There's No Place Like The Forbidden Kingdom

This past weekend we ventured out to see, "The Forbidden Kingdom". It's a new martial arts movie starting Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

The story is about a teenager who's heavily into martial arts movies and lore (but not actually into the actual physical side of it) and befriends an elderly pawn shop owner in Chinatown.

He runs into some bully classmates who want him to get them into the store owner's shop so that they can rob it. During the event the kids attempt to steal a storied staff that the teen sees as a priceless heirloom and attempts to run away with it. '

The bullies catch up to him and during the entanglement he manages to fall, with staff, off the side of a tall building. During his decent he's transported to ancient China where he runs into all sorts of mythical characters and plot lines.

The story seems very much a martial arts retelling of "The Wizard of Oz". The open sequence above is right out of the black-and-white opening footage of Oz while the trip to China is Oz and then of course comes the resolution. Along the way the teen encounters several odd characters and villians who also seem to come straight out of Oz. There's even a long road leading the way. In fact, about the only element fully missing is a replacement for Toto.

In the end it's all a bit disjointed. Some parts are interesting, others are boring and some just don't work. It wants to be "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" but doesn't make it. The martial arts sequences are fun but there's really nothing that feels new. In fact, I'm pretty tired of the entirely unbelievable physics-be-damned stunts that seem to come out of any similar film these days.

The acting is just okay. Jackie Chan has continued trouble with English and it gets in the way here. Plus his "drunken master" routine grows old quickly. Jet Li fares a bit better but really doesn't help a lot either. The teen, played by Michael Angarano, just doesn't work at all for me. He just doesn't fit in this part, at least for me. He was more distracting to me than anything.

I just couldn't get into this movie. It's not terrible but it's not something anyone needs to rush out to see either.

Why Isn't This Bigger News?

Going back some time I've been curious about the sudden influx of high-ranking retired military brass showing up on news channels to give us their "unique" insight into the war and other military matters. At first I assumed it was a typical domino effect. It could have started with a single network and then the others saw the benefit and followed suit with their own military analysts.

These men have shown up on the networks trading on their expertise and suggesting that the only reason they can speak up now is because they're retired and have the ability to be frank. It all comes off as being extremely credible, powerful and insightful. The analysts would mention that they still have friends in active duty at the highest levels and have talked with them about progress (or lack thereof) in the war and other areas of contention. They made it clear that they had an understanding of events that couldn't be matched by other sources.

What the public didn't know is that these analysts were anything but objective. In a New York Times piece the truth has come out on this issue. It turns out that the vast majority of the analysts were being paid by military contractors and others to put a positive spin on all things war. Another fact to come to light is that the Bush administration was very much behind this effort to steer the message from within the networks themselves by providing access and one-sided information to these "experts". Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would routinely call these analysts together to discuss messaging and how to present a unified front to keep the spin on the war positive.

Mind you I'm not upset with the analysts. This sort of thing isn't surprising to me. That is, I'm not surprised about the analysts themselves. What I am upset about is the lack of proper vetting these men received from all the networks. How could this go on for so long and so wide without any of the networks realizing these guys were all spewing out the same administration talking points and not question it?

The New York Times found that the Pentagon referred to these analysts as "message force multipliers". Are you kidding me? Worse, the information shows that many of the analysts reported back directly to the Pentagon information about what was going on inside the networks--stories that would be coming up that needed to be put down and so forth. They offered advice on how to turn the tables on the very networks that were paying them. The Pentagon would refer to them in their own documents as "our analysts" and how they could be used to "push back" stories that didn't suit the suggested storyline of the administration.

In many cases the Pentagon would provide the script for the analysts and send them out to spread the word. They would then turn around, after the analysts provided their "insight", and point to these comments as proof of the claims they were making. It must be accurate because all these retired analysts are seeing it the same way, right?

The bottom line is that our press once again failed us here and this is yet another example of the myth that the media is dominated by liberal bias. Every single one of them fell in line with this process and none of them called these analysts into question. It was a typical "don't ask, don't tell" policy between the networks and the analysts. We, as a people, were dupped as a result.

Remember Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Friday brought my wife and I to the latest Judd Apatow movie, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". Let me say right now that my least favorite part of this movie is its title--it's entirely forgettable.

The story comes to us from it's lead actor Jason Segel who we've seen in lesser roles in previous Apatow movies. Segel's character is a somewhat average guy who just happens to be the longtime boyfriend of an attractive, well-known TV star. The story starts five years into their relationship just as the girlfriend, played wonderfully by Kristen Bell, has decided to call it quits.

The main thrust of the story is, as the title suggests, a story about coping with the sudden world-change that comes with such events. Typical Hollywood coincidence dictates that both characters end up in the same hotel in Hawaii without planning to have it happen that way.

Segel's character meets a charming girl played by Mila Kunis who sees his pain and sympathizes. Of course they grow closer and complexity grows.

Once again I have to vent about Apatow's continued insistence of matching everyday (and usually geeky) guys with drop-dead gorgeous women as if that's an everyday occurrence. The one casting issue I have here is with Kunis. She is stunning from every angle but it just is a distraction here. It's not that she did a bad job. Quite the contrary. It's just that the story would have, in my view, been far more plausible and effective if the role were played by someone like, for example, Janeane Garofalo. It's harder to feel the angst when a character is torn up about two fairly similar model-type actresses than it would be to have one of them play the girl-next door, better-for-you role.

One of the best, and a bit surprising, casting choices was the role played by Apatow-favorite, Paul Rudd. It took me a few moments to realize this was even Rudd in the first place. He turns in a brilliant performance as a drugged-out surfing instructor who seems to not even be sure of what his own name is let alone the state of anything else in his world.

The movie is also peppered throughout with a myriad of character roles that impress time and again.

One word about the preview press on this movie. Much is being said about a an early scene that very much exposes every inch of the lead actor's genitals. It shouldn't be a topic of conversation. While it is a bit of a shocking moment, it's only so because it so rarely happens in Hollywood films. Here I suspect it's done for comedic effect and, to be frank, it really wasn't necessary. I believe it was left in just to generate some level of controversy.

In the end it must be said that Apatow has done it again. "Forgetting" is a very solid picture that does exactly what it sets out to do. If I had to place it up against his other films I wouldn't be able to say it's his best work but it's not too far off either. It's a must-see for any Apatow fan.

My Has Netflix Changed

Several years ago the mail-based DVD rental service, Netflix, launched and it sounded like a very interesting idea. My wife and I had spent so much money at Blockbuster, mainly on late fees, that we'd adopted the policy of just buying the DVD's we wanted instead. With late fees we ended up spending that much on most movies anyway.

Netflix seemed like the perfect compromise. We joined. At the time it was $19.95 a month and you could have four movies out at once. Furthermore, they allowed you to go to their website and claim you had put a movie in the mail to them which would cause them to send out the next movie on your list. Of course this system quickly became a focus of abuse. People would claim they mailed the DVD and hadn't but that could be tracked over time.

For a while there it was a great thing. I was "renting" more than 20 movies a month. We always had something new to watch. The service still had issues. Most new movies would be listed as being out of stock for weeks at a time. The mailing process also took several days. Ultimately, the queue system that you use to determine the order you receive movies, failed.

After about a year we canceled the service. The main reason was that we'd run through all the movies we wanted to see. In the end I realized several months had passed while we still had the same four movies out. By this time they were four movies I only vaguely had interest in seeing and now I was paying $20 a month not to watch them.

Just recently Netflix sent a new offer out of two free weeks of service. It's been a long time so I figured it might be interesting to see what's changed. I signed up for their plan that allows for three movies to be out at once. I think that would mean $16 a month if we stuck with them. I've been wanting to see the HBO series "Six Feet Under" but have no interest in paying the huge amount they want for each season. Netflix seemed like a good way to deal with it. With Netflix each DVD counts so a TV show, made up of many episodes and series, results in several discs per season. I took two of those and the movie "Enchanted" which I'm curious to see again already.

The very next day these DVD's were all in my mailbox. It turns out that since my first membership, Netflix has added a huge array of shipping locations. The one closest to me is just a couple of towns away. The service itself it fairly similar to what it was before. The only major addition is the ability to watch a movie over the Internet. I tried this out and was not impressed. The movie took a while to get started and when it played back it was of such poor quality, to my eyes, as to be unwatchable.

I also already sense that there's very little I want to see. I wish Netflix had a sort of "virtual" store. One of the things I like about Blockbuster is that they have the outside walls that you can walk that are filled with the latest, most popular movies out. Netflix has the latest releases but the lists are so long that it'd take forever to go through them. I just want to get a subset of that. Having everything is good but not all the time.

Their recommendation system is virtually the same as always and, as always, it's recommending a lot of movies I have no interest in seeing including many I really disliked.

In the end I think I'll watch "Six Feet Under" and then just cancel the account again when I'm done.

You Can Too If Ubuntu

I'm writing this entry now in Firefox. That isn't new. However, what is new is that I'm writing this in Firefox that's running on a flavor of the Linux operating system known as Ubuntu.

No, I haven't abandoned Windows. I'm a gamer so that's a bit difficult to do these days. I'm currently running this in a dual-boot scenario. Every time my PC starts up I have a menu that offers me the choice of which operating system I'd like to run. Windows XP is set to the default but Ubuntu is an option now and it's been an interesting journey.

Understand that my days of being an operating system rebel are, I believe, most likely behind me. When everyone was running Microsoft DOS, I was checking out CPM, 4DOS and IBM DOS. When everyone moved to Windows I fought back with Desqview, Geos, GeoWorks, X and OS/2. I never wanted to be the guy who used something just because everyone else was using it. I believed these other options offered a better potential.

I've tried nearly every major OS the world has offered up and found them all to be interesting, compelling and, ultimately, frustrating. In the end every single one of them lacked for support, choice and basic necessity. I always ended up coming back to the mainstream--defeated and dejected.

Not this time. I've used Unix (the precursor to Linux) in the past--most notably professionally. I found it to be very short on creature comforts and very long on syntax complexity. Linux wasn't much better except that various versions of it have been rumored to have addressed all of that with simplistic graphical user interfaces and features. Linux comes in a dizzying array of choices. One of the most popular ones right now is Ubuntu. I have no idea where the name comes from but it is nothing if not catchy.

My son had recently become enamored with the idea of changing operating systems and was running Vista with some difficulty. I mentioned that he should check out a flavor of Linux and find out what his Uncle Jim was always going on about. I wasn't going to let my cynical experiences stand in his creative way.

He was curious and asked what to install. I couldn't reach his Uncle Jim so I asked some resident Linux friends of mine and Ubuntu was universally recommended. The first thing that impressed me was the ease with which you get it and start with it. All he had to do was go to its website, download it and burn it to a CD. He then was able to boot it from his CD drive and up it came. Not just an installation but the whole thing. This is called LiveCD and it allows you to test-drive the entire OS without having to install or disturb anything. I comes with most everything you'd need to play around. Very, very nice.

He installed it fully to his hard drive and within an hour was working on a homework project entirely within Ubuntu. It already came pre-configured with everything he could need including a top-notch "office" suite. Over the next several days he continued to tweak and poke and things just improved.

I finally decided I had to see this for myself. I installed it earlier this week on a small section of an older hard drive.

The results have been rather interesting. For me, so far, I don't think it's a permanent fixture. I've done some neat things. I managed to get Firefox and Thunderbird installed and both of them work from the settings and data stored on my XP setup so I don't lose anything regardless of the OS I'm in. I'm also impressed by how fancy the graphical interface is. Windows that you move around act like putty when dragged about. They act as if reluctant to want to leave the edges of the screen (by pulling slightly out of shape at the point you pull them). I also am impressed with how simple many things are to do.

However, there's still much to be concerned about. As with all minority solutions there are major trade-off's. I have a very specialized sound card. There are no drivers for it so I have no sound what-so-ever. For an audio guy that's pretty major. My keyboard is pretty specialized and it too has no drivers. My mouse works but isn't as fully functional as it is in Windows. While I have an instant messaging program (Pidgin) it's not as feature-rich as Trillian (although right now it's a lot more stable than Trillian has been of late). Video drivers are limited so it's pretty much live with what you get and don't complain. There's also no way to really play top games as easily as you do in Windows and this is a major drawback for me. If I want to play my games it's time to boot back to Windows.

What's most annoying is that Linux fans are quick to tell everyone how simple today's Linux is. What they don't tell you is that just about anything you want to do that's extra will often require a dizzying array of completely foreign, entirely unintuitive steps and commands to achieve. Most anything is possible but good luck finding it on your own. If it wasn't for user forums this effort would be a complete loss. Thankfully the community is growing and motivated to help so answers are generally only minutes away. Even things that represent major leaps forward sometimes are crippled by terminology that only elitist coders could love. For example, there's a wonderful tool that you can bring up and search for just about any kind of program imaginable. If you find it there you can be fairly confident that it's fully compatible with Ubuntu and also will be seamlessly and effortlessly installed for you. What's the name of this great tool? It's called the "Synaptic Package Manager". Are they kidding? I struggle to remember the name every time I need it. I had to look it up just to type it here.

The bottom line, for me at least, is that there's nothing in Ubuntu right now that is a "must-have" item. It's nice to be able to not have to worry so much about spyware and most viruses but that only gets you so far. Everything I can do in Ubuntu I can do just as easily, and usually with more choices, in Windows. Windows also generally will do it without the complexity. If someone were just starting out and wanted a computer for browsing and e-mail along with some online games, I'd set them up on this in a heartbeat. I suspect it would run happily without intervention for years. No matter the user type Windows seems to turn to molasses in short order requiring endless trips to various homes of my friends and family.

I'll be keeping it around to see if things change. Perhaps something will but for now it's just a fun experiment.