Busy day today and I totally spaced out that it was Spider-man 2 DVD release day! We hit Dominos tonight for a little take home pizza action and were sucked into Spidey’s web at Best Buy, but we managed to get free enough to do a little more Xmas shopping for the kids. 10 hours of extras! Wow … I love DVD extras. Sometimes the extras are better than the film (but doubtful in this case). Now please forgive my rapid exit while I fly to sit in front of the DVD player …

Just leave it to man’s greedy nature to be more destructive than the corrosive force of deep sea.

Visitors wanting to see or salvage the world’s most famous shipwreck may be finishing off what an iceberg did to the Titanic 92 years ago, according to one of the marine explorers who found the ship’s watery grave.

I’m fascinated by Titanic and found the movie to be one of the biggest surprises that I’ve ever seen. I totally expected it to suck, I mean, we already know what happens to most of the people who rode that ship … but what a wonderful surprise. I wasn’t the only one though, who made it the bestselling movie of all time. I wonder how or the Titanic perfume is doing?

Last night we took the kids out for a rare trip as a family to see the new G-rated film: Polar Express. I don’t remember the last G film I paid to go see because it’s been a long time. In fact, it seems like there haven’t been that many compelling G-rated films to go see. The entire movie can be told in one sentence, so if you want to see it, then don’t read my next sentence.

It’s about a boy who gets on a train that rides to North Pole and Santa picks out a toy for each child. It is centered around the concept of believing which is something that sooner or later, people grow up and lose when it comes to the magic of Christmas. It is based largely on the 32-page children’s picture book by Chis Van Allsburg, but obviously content had to be added by Back To The Future director Robert Zemeckis to fill a full-length movie. Along the way there is some great animation which sometimes made this viewer think he was not watching a cartoon. There’s a scene where the train is going up and down a steep incline and it is almost like you are on a roller coaster which some other pessimistic reviewers are calling cheap video game tricks, but I liked these parts of the film. Tom Hanks is the voice for multiple characters, including the narrator, and he does a good job voice acting with a storyline that is intentionally simplistic.

Warner Bros.’ big-budget movie for children, “The Polar Express,” pulled into theaters on Wednesday with a load of mixed reviews, ranging from praise for an instant holiday classic to jeers for a huge disappointment. The computer-animated movie, which reportedly cost about $270 million to make and market, is a major financial risk for the studio and a creative risk for the new “performance capture” technology used to make it.

Our youngest child enjoyed this movie (age 11) but it didn’t get rave reviews from our 14 year old or 13 year old, the older of which saw some teen girls he knew from school in the theater and seemed ashamed to admit he was at this movie with his family. Incidentally, I don’t blame him for his embarassment. After Polar Express we went to eat at the Olive Garden, good food, mmm.

Overall, I’d say Polar Express is good for younger children as there is a sweet, although somewhat cliched Christmas oriented plotline and the overall visuals reminded me a bit of The Nightmare Before Christmas and I’m not sure if the 280+ million dollars was worth it. I can’t bag too much on holiday family films like this without feeling a bit Scrooge-like, so I’ll just go up the middle with this rating (yeah, the coward’s way out as a reviewer, I know, but I enjoy Christmas time and snow and giving presents — la, la, la!). As of this writing, Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 62% and is giving another animated film: The Incredibles a much higher rating. Polar Express is a film that will look and play as cool as a snowy evening on a progressive scan DVD player and you may want to wait for it for a Christmas release because I don’t think it will last that long in theaters. This might explain why they released it so early, so that if it did indeed tank in the theaters then they could rush it out there as a DVD right at Christmas time to help recover the expensive production. Grade: C.

It seems kind of strange to admit, but I’ve always enjoyed horror movies and in fact, six of my seven completed novels are in the horror genre. Scientists keep trying to figure out why people enjoy being scared, and what better time than near Halloween to explore this phenomenon, via MSNBC:

Glenn Sparks, a Purdue University professor, said the euphoria people feel when the credits roll or they finally leave a house of horrors is what keeps them coming back even if they absolutely hated the experience.

I’m still trying to decide if Monday I’ll start writing fiction again for the first time since 1998 in the 50,000 word challenge during National Writing Month. I was originally planning on doing it, but with non-fiction and upon closer inspection, I realized non-fiction didn’t fall within the challenge guidelines.

Nobody is Rod Serling, there’s only one Rod Serling, but I can’t believe how bad Forrest Whitaker is trying to play Rod Serling in the most recent incarnation of The Twilight Zone that lasted a brief single season before being cancelled. Aldokkhan.com says:

Woefully miscast as the series’ host, Forest Whitaker delivers facile introductions devoid of Serling’s literary finesse.

I’m only a few stories into watching the 44 episode set and I’m already tired of Whitaker. I was so excited when I saw this DVD set at Best Buy that it wa an immediate buy. Since I haven’t followed TV that much the last few years I was totally unaware that there was a new Twilight Zone. One of the coolest things about the Twilight Zone is the famous twists. The part at the very end where you think you know how it is going to end and get turned the other way. That’s a formula I don’t think I’ll ever tire of.

The stories are everywhere, but if you haven’t heard yet, the man who played the man of steel, Christopher Reeve died:

The man who soared to fame as the star of the Superman films and was grounded by a paralyzing accident in mid career has died at the age of 52.

It’s my understanding that there might be another Superman film and I sure hope whoever they get to play Superman doesn’t suck. Reeve made me believe that he really could fly. R.I.P Mr. Reeve. Below you’ll find a screenshot of the amp I made, which as soon as they fix their server issues I can (hopefully) link up and share with you.



What other bloggers are saying:

Digger’s Realm: “Such a tragic end to a guy who had everything. Looks, money and a successful career came to a halt with one fall from a horse.”

No Math: “He never gave up on life despite his injuries. He really was, I have to say it, a super man.”

Outwit, Outblog, Outsnark: “Most people will tell you their favorite memory of him was as Superman, but my favorite movie of his was Somewhere in Time. I’m a romantic shmuck and the thought of him, a rather towering figure, reduced to a man desperate to be with the woman he loved…well…powerful stuff.”

Wicked Muse: “So, I’m sitting here at work (taking a short break to post this), plowing through work when a co-worker comes by and says, “Hey, Superman died.” “No way! BS!”

Unfogged: “He was inspiring, and his death is the more sad because one sensed that he really did have hope, and believed that his determination could help him be cured.”

Prototype Creative: “i, and no doubt most of the world, believed if anyone could heal and come back from paralysis from a broken neck it would have been him.”Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered: “This came as a great shock to me when I heard about it just a few minutes ago.”

Hung, drawn and quoted: “I never got comfortable with seeing Christopher Reeve in that chair. There was just such an cruel irony to it… Man of steel to man in steel. Things like this happen to people all the time but when it happens to celebrities it’s almost like a it happening to a friend.”

not sweet words: “Very sad, he was such a fighter. It’s a shame that he never realised his dream of walking again in his lifetime.”

He certainly earned my respect, I enjoyed his many comedic moments including his stints in such classics as Caddyshack.

Rodney Dangerfield, the comic who got laughs out of getting no respect, died Tuesday.

Rest In Peace, Rodney. You made many, many people laugh and that’s a commodity that seems to be in short supply sometimes.

Just read Jowl’s review of Mr. 3000 over at Webmaster Cookbook. Besides learning how to build a website step-by-step he’s also learning how to blog. 

Yesterday after the show we went to go see Mr 3000. It was quite interesting although I didn’t really like it. My rating is a C+, I would not go to see this movie again. Well it seemed to last a long time and in the end I didn’t exactly figure out why they made the movie.

I would give it a similar, but little lower rating, and I do understand why they made the movie. It’s all about timing in Hollywood and this is the time that people are getting excited over the various pennant races in Major League Baseball, so why not roll out a baseball movie or two and try to capitalize on the timing. I’m not a huge Bernie Mac fan myself, but from the trailer I foolishly believed that this movie would be better than it turned out. The movie needed many more laughs to offset the very unlikeable Barry Bondesque main character that Mac played. The ironic thing is these days 3000 hits doesn’t necessarily guarantee a player will make it into the Hall of Fame, and neither will this movie win any huge honors. Grade: C-

I guess they didn’t heed the bad T3 reviews, because Warner has said OK to another Terminator sequel. Now that Arnie is a governor and said he was leaving his lucrative film career behind, the questions will begin if he’ll have anything to do with this sequel.

Studio bosses have held talks with the Austrian-born governor of the state over his availability for the film, the daily said. “Discussions have already occurred for him to return for an encore, but the likelihood is that it would be in a limited role,” Variety said, adding that the film would likely star a new model of killer cyborg to replace the man now dubbed the “Govern-ator.”

It’s really sad to see a great franchise ruined by subpar sequels … Friday the 13th, Halloween anybody?

I did, I did. Widescreen edition. And here’s my crappy camera phone in the dark car picture to prove it: