I rented Book of Love through Blockbuster online after watching it two times previously. As you might guess I like the film, it's a solid 7/10 if I had to rate it, but a “must watch” in general terms.

Quick plot summary. Married couple befriends a 15 year-old kid. The wife sleeps with the kid and tells the husband. Bad things happen and everyone ends up getting exactly what they desired to be happy.

After tonight's viewing I decided to read what the people on IMDB had to say about it. Don't do that. It'll drive you insane. The shear number of people who focus on the minor details, or just focusing on the action and not what the action represents in this film is staggering.

Anyway, good film. Go watch it.

In Microsoft's Windows Live Mail Desktop, one of the nicest hodgepodge of names that I've ever seen, they will have a neat new feature called “Active Search.” What is active search you ask, well we'll have the Windows Live Mail Desktop blog tell us.

Much of what you need to get done online – from planning your next vacation to remembering to buy flowers for your mom on her birthday – is piling up in your inbox, just waiting for you to take action, usually by looking something up on the web.

With this in mind, we’ve designed Active Search to make it easier for you to act on anything that piques your interest while reading your email. That’s why we show you key search terms we find in a message and provide a search box right underneath, so you can quickly search for terms of your own.

In other words it's keyword based advertising. The rest of the post tries to explain what all Active Search does without ever really calling it advertising, until the end.

Active Search provides advertisers with a powerful way to reach consumers with text advertising that is very relevant to their daily lives. Contextually targeted sponsored links are shown automatically for the relevant keywords Active Search finds as users read their email; these will be provided by Kanoodle during our beta. Paid search sponsored links are shown whenever users select alternative keywords or enter in their own search terms; these are delivered by Microsoft adCenter.

So a huge multi-billion dollar company can't eat the cost of an email client, a cost they have been eating for years with both Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. They pass of the cost onto the users and try to hide this by giving it a fancy name. I can't wait for Windows Live Web Desktop with an integrated Active Search banner that spans the entire window width right below the tab bar.

Tags: microsoft, windows_live

I'm a huge fan of the comic character The Spectre and the potential stories that could be told based on the idea about the avenging spirit of God roaming the Earth. I enjoyed the rise in visibility he got during Infinite Crisis time, even if it was in a villainous role.

So needless to say when I saw that there would be a new Spectre mini-series following up the open plot from Infinite Crisis I jumped at the chance to buy it. While the first issue did what it set out to do, establish Crispus Allen as the new Spectre, it did so in such a long convoluted way that set aside past Spectre history and even the events of Infinite Crisis.

One of the best parts of the whole Infinite Crisis storyline was when God finally took notice to what the Spectre was doing and forced his essence into the body of recently slain Gotham PD officer Crispus Allen.

Good Origin

A nice quick and accurate Spectre origin that the mini-series completely ignores.

Bad Origin

At the beginning Crispus Allen is dead and is not the Spectre. The Spectre makes him an offer of joining, which he refuses. The Spectre then gives him a year to reconsider the proposition, so this is a One Year Later story then. During the year Crispus watches in on his family, discovers Batman's identity, so it isn't a One Year Later story since Batman is active, and witnesses a ritualistic murder that piques his interest. At the one year mark he agrees to join with The Spectre, to be the spirit of God's vengence and we get treated to a nice Spectre style killing, a child molester being eaten by his child-like dolls, “You have preyed upon children now children will prey upon you.”

Why did they cast off such a great origin for one of much lesser strength? Was it to play up the human side of the Spectre? Was the planning for this mini done further in the past but needed an event to kick it off? Does DC Comics just hate continuity?

Finally what has The Spectre been doing during this year? Last we saw he wasn't quite sane and was being punished by God for his deeds. I'd imagine he was being tortured for his many actions, or even had his memory wiped.

Tags: comics, crispusallen, dccomics, spectre

I rarely use Paypal, just for the occasional software purchase or donation and little, if anything, else. My account has been placed on a limited access deal. I find it weird that a company can forcefully make you agree to a new policy, while the old one served you fine, or block you from using the service.

Perhaps it's the drastic difference between service software versus purchased software that I don't grok.

I finished up Infinite Crisis over the weekend and both enjoyed and was disappointed by it. On one hand you have a great classic superhero fight here the good guys win but on the other hand you have the awkward finale of the big three.

So much was made of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman disappearing for a year that you'd expect some huge event to cause it, but instead you had what we got. Superman lost his powers and just became Clark Kent. Batman, feeling paternal, took his boys on a cruise and Wonder Woman went off to find herself.

Not exactly what I was hoping for.

Tags: comics, dc comics, infinite crisis

The pilot is free on iTunes. It's like the Order from Law and Order mixed with the characters from ER.

Hey look SPOILERS!

Character (Future prediction)

The newbie who is young and idealistic whose error caused a death. (Gains confidence, moves up the ranks etc etc)

The self-destructive DA who longs for the woman he broke up with. (Reaches a life and career low and slowly recovers, or kills himself)

The cocky DA who only takes cases he can win and tosses aside those he can't. (Has an emotional epiphany that causes him to refocus his life to help those that can't help themselves)

The fully competent female DA who places her career ahead of her life and has an affair with her boss. (She wont change her boss will)

The airhead flighty female DA. (WIll show signs of being a great trial attorney but will suffer from her failings for many seasons until she overcomes the mental humps)

The “boss” is very clinical and treats each case as must win no matter what the cost but takes pride in his cases and representing the families and doing what's right. (The deah of his friend will rearrange his priorities and focus his attention on his life, like making the affair legit, and getting in touch with the victims on a personal level)

I guess I missed the SVU that brought back the original DA from the show since she's the “boss of bosses” in the series.

The Cartoon Network airs one of the finest shows, animated or otherwise, on the air today.

Beautifully animated, wonderfully scripted and perfectly voice acted, by both voice actors and “real” actors. It mixes the best of the comic Justice League, the dark plots from the modern day and the grand adventures from the olden days.

Tags: comics, justice league

Listening to Opie and Anthony complain about the lack of creativity on regular radio as they spend an hour on each show talking about MySpace and PalTalk or how much better XM is than Sirius or how much better SatRad is so much better than regular radio because you can curse and play clips unedited, that doesn't make radio better. Instead of talking about being better, just do it, put on a better show.

Without the flow of genuinely funny comics that sit in the third chair each day O&A would be unlistenable. Check out Bill Burr, Robert Kelly, Patrice O'Neil and Jim Norton for the real stars of the show.

Tags: opie and anthony, xm, xm radio

I picked up Space: Above and Beyond from Best Buy the other day and am very glad I did.

Originally airing in the mid 90s SAaB was truly one of the finest Sci-Fi shows of the 1990s. Born from the minds of the creators of The X-Files and Millennium SAaB followed the lives of 5 Marine Corp Space Aviators as the fought in a war against an alien foe set to destroy mankind. This show could have easily fallen into the trap of this type of series by being way too plot focused but a strong focus on the characters and their interactions with each other and the war makes the show a creation way before its time.

Read The Rest of “Space: Above and Beyond”

Tags: sci-fi, space above beyond, tv

One of my favorite comic book series is Kingdom Come, a stark and frank view on superheroes and what the mean, stand for and most importantly their role in the world. However its sequel, The Kingdom, tosses all that aside for the author's ego and desires. Furthermore it is a recursive storyline that negates both it and Kingdom Come with its events and resolution.

What follows is a very detailed summary of the book that you should not read if you want to read the book.

Read The Rest of “The Kingdom Comes Again”

Tags: batman, comics, dc comics, superman