Here’s the trailer for the new Iron Man 2 movie. I like the beginning and the end; the middle is just so so, maybe if you’re a fan of the villain (Whiplash?) you’ll like the middle…

Looks good to me. I thought the first Iron Man movie was excellent. I’m hoping for the same for this one…

Here’s the direct link to the preview. If you watch it in HD, be sure to pause it when it starts loading and let the whole preview load before starting it, it’ll play better.

Here’s a free download to the soundtrack of Disney’s and Pixar’s Up be sure to use the code latimesdisney when it asks for it.

The soundtrack was nominated for “Best Original Score” but I’m not sure which award (Oscar, Grammy, Academy?). It was done by Michael Giacchino who did Ratatouille, Lost, The Incredibles, Star Trek, Alias, Fringe and more.

This offer is only supposed to be good until the end of Thursday.

Please let me know in the comments if this works for you (or more importantly, when it stops working)…

I really liked Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. It’s the story of how Billy Beane turned the Oakland A’s Baseball team around by picking players with statistics.

The story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget, by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.
– Plot synopsis at IMDB.com

It’s a great read if you like baseball or numbers, I’m not a big sports fan, but I’d recommend the book if you’re interested in either. But the numbers part was really interested. I originally read it because my dentist talked me into reading it.

So it turns out that they’ve decided to turn it into a movie. They’ve got Aaron Sorkin (West Wing) to rewrite it into a movie and they’ve got Brad Pitt to play the team’s general manager. And it looks like they’ve got some of the baseball players to play themselves.

Oops, not to get you all interested in it, but it doesn’t come out until 2011. So read the book in the mean time and you’ll enjoy it again in another two years when the movie comes out…

And looking up Michael Lewis at Amazon.com I see that he also wrote Next: The Future Just Happened, I’m pretty sure I’ve got that on my shelf (unread), now I know why I got that book!

I’ve read the book The Time Traveler’s Wife several times (and when I say several I’m thinking four or five times). This was the first novel by Audrey Niffenegger and it took her over five years to release her second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, which is due out soon (end of September 2009). You can check out a review I wrote a few years back if you don’t know anything about it.

If you don’t know anything about it, know this: it’s not a science fiction movie! I know that it seems counter-intuitive, but the movie is about their relationship and how this “disease” affects it. Henry travels through time and can’t control it, he’s not some tinkering scientist with a lab in the basement. The main thing is that he generally travels to the same places, this is what makes the story work. When he travels to unfamiliar places that’s when there is trouble; did I mention that his clothes don’t travel with him?

I thought the movie was amazing! Obviously, they had to change a few things in the movie. It was so wonderfully done I can clearly remember the one scene I didn’t like and there was one scene that I thought should have been left in. I thought the character’s were aged okay, really more Henry’s character was necessary than Claire’s, since Henry was the traveler you needed to be able to figure out how old he was when he appeared.

The only other thing I’m saying before I offer some spoiler-like things is the only swearing I noticed was the word “shit” and you get to see Eric and Rachel’s butts, so it’s a pretty safe film if your wondering about it for your kids from that perspective (but it is about life and gets intense so it’s not happy-go-lucky for your younger kids). Reviews seem to score about 70-75% but it really seems as if people love it or hate hate it, not many people in-between (35% or 1,700 reviews on IMDB gave it a 10). And don’t watch the preview, it gives away way too much!

It’s a long book with a lot of craziness and depressing parts of life. The movie got rid of most of the bad/extra-depressing parts. It’s still there though: pain, life, suffering, death and it’s a lot more visual than the book. And it’s got lots of sad parts. I actually think it’s more emotional if you read the book since you now what parts are coming.

It really just worked. I thought everything came together very well. I’m not going to rave about it, since I’m sure I’ve oversold it already. There was that one scene in the middle that I didn’t like the way it went, it just didn’t flow right, if you see it remember to come back and leave a comment as to what you thought the worse done scene was.

They added/changed a few scenes too, one scene ended completely differently than I thought it would (but was done excellent). I was really disappointed that they cut a scene, had they not made a fore-shadowy reference to it I might have lived without it. And the way the movie put some parts together it might even have changed things a little bit, but still I missed it. I will say I stayed to the end of the credits just in case they ran that scene, it would have worked really well there, it is a time travel movie after all.

P.S. – Bring kleenex…

So the reason I was at the Detroit Science Center the other day was to see the new IMAX movie The Alps IMAX movie.

First of all let me tell you why they had the rock climbing wall the other day. It was because it was the science center members preview and the new IMAX movie was about (climbing) the Alps so they had a bunch of “extras” for the evening. They also had swiss chocolate bars for the first 300 people and free snow cones for everyone. Plus, they let us see the movie for free! It was really fun. I will make a point of going to all other members IMAX previews that they promote like this one!

The movie was visually stunning. And it wasn’t all about climbing, it was about the growth and living in the mountains and all sorts of other (educational) stuff. But the plot/premise was this guy and his father was killed climbing one of the mountains and how he needed to climb it (40 years later) to get past it. It was a little crazy in my opinion, but ignoring that, it was really good!

The weird thing is the movie is already out on DVD and Blu-Ray, they even had it for sale at the Detroit Science Center (their web site is down a lot).

If you’re not a Watchmen fan you probably won’t find it very funny.

Here’s the direct link to Dr. Manhattan’s Pants.

So I’ve seen a lot of people confused about the new Star Trek universe. It’s pretty simple, it gets explained to you in the new movie several times.

Warning if you haven’t seen the movie, there are big spoilers below:

It’s explained with Spock with Kirk and again with Spock and Uhura. When Nero and (old) Spock came back in time, they changed the future. Kirk’s father dies and Vulcan is destroyed, this changes the Star Trek universe (at least the parts we care about). None of the stories that take place on Vulcan will happen again in this universe.

The Star Trek on-ine game (which I’ve never seen) wanted to explain where it fits into everything so they created an image of the new timeline. But they help explain the new timelines here. They actually call the “originl” ST universe Star Trek Prime (and the on-line game takes place after Romulus is destroyed in the universe’s future) and it consists of everything Star Trek before 2008 (original series, movies, next generation, deep space-9, enterprise, voyager). The game chose to take place in the prime established universe, otherwise it doesn’t have much ‘history’ to work with…

So we’ve got a whole new universe. Kirk never found Khan, Spock never died (we’ve got two Spock’s now!) but similar too Pike was the Captain of the Enterprise still ended up in a wheelchair. Everything from 2233 on changes a little and from 2258 on, there is no Vulcan. FYI, the math on that seems off, it makes Kirk 25 when Vulcan is destroyed, I would have guessed he was younger than that.

Bottom line – I thought it was a nice timeline chart…

I gotta tell you I hadn’t even noticed the similarities (other than the weapon).

Here’s the Direct Link to the video.

Found at The Fire Wire.

I get a ridiculous amount of searches for “Neil Gaimen” on my site, but it’s spelled “Neil Gaiman” (sometimes I get some for “Neil Gaimon” too). This post is really just to help point people to the proper postings.

If you’re looking for stuff about Neil you can search this site for Neil Gaiman or posts tagged with Neil Gaiman.

Speaking of Neil Gaiman, I’m planning to see Coraline in 3D today!

Neil Gaiman has written many incredible books and graphic novel for children and adults: (these are all Amazon links)”
“Coraline”.
“The Graveyard Book”.
“The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes”.
“American Gods”.
“Stardust”.
“The Wolves in the Walls”.
“Murder Mysteries”.
“The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish”.

And he blogs too!

It’s totally silly, but I thought it was cute (and it’s making the rounds).

It’s not as cute as my previously mentioned “Star Was as told by a 3 year old“, but how could it be?

This is one of the shorts that I saw at the Montezuma International Film Festival. A very cool (stop animation) wall painted animation done on the walls of buildings on the streets of Buenos Aires.

More info at Blu’s blog.

Of all the “these aren’t the ‘droids you’re looking for” jokes / spoofs / parodies I think this is the simplest funniest one I’ve ever seen. I got this off PhotoBucket after spotting it on someone’s MySpace page.

If you don’t understand it, it’s a popular reference from the first (4th) Star Wars movie…

I hadn’t really thought much about it but I see they’ve been releasing TV shows on DVD Blu-Ray, that’ll be nice when the prices go down. I think “they” need to announce when they plan to discontinue regular DVDs. I think they sooner they do this it’ll drive down the cost of Blu-Ray discs and Blu-Ray players and we can all be happier. With the TV format change next year, it seems like this couldn’t be done in the next few years, as long as someone would make an announcement. There has got to be some people holding back because of  this!

Speaking of Blu-Ray, Iron Man might be the one to get me to finally take the leap. The effects were so excellent, it’d be a great first one to watch on (my theoretical) new player.

I have purchased a few Blu-Ray DVDs when they’ve been way on sale but still no player for me…

As I’ve said before, I’m not the biggest Harry Potter fan at all. But I just noticed on my AppleTV the new HD movie preview for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” so I watched it.

and I was very surprised when it gave me chills…

You can watch the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince preview, but you’ll have to wait until November 21st for the rest. Be sure to pick the HD version if you have the processing power.

As I mentioned last week I was going to watch Stealing Beauty with Liv Tyler. I’m pretty sure that was the first thing I ever saw her in and she was so enchanting in it. She’s plays this sweet 19 year-old name Lucy (and Liv was 19 at the time) who goes to visit close family friends in an isolated mini-artians community in Italy. Most everyone there is older and they’re all interested in every little thing about her.

Jeremy Irons plays another friend of the community who is ill and just staying there to live out his last days. Lucy and Alex get to be close friends and being with her just adds new energy to his life. It’s almost as if these older characters are psychic vampires and are just absorbing whatever than can from her (it’s a strange analogy but I thought it more than once), it’s kind of funny in their limited gossipy community that she just brings a new energy to their little community.

I was disappointed in the quality of the DVD, I really expected more from the wonderful scenery in the movie. It was something that I originally at the “arts theatre” and it had some great scenery and it just didn’t transfer very well.

It’s a strange movie with some odd little sub-plots that I had forgotten about (it was 16 years ago) but like I said it was at the arts theatre and I don’t remember it getting released in the major markets (at least in Michigan).

So I’ve gotten a few searches here lately for “favorite movie characters” so I went and checked out the old post. Now I think it’s time to watch a few f those old movies again:

So I watched the 1951 version of The Day The Earth Stood Still last night and as I said last week it is still an amazing science fiction movie. I made Kelly sit through it so I was hoping it was as good as I remembered, it was (and she seemed to think so too).

The line this movie is the most famous for is

“Klaatu barada nikto”

It’s certainly not as mainstream as “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for”, but…

This was one of the first movie DVDs I ever purchased (maybe the first), it hit a good price on-line so I picked it up (I never bought movies for VHS but that’s about the time when I started for DVDs). I never watched it until now. THe sound was THX remastered and was very clear but the voices just weren’t as loud as the sound effects so if you turned it up to hear the next time the sound effects came on it was blaring. The good part was there wasn’t a lot where people were talking and there were effects.

One of my favorite quotes from the movie was

“I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason.”

It was definitely a thinking sci-fi movie…

Instant gratification: You can rent it from Amazon for your TiVo or from iTunes (but it’s only $7.50 to buy it from Amazon).

So the original The Day The Earth Stood Still is one of the quintessential science fiction movies ever made. I can barely remember any old SciFi Black & White movies that I’ve seen (that didn’t have Godzilla in them) but this one has always stuck in my head. Very little action but an excellent story. I never knew it was such a classic, I just thought it was a great movie that I liked, but I’ve seen so many references to “Klaatu barada nikto” throughout my life I realized* I wasn’t the only one who thought so (but as a by-product I also realized I was a nerd).

They’ve decided to remake remake The Day The Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves. The trailer looks interesting but I’m not sure if it’ll live up to the original. While I’m a fan of Keanu Reeves, I won’t say he’s the most excellent actor out there but his movies are either great or lame (generally not in the middle). And even though there was only a quick glimpse of Gort, the preview made me feel like it will not be lame. So I’m very hopeful.

So I just saw Hancock and I really enjoyed it. A lot of laugh out loud moments. An excellent part for Will Smith. If you think this is yor type of movie than I bet you’ll enjoy it.

But the movie was different than I expected, I’m not sure if “twist” is the right word but it was something completely not expected. So go see it quickly, before you hear about it or before they change the TV trailers to reveal it.

The more interesting stuff is in the twist, so that’s all I’ve got to say…

So while we were walking around there were a lot of film trucks and equipment, so I told Mom if she thought she saw anyone famous that it might be so snap a picture. The next corner we went around was all blocked off and looked like it was from the 1,800s.

Turns out they were shooting The Wolf Man starring Anthony Hopkins and Benicio Del Toro; comes out April 2009. We never saw any of the big stars but it was all people in carriages and police carts all in old dress. It was very cool.

If you look this photo you can see the rain machine up high on the crane. The worksers told us it was crazy when it was running and you don’t want to be anywhere near it.

I saw this on SlickDeals.net, get a free Star Wars book “Legacy of the Force: Betrayal”) PDF, MP3, Kindle or Sony eBook through Tuesday, May 13, 2008. (If that link doesn’t work try this link).

It looks like it’s part 1 of a “Legacy of the Force” series that they’re trying to promote, book 9 comes out on the 13th. The series is supposed to cover a “new era in the Star Wars universe and features the beloved characters from the original trilogy, answering the questions of what happened to Han, Luke and Leia after the conclusion of Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi”.

Just got back from a preview of Iron Man, it was excellent. It was a long movie but it did not feel like it at all, had to be close to two hours. Wonderful visual effects!! I couldn’t tell where Tony Stark ended and the CGI began. I was highly entertained and not disappointed at all! I had really high hopes and saw a million different previews and I thought it might spoil it, but that wasn’t the case at all.

If you’ve got kids who want to see it: it’s got lots of violence but less than the average violent show (or video game) and the sexual references/scenes are way less than the average soap opera (which is probably too much).

Jon Favreau (who you might remember as the Ultimate Fighting Champion wannabe from Friends) was the director/producer and also played Happy Hogan. The movie adaption book was written by Peter David who always writes good stuff (IMHO) so I’ll be checking that out. And of course, a humorous scene with Stan Lee….

Where did our preview tickets come from? We have no idea, they showed up in a Mark’s mailbox with no indication of how the were won or distributed. We asked a few people in the theatre where they got their’s but it turned out they all “knew someone” or got them from “an aunt/grandmother” and didn’t know the original source.

Possible Minor Spoiler below:I swear in one early scene (at the end of one of the scenes that take place in a club) I heard a few bars from the original Iron Man TV theme song. Did anyone else, or was this my imagination?

Later: I’m certain it was the old theme. It’s the casino scene (right after the awards ceremony) as they walk towards the car, it’s gets louder and more pronounced (horns?) and then abruptly gets cut off. The last few bars are the clearest…

Even Later: If you’re a comic fan, stay after the credits (I didn’t) I hear there’s an additional scene with a cameo you want want to miss..

If this isn’t the cutest review of episode 4 that you’ve ever seen…

I’m sure a few parts were re-shot, but it’s adorable…

Here’s another cute kid video…

So I just downloaded the AppleTV update called Take 2 (or is it Take2?). I wasn’t thrilled with the changes that I saw in the preview because I thought the interface was pretty great. But I’ll agree that some changes for the new interface was necessary.

Since you now can shop the whole iTunes store via the AppleTV something to surf around a larger library was necessary. They new sections fill up the cover art at a more than acceptable speed (my cable modem is 6000 down and 384 up) and it flowed pretty nicely. But a lot of the old interface is still around for the sub menus and it they really clash with each other. But I like the shopping on-line option, I’ll try it later just so I can see how well it works. I would have purchased last night’s Kyle XY episode but it wasn’t ready for download yet for some reason…

The amount of movies and music and TV is just a little overwhelming. There’s just so many options and you can scroll in so many directions! And all the album art just looks fantastic in large high quality images!!! They need a all you can watch or listen to with the music videos, pay a flat rate and go cRaZy for a few hours.

The podcasts are interesting, You can browse very nicely and you can view/stream but if the site is slow, you’re gonna wait a while for that hi-def video. You can select download and it’ll be there later for you. It’s strange that you can favorite a podcast, not to be confused with subscribing, but you can’t actually subscribe; this would be inconvenient if you don’t actually have a computer.

The new Flickr photo viewing works great, but I wish there was a way to view the descriptions or titles of the photos. And I wish there was a way to look at thumbnails; for example a person has 500 photos in a folder and there isn’t a way to jump around it just goes to slideshow mode. This never bothered me with my photos, but when looking at someone else’s it jumped right out at me….

Overall, it’s a great update in that it adds some great functionality. The new interface will grow on me (it’s not like I wouldn’t recommend it to someone). I just feel it’s missing some normal Apple consistency in the Human Interface Guidelines area…

I’m still missing a way to build a video playlist (or a video shuffle). I’ve got hours of video podcasts and I don’t have a way to string them together as my own private TV channel. I hadn’t heard about it or this release but it just seems like a natural outgrowth of the music playlist and/or shuffle.

The update took a while and had to reboot more than a few times installing all the features but seems like it worked just fine. I expect they’ll be a update soon to fix a few minor things, like the TV Genre of “Cops and Robberts”.

This is great, it looks like Apple has semi-extended movie rental time limits. I say “semi” because once the 24 hour time limit passes you cannot go back to the beginning of the rental, but you can resume where you left off.

This makes me very happy because I’ve thought the 24 hour was just too short. My thought from a few weeks ago was “Maybe they can do something to cripple it, maybe after 24 hours any viewed portion is not viewable any more”. It seems (at least on an iPod) that you can’t leave and do something else and still have it resume when you come back (“delete” or “resume” are your choices) your iPod is “stuck” on that screen. Maybe they’ll do it a little different on AppleTV or iTunes…?

I think the new AppleTV software was supposed to roll out last week so it should be appearing soon.

My Apple TV has been one of my favorite technology purchases and I never expected that I’d like it that much. Actually, I’d been interested in it but it took a visit to Best Buy, after happy hour, for me to finally commit to the 40 GB version. I took it back a few days later but only because I knew I needed the 160 GB version, bigger is better after all…

Apple TV is pretty much an ‘iPod for your television’ and iPods are pretty much the standard to beat for portable media players (at least the standard for handheld audio players) so these should be selling much better. I’ve always been impressed with my Apple TV and had been surprised they hadn’t really caught on more than they have. The Apple TV interface is excellent, it’s as good as the TiVo (except it doesn’t record), you can buy videos (and music) on your computer to load it up, but that is a little inconvenient for some people. You can convert videos for it, but that’s not for the average user. I knew it was close to what people want but it wasn’t exactly there yet.

A few weeks ago at MacWorld they announced movie rentals for the Apple TV. $2.99 for old movies, $3.99 for new ones and $1 more for HD quality. Plus, you can buy music (and music videos) on-line and view/subscribe to podcasts (for free). They changed the interface, I personally think it’s a little more complicated, but since you need to be able to browse an infinite number of music and movies I can understand it (and maybe I’ll like it too). This new interface is free to original Apple TV owners and should show up in a few weeks (I keep checking).

I heard all this when they announced it and I’ve been mulling it around in my head, but I finally just watched that part of the keynote from MacWorld (on my Apple TV, of course) and now I really think this is getting even closer to being the media box for your TV.

So I’ve mentioned this movie a few times before, mostly back in the summer of 2007 when I saw the unnamed 1-18-08 preview. I think I was pretty accurate in my original description when I originally referred to it as “Godzilla meets the Blair Witch Project“, that’s exactly what it was (except the creature wasn’t Godzilla). Lots of action, really awesome special effects. The jiggly camera action bothered some people, I was okay with it but I certainly understand why it’d be annoying…

The plot needed a faster start at the beginning, they spent forever setting everything up. I thought the slow start was really odd since I thought the preview did a great job of setting everything up in about 30 seconds (rob,. party, going away, friends, explosion, monster, run) so I’m not sure why it took so long to set up in the film. I’ve got comments on the end too, but don’t worry I wont talk about those. I really enjoyed it, it’s pretty much what I expected (but with better effects) so I was happy.

What I didn’t like was a few technical details: I thought at the beginning they specifically mentioned the video was specifically found on an SD chip, but throughout the movie it’s a “tape” and treated that way too, so I’m not sure why they bothered to set that up. And they didn’t seem to bother worrying about the camera battery as a plot problem, which I would have been okay with, except they did worry about they cell phone battery as a plot problem (and they way they handled it could have let them fix it as a camera problem too).Watch for this: At the beginning of the end credits, it looks like it’s overlaid on some (government?) documents / graphics with a 1969 date, I’m not sure what the significance of this was unless I really wasn’t paying attention to something significant during the movie (my one bathroom break wasn’t that long).

They also showed a teaser of the new J. J. Abrams Star Trek movie, but it just showed the 1701 being built in the shipyards, not much else…

I love movie trailers, I could watch them all day at the theatre, at the QuickTime site or on AppleTV. And I like TV previews for shows coming next season.

But I can’t stand TV previews for the next week. I’ll generally leave the room if other people are watching or skip over them. Occasionally I’ll catch them (and occasional they’ll excite me) but usually I’ll pass. I think it’s that they give away too much of the plot of the show and depending on the show, I don’t feel like I need to watch it (I guess). I just watched the show, if that’s not enough to get me to come back next week the preview probably won’t.

Speaking of trailers, have you seen:

So Amazon Unbox is having their usual 99 cent sale again this weekend (six different movies). Usually the movies don’t show up cheap until Friday, but it seems to be working today (and there are a few reruns from last week).

This weekend they’ve got Superman: Doomsday, interesting movie it’s based on the whole Death of Superman story-line from 10+ years ago but it was an entertaining movie (I watched it last week on a day I was home sick). Voices by Adam Baldwin, Anne Heche respectively as Superman/Clark and Lois. It was odd though with the amount of death and violence in it, this isn’t a kid’s movie at all. Note the bloody Superman logo, it’s representative of the movie. Lex Luthor is ruthless and totally evil! At least Doomsday was an evil mutant from space!

So if you’re interested it’s worth the 99 cents (at least it entertained me while I was sick). You can download it to your TiVo (which rocks) or your Windows PC (which PC say is an okay process). I think you can even buy them straight from your TiVo menu now, but I haven’t tried that.

This weekend they also have:

I’m still thinking it’s some kind of Godzilla movie. I mean just look at the poster and tell me that it wouldn’t make sense to add him to the image.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s refencing the 1-18-08 movie.

I just finally got around to watching some David Letterman and Conan O”Brian episodes, I grab them if they have a guest I like and coincidentally Anne Hathaway was on the two I picked in the TiVo. She’s always fun (she was the one who made The Princess Diaries so fun) and has such an awesome smile in just about everything (movie or interview) that I’ve seen her in. She’s currently in Becoming Jane playing Jane Austin which I think is now on my list that I’ve seen a few more clips on it. She’s also in the new Get Smart film playing Barbara Feldman’s role as Agent 99.

I usually think of her as beautiful but she was way more than that on Letterman (the stunning dress probably helped), Dave even asked her where she was going after the show, since she was clearly too much for his show (“It’s just for you Dave”). Here’s the clip.

Usually on these interviews I never notice the guest drink out of the glass in front of them, but on both Letterman and Conan I noticed drinking out of her mug all the time. I’m not sure why that’s sticking with me so much but it really keeps popping back into my head.

I think I’m off to see Becoming Jane this week…

So I’ve been excited since I originally saw the preview for Stardust a few months ago and I got to see a preview of the movie a few weeks ago (the movie is out now). I really enjoyed the movie and the cast was great (Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Charlie Cox). They didn’t follow the book exactly and I have no problem with that, I’m re-reading the book and I’m finding that I really enjoy it after just seeing the movie.

I really like Neil Gaiman but I really haven’t seen them promoting him much in relation to the book and the movie; the book came out about 10 years ago as both a regular book and as a graphic novel (illustrated by Charles Vess). And I’ve seen this book in so many variations of the cover not even including the movie editions or the graphic novels…

Claire Danes as the falling star was wonderful, technically she was a fallen star but that sounds like it has a negative connotations and she didn’t have any. From the previews I wasn’t sure how Claire would be in the part (I eel they edited the preview oddly) but I thought she was perfect. DeNiro played a different part than I expected from the previews; I guess it was a different role than I’ve ever seen him in before. Charlie Cox was great, I’m not sure where I’ve seen him before.

Here is the official 1-18-08 movie preview. It’s so clear it’s hard to feel the amateurish video quality that the preview had in the theater…

And they added a third image to the 1-18-08.com site.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ve mentioned the 1-18-08 preview before…

So I’m not the largest Harry Potter fan, I’ve read the books, but I think I missed the last movie. I got dragged to the latest one but I did enjoy it. Except for the flying in the opening sequence the effects were awesome. They cut so much out of the books (and the books keep getting bigger), it’d probably be better if they’d make the movies twice as long and just release them in two parts (but twice as often) and make them ‘to be continued’…

The parts when the magistrate (government) were nosing around the school with what should be taught and how it should be taught were hysterical, especially the parts about the standardized testing.

Harry is starting to look pretty old, I’m not sure how him and the gang are going to make it to the 7th movie without looking like 5th year college students.

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.

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!

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.

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:

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.Did the girl named Frankie have the last name of Ray? Doesn’t she eventually become a herald of Galactus?

So I had day off and it was raining so I finally took the time to go see Spider-Man 3. I really enjoyed it! Lots of differences between the movie and comics but these days with alternate universes and different story-lines (such as Spidey having a secret identity in one series and not in another) there are lots of differences from comic to comic too.

Lots of action and effects; all the sand and the black suit moved around really cool. Unfortunately, sometimes the action was moving so fast it was hard to see what was happening. Gwen Stacy was in this story which was interesting since the ‘falling off the bridge’ sequence from the first movie was originally taken from the comics with Gwen being the fallen. Toby (Peter) just played such a nerd, I don’t remember him being such a dork in the earlier movies.

What I don’t like about super-hero movies is they make the plots too busy; why have one villain when you can have three? They spend too much time setting things up and then the other half of the movie breaking them down. Not enough time spent with Gwen, Venom and Sandman. And who’s the dorky cute girl across the hall? Does she eventually become a hero or villian?

While I haven’t read it (yet) the novelization is by Peter David. Peter has written everything (books and comics) from The Hulk to Star Trek to the Little Mermaid so it’s certainly worth checking out.

I’m not a Will Ferrell fan but I really really enjoyed Stranger Than Fiction. I’ve heard several people (Kelly and Srah) say the same thing and since I thought the movie looked interesting I gave it a try. Before I tell you about it I’ll mention that it’s the slapstick / stupid / immature stuff that makes me not like Will Farrell but since I now know he can act I’ll pay a little more attention to his stuff; I feel the same way about Jim Carey and Adam Sandler, when they aren’t pretending to be one of The Three Stooges they’re pretty entertaining (hmm, the three of them as The 3 Stooges…).

So all of a sudden boring Harold Crick realizes he can hear the narration of his life in his head as his day goes along. It makes him think he’s a little crazy but the narration is hysterical (IMHO) in that it captures his idiosyncrasies perfectly. Eventually with lots of confusion as he occasionally speaks out to the voice he he seeks out a shrink and eventually ends up with a Literature Professor (Dustin Hoffman) who helps him to figure out what type of novel he is “in”. All of it really makes for some hysterical dialog and really has some “meaning of life” stuff in it if you think about the story you are participating in as you live out your life…

On a side note: I have a crush on Emma Thompson, but her semi-depressed chain-smoking character in this movie made that fade away; but they made up for it (with me) by having the lovely Maggie Gyllenhaal…

So I enjoyed The Holiday but some parts were really really slow. There were parts that really appealed to my sense of humor, but I’d have a hard time recommending it. It’s got Kate Winslet (and Cameron Diaz) and I’ve always had a thing for Kate…

It’s the story of two women who need to get away due to recent men problems and end up doing a home swap. Cameron leaves her huge home in LA to stay in Kate’s tiny place in the little town in England (and vice-versa); Kate really made out on this deal. Of course they meet men and the story goes on from there. One of the parts I really really liked is when Kate was exhausted from the trip and the jet lag and wants to sleep but it’s bright since it’s the middle of the day. Then she find the magical switch that activates the room blinds which slide down and seal the room up likes it’s a bomb shelter it was awesome; that’s how I like to sleep, when it’s pitch black so I could really handle having something like that.

What else? Cameron makes movie previews for a living and that was cool, especially her daydreams about her life as a movie preview. I liked Jack Black’s part, when he’s not too goofy I like him, and the he was pretty good (a little less goofy would have been better, IMHO). The little girls were hysterical(!) but I won’t say anything else about them. That’s it, I wish it had been more exciting but that’s all I got, like I said, I enjoyed it…FYI, I read in the IMDB that “This film was written specifically with actors Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Jack Black in mind”

They’ve finally got the preview for Stardust up. This is based on the Neil Gaiman book of the same name. I’m thinking they’ve taken some liberties but it’s been a while since I read the book so maybe not.

This is what started me thinking about Neil Gaiman a few days ago, but the preview they had up at Yahoo didn’t seem as universally playable as this one at the official site so here you go to the official site. But back to the preview and check out this cast: Robert De Niro, Michele Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Sienna Miller, Peter O’Toole, Ian McKellen (Narrator) and Charlie Cox (the main character).

So there’s a raffle at the Open Rights Group and one of the items is the keyboard that Neil Gaiman used to write most of his Sandman stories. It’s missing a key, but it’s autographed and for some reason he doesn’t think this would be a very cool prize. This would be so cool to have! There’s lots of other prizes too (more from Neil too).

If you don’t know who Neil Gaiman is, someone summed it up the other day (and I don’t remember who I found it, so now I don’t have to paraphrase it).

Most geeks swear by him (Neil Gaiman).
If Joss Whedon is their god, Gaiman is their Jesus.
- Peter Sciretta at SlashFilm.com

Actually, I’d rank Neil higher than Joss, but he’s definitely more of a parable/quote person (IMHO) so maybe the latter fits more.

So back to the keyboard – However I wanted to display it I’d have to put a little tag on it that says something like, “This author writes stories that transcend reality as we know it, but still fits in with it. Don’t ask any more because it’s a really really long answer”. He’s one of the few people that I really enjoy that I haven’t pushed on people. You really need to read more than a bit of it to get someone to really get it and before that point most people give up.

I’ve mentioned Neil Gaiman lots before but I’ve never really posted a lot. If I mention him on-line people either know him or they don’t and I’ve generally left it at that. But I think I’m going to change that.Back to talking about the books — The Sandman is too complicated to explain to most people. No one believes me that he’s got a story-line around a English kid, Timothy Hunter, with wizardly powers who is a better character and been around a lot longer than Harry Potter (The Books of Magic). Mirror Mask is kind of surreal/bizzaro to show to people. Anansi Boys and American Gods are great if you can get people to stick with it, but they’re a little long for people who don’t get it. I’ve got people to like some of the short stories and some of the Sandman one-shots but getting them past that is always hard. Honestly, the kids books are where I’ve gotten most people to read: The Day I swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish, Coraline, and The Wolves in the Walls. But Coraline is the story one (the chapter book) but people tend to shake they’re head at some of the bizarreness of it.

He’s got connections to Tori Amos too, but that’s another story.

One of my favorie parts of the movie Running Scared (1986), is when Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal (who play Chicago Cops) are in Florida (Key West, I think) and see a bunch of people standing by the pier. They think ‘someone must have found a body’ or ‘a car must have drove off the pier’. As they try to get closer they ask someone ‘what happened?’ and the response is, ‘they’re just watching the sunset’ and the both look at her and say, ‘no, really, what happened?’ and she replies, ‘everyone comes down every night for the sunset’ and they just don’t believe it. But sure enough, it’s just the sunset and they’re hooked they watch it every night get hooked.

That’s what it’s like here in Jaco, Costa Rica, everyone starts showing up on the beach in the evening. Even if they aren’t going to get in the water they just show up to watch. Some show up just a few minutes before, some show up an hour or so. They bring the kids, the babies, the grandparents and just watch it set and the colors fade away…

(I’m just paraphrasing the movie, I can’t find the actual quotes, anywhere on-line, but you get the gist of it.)

As usual, click the photos for larger views.

So last week I wanted to go see the Stormbreaker movie. It’s the first of the Alex Rider books being made into a movie (I’ve mentioned Alex Rider before). It was supposed to open July 21st but I couldn’t find it anywhere. So then I looked around some more and found this:

July 21, 2006 (UK)
September 21, 2006 (AUS)
October 6, 2006 (USA) –from Wikipedia

I’m a little disappointed but I’ll get over it. I still don’t understand why it’s opening here last (and why that isn’t clear on the site). For those of you that don’t remember, the movie stars Ewan McGrager, Rutger Hauer, Alica Silverstone and some new actor actually named Alex playing Alex Rider.

So one of the things on my 101 in 1001 list is to make sure I own 50 excellent movies (if I don’t own then I need to buy them) watch them again and do a review on-line. By “excellent” it has to be something to have mostly wide appeal (I’m sure a few won’t) and I’m trying to have a range of the types of movies. I probably owned 15-20 I’d put in this category and I’ve probably already bought a dozen since.

Without question StarGate would be one of those movies. And since I’ve been thinking about it a lot since my trip to Egypt. The ultimate edition actually includes the original and the longer cut on two DVDs (and gobs of extras). It’s a great movie with Kurt Russel as the action hero and James Spader as the geeky egyptologist who thinks that aliens might have actually built the pyramids. The government has some items they dug up a few years back and are trying to decipher the writings on it and they bring in the ridiculed scientist to come help them make it work.

I can tell you why I was disappointed, I was hoping for more Egypt references but while I remember lots, this show did turn into seven seasons of StarGate SG-1 full of references so I guess that’s where I recall lots from, I just thought there were more in the original movie. There was a bit, I just hoped for more. Still a great flick, lots of action great scenery, some big explosions and some really great characters. And they really do have a good story tie into the creation of the pyramids. Plus he also finds what every geeky guy traveling across the universe needs, a beautiful woman who doesn’t realize what a geek he really is

So with the sales today I bought a few things.

I’ll do reviews for the movies when I watch them. It seems like I bought more but I’m not going downstairs to check…

So on the flight home I watched What the Bleep Do We Know!? which was semi-hosted by Marlee Matlin (it’s part story and part interview). It was an odd different show about thought and reality (with a little quantum thought/mechanics thrown in). When I say “and” it’s night really the right term since it’s pretty much the same thing as far as the show is concerned. The show appeared to be something that might have been for PBS but someone decided it might make a good movie instead. I think around here it just got released at the arts theaters.

It’s very interesting. Especially if you like to think about how things (reality) are put together or have ever wondered if we are in a (the) matrix or what you might be doing in a parallel universe right now.

With Yahoo’s new Yahoo! Go service you can watch previews, flickr feeds, yahoo photos, download music and burn it to a cd. Of course it’ll play any of those files from the hard drive (or CD/DVD) and with a supported video card you can record television in a TiVo like fashion.

Unfortunately, Yahoo! generally chokes with a good idea before they get it done, but this is a great one so let’s see how they do. Especially since they are doing this just after TiVo has canceled their lifetime subscription and is now charging monthly rates only….