It's actually been a while since the last Harry Potter film, and even longer since the 7-book series ended. While we middling Potter fans look forward to whatever The Half Blood Prince brings in July, there are a bevy of movies that are aimed to fill the space of kid-friendly fantasy.

There is, of course, the classic Chronicles of Narnia, also based on books, but dredged up from C.S.Lewis' writings in the 1950's. The two movies so far are nice to look at, and have the same characteristic qualities of the books. As an adult, the story doesn't quite hold up in a few places. There are just a few too many strange moments where I'm left asking, "Why would that be?" And it's hard to avoid the religious undertones.

My kids really liked like A Series of Unfortunate Events, which is not a fantasy in terms of magic and monsters, but is itself somewhat fantastic and fits into this grouping if only because it's a movie based on a popular children's book series. We didn't read the books, but friends have, and I'm told that the movie has condensed several books into the single film. What irritates me about this movie is that there are so many high-powered stars in it, but all of them seem to pander their roles to children. Meryl Streep is the worst of the bunch, making me cringe just thinking about it. Nonetheless, the whole movie is worth the price of admission just to see the end credits and hear the soundtrack, which are amazing.

I saw City of Ember in the bookstore long before the movie came out this year. The book sounded interesting, but not quite interesting enough for me to buy it, instead going onto my mental "one day, when I have no other obligations" list. City of Ember is also based on a series starting with the book of the same name, and seems to have four books to the set so far. I will be watching this movie soon, and if it's worthwhile, I'll write more. Still, even without having read the book, I'm disturbed by having both Bill Murray (bad?) and Tim Robbins (good?) in the movie.

Eragon came out as a movie after the Harry Potter series finished also. My goodness, that was a terrible movie. It wasn't the movie quality that was terrible, but the story. The story was simply awful. I really hope - and must assume - that the books were simply not translated well, because there are three books in the Inheritance trilogy.

The problem as I see it, is that there is a lack of good fantasy story in general. When you really look at it, Harry Potter isn't all that great of a story. In particular it tends to explain away all of the weird stuff that happens in the last five pages with some unknown knowledge. They're kind of like the Scooby Doo episodes where the guy who "done" it is someone you've never seen before.

Is the problem even more basic in that people have forgotten how to craft a plot? Writing good kids' plots is hard. You can't talk down, but you don't want to be too complicated. I can see how that would be difficult. Still, with all of the writers in the world, you would think that there would be some new epic children's novel to get excited about at least every year. Keep an eye out.

On a whim and a wish to watch something with the kids that was not yet another animated film (not that I dislike them, but they seem all that the kids will tolerate in entirely) I threw in a copy of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I'm not sure I expected them to really watch the whole thing, but being that Indiana Jones was a favorite of mine over the years, I had hoped they would enjoy it as much as I do. As it turns out, my hopes have come true.

Tonight when we were out to dinner, I suggested to Abby that we pop some corn and watch another Indiana Jones movie. Her eyes flew wide open in shock, as she was surprised to learn that there was another movie!

I was only too happy to put Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade into the player to watch. We've been nibbling popcorn and watching Indy chase down the holy grail now for a little while, and I'm happy to report that the movie has her rapt attention.

I'm so glad I've been able to pass on some of my favorite things and that they're sticking. I'm a big fan of pulp, especially in my roleplaying genres, and knowing that Abby likes treasure-hunting and pulp adventures makes me feel like there's a little of my influence on her after all.

Next up: Science fiction. For now, Venice, and the grail!

In the recent 941/942 double-issue of Entertainment Weekly, they've listed 32 things (page 110) that they hate about Entertainment these days. They've not gone far enough. I've revised their list to make more sense. Observe:

1. EW: "Paris Hilton on CNN"
Me: "Paris Hilton"

You may be able to tell how this is going to go...

2. EW: "The overuse of that damn KT Tunstall song 'Suddenly I see'"
Me: The overuse of any song that might otherwise be a catchy pop tune that one could easily put into their MP3 rotation. Additionally, the changing of words to "good" (read: recognizable) songs to be used as advertising jingles. Also, the word "damn" as an adjective. (Editor dude, it's a verb.)

3. EW: "TV shows that end at 10:02pm. Our DVRs don't know to wait up."
Me: TV networks that haven't figured out how to cater to DVR users. Tivo for patenting the process and TV Networks for scaring other DVR makers into not providing the handy time-shifting features that would record those extra two minutes. (Hey, mine does it. EW, does your equipment suck?)

Oh yes, there are 32 of these...

4. EW: "That on The Bachelor every single rose ceremony that comes down the pike seems to be dubbed 'the most dramatic rose ceremony ever.'"
Me: Isn't this item cliche? My friends and I have been using "...and on a very special X" as an expression since the 80s. Being topical is more than just throwing out buzzwords, it's also about nixing the old cliches.

5. EW: "Peter Parker's emo haircut."
Me: If you want to smack up a comic book movie, let's do it right: Comic book movies that suck because the director and actors never read the disgustingly impressive volume of work that predated their little wrecking-ball project. Not to say that Spider-Man is one of these, but, hey... It is!

6. EW: "Threequels"
Me: Movies that were either not original enough in their own right to depart well from their origin, or not close enough to the source material to do it justice.

7. EW: "The word threequels."
Me: Magazines that make up or publicize made up words and then decry them. I never even heard this word before this EW. It's a freakin' trilogy.

8. EW: "Movies shot in Toronto that aren't set in Toronto"
Me: Movies shot in space that have outside sound or otherwise defy the laws of physics.

9. EW: "Hollywood's indiscriminate use of the words artist and genius."
Me: Hard to argue against, but worth noting that "Hollywood commentary" isn't doing much better. See #7.

10. EW: "People who relish Katie Couric's ratings struggle."
Me: People who care so much about ratings over the actual art of storytelling or quality of the entertainment. (No, this doesn't have anything to do with Couric, it has to do with ratings.)

11. EW: "Upsizing" sales tactics at the concession stand."
Me: I'll one-up that: The giant size "small" with the quarter's difference to upsize. Where has the freaking "small" gone?

12. EW: "Overdone reality show orchestration."
Me: Reality shows. I hate to complain about them, but it seems that their all that's on. We braindead Americans must love our braindead TV, I guess.

13. EW: "When someone is 'playing' a musical instrument on screen and it's obvious not only that they are not playing the instrument but that they haven't even been taught how to fake playing the instrument."
Me: When someone is "acting" in a role, and it's obvious not only that they are not "acting" but that they haven't even been taught how to fake acting. See also: Keanu Reeves.

14. EW: "Teenage stars who talk about how they've been waiting their entire lives for a moment like this."
Me: You know what? Maybe they have. What makes their age any less pertinent than a 30-something saying it? Does youth necessarily imply that they've been at it for less time? No.

15. EW: "Ringtones."
Me: Crappy phone technology, held back by fly-eating cell phone producers. But that belongs on a completely different list. (Fly -eating: So miserly that when the waiter brings the soup, instead of complaining that it has a fly in it, they eat the fly, too.)

16. EW: "Stars who insist they hate the paparazzi while courting them by showing up at place like the Ivy."
Me: Magazines who believe that they little "I hate paparazzi" act is anything but.

17. EW: "The line 'dancing for their lives' on So You Think You Can Dance."
Me: Assuming I watch every crappy show you review to have ever heard that line.

18. EW: "New release DVDs that have zero extras."
Me: New release DVDs that are dissed because of their lack of extras. Seriously, I've never bought one disc pack because of some "extra feature" it had over another pack that lacked that feature. My discriminators are first the transfer quality of the original movie, and second, the price. Anything after that is gravy.

19. EW: "When TV shows are based in cold places, yet no one is sufficiently bundled up."
Me: When unrealistic "ACCESS DENIED" messages are displayed on computer screens instead of using the same OSX/Windows/Linux GUI systems that everyone is familiar with. Geez, you'd think that sponsorship would be used here.

20. EW: "Music videos where the singer romps around in white sheets on a bed, looking all moony and in love."
Me: Music videos. Didn't MP3 kill the video star? It should have already. Maybe EW just hasn't noticed that music videos have become fairly irrelevant.

21. EW: "The fact that Kate Winslet does not have an Ocsar."
Me: Uh, for what? Instead, let's lament the lousy Oscar categories, the fact that they're judged by peers (who seem to mainly rely on influences outside of actually watching the film), and that they suck up multiple hours of TV time better spent on, well, anything.

22. EW: "The word 'pitchy'."
Me: Uh, ok.

23. EW: "Athletes who rap."
Me: Rap backbeats and the claptrap they speak on top of it. Let's face it, rap isn't going away. Some of it is good. Some of it sounds good. And most of it is just meaningless words on top of a slicked-up baseline. Want to know what's cool about the Beastie Boys' music? It's got guitars. Want to know what's cool about Beck? He's a musician. Pull any kid off the street and give him a mic and play some bass track behind him (and promote the crap out of him) and he'll be played out of the trunk of every hoopdie. But please - "talent" is the word. And since I've listed two white groups, I'll note that Snoop Dog is also talented. That guy can get the job done, son. The corollary is, of course, that just because you're a musician, that doesn't mean you should rap. (See also: Gwen Stefani)

24. EW: "Foreign characters speaking to each other in accented English instead of subtitles."
Me: Stepping it up: Movie studios that think that people won't go see their movies if there are subtitles. See also: Pan's Labyrinth

25: EW: "The 2007 MTV Movie Award for the Best Summer Movie We Haven't Seen Yet."
Me: MTV. MTV belonged to my generation. Now it should go peacefully.

26. EW: "Waiting around for Guns N' Roses to release Chinese Democracy."
Me: Waiting for Chinese Democracy. Get some perspective, EW.

27. EW: "Promo spots in which TV cast members walk toward the camera, or spin around, and get wind blown through their hair."
Me: Promo spots for "next week's episode" at the end of the night's episode that never materialize.

28. EW: "People outrunning fireballs."
Me: Every actor and actress looking like they fell out of Cosmo or GQ.

29. EW: "Actors sitting in the audience at awards shows, trying to joke with the host. We can't hear you&emdash;and neither can the host."
Me: Award shows. See also: #21

30. EW: "Reality shows about mundane professions: The Ace of Cakes!"
Me: Reality shows. I'm experiencing deja vu here. If we have so little good to say about them, why are they on?

31. EW: "Movie trailers in which an explosion cuts of profanity."
Me: Movie trailers that show you the most funny parts and give away the juicy bits.

32. EW: "TV shows without the commercial interruptions."
Me: WHAT??

I had a few thoughts on the recent HD-DVD folderol that was going on at Digg and other places, and I figured I would let them stew a couple of days to see what I managed to mentally sift out of them.

There have been a few interesting points made on the subject of the release of the HD-DVD key. If you haven't heard, or you just didn't care, or you had been left ignorant by big media news (no surprise if that's the case), then you should know what happened before we begin.

Very simply and quickly, as I understand it: HD-DVDs are next-generation DVDs that hold more data and contain higher resolution movies. All the data on the discs are encoded with one of many secret keys (basically a special, unusually big number) that is licensed to makers of HD-DVD players so that they can decode the video contained on the disc for playback. Without the specific key for the disc, you can't play the video, nor can you digitally transfer the video to a different format. Someone recently discovered one of these keys and made the information public, which would allow someone to write programs to remove the encryption from those discs and enable all of the things that are otherwise impossible without it. So what does Digg have to do with any of this?

We can't exactly skip over the events at Digg for the purposes of this discussion, although I'd like to. Basically, some user at Digg - a site that links to interesting things on the net - linked to an academic discussion of the discovery of this HD-DVD key. The licensors of the key issued a demand to Digg's operators telling them to remove that link in compliance with DMCA laws. They complied. The users of Digg lashed back in defiance, posting endless new stories containing the key number. The operators of Digg relented to their riotous community and put the original link back online.

And so, my thoughts: Since when does the DCMA apply to sites that link to sites that contain coyrighted materials? If I like to a warez site, or a site that promotes warez, does my site stand to receive a DMCA letter? It linked directly to The Pirate Bay, for example, would that constitute a violation? I think that's crazy.

Do the licensors of the HD-DVD copy protection scheme have the right to protect their intellectual property? I have heard arguments that they should be allowed to seek legal remedies for people sharing these keys because the release of the key would damage their business. I look at this a different way.

On one hand, if you use a crappy key to protect property that many people are trying to steal, then you should expect that you're going to get robbed. And if you really think that you're going to be able to stop people from making copies of the key by issuing legal threats after the plans for the key have already been published, you're crazy. But I don't think that they care. After all, no more discs are going to be printed that use that key, so you'll need a new key if you want to steal the content from any new discs.

There's another issue, which is about fair use. I'm a little sketchy on fair use. I was thinking that it should be fair for me to make copies of movies that I own, for backup or transfer to other formats for my own use. But is that really what I'm being licensed when I buy a movie? I'm not sure any more. I think I've had the idea that these keys promote pounded into me so much that I just don't believe in fair use any more.

Think about it - These companies do everything they can to prevent you from copying movies that you "own". You can't rip them to your iPod (or other, obviously better portable video device). Why? Why did they make that hard? Maybe they don't want you to do that? Maybe they want to make money on it? Maybe you didn't buy the right to play back that movie wherever you liked when you bought the HD-DVD. Maybe you only bought the right to play back the movie from that HD-DVD. If they made that clear from the get-go would it satisfy consumers? Probably not.

And the Digg community went completely nuts over this exact point. I think they went overboard. I think they have a good grievance, but it's poorly directed. I don't know that it's right to subvert the system to incite change. I don't know that it does any good. As we see in this case, we have a key that is now invalid. So you can use it to copy the handful of HD-DVDs that are already out, and that's it.

Moreover, there isn't any software (that I know of or have read about) that will use the key that everyone is publishing to make copies of HD-DVDs. The whole thing is silly. It's paraded around as if knowing the numbers of the key makes the information free. Where's the software that employs it? By the time we see that developed, the four HD-DVD titles that are now worth watching won't be worth watching any more. And even if it existed today, it's not helping me - the hapless consumer. Where's my benefit?

The lawyers are funny. If they had just let the story go, if they had let the Digg story pass instead of sending them a takedown notice, then it wouldn't have received hardly any of the attention that it did. And it's still disturbing that I didn't see any mention of this on major non-internet news channels. Did your local TV news or newspaper cover it? Probably not. I wonder if this is more about the side of the story that the mainstream media takes or that the story wasn't big enough to bump the results of the local little league game. We're far from needing to know that the industry is colluding to make us pay for individual chunks of freedom. It's too much like politics and religion, I think. "Don't look over there," says the media.

It occurs to me that the whole thing was orchestrated by the BluRay people (the competitors to the HD-DVD format) to cast more bad light on HD-DVD. Truly, this same technology plagues BlueRay, though perhaps not this exact key. It's just a matter of time until one of theirs is released, too. Still, the bad news comes at a serendipitous time for BluRay, who is pulling out all the stops - even buying internet ads on the word "HD-DVD" - to crush their HD-DVD enemies.

So what are we to do about the unfairness it? At this point, I'm saying "nothing". There's no changing this industry. They want more money for themselves, so they're going to embed whatever devilish technologies they can into their gadgetry to allow them to snatch every last penny out of our wallets. In 20 years, we won't even know it could ever have been any other way.

Seriously, my TV is hooked to my set top box with a single cable. In the past, I could hook a VCR in there and record anything I saw on TV. But today, the technology in that cable is such that this is impossible. This is happening under our noses and nobody realizes it. Nobody seems to care enough to do anything about it. Still, is posting the HD-DVD key all over the internet the answer to these issues? It seems like they're using a flyswatter to kill an elephant.

Will the market economics eventually settle the feud between consumers and the studios? Likely not. The studios are an oligarchy. They know that if they collude to keep their technologies prohibitive and their prices at a certain level, they will all benefit from the stupidity of their customers. It only takes one studio to quit the oligarchy to make their whole system crumble. It's a shame that they're all living so well walking on our backs.

I watched War of the Worlds and Ultaviolet over the weekend. There were many things that I liked about War of the Worlds, and many things I did not like about Ultraviolet.

I enjoyed the fact that the main character of War of the Worlds was flawed. Perhaps a bit too much. On one hand, he wants to protect his kids. On the other, it really does seem like he is trying to get them to their mother so that he can dump them off.

Judging from how Berta reacted, she seemed to think that the gun was a sign of bad things to come. I'm not sure I felt that way. I think that in a situation where I don't know what I'm going to have to do to survive, I'm certainly not going to leave the gun behind. Yet, I think the movie tried to enhance her feeling about the gun - in the scene where they enter the mother's house and try to get rest in the basement, the camera seems to focus on him removing the gun from his belt. This seemed unnecessary to me, since the gun didn't factor in that scene at all.

When it finally came time to use the gun, did he really think he was going to be the only one who had one?

That scene kind of ticked me off, too. I guess there wasn't anywhere else to cross the river, but it seems like they should have seen the throngs gathered there and decided that this was not the best crossing place. Sure it's a bit morbid, but had they waited a few hours they could have avoided the people entirely.

Most of my enjoyment of the the movie came from imagining what the world would really be like if this kind of thing were to happen. It's something I think about with reasonable frequency, given my perhaps previously disclosed utter fear of nuclear annihilation. Like the movie that spawned my irrational fears, which forecasted our distruction at the hands of nuclear weapons, this movie really suspended my disbelief in aliens and such to get me thinking about the world in the aftermath of an alien invasion. Really though, if you could survive an attack like that for even a few days, it would be amazing. Seeing someone else in this movie go through it was very entertaining to me.

Overall, War of the Worlds wasn't too bad. I enjoyed it. I didn't even think about Tom Cruise's wacko antics once while I was watching it. My grade - B.

Ultraviolet, on the other hand... Where do I even begin with what's wrong here?

I guess this movie is supposed to be based on a comic book? Is it? The opening sequence seems to indicate that it is, what with all of the comic book covers. The movie leaves me sure that I have no interest in persuing it.

Essentially, Ultraviolet (Milla Jovovich) is some kind of vampire, although she never sucks anyone's blood or gets burnt in sunlight, who can pull weapons of various sorts from another dimension (no, it's not a super power, apparently everyone cool can do it in this movie) in her quest to free the "Hemophages" (vampires) from persecution. She uses guns and swords a lot and kicks a lot of butt trying to steal Daxus' (played by Nick Chinlund, who I simply can't stand) secret weapon for killing off the last of the vampires.

What happened to the spunky chick who starred in the Fifth Element? This Ultraviolet character hardly does anything action-wise that isn't covered up with lousy special effects.

In most scenes where Ultraviolet is fighting people, there is a group of guys with swords. All of the guys run at her all at once, surround her in a circle so that you can't see her, then she erupts from the bunch knocking them all over, dead. Huh? How did she do that? Where is the seriously cool ninjitsu?

In another scene, she jumps off of a building and lands on the pavement Underworld-style, cracking the sidewalk. Cool, except the effect is done so poorly... Record me pretending to jump off a building, cut the shot where it's apparent that I didn't really jump, and then splice that onto a shot of me standing up from an already-cracked sidewalk. That's essentially what we're talking about here.

I never really considered Jovovich a great actress. Let's face it, she's eye candy. But she had her opportunity to prove herself as a female action star, and just didn't cut it in this film. Moreover, they made her up to look somewhat ugly. So if she's not pulling off the action, and she's going to look kind of ugly, why did you hire her?

Let me speak to Nick Chinlund for a moment. I'm not sure what it is, but I hate this dude. I can't stand looking at him. It's like when you go to the museum and see a work of art and it repulses you, the sight of this man does the same for me. I can't look at him without thinking "B-Movie". That said, I try not to taint me appreciation of a good movie by the actors who play in it. Unfortunately here, there is no good movie.

The plot is pretty thin. The only really "creative" element here is the twist in which Daxus decides to change his company's business model. In this age, though, don't most companies do that? It's no so much a prescient element as it appears as if the writers said, "Now what?" And then they gave up. "Kid in a suitcase? Yeah, run with that!"

So... If you hadn't already guess this, my evaluation of Ultraviolet is a nice solid "F".