I rarely watch TV anymore. When I do, like for the ongoing Olympics coverage, I quickly become frustrated with commercials (especially those not appropriate for 4 year olds, even if the main show is). I want a “visual mute” feature for my television. One click on the remote kills the sound and dims the picture, down to 15% or so. Forget high-definition, how about something I can use? (Patent pending.)

Saw Eternal Sunlight for the Spotless Mind tonight. An incredibly great film. Then I wanted to order Beck’s song from the film soundtrack. I have an extra Pepsi bottle top that had been gathering dust in the kitchen for a couple weeks, but apparently the song isn’t on iTunes yet.

We saw Whale Rider last night, and I was pulled into it from the very beginning. There were few big surprises, but the story was moving, especially for all of us with daughters. It was told in a uniquely honest way that made the whole feel special. The scenes had a thoughtful timing and flow to them that really worked, and you could tell each shot was carefully composed. As Traci said as we left the theater, it was one of those rare films that you want to see again soon.

A couple of hours from now I should be firmly planted in my seat with popcorn and drink for The Two Towers. I didn’t get to finish re-reading the book this week as I had planned, but from what I’m hearing there are enough differences that maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. These films have a way of intruding on our own version of the story. After seeing the film, it’s sometimes hard to remember how you first imagined things.

Not to mention the plot changes. There was one subtle change that annoyed me about Fellowship, and as far as I can tell there was no reason for it. In the last chapter of Fellowship and the opening of Two Towers, Aragorn is busy running around and makes a crucial decision as the Orcs attack to not continue to find Frodo, and so Frodo and Sam leave unnoticed with the ring. By the time Aragorn realizes what has happened, he admits to himself that it’s probably best for Frodo to go the rest of the journey alone, and he can focus on rescuing the other hobbits.

But in the film, Aragorn and Frodo have a little talk, and Aragorn lets Frodo go to Mordor alone. This is definitely wrong for Aragorn’s character, since after Gandalf disappeared he was responsible for seeing the journey to it’s conclusion. He would never have willingly let Frodo go alone, and my guess is that Tolkien spent some time crafting the right situation that would allow Frodo to go by himself.

Meg: “I’m most looking forward to seeing the Ents.”

I’m both looking forward to and dreading the Ents. In the early trailers, there was no sign of Treebeard or his friends, so I assumed they had been given the ol’ Tom Bombadil (cut). Of course it will be computer animation, but I wonder if they can pull it off in a believable way.

I saw Enigma a week ago. We’ve seen many movies about technology come and go, but so far only Enigma deserves a place next to Sneakers as one of the best ever. Some may be bothered that the characters are fictional, but the rest of the movie was so true to the spirit and technology of the time that I easily fell into the story without a thought to Alan Turing’s absence until I left the theater. From the dials and plugs on the Enigma machine, to the explanation of cryptanalysis and the handwritten notes as the code breakers worked out a problem — it all felt real, a refreshing break from the fake computer interfaces usually designed by Hollywood.

That Turing’s story could be great on the big screen, I have no doubt. But Enigma’s story — romance, cryptography, war — also has its place. The look of the film is perfect, and with dialogue to match. You might recognize Tom Stoppard in the screenplay credit; his other credits include Shakespear in Love, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Empire of the Sun.

When I got home, I searched my bookshelves for other crypto books to supplement the film. Here’s a paragraph from The Code Book, detailing the “weather report” code which was referenced in the film but not entirely explained:

“…experience showed that the Germans sent a regular enciphered weather report shortly after 6 a.m. each day. So, an encrypted message intercepted at 6.05 a.m. would be almost certain to contain wetter, the German word for ‘weather’. The regorous protocol used by any military organisation meant that such messages were highliy regimented in style, so Turing could even be confident about the location of wetter within the encrypted message.”

You gotta love this stuff.

I saw Revolution OS at the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin on Saturday. A really great film, and very approachable — it doesn’t matter if you’ve never heard of Richard Stallman or don’t know what a kernel is. Certainly the filmmakers didn’t entirely know the culture before starting the documentary, and I think that’s what makes the film work: It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it’s not invested in the open source movement’s success or failure. They’re just showing a slice of time in which the landscape of server operating systems was completely changed, and having some fun in the process.