I have, to date, not been a huge fan of the remake movies.   The Charlie’s Angels movies were entertaining, but I was hoping for more from them.  I am also not a huge fan of Steve Carell, in the movies I have seen from him, he left me wondering why everyone was laughing so much.  So when I saw the first trailer for Get Smart, I was apprehensive, and while Steve Carell was not my favorite actor, I had to admit that he was the perfect person to star as Maxwell Smart aka Agent 86, and he has made me a believer.  This was the perfect remake.  Spoilers abound after the jump..

Maxwell Smart ( Steve Carell ) is an analyst for CONTROL (yes, it is capitalized, and no it does not stand for anything).  He wants to be a field agent and for the last 8 years has taken, and failed the agency field operative exam.  However, even after he passes the test, his boss “The Chief” ( Alan Arkin ) says he won’t promote him, due to the fact that he is too valuable as an analyst.  After CONTROL is infiltrated, attacked, and all the covert agents identities are compromised the chief decides that he ahs no choice but to make Max an agent and team him up with Agent 99 ( Anne Hathaway ), who is still unknown since she had extensive plastic surgery.

The two go after KAOS (also capitalized, but not an acronym) which is the evil agency that is just as inept as CONTROL.  Max and 99 initially do not get along, but Max continues pressing and eventually starts to get under 99 tough exterior.

Several times during the movie, 99 hints that CONTROL was likely destroyed by an mole in the agency and we know that there is an unknown man who controls KAOS behind the scenes.  The mission is disastrously successful due largely because Max helps a very very large Russian assassin come to grips with his feelings, but afterwards Max is identified as the mole.  This is because he claimed to have destroyed the nuclear missiles they were after, but no one could corroborate that, and they resurface almost immediately along with a demand for 200 billion dollars (someone cue the Dr. Evil theme).  Max is locked up, and CONTROL is effectively shut down by the president and vice-president.

The Chief, 99 and Agent 23 ( The Rock or Dwayne Johnson as he going by now), all go to LA, where the president is located, to try and get CONTROL up and running again, meanwhile Max is languishing in a CONTROL lockup.  On the radio he hears a song dedicated to him, from the Russian agent, telling him to get to LA because that is where KAOS is planning on detonating the nuclear device.  He is assisted in escaping by the two geeky lab rats for CONTROL ( Masi Oka , and Nate Torrance ) who have it out for the agents since they get picked on.

Back in LA, Maxwell hooks up with the rest of the team, and they go after the nuclear bomb.  The true mole is revealed, which I won’t spoil even though I thought it was fairly obvious through out the movie, and the KAOS is ultimately stopped.

Bottom line, this movie was FUN.  Carell found the perfect balance between being a bungling idiot and a fairly impressive secret agent.  Hathaway provided a sexy, but exciting sidekick and gave a convincing portrayal of a woman trying to deny her attraction to her partner.  The Get Smart movie, and TV series, was always meant to be a combination of a Mel Brooks movie and a James Bond flick, and that is exactly what this is, and it works on every level.

I had three personal favorites during the movie.  At the beginning, when Smart is heading to CONTROL, he goes through the “CONTROL museum”, since the official position is that CONTROL was shut down after the cold war, and all the old props were there from the original series.  I also clapped and cheered when Carell said the famous “Missed it by that much” line, which was tastefully used in the movie.  Lastly the movie was dedicated to Don Adams, and I shed a small tear.

You are missed Mr. Adams.

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Hot weather in California means no good news. Ballmer making more noise than ever. He mentions that MSFT blundered in the search business. Microsoft says no buying spree. China says its not investigating Microsoft story continues. All this means is that they ARE investigating. Delta to use cell phone as boarding passes. Firefox up to 14 million downloads. Its started to crash on me and give me weird errors. FCC tells Sprint-Nextel to get out of 800 MHz band in 30 days, or else. I recommend my own column in Marketwatch.

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Ok, first of all, I don’t condone hacking, or cheating.  I think both activities are egregious and if you get caught doing either then you deserve to be punished.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, what happened, if you haven’t been keeping up, is that two high school seniors were caught hacking the school network, and altering grades, and they also apparently broke into school property and stole tests and answers.

Omar Khan

These are very serious charges, no doubt, but really? 38 years … I could murder someone and not get 38 years in prison for it. I think we need to take a very serious step back here, and realize that these kids are only doing what they have seen touted in popular movies like WarGames and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  While that does not make it OK, are we willing to sacrifice someone’s future over a crime that in reality show’s that they have extreme promise for a career in computer technology, if properly guided.

Coto de Caza is an extremely well-to-do area, and these kids have obviously not received proper parental guidance, and they have found, likely through most of their short lives, that shortcuts are easier then actual work.  However, taking their lives away because of that is as wrong as the crimes these kids committed.

Jim Amormino, of the local sheriff’s department, said that he was astonished by the sophistication of the scheme, especially given the age of the defendants. “I think they wish they would have put their talents into studying,” he said.

Way to go Jim.. you hit the nail on the head.  Yes, they should have put their efforts into studying, but clearly they were not guided in that direction.

Should these kids be punished?  YES!  They definitely need to feel the consequences of these actions.  Should this be the end of what could be a promising future?  NO.

A 38 year sentence for this kid is a crime in itself.  All the kids involved should serve no less then 90 days (summer vacation) in jail, and then perform a years worth of community service, where they can put their computer skills to a proper use.  After which, I am sure there are a few high-tech companies that would love to put their skills to use.

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The lucky bastards over at [ IGN ] recently got to play with the newest version of Guitar Hero.  Did I mention that they are lucky bastards, oh yeah… ok, and while we are all still dreading the day that our living rooms are completely filled with plastic instruments, the new GH4 guitar has got some additions that will make even the most die-hard Rockband fan consider getting both.

According to their review :

“The biggest addition to the new guitar is the touch pad located on the neck. While playing a song, this touch sensitive strip allows you to alter notes during sustains by sliding up and down the strip (giving more freedom and options than what you had before with just a whammy bar). It can also be used for tapping to play notes, particularly awesome if you want to mimic a slap bass. The real power of the touch pad comes in the music creator.”

I feel like jumping up and down like a gleeful 14 year old … ok, I am actually doing that, but can you really blame me.

The back/select button has been more tightly integrated into the bridge of the guitar and makes it easier to use to go into overdrive, and makes the overall look and feel of the guitar more realistic.  The guitar is also bigger which will also help that feeling of realism.

Like I have said in earlier posts, the guiatar is also wireless, and has changeable face plates.

Activision, I know you are reading, so listen carefully.  Dump the Aerosmith crap, and get this game released.. I want it… I WANT NOW!!

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Several days ago, the Mars lander discovered some bright hard material in the sand of the surface of Mars, and then four days later those bright hard chucks all had dissapeared.  This has led to scientists to conclude that this is evidence that there is water ice on Mars, and that the dissapearance was the ice evaporating.

Here is a handy animated gif showing it happen [ Nasa Image ].

On June 15, while digging the trench, currently being called “Dodo-Goldilocks”, the Phoenix lander uncovered the bright material. The Surface Stereo Imager, the camera mounted on the Mars lander, revealed bright chunks at the trench’s base.

Scientists initially speculated that this material could be salt, but after seeing it vanish, they determined that wasn’t possible.

Peter Smith, Phoenix lead scientist from the University of Arizona in Tuscon, USA said :

“It must be ice.  These little clumps completely dissapearing over the course of a few days – that is the perfect evidence, salt can’t do that”

While digging a different trench, labeled Snow White 2, the Lander’s robotic arm has also hit a hard surface that scientists are speculating might be a dense pack of ice.  Three attempts were made through dig through the substance, but after failing the landers robotic arm went into a holding position, which is it is programmed to do when it hits something that is too hard to get through.

So what does this all mean?  Is the lander really discovering ice on Mars?  Is the hard surface really just the tops of building from an ancient buried city?  Will we finally have evidence of life outside the surface of the earth?

Not likely, not on mars, but scientists are happy to discover water ice on the surface, since the whole point of this mission was to determine the history of water on Mars, and try to figure out if the planet was ever amicable to life.

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