We watch the Watchmen.

This last Friday I had my friends over to watch The Watchmen Ultimate Cut on BluRay. It was a fun time as I really love watching great movies, this being no exception. Kind of sucks though, I picked this up for $50 on Amazon and yesterday it goes on sale for $28. The rub of the market it seems.

The theatrical release mainly follows Rorschach as he tries to uncover a plot to kill superheros. The Ultimate Cut dances around all the characters and interleaves Tales of the Black Freighter throughout the movie. Watching the Ultimate Cut the first time, my first inclination was that it was too long. I also thought it seemed less focused than the theatrical version. After pondering it more, I still agree with my initial impressions but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fantastic, I just needed a break in the middle.

The Ultimate Cut is much more dark than the theatrical and with Tales of the Black Freighter in the mix now, it really cranks the dark tone up quite a bit. All the scenes have more footage, you see entire sub stories of some of the city gangs and you get the absolutely gruesome yet extremely powerful Tales of the Black Freighter. Speaking of the aforementioned pirate tale I found it to be one of the more compelling bits of the movie. The pirate tragedy narrative really brought the movie to a level I hadn’t considered previously. At first the animation really jerks you out of the movie but I felt later on I was looking forward to it. The final chapter in the tale really brought the entire story full circle in a really fantastic way.

In the end if you loved the theatrical, I would recommend this version. It has a few issues though… First being its length and second being it really changes the movie from it essentially being focused on Rorschach to the Ultimate Cut dancing around everything. Not saying its bad, but it is worth mentioning. That said, if you are looking for the same anti-super hero movie that has you question the motives and actions of “good” then I recommend you check it out.

I <3 Slashdot

Post of Slashdot today titled “The Noisy and Prolonged Death of Journalism” I am not going to talk about the topic but I want to point out a comment someone made I thought was spot on.

“I think some of the cyberpunk writers had it right. Has the “information” age made people better equipped with, well, information? Are people more knowledgeable? Or are they retreating further and further into their own private virtual reality bubbles. Are they seeing the infinite shades of gray in this world, or is it all just angels and demons, black and white and us versus them?

It’s impossible to be an independent thinker any more. If I praise Obama on one thing, I get called a socialist. If I criticize him on another thing, I’m called a right wingnut. There is no correct side here- they are all profoundly effed in the head.“

Osama Bin Laden

Story source.

“As President Obama vows to “finish the job” in Afghanistan by sending more troops, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has completed a detailed look back at a crucial failure early in the battle against Al Qaeda: the escape of Osama bin Laden from American forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in December 2001.”

“The committee report, prepared at the request of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the committee’s Democratic chairman, concludes unequivocally that in mid-December 2001, Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, were at the cave complex, where Mr. bin Laden had operated previously during the fight against Soviet forces.

The new report suggests that a larger troop commitment to Afghanistan might have resulted in the demise not only of Mr. bin Laden and his deputy but also of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban. Mullah Omar, who also fled to Pakistan in 2001, has overseen the resurgence of the Taliban. ”

“The Senate report was prepared by the Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic staff, whose chief investigator, Douglas Frantz, is a former journalist who has reported extensively on the hunt for Mr. bin Laden.”

This coming up to President Obama making his strategy known in Afghanistan Tuesday. My guess is that some people will hate it because we are not exiting now. Some people will hate it because its not a 1 to 1 pairing of General McCrystal’s requests. Some people will hate it because they hate Obama. Some people will be OK with it. In the end we will still be fighting two wars.

Viva la change.

More on this here.

Unsure what I think about this really. I believe in transparency and its not wrong asking questions and digging deep. Unless you are scared at what you might find. If the Iraq war was on the level these inquires should be fine, unless they are rigged one way or the other. Unsure things like this can be impartial with people being so fervent either way.

Obama to ‘finish job’ in Afghanistan:

“Mr Obama said he would announce a long-awaited decision over sending more troops to Afghanistan “shortly”.

Some US media reports have suggested that the US president is intending to send 34,000 more troops. “