Morning Coffee 168 - E3 Edition

Yesterday, was Microsoft's big reveal for Xbox 360 this coming holiday season. If you're not a gamer, please move along, nothing to see here. Also note, I work @ Microsoft, but not in the games division so this is only my thoughts on yesterday's announcements.

• While several "hard-core" games were showcased - Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5, Fable 2, Gears of War 2 and the surprise announcement that Final Fantasy XIII - the rest of yesterday's briefing screamed "we're not just for hard core gamers!"  Call it the Wii effect. Even the title of the main E3 Press Release was Gameplay for Every Passion.
• Honestly, my favorite announcement from yesterday wasn't game related at all - it was the announcement of Netflix on Xbox 360. I've been hoping for a flat rate subscription plan since Video Marketplace first launched. Soon, I'll have it.
• I'm not sure what I think of the New Xbox Experience yet. On the one hand, the whole cartoon avatar thing isn't really my bag. Plus, isn't it quite the Mii clone? However, the ability to share photo and video viewing experiences - even with cartoony avatars - and the flashy + engaging navigation mechanism looks like a real improvement. Here's hoping they improve the performance of navigating hard drive content (games library, gamer pictures, etc).
• Congrats to my friend Matt who's been very involved in the development of the new Primetime game show channel. I'm not that interested in "1 vs 100", but I think the potential of that game model is pretty huge. If they created a Jeopardy game for Primetime, I think my parents would by a 360 right away.
• Music / party games seem to have been the primary focus of the press briefing. I'm definitely getting Rock Band 2 (AC/DC woot!) and I think my wife would like Lips (she usually sings when we play Rock Band). I want to see how the "wireless interactive microphones: Featuring stylish interactive motion sensors and lights" will work. Guitar Hero World Tour looks cool too, but I'm not re-buying all new music hardware.
• You're in the Movies looks like a hoot, plus it doesn't really look like a game, so much as a "party activity". For example, while there are minigame winners or losers, "winning" takes a back seat to the final movie result. I'm guessing this will be big with the kids.
• Speaking of kids, Patrick is really looking forward to Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts. He loves anything related to building, and building fantastic vehicles is a core part of the gameplay. As for Riley, I think she's getting old enough to enjoy Viva Pinata - she enjoys watching Patrick and I play - though I'm not sure we need the new Viva Pinata.
• Geometry Wars 2 and Portal: Still Alive, both coming to Xbox Live Arcade. 'nuff said.
• Not really "new" news, but XNA Community Games launches this fall. I've got a creators club membership, so I'm able to experiment with this now - it rocks, though the available games are pretty shall I say "unpolished" at this point.
• Halo Wars not coming until 2009. :(
• No new Bungie news, but their website is counting down to *something* tomorrow. I guess we'll find out then.

You Call This Archaeology?

I know how I'm celebrating my birthday this year. Well, technically the day after my birthday.

I've always been a movie buff and, other than Star Wars, I can't think of a movie series that shaped the way I think about movies and movie making as much as Indiana Jones. I remember well going to see the first three Indiana Jones movies with my father. Of course, now I'm a father, but Patrick and Riley aren't really ready for Indy yet. So they'll have to be content with Lego Indy for a few more years.

Otherwise, here's hoping Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn't suffer from Star Wars prequel-itis.

Morning Coffee 135

• Congrats to Barack Obama for walking away with the Iowa Democratic Caucus, which set turnout records. Frankly, I'm pretty cool with any of the democratic front runners but I think Obama has the best chance of winning in November. I'm not sure Edwards second time around will be any more successful than the last and I believe Clinton would drive the GOP GOTV campaign better than any of the actual GOP candidates would.
• Obviously, I like to play M-rated games like Bioshock and Mass Effect. But I also like games I can play with my kids like Lego Star Wars. There are two new Lego games coming out this year: Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Batman. I can't wait.
• Speaking of gaming, Xbox LIVE had some issues over the holiday break, due to record setting sign-ups and concurrent users. Record setting numbers is a nice problem to have if you're on the business side, but a not-so-nice if you're a customer or work in operations. The XBL GM announced they're offering a "token of appreciation" for everyone's patience - a free XBLA game. Assuming it's not a crappy game, it's a classy move.
• I watched Transformers on HD-DVD last night. Fun movie with lots of action, but man is it dumb. John Turturro is the only real stand-out.
• Dustin Campbell implements cons, cdr and car from Scheme in C# and VB. While of limited production value (Dustin specifically warns readers not to use any of his code), it really demonstrates how different the functional world is from the object/imperative one, right down to the concept of type. Cons doesn't return a tuple, it returns function with two bound variables. (via DNK)

Morning Coffee 102

Seems like a slow week.

• Jules and I went to see the latest Harry Potter movie this past weekend. It's easily the weakest of the six HP stories so far. The first two stories were about discovering this magical world, the next two about discovering Harry's past, and the last two about confronting said past. That leaves OotP as the odd-story-out, mostly bridging from the end of the fourth story to the start of the sixth.
• Speaking of movies, the new movie feature of Mobile Search v2 rocks, though I have two quick suggestions. First, it would be nice to have a time-sorted view of when a given movie is playing. So if it's playing at 4pm at one theater and 4:30pm at another, you'd see them in a list ordered that way. Second, how about an option to buy tickets directly from the phone?
• If you're interested in WPF and 3D, Eric Sink has a series for you.
• Old news, but Windows Home Server RTMed on Monday. I'm really looking forward to this product.
• I was looking for some information on how WCF pumps messages in the service host and I found this post from Maheshwar Jayaraman. Between that post and Reflector, I think I've got a good handle on how ChannelDispatcher works.
• Larry O'Brein calls out three MS Research Projects. Microsoft Research Accelerator is a high-level data-parallel library that targets GPUs. Graph Layout Execution Engine (aka GLEE) is a library for graph layout and viewing. VirtualEarth MapCruncher converts existing maps (PDF and bitmaps) to work with Virtual Earth.
• Ted Neward weighs in on the David Chappell's Korean War REST vs. WS-* analogy. Skim the history lesson, but make sure you read his points about security and reliability interop. WS-* has addressed these areas, so if you need those capabilities, why wouldn't you use WS-* to get them rather than re-invent the wheel? As for the history lesson, Ted does say he thinks software development is more analogous to making war than building a house. He expands on that idea and recommends Robert Greene's The 33 Strategies of War. I want to read the book and mull it over a bit, but I certainly see where Ted's coming from.

Morning Coffee 98

• Morning Coffee was canceled on Thursday and Friday on account of a kidney stone. So not fun. Luckily, it was a little one and it was alone, but I will be listening very closely to my doctor's advice to avoid another.
• Took the kids to see Ratatouille last Tuesday and saw Transformers yesterday with my wife due to fluke babysitter luck. I liked Ratatouille, but I'm not sure it's the 51st best movie of all time. On the other hand, major props for making a kid movie with a significant lack of toy tie-ins. Ratatouille is a better movie that Cars, but I don't see my four year old boy trading in is Lightning McQueen toy car for a Remy the Rat. Transformers on the other hand obviously did not forgo the toy tie-ins! Still, it wasn't bad. Kinda reminded me of The Rock with a bigger budget.
• Micahville listed DevHawk on it's list of 69 Tech Blogs That Don’t Suck. Thanks!
• David Ing boldly writes that C# is getting fat. Or maybe it's just big-boned. My take: no question that integrated query is a big feature that covers a lot of surface area. But given the prevalence of databases and other queriable stores, it's critical to improving programmer productivity. Go read Todd Proebsting's talk on Disruptive Programming Language Technologies. Two of his candidates for disruptive language technologies were Database Integration and Manipulating XML. LINQ neatly covers both.
• According to John Shewchuck, the new BizTalk Services release is available. However, when I click on the "what's new" page, it tells me they're experiencing technical difficulties. (Their error page is Oops.aspx. Funny!)
• Scott Hanselman has Programming Personas 2.0. Who are you? I thought I was and "Order n" Architect (the quote "Where's the whiteboard" is spot on) but my CS background isn't as strong as the persona's.
• Sam Gentile is starting to dig into Concurrency and he has a great list of links that have influenced his design.

Morning Coffee 84

There appear to be several posts from several blogs that have spawned from my discussion about REST with David. I'll catch up on them and respond here in the next day or so. In the meantime...

• Saw PotC: At World's End over the weekend, due to a fluke last minute babysitter availability. It's gotten mediocre reviews, but I liked it. Not as much as the first two, but certainly better than Spiderman 3. June looks fairly bleak @ the box office. We'll probably take the kids to see Surf's Up And Ratatouille. (Remember back when there was only one kids movie per summer?) Evan Almighty might be funny and I remember reading 1408, but I think they're both rentals. The only thing I'm otherwise remotely interested in is Sunshine.
• Speaking of storytelling, Lost and Heroes wrapped their seasons last week. While early on, it looked like Heroes was going to be the new Lost, Lost's season finally was awesome. If you don't watch Lost, you're really missing out on the best show on TV right now. You have eight months to catch up before season four. Heroes may not be lost, but they're keeping the interest up with their online comic book plus while Lost scales back to 16 episodes for each of three more seasons, Heroes is bulking up, adding six "Heroes: Origins" and bringing the total to 30 for next season.
• Larry O'Brien fantasizes about his dream PDC. Aren't there lots of conferences about learning how to "create great applications" on and for the Microsoft/Windows Platform? What about TechEd? (which is where I'll be next week)
• Sam Gentle continues to dig into WF, examining the various ways you can extend the WF runtime by replacing the persistence, loader and scheduler services. He's also taking my advice to scrap ExternalDataService and work directly with the WorkflowQueuingService.
• Steve Jones compares SOA to trains and I don't get it. I mean, his advice on the value of batch processes makes sense, but his train/car analogy seems a bit strained, esp. when he calls the railway system "event based". Can't a car be "event based" too? There's just a much smaller number of people who care about a given car's events...
• Ted Neward debated OR/M with Ayende on .NET Rocks. Based on Ted's post, the show must have been a doozy. Sounds like Ted took some controversial positions, including advocating OO databases. Of course, "shies away from controversy" isn't how I would describe Ted.

Birthday Coffee 80

• Saw Shrek the Third over the weekend with the kids. It's gotten mixed reviews, but I liked it even though it wasn't as good as the first two. Is it just me, or has sequel-itis reached an all time high? This month alone we've had Spiderman 3, 28 Weeks Later, Shrek the Third and the new Pirates movie opens this week.
• Hot on the heels of his post on anonymous types, Scott Guthrie starts to explain LINQ to SQL, which is where all these C#3/VB9 features have been headed. Lots of digital ink have been spilled on this topic since we announced LINQ @ PDC 05, so I'll just point out that I think this is the first OR/M solution that really works well across the board.
• David Ing sucks the fun out of PopFly by suggesting it might be a "nice data aggregation / reformatting service for technically-challenged managers [and] their business data". Sounds like the next step of enterprise mashups.
• Speaking of PopFly, Larry O'Brein thinks PopFly is helping restore " the bridge between power users and programmers". From the PopFly FAQ: "We’re going back to our roots in 1975 when Microsoft originally launched BASIC for the Altair 8080. Tools like BASIC and Visual Basic 1.0 democratized development by enabling users to easily build applications on DOS and Windows. We believe we can make Popfly a great tool for building and sharing applications on the Web."
• Scott Hanselman wonders if Microsoft is losing the Alpha Geeks. In a related vein, I wonder if MS should be learning more aggressively from the community. MS has been the source of many developer innovations, but certainly not all. For ideas pioneered elsewhere, we tend to eventually get it, but I think we could be better about it.
• Apparently, I'm just a little younger than video games. Pong was born May of 1967, only three years to the month before me. (via Ozymandias)

Morning Coffee 74

Light on the geek factor this morning:

• My daughter Rileyanne turned two Saturday so we had a little pool party. One of the major selling points when we bought the house was the double sized hot tub in the back deck. So even though it was only in the mid 60s, we could still get in and swim.
• Saw Spiderman 3 yesterday. I liked the first two very much, but this one is iffy at best. The problem with these blockbuster movie series is the perceived need to be "bigger" than the previous installments. So we get more effects, more action, more villains. But that usually means less drama and less story. Spiderman 3 is no exception. Here's hoping that Christopher Nolan's Batman series doesn't suffer the same fate.
• Lost announces an end date. There will be three more shortened seasons for a grand total of 48 episodes (plus the three remaining this season). While I love Lost, I'm glad they're going this route.
• Politics 2.0 Watch: according to their blog, QubeTV.tv is "the conservatives’ answer to YouTube". Two thoughts on this: First, Having a site of conservative videos for conservatives seems like preaching to the choir. Second, to quote Andrew Sullivan: "It's not a good sign when a movement cannot engage the mainstream."
• John Shewchuk as more details of the BizTalk.net connectivity service. Hybrid mode and Direct connect are nice optimizations, but don't change the messaging semantics at all. But pub/sub eventing does, so I'm primarily interested in that capability.

Morning Coffee 73

• The MSDN folks have a utility for creating custom help files from the online MSDN library. I didn't realize MSDN even had a content service. This is tres useful.
• Jeff Atwood explains how error-filled the web is and how error-tolerant modern web browsers are. I've often argued that one of the keys to the rise of Visual Basic was because it was tolerant of sloppiness. It's hard to argue with Jeff's conclusion that "forgiveness by default is what works".
• BizTalk Labs shipped an update to the Connectivity Service. It "now supports simple publish and subscribe eventing. This allows multiple clients to subscribe to a service and receive notifications." Steve Maine has some details and a link to the MIX session he did with Don.
• Larry O'Brein is happy about IronRuby, but was hoping to see a new Ruby/C# hybrid language. Even though it's his "#1 administrative programming language", he specifically hopes for a new language so would "have the flexibility to evolve the language." But Larry, MSFT already had an dynamic administrative language that it can evolve! It's called PowerShell...
• The XNA folks have shipped a bunch of new content, including the Racing Game Starter Kit.
• Machinima is growing up fast. I just discovered iClone, a real-time 3D animation filmmaking tool. You know, my birthday is coming up later this month...

Morning Coffee 12

• According to Chris "Long Tail" Anderson (as opposed to Chris "Avalon Architect" Anderson), "Combined with the new low-cost distribution channels, from DVD to digital downloads, all you now need to be a filmmaker is talent." Really? Based on the dreck Hollywood churns out, I thought talent was optional! :) Seriously, check out his post and the sites he points to (Four Eyed Monsters and DV Rebel's Guide review on Cool Tools).
• Speaking of Chris "Avalon" Anderson, he's got a couple of WPF/E tests up on his blog. I wanted to see how it worked under the hood, so I checked out the HTML source for this page. It includes around 115kb of XAML! We've seen ViewState and JavaScript page bloat, is XAML bloat next?
• Larry O'Brien and Alan Zeichick are talking about a Threading Maturity Model. Good ideas there, but frankly I think we need a language that recognizes concurrency as a first-order abstraction if we're going to make much progress up the maturity model.
• Dare recommends programming.reddit.com. Definitely worthy of a closer look.
• The BTS training I'm in yesterday and today is being held on Microsoft's Red West campus, home of MSN & Windows Live. It's very nice looking and is a good size - five buildings - without being as huge as main campus. It even has a "ski-lodge" cafeteria, though given the slim pickings in my building's cafe anything would be an improvement.
• One thing I don't miss about working on campus is the commute. Getting to my office takes 20-30 minutes, depending on the traffic lights. Getting to campus, even though it's physically closer, takes 45-60 minutes, most of it spent sitting still. Every time I wish we'd move to campus, I remember the traffic and decide I like where I am just fine.
• Two big learnings from BTS training yesterday:
  • Conceptually, BTS hasn't changed much since the 2000/2002 releases that I was more familiar with. In practice, it has heavily embraced .NET which is a good thing. I didn't realize how much of a difference having tools like the pipeline and map editor inside VS would make, but it does. (I realize the orchestration editor is inside VS as well, but we get to that module of the class today).
  • The MessageBox is a bigger deal than I remember or realized. Matt called it the "heart of BizTalk". I know BTS has had a SQL based message store since day one, but I don't remember it being called out explicitly.
• I've said before that MessageBox is roughly analogous to SSB queues, though BTS wonks (like my teammates) typically jump down my throat when I do. MessageBox has a pub/sub design philosophy which SSB does not. However, I'm guessing pub/sub is used much more in messaging scenarios rather than orchestration scenarios. My efforts around SSB & WF are much more focused on orchestration scenarios, so I'm guessing SSB's lack of pub/sub infrastructure is not a big deal.

Morning Coffee 2

Late start + early meeting = short post today

• Want a free SAAB? Drop a line to my boss. Note, you have to be willing to steal it.
• Saw Clerks II last night. It was the first Kevin Smith movie I haven't seen in the theaters since the original. Better than I expected, but it's time for Kevin to move on to new material.
• Unlike most avid movie fans I know, I'm not a NetFlix customer. Nothing against them, but I've never been moved to sign up. But we did just sign up for the free trial of Blockbuster Total Access. Basically, it's a clone of NetFlix, but you can bring your movies back to your local Blockbuster store and get a free rental on the spot. Plus, you get eCoupons (I think once a month) which are good for free movie or DVD rentals in the store. We'll see how it goes.
• As expected, I didn't get much done yesterday. I don't think anyone did around here. I did pave the dev partition on my laptop. My laptop isn't very Vista friendly and we blew our hardware budget on new desktops (which I am definitely not complaining about) so I'm still on XP.
• I wonder how well SQL Mobile Anywhere Compact Edition works with ASP.NET? Seems like that would be a better choice than SQL Express for small websites like personal blogs.
• Almost finished getting Christmas put away. What with the wind storm, it seems like it went by very fast this year.

Inverse DVR

Usually you use your DVR to watch the show and skip the commercials. Today, however, I did the opposite. Used the DVR to blow thru 58 minutes of The OC to catch the new Star Wars Episode III trailer. Pretty cool stuff. As an added bouns, they also had the trailer for Sin City. I didn't realize Robert Rodriguez was directing.

24 Does Use A Three Act Structure

Sunday, I said that I didn't think that 24 has a well defined three act structure. On further reflection, I'm not sure I was correct. I'm used to seeing these three act structure within a single episode and I don't think most episodes of 24 follow that model. However, if you look at the season as a whole, it follows the three act structure pretty closely

[Note - as with Sunday, there some first season spoilers here - but again I'm avoiding the big ones. I also talk about the current season a bit at the end]

Typically, the three act structure divides the story into three parts - Setup, Confrontaion and Resolution. Each of these parts is deliniated with a plot point - some type of major reversal in the story. In a story as long as a season of 24, these reversals take a much more screen time than I'm used to. To take Star Wars as an example, the first reversal is when Luke discovers his parents have been murdered and he decides to go with Obi-Wan. That's one scene - takes up a couple of minutes of screen time at most. But in 24, the first reversal is the last 20 minutes of Episode 6: Jack is comproised by the bad guys who have his daughter, it's revealed that his wife is with one of the bad guys, the guy that kidnapped Jack's daughter realizes what a bad situation he's in and Palmer decides to tell the world about the death of his daughter's rapist at the hands of his son that been covered up for seven years.

The second act is typically a series of cycles - alternating between story exposition and action. For example, the first cycle of the second act builds towards the attempt on Palmer's life at the morning press conference. This goes on typically for half of the overall length of the story and ends in another reversal. To use Star Wars as an example again, the second act ends with our heroes returning to the rebel base with the Death Star's plans while being tracked by the Empire. In 24, while the end of the first act ends is very clear and occurs exactly at the one quarter mark, act two runs a little long and has a muddier ending. Personally, I'd say it ends in the middle of episode 19, with Jack in the underground prison, realizing who the prisoner being kept there is while Palmer is realizing that he can't trust his wife anymore.

Of course, the third act is where everything is resolved - typically running the final quarter of screen time. You can really see here the major difference between a format like 24 and a two hour movie. I don't think you could reveal a twist as big as the one at the end of the next to last episode of 24's first season in the last five minutes of a 2 hours movie and make it work. But that's the time ratio - every minute of a two hours movie equals 12 minutes of a season of 24.

If you apply this same structure to the current season of 24, you realize that the we're in the middle of act two right now.  The kidnapping and trial of the secretary of defense was act one - and again act one ends right at the end of episode 6. Jack and CTU realizes the "real" target is melting down nuclear power plant via the override device, Behrooz kills the man his father sent to kill him, Jack's girlfriend's estranged husband shows up and we realize there's a mole inside CTU (I get the feeling this is a running plot point - the CTU spy. I'm guessing that if they've used that every season it's gotta be pretty old by now). I put "real" in quotes because assuming this season follows the same pattern as season one, there will need to be some new "real" target in act three.

But I Don't Think 18 Is A Catchy Title

Tanya pointed out the other day that having a DVR causes you to watch a lot more TV. Case in point: 24. I missed the first three seasons. I never knew when it was on and once you miss a single episode, you're kinda done. Now that I have a DVR, I've haven't missed any of season four. Furthermore, the first three seasons are available on DVD, so not only am I watching more TV from this season, I'm catching up on previous seasons. We just finished season one tonight.

[Note - there are some first season spoilers here - not big ones, but some nonetheless]

First off, there is alot of filler - at least in season one. There are long sequences (the girls escaping from the kidnappers leaps to mind) where there's all this action and suspense, but everything ends up back where they started. Secondly, by the end I thought it was over the top on the amount of resources the bad guys had. I mean, they kidnap his daughter again? Maybe it bothered me more because I watched the whole season over a couple of weeks, instead of several months. Finally, the story flow really feels off - but that's the nature of the real-time format. In a more typical series, there's a slow build towards a final confrontation with a collection of connected yet distinct stories. But 24 is like a single 24 hour long movie, except that it doesn't have a clearly defined 3 act structure. It kust puts the pedal to the metal at around episode four and doesn't let up. That's not as exciting as it sounds - stuff just happens...and keeps happening. There's no time for reflection or anticipation which makes it much more difficult to enjoy the story.

I realize part of the show's gimick is that it's a full 24 hours. But really, I think the story - at least season one's story - would have been better told in 14-18 hours. Of course, that won't stop me from watching the current season or starting in on season two.

The Aristocrats

Typically, my movie tastes are further down the long tail from the big blockbusters. I mean, I'm looking forward to movies like Batman Begins and War of the Worlds, but usually it's the small quirky films that get my attention. In fact, one of the reasons I'm excited about Batman Begins is because it's directed by Chris Nolan, director of the awesome yet quirky independent film Memento.

Along these lines, I saw something about a movie from Sundance called The Aristocrats by Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller). The premise sounds awesome:

Magician, comedian and entertainer extraordinaire Penn Jillette takes us into the secret world of comedians as we're introduced to a perpetually filthy joke that is never told the same way twice, serving as the comedy equilavent of a jazz solo since the Vaudeville days. All that remains constant is the beginning and the end, and 105 comedians fill in the rest. [From Greg's Previews on Yahoo Movies]

Aristocrats has been picked up by ThinkFilm. I hope they get into a theater near me, but clicking thru their site, I don't have a lot of confidence. The only movie currently listed on the site that I recognized was Going Upriver, a documentary about John Kerry that I heard about late last year during the presidential campain. Combined with the fact that it will likely be released “unrated” as it would likely get an NC-17 rating for langugage, I'm thinking that I won't see it until it gets released on DVD.

Not Your Average Night At The Movies

Tonight, we went to see my mother-in-law's new movie Telephone Pole Numbering System at the Northwest Film Forum. My wife and her mother are both actors. Julie was a child actor (she was in some of the old James Garner Polaroid commercials) and her mom was on Days of our Lives back in the 70s. I have always had a passion for movies and spent significant time back when I lived in LA writing bad screenplays (not bad on purpose of course). This movie was mostly OK - it had some very funny bits but also long stretches that were uninteresting and seemingly unrelated to the plot. Luckily, all the parts with my mother in law fell under the "funny bits" category.

While it was cool to see a family member on the big screen, I am really interested in getting more involved with the NWFF. The organization is a not-for-profit film arts organization that includes a two-screen cinema in downtown Seattle, production facilities for rent, workshops and classes plus a non-profit film studio (which produced Telephone Pole Numbering System). In many ways, this is like community theater, but for movie making. I got to chat briefly with the film's director Bill Weiss, but Patrick was up past his bed time so I'll need to make time for a longer chat with these folks soon.

If you could make a movie, what would it be? For me, if we're talking pie-in-the-sky, no-real-world-constraints, it would be "Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League" hands down. (Laugh while you can, monkey boy)

Favorite Line from Telephone Pole Numbering System:

"If I was a tree, I'd want to be a telephone pole"
"You're too short"

Horror Stories for Halloween

Halloween is the time for scary movies. Julie and I have seen two since I got back from OOPSLA - 28 Days Later... and The Grudge. I'm not sure I would have called 28 Days Later “Scary As Hell” but I did really like it. It had a real plot and real characters that had real arcs. True, it also had zombies running around, but that was much less the focus than I expected. In fact, I think it had some thinly veiled social commentary (that I can't discuss w/o spoiling the movie).

On the other hand, The Grudge is simply a run-of-the-mill haunted house story. Not that scary and no plot or characters worth mentioning. Simply a series of loosely strung together scary scenes with little consistency. Which was a bummer as it did have a great opening scene. After all the comparisons to The Ring (which I liked, though not as much as most people) and the fact that Sam Raimi was producing, it was very dissappointing.

Of course, neither of these can compare to the potential horrors of election fraud on Tuesday. Apparently, over 80 lawsuits have already been filed (on both sides) which I don't take as a good sign.

Thoughts on Prisoner of Azkaban

My wife and I saw the latest Harry Potter movie over the weekend. It's my favorite so far. I'm not sure if it was the new director, or just the fact that this book was longer than the first two, but I thought this movie spent far less time on stuff from the book that wasn't relevant to the story. I took a film class back in high school, and the teacher explained that every scene in a movie has to do one of three things.

1. Advance the plot
2. Advance the character
3. Get a laugh

I amended rule #3 to be “Get a reaction” since there are often scenes in a horror or thriller movie that are there just to scare you. The first two Harry Potter movies seemed to spend a significant amount of screen time on getting the reaction: “I remember that from the book”. For example, in the last movie, when Harry and Ron drink a potion to transform into Malfoy's two henchmen (henchboys?) , Hermione accidentally transforms herself into a cat. The only reason that scene is in the movie is because it's in the book. Not having Hermione doesn't affect Harry and Ron's mission (i.e. it didn't advance the plot) nor was there any fallout or change to Hermione in later scenes (i.e. it didn't advance the character). It doesn't even get a laugh. Given the Harry Potter movies are around 2 1/2 hours long each, there's no excuse for extraneous scenes like this.

Kill Bill Vol 2, Troy, Shrek 2 and Harry Potter so far with Spider-Man 2 and King Arthur on the horizon. Sure we've had Van Helsing and The Day After Tomorrow, but so far the summer movie season is looking good.

Movie Times Web Service?

There are a wide variety of web pages to get movie times information. How about web services? My wife and I went to see a movie on Saturday (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - loved it). On the way there, we got worried we weren't going to make it in time. I figured I'd check if there was any other movies starting a little later in case we didn't get there in time. Of course, I have my new Smartphone, so I wanted to use it. This turned out to be much more difficult than it should have been.

MSN Mobile entertainment section was useless - lottery and horoscope only. There don't seem to be many sites tuned for smartphone access. TV Guide has a smartphone site - in case I want to check what's on TV while I'm out?

I want a program that downloads local theatre movie times into my phone. Not too much to ask. In fact, I'd write it myself and give it away if there was a simple source for the data. However, for all the movie time sites, I can't find a web service or even a source for the raw data.

Is there a movie times web service that I just don't know about? If there isn't where do the movie sites get their movie times data and how can I get a copy?

Off-the-Wall Movie Sites

Thanks to Werner for linking to the Flick Filosopher. I liked the analysis of The Passion of the Christ and the comparison Monty Python's Life of Brian. I especially liked her Best & Worst Of 2003 article as well. An you have got to respect anyone who has "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension" at the top of their list of 100 comfort movies. Only downer - no RSS feed. <sigh>

The other movie review site I read regularly is Mr. Cranky. I'm a big fan of his unique comments on bad movies such as " I have never come closer to tearing my own penis off and throwing it at the screen while watching a movie" (Laura Croft 2) "Chris Klein is like Keanu Reeves without any talent...Frankly, I have a hard time even comprehending that sentence and its terrible implications." (Rollerball) and "This film caused the kind of pain I'd normally associate with being shot through the thigh by a rusty nail from a high-powered nail gun" (Saving Silverman). Again, no RSS feed. <double sigh>

The Matrix Rethought

I took my wife to see Matrix Revolutions, even though I saw it Monday. Still liked it, though the second viewing really helped me figure out what I didn't like about Reloaded and Revolutions. I can sum it up in two words: The Merovingian. He represents everything thematically that was added in the second two movies that both didn't work and wasn't there in the original Matrix.

Note: I'm guessing everyone who's going to see Revolutions has seen it by now. So there are some spoilers below. If you haven't seen it and want to remain blissfully unaware, stop reading now.

The themes of Control and Choice were very strongly represented in the original Matrix. Choice was directly represented (red pill vs. blue pill), control somewhat less so, but still there. Certainly, there was enough material in those themes for two more movies. Choice is stated bluntly in the climatic battle between Neo and Smith when Smith asks Neo why he continues to fight and Neo replies "Because I choose to". A little corny and heavy handed to be sure, but still consistent with the original theme. Smith's relation to the theme of control (or lack thereof) is also stated bluntly by Neo: "The program Smith has grown beyond your control". Choice and Control come up over and over again: The Architect's unbalanced equations, Commander Lock's defenses, Neo returning to the Matrix rather than Source, Niobe going after the Nebuchanezar, etc. Pretty much every character has to deal with Choice and Control to some degree.

However, the Brothers Wachowski apparently decided that wasn't enough, so they added all the stuff about "exiled" programs. Programs hacking programs, choosing exile over deletion, falling in love and having daughter programs, etc. Thematically, I don't see the connection to the Choice and Control elements introduced in the first movie. There were only a few machine characters in the original movie: the Agents and the Oracle - and we didn't know for sure that the Oracle was a program at the time. So when we meet Merovingian, Persephone, the Twins, the Train Man, etc. in the second and third movies, they are a major departure from the way programs in the first movie act. They act like they have free will. I can accept that the Oracle - a program "initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche" - would exhibit some aspects of free will. But all programs? Come on. Free will could have been the thing that differentiated Smith from the other Agents. Instead, all of the programs basically act human. And their motivation makes no sense. The Architect claimed the entire Matrix would suffer a "cataclysmic system crash" unless the One returned to the Source. Why would the Merovingian, who lives in the Matrix, try and stop Neo by keeping the Keymaker prisoner? Since Merovingian has survived Neo's predecessors, he must have some idea what's at stake. Of course, the Neo the Matrix doesn't crash when he doesn't comply, but how would the Merovingian know that would happen?

The really sad part is that it wouldn't have taken much to rework the stories without the human-acting programs. The second half of Reloaded would have been tough. Maybe Agents would have had the Keymaker instead of the Merovingian. Or the Twins, working for the Architect, could have him. Revolutions would have been much easier: Merovingian et. al. are in Revolutions for just a couple of minutes. Neo could have figured a way back to the Matrix on his own - it's sorta crappy when your main character has to be rescued. After that, it's back to just Smith and the Oracle. Seraph can stay since he's just a bodyguard program but Sati would have to go. With the extra screen time, I think I would have concentrated on the Neo / Smith relationship more. Since Smith is "the result of the equation trying to balance itself out" then his power should equal Neo's. When Neo gains the power of the Source, Smith should have had some similar improvement. But Smith's already has the ability to replicate as well as "reach" the real world by the time Neo meets the Architect.

One thing I liked is that they killed off this story line, literally, while keeping the world open for more. There's a Matrix comic now and a MMORPG coming next year. I've seen several short fan films done with Machinima plus a hilarious parody. I'm sure there are more out there. I'm looking forward to more stories from the Matrix world.

Entertain Me the Way I Want To Be Entertained

Talking about the Matrix movies and game got me thinking about the way I am entertained. I'm used to being entertained on opposite ends of the interactivity spectrum: passive movie watching and active game playing. I think you could generate more interesting experiences by intermixing those two extremes. For example, my favorite games are ones with a great story. You could watch someone else play Halo and still enjoy the experience. I hear Crimson Skies is the same way. So why can't you choose to passively experience the story without getting involved in the game play, if I only care about the story? My wife has no interest in playing Enter the Matrix, but she'd like to see the story.

I also really like sports games (esp. hockey). Many sports games are adding "owner" modes where hire staff and sign players but don't control the game play on the field. That's pretty cool. Microsoft's XSN Sports lineup doesn't have those modes, instead the focus on online leagues and tournaments. While most of that experience is very interactive, how about having a XSN "SportsCenter" where you can see highlights from other games in your league? Maybe even cut away during breaks in the action to show highlights from other games in your league that may be going on at the same time. Those features are passive, but they would add immensely to the game experience.

Some of these techniques start to get into the realm of Machinima - making movies using gaming engines.

Anyone else interested in this? What are the good tools and engines that work with Managed DirectX?

Matrix Revolutions

I finally got to see The Matrix Revolutions. My whole division saw it on opening day, but since that was during SAF, our team couldn't go. So we went en masse on Monday. I guess I'm in the minority, both in blogsphere and on the team, but I really enjoyed it. I also just finished playing Enter The Matrix. Funny coincidence, I reached the point of the game that corresponds to the end of The Matrix Reloaded on Sunday, saw Revolutions Monday, finished the game Tuesday. The game got somewhat decent ratings, but again I liked it. Probably because I was more interested in it as an adjunct to the movies than as a game. One review I read complained about the amount of action that took place during cinematic cut-scenes rather than in the game itself. But since I played the game primarily for the story, I didn't mind.