It's Valentine's Day! All pink hearts and chocolates today. So in an effort to provide some actual content, I will regurgitate some random factoids and stats about the 14th of February—and one that is not:

1. Women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.
2. In 1929, seven people were shot and killed by Al Capone's gang.
3. In Japan, Women give Men chocolate for Valentine's Day.
4. Chocolate is a psychoactive food.
5. In 842, Charles the Bald and Louis the German signed a treaty.
6. Charlie Brown typically received no valentines.

--Leif

Tonight, 8/7c on Fox, Arrested Development will air its final four episodes. Technically a 'Season Finale', but for all intensive purposes, it's a Series Finale. The good news? We get two more hours of the best comedy to ever air on Fox, and yes, Showtime might pick it up. The bad news? It's during the Winter Olympics' opening ceremonies, which almost guarantees low ratings. A final last punch in the nose from Fox? Nevermind.

So what's left for Bluthies if Showtime doesn't pan out? (Even if it does, Dead Like Me only lasted two half-seasons.) Watching our glorious DVDs over and over again, because if any show benefits from repeat viewing, it's this one—in fact, its lack of popularity could be attributed to that.

--Leif

Yeah, I watched the Super Bowl. There were a few good moments, and a few good ads, but it was essentially embarrassing shots of Jagger's midriff sandwiched by disappointing calls on the field. I'm not going to describe any of it, since that just might get the NFL upset with me—probably not—but suffice to say it was frustrating for all but the obnoxious Steelers fans.

On to the main event: ABC almost had the best ads themselves with their own show promos, but FedEx, Miller, Budweiser, and MasterCard all had good ones. At least I thought so, but thats the peril of being an ad producer: Not everyone gets them. Overall, I was expecting more.

The always hyped post-Bowl programming was good this year though, with Grey's Anatomy, which managed to not fizzle the hype with a crisis to warrant the mysterious "Code Black". (Hospitals make these code protocols up themselves.)

--Leif

The Academy Award nominations were today. Once again, the only interesting category is Best Animated Feature, and for that my prediction was correct, if a little surprising: Howl's Moving Castle, The Corpse Bride, and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit were the nominees, of which I am exceedingly pleased, but to be honest I did not expect Howl's Moving Castle to garner it, but rather Madagascar.

To win, Wallace and Gromit, I have not much doubt. Despite my affinity for Ghibli, Howl's is one of their weaker films, and I personally found Wallace and Gromit more enjoyable than the Corpse Bride—the songs lacked the same catchiness as The Nightmare Before Christmas. It could be bias, as I grew up with Wallace and Gromit—as proved by my Feathers McGraw t-shirt—but apparently the critics concur with me, and I feel that the Academy will as well.

--Leif

That's right, the Australian Open just finished up on Sunday morning, so for anyone who wasn't watching—which is probably a lot—Roger Federer won his third consecutive and seventh Grand Slam, and seventh straight Grand Slam final. The first one he shares with Sampras, the second puts him halfway to matching Sampras' record, and the third is a first. It also puts him on his way to winning a true Grand Slam, though he'll first have to overcome the French Open in June.

We also received one of the best Slam finals in a long time, with the upset contender Baghdatis testing Federer for the first two sets. But, not to forget the Women, Amelie Mauresmo won her first Slam, after hovering near the top of the pack for years, and being the best player to not win one, since Clijsters won the US Open at least.

--Leif

Merry Christmas!

--Leif

IE for Mac gets abandoned at the end of the year by Microsoft, and while this was planned on since 2003, it probably makes things a little easier for Microsoft to focus on their Windows version. Focusing is what they need to do, if they want power users to continue using their browser, which is what this delay is about:

eWeek:

Microsoft Corp. postponed the introduction of the next test release of its Internet Explorer 7 Web browser until sometime in 2006, according to comments posted to the company's site for software developers.

"We want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to try a pre-release version of IE 7 and tell us how it works with their Web sites, their applications, their add-ons, and how they use the Web overall," Hachamovitch wrote.

Internet Explorer 6 has been out since 2001, with the only feature update coming with SP2. Let's just hope Microsoft sticks to improving their browser, and doesn't resort to proprietary HTML in their next release to try and lock in websites with IE exclusivity once again.

--Leif

Disney has released the covers to the next wave of Ghibli DVDs to be released in region 1. Now, the previous covers, most notably Nausicaa, Porco Rosso, and Kiki's Delivery Service all had rather disappointing covers, and looked more like photoshopped bootleg inserts rather than region 1 Disney releases.

Luckily, the next batch is better, if still a bit inferior to the R2s:

As you can see, Disney has used the same artwork as the R2s, with some slight zooming. The only irk I have is the fonts that they used, but for Disney these are wholly acceptable.

Howl's Moving Castle is a little different, because I frankly don't like the original R2 cover very well, and the R1 stays fairly close to tone:

I don't like the standard R2 cover—the middle one—which the R1 mimics, but the Special Edition cover is fantastic. It obviously wasn't used because it features none of the characters, but rather just the castle itself.

The R2 covers are still superior, despite the somewhat bland matting, if only for the more pleasing titles over the somewhat cartoony fonts Disney is using. But kudos must be given for mostly sticking with the original artworks, since that alone would have vastly improved some of the previous releases' covers.

--Leif

Fortune telling through math:

Physorg.com:

Ramesh Sharda, an information scientist at Oklahoma State University, trawled through 834 movies released between 1998 and 2002 to build a "neural recognition" programme that assesses films according to seven parameters...

...It then predicts the movie's financial returns according to nine categories -- from "flop", with total takings of less than one million dollars, to "blockbuster," with earnings of more than 200 million.

Well, we'll see. In all likelyhood the accuracy rate will fall below usefulness once they start using the thing to plan new movies. It'll be as crass as the current CG animated feature formula for success, only more short-lived.

Marketing Guru to Director: "You need an extra household name and 20% more CG to meet the profit goal." The movie going public should be repulsed by such contrivences, but I could be wrong; for that to happen the said public would have to be less shallow than the invention presumes, and I'm not real sure of that.

--Leif

As a follow up, I'm vaguely satisfied that Fox is still pushing Arrested Development as if it's not cancelled, and the show is still getting the night's best bet feature in many newspaper TV inserts, but alas, the ratings speak:

3.0/ 5 which is #5 for the timeslot, equaling 3.95 Million viewers. UPN sitcoms do better than this at times. Although some other Fox shows do not, which aren't cancelled (renewal is doubtful for them as well though).

--Leif