, golden skin, and great but undefined powers. He left earth but later ran into Thor and his girl friend, Sif. Him decided that he liked Sif and Thor beat him up, forcing him back into his cocoon.

Enter the High Evolutionary, a Lee/Kirby creation from Thor. He was a scientist who came up with a way of speeding up evolution on mammals (or combining their DNA with human). His big failure was with the wolf. The result was an evil being known as the Man-Beast. Thor helped defeat the Man-Beast and the High Evolutionary left Earth. He showed up later in a Hulk comic and turned his machine on himself, making himself god-like.

All of these elements came together when the High Evolutionary decided to recreate Earth without original sin. As it turned out, Him happened to be nearby in his cocoon and stopped to watch.

Creating a second Earth on the far side of the Sun was enough to tax even the High Evolutionary. As he rested the Man-Beast took over the experiment and introduced sin to Counter Earth. He also arraigned it so that there was no religion and no super-powered beings.

The High Evolutionary was ready to destroy his creation but Him offered to go clean things up. He emerged from his cocoon, weaker than before. The High Evolutionary named him Adam Warlock and gave him a soul gem to help his mission.

Once on Counter Earth, Adam gathered a following. The strip was canceled after a few issues but
the plot was concluded in the Hulk. Hulk ended up on Counter Earth as one of Adam's disciples. Picking up the Christ references, Adam was arrested (it turned out that the Man-Beast was the President) and sentenced to die (on sort of a cross-shaped table). Hulk played Peter to Adam's Christ.

Adam reverted to his cocoon and emerged after three days. He turned the Man-Beast and his minions back into the animals they started as and left for the stars.

The least likely Christ figure in comics is the mad titan Thanos. Originally Thanos was a death-worshiper who hoped that by killing enough of the universe, Death herself would accept him as her paramour. Never the less, in one limited series, Thanos absorbed the "Heart of the universe", becoming all powerful. He discovered that there was a fundamental flaw in the universe caused by characters constantly being resurrected*. The flaw could be fixed but it required Thanos to destroy and recreate the universe with a stronger barrier between life and death. This process would destroy Thanos, meaning that he had to sacrifice himself for the universe. Of course, Thanos tended to cheat on things such as this and survived.

One other character deserves mention. Doctor Strange ran across someone named Sise-Neg traveling back in time and absorbing mystic energy as he went. He reasoned that by the time he got to the Big Bang, he would be all powerful and could recreate the universe any way he wanted. He got his wish but the wisdom that came with so much power told him that the universe was already perfect so he recreated it exactly as it had been. BTW, Sise-Neg is Genesis spelled backwards.


* Marvel characters resurrected so often that Peter David made a humorous point about this in an issue of the Hulk. Rick Jones's girlfriend, Marlo had been killed and he was trying to get someone to bring her back to life. When he asked Dr. Strange, he was told that death is normal and people don't come back. "What do you mean?" Rick asked. "I've come back from the dead. You've come back from the dead. Wong, have you been dead? See? People come back from the dead all the time." He was right of course and a few issues later he married the resurrected Marlo.

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?