Why don’t we connect with our friends enough? I had a close friend who lived in Europe for three years, when did I finally go visit him? One week before he moved (duh!). Why wait?

I’ve got friends that live close that I haven’t talked to in ages. Why not?!?

We’ve all got friends close and far that we haven’t seen. Take a minute and make plans. A few months ago I got a message on Facebook.

Hey, what are you doing around Dec 17? 
I'm hoping to be in town. Want to see Tron 2? 
I think we saw Tron 1 at the theater. 

That’s all it took, a couple of messages back and forth and I saw a friend I haven’t talked to in years and haven’t seen for over a decade who lives a 1,000 miles away. How easy was that?!?

Mark, David and I met up, had drinks and food, saw Tron Legacy at the IMAX in 3D (which was awesome!) and then went and had pizza afterwards. It was a great night. We talked a lot (lots of glory days kinda stuff) and caught up on life.

So take a minute, when you talk to someone over the holidays make a point to make plans with them and see them sometime soon…

Thanks for checking in David!

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What to say about this movie? It’s not for everyone, but it’s probably got a little of something in it for everyone.

• A strange movie. For sure!
• A good movie? I’m not sure.
• Seriously oddly compelling? Definitely!
• s it a movie? A comic book? A video game? Yes, it’s all three at the same time…

Scott’s got a new girlfriend, but to move along in the relationship, he must defeat her seven ex-boyfriends exes. Although I’m not sure why he must defeat them, they’re just after him. She seems aware of it, but overall she doesn’t seem like “she” needs him to complete the task. You need to just accept this point and move along with the plot.

But it’s filled with many interesting scenes; I’m not saying they all make sense, but they’re interesting and have some cool effects.

In some bizarro way it made me think of what we leave in the wake of our old relationships… What perspective do the others have? What perspective do they have years later? Do they think “Gary who?” or “Gary, sigh…”? Hopefully somewhere in the middle and without too much anger or regret…

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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.

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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)…

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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!

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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…

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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).

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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.

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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…

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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.

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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!

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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?

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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.

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Of all the “these aren’t the ‘droids you’re looking for” jokes / spoofs / parodies I think this is the simplest and the 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…

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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…

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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.

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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).

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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: