Review: Ubuntu 10.04

I installed Ubuntu 9.10 (aka Karmic) a few months ago, so when the new version 10.04 (aka Lucid) came out recently I eagerly upgraded. How is it?

A little more background will be helpful to understand my review. Ubuntu comes in 32 bit and 64 bit versions. I have a newer computer so 64 bit is the natural choice, but I inadvertently installed Karmic 32 bit. After realizing that, I decided it wasn't worth the hassle of reinstalling just to get 64. When Lucid came out, I simply upgraded from Karmic. It turns out this didn't go very well because of the proprietary graphics driver I had installed to get all the nice graphical effects on the desktop. I ended up with broken packages that couldn't be fully uninstalled, nor fixed. Rather than live with the default and rudimentary default graphics driver, I did a clean install of Lucid. And while I was at it, I went up to 64 bit.

So the first thing I have to say is, use the 32 bit version. The 64 bit works well, but I have come across multiple little glitches in things that worked just fine on 32 bit.

• the java plug-in for the browser is only available for 32 bit architectures
• the Amazon MP3 downloader program is only available for 32 bit architectures
• firefox doesn't deal well with installing add-ons. Every time I add an add-on and restart firefox, the browser hangs. After killing the process and re-restarting, it runs fine.
• well, almost fine. I have not been able to get the Yahoo toolbar to work. I lasted on Lucid 32 bit long enough to run the browser and know that the toolbar worked just fine there, so it has to be with the 64 bit build of the program.
• most importantly for me, I have not been able to get Oblivion to play under wine on the new OS. I had it running just fine on Karmic 32 bit. On Lucid 64 the opening credits actually run more smoothly, but always hangs at the start menu. I've tried multiple versions of wine, and still no go.

Despite these issues, I'm sticking with 64 for now. I'm optimistic these things will be solved. They don't seem all that major that they won't be.

That pretty much sums up my negative comments about the OS, and they're not really comments about Lucid so much as 64 bit. Overall I'm still happy with it.

The big talk in the Ubuntu world about Lucid is that the window control buttons--minimize, maximize, close--have moved from their traditional position on the right side of the title bar to the left. This change triggered some let's just say passionate reactions, almost all against the change.

Some felt it emulates the Mac OS X desktop too much and that would be hard for Windows converts to adjust to. That's silly. First of all, the GNOME desktop is already strongly influenced by the Mac desktop, so it seems natural that this would eventually happen. As a Windows convert myself, the new user already has to adjust him- or her-self to so many differences with GNOME, that this is just one more. If you really don't like the Mac-influenced desktop, use KUbuntu, the Ubuntu variant with the KDE desktop (yes, that's redundant) that is much more Windows influenced.

Having used it, is it really all that big a deal? No. You get used to it. It's amazing how resistant people are to change. They will fight vigorously against it, and then find ways to adapt when it happens anyway. It turns out it's a simple configuration change to put the buttons back, but it's not really a big deal where they are. I had a harder time getting used to the system clock being at the top of the screen instead of the task bar at the bottom.

One of the more significant changes with Lucid is the whole "social from the start" theme, which essentially means a greater degree of integration between the desktop and social networking systems like facebook and twitter. This is primarily through the "MeMenu":



which allows you to post updates to those services right from the desktop. The design isn't very clean. You have a text box out in the middle of nowhere with no label or action button to give a hint as to what it's for. That's not very user-friendly. But it works. I can see this being the foundation of future enhancements that would even more integrate the system with social sites. It'll be interesting to see what that does.

It sounds weird, but I want to put in a plug for the scanning program that comes with the system. I have never had an easier or faster experience scanning pictures than with Lucid. In what would it take on Vista to scan one picture, I was able to do maybe three. The focus with Lucid was on user friendliness. That's really one of the main motivations behind Ubuntu period. But this is a simple yet perfect example of that at work.

In a previous post, I mentioned issues in Karmic with the CD/DVD drive. Those appear to have been fixed with Lucid. I have inserted several CDs and DVDs since installing and haven't had any problems. I always thought it was strange that in Karmic you could either eject the disk or unmount the drive. If you ejected, the drive would stay mounted and you wouldn't be able to use another disk. With Lucid only the eject option remains; apparently the OS now realizes that when you eject the disk, the drive is no longer part of the file system.

There aren't a lot of dramatic changes in Lucid relative to Karmic. That's not unexpected, given that Lucid is a long term support release. It looks like Maverick (the 10.10 release coming this October) will be a bit more ambitious. It's a great system that will meet most people's needs just fine, without anti-virus and all the other "joys" of Windows. Oh, and things seem to run a lot faster compared to Windows.

Now, if I could just get Oblivion to play.....

Update 5/15: I finally got Oblivion to play. I had to try numerous versions from the distribution site. With 1.1.25, I was able to finally play the game again. And honestly it plays better than I had it running on Karmic. The game looks much better than it did. The lighting actually works right, though that means I have to deal with dark caves again. But it's a go!

Movie Review: The Dark Knight (2008)

Um, wow!

The second installment of Chris Nolan's Batman franchise hit the screens this weekend with The Dark Knight. In Batman Begins, Nolan told the story of his protagonist's origins as the caped crusader combating crime in Gotham. The story continues by examining the consequences of having someone fight crime in this way. It's a continuation of a conversation Batman and Gordon had at the end of Begins about escalation.

Bruce Wayne is tired of being Batman. The vigilante hero has given rise to a wave of imitation vigilantes taking justice into their own hands. Batman has to take down his own imitators alongside the criminals he is supposed to be fighting. Rather than bringing light to the city, he is just bringing more chaos. But when Wayne meets the new DA Harvey Dent, he is impressed. Dent is taking on the mob in Gotham bravely in the face of constant threats to his own safety. And he does so without a mask. Wayne decides Dent is the hero Gotham needs, and sees with relief the beginning of the end for Batman.

As Gordon prophesied in Begins, the mob do not take kindly to Batman's interference. When they find themselves unable to get rid of Batman, they decide to give the Joker a shot. This Joker, unlike Tim Burton's Joker from Batman, is an agent of pure chaos. He's not out for the money or power. He's a pure psychotic who wants to see the world writhe in agony. As such, he sees something of a kinship between himself and Batman, since Batman is inadvertently giving rise to chaos as well.

In addition to, or perhaps as part of, causing chaos the Joker makes a game of trying to corrupt the seemingly incorruptible Dark Knight (Batman) and White Knight (Dent) and bring them down to his level. He ultimately succeeds in Dent's case (not really a spoiler, because anyone who saw Batman Returns or has read the comics knows who Dent is).

The two are emblematic of Joker's ultimate goal of corrupting everyone, prompting people to do things to others that they would otherwise find horrifying to even contemplate. One great sequence involves two captive groups of people, each with a detonator that will kill the other group. Joker gives them the choice of either using the detonator, which will kill the other group but spare their own lives, or don't use the detonator and wait for either the other group to kill them or, if neither group uses its detonator, Joker will kill both groups. Are we the kind of the people who would kill the others to save themselves or are we the kind of people who would stick to their values and not kill innocent people?

The film is masterful in every respect. Visually it is stunning, from the very opening image of a fireball the final image of Batman speeding off on his Bat-bot. The writing is sharp and intelligent. Nolan is not afraid to shock the audience, and shows it by having at least one major character killed off in the film.

The acting is superb almost all around. The late Heath Ledger has already garnered a lot of word of mouth for his performance, and deserves every bit of it. As in Burton's Batman, the Joker ends up outshining Batman. Aaron Eckhart is also solid as Dent, and fairly scary as Two Face, admittedly that is in no small part due to the makeup. Christian Bale is as good as he was in the first film. The only complaint I would have is with Maggie Gyllenhaal who takes over the role of Rachel Dawes from Katie Holmes, and is definitely not of the same caliber.

One note for parents. I know that Batman is a character in Saturday morning cartoons that your kids probably watch. I know that he's a comic book character that your kids may read. This is a movie, not a Saturday morning cartoon show. This is a movie with some very frightening images that tells a quite adult story. This is not a movie to take your kids to. I couldn't believe how many 5, 6, 7 year olds were trotting of the theater after the show. Parents, show some sense.

Movie Review: Vantage Point (2008)

This thriller is about an attempted presidential assassination. Rather than simply telling the story in a linear manner, director Pete Travis takes a page from Memento (not to mention the Japanese classic Rashomon) and instead tells the story through the eyes of several different people, including the news producer covering the president's speech, his secret service body guard, a tourist with a video camera who ends up a Zapruder wannabe, and others. We see the same events played out eight times, but from a different vantage point, and through that the story of what actually happened emerges.

The movie seems to have gotten some very mixed reviews. Count me among the enthusiastic fans. Travis makes a fast-paced film that never slows down. There are no scenes that drag the film to a halt, like in so many lesser thrillers. The big car chase late in the film is on par with the chase through Paris in The Bourne Identity. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. The movie is exciting and captivating, everything you want in a thriller.

This isn't to say there aren't contrivances and logic holes. Our Zapruder wannabe, played by Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, runs through the streets of Salmanca, Spain with his trusty video recorder, chasing the police chasing a suspect. Why? So he can be positioned to take a key action late in the film. And there's one very key contrivance involving the president that is necessary for the film but doesn't make a whole lot of sense as a presidential action.

But who cares. Film is supposed to be entertaining, and Vantage Point is certainly that.

It's difficult to assess the acting. Because of the structure of the film, no one gets a whole lot of time on the screen. Sigourney Weaver's role is little more than a cameo. Dennis Quaid gets the most time on screen, but most of that is taken up in the great car chase, so there's not a lot of room for character development. But all the main actors do what they can in their roles.

There won't be any acting Oscar nominations for Vantage Point, but again it's supposed to be entertainment.

Movie Review: Sleuth (2007)

Director Ken Branagh brings the 1972 classic film Sleuth into the 21st century with his remake, reimagining, whatever you want to call it. The original starred Laurence Olivier as Andrew Wyke and Michael Caine as Milo Tindle. They comprised two-thirds of the cast, with the one-film wonder Alec Cawthorne being the final third. (And there's a very good reason Cawthorne doesn't have any other screen credits.) The new version has Michael Caine moving to Olivier's role and Jude Law taking over for Caine. And still, that's it, the entire cast.

Wyke is a successful novelist, an older man married to an attractive younger woman Maggie, who is having an affair with unemployed actor Tindle. Tindle comes to Wyke to ask him to grant a divorce so they can be together and marry. Wyke agrees, but only if Tindle will cooperate on a charade. Tindle must pretend to steal some expensive jewels from Wyke's safe, and sell them in order to have the money to support Maggie in her accustomed style. Wyke will then file a claim on the insurance and get the money. Everyone gets what they want. But things don't go as expected.

I've been a fan of Branagh's films for a long time. I was one of the 5 people in the world who actually liked his Frankenstein movie. He's a gifted actor, and a strong director with a flair for atmosphere and tension. A story like this is perfect for him as a director (and as an actor but he's probably too young for Wyke and too old for Tindle, so Ken stays behind the camera). Branagh delivers with spades. He fills the screen with inventive and compelling images that give the film an edge without allowing his camera work to overwhelm his story. (This is one of many areas where he shows the Hitchcock influence. So many directors, most notably Oliver Stone, are as imaginative or more as Hitchcock, but their visual styles tend to become the focus of the film rather than being tools to support and build up the story, as Alfred did.) Branagh knows this an actor's film, and keeps the focus squarely on his two leads.

The acting is good, though Law is a little over the top at times. The original featured Caine and Olivier, with the two men performing at almost equally high levels. In this version, Caine is clearly the superior actor. Law is good, but not quite to Caine's level. But any deficiencies in the acting do not take away from the film.

Where the film is disappointing is in the screen play. The dialog is often quite witty between the two men. It's fun just to listen to the two of them duel. Harold Pinter does a great job of setting up the story and carrying it along, but the climax is weak.

The original film was a compelling three act story filled with themes of class tension and intellectual arrogance. Olivier's Wyke was a well-bred, educated English gentleman who was more offended by the idea of losing his wife to a poor commoner, than of simply losing his wife. His motivation was more about putting Tindle in his place, punishing him for daring to pursue a rich man's wife, than simply exacting revenge against the man who stole his wife. Tindle, on the other hand, is ultimately motivated by an obsession to humiliate and destroy Wyke at all costs. Their duel is a three set tennis match that ends with no winner and both men destroyed in one way or another. I suppose one could say Milo ultimately wins but pays such a high price that it would be odd to call him the winner.

The new film is a similar three act story with none of those themes. Both men are simply motivated by the desire to humiliate the other. Dropping the themes of class tension is a reflection of the times. It's something that would have resonated to some degree, particularly among British viewers, in 1972 but not today. Milo is motived in both films by the same desire, though the lengths to which each will go is a bit different. Milo and Andrew play the same three set match, but with a very different third act/set and with an outcome that shows Andrew as clearly the winner.

It's this third act that undermines the film. The writing is disappointing. The cleverness of the dialog that characterized the first two acts disappears. The quality of acting falls off a bit, particularly with Law. It's confusing because it's no longer clear why each man is doing what he does. We ultimately get to the same climactic action, but the new film's version lacks the Shakespearean tragedy of the original. The new film just kind of ends.

In the end, the Branagh version is interesting and entertaining and I can't not recommend it, for the quality of the acting and directing, but to really experience Sleuth, watch the original.

Game Review: Half Life 2

As I've said before, I'm usually very much behind the times when it comes to gaming. I recently completed playing Half Life 2, one of the most anticipated games of 2005. I got started in video games as an adult in shooter games, particularly games like Medal of Honor. But I've become more a fan of RPG's. Shooters are fine, but how many different ways are there to shoot a machine gun? But I wanted something different and this game seemed just the ticket.

Every time this game, or its predecessor, is reviewed, they talk, no rave, about the strong story telling. I played part of Half Life, and all of Half Life 2. What story? The game starts with Gordon Freeman waking up on a train in City 17. Why you are there is never really explained. Just go with it, you're there. You start roaming around, eventually get a crowbar and the game is on. For the next many hours, you run through an elaborate maze picking up various weapons along the way and killing a whole bunch of people, zombies, and aliens who are trying to kill you. Why you are doing this is not explained. Why the bad guys want to kill you is not explained, though I guess once you start killing them it's pretty obvious why they want to return the favor. Just go with it, you're a one-man army. And then, it's .... over. You've achieved ... something. But there is "immersive story telling."

Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game. The graphics and sound are really good. There is variety in the game. You aren't just shooting all the time. There are levels where you pilot a boat and where you drive a buggy. Sometimes you get to control alien entities and let them to the hard work of clearing out rooms. It takes up a lot of time and is definitely enjoyable.

There is one section that was just plain aggravating. You have to cross through this sandy region where if you touch the sand, antlions will rise up continuously until you are dead. So you have to pick up debris that just happens to be lying around and step from box to box to get to the other end. Slowly. Tediously. Whoever thought of that should get slapped.

The ending pretty much stinks. You lose all but one weapon, which mysteriously gets upgraded by the enemy. It becomes a cool little gun and gives you new ways of eliminating your enemies. But isn't the point of a shooter game to have multiple weapons you can choose from? Beyond that, it ends pretty much out of the blue.

Anyway, as a shooter game, it's fun. Just don't talk to me about story.

Movie Review: Zodiac

David Fincher, who made his name with the story of a serial killer working his way through the seven deadly sins, now regales us with the true crime story of the Zodiac killer who terrorized San Francisco in the late '60s and early '70s. Well, really it's the story of the men, both police and journalists, who became obsessed with the Zodiac killer and the toll it took on their careers and lives. (And it's easy to get hooked. I visited one of the main clearinghouses of information on the Zodiac this morning and lost track of time, and then had to race to get ready for work.)

In summer 1969, the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle receive an anonymous letter from someone claiming responsibility for three recent murders (one victim survived), along with a cypher the author demands be published. Investigative reporter Paul Avery and cartoonist Robert Graysmith (on whose books the film is based) start looking into the Zodiac. For Avery, this will lead to the downfall of his career, as his obsession leads to alcoholism and paranoia, and he ultimately runs away. For Graysmith, it will obviously lead to fame and fortune through his books and this film, but will cost him a marriage.

The newspaper reports the letter to the police and Inspectors David Toschi and William Armstrong are assigned to the case. Armstrong will eventually burn out on the case. Toschi will get caught up in it to the end, despite it derailing his career when he is accused of writing some of the Zodiac letters himself. After that he tries desperately to put the case behind him, but Graysmith continues hounding him for information and direction.

The Zodiac killer has never been identified. The film posits one possible solution, apparently the favorite of many: Arthur Leigh Allen. No other suspect is even shown in the film. Given that the film is based on Graysmith's book rather than attempting to be an objective view of the case, this is not surprising. Fincher plays fair, though, and points out the flaws in the theory, little things like DNA.

Overall, I have to say I was disappointed. After such seminal works as Se7en and Fight Club, and the lesser but still entertaining Panic Room, this one is rather pedestrian. Fincher assembles a strong cast, and none disappoint with their performances. But the film just plods along with no energy or momentum. Part of the problem is that the story keeps jumping time frames, especially in the first half. And after all is said and done, the movie comes out and says, "We don't know who did it."

And then there are strange developments. For the first cypher, we get a quick scene of intelligence operatives in the Navy working to decode the thing, but then we find that the code is broken by some couple in their pajamas (early bloggers?). And it's not even a complicated code, but Navy intelligence couldn't crack it? Zodiac sent a second cypher that no one has ever solved. Late in the film, Graysmith is shown in a TV interview after he did so. But we never hear what the solution was. Given that in reality it's never been solved, that's not too surprising. But then why put that scene in?

But the weirdest one comes late in the film. Based on some anonymous tips and some investigation, Graysmith is convinced some guy named Rick Marshall is the Zodiac who was a film projectionist. One of the pieces of evidence for Marshall is that his handwriting is the closest match they've had to the Zodiac's handwriting. Graysmith goes to visit the man who owned the theater where Marshall worked. There, the owner identifies the handwriting as his own, and not Marshall's. Graysmith suddenly gets very scared, thinking the owner is the killer, and runs out. Two scenes later he's interviewing the sister of one of the victims and is insistent that Marshall is the Zodiac. At this point, why would he believe that? Doesn't he remember what he learned the night before?

Well acted, but the movie isn't worth the time. Too bad because the subject matter seems quite interesting.

Movie Review: Rocky Balboa

Like everyone else, when I heard that Sylvester Stallone was making a new Rocky movie, I couldn't help but laugh and feel bad for an aging action star long since left behind by the movie industry. When it came out, I was quite surprised to read many reviews saying it was pretty good. I finally decided to watch it last night ($0.99 on Amazon Unbox, how could I lose?). I watched it partially because a local TV station pretty recently showed the first three films, and immediately after I watched the fourth, so I'm in the mood for the Rock. And you know what? It really was good.

Balboa reminds viewers what the original Rocky was all about. It wasn't about some muscle bound boxer who could pound super-human Soviet fighters into submission with a super-burst of testosterone. It was a personal story of self-respect and not allowing one's circumstances, no matter how poor, dictate who you are. The final film in the series gets back to that. It's not about boxing. In fact, boxing doesn't even show up in the film for the first hour. It's about Rocky the man, who finds himself back where he started and again struggling for that sense of respect and meaning.

In the first film, Rocky was little more than a street thug with a good heart living poor in Philadelphia who was given a chance, as part of a publicity gimmick, to fight the heavyweight champion. To Rocky, it was an opportunity to prove to himself and others that he was more than just a bum, that he was somebody. And he did.

In the last film, Rocky is again back in the old neighborhood. His beloved wife, Adrian, is dead and Rocky is left to carry on with his restaurant, entertaining customers with stories of the old days. He's living in the past. The film begins on the anniversary of Adrian's death and shows Rocky and Paulie going to various sites around the neighborhood that meant something in his relationship with Adrian. The old apartment. The ice rink. The pet shop. He's become a shell of himself, eking out a living, surrounded by images and memories of what he had been. In Rocky IV, Apollo warned Rocky about what would happen when it was all over. Here, we see it.

Despite the sadness and emptiness of his life now, he still has a good heart. He allows Spider Rico, a fighter from the clubs where Rocky got his start and the one Rocky fought at the beginning of the first film, to eat for free in his restaurant as Spider is now a broken-down old man without much money. He bumps into Marie, a kid in the first movie, who's now a single mother in the neighborhood and who has been made to feel worthless, and gives her and her son jobs in the restaurant. And, of course, he still helps Paulie as much as he can.

Finally, Rocky is approached for one last fight, against the champion. Feeling a bit of the old fire in his belly, he agrees, setting the stage for the final bout. This is, of course, where everyone thought things would just get absurd. But they don't. Rocky is a fighter with a broken down body who can't train like he used to because his body just can't handle it.

One of the interesting things is how Rocky's opponent, Mason Dixon, is portrayed. He's not Rocky's enemy or rival, like the opponent in all the films before this one. He's a champion who has never really been tested. There's no one in the boxing world who can truly challenge him, and he knows it. He's an Ali in a world of Tommy Morrisons. He's frustrated by it. He doesn't seem to really enjoy his money and fame because he knows he hasn't really proven anything. (There are two scenes at Dixon's home. In both, we see his entourage and hangers-on in his house watching TV and enjoying his wealth while Dixon is out by himself, watching a reply of a bout in one scene and playing basketball in the other. Not a vision of a man enjoying his success.) So, like Rocky, he has something to prove, to himself if not to the fans. While he goes into the fight with Balboa as a stunt, in that fight he finds himself. Even Rocky commends Dixon after the fight for being a great champion, and having a lot of heart.

There are a lot of parallels between the first and last film. In both Rocky fights the champion as a stunt only to shock everyone and go the distance. In both, Rocky loses, in split decisions. But there's an important difference, one that really does bring the saga to an end. In the first film, Rocky decides he cannot beat Creed, so he lowers his goals a bit to going to the distance against a champion who has never had to. He fulfills that goal, but in doing so shows that he could actually beat Creed. At the end of that fight, Creed is just about out on his feet and is truly saved by the bell. (This makes Rocky's "victory" a bit hollow looking back on it, and sets the stage for II where he must now prove he can carry through on the loftier goal of winning.) At the end of this fight, Dixon and Balboa are furiously exchanging blows, neither beaten. So while Rocky has again gone the distance, there's not a danger that he's again a contender. And Stallone is careful to hinder Dixon a bit (he's not in top shape, he breaks his hand during the fight) so that Balboa is hanging in there against a champion fighting at only partial capacity.

Stallone is not known as a great actor. But he's done his best work in the Rocky series. I always thought III was the best acted of the series, but Balboa takes the crown. He delivers a superb speech to his son that epitomizes everything Rocky is about. And there's a nice scene between Rocky and Marie, who encourages him to not worry about what other people think about the fight, but all that matters is what he thinks. (A statement to all of us who mocked the idea of making the movie? If nothing else, I think it shows how much a labor of love the movie was for Stallone.)

And I have to give props to Stallone as a director, as well. The movie has a great look and feel. Lots of night photography and interesting lighting. Two images at the end of the film stand out to me. The movie ends at Adrian's grave. Rocky leaves some flowers and walks away. The camera stays focused on the flowers and Balboa goes out of focus, but stays in just enough to show him waving good-bye and then fading out. Beautiful ending. And then, after the credits roll (with video of lots of ordinary people running up the museum steps, imitating Rocky), there's a short, quiet shot of Rocky standing standing quietly at the top of the steps, at night, looking out over the city, and then fading to black.

All in all, a very well done film that brings Rocky full circle and provides a touching closure to an enduring character and redeems a series that had long ago fallen away from its original vision.

Movie Review: Spider-Man 3

The saga of Peter Parker and his alter ego continues this summer with the third installment of the franchise. In my review of Spider-Man 2, I raved about the film but warned that other super-hero franchises were great the first two films, but fell apart in the third with the "creeping disease of franchise-itis." With the third film--the first in the super-hero film genre to return the full cast and director of the prior films--finally in theaters we will see if the same holds true for this franchise. The summary is: it does fall short of its predecessors and shows franchise-itis, but it is still an enjoyable film.

In 2, Peter was tormented by the conflicts between his personal life and his public life in the suit. In 3, the torment is still there, but it's Mary Jane who is tormented. Peter would be, but he's far too caught up in the celebrity of being Spider-Man. To a "nerdy kid from Queens" the thrill of rescuing hot blondes in distress and getting the reward of a lip-lock is too much to pass up. And then he can't understand why his girlfriend would be upset at seeing him kiss another woman. MJ and Peter are still together. In fact, Peter plans to pop the question. But the celebrity has gone to his head, so when MJ has issues and problems in her own career, rather than listen and provide support, he goes off talking about his issues as Spider-Man. Rather than losing everything because he's conflicted about being Spider-Man, he's losing his girl because he's now become far too comfortable in the role. As with the other films, it is this relationship between Peter and Spider-Man that provides the main story.

This big sign of franchise-itis in the film is the presence of three villans: Green Goblin 2 (dismissively referred to as Goblin Jr.), Sandman, and Venom.

Goblin is, of course, Peter's old buddy Harry Osborn, who still holds a grudge against Spider-Man for killing his father. The two engage in a spectacular fight early in the film, which all but kills Osborn. Peter takes him to the hospital, and when Harry wakes up he finds he has lost part of his memory, including the memory of who Peter is. This enables the two to become friends again. But, of course, Harry eventually remembers and gets back to the business of bringing down Peter Parker.

Sandman is Flynt Marko, the man, we find, who really killed Uncle Ben in the first film. He's a thief who steals to provide money for his sick child. While running from the police, he falls into a particle physics experiment (which inexplicably has nothing to do with particle physics, but rather whipping up sand storms in a controlled environment), where his body is destroyed and he becomes a creature of sand.

Venom is, well, hard to explain. First, there's what I would call pre-Venom. This is a gooey, living substance from a meteorite that, when bonded with a host, accentuates various negative characteristics of that host, particularly aggression. This substance finds its way to Peter, where it gives Spider-Man a black suit and a much more aggressive personality. At first Peter enjoys the power, but after one particularly shocking incident, he realizes what he's become and so frees himself from the goo. Then we get Venom proper. The goo, leaving Parker, finds its way to Eddie Brock, a photographer competing with Parker and who has been particularly humiliated. Brock becomes Venom, a creature much like Spider-Man in abilities, though far more evil.

There are too many villains flying around. None really get well developed. Venom is never even named in the film. I only know the name because of reading other reviews of the film. Apparently he is a pretty popular villain in the comics, but the film doesn't do much with him. He appears late and only has a couple of scenes before the big climactic fight. Sandman is just plain frustrating because he's like two different characters. The rules don't even seem well defined. The first time Spidey fights Sandman, he punches right though him. Sandman is, after all, a sand man. The movie uses this when convenient. But other times, when convenient, Spidey can hit him hard. As a character, he starts out being a thief with a good cause, then he becomes a pure bad guy trying to kill Spider-Man (for no defined reason), then at the end he becomes the thief with a good heart again.

At least the main story is well told and developed. As already written, Peter has become caught up in his own celebrity (anonymous though it may be). He's not there for MJ one night because he has to go off and do his superhero thing. He doesn't really hear MJ when she's trying to share the hurts of her day. And there's the aforementioned hot blonde and her lip-lock. Eventually, when she just needs someone to talk to, she pauses before dialing Peter and instead switches up to Harry's number.

Meanwhile, Peter is enjoying the things the pre-Venom goo is doing to him. Women notice him, initially with apparent interest but then with laughter to which he's oblivious. In what is easily the most hilarious sequence in the entire trilogy, Peter channels his inner John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever's his way down the street to buy a black suit (from a second hand shop, of course). He's no longer the push-over geek of high school. When Brock gets the staff job that Parker has wanted for years, Peter physically intimidates and then humiliates him, and enjoys doing so.

After MJ breaks it off with Peter, in an extremely well acted scene by both Dunst and Maquire, Parker gets his revenge by bring the now twice aforementioned blonde to the club where MJ is singing and proceeds to (a) show her up by performing a fantastic dance sequence that steals the spotlight and (b) shoving the blonde in her face. Very un-Peter-like, but it's not over. This sequence leads to the shocking incident mentioned above which knocks some sense into Peter's head.

With Peter's head finally cleared and dealing with a lot of remorse over what he had become, the stage is set for the climax. Which is disappointing. Having to wrap things up with so many bad guys makes for an over-long, not to mention somewhat recycled, ending. The resolution with Sandman cheats and doesn't really make a lot of sense. The resolution with Venom requires discovering at just the right moment a totally contrived weakness in the enemy. (As the Knights Who Say Ni have certain sounds and words they cannot bear to hear, so goes it with this alien goo.) The Goblin story line is the best resolved, but even that requires...well I won't give it away. Suffice it to say, a development comes out of nowhere to allow that storyline to get resolved.

So, in the end, Spider-Man 3 is an enjoyable summer flick with a lot going for it, but bloated and overly ambitious which makes it the least satisfying of the three.

Movie Review: The Illusionist

Neil Burger's The Illusionist is a very pleasant surprise. Hollywood often comes out with two films simultaneously that deal with same things. Deep Impact and Armageddon, and the like. This year, it's The Illusionist and The Prestige, both period pieces centered on magicians. I saw them both this week. I expected both to be decent but The Prestige to be better, given that is from Chris Nolan. Unfortunately Nolan's work just proves that he is, in fact, mortal. But The Illusionist holds up, and is a totally captivating and entertaining film.

Set in Vienna circa 1900, the film tells the story of Eisenheim the Illusionist (Edward Norton) and his romance with Sophie (Jessica Biel), a Hungarian duchess betrothed to Leopold (Rufus Sewel), crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The two were childhood friends, whose friendship and romance flew in the face of convention as she was from nobility and he was a peasant. Try as they might, they cannot buck the social pressures of the day, and Sophie is eventually taken away. That's the backstory to what happens in the film, which takes place 15 years later.

Eisenheim has become a magician with a great following. His tricks are so astounding, his mystified audiences are convinced he has supernatural powers, though he assures them (when needed) that everything is just an illusion. One night, Leopold is in the audience and volunteers his beloved to participate in a trick. Eisenheim immediately recognizes Sophie, and she eventually realizes who he is and their love is rekindled. Later, Eisenheim is brought to meet the prince, who invites him to the castle for a private performance and asks for something special. Eisenheim muses that he will make the prince disappear.

Instead, Eisenheim takes a cut at the prince by improvising a trick based on the legend of Arthur. Taking the prince's sword, he challenges members of the audience to prove their worth by lifting the sword. None can, of course. But when Leopold comes to reclaim his sword, Eisenheim doesn't end the trick right away and the prince is left struggling to lift the sword too, while members of the audience joke that he must be unworthy of the throne. Leopold immediately decides the magician must be shut down, and sends his lapdog, Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) to do so.

One of Leopold's failings is his habit of beating women. He is rumored to have even thrown one off a roof to cover up the bruises from a beating. When Sophie leaves Leopold, he kills her. Everyone suspects the prince, but few are willing to say so publicly. This includes Uhl, who by his own admission is not totally corrupt, and cannot help but notice a few clues to the identity of the killer.

Eisenheim takes the death of his lover hard, and eventually transforms his act into one of conjuring spirits for the audience. One of those spirits is, of course, Sophie, which infuriates Leopold even further and demands again that Eisenheim be shut down. Unfortunately, the conjurer himself appears to have become a spirit, and the police are unable to arrest him.

So, there it is. The story of the film. Or is it? I won't answer, but I will point out the name of the film is The Illusionist.

Everyone involved in the film gives a solid performance. The acting is uniformly good. That may come as a surprise in reference to Biel, but she holds her own in such highly reputable company as Norton and Giamatti. The pacing is perfect. So many films, particularly in the age of the DVD when movies can be much longer, are bloated with many scenes that should have been edited out. Not this one.

The cinematography is quite interesting. It was a little annoying at first, but then I got it. A lot of the touches convey a sense of having been filmed long ago. The opening credits are jittery. The lighting is not uniform across the frame, leaving the edges and corners in shadow. Those shadows flicker as the background is brighter in some frames than others. All this is what we see in early film-making. Of course, this is in color rather than very high contrast black and white, but even the color has a sepia tint to it, which conveys a sense of age. It's no wonder the cinematography got an Oscar nomination.

There is one element of the film about which there appears to be a lot of confusion, and I don't know the right answer. I read several reviews of the film before writing this one, and several viewers were unimpressed with the film, primarily because of low quality CGI. The irony is that, from what I have read--and I don't claim that it's true--there was no CGI! One person writes

Finally, I understand how another letter writer may have thought the illusions were mere CGI. But no. As impossible as it may seem to believe (unless the filmmakers were flat-out lying when I saw this film at Sundance), there is not one scrap of CGI at play in the film's magic. The illusions are all authentic. No digital trickery. All performed by Norton. Which is amazing in and of itself. He apparently worked his butt off to learn them all and does a breathtaking job.

Kind of funny that someone does a real illusion, and people complain that it doesn't look real enough.

Movie Review: The Departed

Acclaimed director Martin Scorsese's latest opus is The Departed, a gangster story set in Boston rather than his more typical New York. The movie tells the story of two moles, one a cop who has infiltrated Frank Costello's gang and gotten close to the man, and another a man close to Frank Costello who has infiltrated the police force and is working his way up the ranks. Leo DiCaprio plays Bill Costigan, the undercover cop. Matt Damon plays Colin Sullivan, the mole in the police force. Jack Nicholson plays Costello Both Costello and the police know they each have moles in their organizations and the movie plays out as a cat and mouse game with each increasingly desperate to avoid detection.

I have to be honest, I've never been a huge Scorsese fan. He's certainly made his share of great movies: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and the severely under appreciated Age of Innocence, among others. But he's also made his share of duds and disappointments. Admittedly when he's good, he's awesome. Unfortunately there's too much inconsistency in his body of work for me to be a rabid fan.

I'm not really sure where I would rank this film. The acting is phenomenal. Scorsese pulls together a superb cast--DiCaprio, Damon, Nicholson are the leads, but in support are Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg, and a solid list of character actors--and they all give top notch performances. There's not a slouch in there. The one knock I would give would be for Wahlberg (who, ironically, is the only actor in the cast to get an Oscar nomination), but it wouldn't be for his performance but rather the way his character was written, which just seemed a bit too much over the top.

One note, though, to both the cast of this film and any future film set in Boston. Not every person who lives in Boston speaks with a Boston accent. I lived there for six years. Granted some do, but why does just about every male actor with a significant speaking part attempt the accent? Unsurprisingly, Damon and Wahlberg--both from Boston--do the best. It's pretty annoying when everyone in the cast is trying to do it, not always consistently, and certainly not always successfully. I've definitely heard worse, but still.

While the acting is fantastic, the directing seems a bit unfocused. The film meanders around. The opening act is confused and kind of sloppy. There even seem to be scenes from the future. We meet and have a few scenes of Leo in the office of the undercover force as a clean faced kid where he gets his assignment and accepts it, but in the middle there's a scene of him visiting his dieing mother where he's got the beard and hard look that we will see later during his time with the gang. There is a token female in the cast, who happens to fall for both moles, but she is so poorly drawn it seems her only purpose is to be on the receiving end of a sex scene with DiCaprio.

The film is so sloppily assembled, they don't even wrap obvious things up. Near the end, DiCaprio and token woman have a scene where Costigan gives her a package that she is not to open unless something happens to him. This is a big scene. What's in the package? Who knows. The movie immediately forgets there ever was a package. I understand the idea of the MacGuffin, but this is ridiculous.

And the ending, while having a very good closing shot (the Massachusetts State House roof, suggesting Sullivan's ambitions, gleaming in the distance shown through an apartment window, with a rat walking across the balcony railing) comes out of nowhere.

The writing isn't too bad. Writing is the one area of film that I think has been consistently suffering for years. So many good actors, so many good directors, so many big budgets to allow film makers to indulge their visions, but writing consistently lets movies down. As I said, I thought the gruff character Wahlberg plays was too over the top. And the token female is, well, a token. But that happens all the time. Other than that, the writing was good.

So, in the end, I can praise the film for the quality of acting. But not much else.

Movie Review: Casino Royale

I just got back from seeing Casino Royale, the newest entry in the James Bond series. This, the 21st film in the series, is an adaptation of the very first Bond novel. The movie marks the first time Ian Fleming's work has actually been involved with a Bond movie since 1987's The Living Daylights. While Fleming's titles, and occasional passages from the books, were used until then, no movie has actually tried to remain faithful to its source material since 1964's Goldfinger. Royale puts that streak to an end, by not only using the title but telling the story of the novel, though with some tweaks to modernize it.

The story pits our hero against Le Chiffre, banker to the world's terrorists. Le Chiffre has lost a lot of his clients' money when a terrorist attack is foiled by Bond and has set up a high stakes game of poker at the Casino Royale to get it back. The British government decides to stake Bond in the game so he can clean Le Chiffre out and then offer him sanctuary in return for information.

The movie, while telling a modernized story, has quite a retro feel to it. As already noted, the novel on which the film was based is the very first one. So, true to the book Bond is a newly minted double-O. The pre-title sequence shows his first two kills which earn him the rank and is in black and white. Bond drives a 1964 Aston Martin early in the film. And his swimsuit and sunglasses have a decidedly 1960's feel to them. But Bond is all 21st century. Cell phones and text messages feature prominently. And the big card game between Bond and Le Chiffre is the highly popular Texas Hold 'Em poker rather than baccarat as in the novel.

As a Bond movie, this one is very scaled back. The usual touches are not there. The opening visual that has been used in every movie since From Russia With Love (the white disk moving across the screen to reveal Bond) is absent, though the shot into the gun barrel is there. The Bond theme music is absent until the closing credits, and when it is finally played it's the old style version, not the amped up hard rock version of the Brosnan movies. The signature line ("Bond, James Bond") almost misses the film. Q is absent. Moneypenny is absent, at least in body; there is some word play in one scene that evokes her memory ("I'm the money." "And worth every penny."). Gadgets, other than cell phones, laptops, and a defibrillator, are absent. Bond drinks martinis, but doesn't really "give a damn" whether they are shaken or stirred.

Instead, we have a Bond who gets the crap kicked out of him, who nearly dies, who bleeds and gets bruises. We have a Bond who makes mistakes, then loses his temper and composure, reverting to being a thug or, as M so aptly puts it, a blunt instrument. We have a Bond who is subjected to a very uncomfortable torture scene, and who escapes only due to luck. In other words, a more realistic Bond.

The big question, of course, is how well new Bond Daniel Craig fairs in his debut. With all the franchise gimmicks taken away, the film rests solely on his muscular shoulders. Honestly, I'm not sure. His Bond is a cold hearted, brutal SOB. Emphasis on cold. His blue eyes might as well be ice. Dalton tried to go that way in his movies, at least License to Kill. Brosnan hinted at it at times in his movies. But no one has been this cold. As a read of the literary Bond, Craig is superb. As the cornerstone of a movie franchise, I'm not so sure. While he has the coldness and brutality down pat, there is little appealing about the character or the man.

As a film, the pacing is a bit strange. The first maybe 3rd of the film is very fast moving and action packed. Then it settles down to mostly pure drama for most of the rest of the film, until one last climax of action. It's never boring. The drama sections have an element of tension to them as Le Chiffre and Bond face off. It is testimony to Craig's performance that the film can slow down so much, and stay so slow, and yet be interesting. It makes for a good movie, but can a franchise continue for long with such films?

One thing that's interesting about the film. Typically an actor's first foray into Bond is weak. Each actor has brought a different interpretation, but the script is typically customized for the prior Bond. So, for example, Dalton comes off kind of awkward in The Living Daylights because it was written for Roger Moore, even though Dalton was a quite different Bond. This film seems tailor made for Daniel Craig. In fact, it is hard to see Brosnan (who I loved as Bond) in this film.

In the end, this is a very different Bond film, much more brutal than its predecessors and less formulaic. Daniel Craig delivers a very good performance as the Bond of the novels. But it remains to be seen how well he can morph into a Bond more suited to the franchise.

Game Review: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

This game is a sequel to an earlier PC game called The Longest Journey, which I have never played. It is billed as an action/adventure game, which is pretty misleading. There is very little action, and what there is is pretty primitive. It's really more of a puzzle game in which the player is given a sequence of tasks to figure out how to accomplish.

Dreamfall tells a story set well into the future, but in a world that is still very recognizable. Or should I say, one world that is recognizable. The game actually covers three worlds, existing in parallel universes. There our world, which for some reason is called Stark. The world of Arcadia is a bit more like medieval Europe, but with magic. And then there's the world called Winter.

The primary character is a Moroccan girl named Zoë. She's a college dropout with no real direction in life. She has broken up with her boyfriend Reza, who is a journalist and is developing a story as the game begins. When Reza disappears, Zoë sets out to look for him and the game is on. She begins to uncover the story Reza was working on, and it involves the world's biggest electronics company whose newest product, the Dreamer, will revolutionize entertainment by giving the user dreams so vivid nothing else will compare.

I could continue, like the game was a movie and this was a movie review. The game has a very elaborate story, so much so that there are numerous long stretches in the game where the player simply watches the cutscenes. I like story-driven games, but this is almost overbearing taking the player away from the game for far too long. One of the ambitions behind Enter the Matrix was that it would tell a detailed story set in the Matrix universe and complete the movies. The problem is Atari forgot that in the end it was a game, so a lot of budget was put into the story side and didn't pay much attention to the game, and the results were obvious to anyone who played. In Dreamfall, they spend so much time on the story that the fighting is a joke and the player is taken away from the game for far too long.

Given that the story is so important to the game, how is it? Again, I haven't played the first game so I can't say if that would impact my impressions. The setup is good. Conspiracies make for a good story and this is no exception. I certainly wanted to get to the next level so I could see more of what was happening. But when they get to the meat of the story, it kind of just falls apart and gets totally confusing.

Remember, there are three worlds involved and I've only described what's happening in one. In the setup phase, there is only that world, except for one very short sequence in Arcadia, which has no connection to anything so I'm not sure why they put it there. But when they get to the heart of the story, Zoë wakes up in Arcadia. Why? Not really sure. There is a plot element driven by a little girl straight out of the movie The Ring who tells Zoë to save April Ryan, apparantly the heroine of the first game. But other than that, Zoë's travels in Arcadia have no bearing that I could understand on the events in Stark.

Now, in Arcadia we meet and play as April. Why? Uh, I don't know. For such a story-driven game, there appears to be no real story around April, and the events in Arcadia seem to have no bearing on the main story taking place around Zoë. There appears to be some sort of connection, but what it is is not explained nor explored. She's a rebel fighting against the Azadi who have occupied Marcuria.

In Arcadia, we also meet and play as a third character, the Apostle. Why? Uh, I don't know this either. His story is the smallest of the three, and makes the least sense. He's an Azadi warrior serving the empresses of Sadir and who is sent on a mission to Marcuria to bring down the rebels, which will bring him into contact and conflict with April. At some point, he inexplicably changes sides, at which time his story ends.

By now, whatever was interesting in the story has worn off and you just want to get it over with. None of the stories end very cleanly, or at all. There is no sense of resolution at the end. Frankly you fail to achieve much of anything toward your goals and ultimately fail. What kind of game is that? The only way I can make sense of the confusion and resolution is to think that this is the middle act of a bigger story, that there will be a third game which will sort everything out and make sense of what just seems unfocused confusion and bring the disparate story lines together. Having only played this game, I don't know that I would want to play that next, if there is one, but at least knowing that that was the plan might make this one a bit easier to take.

I've pretty much focused on the story, but that's because that's the heart of the game. As a game, the fighting, the few times that you actually do fight, is quite primitive. Like I said, it's more a puzzle game, and the puzzles are OK. Most are not particularly challenging, but there are couple good ones, and some that I have no idea how you would solve them without a walkthrough. There's one sequence playing as April where you have to set 4 widely spaced dials to the right values, but there's no rhyme or reason to the right settings, so I guess you just have to randomly set them until it works. There are actually a couple of sequences with April like that. If there was something to figure out that would tell you the right sequence, OK, but to find the one out of 24 possible sequences is just annoying and frustrating.

The graphics are great. The game looks really good. And it sounds really good, too. Both the soundtrack and the voice actors are very good. Those are really the only unqualified positives I can give.

So, in the end, Dreamfall is a story driven game where the story all but overwhelms the actual game and is confusing and disappointing. But it looks good.

Game Review: Fable

One of the reasons I wanted to get an XBox was for games like Fable. Having played it, the best way I can describe it is by quoting the a line from the opening of Bon Jovi's Social Disease: you mean that's it? Whatever the game may have going for it, it is short. No, I really mean short. I'm talking 10 hours short. In this day and age, that's a joke.

The game is a role playing game set in some dark-ages like setting. In this world, members of the guild of Heroes roam the land, either fighting evil doers or killing the innocent. The game starts with the player as a child whose home is destroyed by bandits. The child is taken into the guild and trained as a Hero. After training, the player guides the character through a series of quests. The main storyline is driven by learning more about who destroyed your home and getting either revenge or justice.

As is the fashion today in RPG's, the game features morality options. You can play as a good guy or a bad guy, making choices throughout the game play to affect your alignment. Strangely though, this morality has little impact on the game. The guild itself does not care if you are good or bad. They treat you exactly the same. Whether saintly or demonic, women will respond the same to your offers of chocolates and marriage. So, ultimately your alignment affects your character's appearance (horns and glowing red eyes if evil, radiance if good) and how people react to you (civilians will cower in fear if evil, applaud if good), but that's about it. Of the four RPGs I've played with the morality choices (Knights of the Old Republic I and II, Jade Empire, and Fable), morality has the least relevance in this one.

One of the reasons the game is so short is there really isn't much to do. You have your quests, some of which will advance the main storyline, others which won't. The developers tried to introduce more openness by allowing you to, for example, hit on women and try to get them to marry you. Once married, you can even have sex with them, and a tracker is provided to keep up with how many times you have. Apart from having sex with your wife, you can beat her (it's a little troubling to me that wife beating is translated into game entertainment, but that's another post) and she will divorce you, and yes there's a tracker to keep up with how many times you've been divorced. And, of course, you can kill all the innocent civilians you want, if you are playing evil. Oh, and you can buy houses and rent them out. Sure, these things will add to the length of the game, but seriously, how long does Lionhead think you are going to keep doing these things?

Playing the game the first time, it's interesting. It certainly looks good and the combat is interesting, varied, and challenging at times. But then all the sudden it's over, and all you can think of is Bon Jovi's song. Play again? Why?

Movie Review: X-Men: The Last Stand

With this, the third installment, the X-Men movie franchise supposedly comes to an close. (I'll believe that when I don't see a fourth one in a couple of years.) The first two films were strong efforts helmed by Bryan Singer, who departed to replace Brett Ratner on the new Superman movie. In an example of turn about being fair play, Ratner in turn replaced Singer on this installment of X-Men.

At the core of all three films is the tense relationship between ordinary humans and the mutant population, with its obvious parallels to the fate of minority groups throughout society. As the film begins, the two groups have learned to co-exist peacefully, with a federal department of mutant affairs and a mutant in the presidential cabinet. But now a drug is found to suppress mutancy, turning the mutants into normal human beings. The drug soon becomes referred to as a "cure." Initially the drug is offered to whoever wants it, but the military quickly weaponizes it.

The leader of the X-Men, Charles Xavier, counsels his usual caution. But his friend and rival Magneto is outraged at the idea of mutancy being a disease that has to be cured. Even some of the X-Men, especially Storm, are equally outraged, but continue to follow Xavier. But Magneto raises an army of mutants to fight what he sees as the final battle between humanity and mutants.

For some mutants, this cure is a welcome relief from the torment of being set apart, of having to endure powers they never wanted. This is epitomized by Rogue, whose mutant powers have left her unable to touch anyone, including her boyfriend. For others, the idea of a cure is offensive, because there is nothing to cure. The drug tears the mutant population apart.

The other main storyline of the film revolves around Jean Grey, who died in the previous film, but franchises like this don't let death get in the way of bringing a character back. Without explaining how, Grey rises from her watery tomb, into the arms of her lover, Cyclops. But Jean has changed. The limits on her powers have disappeared and she is now the Phoenix, the most powerful mutant around.

I had better not write much more so I don't give away any spoilers.

The strength of the first two films in the series was the character development. Like all the top-tier modern superhero film series, the filmmakers take the characters, though obvious fantasies, seriously and delve into what having those abilities and powers can do to a person. With a story about a cure, this episode attempts to join its predecessors. There's certainly the potential for a substantive film there. If you were set apart all your life by something, what would you give up in order to be accepted, to be treated as normal? Would you give up a part of who you are? Those mutants who accept the cure, are they traitors to their kind, as Magneto charges, or are they simply people tired of persecution and being set apart?

These questions are also foundational to the Grey storyline, but in a very different way.

In the end, this substantive story eventually gives way to the demands of a summer blockbuster, with story being replaced by numerous explosions, and explosions on top of explosions. Is that a bad thing? I like destruction in a movie (I am a male), and it is well done. What's more disappointing, though, is why these come about. For reasons I'm not entirely sure I understand, the X-Men, after initially standing on the sidelines as the humans and Magneto go at it, decide to join the humans in fighting Magneto, and the last stand of the title becomes the last stand of the "good" mutants against the "bad" ones.

In the end, the story really isn't that bad. And Ratner does an acceptable job filling in for Singer. The weakest part of the film is the casting and some of the dialog. In order to get Halle Barry back for the film, they had to expand her role considerably, and she just isn't all that good. She is a lightweight actress, her Oscar for best bare butt in a lead role notwithstanding, and she's out of her element as an action heroine leading a battle. The guy who played Juggernaut is a muscle bound joke.

There's also just too many characters, so many that mainstays like Mystique get little screen time.

Two female mutants are referred to as b**ches. Those lines were totally unnecessary, and stood out like sore thumbs. I guess we can thank Dave Chappelle for that. I'm not all that prudish, but both times it just felt like the writers were trying to deliberately shocking (we'll show you how bad these guys are by calling girls b**ches) and ended up being quite awkward.

Anyway, in the end this is a pretty good movie, nowhere near as bad as I had been lead to believe by the reviews. It would be hard to see how they could continue the franchise after this film. They burned a lot of bridges, but you'll have to see the movie to get the details. But since this one is bound to make a pile of money, I'm sure they will try.

Media Player Review: Coby MP-C651

I bought this MP3 player a couple of weeks ago. It was at a good price and has 512 MB storage. It's a good device for playing MP3 files. I have had few problems in that area. Navigation through the contents of the player is easy.

What has really ticked me off is playing WMA files. I've bought several songs from MSN music stores. The device is billed as playing these files, but it's quite the exaggeration. I don't know that any WMA file I have bought plays cleanly. Few actually even play. One that does causes the player to hang at the end, forcing me to remove the battery to shut the thing off and then keep pushing the controls to try to get to the next file when I start up, otherwise it will just hang again.

I emailed their customer service to find out what's wrong. All they would tell me is that the file must be protected and can't be played. That one file actually does play apparently does not contradict this statement that the file can't be played. That the files play perfectly on other MP3/WMA devices also apparently fails to contradict this claim that the files cannot be played. (The files can't be played. The fact that you can play them does not contradict the fact that they can't be played!) I have repeatedly pointed this out to Coby, but have been totally ignored. I've even tried to help diagnose the problem by pointing out that the bit rate indicated on the LCD is quite a bit lower than the rate actually in the file.

So my conclusion: If you are in the market for a pure MP3 player, this isn't bad. But take their claim that it plays WMAs as the joke that it is.

Movie Review: Good Night, and Good Luck

I finally saw the movie Good Night, and Good Luck last night. The multiply Oscar nominated film (6 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director) tells the story of newsman Edward R. Murrow's coverage of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950's and how the news media helped bring the fool down.

For such a well reviewed film, I wish I could say I was surprised at how overrated it is, but I can't. Films like this are going to be received well, regardless of merit. (I will focus purely on the movie, not the political context of the film, which is the motivation for much of the praise.) The best summary of why it's overrated is simple. The film features a cast with several known actors, Jeff Daniels, Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, David Straithairn, and George Clooney among them. Having watched the film, I can't tell you any of their character's names, save Straithairn who gets the lead role of Murrow. I can't even tell you what their characters did in relation to the story. They all work for CBS. Clooney is, I guess, a producer who hides in the shadows of the set to tap Murrow on the leg to give him cues. The rest? I really couldn't tell you.

As to the story itself, it's told in a by the book manner, perhaps consistent with Murrow's approach to journalism. But there's no real drama in it. As Steve Rhodes writes in his review, "In probably the year's most wildly overrated movie, director George Clooney takes an extremely exciting piece of history and sucks all of the life out of it. The movie is about as flat as the Pillsbury Doughboy after being run over by an 18-wheeler." McCarthy was a fool (and it fills my heart so much whenever I think he was a Senator from Wisconsin) so all CBS had to do was show footage of the guy putting his foot in his mouth and point out a few facts. I understand that was risky back then, and I'm not trying to minimize that. But as an antagonist, McCarthy is pretty lightweight.

The film, in telling this story, relies on a lot of archival footage. Too much archival footage. There's one section that was just one very lengthy excerpt from the hearings with some Senator standing up to McCarthy for a change, when McCarthy wasn't there. The excerpt must have lasted at least 5 minutes, and was not germane to the story, which is about CBS' coverage, not Senators standing up to McCarthy. It's just a long break in the story. (An amusing note about the archival footage: "Test audiences felt that the actor who portrayed Joseph McCarthy was overacting; they were unaware that only archive footage of the actual Joseph McCarthy was used in the film.")

Speaking of breaks in the story, the film features several segments of a lady singing jazz songs at CBS studios. Whole songs. Who she is and why she's singing is never stated. It's good music and she's a fine singer. But again, it's just padding. I have read that the band and the songs were those of Rosemary Clooney, aunt to the director. That may explain why George Clooney included the material, but it's still another break in the story, which isn't sufficiently interesting to begin with that it can handle the pauses.

On the positive side, the movie is beautiful. As one who once tried to be a good photographer, I have a soft spot for black and white. This movie was actually shot on color film, then changed to black and white in editing. Regardless, it looks fantastic. As a director, Clooney and his photography team definitely have a feel for the camera and compose great images.

But beautiful images do not make up for lack of a strong story.

Game Review: Jade Empire (Limited Edition)

Yes, I am a bit behind the times in gaming. I don't usually get to a game until long after it's been released. Why spend $50 for one brand-new game when you can wait a while and get 3 games for the same $50? Anyway...

My first experience with the RPG genre was Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic. It was, and remains, my favorite game. What I didn't realize at the time was just how good that game was. I keep playing other RPGs, expecting to find what I liked about KoToR, and finding they don't have those elements, the biggest being story telling. Rather than work on the sequel to KoToR, Bioware chose to follow up with a brand new game, Jade Empire. Surely Bioware could provide a game every bit as good as KoToR.

Did they? Not really. The game is very good, but still falls short of KoToR.

The game is set in a world that looks and feels very much like ancient China. The characters all have Chinese-like names and there is a strong focus on martial arts. The empire has stood for centuries with the emperors all but worshipped. Decades ago, the empire was afflicted by a severe drought, but the emperor was eventually able to solve the problem, though no one knows exactly how. In the process of solving the drought, the Emperor found a new right-hand man, Death's Hand, who leads the Lotus Assassins, who are essentially the secret police of the empire. The game begins with the player as a student in a provincial martial arts academy. The Lotus Assassins attack the school, kidnapping the instructor. And the adventure begins.

As with KoToR, the player moves through the empire, tracking his master, and picking up followers along the way. The followers will aid in the quest and in combat. But not everyone or everything is as they appear to be.

What worked? The biggest improvement in Jade Empire is the combat system. KoToR had a glorified turn-based combat scheme in which the player chose one move at a time, queuing up to three moves to be executed in succession. The scheme had a bit more of a real-time combat system than true turn-based combat, as in Gladius. But it was still awkward and lacked the excitement of a more combat-oriented game. Empire improves on this approach resulting in a feel that is much closer to adventure games like the Lord of the Rings games than previous attempts. And there's plenty of fighting to be done.

There are also plenty of styles and techniques to choose from, from martial arts and swords to "demon" styles in which you transform into something else. So, there are plenty of ways to approach the myriad fights in the game. And one style won't work against every enemy. In KoToR, a light saber with master flurry or force storm destroyed just about everything in the path. You have to be more versatile in this game.

I played the game on my new XBox (first game I have played on the platform), whereas I played KoToR on a PC, so it's hard to compare graphics and performance. But the game looked and sounded fantastic. Having said that, there are some amusing exceptions to this. Occasionally, the player will be given interludes in which he has to engage in aerial combat, equivalent to those interludes in KoToR where you man the guns on the Ebon Hawk. These segments felt very retro, reminding me of the very old days of Defender on the Atari 2600. 2-D graphics with a little flyer icon moving back and forth across the bottom of the screen shooting enemies that come down from the top. (Defender meets Space Invaders.) And then there's a sequence late in the game where you have to defend a bridge while a follower sets some explosives. The character moves across the screen but the camera doesn't, so you end up fighting at the very edge of the screen against enemies you can't really see because they are off screen.

What didn't work? I have one complaint about the combat system, an element they seem to have incorporated from Enter the Matrix. In battle, the player's character moves as if to circle the enemy rather than simply moving in the direction the player directs. This makes it quite awkward to try to move the character around, for example to pick up a power up, or to simply get away from an enemy for a moment.

Like KoToR, the game has a morality element in which the player can choose to be a good guy (Way of the Open Palm, the equivalent of playing the light side in KoToR) or an evil guy (Way of the Closed First, equivalent of playing the dark side in KoToR). Unlike KoToR, there seemed to be little value in this. In KoToR, one's appearance changed according to alignment and one got a bonus to certain character attributes if mastery was achieved. Sith Lords expanded on this to have alignment affect interactions with the followers. In Empire, it didn't really seem to make much of a difference. There was a bonus earned late in the game (a new essence gem), but that's about it.

Speaking of followers, they add little if anything to the game. One of the things I loved about KoToR was interacting with the supporting characters and uncovering their stories. In Empire, they don't have stories. Or, if they do, the game reveals the stories as part of the plot; there is little purpose in talking to the other characters. The only real outcome was that one character fell in love with the main character and they kissed.

More generally, there isn't much of a story. Certainly, things didn't go the way I expected them to, with a surprising twist about two thirds of the way through. But overall, there really isn't much to the plot.

The game is billed as an RPG, but it's really RPG-lite. Most RPGs are built around giving the ability to customize and alter just about everything, from abilities and attributes, to clothing, appearance, etc. Empire gives you a choice among a handful of pre-built characters to begin the game, with no customization. While you can alter their attributes as the game progresses, as with any RPG, you are stuck with the face and clothing the character had to begin with. The game feels more like an action-adventure game with more choices about combat style than a true RPG. That's not necessarily bad. I happen to like action-adventure games. But it something to realize before choosing to play the game.

That's a lot of negatives, I guess, but it really is a good game. It's not much of an RPG, but it is an enjoyable action game with lots of combat and ways to approach the game. That should be more than enough to occupy most gamers' attention for a long time.

Movie Review: Cinderella Man

Cinderella Man is the second collaboration between director Ron Howard and actor Russell Crowe, the first being the superb A Beautiful Mind. It tells the true story of boxer James Braddock. In the waning years of the Roaring 20's, Braddock is a confident young fighter rapidly ascending the ladder for a shot at the title. His winnings earn him and his family a comfortable life. Braddock rises high enough to earn a title bout, which he loses.

After the loss, his career falls apart, primarily due to injuries. A few years into the Great Depression, Braddock is an embarrassment in the ring and can barely hold on against vastly inferior opposition. His boxing license is revoked and his career appears over. Braddock joins the lines at the docks in a desperate attempt to get some small day's wage to pay the overdue heat and electricity bill and to provide food for his family. When faced with the prospect of having to ship his kids away to live with relatives, Braddock humbles himself by going on public assistance and passing the hat among the boxing bigwigs.

In a fluke reminiscent of the first Rocky, Braddock's second shot comes when the challenger in a highly touted fight drops out and an opponent must be found on short notice. Expected to be little more than a punching bag, Braddock surprises everyone, including himself, by winning in a knockout. There follows a series of fights against more and more highly ranked opponents, in all of which he is the underdog, and all of which he wins.

These victories earn him a totally unexpected second shot at the title, against the fearsome Max Baer. Baer is so brutal that he has killed two men in the ring, and taunts Braddock's wife that he will make her a widow. The final section of the film is, of course, the big battle between the two, which Braddock ultimately wins in a unanimous decision, thereby completing the riches-to-rags-to-riches storyline.

If I was a movie producer, there are three actors I would sell body parts to work with: Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, and Russell Crowe. Crowe does not disappoint here. The character of Braddock could have easily been shallow and simple: a good man with a good punch. As with so many performances, Crowe digs deeper and finds the dignity of the man and creates a rich portrait. As always with Crowe, greatness is in the nuances he brings to the performance: how he walks, how he carries himself, facial expressions, the look in his eye.

Amusing side note that only I may find amusing. In A Beautiful Mind, Crowe gave an absolutely brilliant performance, a workshop on acting. That he got robbed of the Oscar is ridiculous. (I'm not knocking Washington. The reverse holds true for the previous year, when Denzel's Hurricane performance got robbed by Crowe's Gladiator.) There is one flaw, though. There are scenes in the film where Nash takes off his shirt and walks around in a tight, sleeveless undershirt revealing his physique. His is a body more in line with that of a gladiator than a mentally ill academic who spends most of his waking hours in his office or library. In this movie, playing a heavyweight boxer, he sports a pretty scrawny physique. I've read that he got down to a mere 176 pounds for the role, not exactly powerful looking. (Compare that to the 220 or so that Will Smith was at for Ali.) Maybe it's accurate, it just doesn't look right. So, in A Beautiful Mind, he had the body of a boxer, and in Cinderella Man, he has the body of an academic.

Anyway, the rest of the cast gives top notch performances as well, particularly Paul Giamatti who continues to prove he is the most overlooked actor in the business. Renée Zellwegger's role really isn't all that well written. She has a good scene or two, but is otherwise the typical wife who stands by her man and loves him. Technically the film is excellent. Great photography, great sets and costumes. The film doesn't flow smoothly. It drags in places and probably could do with another round of editing.

There is one area where Howard and his team do a very good job with the editing. Braddock's comeback is driven primarily by a need to make money to support his family. But, unlike so many lesser directors, Howard does not beat us over the head with that. In one fight, at a pivotal moment, Howard brings up images of Braddock's kids and past due notices to remind the viewer that's what he's all about. With that, he makes his point and moves on. Lesser directors would have had Braddock rallying in every fight; just when it looked like he was going to fall, he thought of his kids and unleashed a barrage that brought victory. Howard shows his maturity as a director by avoiding that trap.

Another side note, this time about the writing. Max Baer comes off in the film as a brutal, arrogant fighter. He taunts Braddock in and out of the ring through his wife. He is comfortable with having killed two men in the ring, and threatens to make the Braddock the third. (This makes his behavior after the fight, when he graciously congratulates Braddock on the win and just leaves the ring, incongruous.) The real Max Baer was quite a different man. He only killed one man in the ring, and was haunted by it for the rest of his life. He gave money to the wife of the man he killed, Frankie Campbell, and helped put his kids through college. Though a Catholic, he became a hero to American Jews by wearing a star of David on his trunks when he fought the German Max Schmeling, who was misleadingly portrayed as a Nazi hero. I don't watch films based on true stories expecting a history lesson, so I don't have a problem with the writers reinventing Max for the film. It certainly makes for better drama, and Craig Bierko did a fine job portraying him. It's just something that viewer should keep in mind.

If the film is so good, and it really is, why did it flop so badly? First off, who came up with the brilliant strategy of releasing a character-driven, adult drama up at the beginning of the summer movie season where it will complete with myriad mindless action flicks, not to mention Star Wars? Can I get that job? Get paid millions to make stupid decisions like that?

It also hurts that in recent years, we have seen several boxing related films. Hurricane, Ali, Million Dollar Baby stand out. Boxing lends itself well to movies, both because of the action and because it allows filmmakers to tell the type of story they love to tell, that of the underdog who finds it in himself to rise above his or her circumstances and make something of themselves. But that story can only be told a certain number of times. As well acted and produced as the film is, Cinderella Man comes off as Rocky (underdog rises above all expectations, finding something deeper in himself) meets Million Dollar Baby (boxing to feed oneself, underdog rises above all expectations, finding something deeper in herself), with photographic nod to Raging Bull (fight scenes), and never really rises above them. It is a better acted and directed version of Rocky, a less emotionally manipulative version of Million Dollar Baby.

Will the film get a boatload of nominations? Sure, and it should. Crowe, Giamatti, maybe even Bierko for acting, Howard for directing, plus cinematography and best picture.

Game Review: Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords

I have recently completed my first run through the PC version of the Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords (KOTOR2) video game. I was and still am a huge fan of the first game, which is one of the best I have ever played, so I awaited the sequel with great anticipation. When I bought the game, I read some reviews and was surprised to find just about every one gave a laundry list of complaints and then 4 out of 5 stars. My review: a lot of complaints, 4 out of 5 stars.

As with any sequel, the game will inevitably be compared with its illustrious predecessor. That explains everyone's complaints. The game is vastly inferior to the first. But compared to other RPG style games, it is still good. The high marks for KOTOR2 are really an indication of just how good KOTOR1 was.

Before getting to the complaints, let's be positive and address the improvements. The gameplay and controls are as in the first game. The combat interface is improved. The player can equip each character with two sets of weapons, and switch between with a single mouse click. This is nice early in the game when you may switch between blasters and swords, but once your character acquires a lightsaber, you won't be switching much if at all. Speaking of lightsabers, there are more components to the saber than can be upgraded--lenses, emitters, and power cells--along with the usual crystals. That makes it more interesting. And the user can assemble basic components at workbenches.

The most important change in gameplay is that the player's interaction with other characters can influence those characters, and many of them can become Jedi if you handle them right. This influence game can be tricky, but it does make the user think a little more about more nuanced dialog choices. But if you mess something up with a character, that character may never speak to you again in the game.

My biggest complaint about KOTOR1 is that the game had a cap for character development at level 20. And that was the combination of the level achieved on Taris, i.e. before becoming a Jedi, with the levels achieved as a Jedi. Given that one could spend a lot of time and gain a lot of experience on Taris, this cap restricted just how much one could do as a Jedi. In fact, the user was effectively encouraged to rush through Taris as fast as possible, gaining as little experience as possible, so save the level ups for after becoming a Jedi. KOTOR2 removes this cap. First of all, the main character is a Jedi to begin with. And the character can level up as much as possible. So this is a major improvement.

Now the complaints. Where to start? What I loved most about KOTOR1 was the story. The main story was interesting in itself, but each of the supporting characters also had their own personal stories and the more time one spent with them, the more one learned. In this game, the story is virtually non-existent, and in the end I really don't understand it. Rather than chasing down star maps, the main mission for the game is to track down some hidden Jedi masters. Why? I'm not really sure. Something about getting them back together to smoke out the enemy. But they are in hiding to begin with because getting together smokes out the enemy, and that's a bad thing. And when you finally get them together, all they want to do is strip you of your Jedi powers, because you are a wound in the Force who could spell the end of the Force. I gather in the dark side game, you actually fight the masters you have assembled.

And the characters have basically no story. You might learn a little bit about a character in order to turn them into Jedi, but that's about all.

Some planets in the game seem totally unfinished. Nar Shadaa is especially bad here. Quests pop up in the journal that make no sense. In a pazaak den, I meet a droid who plays very bad pazaak. OK. Now I have a quest. What does the quest say? I met a droid who plays very bad pazaak. It makes no sense. Then there are quests you can't finish. I meet a woman who is looking for a pilot and a pilot who is looking for a job. I have two quests, to provide what each needs. Obvious answer: hook the two up. Can't do it. (I've only played once, so there may be a solution to that one, but I couldn't find it.) On Malachor V near the end of the game, I looked at the map which identified locations like a meditation chamber in non-existent places. It's like they had the idea to put a meditation chamber there, but didn't and never removed the indicator from the map.

Another way some levels seem unfinished is that scenes appear in the game that make no sense. For example, on Malachor V, the game brings up a confrontation between Mira and Hanharr. Why? Does Mira somehow factor into what will happen next in the level? No. Mira wins the battle and then is never seen again. So why move away from the main character for this battle when it serves no purpose? Again, I bet there was idea earlier in the game development that something would emerge from that scene. Maybe Mira would be captured and I would have to free her. But then that plot line got dropped but the battle remained.

I have read that LucasArts gave Obsidian only 12 months to develop the game, which would explain the sense of incompleteness.

The game is buggy, even with the latest patch. I played on a PC, and admittedly mine is not a top of the line gaming machine. In fact, it is at the low end of requirements. So I expect issues, but still, some of the bugs were ridiculous. On multiple occasions, I had to restart from an earlier saved game because something got stuck. For example, on Onderon there is a big battle in the throne room of the palace. Somehow I got the game into a state where the battle was not finished, but I could not fight anyone so there was no way to get it finished. Elsewhere, I had to fight Darth Nihilious three times to see how the fight ended. His death should trigger a cut scene, but the game kept hanging at that point with a black screen and the sound of lightsabers doing battle. Finally, I hit the quick save button, and got the game back with Nihilious considered dead, but still standing there.

Back to game play, it takes forever to get a lightsaber. As I said, the character is a Jedi from the very beginning of the game, so you always have force powers. But it took me something like 15 hours of gameplay through multiple planets before I got the lightsaber.

So, with all those complaints, why would I give the game a high score. Compared to other RPGs I have played, it is still an excellent game. It is addictive and grabs one's imagination much more than other top RPGs like Champions of Norrath. For that reason, I will give the game a high score. I just wish Obsidian had had more time to put together a better, more complete game. You can't rush some things.

Movie Review: Spider-Man 2

I saw Spider-Man 2 over the holiday weekend. What a great film! What makes the Spider-Man series so much better than the others? It has all the action you would expect in any superhero movie, but it adds real characters, story, and casts actors who know something about acting. The father of the modern superhero movie is Tim Burton's original Batman, which had many of these elements as well, before the franchise got ground into dust by Joel Shumacher. The Spider-Man series is a worthy successor. The only caution on that is to remember that the Batman series was great too, for two films.

Anyway, the opening credits give a comic book review of the first film. Then we jump into the film. Peter Parker is trying to live two lives, one as a college student studying the wonders of physics and trying to support himself as a pizza delivery boy, the other as Spider-Man. Unfortunately, these lives do not mesh well. Spider-Man is always getting in the way, making him late for class and work, keeping him from doing his homework, keeping him from his true love MJ. So our hero decides to ditch the high-life and focus on himself.

What makes the Spider-Man movies great is that on top of the requisite special effects and action sequences, there is an actual story with actual characters played by actors who do actual acting. In how many superhero movies can you actually watch a scene and be impressed by the acting? This film has a wonderful scene between Peter and his aunt where Peter finally tells the real story of what happened to Uncle Ben, admitting his responsibility in the sequence of events. It is in scenes like this that choosing a real actor like Tobey Maguire pays off.

Beyond the acting is director Sam Raimi's quirky style, best shown in the sequence following Parker's decision to throw away the Spider-Man costume, all set to "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head." There's also the comedy, like Spider-Man's evaluation of his costume (kind of itchy and tight in the crotch) or an anxious citizen asking Spider-Man if he has any more bright ideas (I won't give away the context).

This is what superhero movies should be. Not too overwrought like Hulk, not too mindless like the latter Batmans. It shows what intelligent scripting, acting, and directing combined with state-of-the-art special effects and action choreography can do. Now the question is, can they keep this high standard going for a third film due in 2007. As I said at the beginning, the Batman series started strong too (but not as strong as Spider-Man) before tailing off into the creeping disease of franchise-itis.