I watched "The Seven Samurai" on DVD. It's a Japanese film from the mid 1950's in black and white, subtitled. Three and a half hours long, the inspiration for "The Magnificent Seven" and originating several cinematic ideas like recruiting a band to do a mission and marauding horde cresting a distant hill all in a line. There is also a commentary by some professor which, although at times is repetitive and a bit too fawning, has some interesting observations, insights and background.

I also watched "Blade Runner: The Director's Cut" which is also on DVD. The DVD doesn't have anything extra other than the movie in normal and wide screen formats and some cast bios which are a bit useless. I've never actually seen the whole movie in the first place so this was mostly new to me. This version doesn't have a narrator and the ending is a bit less cheerful, although the ending is substantially the same.

In my opinion the theatrical version is better. Watching the Director's Cut relatively closely, I still missed things and I didn't understand the whole story. I'm sorry, but it's not a well-filmed movie. Lots of things are unexplained and there are a couple of jumps that didn't follow from the last scene. Maybe the narration wouldn't have helped, but it at least would have been better for a mainstream audience. (Damn these DVD cases, I have no idea how to close them...)

NBC just showed Titanic. It is a nice movie. It is a long movie. A very long movie. With probably the longest death scene for a ship ever. It's kind of depressing too. Everybody dies. The good people, the bad people, the innocents and the sinners. Some people like sad endings. I don't particularly but it's ok once in a while. Don't want every movie love story to have a tragic ending.

As I write this, Florida has declared that Bush won the electoral votes there, so he will be our next President, barring Gore finding some legal recourse. It was a very close race and quite exciting. Personally, Bush will probably do a good job. The issues I'm worried that he'll do wrong, well a President still has to get most laws passed through Congress, so it's not hopeless. Goddess, I hope he gets really good advisors, and that he listens to them. I really worry about his ability to stay informed, especially concerning global issues and foreign policy. But take a look at Reagan, not the greatest or smartest President ever, but had a talent for delegation and picking the right people for the job.

Here's one election where the winner can't say he has a national mandate to do anything, since Bush didn't win the popular vote. I still believe in the electoral system and I'm proud that California supported Gore. There may be changes in the way balloting is actually done, although that will be a state to state or even county to county decision. There are some people who say that no matter who wins, because of the controversy it won't be an effective Presidency. I don't know. A good leader can get past that and get his goals accomplished.

There was a really stupid thread that someone tried to start on one of the TrekRPG.net boards (the general discussion forum). It was something about how the US has done best while expanding territory so we should expand and somehow annex Canada, Mexico, buy Eastern Russia, take back the Panama Canal, and in general impose our obviously superior government and morals on the rest of the world. Besides getting flamed mercilessly and having that thread deleted by the moderators, one good point that came out is that if the US is morally superior, then it would be against that morality to try to buy/conquer the rest of the world to bring them to our views. Some people just try to start arguments and flame wars. It's interesting to see what the response is.