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Movie guru Roger Ebert didn't have much good to say about digital projection. Poor lightning, pixelated displays, washed out colors. To me it sounds like the problems I have seen with DLP projectors for the home. Thats why I went and got a nice analog CRT hdtv for my home movie viewing =) I think I will stick to nice analog film.

...you'll find Ebert's review here. Frankly, I'd like to get me some of that stuff Katz is smoking.

-Sam

I think much the same thing as you, only I came to the conclusion a bit differently. I first learned about Roger Ebert a few years ago through his online reviews at the Chicago Sun-Times website, and I came to admire him very much; he was (usually) a very lucid writer, and always had something intelligent to say about the movies he reviewed. And, importantly, he seemed to try at all times to enjoy all the movies he watched. He usually managed to find something good to say, even about a movie he didn't particularly care for. He was very different, refreshingly different, from Pauline Kael and all of her third-rate imitators, who always tried to outdo themselves in finding clever put-downs and insults about the movies they reviewed. Occasionally some movie would not sit well with Ebert, and he'd give it a rare one-star (or even no-star) review; his review of Rob Reiner's North is a classic in this regard.

But then I found older Ebert reviews, in old editions of his books and so forth, and I was impressed by how bad they often were. Just to pick an example, somebody track down his original review of Hal Ashby's Being There from twenty years ago, and then compare it to the recent review of it he wrote for his "Great Movies" column on the Sun-Times website. Ebert has definitely improved with age.

And he's lost some weight, too.

He rates each movie with a four-star system in the Chicago Sun Times articles he has written for many years. They are available (and searchable) on the Chicago Sun Times Roger Ebert page.

/. garbage filler at work. Either delete the extra spa ces, or:

click here.

It's called Pitch Black.

My personal position is that character development was so completely absent from the movie that there was no real reason I could find to sympathise with any of the characters. Sure, the world's about to end, but if the world ends and I don't identify with any of the characters in it, the accompanying dramatic flourishes will just seem tacked on. And so they did in LoTR. What can I say? The music was largely of an unimaginative, generic canned orchestral variety. Characters were thrown into the plot in medias res. It had about the Action Scene/Character Development Scene ratio of Commando (but I'll stop my kvetching...)

After seeing this piece of trash, someone pointed me to a review of the movie by Roger Ebert. Here's the link, and below is the first paragraph of the review. It's pretty funny, and it sums up the movie very well:

"Resident Evil" is a zombie movie set in the 21st century and therefore reflects several advances over 20th century films. For example, in 20th century slasher movies, knife blades make a sharpening noise when being whisked through thin air. In the 21st century, large metallic objects make crashing noises just by being looked at.

...

There are a lot of good films out there. We just don't hear about them.

Here's a good flick, Monster's Ball. Perhaps you've heard of this one. There was much ballyhoo about the film last year from news that there's a naked Halle Berry scene, but that aside, it's filled with excellent acting (especially from Berry).

Oddly enough I really haven't heard much of the film since then. Just rave reviews via word of mouth from friends who've seen it and, of course, the above-referenced column by Roger Ebert.

Isn't this quote technically by Graham Greene...

According to Ebert, Greene credited Wells with this speech.

I apologize for reposting this material (from below and with minor changes). I realized after-the-fact that this is the post I was responding to. (Actually, I'm respondiNg to both posts.)

After reading Ebert's review, I agree that Ebert's analysis is a bit more thoughtful than Katz's. Ebert attends to the historical context in which Collateral Damage was produced and faults those critics who judge that movie using post-9/11 cinematic morals. To be fair to Katz, he's not trained as a movie critic (he's someone who cares) and his review seems to be an emotional reaction to what some of us find incredibly repugnant, especially after the destruction of the World Trade Center.

What I find interesting, though, is this knot of temporal displacement

Despite that Collateral Damage was released after the fact of 9/11, some (e.g. Rev. Brian Jordan mentioned in Ebert's review) interpret the movie as an insult to our present sensibilities in light of knowledge we only now possess. This is paradoxical thinking, but by no means does it invalidate the response.

Movies like Collateral Damage, Patriot Games, The Siege, Pearl Harbor, and Die Hard are Hollywood fantasies precisely because no one really believed at the time of their production that the U.S. would fall victim so spectacular a defeat on its own soil. We U.S. citizens, and the rest of the world with us, had almost come to believe we were invicible. All we needed to protect us were the comic-book heroes Hollywood showed to us on the silver screen

9/11 has given the lie to those Hollywood heroes

Emotionally and politcally reactionary responses like Katz's don't disturb me one bit. At least he has feelings and he's amenable to argument. What does disturb me are the slack-ass self-proclaimed nerds and geeks who have nothing better to say than that "with [their] expectations already lowered, the movie didn't really turn out to be that bad."

When obviously intelligent people proclaim their absolute political apathy as a virtue because it allows them to continue without thinking, they have relinquished an opportunity to use their intelligence responsibly.

Such people are fat with self-satisfaction, and very likely enjoying another Hollywood blockbuster is the last thing they should do.

Dear Mr. Katz,

While I realize that your intellectual credibility has cemented itself somewhere around "Nil", I feel obliged to note that wrapping yourself up in a flag will neither increase it nor add any other sort of credibility to your ranting.

Please read Mr. Ebert's review, which tackles the same issues as yours does (Pre/Post 9/11), but does so in a clear, concise, and intelligent manner. Do not be so eager to put on 9/11-tinted glasses in the same manner that you did Columbine-tinted glasses prior to the terrorist attack.

Your references to Black Hawk Down betray your complete lack of familiarity with the history surrounding that mission. Please do some research before using Mogadishu in your writings. It's actually getting to be very worrisome, since so many people have on so many occasions pointed out how absolutely narrow your focus is regarding that event.

You have managed to write a movie review without providing a review. This is a noteworthy feat but, alas, does not enrich any of your readers. Try to do better, next time.

Re-evaluate yourself, immediately.

Regards,
l

Not since The Alamo has there been such an engrossing movie about Americans getting their butts kicked.

I haven't seen BHD but from descriptions I doubt if Americans get their butts kicked more than they did in Oliver Stone's Platoon.

Also, Tell it to the Sparatans, 84C Mopic, The Hanoi Hilton, The Sand Pebbles, The Bridges at Toko-Ri and Custer of the West.

There are any number of cheesy war films about America's triumphs, but for some reason the ones about America's defeats are generally superbe.

Gene Siskel complained that one scene (with the Balrog) was extremly short in the book but played out longer on screen.

You mean Roger Ebert.

Gene Siskel, a film reviewer for the Chicago Tribune, died from a brain tumor in 2000.

Ebert's current partner is Richard Roeper, also a colummnist for the Chicago Sun Times.

Gene Siskel complained that one scene (with the Balrog) was extremly short in the book but played out longer on screen.

You mean Roger Ebert.

Gene Siskel, a film reviewer for the Chicago Tribune, died from a brain tumor in 2000.

Ebert's current partner is Richard Roeper, also a colummnist for the Chicago Sun Times.

Uh... who do you think you are, Roger Ebert?

Say what you like about Roger Ebert, this is a very nice writeup: http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/cst-ftr-lord 19f.html.

Look everyone, Roger Ebert is an anonymous coward posting on slashdot... oh wait.. just some plaigarist i bet. Here is the link this poster should have cited: Ebert's review of LOTR.

porp

I wonder if the diagnosis of "mental retardation" is going down at the same time that the diagnosis of "autism" is going up?

-E

Microsoft sales figures aren't entirely accurate according to this article in the Chicago Sun-Times.

I really hated this movie as I haven't hated a movie in quite some time. I believe the director previously did commercials or music videos or something, and it really shows. Horrendously overdirected and overshot. Super fast cuts and pans. Awful sound cues...

Wilson: "I've served my country for 7 years.. etc"
Hackman: "You don't know the first thing about serving your country!"
Music: Dum DUMMM!!!

And I haven't even gotten to the "PLOT" yet.

*MAJOR SPOILER WARNING**

Our boy has half the Serb army shooting at him, nobody can hit him. Not even the bad ass sniper guy can hit him, when he's perched, stationary on a DAM for cryin out loud... Or how about running through that minefield, hitting all the tripwires. You could actually see debris (ie, shrapnel) flying into him. Not a scratch. Entire minutes tick by where bullets are whizzing right past his head. He only gets detected in the first place 'cuz he yells like an idiot so loud they can hear him hundreds of feet away.

Positive notes: Hackman is decent as usual, and Wilson is watchable. Very cool aerial sequence at the beginning, and some OK action sequences scattered throughout. And of course, it IS a rather timely movie, considering recent events.

Check out Ebert's review, he gave it 1.5 stars. Seriously, this movie is so bad that after a while, I just got numb to the badness of it, and it started to seem almost good again. I think the Katz-bot is playing the underdog again. :)

T he premiere of "Behind Enemy Lines" was held aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. I wonder if it played as a comedy. Its hero is so reckless and its villains so incompetent that it's a showdown between a man begging to be shot, and an enemy that can't hit the side of a Bos-nian barn.

This is not the story of a fugitive trying to sneak through enemy terrain and be rescued, but of a movie character magically transported from one photo opportunity to another.

...

The movie recycles the old howler where hundreds of rounds of ammo miss the hero, but all he has to do is aim and fire, and--pow! another bad guy jerks back, dead. I smiled during the scene where Admiral Reigart is able to use heat-sensitive satellite imagery to look at high-res silhouettes of Burnett stretched out within feet of the enemy. Maybe this is possible. What I do not believe is that the enemies in this scene could not spot the American uniform in a pile of enemy corpses.

Do I need to tell you that the ending involves a montage of rueful grins, broad smiles, and meaningful little victorious nods, scored with upbeat rock music? No, probably not.

The premiere of "Behind Enemy Lines" was held aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. I wonder if it played as a comedy. Its hero is so reckless and its villains so incompetent that it's a showdown between a man begging to be shot, and an enemy that can't hit the side of a Bos-nian barn.

This is not the story of a fugitive trying to sneak through enemy terrain and be rescued, but of a movie character magically transported from one photo opportunity to another.

Owen Wilson stars as Burnett, a hot-shot Navy flier who "signed up to be a fighter pilot--not a cop on a beat no one cares about." On a recon mission over Bosnia, he and his partner Stackhouse (Gabriel Macht) venture off mission and get digital photos of a mass grave and illegal troop movements. It's a Serbian operation in violation of a fresh peace treaty, and the Serbs fire two missiles to bring the plane down.

The plane's attempts to elude the missiles supply the movie's high point. The pilots eject. Stackhouse is found by Tracker (Vladimir Mashkov), who tells his commander Lokar (Olek Krupa) to forget about a big pursuit and simply allow him to track Burnett. That sets up the cat-and-mouse game in which Burnett wanders through open fields, stands on the tops of ridges and stupidly makes himself a target, while Tracker is caught in one of those nightmares where he runs and runs but just can't seem to catch up.

Back on the USS Vinson, Admiral Reigart (Gene Hackman) is biting his lower lip. He wants to fly in and rescue Burnett, but is blocked by his NATO superior, Admiral Piquet (Joaquim de Almeida)--a Frenchman who is so devious he substitutes French NATO troops for Americans in a phony rescue mission, and calls them off just when Burnett is desperately waving from a pickup area. Bet you a shiny new dime that when this movie plays in France, Admiral Piquet becomes an Italian.

The first-time director is John Moore, who has made lots of TV commercials, something we intuit in a scene where Reigart orders Burnett to proceed to another pick-up area, and Burnett visualizes fast-motion whooshing tracking shots up and down mountains and through valleys before deciding, uh-uh, he ain't gonna do that.

What Burnett does do is stroll through Bosnia like a bird watcher, exposing himself in open areas and making himself a silhouette against the skyline. He's only spotted in the first place because when his buddy is cornered, he's hiding safely but utters a loud involuntary yell and then starts to run up an exposed hillside. First rule of not getting caught: No loud involuntary yells within the hearing of the enemy.

This guy is a piece of work. Consider the scene where Burnett substitutes uniforms with a Serbian fighter. He even wears a black ski mask covering his entire face. He walks past a truck of enemy troops, and then what does he do? Why, he removes the ski mask, revealing his distinctive blond hair, and then he turns back toward the truck so we can see his face, in case we didn't know who he was. How did this guy get through combat training? Must have been a social promotion to keep him with his age group.

At times Burnett is pursued by the entire Serbian army, which fires at him with machine guns, rifles and tanks, of course never hitting him. The movie recycles the old howler where hundreds of rounds of ammo miss the hero, but all he has to do is aim and fire, and--pow! another bad guy jerks back, dead. I smiled during the scene where Admiral Reigart is able to use heat-sensitive satellite imagery to look at high-res silhouettes of Burnett stretched out within feet of the enemy. Maybe this is possible. What I do not believe is that the enemies in this scene could not spot the American uniform in a pile of enemy corpses.

Do I need to tell you that the ending involves a montage of rueful grins, broad smiles, and meaningful little victorious nods, scored with upbeat rock music? No, probably not.

And of course we get shots of the characters and are told what happened to them after the story was over--as if this is based on real events. It may have been inspired by the adventures of Air Force pilot Scott O'Grady, who was rescued after being shot down over Bosnia in 1995, but based on real life, it's not.

Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

Take a look at some other reviews - most said this movie was junk.
For example, Ebert gave it only 1.5 stars

Converting from R to PG-13 results in the loss of nudity and language, but you'd probably keep all the same levels of violence. Roger Ebert rants about this all the time.

From his Movie Answer-Man column on November 4th:
The fundamental problem with the MPAA is that it avoids making any kind of common-sense evaluation of a film, and simply counts f-words and evaluates nudity. ''Waking Life,'' one of the most affirmative and challenging films I can imagine for smart teenagers, gets the R rating, while the thriller ''Domestic Disturbance,'' which shows a small child exposed to a murder, an incineration, the beating of his mother (leading to a miscarriage) and the beating of his father, after which the kid himself causes an electrocution, gets the PG-13--presumably because there is no nudity and the language stays below the cut-off point. What sane parent would prefer their teenager to see ''Domestic Disturbance'' rather than "Waking Life''?

To me, this is absurdity. Parents cannot rely on these crap ratings. If you are truly concerned about your children/family, you need to watch the movie yourself beforehand and then make an honest judgement.

Converting from R to PG-13 results in the loss of nudity and language, but you'd probably keep all the same levels of violence. Roger Ebert rants about this all the time.

From his Movie Answer-Man column on November 4th:
The fundamental problem with the MPAA is that it avoids making any kind of common-sense evaluation of a film, and simply counts f-words and evaluates nudity. ''Waking Life,'' one of the most affirmative and challenging films I can imagine for smart teenagers, gets the R rating, while the thriller ''Domestic Disturbance,'' which shows a small child exposed to a murder, an incineration, the beating of his mother (leading to a miscarriage) and the beating of his father, after which the kid himself causes an electrocution, gets the PG-13--presumably because there is no nudity and the language stays below the cut-off point. What sane parent would prefer their teenager to see ''Domestic Disturbance'' rather than "Waking Life''?

To me, this is absurdity. Parents cannot rely on these crap ratings. If you are truly concerned about your children/family, you need to watch the movie yourself beforehand and then make an honest judgement.

EXACTLY. When other people control what you watch, that is censorship. With the technology to be self-censoring, the T&A police will be irrelevant. It's nice to see morality become a personal issue instead of a cultural one, again. OTOH the MPAA (the body in Hollywood that controls ratings) is probably going to fight this because "Junior can still see the movie uncensored", if mom and dad happen to forget to set up the censoring.

Roger Ebert is going to be thrilled by this, and it's always good to keep him happy, lest he eat the Earth :)

You forgot Roger Ebert!

Chicago Sun-Times: 1.5 stars

Gee, thanks, Ebert.

Why don't you at least link to his review instead of quoting without attributing it?

anyways for everyone else go check it out, it's a funny read.

For a fresh look at one way globalization negatively affects the third world without attempting to attach a media buzzword to the WTC attacks, see the film "Life and Debt," playing in Chicago and various other cities. It shows in detail how Jamaica's economy has been crippled by IMF loans, and how the average Jamaican lives and works. Quite a startling view of one of the negative aspects of globalization. Given a 3-star rating by Ebert in an excellent review that begins like Katz's, asking questions defining the scope of a nebulous topic, but then actually goes to attempt to answer those questions instead of further shrouding it "in hysteria and knee-jerk cant".

To all of the foaming-at-the-mouth geeks out there who have never left the U.S. or, god-forbid, travelled to a Muslim country: Shut the fuck up. Please. I know you all think you're geniuses, and can espouse the proper doctrine for solving the world's toughest problems--like Israel v. Palestine, or which is the toughest S.O. unit, Delta Force or the Pipe-Hitting Niggaz down the block--but you forget that you're just a bunch of fucking losers.

Fast times at Motorola

IBM advances chip speeds - Tech News - CNET...

In that vein, here's Ebert's review. I'm sorry to say that I trust Ebert's opinions more than Katz's, as they more often reflect my own. He (Ebert) gave it his fairly common three-star rating, so I think it's probably worth watching as a rental.

A lot of us need some escapism these days, but I don't think that the best place to be finding it is in a movie that pokes fun at muslims and considers their one of their contries (Malaysia) inconsequential.

Ebert's point that I liked the best was that, "If the Malaysians made a comedy about the assassination of the president of the United States because of his opposition to slavery, it would seem approximately as funny to us as "Zoolander" would seem to them."

Comedies like this add to the dislike of America that was exploited by a few crazy lunatics to lead to the Sep. 11 tragedy; how sad is it to see that the first big comedy to come out of the States after those events just pours salt on the wounds of the have-not countries of the world; especially since Malaysia has tried very hard to improve its possition in the world (witness the Petronas towers and the F1 grand prix).

In light of these concerns I think that those who are sensitive to the pain that certain American attitudes can cause to the people of other nations would do well to avoid this film.

I was in a training class all day Tuesday and our only contact to the outside world news was through the 'net (/. and a local newspaper site were about the only thing we could hit that had any reliable news.)

Don't sell yourselves short. The dedication of you guys, and the /. community in general, greatly helped keep many of us informed.

I don't feel like making any comments... None are necessary. Here are the last few news sites I can find that aren't flooded offline.

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution - (grade: C+) "Maybe Darwin was wrong: this remake shows no sign of evolution."

• Chicago Tribune - "...a rouser, a screaming-banshee fun house."

• CNN.com - "...this is one really bad script."

• Deseret News (Salt Lake City) - (3 stars) "...when it's good, it comes close to being great."

• E! Online - (grade: C+) "...offers an eye-appealing world but a truly disappointing story."

• Entertainment Weekly - (grade: C+) "...[features] everything...but imagination."

• L.A. Weekly - "...underwritten..."

• Los Angeles Times - "...over-plotted and under-dramatized..."

• Mr. Showbiz - (rating: 2/5) "...despite its presentation, the film is so very ordinary, without urgency or revelation."

• New York Times - "...both a gas and distant, a toy sealed in its unbreakable box."

• People - "The fault lies not in the stars here but in the script."

• Roger Ebert - (2.5 stars) "I expected more."

• Salon - "...stops far too short of being completely seductive."

• San Francisco Chronicle - "...an amazing display of imagination."

• TV Guide - (2.5 out of 5 stars) "...sorely deficient on the story front."

• USA Today - (3 out of 4 stars) "...[the costumes] allow the power of the performer inside the ape gear to break on through."

• Search the Movie Review Query Engine

Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" wants to be all things to all men, and all apes. It's an action picture and a satire of an action picture. It's a comedy and then it gets serious. It's a social satire and then backs away from pushing that angle too far. It even has a weird intra-species romantic triangle in it. And it has a surprise ending that I loved, even though Matt Drudge spoiled it last weekend with a breathless "scoop."

The movie could have been more. It could have been a parable of men and animals, as daring as "Animal Farm." It could have dealt in social commentary with a sting, and satire that hurt. It could have supported, or attacked, the animal rights movement. It could have dealt with the intriguing question of whether a man and a gorilla having sex is open-mindedness, or bestiality (and, if bestiality, in both directions?).

It could have, but it doesn't. It's a cautious movie, earning every letter and numeral of its PG-13 rating. Intellectually, it's science fiction for junior high school boys.

I expected more. I thought Burton would swing for the fence. He plays it too safe, defusing his momentum with little nudges to tell you he knows it's only a movie. The 1968 "Planet of the Apes" was made before irony became an insurance policy. It made jokes, but it took itself seriously. Burton's "Planet" has scenes that defy us to believe them (his hero survives two bumpy crash-landings that look about as realistic as the effects in his "Mars Attacks!"). And it backs away from any kind of risky complexity in its relationships.

The key couple consists of Leo (Mark Wahlberg), who is the human hero, and Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), who is the Eleanor Roosevelt of the apes. They're attracted to each other but don't know what to do about it, and the screenplay gives them little help. Leo is also supposed to be linked romantically, I guess, with a curvy blond human named Daena (Estella Warren), but her role has been so abbreviated that basically all she does is follow along looking at Leo either significantly or winsomely, as circumstances warrant. At the end, he doesn't even bid her a proper farewell.

Leo, to be sure, is not one for effusive emotional outbursts. He's played by Wahlberg as a limited and narrow person with little imagination, who never seems very surprised by anything that happens to him--like, oh, to take a random example, crash-landing on a planet where the apes rule the humans. He's a space jockey type, trained in macho self-abnegation, who is great in a crisis but doesn't offer much in the way of conversation. His basic motivation seems to be to get himself off the planet, and to hell with the friends he leaves behind; he's almost surly sometimes as he leads his little band through the wilderness.

The most "human" character in the movie is, in fact, the chimpanzee Ari, who believes all species were created equal, casts her lot with the outcast humans, and tells Leo, "you're sensitive--a welcome quality in a man." Helena Bonham Carter invests this character with warmth, personality and distinctive body language; she has a way of moving that kids itself.

There's also juice in a character named Limbo (Paul Giamatti), a scam artist who has a deal for everyone, and a lot of funny one-liners. That he sounds like a carnival pitch-man should not be held against him.

The major ape characters include the fearsome Gen. Thade (Tim Roth), his strong but occasionally thoughtful gorilla lieutenant Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan), and Sen. Sandar (David Warner), who is a parliamentary leader and Ari's father. There's also a cameo for Charlton Heston, as a wise old ape who inevitably introduces a gun into the plot and has a curmudgeonly exit line. Watching the apes is fun all during the movie, while watching the humans usually isn't; the movie works hard to bring the apes to life, but unwisely thinks the humans can take care of themselves.

It's interesting that several different simian species co-exist in the planet's ape society. It may be a little hard to account for that, given the logic of the movie, although I will say no more. One major change between this film and the earlier one is that everyone--apes and humans--speak English. The movie explains why the apes speak English, but fudges on how they learned to speak at all.

The movie is great-looking. Rick Baker's makeup is convincing even in the extreme closeups, and his apes sparkle with personality and presence. The sets and locations give us a proper sense of alien awe, and there's one neat long shot of the ape city-mountain that looks, when you squint a little, like Xanadu from "Citizen Kane." There are lines inviting laughs ("Extremism in the defense of apes is no vice") and others unwisely inviting groans ("If you show me the way out of here--I promise I'll show you something that will change your life forever"). And a priceless moment when Leo wants to stop the squabbling among his fugitive group of men and apes and barks: "Shut up! That goes for all species!"

"Planet of the Apes" is the kind of movie that you enjoy at times, admire at times, even really like at times, but is it necessary? Given how famous and familiar Franklin J. Schaffner's 1968 film is, Tim Burton had some kind of an obligation to either top it, or sidestep it. Instead, he pays homage. He calls this version a "reimaging," and so it is, but a reinvention might have been better. Burton's work can show a wild and crazed imagination, but here he seems reined in. He's made a film that's respectful to the original, and respectable in itself, but that's not enough. Ten years from now, it will be the 1968 version that people are still renting.

Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

Let's make a tradition of this!

If you haven't seen JP3 yet, and you want to actually read a real review of the movie and not the stupid shit that Jon Katz likes to spew out, then check out Roger Ebert's review. I think his review of JP3 is very well done.

You know, you may be right - I don't know much about Shinto.

But when I think about the plot, aside from the visuals, it still wasn't anywhere as bad as Katz makes it out to be. The times when you totally forget that the characters are CG are the times when you are totally engrossed in the story.

And do you really need to have every plot element explained to you in detail? I *like* movies that leave you with questions when you leave the theatre.

I think that Roger Ebert's review hits most of the salient points.

And I stand by my original statements. The visiuals were simply amazing and worth the price of admission to me.

I also disagree that the movie is a fairy tale with a sci fi veneer. The technological/societal questions it raises about where we are headed are absolutely central to this film.

In any case, the question of soul isn't what i'm primarily interested in here. I was interested in seeing more attention paid to the question of crossing the line from simulating emotion to actual emotion. But i was expecting too much, because this would be asking the movie to highlight one of its own holes. A hole that it can't possibly close because we are fundamentally ignorant on the subject.

This was a great movie by the way and Salon's review is +5 insightful.

Good movies don't need explaining, and this movie needs a lot of it. The parent post saved me the hassle of my own post listing all the plot holes you could drive a truck through. More than one reviewer mentioned that this movie has all the "Artificial" but none of the "Intelligence" (e.g. see Ebert)

There is a very good NY times article that covers all the problems that Kubrick had with his original ideas - problems that Spielberg glossed over. Their were reasons why Kubrick wasn't able to get this project rolling, and all of them show up in this movie. Interesting ideas and a worthy goal, but the implementation falls short.

I was disappointed in the ending. The character of David's mother is not congruous from the character at the beginning with that of the "final day." I also felt like I was left with an "emotional vacuum" created by bringing back his mother the way they did. "Overworked" would be a another good description.

Good Sci-Fi is when you can watch the movie again to pick up all the nuances of a character. But as the parent post pointed out, this movie won't have any "replay" value. To put this on the level of "2001" like what Katz does is absurb.

I would recommend the movie because it is visually interesting, but I would wait for it to show up at the local "dollar theatre". But this movie should not be called a "classic."

Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source.

When seen in context with the Mobile Internet Toolkit EULA (which also deliberately misconstrues the Open Source "use") all of this reveals that the mere fact of a moral debate between MS and Open Source advocates is all that MS wants, and sufficient for their victory. More precisely, MS is interested in:

1. Tarnishing the "pure" reputation of Open Source so that they may:
2. Eventually forbid all MS developers (and consumers?) from using Open Source products; and
3. Continue to embrace and extend the code of other businesses, researchers, and government in classic fashion; without
4. Facing strong political pressure from businesses, consumers, and the US government.

-Renard

#include "apology for jumping to conclusions if I've completely missed something here"

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

If that's the case, I have to seriously question the ethics of the reporter. It should be pretty obvious that, in general, Microsoft's comments have primarily been directed at the GPL and Linux. Microsoft, like many others, has thrown around the term "open source" without really understanding all of the intricacies of the situation (they seem to suffer from the classic "open source = Linux = GPL" fallacy).

While I'm sure they probably don't like BSD from a competative standpoint, I don't think they're especially opposed to the license. For example, the following is a quote from the same interview answer where Ballmer calls Linux a cancer:

The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody.

That, to me, certainly sounds like a request by Ballmer for more government software projects to be released under a BSD-like license instead of a GPL-like one.

Not all the credits panned it. Roger Ebert gave it 3 stars, in recognition that while the plot is mindless, it's got some great action sequences and cool set pieces.

Even Roger Ebert noticed the anime-ish style of Atlantis and pointed it out in his "Thumbs Up" review last weekend. And he even specifically mentions the Nadia discussion in today's Chicago SunTimes review.

Even Roger Ebert noticed the anime-ish style of Atlantis and pointed it out in his "Thumbs Up" review last weekend. And he even specifically mentions the Nadia discussion in today's Chicago SunTimes review.

Ameritech was telling people in Illinois "never" too, but now it looks like they aren't going to be able to say that to the majority of their customers. The Illinois legislature has just passed some new laws (which I believe are awaiting the governor's signature) that are said to be some of the most consumer-friendly telecommunications legislation in the country. You can read more about it in this Chicago Sun-Times article but the part that is germane to this discussion is the provision that "SBC/Ameritech and Verizon must offer high-speed Internet service to 80 percent of customers by Jan. 1, 2005." If they can do it in Illinois, maybe your state legislature could be convinced to do it too.

It's worth noting that Ameritech has always pretty much had their way in Illinois (Chicago has had some of the smallest local calling areas in the country for a major city) but they have angered the state lawmakers by letting their service decline to almost third-world levels over the past year. In some cases it has taken over a month to get a phone service restored after an outage, in parts of Ameritech's service area.

As I understand it, this all started when SBC bought Ameritech and transferred or gave early retirement to many of the more competent and experienced Ameritech employees, with the predictable result. They then tried to bully state legislators to get their way, a tactic that may work in Texas but that sure doesn't fly here in the Midwest (especially when the constitutents are screaming about the poor service they are receiving).

So, in Illinois the legislation was passed in part as a response to unbridled corporate greed, but there is no reason to believe that legislators in other states would not be receptive to passing similar legislation, if enough people were to ask for it. Unless, of course, your state is one of those where the phone companies can in effect buy a legislator!

The above is, of course, just my opinion. If I am uninformed on any point, please feel free to post a correction.

Yeah, the key is to find a movie reviewer who's taste consistently agrees with your own. I got put off seeeing a lot movies I'd probably have enjoyed before I also settled on Roger Ebert's web site as the only one I pay attention too.

http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert.html

Honestly, I find Mike Myers pretty annoying in that he's too scared to use his own voice in *anything* and is still stuck in that improv schtick.

And the other, by Roger Ebert who gave it 4 stars.

I'll wait for the video.

They even had an article up in the Chicago Sun Times about it.


Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!