You knew it was coming. And here it is. The world’s first film shot and edited entirely on an iPhone 4. Starring the powerhouse talent Garrett Murray. Directed by yours truly.

(View in HD)

G-7

Endings are hard. It’s the only episode where you’re competing directly against the audience members’ vaguely imagined perfect prototype episode. You can’t worry about making anyone happy, you just have to stay true to your story and follow your characters to the end.

Lost didn’t really do that. It was a classic cop-out ending. I think I know why they did it, but first let me complain.

It was a perfectly good ending, just not for this particular TV show. The biggest problem is that the ending they chose could really be the ending to any TV show. Pick a show and you could have the characters meet in heaven for the last episode to reminisce about their lives. It had nothing to do with the mythology of the island. It was arbitrary. All the characters meet in heaven and have sentimental slow motion hugs. THE END. This would perhaps have been tolerable had we only wasted one episode in this heaven reality instead of half an entire season.

Ultimately the writers never put their money where their mouths were. They plodded along as if they were giving us clues to a very very specific place, yet there was no place after all. Other than a hot tub in an underground cave I guess. But the clues were SO specific. They were always telling us not to worry, we’d be rewarded in the end. But instead we got a sentimental clip show suitable for a Lifetime original movie. They were all bark for 6 years and never had the guts to bite.

I didn’t need detailed explanations. I’m not angry about answers, we certainly got a lot of them over the course of 6 seasons. But they left some pretty large and important details up in the air. Specifically the mechanics of the Source and the Smoke Monster were clumsy. You could almost hear Lindelof and Cuse whispering in the background, “Please just go with us on this, we’ve got nothing.”

The other problem dramatically speaking was that the threat of Smokey leaving the island was never very compelling. We were simply told this would be bad. I guess we were meant to just believe them. Instead of, you know, showing us what happens when he leaves the island. Sort of a cornerstone of good drama, that “showing” part. There were plenty of ways they could have done that without actually destroying the world.

The last season should have been all about Jacob, developing his character into something interesting instead of just being this stoic dude who gravely whispers vague generalities.

Ultimately I think the producers were so worried about delivering an unsatisfactory ending that they subverted the entire idea of an ending by throwing this heaven crap at us.

Weak and uninspired. A sentimental greeting card ending. More concerned about making us cry than resolving the story.

Imagine watching your favorite Lost episodes from seasons 1 and 2 and then being shown this ending. You probably wouldn’t have stuck it out.

Well I’m officially a genius. I was impatient to read The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest which doesn’t get released in the US until May 25. So I ordered it from Amazon UK where it’s been out since last year. It just arrived today.

Which is great. Only problem is that the cover is terrible. Not only is it plain and completely uninspired (is that plain ol’ Helvetica?) but it breaks one of my personal book cover rules. Never show a picture of the main character. Creating the character image is strictly up to me. I don’t want a hint of what the character looks like beyond what is described in the words on the page.

“Let’s see, I’ve got it. For the third book we’ll just put a picture of Lisbeth Salander, and make sure you can see her tattoo so we know who it is. Set it against forest green, that’s the color of my SUV, and oh yeah, make sure the model has raccoon eye shadow.”

What’s a shame is that the US versions have such lovely covers with really nice typography.

When I heard that there was going to be a US film adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo I was angry. I mean, I wasn’t surprised. At all. I’m not stupid. That’s what we do. We take good things and make them huge and clean and digestible. But I was hoping that just this once something good could be allowed to simply be what it was without the Hollywood machine swooping it up. Just a good Swedish book and a good Swedish movie. Something uniquely theirs. A story that couldn’t have come from us.

Let the Swedes have this. It’s theirs.

And the thing is, the Swedish movie version is already excellent. It doesn’t need an update. There’s nothing to be gained from it being American. It’s a modern, well told adaptation. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen an adaptation where I wholly agreed with all of the cuts and changes they made. Some of them made more sense than the book’s choices. Except it’s in Swedish. God forbid. Are we incapable of relating to a story that takes place outside our borders?

Then I found out David Fincher is directing it.

Well, geeze. OK then. Apparently I’m a pushover because now I can’t wait for the US version. Thank god for men like David Fincher who can subvert the bullshit and make great art.

And all is right with the world again.

(Until Brett Ratner directs the sequels.)

Perhaps the greatest New Yorker cartoon caption of all time.

After seeing a co-worker use one of these for over a year I never really had the urge to try it myself. But now that I work from home and have discovered that my office chair is actually a slow-death torture device, I’ve decided to give it a whirl.

Day 1: Pretty good so far. At the very least it’s fun to have the option of bouncing while I work. Especially when I get angry at the code I’m writing. Try staying angry while bouncing on a giant ball. Just try.

What the hell is this crap post from the New York Times? They quote three comments about the stolen iPhone story that indicated glee at Apple’s loss of secrecy control. THREE.

But perhaps what is surprising is the utter delight and occasional vitriol permeating the reactions around the Web.

Surprising that there are people who hate Apple? Yeah, that’s just shocking. Never seen that before. They conclude:

The near-giddy response to Apple’s misstep may point to a broader shift in the public attitude toward the company and its covert tactics.

A broad shift based on three comments? Fine, I’m sure there were more but the point is this post is worthless. People have hated Apple and hoped for its demise since the Mac launched in 1984. That there are still Apple haters is not a story at all. Perhaps if they had some facts and some numbers to prove that Apple’s actual fans were changing heart they might have the start of something.

But they don’t. All they have is link bait bullshit.

Bill:

My new outgoing voice mail message.

Skip the Marvel iPad app and get the Comics app instead. It’s the exact same app as the Marvel app, made by the same company, but instead of only carrying Marvel comics it includes a bunch of indie publishers in addition to Marvel. My friend Mike DeVito’s book, The Stuff of Legend, is worth a read and I’ve heard good things about “The Walking Dead” as well (which has been picked up by AMC as series).