Cuil: The ISHTAR of search engines!

You might have heard about Cuil: a new search engine, the founders of which have stated is going to be a "Google killer". It went online a couple days ago and I've tried it a number of times since then, growing more frustrated with each attempt to determine how exactly Cuil is supposed to be useful. It claims to have indexed more pages than Google. And maybe it has, and all those pages really are sitting in a database somewhere in Cuil's corporate headquarters. But if so, the algorithms needed to access 'em are shot to Hell. Doing a search for myself in regard to the Viacom mess last year turned up photographs of a robot and an NBA basketball player. And the results don't even seem consistent from one search to the next, either...

This thing cost upwards of $33 million to start up. Kinda makes Cuil the Ishtar of search engines, when you think about it.

Cade Metz at The Register has written an enlightening - and hilarious - essay about what seems to have gone wrong with Cuil. It reads frighteningly close to what happened at ION Storm (John Romero's now-defunct game company that promised to "make you his bitch"), given the ratio of wild promises to burn rate of venture capital.

Whatever is going on over there, Cuil's owners need to fix things fast, or else their little project will be a vague memory by Christmas.

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Bush spitting in faces of Chinese Christians... again

When he goes to Beijing for the opening of the Olympics over a week from now, George W. Bush will "worship" at a church there, it's being reported.

Now for the part of the story that the Bush Administration doesn't like to talk about...

The "church" that Bush will attend is no doubt going to be one of the state-approved churches that the communist government of mainland China keeps under its control. It will not be a congregation of believers who are free to worship as they best understand the leading of the Holy Spirit. They cannot even appoint their own leaders for their churches: the Chinese government determines who are the pastors and other officials, even installing its own priests for the supposedly "Catholic" churches there.

(By the way, Bush did the same thing almost three years ago and I wrote about it then, too.)

The church that Bush will be going to will be one that puts loyalty to the Chinese government far ahead of loyalty to God.

Meanwhile, some estimate that 40 million Christians in China are worshiping at underground "house churches", beyond the sanction of the government there. They do so at the risk of being arrested, imprisoned, and perhaps far worse.

Those are the believers that our supposedly "Christian" President should be standing in solidarity with. And it would be ridiculous to suggest that Bush attend a service at an "unofficial" church and risk the lives of its congregants. But by announcing that he will attend one of the state-sponsored churches, Bush is gesturing his approval of goverment-controlled religious worship. It would have been better if he had the guts to say "Nope, I'm not going to go in for this farce. You officials in Beijing need to let these people worship God according to their conscience, not your policy."

But then, since when did Bush ever have the guts to do something like that, anyway?

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For those asking for my thoughts on THE DARK KNIGHT...

A review is coming. Probably later this evening. I had to go see it again yesterday afternoon (at that swanky new theater in Burlington) before proceeding any further with writing a review... which I've been working on for over a week now.

Suffice it to say, I'm going to have a lot to say about this movie.

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First trailer for HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE just apparated online!

Harry: "Did you know, sir ... then?"

Dumbledore: "Did I know I'd just met the most dangerous dark wizard of all time? No."

Our first look at the child Tom Riddle. And Dumbledore fights the Inferi.

This one is gonna hurt when it comes to theaters this fall. Can't wait!

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Which KWerky Productions star is now appearing with Richard Gere in a Nicholas Sparks movie?!

Why, it's none other than Dawn Swartz (playing the nurse on the right), who starred in our short film Schrodinger's Bedroom last year!

Dawn has a role in - and even appears in the trailer for - the new Warner Brothers movie Nights in Rodanthe, starring Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Christopher Meloni, James Franco and Viola Davis. It's based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks. I was going to go see this anyway 'cuz of the setting (Rodanthe is a small community on North Carolina's Outer Banks) and the cinematography looks beautiful, and Lisa is a big fan of Sparks's books and movies too. Now we've another great reason to check it out!

Here's a page with some links to various formats of the Nights in Rodanthe trailer. And if you're just plain lazy, here it is on YouTube, too (Dawn appears about 12 seconds in)...

Congrats to Dawn! Who is not only a wonderful actress and KWerky Productions family member, but also a very sweet person and a dear friend :-)

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Iraq War veteran's wounds lead to discovery of cooking

Lenny Watson was a Marine who was among the first to enter Iraq when the war started over five years ago. In 2004 he lost most of his lower jaw during a grenade attack. His drive to have something palatable to eat during his recovery ended up propelling him into the culinary arts...

The Dallas Morning News has the story of Lenny Watson's new career.

No, not gonna add any commentary here about the war, and that's not why I'm posting this here either. I do think this guy has the right attitude though: that being happy is ultimately your own choice to make, regardless of whatever nonsense life throws into your path. It's a great story, and one worth sharing with others.

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TR2N (AKA the TRON 2) teaser is everywhere illegally!

Rather than post a link or embed the video (which would make no sense since Disney is sending out DMCA claims all over the place tonight) I'll just say that if you really have to see the teaser for TR2N - the sequel to 1982's Tron - that ran at Comic Con a few days ago, just search for "tr2n" on whatever video hosting service that you happen to like, and you should come up lucky.

The screenshot above is the official logo of the movie, taken from one of the better versions that I've seen floating around.

From what I've heard, Jeff Bridges shot his stuff for the teaser in a single afternoon, under the tightest secrecy so that it could be a complete surprise at Comic Con this weekend.

I'd love to see this thing in full, beautiful Quicktime. How about it Disney? I mean, people are watching it already anyway. This thing is too gosh-darned beautiful to have it secretly traded around among the dark corners of the Intertubes. If y'all wait 'til next week after Comic Con, we'll understand. But please, get an official release of this teaser out there soon! :-)

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If GRAND THEFT AUTO 4 was real life...

...it would probably be something like this:

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Darth Vader tries to join Lutheran priests in Reykjavík

Is that the most weird title in the history of blogging, or what?

But it's true: Darth Vader tried to take part in a procession of Icelandic Lutherans in that island country's capital of Reykjavík. Here's the video...

And here are some pictures on Flickr of the incident.

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WOLVERINE: OLD MAN LOGAN looks like a terrific arc

It's been awhile since I picked up an issue of an ongoing comic book, apart from the odd Star Wars-related one-shot every now and then. But yesterday Lisa and I were in the Borders in Greensboro and the cover of Wolverine #66 intrigued me enough to purchase a copy. Written by Mark Millar (recently known for the Civil War arc that raged across most of the Marvel line), it's the first chapter of the "Old Man Logan" saga.

And based on what I enjoyed reading last night, "Old Man Logan" might become the best story involving Marvel's most popular mutant since the groundbreaking Origin over six years ago.

The "Old Man Logan" arc takes place fifty years after "the night the heroes fell" and the bad guys finally conquered America. The land is now carved-up into a series of territories and whatever it was that happened, it completely broke Wolverine's spirit. He wandered off into the wasteland, completely renounced violence, dropped his heroic moniker and became simply Logan. When the series begins we find that he's got a wife and two children, eking out an existence as a tenant farmer in California and trying to pay off his landlords.

In Logan's case, this turns out to be the inbred progeny of Bruce Banner. Imagine the degenerate hillbillies of Deliverance as a gang of Hulks. If that alone will not hook you into "Old Man Logan", I don't know what will.

The Hulk Gang beats Logan to a pulp and threatens to kill his family if he can't pony up the rent. Hawkeye - now a blind man - tells Logan that he's got a delivery to make on the East Coast and if Logan can help him get there, his family will get all the rent money they need to pay off the Hulks. By the end of the issue, Hawkeye is in the driver's seat of the rebuilt Spider-mobile with Logan navigating, as the satellite system shows them the three thousand miles they must maneuver through the dominions of Kingpin, Doom, and the threat of much worse in order to reach a place called New Babylon.

Mark Millar is saying that "Old Man Logan" is shooting for the same kind of vibe as The Dark Knight Returns. I can see that here. And in addition to Deliverance there's also a sense of The Grapes of Wrath and maybe even Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at work in the story, with Part 1's final shot of Wolverine and Hawkeye driving off into the East toward whatever adventure awaits.

I'll definitely be picking up Part 2, and probably the rest of this eight-issue series as well. Well worth looking into, whether you're a die-hard Marvel geek or a more casual fan.

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Ex-Iraqi rebels threaten a return to Al-Qaeda if not paid more

And now the dirty secret of whatever success "the Surge" had rears its ugly head...

Military.com is reporting that ex-rebels in Iraq are demanding more money, or else they will go back to the ranks of Al-Qaeda and begin attacking American forces again. The money that's been paying the former rebels to begin with has originated with the United States government.

So all this time we've either been funding an army of mercenaries that used to be shooting at American personnel, or we've been outright bribing them, depending on what your take on the situation is. I don't know if all of the diminished violence in Iraq can be attributed to this chicanery, but it's a safe bet that a big chunk of it will be.

I'm reminded again of the last phase of the Roman Empire, when that government was reduced to hiring barbarians to fill the ranks of its army and even paying off foreign tribes not to overrun the empire. Look at where that got 'em...

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DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-ALONG BLOG: Pure genius from the mind of Joss Whedon!

Last week, around the time that we were in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I started hearing about something called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly creator Joss Whedon wrote, directed and even composed the music for this three-act comic opera about Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), a down-on-his-luck mad scientist trying to gain both respect as a supervillain and the girl of his dreams (played by Felicia Day). I couldn't get to its website in time to catch the streaming video of the three chapters as they were being released, but based on the good buzz and the positive word of several friends (including Phillip Arthur) I went to iTunes two nights ago and checked it out.

People, if you haven't already, you owe it to yourself to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: it's one of the funniest, most clever and even thought-provoking things that I've watched all year. And the songs are catchy! I've had "My Freeze Ray" playing in my head almost constantly since Wednesday night, and I even found myself singing it this afternoon while driving around with my wife.

Click here to purchase Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog from iTunes. You can either get each act individually for $1.99, or all three for $3.99 (which is what I did). And let us hope that this is not the last that we have heard from the nefarious Dr. Horrible!

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Randy Pausch, the "Last Lecture" professor, has passed away

Randy Pausch, the computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and pioneer in the field of virtual reality, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and then turned his fight for life into an inspirational video and book, has passed away at age 47.

If you've never had the opportunity to watch the lecture, here it is courtesy of Google Video. It's easily one of the most uplifting things that I've ever seen.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife and three children.

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Andrew Klavan: Batman and Bush have much in common (What the...?!)

Still working on my review of The Dark Knight, but it should be up later today. Part of the reason for the delay was that I've been so gosh-darned busy since it came out, what with crossing the country (and I didn't even see The Dark Knight in my own, mind ya). And also 'cuz I needed some time to really "suss" things out about this movie.

In the meantime though, I cast your attention to Andrew Klavan, writing for The Wall Street Journal, and he asserts that The Dark Knight proves that Batman and George W. Bush are practically one and the same. In short...

"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Bush is like Batman?! 'Tis writing so mad, Klavan should be locked up in Arkham. If anything, Bush is The Joker: everything this man has done has sown and reaped chaos and destruction... but on a global scale.

But let's look at the comparison to Batman again and why Klavan is so wrong. First, Batman is putting himself on the front line in the war against crime in Gotham City. When Bruce Wayne takes the armor off and we see those cuts and scars, he acquired... nay, he earned... those on his own. President Bush has never been in a real fight. He's a spoiled brat king who sends henchmen (not talking about U.S. military personnel at all, folks) to do his dirty work. Just like The Joker.

Second, from the very beginning of his term of office, and throughout most of his life, Bush has been obsessed with creating a "legacy" that he'll be remembered for. It's a kind of narcissism that fuels the greatest of supervillains. This is not what motivates Bruce Wayne. Wayne is not out for fame or glory, and he can live with the fact that history must never know that he is Batman because that simply does not matter at all to him. What does matter is that he will do whatever is in his power to make sure that no one will ever die... not even those who might most deserve it.

This brings me to another point: Batman's compassion even toward his enemies. We see this in The Dark Knight: Batman doesn't kill The Joker. Heck, if you read the comics at all, you already know that for all his understanding of how twisted and dangerous The Joker is, Batman has never given up hope that the man might be reformed and redeemed. Incarcerated forever for his crimes, yes... but at least with a conscience. Batman does not kill his enemies. He will stop them, and at times punish them when the law fails... but he does not take it upon himself to judge them as unworthy of life. Go read Alan Moore's The Killing Joke if you've never done so, if you want to see what I mean. Does anyone believe that George W. Bush has just as much strength of soul that would keep him from killing his worst enemies and getting away with it, if he could?

Batman wants the people of Gotham to stand up and fight the darkness on their own. Bush wants the people of America to be a superstitious, cowardly lot. 'Nuff said.

I'm going to write more about it in my review, but The Dark Knight is a movie about morality under duress and sometimes having to compromise that. Klavan argues that Batman in The Dark Knight vindicates the neo-conservative belief that Bush must do away with personal rights in order to win the "war on terror" (by the way, nobody who seriously believes in the "war on terror" is worth respecting, in my opinion). He totally missed the point of The Dark Knight here: that though good people are not infallible and do fail at times, good people do at least harbor remorse and regret for not possessing complete wisdom to deal with the world around them. I think this is one of the greatest attributes of conscience... and it's one that Bush and the vast majority of his supporters have never demonstrated.

Which leads to my final point: the possession and abuse of power. In The Dark Knight we see Batman use a technological ability to locate The Joker, though Lucius Fox believes that it is too much power to be given to one man. Batman agrees, and after the need for the power has gone, he gives Lucius the ability to destroy the technology. That could never be George W. Bush. He would keep that power to himself... hell, he darn nearly has that same power already... and tell everyone that he needs it because "the Jokerists are still out there".

Therein lies the greatest reason why Batman and George W. Bush have nothing in common with each other: Batman can say no to power, while Bush cannot get enough of it.

Klavan's essay is the most damned silly thing about The Dark Knight that I've read to date, and is proof of the desperation that Bush's die-hard supporters have been driven to in the final months of their idol's bid to achieve lasting fame. Which made it all the more fun to shoot holes in :-)

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Disney announces TRON 2 at Comic Con

Geez Louise... has the movie news during the past 24 hours been crazy, or what?

In a move that surprised everyone 'cuz nobody really saw it coming, Disney premiered the trailer for Tron 2 at Comic Con today in San Diego.

You heard that right: a sequel to the 1982 film Tron, which was about a programmer who gets zapped into a world that exists within the realm of the computer.

Click on the above link for more details.

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Obama wants to "remake the world"

Until now, I haven't felt anything particularly bad about Barack Obama, the candidate who's pretty much locked-up the Democrat nomination for President of the United States. I disagree with him on pretty much everything, and I sure as heck won't be voting for him. But I'm a guy who knows how to draw a line between not seeing eye to eye with someone, and being able to like him or her as a person. I'm blessed to have friends from many different ideologies and philosophies and even what some would consider "other lifestyles". Doesn't mean that I approve of those things, but I'm not gonna stop that from considering someone to be a person that needs to be loved by me just as God loves them. Just one of the ways I've realized over the years is how I'm supposed to be a witness for Christ to others, I guess you could say.

So yeah, it takes a lot for me to frown on someone enough to more than merely distrust them. And I hadn't had a reason to do that with Obama. Until today.

Speaking at a rally of more than 200,000 people in Berlin, Germany, Obama promised that he would "remake the world", and made what can only be considered blatant appeals for "global citizenship".

So much here that's popping big red flags. For starters, why is Obama apparently campaigning in Germany, when it's United States citizens who are the only ones who are supposed to be voting for him?

And then, "global citizenship"? When I was a Boy Scout I earned the Citizenship in the World merit badge. It was about recognizing your role at the local and national level and how it extends to the rest of humankind. It was not about yielding sovereignty to some nebulous greater good.

But what really is starting to scare me about this guy is that he's openly boasting that he wants to "remake the world".

Mr. Obama, the world is being remade every day, by ordinary men and women. Like the final song from a musical that I was recently in goes: "It's in our hands." God has given each of us the free will of how we choose to make not just our lives, but the world around us.

Mr. Obama, if you ever read this: Who the hell are you to proclaim that you should be given absolute power to "remake the world"?

And that almost a quarter-million people would rally to his cause, chanting his name like a mantra... I thought the whole thing about a "messiah complex" with this guy was a joke before. Now, it's starting to remind me too much about another man in Germany, about seventy years ago. He promised to remake the world too.

Until today I thought that Obama was at most a curiosity. Now, I'm finding myself genuinely worried about what this man's intentions are.

No, I'm not voting for John McCain, either. The wiser, more righteous choice in this farce of an election is not to choose at all, considering that we're being expected to pick between a man hellbent on igniting World War III and a man now seemingly worshiped as divine.

We, the American people, could have remade our world already. We could have chosen to be vigilant and wise. We should have thought for ourselves! Now look at us: a once-proud people reduced to a slave race. If the past sixteen years of executive administrations did not prove that enough, then the next four years at least certainly will.

We had our chance. And we blew it.

And no, I'm not laughing, because there's not a damned thing funny about any of this.

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LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT... found at last?!

So I'm up late, working on the video that will chronicle what happened during those eight days that Lisa and I spent on our epic journey north, and I was about to call it a night when I happened to check Ain't It Cool News and found this story.

Apparently, a horror film expert has located a pristine copy of London After Midnight, the 1927 silent movie starring Lon Chaney and widely considered to be the most lost film of all time...

The print is said to currently be residing in the vaults of Time-Warner under the alias The Hypnotist. Until now, it's been thought that London After Midnight had been lost for all time, because the only known copy was destroyed in an electrical fire at MGM in 1967.

This month has already witnessed the discovery of the full print of Metropolis (and I joked then that maybe London After Midnight could be next). Dare we hope that, after so very long, we might finally behold what is thought to be the last great thriller of the silent era... and what many have said was the finest performance of Chaney's career?

Heck, this actually makes me feel like I can go to bed happy after hearing about The Rocky Horror Picture Show remake :-P

Seriously though: if this is true - and I pray that it is - let us hope and pray that London After Midnight is given a full-bore restoration effort. 'Twould be great on my DVD shelf along with Metropolis (whenever it comes out).

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