"Up" Is Kind Of A Downer

Pixar's latest film "Up" is a downer. Any time other patrons are openly weeping it's a sign the film is tilting toward the depressing side. I was disappointed.

I'm not alone, as can be witnessed here, here, here and here.

Most problematic, for me, was my mistaken belief "Up" was a movie for children. At the time, I didn't realize the film was rated PG, so that's my fault. But, I had help. The trailers heavily promoted the fun, daring and quirky expedition theme involving Carl and Russell, the two main characters whose friendship must span a 70-year gap. But the trailers gave no hint to the movie's dark interconnected themes of loss, failed dreams, bitter righteousness and evil so sinister and blinding as to corrupt an intelligent, respected but apparently egoist adventurer.

The movie's lessons and animation are outstanding, as is typical for Pixar. But like the studio's early Red's Dream short, it's reminscent of an admitted Blue period.

Disney and Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lassiter has famously joked that Red's Dream was popular in Europe. No doubt, "Up" is likely to prove successful overseas, too, as it deserves to in the states as well. But make no mistake, Pixar's latest film is no lighthearted tale of friendship and expedition. Like with Wall-E, Pixar's creative team is intent on presenting complex life lessons, some of which are already all to real to many adults.

Sad News For Pontiac Fans

By now everyone's heard GM is moving to kill the Pontiac brand. Car and Driver has a nice take, in case you want more history and details.

Whether it was GM mismanagement, changes in world markets or just plain lack of interest, the brand had been slipping for years. Pontiac's failure certainly isn't a sudden event, nor should anyone feign surprise. The division has been struggling too long. But it wasn't the economy that ended the Pontiac line. Any such claims are an excuse.

Ultimately, it may be a case of too little too late. The new Solstice was a nice-looking car with sweet lines that deservingly won awards. The Vibe was a quality compact supplied by Toyota as part of a joint venture in Fremont, California. So the company deserves credit for trying.

But there were too many Aztecs (one of Time Magazine's 50 Worst Cars of All Time) and too many Montanas, which lasted only a handful of years. And where were the F bodies, abandoned after 2002 (answer: Pontiac execs chose to focus on more profitable SUVs, instead, even though that flew in the face of the brand's rich history, character and personality)?

When Pontiac killed the Grand Prix (last year), I knew that was it. This is especially true because I debated purchasing an '08 model. But with the options I wanted, I would have had to pay $30K or so. For a Pontiac that would depreciate 35% (approximately) when I drove it off the lot? It didn't add up.

Regardless of the cause, it's a sad event. I grew up with Pontiacs. My dad and grandmother owned Grand Prixs and Trans Ams (complete with screaming chicken decal), respectively. Friends owned LeMans, Firebirds, Grand Ams and Bonnevilles. I remember lazy summer days as a kid scrubbing my old man's Grand Prix whitewalls and cleaning the maddening spoke wheels. So, too, do I remember the bark of the massive 6.6-liter that powered the late 70s Firebirds with the gaudy brushed-aluminum dashboards.

Those days are gone, though. And so, now, is Pontiac.

Booklist

I've been working too much to pay much attention to the Reds (they appear to be holding steady at .500) or the Bengals (leveraged the draft to stock up on linemen, which is fine and good).

I've been able to knock off a couple books, though. I finally finished Undaunted Courage, the mammoth book on Lewis and Jefferson by Ambrose. I recommend it, definitely.

I also finished Orson Scott Card's Shadow Puppets and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers.

Shadow Puppets was OK, but I've found myself losing interest in the whole Ender saga. I guess a couple books was enough but four was too many, maybe, for me.

I found Outliers interesting, but most any undergraduate could easily invest hours debunking some of its methods and conclusions. That said, some breezy pop nonweighty nonfiction is needed every now and then.

Just Finished Anathem

After several months of on again, off again reading, I've completed Neal Stephenson's Anathem. At 900+ pages, I'm glad I stuck with it.

I'm not sure how much I liked it, though. I believe, as one reviewer mentions on Slashdot, the novel was way too long. I suspect (and I base this thought on years of professional editing experience) the book could have been cut by some 300 or 400 pages.

But that's to be expected, anymore, with Stephenson. His "Baroque Cycle" spanned three volumes. Cryptonimicon, too, required stamina, courage and willpower.

While Anathem has great characters and a compelling story line, I felt at times as if I were plowing through an assignment. Passages required dedication, focus and commitment I often associate with reading Proust. That's asking too much of today's science fiction reader, I fear.

Still, there were rewarding moments. Here are my top quotes from the book, all of which will stick with me (and plan to see these showcased within the movie trailer if the motion picture rights are ever sold):

Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor.

And...

Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.

Then there was this anticorporate nugget, as well:

So I looked with fascination at those people in their mobes, and tried to fathom what it would be like. Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them.

Now it's on to Wallace's Infinite Jest. Out of the frying pan into the fryer, I suspect.

DiskInternals Denies Its Own Guarantee!

Check this out.

Bought a piece of software after the evaluation version said it would recover lost files. Note the clearly worded guarantee "If you can preview images, you are guaranteed to be able to recover it."



When the software failed to recover the displayed file, I called the company's fulfillment provider to request a refund (as instructed on the DiskInternals' Web site). The company I reached at the number DiskInternals said to call told me it doesn't manage issues with this product. OK.

So I contacted the company's support technicians and customer service staff. Here's what they told me (keep in mind the clearly posted guarantee from the above screenshot of the company's software):

"The product was guaranteed to recover files for which thumbnail images displayed." Where did you see that? There is no such guarantee.



Precious stuff. I'll have my credit card company dispute the charge on Monday. No big deal. But I post it here so other technicians and computer users will know of the DiskInternals experience I had.