Artificial Cheese

I’m psyched. I can’t believe its happening, someone actually decided to revive Knight Rider and make a motion picture about Michael Knight. Up until now, Knight Rider has been a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a movie that does not exist. But that’s gonna change now.

Miramax, a loner moviehouse on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law, has decided to take the rights to the show and make a movie. There is not much known about this movie at this point, other than the fact that David Hasselhoff has tried and failed in his attempt to cast Orlando Bloom as his son, and the star of the film.

Whats also known is that car companies are falling over themselves, trying to get their car in the movie as the new KITT. And why wouldn’t they? If you think of the most well known cars in the last 25 years, you got Doc Brown’s Delorean, and KITT. No one is remaking Back to the Future any time soon.

I’m definately gonna see this movie, and I don’t care if it takes 10 years to make.

I should’ve known that the cord was too short to reach around my new desk and into my PC. I stretched it anyway and sacrificed a little bit of postural luxury for my favorite headphones. But that one fateful night when I forgot they were around my neck, it only took one swing of my chair to snap the wire out of the left ear piece and leave me with half the headphones I once had. Oh SR60s…forgive me! I should have put the wire UNDER the desk.

Oh woe is me,
for my SR60s have ceased to be.
My poor audio-personified amputee
lies crippled on the floor next to me.

I had those headphones for 4 years, and its time to get new ones. I’ve been searching all over the place to find a pair under $150 with good sound quality. The only name that keeps coming up is Grado, and their SR60’s, SR80’s and SR125’s. These headphones were made almost a decade ago and still retain a favorable opinion in the audiophile community even amongst newly released headphones. I’m currently leaning towards purchasing the same headphones, or maybe the upgraded SR125 model. Although I may use this opportunity to go for a different brand even though they may have inferior sound quality, just to get a good idea of how headphones can vary in different areas.

I’m sure you don’t care about my dual minded purchase process, I am writing this to say that the SR-60s are great headphones. They may look like something a 1930s telegraph operator would wear, but the sound quality is excellent. If you are sick of over-bassy and poor quality headphones then definately give Grado a try. I wouldn’t recommend these as a replacement for ear buds if you like to be candid about your headphones, but if you don’t mind a little clunkiness then Grado is the way to go.

A few months ago, Ilamor purchased an LCD television. This television came equipped with VGA input for use as a monitor. Upon hearing this, Ilamor’s mind went wild. For her birthday, Ilamor requested (in lieu of the annual birthday hug) that I turn her television into a computer.

As nebulous as this request sounds, I found the prospect intriguing. My first instinct was to talk her out of the idea. Ilamor said that she wanted it to watch movies, to which I responded, ‘get a dvd player.’ But the movies Ilamor was referencing were those on Netflix’s new Instant Viewing system where a viewer can watch movies streaming over the Internet. For a moment Ilamor’s intentions became clear, but then when I asked, “is that all?”, she responded, “No, I want to use it like a computer”, thus setting us back into the crazy vague request state.

I decided that gathering requirements wasn’t that important. If my job has taught me anything, its that people don’t know what they want. They just want. Once they get something, THEN they’ll tell you want they want. So its my job to give it to them, and wait for feedback. So off I went, gathering parts for the job.

The Computer - Compaq Presario F572US Notebook PC

For this project I needed a cheap, small, unsophisticated computer that has very limited capabilities. The obvious choice would be a Micro ATX PC. Well, there’s an old uncredited saying that goes, “If you chase two rabbits, you’ll lose them both”, obviously in criticism of the whole “two birds with one stone” thing. So I had to choose my proverb and go with it, and I chose the later. Ilamor has been complaining about her old iBook for years and I figured that new laptop would cease the complaints. So I chose the $600 Compaq.

The negatives about this laptop were bad battery life, and it doesn’t matter in this case because it will be plugged in all the time. Another sticking point was 1gb of ram with Windows Vista, which might be a bit low but hopefully it won’t be unbearable. I figured that buying a 2gb laptop would certainly be faster, but it would cost just as much to upgrade the 1gb to 2gb if we needed it, so buying a 1gb laptop gives us the option to upgrade. In any case, this machines does the trick. Its quiet, doesn’t take up much room, and runs smoothly.

The Controls - GO 2.4 Optical Air Mouse and Compact Keyboard Suite

I know how Ilamor thinks. She wouldn’t be content with a simple wireless mouse and keyboard. She wants a device that would give her absolute control and not be restricted to moving it over a flat surface. Its the same principal that attracted her to the Nintendo Wii, so it became clear what I needed to buy. A wand of sorts. But the options are limited. The first device that I came across was the Logitech MX Air.

The Logitech MX Air has the sleek design and a big name, but also came with a $150 price tag for JUST the mouse. This is also the first attempt at an air mouse for Logitech so the product may be more experimental than I would have liked. I decided to look for other options, and I came across a lesser known company called Gyration. This company knows exactly what I needed. They make the product for demonstration purposes but it really fit the need that I had. The mouse itself is very ergonomically designed (one of the flaws of the MX Air is that it wasn’t comfortable), and comes with a cool blue glowing charging cradle. The Gyrotools software gives you a lot of options, more than I could explore, to customize your Gyroperience. I just made that up. It even works great in Vista.

The only drawback of this mouse/keyboard suite is that the keyboard uses standard AAA batteries. So you’re on your own there. It would have been ideal if the keyboard could some with some sort of rechargable docking station. Aside from that, the movement is silky smooth. It does not operate exactly like the Wii, in that the position of your hand is the exact position of the cursor. It operates by simply tracking the movement of the air mouse, and moving the cursor in the appropriate direction. The result is the ability to put your hand anywhere, and in any direction and move the mouse, ideal for lying in bed and moving the mouse without the tedious task of aiming.

The Sound - Sennheiser RS130 Wireless Headphones

Watching movies in a bedroom has a few drawbacks. The biggest of which is the possibility of one person sleeping and another watching a movie. I knew that headphones would be the ideal way to get sound from the laptop to the viewer. So I started my search for wireless headphone solutions.

The first one that I came across was the Sennheiser RS130 headphones. This model has since been replaced with the RS140s but the differences for this project are negligible, aside from price. After reading some glowing reviews, it became obvious that these were the headphones that I should buy. I ordered one full set with the transmitter, and another add-on pair in case two people wanted to enjoy the sound.

After assembling the system, I came to the conclusion that this was the worst hardware choice amongst the three items that I purchased. Its not to say that they are terrible, because the RS130s are good at what they do. The sound quality is not bad, but the connectors provided are not very high quality. In my case, I needed to turn a stereo headphone jack into a L/R component audio. The connector provided needed to be twisted and pushed in order to get both channels working properly. When the connector was secured properly, the hissing went away.

The reason that this was a poor choice was a design issue with the RS130s. The same piece of hardware was used for the charging stand and the transmitter. This is not so bad for a single headphone setup, but when you have two headphones, they must share the same charging stand, or you need to have two transmitters, neither of which is ideal. Also, transmitter is usually next to the television or the device generating the sound. I would like to have the charging stands near the place where the viewing is taking place, like the couch or the bed. Since the two functionalities are placed in the same device, this is not possible.

If this becomes an issue, I will think about finding an alternative solution to the sound. I already have a request to have the sound come out of the television speakers, so I will need to find a solution that will incorporate that. If you plan on buying the RS130s, keep these issues in mind.

The Assembly

The assembly went just as expected, no hitches or surprises.

The first step was to get the laptop up and running. This was a piece of cake, it just required me to plug it in, turn it on, and go through a few simple Vista setup screens. Once it was running, I took my VGA cable and plugged the laptop into the TV. After going into the video options and enabling my extra monitor, I was able to view the desktop on the television. I had to turn the resolution down to 800×600 to make the text easily readable, 1024×768 is bearable but stretching it. Due to the low resolutions, this is not a good solution for much other than watching movies and browsing the web. Now it was time to plug in the other two devices.

The Gyration wireless devices simply needed a small USB adapter plugged into an open USB slot. It looks like a Wireless USB Network adapter. Once this was plugged in, the wireless mouse needed to be charged and it worked perfectly. I was sitting across the room and working on the laptop. Now for the sound.

I had to keep the headphone charging stand right next to the laptop. This was going to be bad, especially if you know the way Ilamor treats their rechargable devices. If the cradle is not easily accessible, the device remains on a desk until it beeps to be charged. The only input provided to the RS130 transmitter is the L/R component audio. The inputs are not directly on the device, but on wires coming out of the device. The headphones come with some adapters, unfortunately they are not very good quality. I had to struggle to get both channels working with the component-to-stereo jack adapter. Once everything was in place, the sound was streaming directly into the headphones, no channel setup required.

Conclusion

Was it worth it? From my point of view, it was certainly worth it. It was a good exercise in finding an alternative to the usual desk/mouse/keyboard that I’ve grown used to. For Ilamor, I’m not sure how long this experiment will last. I’m sure there will come a point where the laptop will be unhooked and used for its portability and never returned to the room. The wireless headphones will be used elsewhere and the Gyration products will sit in a box somewhere. But as far as I’m concerned, its a success.

During the recent Eagles preseason game, I was chatting with my Funksysteme counterpart while Gary Papa was doing the post game show. We both remembered Gary Papa as a well groomed, lively eyed sportscaster with sometimes a little too much energy, forming a contrast between himself and his uninteresting interviewed players. It must have been a while since we saw him last, because it appeared that he had aged 5 years in a short amount of time.

He lost a lot of hair, not really pattern baldness, and his energy seemed a bit forced. I suspected that he had developed cancer or some sort of illness. Shortly thereafter we discovered that he, in fact, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004, and just last month he found out that the same cancer returned. The source of the information was a blog entry on the phillyburbs.com website.

Gary Papa’s disease is newsworthy, and its sad. But that’s not what I want to write about. I urge you to click on that blog entry and read through the comments. You’ll notice a good deal of sympathetic and somber comments, a few inspiring comments, and some funny ones. Nothing out of the ordindary. But you’ll also notice an offensive comment by a person that goes by “dave”. Also not out of the ordinary. Then you’ll see another comment by dave…and another…and another.

By the middle of page 2 you’ll notice that dave has taken over that blog entry though an offensive tirade of comments and responses. You might think that this is just another fatherless 13 year old with an internet connection craving attention for a page or so. By the second page you’ll notice that there is some sort of unsupported determination behind dave’s efforts to both ridicule Gary Papa’s cancer, and insult anyone who speaks against his responses. By the third page, a mob forms against dave, but he remains unphased.

I’m not even sure myself if this is something that is worth my time analyzing, but something about his persistence fascinates me. His comments are not simply blunt efforts to be offensive either, there is legitimate intelligence behind the words he chooses in those comments, as inappropriate as they may be.

By the time that I read through the entire three pages of comments, I came to an unexpected realization. Dave was the only thing worth reading on those comments. I even started feeling bad for dave as time went on as he was being attacked through very intelligent means and defending himself accordingly. Almost like Michael Douglas’s character in Falling Down.

If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, go ahead and read through those comments and let me know what you think.

People come to me sometimes and talk about how technology has grown rapidly in the last couple of decades. They mention things like the Internet, microprocessing, cell phones, etc. I always take up my offensive posture and start arguing that point. I mention movies made only two decades ago that show rusty mechanial wastelands and robot wars. The setting for these movies is usually 2001 or something. Even the Space Odyssey movies were based at the turn of the century, and those predictions were way ahead of our current space program. The human race failed to meet the expectations of those who made predictions before the technology curve ever started.

Where are our floating cars? Where are our holographic voice mails? Why am I writing this blog entry and not a slavebot she-droid who has been programmed to laugh at my jokes? Well, the answers to some of these questions is, ‘right around the corner’. The answer to the other one is, ’cause she’s making me a sandwich’. Take a look at some of these wickedly recent and radically awesome advancements in technology, and by technology I do not mean computers.

1. Reversal of the Casimir Effect - If you’re not familiar with the Casimir effect then let me put your sorry ass in the know. When two very small, very parallel things are close together, the Casimir effect pulls them towards each other. It happens cause of quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. I won’t attempt to impress you with my copy and paste skills anymore, but I’m sure that you are wondering why the reversal of this force is a big deal.

   According to people who are smarter than myself, the only current application would be nanotechnology. In particular, nanomachinery that would have something to gain from reducing the friction in their movements. But there is some buzz that this advancement could serve as a catalyst for efforts to levitate larger objects. So there’s your floating cars.

2. 3d Image Projector - If floating cars isn’t your thing, maybe this will impress you. Crazy samurai Japanese scientists have discovered a way to use the power of lasers to construct simple three-dimensional images in mid air. While the prospect of crazy laser samurai is futuristic in an anime world, the practical future could see this technology refined and used to create advertisements, and eventually holographic voice mail messages.

3. Cloak of Invisibility +3 - Greasy Dungeons and Dragons fans will finally have their ‘hide in the shower’ dream come true when they get their hands on a Cloak of Invisibility. While not particularly a new concept, there have been lots of recent advancements in theories behind cloaking and bending light to achieve invisibility. The most popular theories involve bending light around an object through a buffered space through to the other side. Bending it once is easy enough, but bending it back again through mid air sounds cancerous. I’m sure that ’scientists’ will find a way eventually.

4. Sunglasses that Change Color - Well…Are ya laughin’, biatch? At this point, the same people who want a Cloak of Invisibility are probably putting this on their Christmas wish list for next year. These glasses come equipped with a super slick knob that allows the ‘user’ to pick the color of the lenses of their glasses. At face value, this doesn’t have much future cred, but this sort of chemical behavior can be applied to signs on buildings, or pairs of shoes. Imagine buying a new shirt at the store and changing the color of your jeans to match right then and there.

It’ll be another decade or two before we start seeing 3d holographic projections of color-shifting invisible floating cars, but we’re well on our way. But scientists can’t do it alone, remember to write your local congressman about crazy futuristic ideas and ask for grants.

• Spelling
• If island, aisle and isle are spelled with an ’s’, then shouldn’t idle be spelled ‘isdle’?
• Chat Rooms
• If a person in a chat room is ‘isdle’, that means they are busy doing something else. If they are not idle in the chat room, that means that they are idle in real life. Shouldn’t the term ‘idle’ be applied to people who are spending time chatting when they could be doing something else?
• Engines
• If an engine is idling, that means its working, but just enough to maintain it’s host’s current state. If you are a doctor or a dentist who is working to keep a patient in their current state, would you be considered ‘idling’?

Its the international sports story of the year, british mega-celebrity David Beckham decided to accept a contract with the American Major League Soccer team, the Los Angeles Galaxy, and his first game is tomorrow, Saturday, July 21st. Any level minded American man with a shred of sports sense knows that soccer will not make it in America. But nobody in this country can argue that point.

Why won’t soccer be successful in this country? Maybe there are too many sports already, but then sports like UFC find their way into mainstream like my finger into someone’s cereal bowl. Maybe its because Americans just aren’t good at soccer, but the US soccer team isn’t quite the laughing stock that it used to be. Soccer might be too slow, but why are there so many baseball fans in this country?

Whatever the root cause of soccer’s unpopularity may be, soccer will not be popular because it has become unpopular. In other words, those people who think that the sport is unpopular will go out of their way to avoid watching soccer rather than give it a chance, simply because it has been branded as “unpopular”. But ‘those people’ that I mentioned are usually male football fans. If the MLS and David Beckham wants to grab the attention of the average american male, in the name of soccer, then they must find an incentive for those men to pay attention. What sort of incentive to men react to?

Men react to women, and women react to David Beckham. So the objective becomes clear for MLS and the Los Angeles Galaxy. Get this estrogen magnet onto as many daytime talk shows as possible. Oprah, Ellen, Judy, Margaret, Jerry Springer, Montel, whatever. Hit that Food Network like an Ike at a Tina factory. Just get him in front of as many females as possible. Eventually you’ll be filling stadiums with giddy wives and reluctant men. Heck, maybe even some giddy men…you know…the kind that watch Ellen. Once you get soccer into the culture, its up to the sport itself to earn its respect.

I noticed that FOX is planning to release a movie based on the video game, Hitman: Codename 47. I’ve said on more than one occasion (in my head) that Hitman would always make a good basis for a movie. The game was inspired by french action classics like Nikita and Léon, and is based around a genetically engineered and manufactured assassin named ‘Agent 47′, who was conceived by the DNA of five different men via a laboratory. If this sounds familiar, it was the basis of the movie “Twins” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. Anyway, the plot is pretty cheesy at this point, but it gets better. In the game, Agent 47 is portrayed in a righteous light and the missions (called “Contracts”) are executed as if Agent 47 was bringing down devine judgement on his victims.

But enough about the game. I’m always cautious in my optimism regarding theatrical renditions of video games; there is always value lost when losing the interaction involved with actually PLAYING a game. Sometimes a 2 hour movie is made from a video game that takes 60 hours to complete (see Final Fantasy: Advent Children). That’s 60 hours of character development, plot advancement and dialog that are thrown out of the window. I am a little less cautious in the case because the Hitman games never offered much in the way of character development or story; the game was all about missions. The entire game was spent strangling security guards and dressing up as house maids for the sake of stealth, Agent 47 could use a little character development.

My primary concern lies with the casting decision. Timothy Olyphant was casted to play Agent 47. You may know him from Die Hard 4, which I haven’t seen yet. The role was originally slated for Vin Diesel, who has earned a little respect in my respect ledger, but he would have given the wrong impression about Agent 47. The movie should have action, but glorify the execution rather than the explosions and bullets. Plus, Vin Diesel wasn’t white enough. I would have pursued Jason Statham for this role, I think he was born for it. Timothy is just too damn pretty.

That being said, here’s the trailer:

Working from home give you the opportunity to really keep in touch with the best things about daytime television, the lives of the days of our lives, the children of all my children, the local technical institute commercials, and best of all, The Price is Right.

I grew up with The Price is Right. I thought Rod Roddy was my father for the first 12 years of my life. It is as much a part of me as …I don’t know… Knight Rider and Tom and Jerry. My point is that I can’t get enough of this show.

Due to Bob Barker’s recent cut-and-run tactics, the show’s future is in jeopardy. Bob Barker’s recent endorsement of Rosie O’Donnell as his replacement has convinced me that he has lost his mind and is not fit to host the show anymore. The thought of Rosie O’Donnell trashing up my childhood tele-home makes me scream uncontrollably and threaten my own life. I feel that it is my responsbility to at least suggest a replacement.

The other names that have been thrown around have been Ed McMahon, George Hamilton, Ryan Seacrest (I’m assuming)…not much to choose from. The problem here is that we’re aiming too high. People who are established as actors or hosts of other shows are obligated to bring their own “flavor” to The Price is Right. In Rosie’s case, that flavor is honey barbeque.

I’m officially nominating Matt Gallant as the next host of The Price is Right.

If you don’t know who I’m talking about then you must have been under an enormously gigantic rock for the past five years, along with everyone else in the world. When I started watching this guy on The Planet’s Funniest Animals, I was convinced that he was a robot, and his torso was mounted to his floor-soldered legs before every show. He was robotic, every motion was symmetrical and he never ever moved his facial muscles. But over the years he has evolved, or been upgraded, to a pretty even-keel, unintimidating, host.

I think he’d be a good host because he is very appealing to kids, which means he’s very appealing to seniors. He has tremendous work ethic, loves animals, and is young enough to last on that show for years.

That’s all…and remember, have your Rosie O’Donnell spade or neutered. Goodbye everyone.

There’s nothing like a power outage to expose just how much we take things for granted; its even worse when it’s a daytime power outage because there is no darkness to constantly remind you that the power is out. At about 2:30pm today, Bucks County, Pa. experienced a power outage. As soon as it happened, it was as if an airplane turned off its engines in my basement. Who knew that there was so much ambient trash entering our ears? Its no wonder that I couldn’t learn French, my brain was busy filtering out humming 24 hours a day.

I was cooking at the time, and since our house has gas-powered stoves, I was acting like the power outage was never going to disturb my plans.

It was pasta I was cooking, and I realized that I didn’t go through my usual sauce warming routine. Once I drained the pasta, I poured some Bertolli’s Five Cheese sauce into a bowl and stuck it into the microwave. “Strange,” I thought, “there’s no clock on th…” I smacked myself in the head for even putting the bowl into the microwave and settled for room temperature pasta sauce.

I go to sit down at the table, grab the remote and start pressing buttons. Now I’m beginning to feel a bit mentally challenged, or like my sister puts it, “like a mouse eating electric cheese.” For those of you who don’t understand what that means, don’t worry.

So I ate my slightly warm pasta as I waited for the engine to turn back on and the beeping to commence. But it didn’t. Its times like this when checking the mail becomes entertainment. So I threw on my sandals and made my way outside, where the scattered tsunami had subsided.

As I stand in front of the mailbox, a nearby car’s engine turns on. I turned to see who was leaving, and I caught a glimpse of the headlights turning on. For a split second, even a microsecond, I was filled with excitement as I thought, “The power’s back!” I stood there for a few seconds and began to consider the fact that my disoriented powerless state was quickly becoming a liability.

As I walked slowly and carefully back to the house, I noticed that a few of my dad’s plants were tipped over and bleeding dirt. I quickly uprighted them and scooped as much dirt as I could back into the pot. When I was done, I instinctively wiped my hands on my t-shirt, which is stupid and has nothing to do with the power outage.

When I got inside my house, the first thing I did was run to the bathroom to wash my hands. I opened the door, flicked the switch, and turned on the water. Yeah, that’s right, I flicked the switch on. I even turned it off when I left. The disorientation continued as I briefly considered that the toilet wouldn’t flush due to the power outage.

As I was leaving the bathroom, I could hear a faint humming coming from down the hall. It wasn’t an airplane engine, but it sounded very attractive. I found that my laptop was still chugging along with 5 hours of sweet power left in the batteries. So I sat down and immediately clicked on the one thing that wouldn’t work, Internet Explorer. I can go on for days on my reliance on an Internet connection, but this sums it up pretty good.

If you need more proof of my confusion without the Internet, I started this blog entry with the unconfirmed assumption that I would be able to post it. But I can’t because the power is out. Sigh…I’m just going to crawl under my bed and hope this goes away.

I’m sure that the baby boomer’s impact on the average age has something to do with rise of nostalgia in the entertainment industry, because over the past few years we’ve seen many attempts at ’setting things right’. Like someone flipping a switch, the entertainment industry looked back at their great creations that were somehow devalued by follow up sequels or cultural changes with a mission to bring them back to life.

Personally, I like when something that was ruined is repaired. I hate the idea of throwing something out just because its old, or just because it has a few knicks and scratches. Finding new value in something old is just as good as creating something new. Thats why I want to point out those efforts to set things right. Here is a list of my favorite turn arounds in the entertainment industry over the past few years:

The Resurrected

Batman Begins

It had to happen for a few reasons. First, Christian Bale was too perfect for this part. Between Empire of the Sun and Shaft, it was as if Christian Bale was in training for this part. I would even go so far as to say that Christian Bale wasn’t cast for the part in a written movie as much as the producers looked at him and said, “lets make a new Batman movie”.

Secondly, Warner Bros. had been milking the quality of the original Batman for 15 years. Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Catwoman, each movie progressively worse and chronologically farther from the quality of the original. After George Clooney and Governor “Chilling Sound of your Doom” Schwarzenegger blew their noses on a film reel and released Batman & Robin, there was no possible way that Warner Bros. could release another Batman movie without restoring the allure first.

So when Batman Begins was announced, and I heard Christian Bale was casted for the part, I was as giddy as a Kennedy in a scotch factory. The movie turned out to be very good, and very different from the others. Unlike the others, the movie focused on how Bruce Wayne became Batman, not how Batman became George Clooney. Liam Neeson made a terrifying villian, Michael Caine sobered up for a few weeks to play the role of Alfred the Butler, and Gary Oldman was absolutely surprising in the role of Commissioner Gordon.

With “The Dark Night” being released next year as a sequal to Batman Begins, we may begin to see that downward spiral yet again. I would advise Warner Bros. to see this movie as closure and quit while they’re ahead, but we all know that there’s no money in that.

Rocky Balboa

I’ve mentioned before that I am a closet Rocky fan. It has little to do with the fact that I am from Philadelphia. Something to do with it, but not much. It is the perfect story of the modest underdog rising up to a challange, and also seizing an opportunity when it comes along. Rocky II was pretty good, a story about a man’s struggle between doing what he wants and doing what his wife wants. Rocky III was not so good but not so bad either, a story of Mr. T hitting on Rocky’s wife and Rocky taking offense. Rocky IV was an atrocity; it was Rocky’s attempt to end the cold war by beating up Dolph Lundgren. Rocky V doesn’t even quality as a movie in my mind.

Then 15 years went by and Rocky Balboa (Rocky XI) was announced. I was blown away by the fact that Sylvester Stallone would be in the movie, and fighting too. I am not going to provide another insightful review of the movie, I’ve done that once already in another blog entry. But I will say that it was good enough to wash the sour taste of Rocky V out of my mind.

Tomb Raider: Legends

Did you notice that in my introductory paragraphs that I did not use the word ‘movies’, but rather ‘entertainment’? This is because I wanted to point out the revival of the Tomb Raider video game series. The original was released in 1996 by Eidos Interactive and developed by Core Design, and became an instant success for two reasons.

First, the gameplay was far ahead of it’s time. No other developers dared to create an action-adventure that was as expansive or elaborate. In 1996, games were just beginning to explore the vast possibilities of the third dimension and Tomb Raider met and set the standard for the period. Secondly, Eidos tapped into the repressed sexual urges of the early teen gaming population by equipping Lara Croft with breasts-akimbo. The breasts looked like two soup cans with a towel over them, but that didn’t matter because no one playing the game had actually seen breasts.

The push-up polygons were enough to get the games off of the shelves, but when the gamers finally started playing with both hands they realized that they had purchased a fine game. This realization braught on a desire for more Tomb Raiders, and sequals were made as quickly as possible. I’m sure this part of the story is familar, as the sequals grew progressively worse.

Now in the video game world, its not only quality of gameplay that needs to be taken into account when developing a game, but quality of code. Tomb Raider sequals were not only bad, but buggy as well. Eidos was so pressed to release new versions, and Core Design just wasn’t good enough to handle the load. The games got to a point where finishing the game without crashing your computer was the goal of the game.

Eidos decided that enough was enough after their franchise lost focus with “Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness” where Lara Croft was an undead vampire or something like that. Eidos turned to a new developer, Crystal Dynamics, to create a game worthy of bringing the franchise back to where it once. That led to the announcement and development of Tomb Raider: Legends. Although the original Tomb Raider was known for its novelty and uniqueness, I can easily say that Legends is the better overall game. Its just another example of fixing something that was broken.

Casino Royale

I have a well blog-umented relationship with the demise of the James Bond movies, and a thoroughly explained appreciation with the release of Casino Royle. It just so happens that the death and resurrection of James Bond fits perfectly into this blog entry. I don’t want this section to seem so much shorter than the others because I have already written everything I want to say elsewhere, so I will space out these links as much as possible:

• James Bond 101 - Why James Bond isn’t good anymore
• So I was Wrong…Casino Royle - How James got his groove back.
• Bond Growing Up - The life of James Bond cleverly linked to the first 21 years of a person’s life.

John Rambo

Sylvester Stallone is at it again. I appreciate the effort of atoning for the Rocky series with Rocky Balboa (Rocky XI), but atoning for the Rambo series with John Rambo (Rambo IV) is going above and beyond the call of duty.

Rambo: First Blood was a clever movie; very cold and very brutish in its presentation. There was almost no character development as you learned more and more about John Rambo as the movie progressed. As it turned out, Rambo was a troubled war veteran who was discarded after the war was over and just lost his mind when he was taken in and punished by the police as a ‘drifter’. He ended up destroying a whole town, but somehow the filmmakers portrayed him in such a way as to make Rambo seem like the victim.

The subsequent Rambos were combustible action-packed death fests with Stallone mowing down wave after wave of bad guys in jungles and deserts, bleeding fashionably and sweating oil to look good in the sun. The plot became paper thin and even Sly had enough after the third Rambo. But the first Rambo movie left a character with emotions and a decent story dangling when Rambo was replaced with an action war hero in the second and third movies.

It appears that Sylvester Stallone wants to wrap things up right once more. According to the recently released trailer, this movie will be quite graphic. I don’t think it ties into the first story as well as I would have liked, but it does appear to have a story of its own. Instead of explaining everything in the trailer, here it is:

Honorable Mentions

Superman Returns

If I had to name a childhood hero, it would definately be Superman. I won’t explain why because it should be obvious to everyone.

So you would probably think that the announcement and subsequent release of a new Superman movie would be the event of the year for someone like me. I should be excited and jumping for joy; giddy like a Kennedy in a…oh I already used that one. Anyway, that wasn’t the case.

Casting Kevin Spacey as Lex Luther was a great decision, and while no one will ever replace Christopher Reeves as Superman, grabbing Brandon Routh from the depths of acting obscurity, rather than a big-name actor, was a example of a casting department really doing their homework. But I wasn’t excited. I wasn’t excited because the Superman character doesn’t mean Christopher Reeves to the new generation, it means Smallville. Throughout the movie you could tell that the story wouldn’t cross into that unemotionally repressed super-world of Superman because it would disconnect those new fans who fell in love with the soft and emotional Smallville.

John Ritter

If Superman was my hero, then Jack Tripper from Three’s Company was my friend with the dirty jokes. Jack Tripper was played by John Ritter, who the newer generation knows as the “dad” from “8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter”. When Three’s Company was taken off of the air, Ritter went on to star in a bunch of Made for TV movies and the ad campaign for “Where There’s a Will, There’s an A”. In other words,

John Ritter finally found his way back into popular television comedy with 8 Simple Rules. The show was very highly rated and was written very well. It showed that John Ritter, who made his name through physical comedy in Three’s Company, was capable of conventional humor through dialogue as well.  But at the height of the show, he died due to heart problems and never got to finish his rise back into stardom. While his death made me unusually sad, I would have been more upset had he died as “that guy who played Jack Tripper 30 years ago”.
 
Live Free, or Die Hard 4

The Die Hard series of movies has a special place in my heart. The first of the series was an example of a perfect action movie. It was one vulnerable man surrounded by opposing forces, and he saved the day without magically dodging too many bullets. In fact, I would say that Die Hard is not only my favorite action movie, but also one of my favorite movies of any type.

Die Hard 3 was also a great action movie. This time it was the plot and the pace of the movie that really added value. Bruce Willis was constantly running around NYC diffusing threats while trying to catch Jeremy Irons without any real help. While this was going on, Jeremy Irons was laying down a plan, that was a bit too logical for a movie, to steal gold.

So am I excited about Die Hard 4? Eh…maybe I would be if it didn’t look so different from the others. Its a new director and a huge cast of characters, which is very uncharacteristic of a good Die Hard movie. A good Die Hard movie has Bruce Willis, a black sidekick, a European villian, and a police chief who acts as a skeptical thorn in Bruce Willis’ side. This one has “The Mac Guy” Justin Long. We’ll see how it turns out, but I’m keeping my optimism locked in the cautious box. Here’s a trailer:

Like to see

Police Academy

If any movie series was ripe for a return, its Police Academy. I’m sure that there are enough young actors out there to play the roles of a few eccentric police cadets. What I don’t want to see is another Will Ferrell/SNL movie with no substance, and I don’t want to see a remake with people portraying the original characters. I want to see a fresh faced, subtly humored movie with a story. It should be Raising Arizona flavored, with a hint of Mahoney.

Jean Claude Van Damme

I understand that people like to stick to what they’re good at, but isn’t there a limit to that? Jean Claude Van Damme is good at kicking people, ok, we get it. But his movies aren’t what they used to be, and he’s getting pretty old. There has to be more to what he does, and I think that there is a large audience of people who want to see Van Damme act in a serious movie, and I am pretty sure that he is good enough to get by with a decent script and some acting lessons.

Death Wish

I act like a movie snob from time to time. I have been heard telling people that I would watch a foriegn movie over an American movie any day, or complaining about lighting and music levels in movies. Its true, I’ve said those things and I’ve meant them at the time. But I would be lying if I said that I didn’t like to watch a good dumb action movie on TBS or TNT. I have seen Rush Hour more times than I have watched the news. So when you think of old dumb action movies that might stand a chance at a return, what do you think of?

Death Wish, of course. A movie that can be described in just a few words, Wife Killed Husband Rampage. Charles Bronson’s wife gets murdered, and he goes on a rampage, and thats it. But that was 30 years ago when people were easily aroused and excited. In the internet age where emotions are buried under layers of defense mechanisms, emotion is a little harder to reach when making movies.

So think of it, a man’s wife gets killed and he goes on a rampage. But if the man is not portrayed as a typical hero like before but as a good guy turned into a troubled villian, and Ethan Hawke is a cop who wants to bring him down but understands his position, then we might have a good movie. If you’ve ever seen Michael Douglas in Falling Down, you’ll know the kind of movie I’m talking about.

Conclusion!

The number 15 comes up a lot when it comes to remakes. Batman Begins was 15 years after the first Batman, Rocky Balboa was 15 years after the last Rocky, Smallville began its series 15 years after the last Superman movie. It seems like 15 is a magic number when it comes to nostalgic sentiments.   

But in the face of growing support for independent movies, Netflix, and YouTube, movie makers need to realize that they aren’t dealing with the same audience as 15 years ago. This new audience won’t put up with bad sequals because they have easy access to quality independently developed films that are beginning to find a great deal of funding. The days where a production house could release any trash and expect people to watch are over. Once digital distribution becomes widely available, the choice between watching a bad Spiderman 5 and a good independent film will be an easy one to make.

As I was visiting cnnsi.com to catch up on the Cavs-Spurs NBA finals series, the latest indication of America’s annual summer addiction to football was pressed up against the anger portion of my brain.  The Bengal’s star wide receiver, Chad Johnson, raced a horse in a charity event recently.  He wasn’t on the horse, but rather he was running against the horse.

Fortunately he won, because if he lost we would need to sit through a press conference, and trade/retirement rumors, experts opinions on why a horse was faster than him, a certain hold-out because he wants more money but he’s not getting it because he lost to a horse, etc…

But while the headlines say, “Johnson outpaces a horse”, its just not true.  He was given a 100 meter head start.  Granted, I probably wouldn’t be able to run the length of the race, let alone outrun a horse, but thats not the point.  Why are the headlines worded, without question, that Johnson was faster than a horse?

…And why are we still pitting ourselves in these man vs. beast competitions?  Just look around…we won.  We won a long time ago.  We won so bad that we force the opponents into these lop-sided competitions, then we cut them up and turn their hooves into glue.

Okay I’m gonna go calm down.