Announced at Comic-con, finally, the name of the third, or sixth, but certainly last Star Wars film is named. And finally he picks a really good one. No doubt in homage to the original working title of Return of the Jedi: Revenge of the Jedi.

So a certain link is made between in the two films in subject matter and placement in the trilogies, but ironically Return of the Jedi is considered the weakest of the original trilogy, while many fans (Myself included) hope for Revenge of the Sith to be the best.

--Leif

In very sad news, last wednesday composer Jerry Goldsmith died of cancer.

Adding in no small way to the success of Star Trek, he composed hundreds of scores to movies and television. It's unfortunate he's not better known, as to me he is the one of the greatest film composers, possibly seconded by John Barry.

While Williams may be the most famous, Goldsmith will forever be remembered as one of the greats.

--Leif

Yesterday I was able to catch 'Napoleon Dynamite' at my local 'limited release' theater; I had been watching for this one for a couple months since I noticed it on the upcoming movie list. I found it to be one of the most enjoyable movies of the year, so if it's showing near you check it out.

As a side note, I'm very disappointed in Roger Ebert's negative review of the film; But then again I've been discounting critic's opinions more and more as of late.

--Leif

I've added three new wallpapers to the site; One a couple days ago and two today. All three of Tenshi ni Narumon/I'm Gonna be an Angel. Found of course in the wallpaper section.

--Leif

One of my favorite journalists, John C. Dvorak, has a new article out: Closing Microsoft.

Alright, what if they did close. Who would pick up the slack? Well the market would suddenly become free for IBM's Linux variation and Apple's 'PC' OS. Longhorn might be popular, but who would provide future support?

It would be good for Open Source in the long run, but which company would continue to take profits for Longhorn, if it's ever released? Sell it perhaps?

--Leif

Not to be neglected, Mozilla Firefox 0.9.2 has been released. Apparently it's an important security update, so if you use Firefox an upgrade is recommended. I think it works a little better too.

If you haven't switched to Firefox/Mozilla, then you could wait until Firefox 1.0, as this version is still in the RC beta phase. Regardless, it's still far better than Internet Explorer 6, and only lacks a few of IE's little habitual features through the use of extensions.

--Leif

The customer isn't always right?

Indeed, in the after math of corporate greed scandals and public distrust, what do we need? Of course! Demon customer labels!

"What we're trying to do is not eliminate those customers, but just diminish the number of offers we make to them," Anderson said.

Larry Selden calls them "demon customers."

Harry Seldon? Er, no... Not quite.

Once in a while, stores need to "fire" their worst customers, Selden said. Filene's banned two sisters from all 21 of its stores last year after the clothing chain's corporate parent decided they had returned too many items and complained too often about service.

The sisters claimed they had been loyal customers for years.

Of course it is the customer's fault. Could it be the products were of poor quality or defective? Perhaps the service was poor? No, ban the customer.

Well, maybe they were whiny and troublemakers. But it seems spookily close to an attitude of 'don't question us if you know what's good for you.'.

"The question is, how public do you go with it, and how big a deal do you make out of it? There are ways of discouraging people from shopping in your store without point-blank telling them you don't want them in your store."

Okay, first stop all your 'money losing sales', or start a club where only customers who purchase a certain quota of overpriced merchandise a year can participate in them.
Here's an idea! Just raise your prices. Then they can fire their support staff and save a load of money.

To be fair, the internet is to blame: No cashiers to deal with, or managers giving you the evil eye. It's a social-introvert's dream! And people just like good prices, who can blame them when the expensive things break anyway?

--Leif

Just to play a bit of catch up amidst funeral proceedings:

Anime on DVD:

Guu, Guu Deluxe (26 Episodes, 6 OVAs) Being released as Hare Guu. No release details on Guu at this time. Expect to finalize license for Guu Final toward the end of the release of the first two series.

The fan desire for this show has nearly exceeded that of Di-Gi Charat, so it's interesting that, like Di-Gi Charat, a relatively small company has licensed it.
The only disappointing aspect is that other reports suggest we'll have to wait until 2005 for the release.

--Leif

A lot of news in the last few days to catch up on, but this was by far the most significant in terms of the film industry is the death of the legendary actor Marlon Brando, who died of lung failure thursday evening.

I can't be sure, but I'd imagine that besides the usual 4th of July movie fare that's cleaned out at the local Blockbuster, but some of Marlon's greats are also in high demand.

--Leif

Viz announced yesterday:

Viz:

CASE CLOSED 192 pages $9.95 Category: ACTION Available August 2004
High-school mystery fan Shin'ichi Kudo is actually one of his high school's best minds, but he gets his reality checks from his childhood friend and almost-girlfriend Ran Mori. Nothing can keep Shin'ichi from a case until he follows a suspicious man into a park, is accosted from behind and fed a strange chemical, which renders him unconscious. When he awakens, he has been transformed into a puny grade schooler! The hapless boy finds a home with eccentric inventor Professor Agasa, who searches for a cure for his condition. While he's waiting to be restored to his adolescence, Shin'ichi takes on the name Conan Edogawa (borrowed from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the last name of the famous Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Ranpo). As Conan, he plays the part of the little brother that Ran never had, and helps her incompetent private detective father solve all of the murder mysteries that come their way.

Notice the names? Well Viz was sure to fix that right up:

Anime on DVD:

While an earlier press release came out heralding Viz's acquisition of the Detective Conan manga series (which is currently at 44 volumes released in Japan) and it listed the original character names, we were told that there was a possibility of change. Well, said change has happened and the manga release of Case Closed will be using the English language names used in the anime series, such as Shin'ichi to Jimmy and Ran to Rachel. Unfortunately, Viz likely won't be sending a press release out about this change but instead just update their website information for it.

I understand to maximize sales they want to affiliate it closely with the broadcast version, but such pandering is still a disgusting alteration. Frankly the names shouldn't have been changed in the first place.
FUNimation has my respect for their DVD releases, but they still fudge up sometimes.

--Leif