Open endings may not be the hottest thing in a society that craves to be beaten over the head with over-exposition (exhibit 1: most of hollywood's films). Don't get me wrong: I enjoy as much as the next guy a good ol' Die Hard or Armaggeddon, silly movies that are a good pastime.

I won't add to the countless analysis that are out there, some impossibly detailed, that indicate that, yes, Tony was indeed killed. I agree. But that's not the point. Had David Chase shown the killing, it would have had to be a complete Tarantino-style bloodbath to match the expectations around that final sequence, and it would have been completely out of place. The more muted, "just shoot the guy" would have felt disappointing (try to imagine it, it's not that hard).

So, the point? The point is that, even if Tony wasn't shot it'd still have been a good ending. Suppose he rose through the ranks to become the head of all the families? Check Phil Leotardo's fate. Or Johnny Sack's. The last two seasons of the series showed us the ending in technicolor. For these guys, criminals and sociopaths, there was no escape.

And that's what the last ten seconds of darkness were about.

With Journey still ringing in our ears, all the way.

The Matrix Revolutions aside (I still think my own matrix "abridged" script was better), the trilogy still deserves a lot of credit for breaking ground in a number of ways for the mainstream of cinema (since most of what makes the movies special had already been invented one way or another, particularly in Anime), and The Matrix remains a pretty good movie, flaws and all. I even have a soft spot for the other two, if only because they have noisy, entertaining chase sequences and some really impressive special effects. And no, I'm not talking about the burly brawl, which already looked fake at standard resolution (hey, perhaps they fixed it!).

Anyway, we'll see how this all looks at 1080p. Some movies (King Kong, Serenity) look amazing. Others (Superman Returns)... eeehh... not so much. All depends on the transfer I think. Color, brightness, digital filters and other obscure settings also play a huge role with HD content, especially HD-DVD/BluRay content.

One disadvantage: the "bonus content" is all on a regular resolution DVD (480p). This includes things like The Animatrix, and it's a shame. At least the Animatrix should be on HD no? Perhaps the movies themselves have some of that shiny picture-in-picture documentaries that I keep seeing trailers of. :-)

Hm. That's much better. :)

Just saw the first episode, "First Responders," of CBS's The Unit, created by David Mamet and Shawn Ryan (creator of the still astonishingly good "The Shield").

It was really something.

Favorite quote of the first episode: "You, you and you: panic. The rest of you come with me."

Highly recommended!

A hypothetical comment from Ralph Wiggum to Kim Bauer.

I mean, really. Just how many bad guys are there in the world? With capabilities that at this point almost defy the laws of physics, never mind mere human legalities. Not only these hypothetical bad guys show up everywhere, they do it faster, and better equipped, than everyone else. The plot get crazier and crazier, even without getting Kim chased by cougars, which is saying a lot.

And even so, I find myself unable to stop watching it, with guilty fascination, as if looking at a train wreck in slow-motion, rolling my eyes, literally, every 20 minutes or so, and hoping that we may get to see another one of those great Jack-Bauer-action sequences.

And maybe wait for another cougar to show up... :)

On the plus side, the West Wing had a great season finale.

PS: nothing like a rant to get those blogging juices flowing. :)

"[And whereas the whale expressed bewilderment at materializing several miles above the surface of the planet...], the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was 'Oh no, not again.'

Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now."

The H2G2 movie, as it happens, will be released on April 29 this year. Here's the trailer.

Can't wait!

PS: btw, I'm not sure if Douglas Adams gets enough credit as a Science Fiction writer. He should. H2G2 is fantastic as a piece of SF, and we forget that it was written more than 25 years ago.

Human history at last took off around 50,000 years ago, at the time of what I have termed our Great Leap Forward. The earliest definite signs of that leap come from East African sites with standardized stone tools and the first preserved jewelry (ostrich-shell beads). Similar developments soon appear in the Near East and in southeastern Europe, where abundant artifacts are associated with follu modern skeletons of people termed Cro-Magnons. Thereafter, the garbage preserved at archaeological sites rapidly becomes more and more interesting and leaves no doubt that we are dealing with biologically and behaviorally modern humans.

BTW, this book is great, although a bit infuriating in a strange way: As I read it, I can't help but agree with his logic, at almost every step. I want to dissent, damn it! :)

A reporter on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Jan. 25 2005.

Anyway, so we each got a copy and then I got other books as well, including Collapse, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, both by Jared Diamond, Hitler's Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil's Pact by John Cornwell, and finally iPod & iTunes: the missing manual, which I got mainly because I want to expedite the process of understanding what the iPod can do, extensions people are writing, etc, and I have no doubt that most if not all of this information can be found online, but it's all dispersed and if I can get a good chunk of it in a couple of hours, then all the better.

You could say that all of this plus the iPod was some sort of delayed self-Christmas present. You could also say that I went on a binge. But I prefer the first explanation. :)

PS: Throughout the trip I've been raving about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which I read a while ago and is truly fantastic--but I hadn't commented on.

• It is possible to jump off the roof of a four-story building and land on concrete, then proceeding to continue your pursuit
• If after making a karate jump on the roof of a two-story floor you are shot in the chest, and then you fall to the ground below the worst you can expect is getting wet with the sprinklers that will activate just as you regain consciousness (your kevlar vest saves you from the bullet)
• If you are flung from a Dodge Viper GT racing at high speed and crash into a window you'll be able not only to continue the chase, but also to catch up to the Dodge Viper GT in only a few seconds, on foot, and silently.
• If you make Karate moves while you're being shot at, the flow of time will slow down so you can see the bullets fly past you.
• If you crash a Dodge Viper GT against a concrete wall, you can expect the concrete wall to be destroyed and yourself to be uninjured and ready to continue a fight. If you are a good guy, however, you will have a shard of glass stuck in your abdomen. Removing it will not impede your movement, though.
• and on and on and on and on...

Why is it that they have to be just so over the top? The actresses, all of them beautiful, and talented, seem to be having fun, and this is made obvious throughout. Ah-ha. Was that the point of the movie? That the'd enjoy their residuals?

Sigh. One of my favorite movies of all time is Heat. You know why? because it was zero-bullshit. It didn't require me to suspend disbelief from here to Canarsie to buy the plot (Note: movies like MIB, Armaggeddon and ID:4 require suspension of disbelief for entering the theater, so it's okay that they are over the top :)). One of my favorite scenes in Heat is the shootout outside the bank. Cars don't explode (it's pretty difficult to make gas tanks explode, maybe because they've been designed to avoid that). People actually run for cover in the face of M-16 fire. On the opposite end, another favorite is the typical Simpsons scene with a leave falling off a tree, hitting a truck, and making it explode.)

So, comment to Hollywood: read Newton's Principia. You know, 17th-century physics. Einstein not required. If you can't get through it, just remember:

• A body remains at rest, or moves in a straight line (at a constant velocity), unless acted upon by a net outside force.
• The acceleration of an object of constant mass is proportional to the resultant force acting upon it.
• Whenever one body exerts force upon a second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force upon the first body.

This sounds snobbish, doesn't it. Well, it may sound like that. MI:2 was over the top as well.

How about making women real protagonists, without having to behave as if they were in a casting call for Baywatch? Uh? Is this too revolutionary?

Yes, it may be that what really pissed me off was the beer-commercial aesthetics of the movie. I generally ignore the misanthropic inclinations of Bond movies, although they do piss me off as well. Why is it that they seem to be more of an issue with Charlie's Angels? Not sure. Maybe it's just that with Bond they are more of a sideshow, and Bond himself isn't a prize either (and Bond women are generally players in their own right, rather than directed by the all-knowing all-seeing Charlie), or maybe it's that at least the beer-commercial thing is not a big item.

However, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle isn't something I'd recommend.

Unless you want to see a two-hour long beer commercial.

PS: I also watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 which is a wacky, wacky B-movie that made me laugh out loud in spite of myself. Crazy characters, no plot, and no pretense of one either. Highly recommended.

Long-time readers already know that I'm not much of a gaming fan. I don't even bother with most games, and the only ones I've played with interest have been those of the Doom/Quake series and the C&C series (and Myst too). I didn't play Doom/Quake for that long, probably until I got bored of fragging zombies with BFGs, but C&C games only got repetitive after several months.

Not that I have a lot of time to play games anyway, but over the years they have gone from entertainment to a good way to get everything off my mind for a while, along with books and movies. (Not all entertainment guarantees that--neither do all books or movies or games for that matter. :))

Enter The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth, which I talked about in September, when I found out it was going to be released. It was finally released last week (it was delayed from its original November release date) and I got it on Friday.

First I thought: "Wow". Then "D'Oh" after I was killed.

The "Wow"/"D'Oh" sequence continued for a while, until I figured out how to actually win one game. Aside from a couple of skirmishes, I've been playing the "Good" Campaign (essentially playing the story of the books--there's also the "Evil" campaign in which you control the forces of Sauron).

The game is astonishingly well done. Great interface (the first consistently good use of circular menus I've seen anywhere), well-balanced sides, excellent graphics and sound, plus you get to actually play a story that you know, with the characters you know.

The simulation of combat is great, both on foot and horseback--A high point is to use an army of Rohirrim to run over an incoming band of Orcs. :)

The resource gathering system (a weak point in many RTS games) is good as well, and it fits with the story. Sauron's and Isengard forces, for example, obtain resources by chopping down woods, while the Good guys (Gondor, Rohan) do it by farming. (Tolkien was probably the first Fantasy/SF writer to worry a lot about the ecology/technology balance, and he mostly put technology in the hand of the bad guys).

Aside from the usual armies, there are also "heroes" which are the characters of the books. Heroes have powers that activate with rank (regular soldiers only increase in ability to what they already do). Sometimes they deviate from the story, but that's not a big deal (in Moria, Gandalf can survive against the Balrog, for example). Then, at crucial times, the action is mixed with sections from the movies for what you're doing (say, the arrival of the Elves at Helm's Deep while preparing for the defense). This is getting pretty close to a a mix of RTS with action RPG.

Anyway, if you like wargames (or even Role-Playing Games), you should check this game out (if you like C&C, it's almost guaranteed that you will like this game too--there's even an option to activate a C&C-like input interface).

PS: it is sad that Electronic Arts treats its employees badly. The games these people create are excellent, and they deserve better.

1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the "shuffle" command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.
5. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You don't have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you'd like.

Here's my list:

1. Light My Fire - The Doors
   
2. Can't Not - Alanis Morissette
   
3. Help! - The Beatles
   
4. Great Escape (Acoustic) - Guster
   
5. Pride (In The Name Of Love) (ZooTV Live Transmission, Houston 14/10/1992) - U2
   
6. Como un Bolu - Bersuit
   
7. High Voltage (Hybrid Theory EP) - Linkin Park
   
8. Shattered - The Rolling Stones
   
9. Symphony #5 in C Minor (3rd movement) - Beethoven
   
10. Learning To Fly (Live) - Pink Floyd

PS: for the record :), I did skip "duplicate artists." I think it definitely makes sense, considering that for some artists I have hundreds of tracks and others rate only a few, or a few dozen (There I go, trying to "make sense" out of something like this. The bane of logic). I'm surprised to discover that skipping randomly through my entire music collection is oddly addictive...

About two years ago I was walking through Dublin and I noticed that the then-new U2 Best of... collection had gone on sale. So I got it (of course). Yesterday I was about to go into town but the terrible weather discouraged me, and I ended up going today, around noon.

Since I appear to be attuned to releases that interest me (or my subconscious knows more than I do and is in charge, take your pick) I happen to wander into town when the new U2 album has just been released, three days before the rest of the world. Eventually I walk up to HMV and go in, get the Collector's Edition of HTDAAB, which contains an extra track on the CD, Fast Cars---a song that made me thought of Arabian, Flamenco, and Indian styles of music, all at the same time (!)---a DVD, and a book with photos and writings by the band. I don't even look at the price, something that happens to me with certain categories of goods which my head apparently refuses to consider from a financial point of view, such as with almost any kind of book--this is why I avoid browsing bookstores, I go in, walk out five minutes later and somehow I've bought a book or two. But I digress...

I put the package in my backpack, and walk out.

And at the door my first thought is: What the...?

Right there, obviously just arriving, are the Macnas U2 heads (Macnas is a performance arts group out of Galway), which first made their appearance in the ZooTV tour. So naturally I got my camera out and snapped a few pictures, such as the one above (click on it to see a larger version), and here are a few more: one, two, three, four. Or, as Bono would say: Uno, dos, tres, catorce!

Anyway, such are some of the advantages of living in Dublin and walking Grafton street now and then... :)

PS: if that isn't enough, the latest survey by The Economist says that Ireland is the best place to live in the world, quality-of-life-wise.

Overall ... you get this funny feeling that you've heard this before, somewhere, but of course you haven't, which is one of the U2 trademarks IMO. Some definite whiffs of Electrical Storm, the song released in their second Best of... collection. Also of Always and Summer Rain, songs from one of the Beautiful Day b-sides.

As with most other U2 albums, it starts with a bang (Vertigo) and then mellows out a bit, with bursts of energy in between (such as City of Blinding Lights--which seems to be this album's Where the Streets Have No Name-- and All Because of You), and u2-style love songs, like Miracle Drug and Original of the Species. Then there's Love and Peace or Else not only great rock n' roll, but the political track of the album. Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own feels like a worthy follow-up to Kite from ATYCLB (For example, the line "You're the reason why the opera is in me" is clearly a reference to Bono's father).

One prediction: City of Blinding Lights (which refers to New York City, I think) will sound great live when the tour kicks off next year. I can already imagine an entire stadium singing "Oh, you look so beautiful tonight."

Bonus: via Anne, I discovered Do Make Say Think. They sound like I feel at times. Very cool.

Later: I knew that the beginning of City of Blinding Lights reminded me of something: the beginning of Sweetness Follows from R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People.