LOST Fans Can Nab Jack, Shepherd of Castaways

Back when my friend Libbie and I finally got around to watching the pilot of LOST, more than 16 months after it originally aired, we both had a pretty good idea of who was going to inspire our most ardent affections. My money was on Charlie, the burned-out rocker portrayed by none other than the adorable, hilarious former hobbit Dom Monaghan, while hers was on Jack, the rugged hero bringing a sense of order amidst the post-crash chaos, a towering figure of strength and resolve played by Party of Five's Matthew Fox.

Three seasons in, we've both conceded that tortured, time-traveling Scotsman Desmond, a latecomer to the game, gives our respective flames a run for their money, but since we're not going to be seeing Mr. Hume in plastic form anytime soon (and when we do, I really hope his prop is the failsafe key, which I can string around my neck should I feel so inspired, rather than that picture of him and Penny) there was no question as to which character in McFarlane's line of LOST figures would be most suited to her. When her birthday rolled around recently, it was Jack in the box, ready to spring into action.

Jack, it seems, is not quite as popular now as he was in the first season. While I never really latched onto him as a favorite, preferring the more down-to-earth Charlie and Hurley and the enigmatic Locke, I've always liked him, and I don't envy him his position of having leadership thrust upon him because, as a doctor, he was among the first to check into the well-being of the survivors. He knew what to do when it counted, so everyone continued to look to him for direction.

And he's delivered pretty well in that regard. As the only doctor in the bunch, he's indispensable, making everyone's stay on the island more pleasant and saving lives - most dramatically Charlie's, in a testament to the value of his stubborn unwillingness to give up on a patient. He rallies the castaways with inspirational speeches and pushes past the personal issues plaguing him for the good of the group. Jack is a good guy.

This figure captures him at a moment early in the series, roughly the same time as the scene in which the Charlie figure is rooted. Jack stands, ever so wobbly on his feet, weaving his way dazedly through the sea of wreckage strewn about him. Chunks of debris jut out at odd angles, while Jack himself looks a little uneven, knee bent, arms splayed at his sides, jacket flapping, shirt half-tucked, tie askew, startled expression on his face. This is Jack just moments after the crash, only beginning to comprehend what's happening, barely aware of the lacerations in his skin leaving bloodstained tears in his clothes. Maybe the blood is a bit much, but it certainly adds to the realism of the scene.

Of all the figures I've examined out of the box, Jack probably looks the least like the character, but that's not to say it isn't a good likeness. It's just not as remarkable as Locke or Charlie. It's still clearly Jack, though, looking mighty heroic atop the pile of fuselage remnants. Like the other figures in the series, he doesn't move a whole lot, but his hands, head and waist are articulated. Putting together the plastic base, complete with its thin black rods, cardboard backdrop and black box, is a bit tricky, but a little fiddling around does the trick. There's also the added complication of having a piece of wreckage that fits onto pegs on the base, just as Jack's shoes do; this makes things a bit more confusing at first, but it's not the sort of challenge that should pose undue difficulty. The backdrop still requires the more complex assembly.

Accompanying Jack is a mug shot of Kate, which seems like a rather odd prop for him to have, but upon reflection I can't think of any definitive props Jack has had at any point in the series, unless it were a first aid kit or something of that nature, so I guess the Kate picture makes sense, given his close connection with her. And it's very realistic-looking.

And then, of course, there are the sound clips. Most iconic is his pleading catchphrase: "If we can't live together, we're gonna die alone." Less effective, especially considering that they both came from the same episode - heck, the same conversation - are "Everybody wants me to be a leader until I make a decision that they don't like" and "There's something that you need to know... We're going to have a Locke problem, and I have to know that you've got my back." These last two are fine, but given the fact that Jack is the closest thing the series has to a singular main character, it seems a little strange to have two quotes from the season one finale. I would nix the third and put in something from around mid-season, something showing the softer or lighter side of Jack... As it is, while the first quote is inspirational, the second is a bit petulant and the third comes off as slightly paranoid - though it's not quite unfounded, given Locke's various issues throughout the second season, to say nothing of the third...

When I bought this figure, it still cost $16, but considering that the second series is due out in July, I wouldn't be surprised if the price goes down before too long, especially since I snagged the hatch set half-off. If Jack's your main squeeze, snatching up this figure before it vanishes from the shelves might be just what the doctor ordered.

Cathy Hapka Shows She Knows the Secret to Good Television Novelizations With LOST: Secret Identity

Earlier this week, I happened upon three novels written in conjunction with LOST. I selected the third, Signs of Life, to include in a LOST-themed care package and read it before sending it off, at which point I wondered whether the other two books were available through our library. A quick investigation revealed that both could be downloaded in eBook format, automatically disappearing after three weeks. I'd never heard of such a thing, but I was soon sitting with Secret Identity in front of me, scrolling down through the pages and wishing I'd picked this book for the box instead.

Some of my satisfaction with Cathy Hapka's book - which takes place within the first few days after the crash of Flight 815, its final pages corresponding with the death of federal Marshall Edward Mars - stems from lowered expectations after my experience with Signs of Life. While it was nice to see familiar faces in that novel, few of the characters came across very naturally, and the events didn't seem to synch up very well with the established timeline. Secret Identity seems much more skillfully written, with an artistic narrative style and a clear understanding of the different characters and how they relate to one another.

Because it covers a pretty short and iconic span of time on the island, there are all sorts of references to events in the first three episodes, but rather than feeling like a tired retread, it struck me as a good method by which to root us in familiar territory while still giving us a different perspective, much the way the third season's Expose - a wrongly maligned episode, in my opinion - did. Hapka manages to squeeze in every major character and even several minor ones, among them Joanna, Scott, Steve and, in a satisfyingly prominent role, irritating but helpful science teacher Arzt.

There are brief mentions of Faith, Janelle, Larry and George; I know Faith is the main character in Hapka's first LOST novel, Endangered Species, and I presume the other three also were introduced in that first book. None have a significant role here, so if you're reading out of order, they seem a bit out of place, but Hapka seems determined to include everyone, so I suppose these characters' presence makes sense.

The focus of this novel is Dexter Cross, a young man in his first year at a prestigious college. Dexter won my sympathy right away, particularly once it came to his flashback, showing him as an unlucky, impoverished teen picked on by his peers and forced to assist his boorish Aunt Paula (a woman rather reminiscent of Aunt Marge from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) in her frequent trips to the store, where she makes as much of a spectacle of herself as possible and seizes upon an opportunity to sue the company for an alleged injury.

While Dexter is mortified by his aunt's actions, she stuns him by offering some of the money received from her settlement so he can go to college. At first, it seems Dexter's dreams have been handed to him, but along with his aunt's gift comes the expectation that he will major in something that will earn him a lot of money. Soon he finds himself caught in a tangle of lies, trying to conceal from his overbearing aunt and timid mother the fact that he intends to major in English (oh most impractical of all majors!) while spinning ever more elaborate lies to his dazzling girlfriend Daisy about his high-brow family back home.

On the island, Dexter awakes, having been helped out of the wreckage by Boone and watched over by Arzt. In a state of confusion, he embarks on a search for Daisy, but no one seems to have seen her. What's more, several people insist they've seen him wandering around in the jungle. Investigating the matter further, Dexter sees his doppelganger for himself, or thinks he does anyway... He has more than one encounter with this mysterious person, and the inclination is to see him as some sort of hallucination or vision along the order of Jack seeing Christian or Eko seeing Yemi. But then how to explain the fact that other people see him too? Hapka never really delivers on that score, and we are left to wonder along with Dexter just what the deal is.

But on the whole his story is much more coherent than that of Jeff Hadley, the protagonist in Signs of Life. Dexter's flashback chapters - all of the even ones - are just as engaging as the ones that occur on the island; he's very likable and easy to relate to, while his story has obvious echoes of The Prince and the Pauper and Aladdin, tales of a poor boy trying to pose as a prince and finding himself in a little over his head. Most importantly, though, Hapka has a very enjoyable writing style that lends her prose an air of seamlessness. Her descriptions of the castaways are dead on, so it's a lot easier to accept her introduction of new characters as well.

While many of his encounters with the 815ers are fairly superficial - bumping into Sawyer as he's pillaging the fuselage, trying to play psychologist for an unresponsive Rose, chatting up John as he carves the whistle that will eventually aid in the finding of Vincent - he forms close friendships with Boone and Shannon, who are close to his age and remind him of his college friends. They have some nice scenes together, and almost all of his interactions with the various castaways seem true to character.

My biggest disappointment with the book was probably the glaring inconsistency in terms of the timing of the crash, since Hapka has it occurring during Dexter's spring break. I guess it wasn't written in stone that the airdate of LOST's pilot episode and the date of the crash were the same until Live Together, Die Alone, which aired several months after this book was published. But surely the creators would have known, and I'd think that would be one fact they'd be sure to pass on to those writing official tie-in novels in order to avoid this situation. This novel has the crash occurring about six months before or after it actually did, and considering how the plane crashed, and the fact that days almost seem like weeks on the island, it strikes me as a pretty big deal.

Aside from a couple of quibbles, though, Secret Identity is a breezy read with consistent enough characterization and dialogue to satisfy LOST fans. I'm not sure why Hapka didn't write the third tie-in novel, but if there is to be a fourth, here's hoping she's at the helm again.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End Concludes Trilogy With a Bang

Wednesday night, I sat with my eyes glued to the television screen as the fate of Charlie Pace, one of my most beloved characters on LOST, hung in the balance. Twenty-four hours later, I stared at a much larger screen as another Lord of the Rings alumnus undertook a dangerous mission. There was even swimming involved. Yet another bond between Dom Monaghan and Orlando Bloom. If I hadn't already seen On a Clear Day, I could rent that tomorrow and make it a trilogy of harrowing viewing experiences featuring water and young former Middle-earth residents. But Orlando is the order of the day. Orlando, Keira, Geoffrey... oh, and a fellow by the name of Johnny Depp. Yes, the Black Pearl set sail for its third - and likely final - adventure in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and I was on deck to watch the voyage.

At World's End gets off to a grimly grotesque beginning with lengthy lines of imprisoned pirates being led to a row of gallowses as stodgy British officials stand by. The condemned are surprisingly resigned, offering no resistance, but one lad, still in possession of a hauntingly high choirboy voice, steps up to his spot singing the traditional pirate anthem, and soon all the others have joined in, a gesture of solidarity that sparks an uprising, a last stand of the pirates from around the world against the evils of the East India Trading Company, as led by the sadistically sinister Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander).

The dreariness of the opening gives way to a swashbuckling swordfight involving our old friends Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Will Turner (Bloom) and the recently re-animated Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). A ship and crew is what they're after, since all three want to sail off in search of Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp), whose last encounter with Elizabeth resulted in his death and banishment into Davy Jones' Locker, which for him is a trippy sort of purgatory in which he finds himself commanding a crew of insubordinate clones of himself in one of the film's funniest scenes.

Eventually, of course, Jack is reunited with his comrades, at which point it's off to the pirate council along with eight other key representatives of various geographical ranges. And then things really start to get tricky. There's a whole new cast of characters to keep track of - or not, since it really is the carryover characters we're interested in. The oft-thwarted romance between Elizabeth and Will takes a bit of a backseat for a while in favor of the tragic tale of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and Calypso (Naomie Harris), the sea goddess whose powers the pirates are hoping to release by coming together as one. Because she's so temperamental, there's no guarantee she will agree to ransack Beckett's boats, but it looks like she's their best shot.

With all the characters often motivated by different things, this third installment feels a bit muddled, just as the second did. But the constant action, rousing score, barrage of effects and solid cast make it entertaining, if still not quite as brilliant as Curse of the Black Pearl. It's considerably darker than that first film, and not nearly as hilarious as the trailers suggest, though there are plenty of knee-slapping moments throughout the movie, most involving Jack's faithful crewmembers Pintel (Lee Arenberg) and Ragetti (Mackenzie Crook), the feisty monkey Jack, the strangely elegant Barbossa or Captain Sparrow himself, still weaving drunkenly through his scenes with slurred speech and upper mouth constantly engaged in rabbit-like twitching. There's nothing really to compare with Jack's grand entrance in the first film or his wheel-running antics in the second, but the ship full of Sparrows is wildly amusing, and the extra Jacks continue to pop up over the course of the rest of the movie, along with, on a couple of occasions, Jack's dear old dad, played by Keith Richards in a nice little homage to the inspiration behind our favorite drunken captain.

Beckett remains a consistently creepy presence, seeming far more inherently evil than the swindling but charming Barbossa; Elizabeth's father (Jonathan Pryce) and her former fiance (Jack Davenport) both have fairly brief but crucial roles to play in the plot. Nighy and Harris still have exceptionally annoying voices - or is that just me? The film ends in what feels like a conclusive place for each of our heroes, with some of Jack's funniest lines coming in the last few minutes. Elizabeth and Will, having battled their own demons all along, arrive at an interesting point before we leave them, not quite as ecstatically happily ever after as they could be, perhaps, but in a way that feels satisfying. Incidentally, it's worth it to sit through the credits, since once again patient moviegoers are rewarded with a scene at the end...

I'd rate this at about the same level as the second movie, delivering the sort of zest that fans are seeking but never quite capturing the charm, wit and plotting of the original. But three hours on the high seas with Johnny Depp is always a welcome way to spend an evening, and if they do decide to go for a fourth installment, you can be sure I'll be on board for that as well.

Signs of Life - Frank Thompson

Yesterday, my mom and I, in the process of putting together a LOST-themed shoebox to send to my brother's Naval ship, went to the bookstore seeking Turn of the Screw, the Henry James novel that figures so prominently in LOST's second season as it is the book behind which the hatch orientation film is concealed. While we managed to find a collection of James' work that included that spooky tale along with two others, we also discovered three official LOST tie-in novels, and we decided to send one of those instead.

I'd heard that the books existed but didn't know enough about them to venture a guess as to which would be the best. I selected LOST: Signs of Life, the third in the series, for the simple reason that John Locke was on the front. That'll teach me to judge a book by its cover...

I've been doing a lot of speculating lately as to which of the castaways I would most closely resemble if I were in their situation. One personality quiz assured me I was Charlie, while another figured me for Eko, but the more I think about it the more I reckon I would be one of those red-shirts in the background, and that at this stage of the game - about three months in - I'd be lucky if half a dozen people knew my name.

Jeff Hadley, the protagonist of Signs of Life, is in a similar situation. A tortured artist, he's kept to himself since the day of the crash, a task made easier by the fact that he stumbled upon a little spot apart from the others that he can use as a studio, producing all sorts of disturbing art. So it is that when Hurley invites him to join a hunting party that includes him, Locke, Michael and Charlie, this is his first real immersion into the culture of castaways fans have all come to know and love.

We are introduced to most of the major characters in turn, their attributes often seem off, and though one might chalk this up to Jeff''s perspective, I think it's really more indicative of a lack of familiarity with the characters on the part of author Frank Thompson. Hurley is a decent approximation of the mellow millionaire everyone loves, though his dialogue often comes across as rather stilted - as does most of the dialogue throughout the novel, particularly in comparison with the sharp writing on the show.

Jeff keeps emphasizing the fact that Locke creeps him out, but Locke never really does anything to indicate creepiness, aside from loudly warning him to stay away from a series of caves that apparently are not the same ones we see so often in the first season. He observes what a great relationship Michael has with his son, but the fact of the matter is that Michael and Walt were on the outs for most of the first season, and the bulk of the action must take place within two weeks of landing on the island, since a month passes and there's no mention at the end of Walt being gone. He also stresses the utter antagonism between Jack and Sawyer, but it always seemed to me that Jack got along better with Sawyer than most during the first season did, Kate-induced tension notwithstanding, and anyway we never see Jack and Sawyer together in the novel so it hardly seems worth mentioning.

Of all the major players from season one, the only ones who don't put in any kind of an appearance are Shannon, Boone, Claire, Sayid, Rose and Vincent. I like the characterization of Jin as the unsung hero of the castaways for providing fish for everyone, but we don't see him much. Mostly it's Hurley, Locke and Michael, with whom Jeff forms a bond due to their shared interest in art.

Like the show, the novel cuts between island life and flashbacks. Jeff's involve his prestigious art career that leads him from London to a residency in a small college in Scotland to Australia to L.A - or, rather, the island. His artwork is very central to the story, but it's hard to get a really good feel for what is might look like, since we have only words to go by, and rather ambiguous ones at that. Just as important as the art, however, is Jeff's unfortunate habit of attracting gorgeous young women and dumping them before their relationship can get stale.

Usually he feels vaguely bad about this but defends it as necessary in order to avoid a life of monotonous monogamy. These convictions don't exactly endear him to the reader, since whatever tiny whispers his conscience may make are quickly silenced as he seeks his next conquest. But one woman is different from all the others, and though he tells himself that he must leave her, something within him resists. Can he break the cycle for the woman he truly loves?

Jeff is Scottish, and if this were the show, I'd probably automatically be a little bit drawn to him just because of that accent. I can't hear a brogue on these pages, however, so that doesn't add any charm to his character for me. Hmm, self-loathing Scot who can't bring himself to stay with the love of his life and spends the rest of his days regretting it? Sorry, Jeff, LOST's already got that covered, and you can't begin to hold a candle to Desmond.

Like all of the castaways, strange occurrences on the island force Jeff to face his demons - and the creatures that haunt him truly are demonic, with evil eyes, cruel claws and fierce fangs. He sees them in the night, surrounded by bizarre symbols, and tries to figure out their significance. Later, he physically encounters them, and the whole scene is very surreal and not properly explained. It seems like something that might arise from a dousing with the voodoo juice Locke gave Boone, but we're meant to believe that there are actually sinister beasts lurking in these caves covered with mysterious markings a la Smallville. And Locke knows about them, apparently, because of his dire warning to Jeff; these can't be the same caves that collapsed on Jack and Charlie or nobody in their right mind would move down there. Later, we see most of the camp relocating to the caves, and those presumably are the caves with which we are familiar, though Thompson doesn't differentiate them.

When I watch LOST, I'm utterly gripped, sitting on the edge of my seat and breathlessly waiting to see what will happen next. Unfortunately, for all its proclamations of urgency, this novel plods along with clunky dialogue, inaccurate characterizations and surrealistic scenarios - not to mention a shoddy back cover that twice names the main character as "Nick" rather than Jeff. I'm still glad I read it before sending it off, and for a fan stuck at sea for months without LOST, hopefully this book will quench the thirst for more episodes a little. But if you're looking for something as compelling as the show, I'm afraid there's not a lot of vitality in Signs of Life.

Third Time Holds Little Charm With Shrek the Third

I've been looking forward to May as the month of the blockbusters, and a couple weeks ago my movie watching got off to a good start with Spider-Man 3. Though I read some pretty scathing reviews, I thought the film was phenomenal and looked forward to watching the next big premiere, Shrek the Third. There were lines around the lobby for Spidey, so I thought we might do well to buy tickets for Shrek ahead of time. We never got around to it, so I was a little nervous when we got to the theater. I needn't have worried about getting seats; I might have done well to worry instead about other things...

When we walked into our theater at 10:15, the previews had started without us, but we were the only people in the audience. A few minutes later, a couple came in and sat down. And that was it. Seven people at the second showing of Shrek the Third. Impressive. If our reaction was a typical response, I doubt Shrek will be packing folks in. I personally couldn't have laughed aloud more than half a dozen times, and I think every time it was something I'd seen already on the previews.

The movie begins roughly where the second left off, with Shrek (Mike Myers) and Fiona (Cameron Diaz) living a cushy life in the royal kingdom of Far Far Away. They're on an extended visit, but as much as they enjoy their fancy lodgings, they're both anxious to get back to their old life in the swamp. Well, Shrek is, anyway; Fiona thinks it might be time to change things up a bit with some new additions. But any arguments about the pitfalls of parenthood will have to wait, because the king (John Cleese) is dying, and he needs someone to take over. That means either Shrek or Fiona's cousin Arthur (Justin Timberlake). And since the last thing Shrek wants is to rule the kingdom, another quest is in order...

It seems like bringing the Arthurian legend into Shrek's world would be an inspired idea, but it turns out to be only one of many weak threads in a film that is surprisingly lackluster. The most interesting thing about Arthur, an insecure, unpopular boy teased by all of his classmates at his medieval high school, is his former magic teacher, Merlin (Eric Idle), a highly eccentric old man with a trick or two up the sleeves of a robe too short for common decency. There's a bit of conflict between Shrek and Arthur deriving from the fact that the ogre initially conceals the fact that he was actually the first in line, but it never feels very pressing.

Nor was I all that invested in the antics of the women attending Fiona's baby shower at the time when Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) showed up with an army of villains to take over the kingdom. Narcoleptic Sleeping Beauty (Cheri Oteri), mannish stepsister Doris (Larry King) (whose sister Mabel (Regis Philbin) is in league with the villains), tough-talking Snow White (Amy Poehler), bitter Rapunzel (Maya Rudolph) and perfect Cinderella (Amy Sedaris) all have their moments, but nobody really stands out to me as an exciting new character.

The most consistently entertaining characters remain Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas). In this installment, there's a bit of added amusement when the two inadvertently switch bodies, much to each other's horror. Little of their dialogue is particularly memorable, however, and my favorite aspect of Donkey this time around is his little bunch of baby donkey dragons, which are as adorable as they are physically improbable. In fact, visually speaking, this movie does have a lot to recommend it, though the baby ogres are a bit freakish looking. Several contemporary songs are prominently featured, most effectively Cat's in the Cradle and That's What Friends Are For, but none of them makes much of an impact.

In the end, Shrek the Third is a movie to watch because you loved the two that preceded it. You'll find enjoyment in the familiar characters but bemoan the fact that they aren't delivering as many laughs as usual, nor coming together in service of a story that feels coherent. Hopefully you'll walk out of the theater smiling, but there's certainly not much need to order these tickets ahead of time. Something tells me Shrek won't be catching up to Spidey anytime soon.

McFarlane Toys Lights Up LOST Fans' Lives With the Hatch Boxed Set

LOST is a dangerously compelling television show. I tend to lament the fact that, after looking forward to the show for half the summer in 2004, I didn't actually start watching current episodes until this year. I missed out on a lot of anticipation and speculation, and despite my best attempts to remain ignorant, I found out about most of the major deaths before I managed to watch them. This week and next, I can wait anxiously with the rest of the country to find out whether all of my favorite characters are going to make it to the end of the season. In the meantime, I just acquired a set from the McFarlane line of action figures capturing the first season's enigmatic cliff-hanging moment.

I first learned about McFarlane's LOST line when I received the fantastically detailed Charlie for Christmas. Also in the series are Locke, Hurley, Jack, Kate and Shannon. Each of these six-inch figures comes on a plastic base and includes a prop or two and a photographic backdrop helping cement the character in a particular moment. For Charlie, it's shortly after the crash, when he's sitting on a piece of wreckage and writing on his fingers. For Hurley, it's the triumphant announcement that he has built a golf course. For Locke, it's peering intently down at the hatch, whose contents at that point remain a mystery. With this deluxe set, our island friends still don't know what's inside, but they're a lot closer to finding out, having just blown the door open with dynamite.

While none of the stand-alone figures is so much a plaything as a display piece, they all have some degree of articulation and are not rooted to their bases. The hatch set includes Locke, Hurley, Jack and Kate, but they are stationary and much smaller. Jack and torch-wielding Locke are crouching near the hole in the hatch's center, gazing into its mysterious depths, while Kate, torch in hand, takes a step onto the hatch and Hurley hangs back. Since Kate and Hurley are standing, they are removable, but Locke and Jack are embedded into the surface of the hatch. The scene is almost as wide as three of the figure bases put together, and in fact this base has separate pieces to it, though you can't really tell once it's all assembled. The curved jungle backdrop stands taller than Charlie's but not quite as tall as Hurley's, and nothing within the diorama peeks out above the top of the cardboard.

As usual, I have someone else to thank for getting the scene all set up for me. I think my brother's biggest challenge was getting everything out of the box, where it was so tightly packaged in plastic and secured with plastic wires. To his consternation, the backdrop was rolled up with the photographic side facing out, so he had a little trouble bending it the other way so that it would fit into the plastic constraints that allow it to slide neatly behind the base, which is made of sturdy plastic and features some very realistic-looking foliage and dirt surrounding the cylindrical top of the hatch. Leading inside is a ladder, but after only six battered-looking rungs, there's a floor. We're supposed to imagine that the hole goes on from there, of course, and that isn't too much of a stretch, especially if you have the lights turned off and are trying to peek inside with the blue-ish white light blazing in your eyes.

Yes, this set has a light-up feature, which is pretty nifty. It definitely adds to the enigmatic nature of the scene, and it's easily accessible with the flick of a switch inside the hole. Unfortunately, this light is really the only interactive aspect of this set. It has no moving parts, no props and, perhaps most regrettably (though it no doubt made my brother's job easier), no sound clips. I really love being able to press a button and hear quotes from three of my favorite characters, so I miss that here. I know the Jack and Hurley figures have lines from this scene, but surely they could have incorporated other lines from this scene - or had those figures say other lines, because they had an awful lot to choose from, after all. Or if they didn't want to have the figures up top saying anything, we could've gotten a nod to the season two opener by having a button blasting Make Your Own Kind of Music or featuring some sort of panicked mumbling from one Desmond Hume. Then again, the voice boxes require AAA batteries and the light switch AAs, so I suppose maybe they didn't want to make people get two different types of batteries. But that little added expense would be worth it in order to make the scene as vibrant as possible.

When I went to McFarlane Toys to find a picture I could link to for the suggest-a-product form (thanks to MaryTara for adding this!), I discovered that series two is quickly approaching. The first series arrived in December; the second graces us in July, and unless the list is incomplete, there is no set comparable to this one (a shame, since a logical possibility would be the inside of the hatch shortly before its implosion and would probably include Locke, Desmond, Charlie and Eko, a fantastic foursome indeed). Additionally, while the first series featured six "fan favorite" characters, the second only has four: Sawyer, Sun, Jin and Eko. All are terrific characters whose figures I wouldn't mind owning, but with so many brilliant folks on the show, I can't see why they made fewer this time around. I'd say there are at least a couple dozen characters deserving of the action figure treatment. Then again, it's probably best for obsessive but not particularly wealthy fans like me not to have too many come out at once...

I picked up the hatch set half off at Toys R Us; usually it goes for $30, while the figures cost about $17. It's definitely worth the $15 I paid for it, and devoted fans probably won't mind shelling out the full $30, especially if they can think of a more appropriate place to display it than the kitchen table, which is where mine is currently situated. As for me, I'm happy to contemplate the mysteries of the island while munching my breakfast cereal, grateful that, unlike "Henry Gale", I have milk to go with it and that, realistic-looking as this diorama is, I am unable to detect anything that might be a piece of the ill-fated Arzt. No matter where you choose to place this set, you can enjoy this fine example of McFarlane's craftsmanship, reliving one of the series' most iconic moments during the long wait between next Wednesday and the premiere of LOST's fourth season in January.

Akeelah and the Bee a Super Story About Spelling and More

When I was in eighth grade, I won the school spelling bee. It was my third and final shot at it, and I managed to take the top slot, taking home $50 and the promise of a chance in the city-wide competition. I studied diligently; I made it to the second round, when I psyched myself out into thinking "buttress" was spelled with one "t". I'm a pretty decent speller, but I don't think I had what it takes to make it to the national spelling bee. I was getting tired of all those words after just a few weeks; I can't imagine spending my entire eighth grade year focusing most of my free time on learning to spell obscure words. Still, I can understand the attraction and the excitement.

In Akeelah and the Bee, we meet 11-year-old Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer), who lives in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood with her over-worked mother (Angela Bassett) and older siblings. Although she is an intelligent girl, Akeelah hates school and frequently misses class. She seems to be headed for trouble. Then her teacher, noticing the fact that she has never missed a word on a spelling test, encourages her to take part in the school-wide spelling bee, and when that fails to interest her, the principal, Mr. Welch (Curtis Armstrong), coerces her by holding her absences over her head. So despite her love of words - derived from her doting father (Wolfgang Bodison), who died tragically several years earlier - it's a very reluctant Akeelah who participates in the school spelling bee, but she wins easily nonetheless, only to be taken down a notch by Dr. Larabee (Laurence Fishburne), a distinguished professor and former spelling bee finalist who begrudgingly agrees to coach her.

As the movie progresses, Akeelah must overcome many different challenges in order to progress in this bee. There's the matter of the words themselves, thousands of them, words whose origins and meanings Dr. Larabee encourages her to learn, beyond mindlessly memorizing words with no thought to their practical value. She must bury her attitude for her lessons, and she has to find some way around the fact that her mother does not support her in her efforts. Beyond all that, as she begins to gain acceptance with the other young spellers, her best friend begins to feel rejected and no longer wants to spend time with her. It's a lot for an 11-year-old to deal with. But there are triumphs, each time Akeelah spells a word correctly in front of a large crowd, and eventually she helps to bring a community together in support of her year-long journey.

It's a fairly typical film about a down-and-out person beating adversity for some sort of personal achievement, into which more and more people are gradually drawn. The movie's focus is primarily on Akeelah, who is spunky, sensitive and studious, but other key players include her mother, whose apparent harshness at the beginning of the film does not prevent her from being a sympathetic character, her principal, who desperately wants some good press for his school so he can get more funding, and her mentor, who is authoritarian and aloof but has a little more heart than we might initially guess. I found Fishburne's presence in this film interesting because he also played mentor to the young chess whiz Josh in Searching for Bobby Fischer, though Dr. Larabee's no-nonsense approach is more like that of Josh's stern other coach, played by Ben Kingsley.

We see Akeelah at all levels of the spelling bee, and the film captures the pressures of these events well. But it's not all grim competition. At the local level, she meets Javier (J. R. Villarreal), a sweet-natured boy who becomes her faithful friend throughout the year. My favorite character in the film, he is absolutely adorable, especially in one scene during which he stalls for time at the state spelling bee until Akeelah, caught in a confrontation with her mother, can make it back to the stage. Also notable is 14-year-old Dylan Chiu (Sean Michael), Akeelah's most intense competitor, who is determined not to walk away with yet another second-place finish.

There's a bit of an after-school special tone to this movie, but that doesn't bother me. An inspiring, family-friendly film about perseverance and fair play, Akeelah and the Bee is s-t-u-p-e-n-d-o-u-s.

Number 1200: Carly Simon Serves Up Tender, Folksy Goodness With Into White

It's been a great year for new albums. Last May, I snatched up Paul Simon's Surprise; in the fall, it was Clay Aiken's A Thousand Different Ways and Weird Al's Straight Outta Lynwood, and January brought Art Garfunkel's Some Enchanted Evening. Then along came my birthday, and with it a gem I'd overlooked: Carly Simon's Into White. I've always enjoyed her music but never included her in my list of indispensable artists. Having had an opportunity to fall in love with this gentle, folksy album - the most tender I've encountered since Garfunkel's Songs From a Parent to a Child - I may just have to amend that...

Into White - This Cat Stevens title song is a sleepy anthem to simple beauty. Simon's husky vocals are complemented by the harmonization of Jimmy Parr and rich instrumentals that occasional seem to betray a Celtic influence.

Oh! Susanna - One of those songs just about everybody in America probably knows. The mystical-sounding flute and persistent kalimba add a unique flavor to a song whose familiarity and simplicity could make for a dull track. Instead, it's ideal for both singing along or just sitting back and listening appreciatively.

Blackbird - A smooth, heartfelt rendition of a Lennon and McCartney classic. The guitar provides a nice undertone, and the chorus of "ooooh"s works well as a bridge, but it's Simon's vocals that really carry this empowering melody.

You Can Close Your Eyes - A gorgeous piano-driven track, penned by James Taylor, Simon's ex-husband. Their children Ben and Sally harmonize with her on this one, and they sound gorgeous together. I'm struck by how much Ben sounds like his father; I'm powerfully reminded of James' rendition of this song, which closed out his concert in Erie last year. It's a very intimate moment on the album.

Quiet Evening - A new composition for this album, it's a contemplative, slightly sultry song. It doesn't grab me as much as some of others, but it's a nice ode to the need for a little personal time now and then, and Simon says in her liner notes that it's her favorite song on the album to sing.

Manha de Carnaval - A Brazilian guitar-driven track in which the only lyrics are "la la la". Despite the lack of words, it's emotionally affecting, with her deft vocals mostly evoking wistfulness.

Jamaica Farewell - One of my favorite tracks on the album, it's a breezy number whose tone is slightly regretful but mostly one of golden nostalgia. Simon's voice is especially quiet here, though never to the point that it is overpowered by the guitar and other instruments, and she and Ben harmonize nicely as a segue into the next song.

You Are My Sunshine - Another of those camp song favorites. This version is much slower than I'm used to, giving it a soulful vibe. The piano, which reminds me a bit of Lean on Me, is what really sets this apart for me, along with the barely audible guitar on the outro, which is reminiscent of waves lapping upon a shore.

I Gave My Love a Cherry - Another very slow arrangement of a famous folk song. I've never been that crazy about this one, but Simon does a nice job with it, and I like the strings that offset the vocals.

Devoted to You / All I Have to Do is Dream - I wasn't familiar with the first song, which makes up the main part of the medley, but it's a very simple, lovely song, which Simon delivers with great gentleness. When the second song, which I know quite well, kicks in atop the remnants of the first, it's a beautiful meshing of voices, with Ben once again complementing his mother beautifully.

Scarborough Fair - Simon and Garfunkel! Yay!! This gorgeous Celtic arrangement of the song they made famous doesn't include their counter-melody. Rather, it has a lovely selection of woodwinds and a couple of verses Simon (Carly, that is) added to the mix. In her liner notes, she credits not only my favorite duo but also the often overlooked Martin Carthy, who showed Paul the song in the first place. Nice gesture, and very nice arrangement of a song I love.

Over the Rainbow - Fairly straightforward and piano-driven, and I think I like it better than the version in The Wizard of Oz. Then again, I never was a big fan of Judy Garland...

Love of My Life - This is the only Simon original of the album, a quiet ode to love with guitar backing. The lyrics are cute, as she lists all sorts of rather random, silly things that she loves, from avocados to Lucy, but none of them as much as the addressee of the song.

I'll Just Remember You - Written by David Saw, who also wrote Quiet Evening, and Ben Taylor, it's a charming, simple song that closes out the album on a note of appreciation. It's a love song, but it could also work as a message of thanks to her fans, helping keep her afloat through the troubles that come with being a famous singer-songwriter. At any rate, it's a pleasant end to the album.

A nice bonus with Into White is the fact that Simon comments on each of the tracks in the liner notes, which isn't something I see a lot. It's fascinating to get a little idea of what she was thinking as she chose and recorded these songs, and her comments are insightful and often very funny. The whole album has a humble feeling to it, as she's setting out to do justice to music she admires, shining the spotlight on others as much as herself. It's a far cry from You're So Vain, but Into White is most definitely an album worth embracing.

The Incredible Truth About Motherhood an Ideal Gift for Mothers' Day or Any Day

Mothers' Day is nearly upon us again. It's a time of flowers, cards, dinners and all sorts of expressions of appreciation to the women who raised us. One man who clearly does not limit his gratitude to his mom to Mothers' Day is Bradley Trevor Greive, who, since writing and compiling The Blue Day Book, has become a gift book power house, with two of his small volumes devoted to the subject of mothers.

First came Dear Mom. Then, a few years later, just in case we hadn't gotten the point, he came out with The Incredible Truth About Motherhood. While the first addresses Mom directly, the second is an ode to her for the benefit of the rest of us, lest we forget how hard our mothers work to ensure that we have a good life. Instead of saying, "Gee, Mom, thanks!" it's saying, "Gee, you should really thank your mom." It covers pretty similar territory, but that's okay. It's a message worth reading twice, and with a different set of zany animals to accompany Greive's sometimes wise, something wacky words, it's an entirely different experience.

It's also a good 30 pages longer, which means even more entertainment and warmth for your ten bucks. Throughout the 107 pages, it's the nearly full-page black-and-white pictures that really capture the attention, many featuring adult animals with youngsters, not necessarily of the same species, which emphasizes the fact that mothers needn't have a biological connection to be nurturing. Of course, for every cozy moment of mother and child snuggled softly together, there's another in which the little darlings are wreaking havoc. We get a lot of shots of mothers looking harassed as Greive reminds us again and again what twerps kids can be and how much patience is at times required in order to put up with them.

Throughout his books, Greive seems to have a slight bias against men, and this comes to light here when he gives fathers a couple of passing mentions, brushing them aside as lazy, ungrateful oafs (who always happen to be portrayed by grumpy gorillas). It's brief and exaggerated enough that I don't take it too seriously, but in light of the rather vindictive Looking for Mr. Right, I can't help but view those pages with some distaste. Then again, there are unflattering portraits of children in this book and even occasionally of mothers, so mainly I think Greive is encouraging us to laugh at our shortcomings. And then to do something about them.

He wants children and husbands to take time out to thank the woman of the house, and not just on Mothers' Day. But that is a good day to start, so if you are stumped for a gift for Mom, pick up The Incredible Truth About Motherhood and give her something to smile about.

A small sampling of the treasures to be found within:

"So in no small way, our world is in their tiny hands. But whose hands are they in?" (7, a young baboon studying a small globe in its hand while its mother gazes intently at it)

"They will be in the picture for virtually every hour of every day for at least the next two decades." (22, a baby koala peeking over the head of its mother)

"'I want an ice cream!'" (43, a baby hippo bellowing at its unimpressed mother)

"But throughout all of this, a mother never loses sight of her loving purpose: to walk beside her child through life's difficult journey." (87, a young elephant walking beside its mother)

There's a lot more where that came from. Celebrate the selfless contributions of your own mother with Bradley Trevor Greive.

I Don't Have Enough Patience For The English Patient

This past Christmas, my aunt brought several boxes of videos along with her to the traditional family gathering. Having switched over to DVDs, she was running out of space, so all those movies she'd taped over the years were fair game for the rest of us. We took her up on her offer, snagging 50 or so tapes. Among the movies was The English Patient, about which I'd heard glowing reviews, particularly during a college class I took on colonial literature. Going into the film, I was intrigued; coming out, I was confused, and after a great deal of puzzling, I'm still not sure just what to make of it.

The English Patient opens near the end of World War II when a French nurse named Hana (Juliette Binoche) takes a severely burned man (Ralph Fiennes) under her wing, letting her comrades leave her behind so she can care for him in what she assumes are his last days. He doesn't seem likely to recover from his injuries, yet there is life and spirit in him still. He has a story to tell.

So he tells it, in bits and pieces, and we watch his tragic tale unfold in flashbacks that show him as the handsome young Hungarian Count Laszlo de Almasy, who comes under the spell of a beautiful woman named Katharine (Kristin Scott Thomas), who is married to Geoffrey Clifton (Colin Firth). The Cliftons work with the Count on some of his archaeological expeditions, and initially Katharine and Laszlo don't get along so well, but their passionate sniping leads to passionate other things, and when Geoffrey finds out, life gets a whole lot harder for both of them.

Throw into the mix Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), who shows up one day shortly after Hana takes on the role of hospice nurse. We don't really know why he's there, but he obviously has a deep personal connection to the man lying helplessly in the bed with bandages all over him, eerily prefiguring the faceless Voldemort, whom Fiennes portrayed in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Late in the film, we see first-hand what happened to Caravaggio to make him so bitter, and it's probably the most grotesque sequence in a film with its fair share of violent moments. It's one of those scenes that I would retreat to the kitchen for if I watched the movie again, my hands clenched over my ears to block out Dafoe's blood-curdling screams.

Creating a quartet in the present day is bomb disarmer Kip (Naveen Andrews), a Sikh with whom Hana becomes smitten. Polite and quiet, he treats Hana with respect, though her regard for him seems much stronger than his for her, at least initially. I've seen most of the members of this cast in other roles but was especially excited to see Andrews, since my only familiarity with him was from LOST, which, like Lord of the Rings, provided me with a long list of actors to watch out for in other projects. I enjoyed his role here, which was a bit less complicated than the others since there wasn't so much back story to deal with.

Oddly, three of the actors in this film - Fiennes, Dafoe and Jurgen Prochnow - have played Jesus. (Now, if only Henry Ian Cusick had made it into the movie somehow, we could've had someone who both played Jesus and stars on LOST...) I assume this is mere coincidence (especially since Fiennes' portrayal came four years after this movie), though the film certainly explores religious themes such as redemption and sacrifice. That said, I wouldn't consider any of the characters a Christ figure. In fact, while Hana and Kip are likable enough, I don't find Laszlo, Katharine, Caravaggio or Geoffrey all that sympathetic. We watch all of them endure great suffering, and we feel sorry for them, but... I don't know. The movie stretches on for nearly three hours, and the minutes tick by ever so slowly. By the time it ended, I was just glad it was over, and I can't say it had much of an emotional impact on me. The ending left me feeling cold, and none of the gradually unveiled secrets of the past made much of an impression on me.

I think this is the sort of movie that's best watched twice if one wants to get a proper appreciation for everything that's happening. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll be delving into the movie further; my list of movies to see continues to grow, and I just don't have time to re-watch films I didn't like much to begin with. It takes a very patient viewer to embrace The English Patient.

Gritty Children of Men Offers Dreary Glimpse of the Future

Sometime last year when I went to the movies, I saw a trailer for Children of Men. I was slightly intrigued by the premise of a world without children and the need to protect a young woman who miraculously becomes pregnant, but it looked like another horrifically depressing futuristic film of the sort I try to avoid, so I didn't give it much more thought. Then, a month ago, my friend Dan came over with the movie in tow. He hadn't seen it, but my brother Nathan had, and he gave me two assurances: that it was a good movie, and that I wouldn't like it. If he's right on the first count, I'm not the right person to confirm it because he most assuredly was correct on the second.

Children of Men plants the audience in a grim world not too far in the future. Since babies mysteriously stopped being born, everything deteriorated quickly, leaving mass chaos and widespread violence. Britain is one of the few places with any sense of order, and that's tenuous at best. The film begins with the death of the youngest person alive, and as he was a symbol of hope to everyone, this event throws the entire population into grief.

In the midst of this tragedy, Theo Faron (Clive Owen) learns of the pregnancy of Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) and undertakes a dangerous mission to get her to a spot where she and the baby will be safe and a team of scientists might be able to figure out how she was able to conceive, potentially reversing the childlessness that has plagued the world for the past 20 years or so. 

Aiding him from the get-go are several people, among them maternal Miriam (Pam Ferris); fiery Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore), Theo's former flame; and Jasper Palmer (Michael Caine), an eccentric old friend of Theo and Julian who provides most of the film's few comedic moments. He's the only character who really grabbed my interest, and there's something so deranged about this wild-haired man fond of giving people "strawberry cough", listening to Ruby Tuesday and asking folks to pull his finger that I couldn't help but be a little weirded out by him. Still, I was sorry when he died, as nearly every character we get to know in this movie does. It reminded me of Saving Private Ryan in that so many people lose their lives in the effort to save this one person. In this case, that one person could just spell a new future for humanity, but that didn't make the violence any less repugnant.

Everything about this is gritty. In most scenes, brutal, militant officials tote guns around and seem to shoot at anything that moves. Even in the few scenes in which no one is getting pumped full of lead, there is nothing of beauty to be seen. A world without children is a terrible thing to contemplate, and director Alfonso Cuaron makes sure we get a sense of the magnitude of despair. It's appropriate, I suppose, that this was the same guy who did Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; from the moment the movie started, I felt as though there was a Dementor in the corner. It took a re-watching of the season one finale of LOST to get the feeling out of my system; though that episode contains quite a lot of harrowing and disconcerting moments, it was a breath of fresh air compared to this oppressive movie.

Children of Men is supposed to end on a hopeful note, but few movies have ever left me feeling so miserable. Maybe my pedestrian mind just can't wrap itself around such sophisticated vision, or maybe the movie was a failure. Given my prejudice against these sorts of films, I'm not sure I'm qualified to say. I will say that Emmanuel Lubezky's cinematography is effective and unique, wholly pulling viewers into the movie. However, this was one fictional world I did not want to get pulled into, and no grand allegory could make up for the endless barrage of violence, profanity and despair that marked Children of Men.

10 Pairs of Awesome Animated Movies

I recently learned, to my delight, that Disney has decided not to give up on traditionally animated feature films after all. When I heard that it was to be nothing but computer animation from now on, aside from straight-to-video releases, I was distressed. Both forms have their place; I'd just hate to see such a marvelous medium disappear. Here are ten pairs of my favorite animated films.

An American Tail / Land Before Time - Two of my favorite Don Bluth movies, both about young animals trying to find their way to their families. Fievel the mouse's journey is primarily a solitary one, though the friends he meets at various stages of his journey come together in the end, while Littlefoot the brontosaurus must try to keep his little band of lost dinosaurs together, an especially difficult task with antagonistic Cera the triceratops in tow. Each features an inspirational song about friendship and perseverance, and one gives a little lesson on natural history while the other teaches a bit about American history.

Anastasia / Pocahontas - Bluth again, and Disney. Neither of these movies was particularly well received, largely because of historical inaccuracies and because the films are fairly dark, lessening their appeal for young children. Nonetheless, these two unusual princess stories, however far they stray from fact, are very emotionally engaging and boast gorgeous music and exquisite animation. The natural beauty of America is rendered breathtakingly in Pocahontas, and Anastasia's half-visions of her father's court in its full glory are haunting.

Toy Story / Cars - Two Pixar films about inanimate objects having lives of their own and overcoming a culture clash within their ranks to become friends. Toy Story was groundbreaking as the first major computer animated film to hit theaters. Humans are present, but we don't see much of them, which is a good thing since the people didn't look nearly as natural as the toys. Clever, hilarious and heartwarming, it was a brilliant movie, and its sequel was equally impressive. There are no people to muck things up in Cars, just a very entertaining, fanciful look at an alternate culture and some glorious footage of vast natural expanses along Route 66. A decade later, Pixar certainly hasn't lost its touch.

The Little Mermaid / Mulan - Yes, this list has Disney overload. Nothing says "animated masterpiece" quite like the house of mouse. These are about young women who feel out of place in their culture and who embrace their true natures while pretending to be something different than what they are. Ariel goes from mermaid to human, taking her obsession with land-dwellers to a dangerous level in an effort to satisfy her adventurous spirit, while Mulan poses as a man out of concern for her father, joining the army in his place because she believes he is too ill to fight. Mulan came along as Disney was on the downslide, past its mid-90s Lion King peak, but while it tends to be more overlooked, it's just as good as The Little Mermaid.

The Lion King / The Jungle Book - Two films featuring a wide variety of animals, one set in the plains of Africa and one in the jungles of India. Mowgli and Simba are separated from their rightful place in the world, and their reluctance to return is exacerbated by expansively comical sidekicks - Baloo the bear for Mowgli, Timon the meerkat and Pumbaa the warthog for Simba. Eventually they both must square off against sinister felines Shere Khan and Scar. The animation is fantastic, as is the music, and both films signaled the end of an era; Jungle Book was the last in which Disney himself was directly involved, while Lion King marked the high point in the company's winning streak in the 90s.

Star Quest / Lord of the Beans - Just to get away from Disney for a while, here are a couple of short videos that make light of two of my favorite things: Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. Both are part of Christian video series, using parodies of beloved characters to impart a lesson. Star Quest, which also has a big nod to King Kong, pokes fun at overzealous directors, bad hairpieces, signature hand signals and overdramatic vocal delivery while still getting across the message of teamwork. Lord of the Beans, meanwhile, a lesson on using our gifts wisely, skewers as much of Tolkien and Jackson as it can in 45 minutes, particularly in the Shire scenes and the encounters with characters in homage to the Ents and Tom Bombadil, and is the most visually glorious of all the Veggie offerings, at least for this fantasy fan.

Mary Poppins / Pete’s Dragon - Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The technique of combining animation with live action succeeds beautifully in these two films. In Mary Poppins, it's one long sequence toward the middle of the film that benefits from this collaboration when Mary, Bert and the children jump into one of his chalk drawings. It's a vibrant, joyous scene, the perfect way to create a sense of the fantastical, especially considering that they actually are inside a work of art. In Pete's Dragon, it's only the dragon Elliot who is animated, but he appears frequently throughout the whole movie. Again, animating him, and in such an endearing, puppy-dog fashion, gives him a magical feel and seems like the only practical way to have incorporated a dragon as a realistic main character at that time in cinematic history.

Wind in the Willows / The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh - Two drowsy, idyllic, anthropomorphic visions of animals in the English countryside, both based on literary classics illustrated by Ernest Shepard. They're stories of friendship and simple troubles - though with Toad in tow, calamities tend to snowball. Tigger gets into his fair share of messes too, though he doesn't have expensive and dangerous equipment like Toad does, so his adventures tend to be more benign. At any rate, these are grand movies for a lazy day.

Make Mine Music / Fantasia 2000 - Two of Disney's films made up of short segments putting animation to music. Make Mine Music includes nine very different shorts, including my all-time favorite Disney short, The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met, an operatic tragedy. Fantasia 2000 is a sequel to the original Fantasia once again featuring famous compositions, mostly classical. The iconic The Sorcerer's Apprentice is included, and I prefer the other offerings in this new version to those in the old, especially Pomp and Circumstance, a romantic retelling of the story of Noah's Ark with Donald and Daisy Duck as Noah and his wife, and Pines of Rome, an inspiring epic featuring the aerial migration of whales.

Shrek / Beauty and the Beast - Beauty and the Beast is a gorgeous film stylistically and boasts some of the greatest songs ever to come out of Disney. It's also one of the most morally mature of the films, with its focus on self-sacrifice and inner beauty, and Belle is my all-time favorite Disney heroine. Shrek is sometimes crude and certainly irreverent, but it too is a Beauty and the Beast type of story, made all the more powerful for the fact that in the end, neither hero nor heroine fits the conventional standard of beauty, yet both are characters very worthy of love. Both films serve as a strong reminder not too judge too quickly based on appearances.

Whether drawn by hand or computer, there have been lots of wonderful animated films over the years, and I'm glad the newer form doesn't need to wipe out the more traditional one. While I'm eagerly awaiting The Frog Princess, the movies above are always worth another look.

Amidst All Its High-Octane Chaos, Spider-Man 3 is Quietly Contemplative

It's shaping up to be a spectacular summer. My trip to the movies tonight reminded me how many blockbusters await over the next few months: Shrek the Third, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, The Simpsons Movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix... Tomorrow I may begin rubbing my hands together in anticipation. But today, I'll simply bask for a while in the brilliance of the film that kick-started the season for me: Spider-Man 3.

The line wound around the lobby of the cinema where I attended a midnight showing of the highly anticipated third volume in the Spider-Man series. Originally slated for two Thursday night showings, the theater had added others; I imagine each of the allotted theaters was filled to bursting, as ours was, with fans who persevered as patiently as possible through countless repetitions of inane trivia, advertisements and, more enthusiastically, previews for some of the summer's most promising films.

And then came the movie, its dramatic opening credits a montage of spider webs and brief footage of key characters leading up to a shot of unassuming Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) gazing, mildly impressed, at an electronic billboard welcoming visitors to the hometown of Spider-Man. It's been a bumpy road for Peter since he was bitten by a radioactive spider, but as this movie begins, everything seems to have settled down in his life. Spider-Man is now revered rather than reviled, and Peter remains firmly in Mary Jane's (Kirsten Dunst) affections.

The only trouble is Harry Osborn (James Franco), who still carries a torch for the girl he and Peter both admired as school chums and is none to happy with Peter, who he blames for his father's death. Unfortunately, this is big trouble indeed, since Daddy dearest is haunting Harry from beyond the grave, compelling him to avenge him by becoming the new incarnation of the Green Goblin and going after Spidey. And that's only the beginning...

There's a lot going on in this movie, whose action is driven more by events in the first film than in the second. We have the ongoing romantic trials of Peter and Mary Jane, who is struggling mightily as an actress, though Peter is too wrapped up in his own concerns to notice. We know that they love each other, but they hurt one another - and Peter is especially culpable in this department, particularly when he evidently lets his publicity go to his head and indulges in a rather steamy trademark Spidey kiss with a fellow college student during a photo op. He does this shortly before he intends to propose to Mary Jane, knowing that she must be watching, and even if she isn't that it will soon be plastered all over the papers; why would he ever think locking lips with another woman would be an acceptable idea?

Then there's the matter of the antagonists, and there are three: Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), who covets the same position of staff photographer at the newspaper that Peter does; Flint Marko (Thomas Hayden Church), the skulking petty thief who put a bullet in Uncle Ben; and Harry. It was this last who I figured would be the most important of the figures, and I think I can truthfully say that he is, though not quite in the way I expected. Each of the characters comes to a critical moment in which he must decide whether or not to forgive past wrongs. Because this is Peter's movie, the greatest focus is on him as he becomes infected with a mysterious black ooze that amplifies the worst traits in the person to whom it has attached itself. Initially drawn to this dark force by a lust for revenge on the man who killed his uncle, Peter finds himself irresistibly entangled in its influence, to the point that he barely knows who he is anymore. He must choose between the visceral power that comes with the mysterious substance and the security of being in control of himself, even if it means getting hurt in the process.

Maguire does as fine a job in this third installment as in others. At times, he is delightfully dorky, chugging along on his bike, getting spit-balls thrown at him in class, explaining the acoustics of the theatre to a self-conscious Mary Jane. But gentle, often goofy Peter fades as he begins to wear his new black suit at all times. Soon he is like Clark Kent on red Kryptonite, swaggering his way down the street, using his powers cavalierly, snapping at anyone who tries to talk a little sense into him. At still other times, he is humbled, reverent, somber. We see all shades of him, and it makes him very human.

The other cast standout is Franco as Harry, who spends half the film in a euphoric daze following a near-fatal incident that leaves him with no short-term memory. Conveniently, among his lost memories is the fact that he now hates Peter. The two are awarded a clean slate, a chance to repair their tarnished relationship, which they do, beautifully. And then, all at once, the seemingly possessed portrait of Harry's father speaks, and everything comes rushing back to the younger Osborn. Now he remembers what happened between Peter and his father, and he too must make a conscious choice. As nice as it is to see plenty of Franco's lop-sided grin while Harry is wandering through life in blissful oblivion, the dark emotions with which he wrestles upon receiving his revelation are what give his role in this film real depth.

If this all sounds a bit heavy for a blockbuster... Well, it is, but there is plenty of light to balance it out. The audience laughed aloud many times, including during every scene in which abrasive, tantrum-throwing editor-in-chief J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons) took part. They chortled at the first sight of Bruce Campbell, who appeared briefly but memorably in the first two films and took on a similarly comical role here as a maitre d' with a ridiculous French accent. Grace's aspiring professional photographer is entertainingly irritating, with constant snappy remarks and an attitude compelling him to do whatever it takes to get to the top. Always a treat: Peter's paternal, heavily accented landlord (Elya Baskin) and his daughter (Mageina Tovah), who chirps out messages for Peter and admires him from across the hall. And there are all sorts of moments throughout the film involving the main characters, from a botched proposal dinner to a reading from a play Harry wrote in high school, that elicit laughs.

So, too, is there plenty of web-slinging action to keep everyone happy, to say nothing of the impressive effects of the poisonous goo and the sand allowing Flint to morph into forms far more threatening than his original body. As a villain, he certainly is ominous, lumbering around town like Frankenstein's monster wreaking havoc. We know, too, that he killed Uncle Ben in cold blood. But the first time we see him in this film, he is risking life and limb to return to his home and see his terminally ill daughter, so we're inclined to be a little more sympathetic to him. But is Peter?

Spider-Man 3, directed by Sam Raini and written by Raini and his brother Ivan, is at once exhilarating and devastating. It ends not with a bang, but with a whimper as characters in the aftermath of traumas attempt to find their way together. Not only lives but souls are at stake; some are lost and others are found. The conclusion is a deeply satisfying one, albeit tempered by the realities of grief and loss. There were no throaty cheers that escaped the audience just as the credits began to roll. But there were minds in gear, spirits challenged, hearts opened. This is a movie that deserves all the ticket sales it will undoubtedly garner. If Spider-Man 3 is any indication, this will be a fantastic summer at the movies indeed.

Grace Overcomes Grief in Prayerful The Lord is My Shepherd

I was saddened to open the paper yesterday and read of the death of Dabbs Greer, an actor whose career spanned more than half a century. He played all sorts of roles over the years but was probably most famous for portraying Rev. Robert Alden on Little House on the Prairie. Among the most memorable episodes in which he appeared was The Lord is My Shepherd, the emotional first-season two-parter in which the Ingallses welcome, all too briefly, a sixth member into their family.

The first half of the episode is a roller coaster of emotions as Caroline (Karen Grassle) informs Charles (Michael Landon) that a baby is on the way. He's ecstatic, not least because of the prospect that after three girls, he may be about to get the son he's always wanted. He's so invested in this possibility that he refers to the baby as "he" throughout the pregnancy, to Caroline's gentle disapproval. When it turns out he's right, though, nothing can stem his exuberance, and he's reluctant to take his eyes off the boy for a moment, so eager is he to revel in this fourth foray into fatherhood.

The town rejoices with Charles and Caroline, but little Laura (Melissa Gilbert) isn't so thrilled to see her father so enamored of this baby when she's always shared an especially close kinship with him. Suddenly she feels cast aside, and as hard as she might try to do everything a boy can do, she'll always be a daughter, never a son. She's so bitter about Charles' lack of attention to her that when Charles, Jr. takes a turn for the worse, she refuses to say a special prayer for him, horrifying Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson). When he fails to recover, Laura blames herself for his death and is utterly miserable until a conversation with Rev. Alden convinces her that she can accomplish a miracle if only she can manage to get close enough to God.

This is a powerful episode, and Landon and Gilbert give especially moving performances as Charles and Laura struggle through the wrenching pangs of jealousy, grief and guilt. It's even more overtly religious than most episodes in the series, with the psalm-inspired title a strong undercurrent throughout as the characters turn to God for help in their darkest hour. (Incidentally, this psalm, generally seen as the most beloved of the 150, also provided the title for a second-season LOST episode rich in religious imagery.) Both Rev. Alden and kindly Dr. Baker (Kevin Hagen) are deeply frustrated by their helplessness in the face of the Ingalls' tragedy, but the way the community rallies around the grieving family is admirable, particularly the very practical help Mr. Edwards (Victor French) provides when Laura goes missing.

The second half of the episode takes considerable creative license, but it's such a compelling emotional and spiritual journey for both Laura and Charles that it's hard to mind. While Charles frantically searches for Laura, riddled with guilt over the fact that he unwittingly neglected her in his excitement over the new baby, she stubbornly scales a nearby mountain in order to be as physically close to God as possible so she can convince Him to swap her life for her brother's.

Once she reaches the top, she falls in with an enigmatic vagabond by the name of Jonathan (Ernest Borgnine). Though Laura is initially reluctant to accept his help, he assures her that he and God are old friends and that whatever answer she's seeking, she may just have to be patient for it, and she might as well have something to eat in the meantime. As he looks after her, he cleverly sets the stage for her father to find her, never letting on to Laura that this is his intention. When the inevitable reunion occurs, Jonathan is nowhere to be found, and we are left to wonder whether this man might just have had a touch of the angelic about him. I find it interesting that his first name is the same as that of the celestial main character in Landon's later series, Highway to Heaven.

Little House on the Prairie was a consistently excellent show, but few episodes packed the emotional whallop of this bittersweet but ultimately comforting two-parter. If you only watch one episode of Little House, it should probably be The Lord is My Shepherd.

10 Films Alive With the Sound of Music

These aren't strictly musicals, which I certainly could write and about and probably will, but rather ten of my favorite movies in which music plays some sort of integral part...

The Sound of Music - Okay, this one is a musical, but I couldn't list movies about music and not include The Sound of Music. Music is everywhere in this film, starting with the title. It's a celebration of the music of nature, the solemn chanting of nuns in the abbey, Maria's exuberant outbursts, her singing lessons that are so integral in bringing together a fractured family. It's my favorite musical and possibly my favorite movie.

Mr. Holland's Opus - An uplifting film about the joys and sacrifices involved in being a truly dedicated teacher. Mr. Holland - as fantastically portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss - goes from ambitious young composer to defeated retiree, forced to leave the job in which he invested so much time and energy, instilling in decades' worth of students a passion for music. Yet before he goes, he is able to receive the gift of a powerful, tangible representation of his accomplishments. A very moving tribute to exceptional teachers and a testament to the importance of the arts in education.

I Am Sam - This story of a man with limited mental capacities struggling to raise the young daughter he cherishes is notable for many reasons, one of which is the soundtrack consisting entirely of covers of Beatles songs. A great source of comfort to Sam, who named his daughter after the song Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, their music is rich with meaning, and the new but faithful interpretations skillfully underline the significance of many crucial scenes.

Forrest Gump - Another story about a simple man trying to make good in the world. Forrest is much more independent than Sam, but he has a way of being swept up in events of far-spread significance of which he has little idea. Music is used in the film to accentuate each step in Forrest's journey, which usually coincides with a notable moment in American history. It is more notable as a narrative device than as directly involving Forrest, but there are several notable music-related moments, him teaching Elvis his hip thrusts, watching Jenny sing and play guitar on stage and joining John Lennon for a talk show interview among them.

Sister Act - A movie about the power of music to uplift and to change lives when performed in the proper spirit. Whoopi Goldberg is very entertaining as a lounge singer who goes into hiding in a convent after witnessing a murder, and the feeble attempts of the choir of nuns to provide stirring anthems on Sundays are hilarious. But once the newly dubbed Sister Mary Clarence puts her talents to work by whipping the sisters into proper singing shape, the film becomes more than comedy. The music becomes a regenerative force amongst the nuns and in their troubled neighborhood, and their performances - particularly the last one before a toe-tapping Pope - are downright inspirational.

Blues Brothers - This riotous movie is packed with cameos of famous singers from Aretha Franklin to Ray Charles, and each has his or her time in the spotlight while kind-hearted criminals Jake and Elwood make their increasingly disastrous way to the concert where they will perform as the Blues Brothers, thereby earning the money needed to keep the Catholic orphanage where they grew up alive. The film's loaded with fantastic performances, but my hands-down favorite is the band's impromptu rendition of the Rawhide theme song, complete with a real whip.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Okay, so it's definitely not the sort of music you sing along to. But this movie is very much about whalesong, which is haunting but beautiful in its own way. It's a madcap adventure, but a crucial one, recovering these majestic creatures hunted to extinction so that they can sing their song to the probe seeking communication with them and in so doing save the world.

Fantasia - A Disney masterpiece with carefully choreographed animation matched up with the works of great composers to bring modern audiences a new appreciation for classical music. Each piece is accompanied by a short film whose contents accentuate the different moods and themes of the music in beautiful ways. A feast for the eyes and ears accomplished again when several more pieces were undertaken for Fantasia 2000.

Sense and Sensibility - I can't quite decide which film owes a greater debt to the pianoforte, this or the BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejudice. Both feature the instrument prominently, but I think perhaps Sense and Sensibility has the edge, since it is while she is playing this instrument that Marianne is first seen by Colonel Brandon, and when he eventually buys her one and she plays the music he sends her, that is the physical embodiment of her changed feelings for him.

The Lord of the Rings - There aren't nearly as many songs in the movies as in the books, but I appreciate that Jackson made a real effort to integrate Tolkien's love of the lyrical into the films, particularly in the extended editions. We get rowdy hobbit drinking songs, ethereal elf chants, aching human litanies of mourning... The snippets we hear are lovely, and the moment in Return of the King in which Pippin turns a benign old walking song into a haunting elegy is one of the most startling and profound in the trilogy.

An incomplete list, as always, but there are all movies that make my living room alive with the sound of music...

House's Foundation Begins to Crumble

I'm turning into a real couch potato. With the exception of Friday - and even Friday has something to tempt me with Ghost Whisperer - I'm glued to the TV every night of the week. Heroes on Monday. Ugly Betty on Thursday - while we tape Smallville at the same time. American Idol and, more importantly, LOST on Wednesday. And American Idol and House on Tuesday. Both of these shows have begun to lose their luster for me, but I continue to watch them faithfully, partly because it's an excuse for my friend Libbie and me to get together. House really fell into a stellar deal by ending up just after American Idol in the lineup. I'd never heard of it until the spring of its first season, when Idol came along behind it to massively boost viewership. Would it have made it otherwise? I have major doubts.

I keep watching House mainly because of the main character. Hugh Laurie makes a fantastically cantankerous curmudgeon, and we are extra alert whenever he is on screen, which is most of the time. Like Simon Cowell, House is a master maligner, flinging colorful insults at everyone he meets and scarcely letting a remark go by without a snappy sarcastic comeback. He's marvelously entertaining. Yet by the second season, I had rather hoped to be watching the show for more than just the weekly barrage of one-liners. There are a few story arcs and a bit of character development, but for the most part, the show is just as episodic and formulaic as before. In every episode, somebody shows up with some mysterious ailment, and after one or several incorrect diagnoses, House and his team hit upon the answer at the last minute, almost invariably leading to a full recovery.

While House remains by far the most commanding presence, with his arresting blue eyes and his barking voice with no trace of Laurie's British accent, all the other major players from season one return and add interest. I like the evolution of Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) the best. An arrogant young Australian, he's a real pain throughout much of the first season, but in season two he begins to soften up, becoming more of a decent guy and not stabbing people in the back as he did in the past. Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps), like House and Chase, has issues with his father, and we get some emotional scenes of them together toward the end of the season. I'm not sure what to think of his character; he's ambitious and aloof, and his attitude near the conclusion of the season really grates on me, and I think it has something to do with the unpleasant way in which Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) begins to change.

Back in season one, she was unassuming, quiet and gentle. In the second season, she begins her descent into the barely likable character we see in season three, by which she and Chase seem to have swapped dispositions. She becomes hard-edged, always fiercely looking out for herself and increasingly locking heads with the others. She also seems to pick up a major dose of hormones along the way - or maybe it's all pent-up frustration for the fact that she and House can't make a relationship work. Bad things do happen to her in season two. She gives up what little hope she may have harbored about winning House's affection when his old girlfriend Stacy (Sela Ward) pops up and starts working at the hospital. Foreman essentially steals a paper she wrote and then, rather than apologizing for it, informs her that they are merely colleagues and will never be friends. Oh, and she almost winds up with AIDS. So it's a bad year for her, but I still hate to see her turn away from the sweetness of the first season.

House's boss, Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), continues to rage against House for his defiant indiscretions, even as she defends his behavior as a necessary evil in the interest of helping hopeless cases. Easy-going Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) is my favorite of the side-liners, and the second season has some fun with him when he moves in with House and his patience with his obnoxious friend is sorely tested.

Despite the various problems facing the characters - including deadly diseases - I never really found myself saying, "Gee, I can't wait until next week so I can see how this turns out." It didn't infect my psyche the way more compelling shows like LOST and Smallville have, and just within the context of this show, none of the second-season arcs riveted me as much as the first-season ordeal with corrupt millionaire Ed Vogler (Chi McBride). The season finale is a definite cliff-hanger, but the first episode of the third season, while boasting an emotional and uplifting ending, doesn't really tie up the loose ends very well.

House really didn't improve with its second season, and if it weren't for American Idol, I have my doubts as to whether it would still be around. But as long as House keeps being an insufferable git with an impressive vocabulary and razor-sharp wit, something tells I'm going to keep watching.

11 Pairs of Outstanding Animal Movies

I am an animal lover, so movies about animals have always been among my favorites. Here are ten pairs of outstanding animal flicks - eh, make it 11 for good measure. There are just way too many good ones out there...

Two Brothers / The Bear - If you're looking for outstanding nature footage, either of these will do. Both are efforts by director Jean-Jacques Annaud attempting to instill in audiences a respect for nature. The Bear barely has any dialogue at all, leaving the bulk of the action to the bears, while the few humans in the film don't have much to say. Two Brothers involves a lot more people, but once again the main focus is on two creatures of the same species making their way in the world when their well-being is threatened by humans.

Old Yeller / The Yearling - Tearjerkers. Just about everybody must know by now how Old Yeller ends, and The Yearling isn't any better. But in the meantime, they are great stories about powerful friendships between boys and the animals they love, and about how life forces those boys to grow up too quickly.

Bambi / The Lion King - In the first, we get haunting hints of humans, while in the second, there are no traces of people to be found. The animation on both films is gorgeous, displaying all the glory of two very different natural landscapes and its inhabitants. Both feature fairly carefree young princes that lose a parent, drastically change their living arrangements, fall in love with childhood playmates and take on the leadership roles they were born to play in closing scenes that echo the films' dramatic openings.

The Shaggy Dog / The Incredible Mr. Limpet - Pure silliness about people turning into animals. The former has more ridiculous sight gags than you can toss a stick at, and its sequels are similarly ludicrous. I haven't seen the recent Tim Allen adaptation, but despite advances in special effects, I can't imagine it provided more laughs than the original. The latter, meanwhile, boasts Don Knotts, who's always good for a laugh, and Don Knotts as a fish is even better. I'm always a fan of half-animated, half-life action films, and this one is lots of fun.

Beethoven / 101 Dalmatians - I like the original 101 Dalmtians just fine, but the new version tickles my fancy even more. It's just the right amount of slapstick for a modern-day Disney movie - not quite as relentless as in years past, but still plenty of well-executed gags, not to mention some very sweet moments, all those adorable puppies, and Hugh Laurie. And Beethoven may have gone a little overboard with the sequels, but the first one is a blast, another throwback to classic Disney family films; Dean Jones even shows up as a not-so-competent villain. Grand fun.

The Rescuers Down Under / Cheetah - Down with poachers! One of these is animated and the other live action, but both feature valiant struggles to save endangered creatures. One is a bald eagle, the other a cheetah. The latter is an inspiring story of friendship and determination complete with wonderful footage of Africa, while the former features dazzling animation of the Australian outback and its dazzling array of creatures, not to mention one of my all-time favorite Disney villains, voiced by George C. Scott.

Andre / Free Willy - Both of these inspirational movies are about children who are outcasts in one way or another bonding with aquatic mammals. In each case, the animal is the child's closest friend, yet the time comes when they realize that it is in the best interests of the creature to depart. Both films thus come to a conclusion that is both exhilarating and sad.

Fly Away Home / March of the Penguins - Two very different types of migration, both very inspiring. The first is more of a traditional movie than the second, telling the true story of a girl and her father who use ultra-lights to help guide a flock of geese to their proper home at the changing of the seasons. The second is more a general story of survival that repeats itself again and again. It's a documentary, but that doesn't signal boring, since the cinematography is exceptional and Morgan Freeman's narration has all the right shading to help us see the beauty in these creatures forced to cope with such a forbidding environment.

The Incredible Journey / Homeward Bound - Same story, two different versions. The first is a lot closer to the real story, and the movements of the animals on their epic trek are compelling enough on their own that there's no need to imagine dialogue for the intrepid pets. But when they do talk, in the second film, it adds another, albeit not quite as realistic, dimension to the tale. The dynamics of the three very different personalities add to the fun and allow for some truly heartwarming moments.

Watership Down / The Rats of NIMH - Two fairly dark animated films about small animals - rabbits and rats - trying to start over after their lives are fundamentally altered by humans. The somber tone of each is alleviated by a raucous bird providing comic relief and a gorgeously soothing theme song.

Babe / Charlotte's Web - And we mustn't forget about the pigs. These two films feature beautiful cinematography and state-of-the-art computer animation techniques allowing real animals' mouths to speak in synch with human actors. Both movies are adaptations of classic children's books about porkers who evade the slaughterhouse thanks to a combination of sweet-naturedness and very good friends. The latter ends on a bittersweet note, but the former's conclusion is just plain satisfying, in no small part thanks to James Cromwell's outstanding portrayal of the taciturn farmer who sees the possibilities in an unassuming little pig.

Well, I think that's more than enough. I was supposed to list ten and instead I mentioned 22. And I've no doubt seen another 22 that are worth a look. What can I say? Movies and animals. They just go together so well...