Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

At IMDB.com!

Li Mu Bai, a great warrior decides to turn in his sword, the Green Destiny to a treasured friend. When the sword is then stolen, it is up to him to retrieve it. At the same time he is trying to avenge his master's death by the evil Jade Fox. He is joined in his quest by Shu Lien, the un-conceded love of his life. During all of this, they are introduced to Jiao Long Yu (Jen), the mysterious and beautiful daughter of a well known family. She is the mysterious link to all these tales. But through all the many subplots, this is in essence, a love story.

Well, that's one way to put it.
Another way to put it is: BUY THIS DVD. NOW.

CT,HD is one of the all-time greatest romantic movies ever made - if you watch it in Mandarin with subtitles. The English audio track on the DVD is horribly done, and reduces a magnificent movie to the level of Saturday Action Cinema. However, the entire cast did a wonderful job on the Mandarin track; it's definitely the way to go.

The story revolves around a swordsman, Li Mu Bai, who wants to retire from what he sees as senseless violence. He has a special sword, called the "Green Destiny," which is nearly indestructible; rather than see it fall into the hands of someone unable to appreciate it, he wishes to give it to his patron.

The complications begin when Jen, played with skill and sensitivity by Zhang Ziyi, steals the sword from Mu Bai's patron. Mu Bai pursues her, and discovers that she has been taught the martial techniques he uses, but by someone who does not fully understand them. He determines to take Jen as his student, despite her objections, and follows her when she flees.

There are two separate, but intertwined, love stories - Li Mu Bai and his unacknowledged love, Shu Lien, and Jen and Black Cloud, a bandit chieftain. Jen is fleeing an arranged marriage to a minor noble who will certainly require her to become a traditional Qing dynasty wife, and falls in love with Black Cloud, who offers her greater freedom than she had thought possible.

Both stories are carried out around the chase for the sword, and both are played with vast sensitivity and skill by the cast; Yuen Wo Ping's fighting choreography only serves to contrast the essential serenity of Mu Bai and Shu Lien's relationship, and to highlight the essential wildness of Jen's relationship with Black Cloud.

The movie is filled with incredible visuals. Often the fight scenes defy physics and gravity, but this isn't a realistic movie anyway; it's a lyrical fairy tale in the old sense, a movie so caught up in wonder, and its own sense of magic, that it doesn't stop to ask if it can do something. It just does.

Buy this; anyone with any imagination will enjoy it immensely. This is the movie that all the other adaptations of Giang Hu novels have been shooting for, and missed. This is the bar; it challenges other filmmakers to reach its standard merely by existing.

I bow, in the most profound admiration, to Ang Lee.

House of Flying Daggers

At IMDB.com!

During the reign of the Tang dynasty in China, a secret organization called "The House of the Flying Daggers" rises and opposes the government. A police officer called Leo sends officer Jin to investigate a young dancer named Mei, claiming that she has ties to the "Flying Daggers". Leo arrests Mei, only to have Jin breaking her free in a plot to gain her trust and lead the police to the new leader of the secret organization. But things are far more complicated than they seem...

A big part of the ad copy for HoFD was the fact that it starred several of the same actors as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and was largely made by the same team.

Sadly, although he definitely has his strengths, Zhang Yimou is no Ang Lee. HoFD is not as good as CT,HD. Let's make no mistake there. Although it occasionally even surpasses CT,HD in its visuals, the story isn't as strong, and Zhang Yimou doesn't build the sympathy with his characters that Ang Lee managed so wonderfully in CT,HD. Don't get me wrong, here, this is an enjoyable movie - I bought it - but it's just not as good as CT,HD.

That said, though, it is a very impressive film. The set design and costumes are amazing, and Zhang Yimou's use of color to delineate events is a technique raised here to an art form. The cinematography is incredible, and the visual effects are so striking I found myself re-running scenes just to see how they were put together.
What weakens this film is first the story, which while certainly interesting, does not possess the depth or complexity of CT,HD; and secondly, the fights.

Yes, I said the fights weaken the film.

See, the fights are beautifully choreographed, and eye-poppingly well filmed; it's just that they're too over-the-top. So many moments occur that defy reality so extremely that your brain, watching, simply cannot dismiss is as fantasy.

When you see one thrown dagger sever 25 or so stalks of bamboo, you think, simultaneously, "Cool!" and "Bullshit!" The problem is that you're never supposed to get to the second one, and you do so several times during HoFD.

In CT,HD, Ang Lee managed to take amazing, gravity-defying fight scenes, and play them as a kind of lyrical fantasy, turning Chow Yun Fat's character into a mythic hero, rather than a stuntsman. Sadly, Zhang Yimou cannot quite make the same leap, and although his fight scenes are visually beautiful to behold, they never make the leap from "fantastic but fake" to "wow."

Zhang Ziyi, who plays the female lead in this movie and the role of Jen, the sword thief, in CT,HD, does her usual stellar job; she is not only beautiful, and stunt-capable, but she is in fact a fine actress, and deserves her rapidly growing reputation. I only wish that she could get a role in which they'd let her beauty shine; makeup artists seem determined to minimize its impact as much as possible, for what seems to me no reason whatsoever.

This is a visually amazing movie, with a good story and (astonishingly enough) a competently acted English audio track on the DVD. It's certainly worth every penny for the DVD, which is in the superior anamorphic widescreen format and comes packed with extras, including over an hour of "making-of" documentaries, audio commentaries by the director and cast, storyboards, and loads of other goodies. Just don't go into it thinking that this is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2 - it's not. What it is, is a good, action-filled, visually striking film.

The Bourne Identity

At IMDB.com!

On a stormy night, a young man is pulled out of the Mediterranean Sea by the crew of a fishing boat. Thinking the young man is dead, a curious fisherman with a scalpel finds two bullets in his back and a miniature laser device in his hip. The laser reveals a Swiss bank account number. But our wet hero isn't dead, and soon finds himself in Zurich. In the bank vault the young man discovers his name, Jason Bourne. In addition, he finds a baffling pile of different passports, all with his picture, and a huge pile of cash. In the U.S. Embassy, Jason Bourne discovers his love interest and travel partner, Marie, along with the fact that someone wants to kill him. Armed with a bag of money and mysterious martial arts skills, with Marie by his side, Bourne scours Paris for clues about his identity and past life... and finds himself in the middle of two assassination plots masterminded by the CIA.

Yeah. Allow me to discuss the concept of "sticking to the book."

I hate it when Hollywood attempts to "improve" a story. It never, ever works. TBI is a perfect example. To understand why, let me talk for a minute about the novel.
In the novel, Bourne has amnesia because he has been shot in the head. In the movie, he's been shot in the back of his shoulder - traumatic, granted, but not likely to induce memory loss.
In the book, Bourne is a fake assassin - his organization has him undercover posing as an assassin in an attempt to draw out a real assassin. When he loses his memory, his own agency tries to kill him, because they think he's lost his mind and bought into his own cover story. In the movie? No cover, he is an assassin, and his agency goes after him for no clearly defined reason. They've "lost contact," so he must be a bad guy. Very sensible.
In the novel, the woman who becomes his accomplice is a Canadian economist - I know, oxymoron, but still - who he takes hostage to escape from some police in Zurich. In the movie, she's an ex-patriate American "gypsy" living from friend to friend in Europe. Not plot-crucial, I suppose, but why change it? There wasn't really a reason to.
The problem is not that TBI is a bad movie - on the contrary, it's pretty good - but rather that it has almost no relationship whatsoever to the book. You should buy it for action, certainly; just don't do so thinking that you're getting a film version of the book. I've barely scratched the surface of the differences, which are profound.
The worst element of this is that they made a sequel - The Bourne Supremacy. Why is this bad? Well, in the novel TBI, Bourne was recruited after some bad things happened to him in Vietnam. While his time in Southeast Asia is barely touched on in the first book, the ENTIRE SECOND NOVEL is set in Southeast Asia, and the whole plot depends on the events of the first book, and the events which took place in Asia prior to the events chronicled in TBI. Having left all these plot elements conveniently out of the first movie, how in the hell can you make a movie of the second novel at all?
TBI is a good movie. Just disregard the title entirely, and consider it a separate, discrete entity. If you want a film version of TBI that's in accord with the novel, try the 1988 TV miniseries, starring Richard Chamberlain, instead. It's vastly superior.

An Addendum

...to my review of The Phantom Of The Opera.

DO NOT BUY THIS DVD.
UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Here's why:

1. The Fullscreen DVD is Pan & Scan, in a most terrible way. More on this later.


2. There are no special features. None. Not one.


3. No, really, NO SPECIAL FEATURES WHATSOEVER.

Now, maybe this has been the experience of some of you, but not mine: I've never even SEEN a DVD without a "Special Features" option on the menu. I've seen some pretty threadbare ones - "Multiple theatrical trailers!" Ooooooo. But never one that didn't even have the option.

I bought the much less popular movie House of Flying Daggers on DVD at the same time as I bought Phantom. HoFD has over an hour of documentaries on the DVD about the process of making the movie, including a 20-minute featurette on the visual effects; storyboards of the movie, production stills, bios of the cast and crew, and audio commentaries by the director and stars. HoFD cost me $2 less than Phantom did, was in anamorphic widescreen, and was vastly superior in terms of what I got for my money.

Now, a little DVD technical note: anamorphic widescreen is the best kind, because it adapts to your television's resolution, allowing it to display properly no matter how new or old your TV is. Even a standard widescreen DVD will suffer from image degradation on a newer, widescreen TV, because the image is stretched to fit the screen, first horizontally, then vertically. An anamorphic widescreen DVD is pre-stretched vertically, which means that when your TV displays the movie, there are no black lines and image degradation.

Pan & Scan, as I mentioned earlier, is related to this. See, theatrical movies are filmed in a different format than televisions: 2.35" to 1", as opposed to televisions' 4" to 3" format. In order to display a theatrical movie on a standard television, you have two options: letterboxing, or Pan & Scan. In letterboxing, the picture is smaller, because the movie is resized so that the horizontal width is the same as the television's, and then black bars are added to the top and bottom of the screen. In Pan & Scan, the DVD company simply chops off the sides of the screen, resulting in an image that fits the standard TV, and focuses only on what the studio considers the "main" action in a scene.

What this means for Phantom is that when the Phantom is onscreen, the screen centers on him - and you can't even see what's going on to the sides. In a musical, in which there are several amazingly choreographed, costumed, and set-designed song-and-dance numbers, ("Masquerade" just LEAPS to mind,) something like 60% of the scene is simply gone.

IF you simply must buy the Phantom DVD, buy the widescreen edition. That way all you have to suffer with is the total lack of special features. For myself, I'm waiting for the "Collector's Edition" or whatever, which will no doubt be along in a few months. But frankly, let me say this flat out: the fullscreen edition is the worst DVD I have ever purchased. Total waste of cash.

Not One, But Two, Things To Rant About.

First, let me say that I think eminent domain is a load of horse puckey. For those of you who don't know, eminent domain is the law that allows the federal government to seize your house, business, or other property, so they can knock it down and put "public works" projects in its place.

However, the U. S. Supreme Court, in a moment of total insanity, has decreed that the government certainly knows how to use land better than the land's legitimate owners do, and as such, local governments - city level, to be specific, can seize your property for any use they feel benefits the community.

What this means to you and me is that there's no longer any reason to buy a house. If the government can come along and swipe however many years of your hard labor that have gone into paying your mortgage as they want to, with no reason in mind other than that they feel like it, what's the point?

Now the case in specific was very simple. The city government of New London, Connecticut, wanted to seize the homes of many residents, for the purpose of putting in an "office park." Why? What clear public good does seizing the homes of your citizens serve? Ooo! Ooo! I know! Higher tax revenues.

What, was I right?

Why yes, yes I was. Higher tax revenues for the city government are the "clear public good" that is served by seizing the citizens' homes. Now, to me, this seems like a big case of "your own damn fault," and here's why. When the city government started making noises about doing this, the citizens could just as easily have unelected the jackass city councilmen who dreamed it up, and elected new ones. But, see, instead, they took it to the Supreme Court - and now they've screwed it up for the rest of us.

Here's why: the U. S. Supreme Court is the final authority on matters of this nature. There IS no appeals court, no way to tie it up or hold it back. What this means is that if the City of Houston, which is well known for its ridiculous willingness to steal from the public pocket using property taxes, decides that you, as a homeowner, aren't paying them enough, they can just bulldoze your house and put in an apartment complex. Or an "office park." Or any other damn thing they please that brings them more money, because as the Supreme Court says,

Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said.

"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including — but by no means limited to — new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

So, without further ado, let me make this perfectly clear: The government's right to steal from you is more important than your right to own your own home. In fact, the government's "right" to assess and levy taxes is the most important thing it does, clearly, as its ability to gain higher tax revenues is more important than the property rights of its citizens.

New London, Connecticut: WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP THIS INSANITY!?! CAN'T YOU DUMB BASTARDS VOTE!?!

On a different note, some of you may remember a few weeks ago, the MPAA made a huge production of announcing that they'd busted a major pirate and captured $30 MILLION in pirated DVDs and DVD-producing equipment. Well, now they're being sued for slander - apparently their representation of events to the media weren't ENTIRELY accurate.

Basically, see, movie companies don't produce all their DVDs themselves. What they do is outsource their production lines to other companies, like New Century Media Corporation, which then actually manufacture the DVDs you buy at Blockbuster. So, what the MPAA is crowing so delightedly about basically consists of sending their illegal, not-a-duly-constituted-authority-pseudocops to one of their own contractors, shutting them down for less than a day, seizing the products of one legal copyright holder under contract to New Century, and then bragging about a hugely inflated "piracy bust."

In fact, what they did was seize $10,540 worth of Genius Products, Inc.'s DVDs, for no reason that they were willing to give and 24 DVD stampers worth about $3600 apiece - and then reported the value of the bust based, they claimed, on the value of all the DVDs those stampers could be used to produce in the future.

Let me stress one BIG thing here - the organization that did the seizure, the Southern California High Tech Task Force, has no legal standing whatsoever. It is not a duly constituted legal authority, although it "cooperates" with local law enforcement - which means they phone in a lot of tips.

The MPAA was so desperately in need of a high-profile "victory" over the evil pirates that they raided one of their own contractors? WTF is going on here? I would not only sue, I would be screaming for criminal charges against all and sundry, and trying to force an investigation into the relationship of the MPAA with "local law enforcement." Internal Affairs needs to be involved in this.

Carson and Jennifer Yu, (proprietors of New Century Media,) my hat is off to you. I hope you win your case, and own their asses in court. It's about time someone put the MPAA on a choke chain. Its escalatingly hostile behavior towards its customers, and now its employees and contractors, has been across the line for far too long with no end in sight - thank you for being willing to fight them on this.

Lots of Random Weird Crap

Completely Useless Political Gestures!

Wear RED on Fridays . SUPPORT OUR TROOPS! WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE, BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE. FOR US, THEIR BLOOD RUNS RED!! GOD BLESS AMERICA.

That's right. Our troops overseas will feel better, knowing your fat, lazy suburban ass is wearing a red T-shirt.
I have a better idea. Why not send them something to read?

Or for that matter, practically any other legitimate demonstration of support?
There are plenty, each good in its own way. Or, instead, you could adopt a useless custom that, while not actually accomplishing anything, allows you to claim that you support our troops without actually making any effort whatsoever. Way To Go, Lazy Pseudo-patriots!

In other news, physicists at MIT have manufactured a new form of matter - a high-temperature superfluid. What industrial applications this will have, I can only imagine, but they're a few years off at least, seeing as this can only be produced in tiny quantities as yet, and must be refrigerated to nearly absolute zero. Still, Way To Go, eggheads!

The movie companies are in shock, as what is called the "Summer of the Remake" gets off to a rocky start. Odd, many moviegoers don't seem to be interested in movies that COMPLETELY lack a point. Only in those that MOSTLY lack a point. I mean, you need SOME point, right? If not, what's the point? (Arrrgh!) Anyway, Yahoo! News has more about this disturbing phenomenon.

Several British banks are now implicated in a scandal in India - apparently, workers in a sub-contracted (outsourced) call-center firm in New Delhi are selling their customers' information for as little as $10. Boy, I'm sure glad no American companies would be that stupid. I mean, really. We might get, like, worried about outsourcing and information security, or something. Way To Go, Unconcerned CFOs!

Krispy Kreme, in a fit of creativity, has responded to their flagging finances by firing six of their top executives, rather than a load of minimum wage earners. What a great idea! Way To Go, Krispy Kreme!

A 73-year-old Kenyan farmer named Daniel M'Mburugu became the coolest man on the planet on Wednesday, June 22, 2005. Why? Because he was attacked by a leopard, and killed it with his bare hands - by pulling its tongue out of its head while it was trying to bite off his arm. Damn, man. Motivated, just a little? While the leopard is the smallest of the "great cats," it's by no means easy - adult males, such as the one M'Mburugu killed, can get as big as 150 pounds and 6 feet in length, and can run 40 miles an hour. Mr. M'Mburugu, Way To Go. You are officially a badass. Now I just hope someone gave you some Bactine.

Astonishing no-one, the cassette tape seems to be going the way of the dodo. Oddly, not even audiobooks can save it - gee, I wonder if that might not have something to do with car CD players, hmmm? Way To Go, People Who Refuse To Acknowledge Things Blatantly Obvious To The Rest Of Us!

That's all the weird news I have today. However, I have two, not one but TWO, rants which I will post next. Enjoy!

Legacy Of Kain (PC, PS, PS2, XBOX)

Lost Worlds

Every epic story has elements that were removed for one reason or another during its creation. For many of these stories, they are lost forever - or slowly fade into obscurity and misunderstanding.

The goal of The Lost Worlds is to preserve in as much detail as possible the apocrypha of the Legacy of Kain series of video games. Like the deleted scenes bonuses on DVDs, these pages catalogue what might have been - and in some cases what might yet be.

Lost Worlds talks about one of my all-time favorite game franchises, Legacy Of Kain.

The Legacy of Kain series now encompasses 5 games: Blood Omen, Blood Omen 2, Soul Reaver I and II, and Defiance. The story is not yet complete, and neither the publisher, Eidos Interactive, nor the creators, Crystal Dynamics, are willing to speculate on how many more games there might be in the series.
This is a very gothic, very ornate series of games, with a plot that spans millennia, and involves vampires, humans, a third race called Hylden, demons, time travel, fate, and the nature of free will. Continuity is preserved across all the games, with the sole exception of Blood Omen 2, and the same actors play the vocal parts throughout, which rapidly makes Kain and Raziel some of the most distinctive, and recognizable, videogame characters ever.
Much of each game is told through voice-overs and asides by the characters. The game designers were courteous enough to include what they call the "Dark Chronicle" in each game, which allows you to read the scripts for each cutscene and rendered sequence in each game, so if you use a cinema to get a drink, you haven't missed anything you can't find out about again. I'd really use the pause key, though: the writing is really good, if a bit melodramatic, and some of the comments the various characters make are fascinating.
The basic premise is simple, but its implications aren't. Kain, the main character of both Blood Omen games and co-lead of Defiance, is born fated to be the "Guardian of Balance," which makes him one of the guardians of an ancient artifact known as the Pillars of Nosgoth. However, just as he's born, the guardian he's fated to replace is murdered, which drives all the remaining guardians mad. Kain himself is later assassinated and resurrected as a vampire, and then confronted with a choice: he can kill himself, which will cleanse the Pillars of their corruption, or he can live, which will doom the world, but make him its ruler.
The thing is, Kain quickly realizes that this is a false dilemma, which he explains later to the other major character in the series, Raziel, in what I think is one of the best cutscenes in the entire series to date. This takes place in Soul Reaver 2:

Kain:
Thirty years hence, I am presented with a dilemma - let's call it a two-sided coin. If the coin falls one way, I sacrifice myself and thus restore the Pillars. But as the last surviving vampire in Nosgoth, this would mean the annihilation of our species. Moebius made sure of that. If the coin lands on the reverse, I refuse the sacrifice and thus doom the Pillars to an eternity of collapse. Either way, the game is rigged.

Raziel:
We agree then that the Pillars are crucial, and must be restored?

Kain:
Yes, Raziel - that's why we've come full-circle to this place.

Raziel:
So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate you must die so that new Guardians can be born.

Kain:
The Pillars don't belong to them, Raziel...

[Kain gestures derisively, indicating humanity in general.]

Kain:
...They belong to us.

Raziel (disgusted):
Your arrogance is boundless, Kain.

Kain (laughing softly):
There's a third option - a monumental secret, hidden in your very presence here. But it's a secret you have to discover for yourself. Unearth your destiny, Raziel. It's all laid out for you here.

Raziel:
You said it yourself, Kain - there are only two sides to your coin.

Kain:
Apparently so. But suppose you throw a coin enough times... Suppose one day, it lands on its edge.

(This taken from DarkID's excellent script guide for SR2, available at GameFAQS and specifically, here.)
This, to me, is an excellent example of the kind of discussions that happen in this series. The entire storyline is based around the essential question of free wil and destiny - is destiny immutable? Or can we change our paths?
LoK is one of the few game series that has improved with age; Defiance is one of the best games I've ever played. Most series repeat themselves, but because of the time-travelling nature of the story, you find yourself seeing the same events over from different perspectives as you play through the games, and new information about them comes to light.
For anyone who loves a good story and doesn't mind a LOT of combat to get there - along with a good deal of puzzle-solving - this is definitely the series for you. Anyone else need not apply; if you can't hang with puzzles you will HATE these games.

One final note: Be aware, if you play Blood Omen 2, that it was not made by the same design team as the rest of the series, and there ARE continuity flaws in it. I didn't hate it; it's certainly an enjoyable game, but there is a definite difference in the production values between it and the rest of the series.

The Phantom Of The Opera

At IMDB.com!
For once, I am not including a plot summary from IMDB. This is because there are only two posted - one written like bad advertising copy, and the other telling the entire story of the movie in one paragraph.
Bah.
Well, before we get started: Buy this DVD. But only if you can find it in widescreen.

To expand on this, for those who don't know why they should care: TVs are becoming widescreen. All of the HDTVs are widescreen, and widescreen standard TVs are becoming more and more common, because the movie industry is pushing - hard - to make widescreen the standard. For once, I don't disagree with what they're doing. Anyone who reads my main blog knows that I typically loathe the decisions and actions of the movie industry, but this is not one of those times.
The reason for this is exemplified perfectly by the fullscreen DVD of Phantom of the Opera. In the movie, the set design is incredibly lavish, and goes from edge to edge of the movie screen, in amazing panoramas of lush detail. The fullscreen DVD chops all the set design away completely, focusing only on the actors / singers. The singing and acting are still great, but this detracts enormously from the impact of the movie as a whole.
It's great to avoid the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen (called letterboxing,) but if you do so at the expense of later having even more intrusive bars at either SIDE of the screen when you upgrade to a widescreen, you're not improving your DVD collection, not to mention that you are missing huge chunks of the director's vision. While this is not always necessarily a bad thing, in a movie with such powerful set design, like Phantom or Vanity Fair, it hurts the movie immensely.
However, let me talk about the movie. (Lest I forget, in my orgy of distaste for fullscreen DVDs.) This is one instance of the ad copy being right - Phantom is one of the best movies I've seen in years. The screenwriter took Andrew Lloyd Webber's already incredible story and music and added his own touches - usually a kiss of death, I know, but in this case wonderful - and produced a movie script of really impressive depth, and the director carried it out to the peak of its promise.
An example of the kind of "touches" the screenwriter added: in Webber's original stage production, there's never any significant explanation of where the Phantom himself came from and why he's at the opera house. The film not only explains this, but in fact gives a complete backstory for it, which has the effect of humanizing the Phantom to a much greater degree, making him a much more sympathetic character than in the original, and greatly increasing the impact of some of the later scenes and songs.
This movie should have won Best Picture this year at the Oscars. Million Dollar Baby might be a good movie, but Phantom absolutely topped it at every level. (Never think I don't respect Clint Eastwood as an actor and director, but MDB just plain wasn't as good as Phantom.)
As I said when I first got started, if you can find this in widescreen - preferably, the theatrical 2.35:1 aspect ratio (super widescreen,) buy it. Immediately. If you can only get it in fullscreen, buy it anyway - but bear in mind that you're missing the true impact until you see it in widescreen. The music is fantastic - even worth buying a home theater in-a-box kit to really enjoy it - and this is one of the not too many movies I can think of that leaves not a dry eye in the house, without coming across as maudlin.

Darkness

At IMDB.com!

There's something in this house... Something ancient and dark that remains still, hidden and silent. It can only wait, having been concealed in the shadows for years. In fact, its milieu is darkness. Only in it can it show itself and move. It even takes its name: DARKNESS. It's lived here since someone tried to call it, more than forty years ago. Because this house hides a secret, a terrible past, an inconceivably evil act... Seven children, faceless people, a circle that must be completed. And blood, lots of blood...

And this is the best that IMDB has to offer about this movie?

Ok. The real scoop on this movie is that it is very, very creepy. The director, Jaume Balaguero, absolutely nailed the use of darkness itself as a "ghostly" effect, something often attempted but rarely so expertly utilized. For some odd reason, this movie has flown somewhat under the radar - it was just released in the U.S. theatrically this year, but has been available online and in europe for at least 3 years. Now, it's out on DVD in a good widescreen edition. For some reason it's being touted as an "unrated" version, although having seen it, I have no idea what was added that was so horrifying it couldn't be run past the ratings board.
Anna Paquin does an excellent job in this film, never coming across as cheesy. The plot is quite involved, much more so than in a normal horror movie - not so much in terms of what is trying to happen, but more in terms of how it's going to take place.
Despite the comments on IMDB, this simply isn't a very bloody movie. There are a few bloody scenes, but they're more disturbing for the WAY they're bloody than for the amount of blood involved. I have no idea why the IMDB people called it loaded with blood, but it isn't true at all.
This movie is very sneaky about how it approaches its revelations - some of the things it tells you, you're not aware of until things come together at the end of the movie. This is a very good entry in the horror genre, and highly recommended for anyone who'd rather be scared than grossed out. Buy it!

One Hour Photo

At IMDB.com!

Seymour 'SY' Parrish has been doing photo development for 20 years. He has a vast knowledge of modern photography and develops photos at a local department store for a living. But SY lives a sad and lonely life and begins spying on the Yorkin family, his biggest customers who seem to have everything in the world. SY begins to feel that he wants to be in the Yorkin's life, but when he discovers that the Yorkins are not as perfect as they seem, he becomes a man on a mission to expose the imperfections of the Yorkin family that could tear them apart.

Well, that's true, I guess.
So far as it goes.

More accurately, Sy is a freakin' nutball.
The Yorkin family, whose characters you don't see enough of to get truly invested in, gets all their family photos developed by Sy. Oddly, they never seem to notice how disturbingly much he knows about them. However, there is one good scene once Sy's plan to tear the family apart begins to come to fruition, and it's really the only scene that makes you empathize with the Yorkins. Having developed some photos that incriminate Will Yorkin, Sy slips them into an envelope of photos of their children that Nina Yorkin has developed. Nina opens them while driving, and nearly goes off the road at what she sees there - while Sy follows her in his little car.
Like The Final Cut, this movie is entirely carried by Robin Williams. His character is the only one in whom you have a serious investment, and although he's very very creepy and severely disturbing, you can sympathize with his enormous loneliness and isolation.
This movie is also a definite buy - high on the list, as a matter of fact - and should be watched by anyone who gets their film developed in the same place more than once.

The Final Cut

At IMDB.com!

Omar Naim's The Final Cut is startlingly different than a conventional science fiction film. It's a compelling fable that offers a vision of a world where memory implants record all moments of a person's life. Post mortem, these memories are removed and edited by a "Cutter" into a reel depicting the life of the departed for a commemorative ceremony, called a Rememory. Robin Williams' powerful portrayal of Alan Hackman, a troubled "cutter," propels this character driven story that forces us to question the power of our memories and the sanctity of our privacy.

Robin Williams, Jim Cavieziel and Mira Sorvino play in this fine film. For some reason it didn't do well in theaters - my guess is that there simply wasn't enough publicity to draw an audience.

Williams' character, Alan Hakman, is a cutter who uses only the "good" parts of people's memories to form their Rememory, leaving out any traumas, bad deeds, or other negatives. This, of course, cheats the families - while they have a happy goodbye, they're not left with an accurate picture of the person they've lost.
Frankly, I'd think that if your "loved one" was as much of a sucmbag as some of Hakman's "clients," you'd want to remember what a bastard they really were, so it wouldn't hurt as much. But that's just me.
The thing is, Alan is gradually losing himself, because he spends all his time invested in the lives of others - and because he's the best cutter out there, they assign him anyone who had something to hide, anyone who was a bad person, anyone who knew something they shouldn't - you get the idea. Alan know EVERYBODY's dirty laundry, and it's making him crazy.
Jim Cavieziel and Mira Sorvino both do well in their roles, but realistically, this movie is all about Robin Williams. Cavieziel and Sorvino both play supporting roles in their true sense - their roles serve to contrast, and highlight, Alan Hakman, not to distract from him. The viewer is unable to really identify with either, because their appearances in the story only draw out more of Hakman's character.
This movie is a definite buy - I just did - and I recommend it to anyone, despite IMDB's lukewarm reviews. This is the best acting Robin Williams has done since One Hour Photo, which I am reviewing in a few minutes.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Jim Carrey

And, of course, Kate Winslet...

This is the story of a guy, Joel (Jim Carrey),who discovers that his long-time girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet),has undergone a psychiatrist's (Tom Wilkinson)experimental procedure in which all of her memory of Joel is removed, after the couple has tried for years to get their relationship working fluidly. Frustrated by the idea of still being in love with a woman who doesn't remember their time together, Joel agrees to undergo the procedure as well, to erase his memories of Clementine. The film, which takes place mostly within Joel's mind, follows his memories of Clementine backwards in time as each recent memory is replaced, and the procedure then goes on to the previous one, which is likewise seen, and then erased. Once the process starts, however, Joel realizes he doesn't really want to forget Clementine, so he starts smuggling her away into parts of his memory where she doesn't belong which alters other things about his memories as well...

To give you an idea how much press this movie got, the summary above was written by some guy on AOL. It was the best summary on the IMDB.com page for this movie, which is a damn shame.

More to the point, there just wasn't much attention paid to this movie, which I can only attribute to the idea that if the movie studios let Jim Carrey get established as a serious actor, they are afraid they will lose all his future rubberface movies.
This is a problem, because as anyone who watches this movie can attest, Carrey is a fine actor. ESotSM was one of his best performances on film, ever, and also one of the best performances on film last year. I will say that I thought Tim Robbins did better in Mystic River, but then he has years of experience in serious roles, where for Carrey, this makes what, two?
Carrey is not alone in his skill, either. Kate Winslet does a fine job, as does Kirsten Dunst, and Tom Wilkenson. Elijah Wood is often mantioned with regard to this movie, but in fact his part is very small; it would have been difficult in the extreme for him to really mess it up.
This movie, like The Machinist, requires the audience to do a little work; it doesn't hand the story to you on a platter, but expects you to use your brain to keep up. Watching this movie requires you to figure out, on-the-fly, which scenes are Carrey's memories, which are real, and when chronologically everything happens. Unlike The Machinist, ESotSM does a better job of tying everything together: even if you're hopelessly lost throughout, you'll get it in the last few minutes.
IMDB maintains a list of all the filmmaking "errors" in every movie; I spotted one they didn't, but to be fair, I didn't spot any of the ones they did. The one mistake I did see seemed fairly glaring, but minor enough to ignore. (At one point, Kirsten Dunst is supposedly listening to an audio tape; she clicks a key on the tape recorder, and a recorded voice comes on that's ostensibly the contents of the tape, but in fact the tape deck's wheels aren't turning, and neither is the tape. No big deal.)
I bring this up only to point out that although I am unusually hawkeyed for movie errors, this movie really only had a couple; not only was the script and acting good, but the director managed to put this movie together very well in terms of the technical aspects of the filmmaking process, which is becoming more and more unusual as we move more towards the quick buck school of film.
All in all, this is an exceptional movie, and well worth watching; I can only assume that the near-total lack of publicity surrounding its release is a result of Hollywood's condescending assumption that the movie public is so stupid they wouldn't understand, and therefore wouldn't enjoy, ESotSM.
Not only did I not feel like my rental fee was wasted, I will be buying this, and soon. It's fantastic.

Really Loud Static

White Noise, SCAAARY!

When the unexpected happens, architect Jonathan Rivers has become a grieving widower, wallowing in deep confusion over the death of his wife. But a paranormal expert approaches Jonathan with the unlikely: the ability to hear his wife from beyond the grave. Through a form of unusual communication known as EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), Jonathan will finally be able to see his wife. But in doing so, Jonathan has drawn himself into a much more complex situation when his curiosity becomes an obsession. Only that obsession will have him confront those not of this world, and some of them don't approve of Jonathan's interference with their destructive nature.

Um, ok. So, what this really means is that this guy gets told by everyone he meets that "that sounds dangerous," and by several people who are involved in EVP research, and thus would probably know something about it "don't do it alone."

Proving that he's a freakin' dumbass, he ignores the advice, even after finding one of the supposedly knowledgeable people ripped up into nasty bleeding chunks after using EVP alone. His continued meddling draws the attention of 3 evil spirits, who then use a serial killer to lure him to a place where they will be able to kick his ass.
They do, and it's one of the only good scenes in the movie. Watching this arrogant dumbass get ripped in shreds and broken all to pieces by a swirling black mist of evil is about the only enjoyable thing about this film. Although billed as a scary movie, it failed totally to induce that effect, as I spent the whole time thinking to myself "given that much advice and evidence, I would run away."
This one doesn't even merit a second rental. Baaaaaaaaad.

Way To Go, So-And-So!

The Movie Studios, At It Again...

The companies are also asking for Microsoft to nix the "bible" (guidelines set out by Bungie in order to ensure the movie does not contradict any source material in the Halo universe).

That's right, there's going to be a HALO movie. That's right, it'll suck. The sticking point in the negotiations is - read the quote - the idea, the very notion, that the movie ought to stick to the rules laid out in the games / books.
Didn't they get the idea when audiences universally thought that Alien Vs. Predator sucked horribly? Naw, it was cellphones and internet piracy - even though cell phones would have been used to warn friends not to see that piece of crap, and no-one bothered to download it. See, filesharers only download the GOOD movies. Duh.

To me, if we know in advance that it will suck and not be anything at all like the games and books, then who GIVES a damn if The Rock is in it? it's still going to suck. No, really. I mean it. And I like HALO. Way to go, Universal!

In other news, the Secretary General of the increasingly irrelevant U. N., Kofi Annan, is (big surprise,) now implicated in illegally granting U. N. contracts to his relatives. Of course, this will somehow be explained away, as he was one of those in the U. N. that didn't want to go to Iraq in the first place. Way to go, Kofi Annan!

There's a sect of polygamists in Utah that's gotten itself in trouble for being militantly stupid. See, they believe that for a man to go to heaven, he has to marry at least three women. The problem with this, of course, is that sooner or later you run out of teenage girls. Unless, that is, you excommunicate and banish all the teenage boys. The problem, of course, is that you now have several hundred angry, embittered teenagers who aren't getting any who would make just dandy witnesses to the ongoing, widespread child abuse among the sect. Way to go, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!

Scientists have discovered that drinking diet soda can make you obese. That's right, use the diet drinks, get fat. Why? Because unlike fruit sugar (fructose) and other naturally occurring sugars, which your digestive system can process properly, diet drinks are made with artificially created derivatives of those same sugars and other artificial chemicals, which your body can't process at all. Which is also why diet sodas can give you kidney and liver disorders. Way to go, Nutrasweet!

Michael Jackson has been acquitted on all 10 charges against him, despite 3 people claiming to be his victims and a mountain of evidence against him. It's nice to have money; now Jackson can go out and molest even more young boys whose parents are morons. Way to go, Santa Maria, California!

Aurora, Colorado residents were horrified on Sunday when a huge fire broke out in an apartment complex. Not because of the fire, but because after calling 911 over a dozen times, and fighting the fire themselves, they were told by the fire department:

Jones said the department will thoroughly investigate every call that was made. One possible explanation for any delay could be that several people called 911 on cellphones.

Depending on where cell towers are located, calls may have been routed to Denver or Adams County. Those dispatchers could patch calls to Aurora, but not until they had taken down the address, he said. That consumes time.

Frankly, I don't care where I call 911 from, the entire purpose of having, and paying for, 911 is to prevent these kinds of delays. The city government of Aurora, Colorado, clearly doesn't understand that. Don't you just LOVE that

Exceptional service to the community provided by well trained professionals.

?
Way to go, Aurora Fire Department!
All in all, an interesting day, don't you think?

Oh, The Humanity!

Boogeyman

You thought it was a just a story... but it's real.

And, it's crap.
Of course, they won't tell you this.

One problem many screenwriters seem to have with horror movies is that they don't understand that logical consistency is good.
So, for their benefit, and yours, let me explain a phenomenon called "voluntary suspension of disbelief." When you go to a movie, you are making a contract with the director and screenwriter. You agree to ignore the fact that the story is on a screen, and whatever the basic premise of it is, however unbelievable. THEY agree to make the rest of what follows from that premise as believable within its context as possible, so that you can watch the movie without yelling "Bullshit!" at the screen.
The problems arise when they fail to do so. Examples follow:

• Horse-drawn carriages exploding on overturning in Van Helsing.
  
• Jason Bourne getting amnesia from being shot in the BACK in The Bourne Identity. Note that this wasn't the book author's fault; in the book, Bourne was shot in the head.
  
• The discovery of "unobtanium" enabling the trip to The Core.
  
• The fact that the bashed-in cab with a shattered windshield is only stopped by police ONCE during Collateral.
  

In Boogeyman, this phenomenon abounds. To put this in perspective, Darkness Falls, with its murdering Tooth Fairy, (!?!) was more consistent with its premise.
The Boogeyman appears in Tim's bedroom and drags his father into the closet, where he disappears. Tim is raised on an endless diet of people telling him that what he saw was his mind's way of compensating for the trauma of his father's "leaving them," but Tim keeps the faith, and in his 20's, returns to his hometown to try to find out the truth. What he finds is that for years, some being has been disappearing children. At one point, Tim finds a backpack full of "missing persons" posters, detailing a reign of terror longer than his own life.

Ok, I was able to suspend disbelief to that point, but then the filmmakers failed me. Catastrophically. Although the monster has been around for years, has "stolen" maybe a hundred people, and is supposedly invincible, (according to the ghost of one of his victims, no less,) Tim is somehow "the only one who can defeat him."
Why? No clue what makes Tim special. He's an adult, who the Boogeyman didn't get as a kid, but then Booger takes several adults over the course of the movie, so that doesn't seem to be a problem. There's no actual hint in the movie as to why Tim is the Chosen One.
How? By "confronting" him, of course. It's a Hollywood movie, so of course Tim wins, and the Boogeyman just vanishes, never to return.

HUH!?!

If there was ever a movie that screamed for a They-style ending where the good guys lose, it was Boogeyman. Instead, the filmmakers bankrupted their premise, totally sold out a sequel-worthy villain, and turned what had until then been a reasonably creepy movie into a huge pile of shit. Terrible. How a newspaper can review this as "the scariest movie ever" I have no idea; maybe they just don't get out much. This was not only not scary, it was complete trash. If you want to watch a vastly superior version of the same movie, watch They or Darkness, either of which is far scarier and more believabe than this garbage.

The Machinist

...At IMDB.com!

THE MACHINIST is the story of TREVOR REZNIK, a lathe-operator who is dying of insomnia. In a machine shop, occupational hazards are bad enough under normal circumstances; yet for Trevor the risks are compounded by fatigue. Trevor has lost the ability to sleep. This is no ordinary insomnia...

We watched this movie today, and really enjoyed it. It's a very unusual film, in that unlike most movies that are filmed out of chronological sequence, it's so smoothly done that you don't realize that it's out of sequence until late in the movie. This is a good thing; it adds greatly to the punch at the end when you find out what it is that's really keeping Trevor awake at night.

The movie is very hallucinatory; the director did a fantastic job at making things look washed out and blurry, the way they do when you have insomnia. (I know about this. It was VERY accurate.) However, the single thing that made the movie was the star: Christian Bale.
The script for "The Machinist" has been kicked around Hollywood for about ten years, largely because they couldn't find a lead actor willing to go to the extremes required for the role. Then they got a copy of the script to Christian Bale, who said I imagine something along the lines of, "Sure, I don't have anything better to do, I'll gladly lose 70 pounds to be in your movie!"

No kidding.

He looks like a walking skeleton. Twice in the movie, people tell him "If you were any thinner, you wouldn't exist." It's accurate; watching his emaciated body is actually painful. He looks like he just came out of some horrifying prison camp.
Added to the fact that Christian Bale is an amazingly talented actor anyway, it makes the movie as powerful as a punch in the teeth. This one is definitely a buy; it's purely amazing filmmaking.

Your Friend, The Federal Reserve

Just a simple note.
Today C-SPAN aired a meeting of the Joint Economics Committee, where Alan Greenspan, long-time chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank and renowned economist
was questioned by such dubious luminaries as Sen. Jack Reed ( D - RI ) and Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy, ( D - MS ).

Senator Reed, of course, spent not one penny of his own money on his last election, as did Senator Ted. Both Senators are of course doing very well, and in no danger whatsoever of having to themselves suffer under the crushing tax burden laid on the U. S. population by Clinton's economic "policies," But in this particular hearing, they were of course passionately against any reduction in the tax burden.
And you just knew they were going to drag Social Security into things.

You were right. They did.

Senator Reed spent several minutes explaining to Chairman Greenspan that reducing the taxes, notably the estate tax and capital gains taxes, would further hurt the ability of the government to meet its "obligations" for Social Security.

Chairman Greenspan, with the inimitable tone of an older man explaining patiently to a particularly slow four-year-old, informed Senator Reed that (translation mine) "if people have more money in their pockets, they will invest more, which increases the tax base and the number of people able to pay taxes. This increases your tax revenue."

Well, duh. This doesn't take a WHOLE lot of thought. Who's going to buy stocks when they can't put food on the table, especially when they know that if they do, their taxes will go up amazingly if they make any money at it? Who's going to buy a house, or a business, or anything, if they get punished for making money?

The current tax rate on capital gains is 28%. This means that if you sell your house that you bought for $50,000, and you get $100,000, you have to pay the government $14,000 in taxes. Does that sound a bit steep to anyone? Especially since there are applicable sales taxes when you buy the property or stock which can result in capital gains, which means that in effect you have been taxed twice for the same item.

The estate tax is even worse. Although according to the IRS, it only affects people who are leaving an estate in excess of $1 million, let me ask a simple question. Who do you think employs the poor? If the rich have no cash money, and instead only own real property, they cannot hire workers, or start businesses, or invest in other people's business ventures. The "tax the rich to death" school of economic thought only results in a greater group below the poverty line. Further, the moneys and property affected by the estate tax have already been taxed before, upon their acquisition; in fact, in the case of stocks and savings, those moneys can be taxed each year that they exist. This is abusive taxation in its worst form.

But: all this is important only as a sidelight; the real issue at hand is Social Security, that great political deathtrap that no-one wants to address. So, here's how the system works.

Social Security, however it was initially conceived, has become a gigantic, government-subsidized Ponzi scheme. When you work, you pay Social Security taxes out of your wages. However, contrary to popular belief, these taxes do not go to pay for your benefits when you retire. Instead, they go to pay for those people who are already retired and drawing benefits. You are taking it in trust that when you retire, there will be enough people still working in this country to pay your benefits in turn.

Sadly, there's simply no actual evidence that this is even possible. Remember the so-called "Baby Boomers?" They gave birth to a generation which has largely limited its procreation, which means that when the Baby Boomers retire, the number of retired people will outnumber the number of those in the workforce enormously. This is not helped by the AARP, which lobbys constantly to get the age of "seniority" and the retirement age lowered, thus increasing the pool of benefit recipients steadily.

What this means is that eventually, the number of retired people being supported by each worker's taxes will exceed the worker's ability to pay. Just as in any Ponzi scheme, you can only rake in the cash until a majority of your customers are asking for their money back; then it falls apart.

The National Center for Public Policy Research has done a good essay on this.
Their conclusion is accurate, privatisation is not only necessary to save the system, but will actually result in increased benefits for everyone. But that's only good as far as it goes. They missed, as all the talking heads on TV do, the moral premise behind it.

This is very simple. IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT'S MONEY. IT IS YOUR MONEY. You have the right, having earned the money, to determine how it is used to provide your benefits. If the premise of Social Security is, as its founders stated, to provide YOU with a retirement account, then why should the government get to use its coffers as a private piggybank, and why should the government decide the manner in which it is to be administered? YOU EARNED THE MONEY. THEY STEAL IT. It really is that simple. The people whose idea this was are now not contributing to the system, and they are being paid for by those who are contributing.

The current system is in the process of collapsing. Frankly, given a choice between taking the word of Senator Jack Reed, (Master's Degree in "Public Policy") and that of Federal Reserve Chairman Dr. Alan Greenspan, whose doctorate, might I add, is in economics, I will take that of Chairman Greenspan, who says that Social Security is a sinkhole for our economy.

Watching Dr. Greenspan make Senator Reed look like a monkey made my day; it's a pity virtually no-one else was watching, or thinking about what it meant.

...And The Madness Continues, Unabated...

Giant Balls Of Snot!

"A sinker is basically snot," Sherlock said. "It's very fragile. We have very skilled ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) pilots and special containers to collect these things. We were only able to adequately collect one out of four."

Yes, scientists are collecting giant marine boogers to explain plankton growth. I can't just make this stuff up, folks. It's all true!

Miraculously, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute is privately funded and non-profit, which means that this ISN'T another example of government spending run wild. Astonishing.

In banking news, clearly Absa, a coalition of banks based in South Africa, is in love with the current surrealist school of advertising in the U. S. Equally clear is the fact that they're not quite sure how to go about it.
This,

“My bank is my best friend. My bank is my host. My bank is inviting me round for dinner: something about fava beans and a fine Chianti …”

...and this, just seem to say it all, don't they?

“My bank is my haemorrhoid cream. My bank is my tampon. My bank is my French tickler condom. My bank is my jockstrap, my next-door neighbour with the big breasts whom I covet, my mullet. My bank is my collection of porcelain Cavalier King Charles spaniels.

The author of this little screed also accuses the bank of

entrusting its re-branding to a band of rhesus monkeys chained to typewriters and supervised by crack addicts.

Wow.

Oh, and here's good, free life advice: don't, and I mean DO NOT, download hacker tools on the internet, and use them to infiltrate the Pentagon in a mad quest to expose the truth about UFOs. Really. The guy who did it is attempting to fight extradition from Great Britain to the U.S. for purposes of prosecution based on the over $700,000 in damage that he inflicted on the computer networks he accessed. Baaaaaaaaaaaaad juju, man.

More Very Weird Happenings...

The MPAA, Movie Pirates Extraordinaire!

”Most appalling, says Stewart, is the fact that it would’ve been so easy for the studios to pay her for her work. “It’s a greater crime for the rich to steal because they have the money to pay for it. Why should the poor and the weak suffer? We’re not going to take anymore crap.”

That's right. The Terminator and The Matrix were stolen from a script treatment by a grad student, long ago. Boy, it's a good thing those evil pirates have the MPAA watching out for them.... Oh, wait. The MPAA members are the ones who did the stealing.
Oh, the humanity.
Oh, the IRONY.

Falling under the category of

Guaranteed To Make My Wife Angry,

science proves that love is an addiction, and nearly identical to mental illness.
Dennis Rodman is going to compete in a "Wife-Carrying" race, porn will soon be available for your PSP - IF you live in Japan (where else?) and some crazy guy in Duluth doesn't want his $617,000, and will thank you to leave him alone.

TV stations have run out of things to do with their time. One station in Denver decided to play "Candid Camera" on a FOX investigative reporter - and discovered that he was doing the same thing to them. Hi, you guys! You're on live TV!

Preschools have also run out of things to do. This, however, is not their fault, but is instead due to the never-ending tide of social workers trying to insulate kids from reality even more than they already are. Thus, the birth of the "behavior contract." This is rubbish; how you can expect a five-year-old child to abide by a contract which could result in legal consequences for his or her parents is utterly beyond me. Even a perfect child, and I don't personally know of any, will sooner or later have a bad day and act out. Here, take it - this is your reality check. I will cash it for you: YOU ARE AN IDIOT.
Thank you. That is all.

On to other matters:
A double-leg amputee in South Africa has a VERY good chance of qualifying for his country's Olympic team for 2008 - in the 200-meter sprint. Oscar Pistorius now holds the world record in the 200-meter dash for amputees, at 21.97 seconds - a time only 1.2 seconds short of qualifying for the Olympic team. To put this in perspective, 100 meters is approximately 1.3 football fields, and this guy can do twice that far in 22 seconds. That's just plain fast as hell. YOU GO, OSCAR!! We OUGHTA be proud of this guy.

Seminole County, Florida has thrown out hundreds of breathalyser tests because the manufacturer won't tell the court how the tests work. This one stands by itself; it doesn't really need much in the way of commentary, does it?

If you play a prank, and it's so cool that school officials decide to make it permanent, you are legend. That is all.

And last, but definitely not least, Microsoft strikes again. Realizing that most people don't actually READ the Blue Screen Of Death when their computer crashes, they've adopted a new tactic for the upcoming Windows Longhorn. Microsoft's next-iteration operating system will feature the BSOD for "simple" errors, but for more serious crashes, the OS will now feature a RED screen Of Death. That's right. a RSOD. How this will affect users, who mostly just want the damn things to quit crashing, is anybody's guess.

Ok, isn't that enough for one week?