Jeff discusses the Evolution of commandN at Blogworld on MacVoicesTV.

I still have plans to do more stuff at JeffMacArthur.com but, until then, you might want to keep up with my musings at decabled.com and commandN.tv.

Thanks!

Jeff

Since I haven’t seen this before (despite it being online for over a year ), I thought I’d share it with all of you. It’s basically a spoofed trailer for “the Shining” with Jack Nicholson that’s done in some kind of redeeming family flick style. Pretty funny …

Scott Walker has taken an old newspaper vending machine, slapped in a 17″ LCD display on the front, and then hooked up a Mac Mini to stream newspaper front pages and more. Cool!

Colourful Optical Illusion

Lost is just a terrible, substanceless tease. Each week brings the promise of something new to be revealed, but there are no answers, only more (stupid, insipid) questions. Although the first season, and to some degree the second, were quite good as network television goes, the show how so “lost” its way that it’s very hard to believe that there is any over-arching story going on here at all.

Let’s face it – Lost was burdened by its concept from the beginning and should have ended after a couple of seasons (there’s a reason why Robinson Crusoe was such a quick read). What’s going on now is just a pathetically slow death kept on life-support entirely for business, as opposed to creative, purposes. Such is the way with television, but it’s hard to believe how low Lost has sunk.

Look at a show like Heroes (which I really like) – it, too, unwinds a continuing stream of new questions with each episode. The difference is that it also answers some of these questions every episode. If the makers of Lost could muster up enough pride to understand that this endlessly wavering series is not going to make it past another season then they’d smarten up and start writing their way out of this tangled mess they’ve created. At least then, after a final season of explaining what’s going on instead of just creating further shallow “mysteries” like some David Lynch series gone bad, viewers could look back and think that all in all it wasn’t a total waste of time – good first season, decent second season, some floundering in the middle, but boy did they wrap it up tight! However, given the decision-making that has brought the show to its current sorry state (and the lack of much competition on Wednesday nights), I’m not too optimistic about a “creatively principled” ending anytime soon.

Alpha Dog is based on actual events: the kidnapping and subsequent murder of a crazed druggy’s 15 year old brother by a group of teenagers led by the local pot dealer/wanna-be-gansta. The movie is a disturbing look at the increasing disconnect between real life and the life depicted in rap videos and tabloid news.

Jake Mazursky (played by the talented Ben Foster, best known for his role as Claire’s boyfriend in HBO’s Six Feet Under) is a psychopathic, drug-abusing Jewish kid with some serious Nazi tats who owes teenage kingpin Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) $1200 in drug debts. The diminutive Truelove tries to play tough and is wholly outclassed by the crazed Mazursky, who demeans Truelove in his retaliation. When Truelove and his crew (including Mr. Justin Timberlake, who is surprisingly capable in his role) happen across Mazursky’s younger brother, Zack, Johnny decides kidnapping the kid would be some serious payback. Zack (Huff’s Anton Yelchin) is happy to party with the “big kids” (which is what he ends up doing after the first few hours) and figures he’ll be back home within days. Needless to say, things escalate beyond all reason.

Alpha Dog is ably directed by Nick Cassavetes, and has a great supporting cast, including Bruce Willis (Johnny’s dad), Sharon Stone (Zack’s mom), and the first I’ve seen (although it is brief) of Alan Thicke in years. The fact that this atrocity actually happened is totally disturbing, and it’s not exactly a movie that’d make your average parent very optimistic about raising a kid today (at least not amongst the idle rich in Southern California). That said, with the copious sex, drugs, and hip hop involved, that’s probably not the target audience anyway.

PS: I hope you didn’t expect a romantic movie for Valentine’s Day .

Well, it’s looking pretty likely that Rogers Wireless will be the carrier for the iPhone in Canada. There’s been a slew of different reports on this (MacNN and many others) and I think yesterday’s CrunchGear post probably cements it, quoting an official Rogers rep as saying:

“Rogers is actively working with Apple to launch the iPhone in Canada as soon as possible and will be the exclusive provider of the iPhone in Canada.”

This makes sense because Rogers is the main GSM network provider here, but a quick peruse through the comments threads of various articles (like John Wiseman’s blog and the MacNN story referred to above) certainly shows a lot of displeasure at the prospect (including some insane price calculations for service that I can only hope are far off base). I’ve only used Telus in Canada, so I can’t really offer any firsthand opinions, aside from agreeing that telecommunications competition in Canada is not what it should be.