I just watched a trailer for the remake of the Karate Kid starring Will Smith’s son as Ralph Macchio, and Jackie Chan as Mr Miagi. I have no problem at all with remaking the movie. It’s over 25 years old, and it’s not like we’re talking about Casablanca, Star Wars, or Caddyshack. It was a cheesy movie that is due for a remake. Frankly I’m amazed it took this long for it to happen. After all it has been 16 years since we saw Academy Award Winner Hillary Swank in The Next Karate Kid.
You may ask then, “What is your problem?”. For starters it takes place in China, Jackie Chan is Chinese, and the boy is learning Kung Fu not Karate (the spiritual nature of Kung Fu seems to be a central theme of the film). As my friend can tell you Kung Fu is a Chinese fighting style that is very different from Karate. China and Japan are very very very different nations who historically don’t like each other very much.
I was able to burn through a couple of my recorded shows last night, which is always a treat. One of them was a “Premier Event” (whatever that means) of a new show on Fox, Human Target. Based on the little-know comic book of the same name, it piqued my interest when I saw a commercial for it. I told my system to record as many of them as were scheduled, and here we are. The premier will have an encore showing tonight after American Idol, and the pilot (which is actually a different episode) will air Wednesday in the same time slot. If you can’t watch it tonight, schedule your TiVo. If you can’t do that, then I suggest you watch it here. Long and short of it is, YOU REALLY NEED TO CHECK THIS SERIES OUT!!!
People will claim that I am a huge Microsoft fan/spokesperson, but the honest fact of the matter is that I simply like what works. If it does its job well, then it’s a win in my book. If it goes above and beyond what it needed to do, then it gets bonus points. Some special features aren’t really useful to me, so I don’t factor them into my grading. Sometimes this means I rank Apple products rather highly. Sometimes I prefer Microsoft products. I rarely like Unix/Linux items (no features, no “above and beyond”, and requires three weeks of work to get it to do what I need? No thanks). Overall, though, I think I’m pretty balanced about what I consider “good” in the technology world.
If you look over in the sidebar to the right, you’ll notice (or maybe you won’t, I don’t know how often you look there) a new section. Google has a new bit of code that will translate an overlay to your site into nearly any language you could hope for and display it along side the rest of the content in your browser.
Since Stolen Droids is read worldwide (or at least in 109 countries at last count), I thought it might be a good idea to add something like this. Of course, I don’t speak/read all those languages so I don’t know how accurate the translation is. If anyone sees anything horribly wrong, just let us know!
It’s a well known Hollywood adage, “If it’s worth doing once, rip it off again and again and again.” This is also what’s known as the “Disney” effect, or Direct to Video syndrome. It was revealed today that director extraordinaire Steven Spielberg has chosen his next project. He’s going to remake Harvey. For anyone who hasn’t seen the original it stars the late great Jimmy Stewart as a man who sees a six foot tall invisible rabbit. Yet despite the silly premise its a fantastic movie, what else would you expect from Stewart. While Spielberg is a fantastic director, I think one of the best, the question shouldn’t be Will he make a great movie?, but instead Should this be done at all?
(This is a repost of a letter written by a retired major in the United States Marine Corps. It eulogizes the late Ed McMahon who died this week at the age of 77. I only knew McMahon from my early years watching him as Johnny Carson’s wing man for years on the Tonight Show, Star Search host, and the Publishers Clearinghouse sweepstakes commercials. In a week when several celebrities have died this is a tribute to a man who should be remembered and honored.)
COLONEL ED HAS DIED
He wanted to be a Marine fighter pilot. The US was building up their military force, but they were not at war yet and the Navy required all its potential Navy and Marine pilots to have two years of college. So Ed started classes at Boston College. When Pearl Harbor was attacked the Army and the Navy both dropped the college requirement and Ed applied to the Marines.
By now, many of you (if not all) know that Michael Jackson has died at the age of 50. Some of you may not care but I still thought it was worth mentioning here. I don’t believe he was ever a saint, I don’t think he was ever totally stable, but I don’t think he was a child molester either. In the end, I think he was just very thin-skinned for someone in that position. One thing is for certain, and that is he was a music great and should be remembered as such. At least he didn’t die on the toilet, huh?
For those of us who just can’t get enough Star Trek, the cast of Star Trek The Next Generation had a reunion recently. Granted, it was on the animated series Family Guy, but they were all there none the less.
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