Survivor started up again last night, woot. Interesting twist this time. Four tribes, one tribe of older men, one of younger men, one older women and one of younger women. Should be interesting.

Anyway, after Survivor C.S.I. comes on. I really enjoy the show, been a fan for years. I do have one major issue with the show though, it’s a common issue I have with movies and TV shows. They just happen to be one of the worst offenders of it. What is it you ask? CMSNC or “Constantly Making Stupid Noises Computer”

Ever notice how much noise a computer makes on TV or in the movies? It’s absolutely ridiculous. If my computer made 2% of the noise one of Hollywood’s computers made I would be forced to go postal. Seriously, whenever they drag something with their mouse you get a sound effect, every time they press a key on the keyboard the computer emits a beep, if they start to search a database or something watch out, sound effects galore. Image, if you will, the next time you defrag your computer or run your virus scanner if the program had sound effects to go along with it. Imagine being at work if everyone’s computers was playing this cacophony of sounds, murder rates would sky rocket.

You can have fun with this and make the sound effects yourself as you work on your computer. This is especially fun at work or at internet cafes.

So I went and saw Terrence Malick’s (“Days of Heaven” “The Thin Red Line” “Badlands”) latest film The New World over the weekend. If you aren’t familiar with the movie it tells the story of Pocahontas. When I first started seeing previews for this movie a few weeks ago I wasn’t at all excited, it just didn’t make a good impression on me. The more I saw the preview the more I felt this way. Then the professional reviews started coming out and quite a few people were raving about it. I happen to be a big Roger Ebert fan, I find I agree with his taste in films more often than not, and he gave this film 4 stars, his highest rating. If you are curious you can read his review here

Since it was getting good press and Ebert liked it I figured I would give it a fair shot. The movie is stunningly beautiful to look at. It is up for the best cinematography Oscar and deserves to be. The acting is quite good too. I was especially impressed with newcomer Q’Orianka Kilcher who plays Pocahontas (her character’s name is never mentioned in the movie). Q’Orianka was only 14 when the movie was shot (further proof that I am going to hell for being a dirty old man) and I found her completely believable in the role with a very natural grace. The other actors; Colin Farrell, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer and a bunch of other people I didn’t recognize or don’t remember do a fine job as well.

With that out of the way; I absolutely hated this film. I should have followed my gut and not bothered with it. While I agree with many of the things that Ebert says in his review such as the awe that the Indians must have felt as they saw the English boats and the awe the English must have felt seeing their first natives or how much of the film is implied rather than spelled out. It just didn’t work for me. The movie is very light on dialog, not always a bad thing but here it just adds to the snooze fest. Another aspect of this movie that I loathed was the music. Imagine a donkey yelling in your backyard as you try to fall asleep, that’s about how enjoyable the music in this movie was. The music was done by James Horner who I usually don’t have any problem with.

Avoid this one folks or just watch it on mute and enjoy the scenery.

So I recently got myself a copy of Google Earth and have been having a great time with it. It is really quite amazing the power of this program. Along the way I have found some really cool stuff with it, some of things I found on my own others I have found via the net.

For those of you not familiar with google earth it allows you to explore our planet via satellite imagery in ways that you may have thought was only available to high powered governments. It is also combined with google maps and google search making it even more powerful. It really is quite fascinating and it’s free!

Here are some of the neat things I have found if you have google earth and click the “visit in google earth link” below it will bring you there in google earth:

My house Sorry, not going to link you	A plane flying visit in google earth
Dave. I’d like to buy this guy a beer visit in google earth	The Hoover Dam visit in google earth
Area 51. No UFOs visible visit in google earth	Ground Zero visit in google earth
Marree Man visit in google earth	Flying car? visit in google earth
Thunderhill: Where I raced my Miata visit in google earth	Trinity: location of first nuclear explosion visit in google earth
A couple SR71 blackbirds visit in google earth	B2 Bomber visit in google earth
F117A visit in google earth	Old plane in flight visit in google earth
Airplane graveyard visit in google earth	Creepy black helicopter visit in google earth

Pretty cool stuff. I suggest you give google earth a try, it’s fun and free.