I paid. I saw. I laughed.

Opening night, Friday, our family got to see one of the most anticipated movies of all time: The Simpsons Movie. The movie earned a PG-13 rating and contains enough jokes that one Rotten Tomatoes reviewer made the excellent point that to catch every joke repeated viewings will be required. This makes me wonder how many people will return to see it in the theater or wait until the inevitable DVD release to savor each joke.

Before getting to the review and for a limited time, Wal-mart is offering a Simpsons T-shirt with the complete seasons with donut hole packaging for $21.99 - $24.99. That’s less than the price of two tickets and popcorn to the movie for an entire TV season. DVDs continue to provide the most value.

The plot
A dome has been placed around Springfield trying to contain an ecological nightmare no thanks to Springfield’s dumbest but most lovable nuclear power plant employee, Homer Simpson. Speaking of the power plant, that’s one of my disappointments: barely featured in the plot. Mr. Burns and Smithers? You’ve probably already seen their scene in the previews. The previews spoiled some of the gags, unfortunately.

Other minor disappointments? No drinking inside Moe’s scenes. It’s almost like having a TV adaption of Cheers without a bar scene. There’s at least one Moe’s bar external gag. And very little of my favorite non-main character: Barney. Itchy & Scratchy made it, but it would have been nice to see them bookending the movie based on their placement in the plot. Principal Skinner? Don’t even remember seeing him, but he might have been there briefly(?). In fact, while Springfield is the center of the plot, a lot of the action happens outside of Springfield.

And no they don’t give away where Springfield is actually located other than a joke about it being bordered by four states (that you’ve probably seen in the previews). Maybe we’ll get the answer to that enigma in the sequel?

Is it too early to start talking sequel? I don’t think so. This movie isn’t quite as big as I’d hoped for, kind of like eating a single donut leaves you wanting a second one. It’s not the over the top awesome must see movie of the century, but it’s not Star Wars I Phantom Menace either. It’s, well, somewhere between Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars IV, the original Star Wars on my favorite movie of all time radar.

The movie theater physical experience
Why this movie didn’t make it to the best theater in town is a mystery. I was frustrated and uncomfortable by the crappy theater chairs and lousy angle of the screen. We arrived about just minutes before the 7:20pm showing and there were still 30-35% seats left, but in order for our family of five to be able to sit together we had to take the very front row. Definitely not the best viewing angle, but what did we expect? I was surprised we could walk in at the last minute literally on opening day and get any five seats together, but I blame this partly on the shoddy theater.

Regal Cinemas has much nicer theaters a few miles down the road but the Simpsons wasn’t showing on any of those screens. Strangely, they chose the more ramshackle theater for The Simpsons Movie (three screens). Disappointing. If they do this all over the country, the movie sales aren’t going to soar as I’ve predicted in the past. Harry Potter, Transformers and the new Sandler movie were eating up screen space at the nicest theater in town. Maybe if sales are strong enough, they’ll knock out a few of those screens and replace them with the Simpsons movie.

For those who saw The Simpsons Movie, was it playing at the nicest theater in your town? I’m really curious if this was something unique to our area because with a major movie launch this is the first time I remember this ever happening. Whomever made this decision certainly didn’t help Groening and crew.

Summary and grade
There are some gags in The Simpsons Movie that you won’t see on TV which I won’t spoil and unless you are immune to humor will make you at least chuckle. Despite a few adult gags you can still take the family to this movie and laugh together. During a poignant scene in the movie I heard crying and at the end of the movie there were a few scattered applauses. We didn’t stick around to see what goodies were in the credits rolling, if any.

Reader Wayne took his girls to see the movie and they enjoyed it, adding:

I don’t know that it will end up sinking Titanic’s record though. I consider myself a HUGE Simpsons fan and don’t see myself paying to see it again. It just doesn’t feel like it breaks enough new ground to warrant repeated theater viewings.

You can read my comment response there, but let me remind that the Simpsons are an international phenomenon and while the TV show isn’t as good as it was the first five or so years, this movie proves there is still gas in the tank. This wasn’t just an overly long TV episode. In fact while leaving the theater I felt it was maybe 15 minutes or so too short.

Not sure I’ll be paying to see it again in the theater — definitely not in the same theater — but perhaps in a better one. Still, I’m sticking by my original prediction after seeing it despite the unfortunate screening position by Regal Cinemas that while The Simpsons Movie probably won’t beat Titanic gross gross receipts it will make the top 10 overall. Furthermore, I’ll go on record predicting that it will take down Shrek 2 which has the record for highest gross receipts worldwide for an animated film ($920.7 million via Box Office Mojo) and is #8 on the all-time gross receipts list. That would make The Simpsons Movie the highest grossing animated film ever.

I saw Shrek 2 and The Simpsons Movie is better. A sequel is the highest grossing animated film ever? Wow.

Does The Simpsons Movie break a billion? It has to in order to get into the top three movies all time. It’s going to need to break $1.8 billion to be in Titanic’s league which are unchartered waters for any other movies. We’ll have to wait and see how much steam is left after a month in theaters. Movies tend to fade fast these days after the opening weekends. Remember Spider-man 3 (#11 all time)? That made almost $900 million worldwide and it wasn’t nearly as good IMO as Spider-man (#16) and Spider-man 2 (#21).

$100+ million the first weekend? Sure, why not? Grab a donut and hit the theaters now. Grade: A-

Update July 30, 2007 9:09am PST: The Simpsons Movie was #1 opening weekend with $71.9 million domestically (source: Box Office Mojo) and $168 million worldwide (source). #2 was the newest Adam Sandler vehicle ($19 million) and #3 Harry Potter ($17 million).

Assuming the theaters aren’t too packed, we’re planning on seeing The Simpsons Movie this weekend. How about you? The Simpsons are clearly on surfer’s minds searching for Simpsons-related posts at this blog. Pictured right six of eight search query results as of this writing are related to the Simpsons.

We’ve been watching the DVD of the Complete Season Nine Simpsons upscaled on the PS3. Good stuff. I’m liking how the PS3 upscales DVDs and it is fast becoming our DVD player of choice. While we’re still not playing many games on the PS3 it’s nice to see it getting use as the most expensive DVD player in our home. With Lair, Heavenly Sword and other hot games on the horizon as well as the HOME interface, I’m seeing a brighter PS3 future this winter and beyond.

What’s the secret behind the Simpsons staying power?
What about those Simpsons, how have they endured so long in our collective minds? I think it’s because of the excellent writing, characters and jokes. It’s hard to get through a couple minutes of the Simpsons without at least a smile. It’s healthy laughing. It relieves stress. Groening and company seem to get that treating an animated show like a stand-up comedy act was a good recipe for success and they’ve been handsomely rewarded for their efforts.

The non-main character that makes me laugh the most is Barney. His drunken antics are great and I’m looking most forward to see what his part is in the Simpsons Movie. As for main characters, I’ve never been a huge Bart fan. The Lisa storylines have been kind of boring too. Homer is my favorite main character. What’s yours? Why?

Woohoo, my o-fer Bourne sightings streak has come to an end! Today in the Bourne Ultimatum game it said that two of my cameras had seen Bourne. Now, you can stop chuckling at my plight, Nathan Let’s see if I can get a streak of sightings going the other way, like the rest of you playing. Although I must admit your idea about trying to keep the streak going of least sightings was intriguing.

Reader, and self-confessed part of the “crew”, Bernice got to see an early screening of Bourne Ultimatum last night and left her glowing review in yesterday’s comments: “It’s a wild ride and will leave you tired. It rocks!” Her complete report along with some additional hints for today’s mission can be found here, no spoilers.

Day 10
Today’s mission isn’t anything new really. Just go follow the links from the last two days at priceless.com and Google Groups and look at Ross’s clues which are provided by the message transmitter. In fact, today’s answer was the one I thought was yesterday’s answer originally.

Hint: Look at the pictures in Google groups carefully.

As of next Wednesday, August 1, Microsoft is sweetening the HD-DVD pot by lowering the price of the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive by $20 and for a limited time offering a coupon for five free HD-DVD movies from a list of 15 by mail-in offer.

Via the official Xbox News:

Perhaps a defensive move in light of news like this story (thanks DVD Dossier) which points out that thieves broke in and stole a store’s entire inventory of Blu-Ray movies, totalling some 7,000 bones, leaving the HD-DVD movies untouched.

Although, I haven’t been that excited by either of the next generation formats over DVDs (selection issues, mainly) I might move on this deal. If you figure an average of $23 per HD-DVD with five free that makes the math for the price of the player with the movies (assuming they aren’t terrible movies) as follows:

$179 HD DVD player
- 115 ($23 x 5 HD-DVD free)
= $64

Not a bad deal even if the format ultimately tanks (which I believe both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are in trouble). I’ve bought plenty of bad video games over the years for around $65 and there are a few HD-DVDs I’m interested in like the new Heroes first season.

Why is it that more TV seasons aren’t available on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray? To me, that’s the biggest weakness in selection because paying $23-40 for the highest quality movie you can buy for home viewing isn’t remotely as attractive as paying $20-40 for an entire TV season. There are very, very few movies I’d want to buy on Blu-Ray or HD-DVD format.

In fact, to date, have only bought two Blu-Ray movies over the last eight months of owning a PS3: the Mission Impossible box set and most recently Ghost Rider because it was on sale at Wal-Mart and the kids enjoyed that movie. I could take or leave the Ghost Rider movie itself (see Hmm Ghost Rider review) but I’ll admit the flaming skele on a cycle shots are cool cinematically.

A depressing night here as the Seattle Mariners dropped their sixth game in a row. Hopefully I don’t go 0 for 9 with Bourne sightings. I don’t think I will, so let’s get an earlier (earliest for our coverage anyway, but probably late for Bernice) start on today’s Bourne Ultimatum game.

Day 9
Back to another IM conversation with Simon which leads to a Google Groups post to find out where he’s at.

Hint: When you reach the Google Groups list look for the picture circled and the general area around that, not the circled area specifically.

Good luck to all players!

I’ve been lax in mentioning — and being successful — in the second part of the daily Bourne Ultimatum game missions. The mission part we’ve covered since day one but haven’t discussed the placement of the security cameras in an attempt to catch sightings of Bourne along the way. You’ll note from the green circled text in the graphic below that after pressing confirm players are given the opportunity to place a camera in the surveillance area of the agent console below.

On today’s puzzle there are several different map locations to choose and then click “save” if you guess correctly which camera then a Bourne sighting will be awarded. This is the second puzzle and so far I’ve 0 for 7. You only get one opportunity to complete this challenge after clicking the confirm button, so don’t forget this secondary challenge.

Day 8 map locations include:
- London tower
- St Paul’s Cathedral
- Waterloo Station
- London Eye
- 10 Downing Street

How are you doing with the sightings? How many do you have? Looks like I went 0 for 8 with my guess of London Tower today.

Day 8
Supposedly operative Simon Ross can’t get to Dater Notes and instead is leaving clues publically about Bourne’s whereabouts through the site priceless.com.

Hint via Bernice again (man, she must wait up at night for these to be released):

“We go to a new web page [following the link in the agent console encrypted message]. Find Simon … click one of the pics … there are only two read the handwriting on the left going up and down of the passport, read the typed letters and numbers in the center, put into IM, get bored because there is no further communication until tomorrow, sigh.”

Time to jaw a bit about the off camera and on camera star of Bourne Ultimatum: Jason Bourne played by Brad Pitt Matt Damon.

I’m not sure what Brad Pitt sees in Angelina Jolie, his off screen love interest. In fact, I’m not sure what most men see in her. Jennifer Aniston, Pitt’s ex-wife is a lot more attractive than Jolie. One thing about Aniston is that she doesn’t seem very happy. Howard Stern talks about Aniston’s smirk a lot. She does seem like she’s unhappy a lot which I can’t imagine why (paparazzi? too much money? too much beauty?). Whatever the case, it seems like since Jolie and Pitt were in that Mr and Mrs. Smith flick it has spelled doom for the Brad and Jen romance. Ok, enough celeb talk — unless you want to weigh in on these thoughts in the comments area of course — let’s get to Day 7 of the Bourne Ultimatum game.

Day 7
We finally get to use the image filter in the agent console today. I was wondering when we’d get a chance to use that. Did you know Dater Notes has a newsletter?

Hint: Search Google Images for “treadstone all lies” and enter the image URLs into the image filter.

Update 7/24/07 9:19am PST: Why do I keep mixing up Matt Damon and Brad Pitt? My comments on Brad Pitt stand, but my bad for confusing the two and I’ve corrected thanks to Eric in the comments below.

Looks like Google threw us a curve by having the Bourne Ultimatum game take a break over the weekend. A message in the indicator read: “Login Monday to receive your next mission.” Depending on what part of the world you live in, Monday might have come faster than others. Received a comment here yesterday afternoon PST that somebody had already beaten the mission. This break should have given players who didn’t get in yet a chance to catch up and/or spend time reading the new Harry Potter book that came out Saturday.

Since the Bourne Ultimatum movie launches August 2, I’m thinking this weekend won’t be treated the same. Here’s how the schedule would work:

July 23 - day 6
July 24 - day 7
July 25 - day 8
July 26 - day 9
July 27 - day 10
*July 28 Saturday - day 11 (or alternate day off again)
*July 29 Sunday - day 12 (or alternate day off again)
July 30 - day 13 (or day 11)
July 31 - day 14 (or day 12)
August 1 - day 15 - end game (or day 13)
August 2 Thursday - (or day 14)
August 3 Friday - Bourne Ultimatum launches in theaters everywhere (alternate day 15 and end of game)

* the weekend of July 21-22 the game didn’t run, so it’s possible Google will not run the game July 28 or July 29, and that would make the game end the day the movie launches in theaters everywhere. Makes sense.

This weekend my wife and I caught the new Adam Sandler movie and saw a preview of Bourne Ultimatum right before it started. Looks like Bourne figures out who he is according to the preview. The Simpsons Movie this coming weekend and Bourne Ultimatum the week after that. Looks like lots of buttery popcorn in the future!

Day 6
We’re supposed to combine tactics learned from previous missions including instant messaging and watching a video for a phrase to type in, this time focusing on the videographer Mustapha Nayet.

Hint: Use the instant message with the codeword in Nayet’s profile to get the YouTube video location to watch for the phrase. If you have trouble pasting the video URL (404 messages), look closely at the format of any working YouTube video so the format makes sense. Tricky Google, tricky!

Wow, can you believe the Bourne Ultimatum game is already one third over? Seems like we are just getting started.

Day 5
A new Dater Notes profile to view for today’s challenge: Mustapha Nayet. We’re supposed to figure out the locker code by watching his YouTube surveillance videos. I’m with reader Bernice who left a comment on yesterday’s game, this one was pretty easy.

Hint: Today’s hint comes in part from reader Bernice who writes:

it’s numbers.

To which I’d add, watch the last video for the numbers. You can put it together.

Day 4 of the Bourne Ultimatum game had me knotted for awhile.

Day 4
Today I was stumped trying to figure out where Treadstone’s Nicky Parsons is “located now.” Her Dater Notes profile including zip code indicate New York, NY, but that is not the answer. Confession: I got the answer with help from my friend Lestat. Two brains are better than one.

Hint: Use Google web search on the names in Nicky’s picture gallery.