Dolphin’s Dock

Stargate: Ark of Truth

Put simply, if you enjoyed Stargate SG-1, you'll enjoy this movie. If you were not a fan of SG-1, you won't even understand what's going on in this movie (even if you enjoyed the original Stargate movie, so much has changed in the 10 seasons of the show that that movie inspired, and this movie starts where the show left off). This wasn't as much a "movie based on a tv show" as it was a TV episode of Stargate SG-1 that was too long to play on the air. I enjoyed it, and it nicely finished the Orai plot line that was left fairly open at end of the final episode of the series.

Jerome Bixby's Man from Earth

I'd never heard of this when TheBoyfriend™ handed it to me in Blockbuster. I flipped it over and read the back which essentially described the plot as a college professor has quit his job and is leaving town when is friends (other professors) show up unexpectedly to see him off and question why he is leaving. He decides to tell them his secret; that he is a 14,000 year old cro-magnon man who has to move on every so often when people begin to notice that he isn't aging.

How freaking corny does that sound?!?! Well, don't let it fool you, it's one of the best movies I've seen in quite awhile. Modern movies (especially in the SciFi genre) seem ready to spend their big budgets on visually dazzling special effects that are all too often designed mostly to divert your attention from the apparent lack of money they spent on writers. This movie doesn't take that route at all, and in fact, the entire movie takes place in a rustic cabin packed and ready to be moved out of, devoid even of most of its furniture. Beginning to end the "action" is nothing more than a conversation between colleagues. Yet it keeps you intensely engaged beginning to end. It has the feeling of being based on a book, and I was unhappy to find that it was not. Seems to me that they could have explored the plot much deeper than they did and was hoping a book would have done so. Even still, it was definitely a worthwhile movie.

Highlander: The Source

TheBoyfriend™ bought this as an impulse buy. After watching it, even he was wishing he could go get his money back. Probably because the first movies came out when i was too young to be interested in them, I've always thought of Adrian Paul as the real Duncan MacLeod, so I was glad that he was cast in the role in this film. That was where my enjoyment of it ended. "The Source" utterly butchered the original highlander mythology and the mythology it attempted to replace it with was poorly thought out, underdeveloped and inconsistent. Even ignoring the fact that the film seemed oblivious to the entire Highlander story up to that point, as a standalone movie it was poorly done. Seriously don't see this movie if you enjoyed the Highlander movies and tv series. I'm trying my best to forget this movie so as not to tarnish my memories of the rest of the Highlander franchise.

It's not that the I don't like the idea of a laptop that is only 3/4 of an inch thick at it's thickest point (though I admit I have some questions as to the durability of such a machine), but with a $1799 price tag, this isn't something many people are going to be able to buy for the "cool factor" alone. I suspect anyone paying that price will be using it as their primary computer and, for that purpose, the MacBook Air just doesn't stack up.For one thing, the hard drive is a wimpy 80gb. That might be ok for Joe Schmo who doesn't do anything but check his email and surf the web, but then if that's all you do with your computer, why are you buying a $1799 laptop? And if you don't mind the smaller hard drive, why not go with the baseline MacBook. That'll land you a faster processor and even if you add an extra stick of RAM to match the Air's 2gb, you'll still be saving yourself $500. I find it difficult to believe that there is a significant market out there of people wealthy enough to drop an extra $500 bucks to shave a quarter-inch thickness (and .4 GHz of processor speed!!!) off of their laptop.

Then there's the lack of a CD/DVD drive. Kudos to Apple for looking to the future, but... ...I'm not sure that future is here yet. Sure, you can download alot of your movies, music and software from the web now, but what about when you want to give a 500MB file to a friend (or a client)? Without the ability to burn to a disc, I guess you're left purchasing webspace (a .Mac account perhaps) to upload to, so your friend can download from. And what if you want to watch your home movies on your home tv? I suppose you may be able to wirelessly transmit them there if you own an AppleTV, but that won't help Grandma three states away see them. Not to mention that if you're storing your films on your hard drive, that 80 gig ain't gonna go far.

Now, you could BUY an external drive to burn your discs with (in fact Apple would be happy to sell you one specifically intended for the MacBook Air), but my question is where do you plug it in? The MacBook Air contains a single USB port. Plug a (wired) mouse into it and you've lost that.

I'm not saying I don't think the MacBook Air is "cool." I just don't think it would fit the bill as my primary computer. I'd love to have one as a cool toy (err... a secondary computer), but I think at $1799, it's priced out of the toy range.