Six proposals for redeveloping the World Trade Center site were unveiled today. I prefer the "Memorial Promenade" version, with its two towers of equal height surrounded by a ring of smaller buildings and plenty of land set aside for memorial space (and I'm pretty sure this design is one of those that does not actually build on the two spots where the original Towers stood). From the Hudson River, it would look like this:





Click on the link for more information on this plan, and the other six that have been submitted for public comment.

I saw the trailer for The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions yesterday as well (there is one trailer for both films, viewable here). I hope this was just a teaser trailer, because it did little to really whet the appetite for these two films. As far as I could tell, it consisted solely of Morpheus saying something mystical-sounding followed by a series of effects shots that look like extensions of the fight scenes from the original film. There was no hint of story at all, except to refer to a "war". These films aren't due for another year, so presumably this isn't the last of the trailers for them.

I went to see Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones again yesterday, for the first time since seeing it three times during its opening weekend. Once again I was struck by the film's level of visual invention, noticing this time things like how in the opening scenes, on cloudy Coruscant, you can faintly see the lines of air traffic moving through the haze. I still find the acting quite acceptable and the dialogue mostly fine (although I still think Obi Wan says "my very young Padawan learner" way too much). I did, though, spot a couple of things that I think would have improved upon the proceedings:

:: George Lucas is such a visually oriented storyteller that sometimes his subtleties are lost in the midst of so much other stuff going on, but he missed an opportunity with regard to Anakin's dreams about his mother's peril: he should have actually shown one of the dreams. It would have worked better if, say, just after the scene where Palpatine suggests that Obi Wan and Anakin be assigned to Amidala's protection, we cut to the shot of Anakin awakening from his nightmare and then being summoned by Obi Wan for a new assignment. Then, later on Naboo, as the dreams grow in intensity, Lucas could have actually inserted a few of Anakin's visions into the film -- maybe showing her being roughly taken by someone (he wouldn't have known it was the Tuskens), or showing her agony -- or perhaps a less literal vision, but still harrowing nonetheless. Show, don't tell is a cardinal rule amongst storytellers. Here Lucas could have helped his cause by showing a bit, thus drawing us in more to Anakin's turmoil.

:: I also think the Anakin-and-Padme section of the film would have worked better if there had actually been another attempt on Padme's life on Naboo. Perhaps Anakin would not have told her about the dreams of his mother, and then used an attempt on her life -- which he would have foiled -- as his excuse to disobey Obi Wan, leave Naboo, and take her with him. Thus he would be indulging most of his more dangerous instincts and being deceitful -- even if well meaning -- to boot.

I also noticed a nifty parallel to the classic trilogy: during Shmi's burial, R2D2 comes rolling up, beeping away, and Threepio says: "He has a message from an Obi Wan Kenobi." Owen Lars is standing there, so he hears this. Later on, in A New Hope, Luke informs Uncle Owen that the R2 unit they've bought "says he belongs to an Obi Wan Kenobi". Owen's "Uh oh" glance at Beru is now much more understandable.

Speaking of Millennium, the lead role of Frank Black was played by Lance Henriksen, who in my view is one of the more underutilized actors working today. He is also a man of some surprising talents: he makes and sells pottery on the side.

I've never gotten into Buffy the Vampire Slayer or its sequel series, Angel, mostly because both series have generally been opposite a show that I still watch and enjoy regularly, and by now both series appear to have a sufficiently established mytharc that I fear I would be at sea if I tried to come aboard now. When I've watched both shows, though -- I've caught an episode here and there -- I've found them to be intelligent and entertaining. Joss Whedon seems to know what he is doing with these shows.

And now, this fall he has a new one on Fox: a space opera series called Firefly. Apparently Whedon's concept is "Stagecoach in space", which sounds a lot like an early Gene Roddenberry description of Star Trek: "Wagon Train to the stars". Anyway, here's hoping that this new show finally gives something to look forward to on television on Friday nights, which has not been the case since the brilliant (in its first two seasons, anyway) but ratings-challenged Millennium went off the air.

(The Firefly official site can be found here, while a fan site [should a show that doesn't exist yet even have a fan site?] can be explored here.)

Stephen Den Beste has written this article on the plausibility of the new movie Reign of Fire. I haven't seen the film (and I'm not sure I plan to), but his critique puts me in mind of that awful Godzilla movie from a few years back, which not only forced me to watch the fascinating Jean Reno playing second fiddle to Matthew Broderick (whose only decent role was WarGames, when he was thirteen or something like that) but also asked me to believe that if I had two vehicles to choose from in order to escape a gargantuan lizard-dragon-dinosaur beastie that is on the loose in NYC, I should choose the yellow taxicab over the Apache attack helicopter.

A while back I wrote about the bizarre theories of human history proposed by author Graham Hancock. In that post I hinted that I would sometime post some recommendations for books on skepticism, something which is in short supply these days as belief in UFOs, alien abductions, ghosts, contact with the dead, and other such ideas abound while basic scientific knowledge generally atrophies. Here are some of the better books and other sources for skepticism and the scientific outlook that I have found. (I should note that I am not talking about "Skepticism" in the epistemological sense, but rather skepticism as an outlook.)

:: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan. Sagan was known as a critic of pseudoscience and anti-rationalism all his life, and this book is his crowning achievement in those areas. The book, written in 1995, creates a sense of alarm that in an age where so many facets of American life -- entertainment, business, medicine, national defense -- are dependent on science, scientific ignorance is on the rise rather than on the decline. It seems to Sagan as if the country has made a conscious decision to turn away from science: for instance, at the time of his writing Congress had just eliminated its Office of Technology Assessment, the only organization specifically charged with providing scientific and technological information to the members of the House and Senate. Throughout the book Sagan decries the rise of fuzzy thinking that has accompanied the decline of science and questions the priorities at the heart of our society that have led this way. Sagan's tone in The Demon-Haunted World is grumpier than in his other works; he employs grumpier language than the flights of near poetry that appear in such books as Cosmos and Pale Blue Dot. The tone is real, and warranted.

:: Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer. The title of this book is something of a misnomer; the issue of just why people do believe weird things is not actually addressed until the book's last chapter. That said, the book is a decent primer on skepticism and critical thinking. Shermer illustrates the difference between science and pseudoscience, and in one particularly useful chapter he illuminates a series of errors and fallacies that can creep into our thinking, polluting it, as it were. Much of the book directly addresses specific pseudoscientific claims, such as alien abductions, near-death experiences, and the like; he also devotes a substantial amount of space to defending evolution in the face of creationism and to addressing historical revisionism, particularly with respect to the Holocaust. Sagan's book is better, but Shermer's is also valuable.

:: Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud by Robert Park. This is another survey of pseudoscientific claims and investigations into why scientific thought is so often derailed by wishful thinking and poor reasoning. He concentrates in particular on perpetual motion, cold fusion, and homeopathy. The best parts of the book involve his disappointment in the news media; many news outlets continue reporting on people whose pseudoscientific claims have been long-since debunked, ignoring the debunking completely and justifying the continued coverage of outrageous claims under the rubric of "human interest stories".

:: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. This book is only tangentially about skepticism and critical thinking, but it is illustrative about how accurate knowledge and a systematic approach to that knowledge can be derailed by political concerns. Loewen describes many ways in which history texts are promulgating blatant errors, but more pernicious is the fact that many textbooks deliberately omit events and trends in history that do not promote a popular view of America. The aim, according to Loewen, is to produce pupils who view America as the protagonist in world history; for good or ill, this aim on the part of educators and textbook producers -- Loewen casts aspersions on both -- has had the effect of dulling historical knowledge and convincing legions of students that history is at best boring and at worst irrelevant.

Here are some sources on skepticism from the Web:

:: The James Randi Educational Foundation. Former magician James Randi is a professional debunker of odd claims, and as such he is a treasure. If you want to win a million dollars and you don't want to risk losing to one of fifteen other people on Survivor, Randi is your man: all you have to do is demonstrate a paranormal power. Easy, eh?

:: The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. CSICOP is a well-known organization that applies scientific investigation into putative events of paranormal activity. Their website is loaded with resources, and they also produce a periodical journal, The Skeptical Inquirer. (They are also based in Amherst, NY -- a suburb of Buffalo. They get high marks on that basis alone.)

:: The Skeptics Society. To quote from the mission statement: The Skeptics Society is a scientific and educational organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, professors and teachers, and anyone curious about controversial ideas, extraordinary claims, revolutionary ideas and the promotion of science. Our mission is to serve as an educational tool for those seeking clarification and viewpoints on those controversial ideas and claims. The Skeptics Society also produces Skeptic Magazine.

:: The Critical Thinking Consortium. An organization devoted to promoting critical thinking.

:: Snopes.com: The Urban Legends Reference Pages. If you're wondering if there is any truth to such claims as a suicide caught on camera in the background of The Wizard of Oz, or Phil Collins writing the song In The Air Tonight as a response to witnessing a drowning (and then performing the song for some guy who had been in a position to stop the drowning and did nothing), or that Nostradamus predicted the attacks of 11 September 2001, go to this site. It is one of the most comprehensive such sites on the Web. (None of these claims is true, by the way.)

I've been experiencing difficulty publishing lately. I wonder how that "Movable Type" thing works....

IMAGE OF THE WEEK





Cover to Detective Comics #27, which contained the first appearance of Batman. (Image links to a good site on the history of superhero comics.)

:: I'm a day late with this week's Image, primarily because I wanted to tie the image with my thoughts on the remarkable novel I finally finished reading yesterday. The book is Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

What a book this is. It is the tale of two cousins, Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier, who team up to create a number of notable comic book characters, their most famous creation being "The Escapist", a costumed superhero who is sort-of the ultimate Houdini. Chabon tells how these two men come up with the idea of doing comics in the first place, how they create their initial works, and how their creation becomes more famous than they ever thought possible. A mere plot description of the novel makes it sound like a "rags-to-riches" story involving comics, but it is far, far more than that. Chabon isn't content to merely give us a few years in the lives of two comics men; instead, he gives a meditation on the entire Golden Age history of comics itself, complete with owners who cheerfully (and sometimes not so cheerfully) pocket all of the financial rewards from the artists' efforts; the lawsuits begun by DC Comics in an effort to keep anything remotely resembling its cash cow, Superman, off the market; and the McCarthy-era turn against comics which was brought about almost single-handedly by Dr. Frederick Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent, which in turn led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority (and, to some, the setting back of comics as an artistic medium in the United States). Many novelists could get an entire work out of just that material, but in many ways the historical background of comics is just that: background for his work, which concentrates instead on character. And it is in its characters that The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay takes flight.

Put simply, it is a very long time since I read a book whose characters were as real as the ones presented here. Chabon gets us to rejoice at every victory, wince at every defeat, and acknowledge every stop on the voyage of self-discovery that Sammy and Joe take. Both of these men are full, three-dimensional characters who lead full, three-dimensional lives. And what lives they are. Joe, for instance, isn't just Sammy's cousin. He is a Jew from Prague who has managed to escape the oncoming Nazi threat, alone of his family. When he arrives in America at last and meets his cousin Sammy, he quickly falls under Sammy's spell. Sammy is one of those rambunxious youngsters who always has some kind of "get rich quick" scheme cooking up, and who thinks nothing of talking benefactors into bankrolling his plans before he has even fully formulated his plan. This happens early on, when Sammy talks a businessman -- Sheldon Anapol -- into entering the comics business, with the promise that he and Joe have "the next Superman" ready to go. Of course, much of this is bravado and bluff, and after they convince Anapol to give them a chance they promptly start work on creating this superhero they have already claimed to have. Sammy is to do the writing, and Joe is to do the artwork.

However, both Sammy and Joe are torn in different directions. Sammy is a writer with brilliant talent, but he can never quite overcome his belief that comics are just junk, telling pictured stories for children; plus, Sammy is increasingly unsure of his own sexuality. As the book progresses, Sammy's self-loathing becomes more and more apparent, as does the unnecessary nature of it all, because Chabon makes clear that he is a man of talent.

Joe is likewise torn in opposing directions: between the art of comics (for he regards comics as an art, a fully respectable medium for expression) and his desire to get his family out of Prague (his concern is particularly strong for his beloved little brother, Thomas). Joe also develops a strong hatred for the Germans, which plays out in some very unexpected ways at several points throughout the novel. And to top things off, there is a love-triangle of sorts between the two men and a woman named Rosa Saks, a wealthy New York socialite and herself a brilliant artist. Chabon resists any urge he must have felt to deal with the complex emotions of his novel in perfunctory, soap-operaish manner; instead, he shows us complex people behaving in complex ways, each trying to live as best they can in the face of a world on the brink of (and later engulfed by) war. The feeling of "There but for the grace of God go we" pervades this entire novel, but this feeling can only exist if we are given characters we can care about -- otherwise, the whole exercise is fruitless.

Chabon's language is also accomplished. It took me a long time to read this book, not just because it is long (636 pages in trade-paperback format) but because it is such an amazingly rich novel that there are entire passages that demand to be re-read immediately. Joe's lessons in magic and escape, learned in Prague from a kindly magician named Bernard Kornblum, are wonderful. They come early in the book, and we wonder why we are being told these things, but everything becomes clear later on as Joe's magician-training not only forms the basis of The Escapist but also much later becomes a means by which a family is reunited. Painstaking attention to structure is evident throughout the book, as are some wonderful sentences. For example:

:: Regarding the fate of Kornblum, Joe's boyhood magic teacher in Prague: "Kornblum['s] encyclopedic knowledge of the railroads of this part of Europe was in a few short years to receive a dreadful appendix...."

:: Regarding the work habits of Sammy and Joe: "In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time."

:: On people's ability to appraise their times: "One of the sturdiest precepts of the study of human delusion is that every golden age is either past or in the offing."

:: On a particularly unfortunate aspect of the Empire State Building: "A great feat of engineering is an object of perpetual interest to people bent on self-destruction. Since its completion, the Empire State Building, a gigantic shard of the Hoosier State torn from the mild limestone bosom of the Midwest and upended, on the site of the old Waldorf-Astoria, in the midst of the heaviest traffic in the world, had been a magnet for dislocated souls hoping to ensure the finality of their impact, or to mock the bold productions of human vanity."

Imagine a 636-page book filled with sentences like that, and you have a book that is not to be read quickly like a Clancy or Grisham page-turner. You have a book of literary amazement. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is absolutely deserving of its Pulitzer Prize. It's the kind of book that leads one to take pity on the next item on the "To read" pile.

I've added a new link to "Other Journeys": AngieMcKaig.com. The subtitle of this one is "Technofodder for the Masses", which is an accurate label: she provides a lot of news items on all things tech. (Plus, she apparently is from Toronto, which is one of my favorite places on the planet -- next to Buffalo, of course.)

Also via her site, this fascinating article on the recording industry and its increasingly maddening attempts to maintain its relevance and dominance over artists. I don't entirely agree with the article, but it's the best making-of-the-case for free downloads I've ever read, plus a convincing argument that the industry is more interested in its own well-being than pretty much any concern for the artists.

I've been perusing my archives a bit lately, and I've come to an interesting observation (interesting to me, at least, given my aims in producing this journal in the first place):

I don't write enough about music.

I'm not entirely sure why this is the case. I've always had fairly strong opinions about music; in fact, I even started college as a music major before I switched after two years to Philosophy (thus heeding the siren call of money and fame, not realizing then that this siren call was coming from Ancient Greece). That single decision is probably why I've moved toward writing as my creative outlet as opposed to music, which I was pretty good at. I posted regularly for several years to the rec.music.movies newsgroup, mainly to indulge my long love of the most unfairly neglected area of music: film scores. I left off the Usenet posting, though, at roughly the same time that I began Byzantium's Shores, because I pretty much ran out of things to say about film music after a while. I've become more interested in storytelling in general and writing in particular, and while my love of music has not diminished in the slightest -- my CD collection refuses to stop growing -- I've had far less to say about it. But now that may be changing.

Another problem with my lack of music-related musings is that since I left college (and, before that, turned away from the serious study of music) my vocabulary on musical matters has diminished. I've forgotten things I knew then; chord structures I could at one time identify by ear are now mysterious to me again. My musical muscles, as it were, have atrophied. Thus, I've decided to expend some effort into regaining some of that. I am planning to read up on music again, starting with Harold Schonberg's wonderful books (most notably The Lives of the Great Composers) and then proceeding to A History of Western Music by Grout and Palisca. (This latter work struck me as impossibly dry and boring when I read it ten years ago in a Music History class; but then, so did Charles Dickens, and I'm rather enjoying Great Expectations right now. All things in their time, I suppose.) Another constant companion will probably be David Dubal's remarkable new book, The Essential Canon of Classical Music. This amazing book is nothing less than a fairly comprehensive listening guide to the awesome edifice of classical music.

And that's where the real key lies: in listening to music. While I've always had fairly broad tastes, I find that nevertheless a certain extension of the horizons is called for. I have never been particularly fond of the music predating the Classical period, nor have I been able to digest much of what has come after the end of Romanticism and the "death" of tonality. My musical tastes within classical music tend to begin with Mozart (whose every note is miraculous) and end with Mahler (also astounding), and peaking in the middle with Berlioz (whose music speaks so directly to me that the effect sometimes terrifies). While I do enjoy some Bach, and while I do love Handel's Messiah -- who doesn't? -- I can't boast much familiarity with anything else in the Baroque era or the even earlier musical epochs. Likewise, while 20th century masters like Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Hanson and Copland are near and dear to my heart, the entire edifice of atonal music -- serialism and the like -- has never figured at all in my musical calculus. It is time that I placed more demands upon my ear, and I hope and intend to be writing more about the results.

Some people claim that music is the highest of all the arts. I cannot agree with that -- is Beethoven's Eroica Symphony a greater work, a priori, than The Last Supper or Hamlet, Prince of Denmark? Hell, is the Eroica greater than Stairway to Heaven? I'm not after rankings and hierarchies. What I'm after is art. Had I made different choices some years ago, my art would be music. Instead, it is writing. So be it -- but surely one can inform and enliven the other. That's what art is supposed to do, after all.

The amazing Robert Ballard has found another sunken vessel. This time, he has located John F. Kennedy's famous WWII ship, the PT-109.

Major League Baseball decided to pay tribute to one of its greatest stars ever, Ted Williams, by naming the All Star Game MVP Award after him. This was an excellent way to honor the "Splendid Splinter", who died last week. Of course, if the Powers That Be in baseball had their crystal balls functioning properly, they would have avoided doing this for another year -- because then they would have known in advance that there would be no MVP awarded at this year's All Star Game, because the game would go to 11 innings, the two managers would run out of players, and commissioner Bud Selig would be "forced" to call the game a tie.

Amazing. Just amazing. How MLB can still be alive after its long history of bad decision making, which crystallized last night on the field, is one of the great mysteries of the Universe, right up there with black holes and the duck-billed platypus. The decisions that led to the most ridiculous conclusion of a baseball game in memory were many: both managers selected too many position players and not enough pitchers; both managers cleaved to the rather recent notion that every player should be able to play (whether that means getting one at-bat, pitching to one hitter, or even just being a pinch-runner); despite the expansion of the Major Leagues, the All Star Rosters have not been increased; et cetera et cetera et cetera. The excuses trotted out by Bud Selig and others ("We didn't want to risk injuries to our players", "We ran out of players", "Last call at the hotel bar was in twenty minutes") are, in a word, lame. This was an idiotic thing to happen.

And if that weren't enough reason to question the decision making abilities of the folks running the National Pasttime, just wait. The disastrous lessons of 1994 seem to have been duly noted and ignored by both management and labor, and a player's strike is looming. Way to go, Major League Baseball. Way to go, Mr. Selig. Way to go, Player's Union.

How many more weeks until the Bills open training camp?

I love the Tour de France. The sheer level of endurance that these athletes display is utterly, utterly amazing.

Lance Armstrong slipped to fifth place overall today, which isn't much of a concern. Armstrong's strength is in the mountain stages; it is there where he will almost certainly make his move. The last three Tours -- all won by Armstrong -- played out precisely in this way.

Part of the pre-game ceremony for the Major League Baseball All Star Game was baseball's 30 greatest moments. They seem to have pretty much nailed them all, although I'd have included Kirby Puckett's walk-off home run in Game Six of the 1991 World Series. (Of course, Jack Morris's shutout in Game Seven of that same Series was a fine choice, too.) It's too bad they couldn't include some of the best moments from All Star Game history; then we might have been able to revisit that wonderful scene in 1993 (or was it 1994?) when Randy Johnson uncorked a fastball over John Kruk's head. It was one of the funniest baseball moments ever.

And not surprisingly, the Pirates -- losers of 100 games last season and embarking on what will be a long rebuilding process after their last GM, Cam Bonifay, decimated the farm system -- only have one All Star representative (and they probably wouldn't even have him, if not for the rule that requires that the All Star rosters reflect at least one player from each team). This year it is closer Mike Williams, who the Pirates signed to a large contract last offseason for some unknown reason. Teams which lose 100 games typically have far more pressing needs than a top-flight closer.

Ah, well. Go National League!

Let the waiting for 2005 begin: over at TFN, an article has been posted on what will happen in Star Wars Episode III. What I'm most interested in is seeing how Yoda gets away from the forces of evil; surely the Emperor and Darth Vader would never allow him to live if they had any idea that he was not dead. (And notice, in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Vader says things to Luke like "Obi Wan has taught you well", never once mentioning Yoda. Hmmmmm.)

I am also interested in seeing if my theory about the parallels between the fall of the Jedi and the true story of the Knights Templar holds true.

It's also less than six months until The Two Towers. Try as I might, though, I simply cannot get excited about Star Trek Nemesis.

One of the more pleasant side effects of having children is that once the child reaches the age of, oh, two or so, one suddenly becomes much more well-versed on the subject of animated movies. One gains the ability to quote entire passages from Dumbo, Aladdin, Snow White, et cetera. Of course, it helps if one actually likes animation to begin with. Fortunately, I have always loved animation....although some of the films don't bear up upon many, many, many viewings as well as others (I think I can safely live to the age of 71 before I feel the need to watch The Rescuers again).

Anyhow, in recent weeks we have made liberal use of our Blockbuster card to catch up on some animated films we haven't seen yet, and we actually saw a new one at the theater.

:: Shrek. Yes, somehow we failed to see this movie when it was out last year. It's every bit as delightful as the reviews and box office receipts implied. It's a warm and funny film, with a lot of heart but also with a hearty helping of satire and humor. The tone is most similar to the classic film The Princess Bride, in that it constantly walks a fine line between telling its own story and parodying others. The story, about an ogre who claims to crave solitude but really desires love and acceptance, is a wonderful little fable. What makes the film so endearing is its heart and its humor. In one scene, the villain -- Lord Farquaad -- attempts to extract information, through torture, from a helpless Gingerbread Man, using methods such as prolonged submersion in milk. Later on, the Lord is trying to get information from a Magic Mirror. The Mirror tries to hem and haw, until Farquaad gestures to one of his guards -- who holds up a hand mirror and smashes it with a gaunleted fist. The Magic Mirror quickly falls in line after that. The film is full of these kinds of jokes, some of which are quite dark indeed -- witness the bird that explodes when the lovely Princess Fiona's voice attains a too-high note. The film's music score is a combination of pop tunes and ordinary orchestral underscore, all of which somehow works. Shrek is a pleasure.

:: Atlantis: The Lost Empire. This is Disney's foray into a new type of animated film, where the emphasis is on story and action as opposed to song and dance. It's an intelligent move for Disney to make, as its musical films in recent years have felt a bit thin. It's almost as if Disney's best writers have been working on the PIXAR films (Toy Story, Monsters Inc., A Bug's Life). Atlantis's story is really nothing new, in itself; in fact, the film could almost be a reworking of Stargate. A nerdy archaeologist has eschewed traditional studies for unpopular esoterica, and he claims to have discovered the key to finding the lost city of Atlantis. Of course, this gets him nearly fired from his museum job, but a mysterious and rich benefactor personally finances his expedition, which he undertakes along with a crack team of other experts. There is the crusty military man, the eccentric dirt expert, the French demolitions man, and so on. They embark on their journey, eventually arriving at Atlantis after a number of adventures -- and a number still to go, as certain persons on the mission are revealed to have other agendas at work. None of this is particularly surprising, but it is still highly entertaining because of the freshness of the animation -- a lot of which is based on techniques developed in Japanese anime -- and the wittiness of the script. (One notable line comes from the submarine's public address announcer: "Tonight's meal will be baked beans, musical performance to follow.") The film's climactic action sequence is something to behold: it is a battle between Atlanteans (and some of the good guys) in flying-airships that are shaped like fish (one character says, "Do you have anything sporty, like a tuna?") and the bad guys in miniature biplanes, centering on a hot-air balloon that is attempting to depart through the crater of an extinct volcano. The animation during this sequence is nothing short of amazing -- never is the action anything but crystal clear. If Atlantis: The Lost Empire breaks no new ground in terms of story, it is still an enormously entertaining film and may point the way for traditional animation in the future.

:: Mulan. This is the oldest of the films that we've recently seen. It is also the most uneven of them. The film tells the tale of a Chinese girl who, desperate to bring honor to her family, disguises herself as a man so she can go off to war against the Huns. While this is different subject matter for Disney, it is clear that a need was felt to "Westernize" certain aspects of the tale. This being the case, the film doesn't really create the sense of time and place that the best of the Disney films evoke. Mulan simply isn't Asian enough; despite a few very nicely done sequences, this film still feels like a Western take on China rather than China itself. The songs aren't bad at all, but they are very un-Oriental in their tone (especially the horrible pop-tune that closes out the film's end credits); the film's music score, by Jerry Goldsmith, is very good but still doesn't push the Asian envelope enough. The film's voices are well-selected, with many of prominent Asian actors -- George Takei, Pat Morita, Soon Teck-Oh (one of my favorite character actors and a frequent Magnum, PI alumnus) and Ming-Na in the title role -- but somehow the film still feels like the Epcot version of China rather than the real thing. The villains are nothing more than robotic killing machines. Mulan is an enjoyable film, but it can't compare with a film like Princess Mononoke (yes, I know that Mononoke is set in Japan and not China, but the point stands).

:: Finally, we saw Lilo and Stitch last week. What an entertaining film this was. At first glance, one expects a Disney-fied version of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial. A diminutive alien is stranded on Earth, where he meets a young person from a broken family and then both proceed to learn valuable lessons about family and love. The similarities end there, though, because the alien -- Stitch -- is actually a genetic creation by an alien scientist who is literally programmed to do nothing but destroy. (In one scene, he creates a miniature model of San Francisco so he can trample, Godzilla-like, through the city.) The girl -- Lilo -- is rough around the edges; she gets into fights and purposely sabotages her sister's attempts to convince the social worker (a huge, black man named Cobra Bubbles and voiced by Ving Rhames) that she is an adequate guardian. The film is animated in wonderful style, making prominent use of pastel shades and watercolors for a look that is quite different from the usual Disney boldness. The music blends traditional Hawaiian song with, believe it or not, Elvis Presley (who apparently is quite revered in Hawaii). The film employs some wonderful humor: when the aliens simply decide to vaporize Earth to rid themselves of their escaped weapon, a life scientist pops up and explains that Earth is the sole habitat of that precariously-endangered species, the mosquito. Lilo and Stitch is a terrific film.

I am starting to wonder if some kind of Golden Age of animation might not be in the offing, between the continued excellence of traditional animation (recently renewed by the adoption of anime techniques), the increased appreciation of anime in general, and the continued evolution of computer-generated animation. There is still life in Disney....but it's not all Disney. And that's all to the good.

A thousand cheers for the organizers of this years Taste of Buffalo, which was held downtown this past weekend. The festival was great fun, as always, and for some reason the food seemed even better this year. Maybe it was the fact that, unlike last year, it didn't rain.

It is still a bit depressing to walk through the festival, along with upwards of 200,000 other people, and note the large number of empty storefronts and closed businesses. Downtown Buffalo has a long way to go.

I wrote a few days ago about Russia's proposal of an international mission to Mars. In that article, I wondered if the Russians could meet the financial obligations that they would incur if such a project were undertaken. The financial problems of the Russian space program are well-documented; they have, for example, raised money for their cash-strapped operation by licensing the hulls of their rockets for advertisements and auctioned off old test vehicles. Well, their problems go far deeper than that, and it now appears that this may be -- and probably is -- a way for the Russians to secure more Western (and, mainly, American) financial backing for their space program. A Mars mission would involve a long-term commitment of capital, which is not exactly in great supply in Russia these days.

(Thanks to the Captain for the information.)

I've been nursing a cold for the last couple of days, which is why I've been absent from posting since Friday.

The problem with summertime colds is the degree of incredulity they create. Since it's not the time of year that I associate with colds, not only is there the typical suffering of a runny nose and a sore throat and all the rest of it, but there is an additional sense that "I can't believe this is happening! How on Earth did I get a cold? Nobody I know has one!" If this were October or November, say, I would have little difficulty accepting the fact that I have a cold right now. As it is July, though, the whole thing seems a bit stupid.

Now, it's off to ladle some more DayQuil down my throat.