Monthly Archives: July 2007

I’m really liking (Will) Traveler

Posted on July 12, 2007 | Leave a comment

After the pilot, the next few episodes of Traveler were a little slow (and complicated) and I didn’t really think I’d get into it. But after that I was hooked! It had the chase scenes and the conspiracy and the action but they didn’t waste time repeating themselves all the time like so many other shows do. It’s like they’re Jack Bauer and they’ve been falsely accused of bombing a museum. On paper the guy who did it doesn’t seem to exist so they’ve got to evade the law and prove that Will exists and that they didn’t do it.

This weeks show was packed with twists and turns and ended with a great twist. Unfortunately next week is the season finale, this has got to be the shortest season I’ve seen, it was only eight episodes. As sad as I am that it’s only eight, I prefer that over them stretching the same story out over 15 or 20 episodes. I’m not familiar with the directors/producers but I’ll watch more if they make it.

FYI, on a non-related note, the new season of Psych starts Friday on USA.

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Brandi Carlile in Detroit – You Oughta Know Tour

Posted on July 11, 2007 | 1 comment

Brandi Carlile is headlining the VH1 You Ought to Know Tour. She’ll be at St. Andrews Hall on October 14th. Yeah, I know I just saw her, but she;s going to be about a 10 minute ride from my place, how can I not go?

If anyone is going let me know and we can say HI at the concert.

Pre-sale tickets were supposed to be at VH1 today, but I can’t find them. TicketMaster wasn’t supposed to have them until Saturday, please note the operative worlds “supposed to” they appear to be available for some cities.

And Ticketmaster give me 10 free iTunes songs (their choosing) so be sure to pay attention at the end of your order to not miss the button for that…

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A little more on the JJ Abrams movie…

Posted on July 7, 2007 | 12 comments

We’ve got some more URLs for that J J Abrams mystery movie that I saw the preview for, they appear to be semi-authentic.

Sadly, I’m not thinking it’s a Godzilla movie anymore :(

Update: Here’s a pretty good copy of the unnamed preview.

  • 1-18-08.com – Which has been modified to show a raqndom placement of two photos (I assume the quantity will grow). Domain created March 30, 2007. Everyone seems to think this one is real.
  • Parasite Movie – Supposedly a possible name for the movie. This page has a countdown until August first (with some other web addresses). Domain created Jun 7, 2007. The fact that the meta-words contain the word “transformers” makes me think this might be fake.
  • Ethan Hass Was Right – The weird shape is an interactive (flash) puzzle and you get a video when you solve it. Domain name not created until July 7, 2007 so I’m slightly skeptical on this one. It’s put together professionally, possibly for another movie if not related.
    And if you don’t have flash when you go to the above page, you get

    “…war came, no longer from the elemental nor from the star’s rain of fire. The world was again remade, and the glow was as the coming of the sun upon the Earth. The children of the gods were again too few, scattered and divided and among them walked the ancients and those whose thoughts were not as to the towers and the marvels, but to the End and the destruction of the Earth and to the fires from which nothing could escape”

    Not sure if the following are real sites sponsored by the producers or not. But supposedly someone has been pulling the Ethan Haas stuff from YouTube as fast as the 1-18-08 stuff.

  • Ethan Hass (dot com) – Please note Haas is spelt incorrectly. Created July 6.
  • Ethan Haas (dot org). Also created July 6, 2007.
  • Ethan Hass Was Wrong Blog
  • Ethan Hass Was Right Blog

    Also, most of the domains are all registered from different addresses.

    UPDATE! Please note from Angela’s comment below that the Ethan Haas sites appear to be not related to the 1-18-08 movie (but JJ does have some undiscovered ones).

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    Transformers – The Movie

    Posted on July 3, 2007 | 2 comments

    So I was never a huge Transformers fan. I never understood the reasoning/idea of the robots Transforming into cars (please don’t try to explain it to me) as a great story-line even for the comics. But the effects and the Michael Bay action couldn’t keep me away.

    THe effects were awesome, lots of action, lots of destruction and a bit of campy humor. I was totally into the movie and the chase scenes and the explosions. It did take more than a few minutes to set the movie up, but since the movie was two hours and twenty minutes I really won’t complain about that. My biggest complaint is to ditch the little robot that transforms into the tape deck, but they probably needed something that wouldn’t totally slaughter the humans…

    If it interests you, go see it, you’ll love it. My piece of trivia for this movie: the voice of Optimus Prime is the same guy who did the voice for the cartoons.

    I still don’t get the idea of the robot/car transformations, but I certainly want my car to be able to do it!

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    Godzilla meets Blair Witch Project ?!?

    Posted on July 3, 2007 | 9 comments

    So I just got back from the movies and what’s more important than a movie review?!? A movie preview review! What’s the title of this movie? I don’t know. They didn’t list a title just that it was produced by J. J. Abrams. Plus they didn’t give it away as to what the movie is actually about, very strange…

    So the trailer is a home movie of a party and after they establish the characters (and that it’s a going-away party) you hear a rumble and a noise outside. They then go up to the roof and hear the same noises and see an explosion in the distance. Then the camera angles get all Blair-Witch-like as they run around and there are a few more explosions (and screaming).

    Then you just see J. J. Abrams name and the date of the release, 01.18.08, and that’s it. Very strange. Looks very cool.

    I thought it was a Godzilla flick but the rumors on-line don’t think so (but that was their first impression too). But I’m still hoping…

    UPDATE:
    Plus they’ve updated the site at 1-18-08.com which now has a second photo and they are a flash image now that randomly layers them (instead of the single jpeg that was there before) and I imagine they’ll slowly add more (fyi, all the images are date-stamped 1-18-08).

    They’ve been pulling down the trailers pretty fast but here’s a copy that was live on YouTube…
    It should give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

    Please note I’ve put some additional information up on July 7th.

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    Brandi Carlile – Act 1 in Ravinia

    Posted on July 2, 2007 | 1 comment

    So back to the concert in Ravina that I’ve mentioned sever times already. Brandi Carlile was the first act, she’s big enough these days that I’m surprised she didn’t get mentioned in the listings for the concert. She was incredible, I really like the songs on her current album and she played quite a few songs in the forty minutes that she was up there. Man, she can belt out a tune. Any & Emily came out and did a song with her which I never realized that they sang with her on the album.

    So Brandi has changed a bit in the last year since I saw here in Ann Arbor. When she was there she was excellent but she was kind of casual about her look (in a good way). When I saw the video for The Story I noticed how much makeup and hair-do work she had done, I didn’t even realize it was her at first (and who else would it have been). She still had her jeans and cowgirl boots on, but she definitely was still a bit more made up than I’ve seen her before (in person and album covers, etc.) and the jeans seemed a bit more low-cut than how I picture her normally. Speaking of last year’s concert, I do recall her being very grateful and chatty about Grey’s Anatomy but it didn’t get a mention at all this concert.

    She mentioned she was a huge Indigo Girls fan and tried to get us to sing along to a song (she knows everyone sings along to every Indigo Girls song) but it was a hard one, we didn’t didn’t do so good, we did better singing with some songs that she didn’t encourage us to sing on.

    After her concert she cam back out and sang “Kid Fears” with IG, she did the Michael Stipe (from REM) part. She was incredible, it actually gave me chills when I heard it.

    She sang more with IG, but that’s another post (or two).

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    Waitress

    Posted on July 2, 2007 | 2 comments

    So I went to see Waitress, starring Keri Russell, at the Main Art Theater (in Royal Oak, MI). I like Keri, unfortunately there is something about the parts she plays that I generally don’t like. But the reviews have been giving her great acclaim for this movie. Rightly so, she did an excellent job and I really liked her and her character in this film.

    She plays a small-town waitress in a rotten marriage who makes pies. These aren’t ordinary pies, they’re extra-ordinary pies. She thinks these pies out according to her mood, they might be called:

  • Falling in Love Chocolate Mousse pie.
  • Bubble-gum Mermaid Pie.
  • Pregnant Miserable Self Pitying Loser Pie – Lumpy oatmeal with fruitcake mashed in. Flambé of course!
  • I Hate My Husband Pie – You take bittersweet chocolate and don’t sweeten it. You make it into a pudding and drown it in caramel.

    And everyone just thinks they are the best thing ever. She’s trying to save money and wants to win a $25,000 pie contest so that she can finally leave her husband.

    The interactions with the other waitresses and with Joe, the old coot in one of the booths, (played by Andy Griffith) are excellent and I laughed aloud in the theatre many times. Her Ob-Gyn is played by Nathan Fillion and they have some hysterical interactions and strange conversations, so strange it makes me wonder if they had a script, or if they didn’t if they re-edited it to make it so goofy. I loved it!

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    Fantastic Four – Rise of the Silver Surfer

    Posted on July 1, 2007 | 2 comments

    For the effects I give it a big WOW! THe effects were amazing. Where were these movies when we were kids? We would have gone nuts over them. Now most comic story-lines are so complicated, you could never make a movie out of them.

    The story-line was great but they had this constant sub-story line of stupid jokes and their powers bouncing back and forth which was just a waste in my humble opinion. Reed working around the wedding plans trying to save the world was interesting. And it was a lot faster moving than the first movie, IMHO. There was something odd about Jessica Alba, was it just that she was a blonde or was there too much make-up or what?

    We lost power just before the end of the movie so a few of us were debating if it was going to end in a few minutes or if it was ‘to be continued’, I was for the latter, I felt that way before going to see the movie.

    They had a bit of product placement, mostly by joking about sponsors for the team, which I enjoyed. And over at Population Statistic, Costa noticed that the name of the catering company was Edible Planet.

    Being a comic fan when I was a kid I really enjoyed this movie movie even with the above comments. Just remember it’s a movie, not a comic and they take some liberties. Continue reading →

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