The first Men In Black came out of nowhere five years ago. Barry Sonnenfeld stole the box office that summer with the original, strange, hilarious, spoofy sci-fi comedy. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones were the perfect pair for this inventive "who-are-the-aliens-in-our-midst" romp, playing secret agents working for a super-secret government agency keeping an eye on beings from outer space. It was perfect for the era of the still-vibrant X-Files. The sequel, inevitably, has lost some of the surprise. But it's still plenty of fun. Spoilage warning: plot discussed, not ending, not that it matters here.

If only H.L. Mencken or A.J. Liebling were still around to weigh in on the kidnapping stories suffusing our media lately. Alas, they're not. They wouldn't even be able to find work these days. And too bad. If healthy media criticism still existed, someone might have pointed out the insane hype that shrouded tragedies like the death of Princess Di and TWA Flight 800. Pandering media hype isn't new to people who've been on the Net or the Web. Just consider the hacking and porno scares and insane coverage of offspring companies like Microsoft and Amazon. Why does a case like the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart get so much attention when others just as horrific get none at all? The answer is as obvious as it is depressing.

The sleaze has gotten out of hand; it's time to roast a group of 20 or so companies whose profits are directly linked to creating fear in their customers, who have to keep discovering new sources of fear to improve their bottom line - or in the absence of new discoveries, keep inventing new sources of fear. Yes, it's time to take on the anti-virus software vendors.

"Its like being the world's tallest midget" is how Flansburgh describes They Might Be Giants fame at one point during the bands documentary, Gigantic. I was lucky enough to score tickets to the opening screening here in Seattle of the movie and was delighted with what I received for the price of admission. Of course having one of the John's, Flansburgh that is, plus the director AJ Schnack show up to the screening only added to the value.

Ex-Amazon.com wage slave Mike Daisey asks in one fantasy e-mail to his then-boss Jeff Bezos: "Would it have been so hard to build a cool and quirky bookstore instead of a soulless virtual megamall? You were afraid: afraid to define the company, afraid the stock would drop, afraid not to feed the monster. What you sacrifice reveals what you value, and you're a fool if you think the world will forgive you in the end." Prescient stuff. 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com , Daisey's hilarious, heartbreaking and surprisingly powerful recounting of life inside what may be the world's strangest, most ephemeral company -- a symbol of all that was exciting, misguided, and ultimately misunderstood about business online during the mad years. It's also one of the best books ever written about the Net, an unsparing, even brutal indictment not only of hubris, but of media and, of course, the corporate-spawned hype that shapes so much of American life.

It may not be the summer's happiest movie, but it might be the best (and there isn't a single marching digital Army, special effect, or marketing tie-in involved!). Hilary Swank and Robin Williams co-star in this dark tale of murder and redemption, but it's really Al Pacino's movie from beginning to end. And he was born to play the role of the exhausted, tough, morally confused LA homicide cop pursued by the do-gooders from Internal Affairs (IA), sent off to Alaska to help an old pal solve a vicious killing. The plot is a touch cheesy at moments, but the film is wonderfully acted, and beautifully shot. It's also dark, a great and timely movie. This isn't a take-your-mind-off-your-troubles summer flick. Neither is it a mega-epic. SPOILAGE WARNING: Plot discussed, not ending.

We saw a cultural and generational coup d'etat this month, at least in cinematic terms -- if we were watching. Star Wars was challenged by millions of rebellious kids, who decided to choose a new kind of myth. The next generation unseated its elders -- as is the right of every generation - and is making its own culture, moving away from ours. In doing so, these kids balked at mega-hype, rediscovered earnestness, simplicity, the love story, some patriotism, punctured a billion-dollar balloon, and maybe even sparked a (relative) movement away from whorish sellouts, back to simpler story-telling. I, for one, sure hope so.

Dogtown and Z-Boys is a wonderful documentary, exactly the kind they'll be making about hackers in two or three decades. It's the very American story of the pioneering l970's Zephyr skating team, whose LA guerrilla style shook up the mainstream types, and co-opted centuries of building technology to create an appealing and enduring culture with their individualistic brand of guts, energy and drive -- much like the kids who helped build the early Net. Skip the long lines for the hypey and elephantine big epic and get to Dogtown.

Michael Jennings writes: "Here is a review of the Game On exhibition that is on at the Barbican centre in London, and which will tour Japan and the US in 2003." Here are two previous mentions of the exhibit. Below are Michael's detailed impressions of the exhibit.

We've run a number of stories about RealNames over the years. To our credit, Slashdot readers and editors have mostly thought that RealNames was a foolish and pointless money wasting exercise to create an alternate DNS system that is neither, well, alternative or compatible with the DNS protocols. But recently, due to some shrewd marketing on the Part of Keith Teare, the RealNames CEO, they've gotten undeserved sympathy by painting themselves as victims of Microsoft. It is my intention to cut this off before it goes any further, to engage in some review of RealNames business and why it was a good thing that they went out of business. If you are interested in reading my thoughts about this, read on...

Daryl Carpenter writes "After months of grumbling and mild assaults, I finally vent my rage with this penultimate [ed. note: there will be another one?] assault on the cinematic drivel known as "U-571". Did he like it? I don't know. You be the judge.

Lucas hasn't exactly redeemed himself this time around, but he has wiped out most of the worst of The Phantom Menace from my memory. Clones starts off slow, and it takes half the movie to really start get going. But the final hour finally feels like Star Wars again. Read on for my full review- I'll try not to lone gunman the thing, but you've been warned.

Peter Wayner writes: "In all of the scary stories Hollywood circulates about copyright piracy, nothing could be scarier that the gang of file swapping, copyright circumventing hackers in the new movie 'Enigma'. They laugh and love a bit, but mainly they spend their time building a big whirring and clicking machine to smash a copyright protection mechanism. When the machine delivers, they put the results into a Gnutella-like file sharing system called Ultra so their friends can track down the original artists and kill them." (Read on for the rest of Peter's review.)

Spider-Man shocked analysts and critics last week, racking up a record-breaking $114 million opening weekend for Sam Raimi's warm-hearted adaptation about the web-slinging arachnoid-nerd from Queens who gets the bad guy but really wants the girl. Spider-Man embodies the simplest, most elemental tenets of myth, especially when compared to the increasingly elephantine Skywalker saga, which seems more like a graduate program than a story each time there's a new movie. I'll bet Peter Parker's adventure surpasses the upcoming opening weekend of Attack of the Clones and teaches George Lucas something about the power and nature of myth.

Major news Web sites routinely rewrite stories after they are published, sometimes so heavily that they only bear a glancing resemblance to what was posted earlier. This CNN/Money article about the penalty phase of the Microsoft trial is a prime example. What you see at the other end of the link is quite different from the story that first appeared at that URL. Even the headline and byline have changed. But CNN/Money managing editor Allen Wastler says there is nothing wrong with this practice, even though there is no indication on the site that the article was heavily modified after it first appeared.

I skipped out early this morning and went to see the first showing of Spiderman in my local theater. The Sam Raimi directed spiderman is the first of the summers blockbusters and stars Toby Maguire as the webslinger, Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin and Kirsten Dunst and the lovely Mary Jane. And guess what? Its one of the best comic book movies I've ever seen. I loved it. And I'll try not to lone-gunman-are-dead the review, but if you're super paranoid, just skip out, go see the flick, and enjoy it.

I'm not much of a salesman, in comfort or skill, but I'm willing to hype my books, especially given the realities of 21st Century publishing, when you do it yourself or nobody does it. Some people think if you get a book published, you're a big deal and a rich one. If you're Grisham or King, that's true. The reality: Few books sell well, and even fewer (mine, for example) make money. Can content like books be successfully "open-marketed" on the Net? I say yes.

Sorry, but I really love this trash, even as I grasp why more of the world hates us every day. The Scorpion King is as American a film as anything the Duke might have made, an astonishing mish-mash of digital effects, hip-hop, kung fu, Mighty Mouse,Indiana Jones, the Mummy (and his Return -- from which the idea for this enthusiastically stupid movie was spawned), and the World Wrestling Federation, to whom the film owes its star and its theatrical notions of head-butting machismo. If they ever give an Oscar for lacerations, grunts and thumps, this one is a runaway favorite. Or as the Rock says about 100 hundred times in the movie, "Live Free, Die Well." If you need escapist entertainment from your hyper teched-up lives, this is the movie for you. If the Rock can survive tyrants, thieves, traitors, arrows, impalement, knives, spears, swords, sandstorms, fire, poison, snakes and killer ants, you can get through a boring day at work.

Anonymous American (Sherman Boyd) writes: "I was looking for a flexible, powerful distribution that makes it easy to build a 'custom' Linux box that meets my exacting specifications. I think I found it. Gentoo Linux has just released version 1.0 of their innovative meta-distribution and to celebrate I decided to throw it on my laptop and write this article based on my experiences." And good news for anyone interested in trying Gentoo: yesterday, Daniel Robbins announced the release of version 1.1a. Read on for AA's detailed look at putting Gentoo on his machine -- Gentoo has a different style than today's typical distributions, and it bears some explanation.

(Second in a series.) Globalism is the least hip political idea around at the moment, perhaps because it has been hijacked so completely by the multinationals. Herd-like college kids and knee-jerk political activists associate the term with a broad range of bugaboos, from cultural imperialism to sweatshops to environmental destruction. But others (like me) see it as the best hope for a world in which gaps between the tech and non-tech worlds are widening, and the have-nots are increasingly enraged at the haves. Philanthropist and open-society advocate George Soros is an ardent supporter globalization, despite its shortcomings. In response to this series, Niklas Saers e-mails this question: "Do you think developing countries will be able to use open source to develop and keep pace with the western world?" My answer: not unless they get open governments to support it. Soros supports globalism, and not only because of the new wealth he believes it can produce. Along with many Open Source advocates -- he believes in what supporters call a global open society that could ensure a greater degree of freedom than individual states can or will. Is it already too late for that?