BLU-RAY SKIES ARE HERE
The fat lady hasn't sung yet, but for all intents and purposes, it looks like the next-generation DVD battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD is pretty much over.
The winner of the two-year battle - akin to the Betamax and VHS war of the '80s - seems to be Blu-ray, thanks largely to Warner Bros. Home Video's recent announcement that it'll be going all Blu-ray, all the time, after late May. (It had been the only movie studio that hadn't picked a side, releasing in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats.)
Warner will be joining Blu-ray-only studios including Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, MGM and Lionsgate. This leaves Universal, Paramount and DreamWorks as the sole HD DVD supporters - although it's been reported that Paramount will be ditching its HD DVD support now that Warner Bros. has done it, thanks to a clause in Paramount's HD DVD-exclusivity contract.
What does this mean for you? Here are some answers to those burning questions you have about Blu-ray.
Q - Can you use a Blu-ray player if you don't have a high-def TV?
Yes, but unless you've got a TV producing 720p, 1080i or 1080p resolution, “there's no point in buying a Blu-ray player," says David Katzmaier, CNET.com senior editor. “You can hook it up with your S-video [connection], and you're going to see a darn good picture, but there's not going to be much difference between a [standard] DVD and a Blu-ray player. You really need a newer, preferably larger, HDTV to experience the difference."
Q - Does size matter when it comes to watching Blu-ray on an HDTV?
Yes. “The bigger the TV [40 inches and larger], the more it matters," says Consumer Reports senior project leader Maurice Wynn, especially when you're forced to sit closer to the TV than you'd like. “The closer you sit to your TV, the more you'd need to have high definition, like Blu-ray," he says.
Q - What do you need to get the most out of your Blu-ray?
Definitely an HDTV. Katzmaier also recommends HDMI cables, “if you're going to get a Blu-ray player, you might as well spend a little bit more and get a cable - we recommend monoprice.com." Meanwhile, Wynn says you won't go wrong with an audio system, because “Blu-ray discs can theoretically have better-quality sound since they have more [memory] capacity and studios can put higher data audio on the disc."
Q - Do you need to replace all your standard DVDs with Blu-rays?
No. All Blu-ray players will play standard DVDs, although some do a better job at it than others (check out sites like CNET.com's home video reviews for opinions on which ones do this the best).
Q - Should you rush out and buy a Blu-ray player now?
Probably not. They're still expensive - the cheapest one on the market is $300 - and there aren't that many Blu-ray discs out there yet. But if you're really desperate, Katzmaier suggests getting a PlayStation 3. “It's basically a Blu-ray player and a gaming console, without any compromises. There are no video or audio quality differences, and it does a great job playing [standard] DVDs. It's basically a little supercomputer [with built-in Web access], which allows you to do a lot of upgrades when Blu-ray requires it, making it the most future-ready Blu-ray player out there."
Comic fans fume as Marvel erases Spidey-MJ marriage
Those who know Spider-Man only from Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in the movies might be surprised to learn that in the comic book, the web-spinning hero has been married for almost 21 years.
That's why the comic world is in an uproar over Marvel Comics' decision to undo the marriage of Peter Parker and red-haired bombshell Mary Jane Watson, reversing two decades of storytelling.
In Amazing Spider-Man #545 last week, Peter and Mary Jane make a tearful deal with the devil-like character Mephisto: In exchange for saving Aunt May's life, Mephisto erases all traces of the Peter-Mary Jane marriage from memory.
In the issue out this week, subtitled Brand New Day, Peter Parker returns to his roots — young, nerdy and single. Aunt May is alive and well and Mary Jane is again just part of the cast. The marriage never happened.
"People are very upset. They erased a lot of stuff that had been set in stone," says John Newman, manager of Ultimate Comics in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Wednesday as customers came in to buy the opening chapter of Brand New Day. To help emphasize the new start, Amazing Spider-Man will go thrice-monthly.
"We knew it would be a very controversial thing to do," says Joe Quesada, Marvel's editor in chief, who believed so much in the project that he drew the crucial issues himself. "Looking into the future, this is really the right thing to do for the long-term health of the character."
Spider-Man, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962, was a hit, connecting with young readers because he was a geeky teenager, shy with girls and uncertain of how to use his powers. But in 1987, Peter and Mary Jane, by then a fashion model, got married. Marvel had instant regrets.
"I remember editors and editors in chief lamenting that a married Spider-Man was not where we want to be," Quesada says. "A married Peter Parker makes for a less interesting soap opera than a single Peter Parker going about his nerdy kind of life."
Writers tried everything: The couple separated for a while. She miscarried. And in a much-criticized story line, Marvel tried to convince readers that Peter Parker had not gotten married, but his clone. That didn't stick, either. Then Quesada took over and insisted the marriage just couldn't continue.
"Nobody wants to read about a married Spider-Man," says Craig Shutt, a columnist for Comics Buyers Guide. "But in the short run, it's a terrible idea. It disrespects the readers by saying everything they read is wrong."
At DC Comics, Superman is married to Lois Lane, disrupting that title's long-standing tensions. DC declined to comment for this story.
Quesada is steadfast that for Spider-Man, the move is the right one: "Ultimately we have to do this to keep this character fresh for this generation and generations to come."
HEROES CHANGE
How long-term heroes have been revised to keep up with the times:
Superman. Created in 1938, Superman was totally revamped in 1986. The current Man of Steel never had a career as Superboy, and as Clark Kent, he has been married to Lois Lane since 1996.
Batman. Created in 1939, Batman has mentored three Robins. The first, Dick Grayson, is now Nightwing. The third, Tim Drake, was introduced in 1989. The second Robin, Jason Todd, was killed by the Joker but has returned.
Iron Man. Created in 1963, Tony Stark built his armor after being injured in Vietnam, later updated to the Gulf War. Now he got his injuries in Afghanistan.
Apatow, Cody, Penn among WGA script noms
NEW YORK - While the Writers Guild of America continues its strike, throwing much of awards season into question, it still has some awards of its own to hand out.
The WGA on Thursday announced its nominees for the most outstanding achievements in writing for the screen in the past year. Among the nominees for best original screenplay were stripper-turned-scribe Diablo Cody for the teen pregnancy comedy "Juno," and Tony Gilroy, who wrote and directed "Michael Clayton," about a fixer at an upscale New York law firm.
Also nominated for best original screenplay were Judd Apatow for "Knocked Up," another comedy about an unplanned pregnancy; Tamara Jenkins for "The Savages," about adult siblings caring for their ailing father, and Nancy Oliver for "Lars and the Real Girl," in which a loner falls for a life-size doll.
Many of the year's most acclaimed films were based on books, making the adapted screenplay category especially competitive. The nominees include Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Texas crime novel, "No Country for Old Men," and Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!" — which he turned into "There Will Be Blood."
Also nominated for best adapted screenplay were Sean Penn's script for "Into the Wild," based on Jon Krakauer's book, Ronald Harwood's adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," and James Vanderbilt's script for "Zodiac," adapted from Robert Graysmith's book about San Francisco's Zodiac killer.
Nominees for the third and final category, documentary screenplay, were Michael Moore's script for "Sicko," as well as those for "Nanking," "No End in Sight," "Taxi to the Dark Side," "The Rape of Europa" and "The Camden 28."
The Writers Guild Awards are set for Feb. 9 at simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York.
The guild's strike is causing considerable turmoil this awards season. On Monday, organizers facing the prospect of a Golden Globes ceremony without any celebrities — who said they wouldn't cross picket lines — reduced the event to a news conference.
Edmund Hillary, first atop Everest, dies
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Sir Edmund Hillary, the unassuming beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest to win renown as one of the 20th century's greatest adventurers, has died, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced Friday. He was 88.
The gangling New Zealander devoted much of his life to aiding the mountain people of Nepal and took his fame in stride, preferring to be called "Ed" and considering himself just an ordinary beekeeper.
"Sir Ed described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities. In reality, he was a colossus. He was an heroic figure who not only 'knocked off' Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity," Clark said in a statement.
"The legendary mountaineer, adventurer, and philanthropist is the best-known New Zealander ever to have lived," she said.
Hillary's life was marked by grand achievements, high adventure, discovery, excitement — and by his personal humility. Humble to the point that he only admitted being the first man atop Everest long after the death of climbing companion Tenzing Norgay.
He had pride in his feats. Returning to base camp as the man who took the first step onto the top of the world's highest peak, he declared: "We knocked the bastard off."
The accomplishment as part of a British climbing expedition even added luster to the coronation of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II four days later, and she knighted Hillary as one of her first act.
But he was more proud of his decades-long campaign to set up schools and health clinics in Nepal, the homeland of Tenzing Norgay, the mountain guide with whom he stood arm in arm on the summit of Everest on May 29, 1953.
He wrote of the pair's final steps to the top of the world: "Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no false cornice, no final pinnacle. We were standing together on the summit. There was enough space for about six people. We had conquered Everest.
"Awe, wonder, humility, pride, exaltation — these surely ought to be the confused emotions of the first men to stand on the highest peak on Earth, after so many others had failed," Hillary noted.
"But my dominant reactions were relief and surprise. Relief because the long grind was over and the unattainable had been attained. And surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar (high school) and a no-hoper at university, first to the top of Everest. I just didn't believe it.
He said: "I removed my oxygen mask to take some pictures. It wasn't enough just to get to the top. We had to get back with the evidence. Fifteen minutes later we began the descent."
Hillary's life was marked by grand achievements, high adventure, discovery, excitement — and by his personal humility. Humble to the point that he only admitted being the first man atop Everest long after the death of climbing companion Norgay.
His philosophy of life was simple: "Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself," he said in a 1975 interview after writing his autobiography, "Nothing Venture, Nothing Win."
Close friends described him as having unbounded enthusiasm for both life and adventure.
"We all have dreams — but Ed has dreams, then he's got this incredible drive, and goes ahead and does it," long-time friend Jim Wilson said in 1993.
Hillary summarized it for schoolchildren in 1998, when he said one didn't have to be a genius to do well in life.
"I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it," he said before planting some endangered Himalayan oaks in the school grounds.
The planting was part of his program to reforest upland areas of Nepal.
Hillary remains the only non-political person outside Britain honored as a member of the Britain's Order of the Garter, bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II on just 24 knights and ladies living worldwide at any time.
He reached the summit of Everest four days before Elizabeth was crowned Queen of Britain and the Empire on June 2, 1953. She immediately knighted the angular, self-deprecating Hillary, who was just 33.
Throughout his 88 years, he was always the atypical "typical New Zealander" who spoke his mind.
In his 1999 book "View from the Summit," Hillary finally broke his long public silence about whether it was he or Norgay who was the first man to step atop Everest.
"We drew closer together as Tenzing brought in the slack on the rope. I continued cutting a line of steps upwards. Next moment I had moved onto a flattish exposed area of snow with nothing by space in every direction," Hillary wrote.
"Tenzing quickly joined me and we looked round in wonder. To our immense satisfaction we realized with had reached the top of the world."
Before Norgay's death in 1986, Hillary consistently refused to confirm he was first, saying he and the Sherpa had climbed as a team to the top. It was a measure of his personal modesty, and of his commitment to his colleagues.
He later recalled his surprise at the huge international interest in their feat. "I was a bit taken aback to tell you the truth. I was absolutely astonished that everyone should be so interested in us just climbing a mountain."
Hillary never forgot the small mountainous country that propelled him to worldwide fame. He revisited Nepal constantly over the next 54 years.
Without fanfare and without compensation, Hillary spend decades pouring energy and resources from his own fund-raising efforts into Nepal through the Himalayan Trust he founded in 1962.
Known as "burra sahib" — "big man," for his 6 feet 2 inches — by the Nepalese, Hillary funded and helped build hospitals, health clinics, airfields and schools.
He raised funds for higher education for Sherpa families, and helped set up reforestation programs in the impoverished country. About $250,000 a year was raised by the charity for projects in Nepal.
A strong conservationist, he demanded that international mountaineers clean up thousands of tons of discarded oxygen bottles, food containers and other climbing debris that litter the lower slopes of Everest.
His commitment to Nepal took him back more than 120 times. His adventurer son Peter has described his father's humanitarian work there as "his duty" to those who had helped him.
It was on a visit to Nepal that his first wife, Louise, 43, and 16-year-old daughter Belinda died in a light plane crash March 31, 1975.
Hillary remarried in 1990, to June Mulgrew, former wife of adventurer colleague and close friend Peter Mulgrew, who died in a passenger plane crash in the Antarctic. He is survived by his wife and children Peter and Sarah.
His passport described Hillary as an "author-lecturer," and by age 40 his schedule of lecturing and writing meant he had to give up beekeeping "because I was too busy."
By that time he was touring, lecturing and fund-raising for the Himalayan Trust in the United States and Europe for three months at a time, speaking at more than 100 venues during a tour.
He was known as ready to take risks to achieve his goals, but always had control so that nobody ever died on a Hillary-led expedition.
He was at times controversial. He decried what he considered a lack of "honest-to-God morality" in New Zealand politics in the 1960s, and he refused to backtrack when the prime minister demanded he withdraw the comments. Ordinary New Zealanders applauded his integrity.
He got into hot water over what became known as his "dash to the Pole" in the 1957-58 Antarctic summer season aboard modified farm tractors while part of a joint British-New Zealand expedition.
Hillary disregarded instructions from the Briton leading the expedition and guided his tractor team up the then-untraversed Shelton Glacier, pioneering a new route to the polar plateau and the South Pole.
In 2006 he climbed into a row over the death of Everest climber David Sharp, stating it was "horrifying" that climbers could leave a dying man after an expedition left the Briton to die high on the upper slopes.
Hillary said he would have abandoned his own pioneering 1953 climb to save another life.
"It was wrong if there was a man suffering altitude problems and was huddled under a rock, just to lift your hat, say 'good morning' and pass on by," he said. "Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain."
Named New Zealand's ambassador to India in the mid-1980s, Hillary was the celebrity of the New Delhi cocktail circuit. He later said he found the job confining.
He introduced jetboats to many Ganges River dwellers a decade earlier, in 1977, when his "Ocean to the Sky" expedition traveled the Ganges by jetboat to within 130 miles of its source.
The last segment was by foot, and two mountain peaks near Badranath, where the Ganges rises, were also climbed. He sought adventure in places as distant from each other as the Arctic and Antarctic.
Hillary didn't place himself among top mountaineers. "I don't regard myself as a cracking good climber. I'm just strong in the back. I have a lot of enthusiasm and I'm good on ice," he said.
Despite his fame, he spoke of being "really embarrassed" even when introduced at a lecture.
"I really am an ordinary person with a few abilities which I've tried to use in the best way I can," he said.
The first living New Zealander to be featured on a banknote, he helped raise nearly $530,000 for the Himalayan Trust by signing 1,000 of the sparkling new five-dollar bills sold at a charity auction in 1982. They were snapped up by collectors round the world.
Honored by the United Nations as one of its Global 500 conservationists in 1987, he was also awarded numerous honorary doctorates from universities in several parts of the world.
One of his accolades was the Smithsonian Institution's James Smithson Bicentennial Medal for his "monumental explorations and humanitarian achievements," awarded in 1998.
Throughout his life Hillary remembered his first mountain he climbed, the 9,645-foot Mount Tapuaenuku — "Tappy" as he called it — in Marlborough on New Zealand's South Island. He scaled it solo over three days in 1944, while in training camp with the Royal New Zealand Air Force during World War II. "Tapuaenuku" in Maori means "footsteps of the Rainbow God".
"I'd climbed a decent mountain at last," he said later.
Like all good mountaineers before him, Hillary had no special insight into that quintessential question: Why climb?
"I can't give you any fresh answers to why a man climbs mountains. The majority still go just to climb them."