Why is it so important to re-write the Bush narrative? In my last entry I pointed out that the point of the CBS forged memos was to show that Bush couldn't have gotten into the Guard or stayed in without outside help. This is part of a general outlook on Bush's life by the anti-Bush crowd. They feel that he is too stupid to have accomplished anything on his own so it must have been given to him.

From there it is a short step to Michael Moore Land - Bush owes favors for everything he has and this drives every decision he makes. Remember the loony theory that we invaded Afghanistan for an oil pipeline?

Speaking of Moore, he let it be known that he didn't want an Oscar for best documentary. He wanted best picture or nothing. He got nothing.

The Academy Award nominations are out. What I think were the two most influential movies of the year were passed over. These are "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and "Polar Express". A decade ago Toy Story was the first computer generated movie. This went from oddity to industry mainstay. The three nominees for best animated picture (The Incredibles, Shark Tale, and Shrek 2,) are all computer generated. And this is a year when Disney released what may be their last hand-animated movie.

Sky Captain was shot on a green screen. The actors are real but everything else is computer generated (and gorgeous). This is probably the wave of the future. More and more, film makers will substitute computer backdrops for real ones, especially in science fiction and fantasy movies. The TV show Babylon 5 used this technique ten years ago for limited scenes, a process they called a virtual set.

Polar Express tried to go one better. They put hundreds of sensors on their actors and used these to cue computer generated characters. The jury is still out on this. Basing an animated character's performance on a real actor can work. Lord of the Rings' Gollum proves that. But LoTR was still done by animators. They used the actor's face and hands as reference points but they still moved the models by hand. By contrast, Polar Express was totally automated, or so they said. This put more of Tom Hanks on the screen but something was lost in the process. Many viewers complained about scenes looking like zombies.

It will be interesting to look back in ten years and see how the technologies have progressed.