Brad Bird, who wrote and directed the Oscar-winning animated film The Incredibles, told SCI FI Wire that he still
is working out a story good enough to justify a sequel.
"I have to come up with a story that is as good as or better than the original," Bird said in an interview on June 22 while
promoting his next Pixar movie, Ratatouille. "If I could come up with something like a Toy Story 2 with the
same characters from Incredibles, then I would do it in a second."
Bird has been developing a new storyline for the superhero family introduced in 2004's The Incredibles. "I have
ideas," he said. "I have a few bits and pieces, but I don't have it all together."
I just finished watching 80's vampire movie, The Lost Boys. A
few notes:
it's much shorter than I remember -- only about 1 hour 30.
it's much shallower than I remember, I think it's the cool title song that made me think more of it. Listening to the
commentary, the shallowness is somewhat deliberate -- it's supposed to be a teen movie, remade from an original script for a
kid's movie
the movie looks great, very modern in technique but the clothes and music is totally -- epitomely, if that's word -- the
80's. The commentary said that Corey Feldman's clothes was supposed to be "mall fashion-victim", but that provides no excuses
for the head vampire Edward Hermann who looks like he wanted to be on a Duran Duran album cover.
first movie with The Two Cories
Keifer Sutherland looks great; they say he has the least words of any of the major stars in the movie, but every word
counts
I have to say that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has totally set my expectations for vampire movies -- "hey, they're not
following the rules". For example, inviting a vampire into your hour renders you
powerless; but they don't need an invitation.
I had never seen this movie and quite enjoyed it (despites to follow). Given its place in pop culture, I was expecting
Jar Jar Binks meets Cadyshack II
The despites:
Sophia Coppola can't act. Too bad.
George Lucas makes exactly the same mistake as Coppola in Star Wars I-III: they confuse the MacGuffin with the story
The Andy Garcia (Sonny Corleone's illegitimate son) plotline is poorly integrated, to say the least. At the beginning
of the movie he doesn't even rate an invitation to big event; at the end he's the Godfather despite the fact he really
doesn't really accomplish much
Tom Hagen is missed.
What's the point of the Godfather trilogy: is it just that Michael has to pay for his character flaws of being
disproportionate and losing sight that it's supposed to be for the family, not for honor? That Michael's sins put him outside
of forgiveness? Just asking...
Despite the critical tone above, if you haven't seen it, take the time.
Having recently watched Star Wars III, including the incredibly boring special features about how they did everything (green
screen + cash + Australians), this video "interviewing" George Lucas and pals about how they would do Lord of the Rings is
priceless:
Interestingly enough, the most interesting part ... hell, maybe the only interesting part ... of Star Wars I-III, the fight
on the volcano planet, had a lot of consulting with Steven Speilberg.
Marlon Brando is amazing (and I'm only 15 minutes in); I'm really going
to have to make an effort to watch some of his early material to see what that's all about -- my memories are mainly of the
corpulent joke Brando, but there's a lot more going on there
Robert De Niro is amazing too; I'm glad I watch these movies in the
reverse order. He did a fantastic job of capturing Brando's character. Sadly, another actor who has lapsed into parody
contract to Ewan McGregor and Alec Guinness playing Obi-Wan Kenobi. McGregor got the motions, but never the
character.
My wife Joanne's Italian and it's funny to note that they had a "fixer" character too in their life. When they moved to
Canada, only one lady could speak English and she took charge of all things dealing with "the English". As necessary, she
would be the mother, the sister, or whatever was needed for the circumstance (such as going to the doctor). [I'll update this
with her name when Joanne gets home]
Everything you know about Italians from the top-tier mob movies is true, except for the mob part. Really (or at least
they're not admitting to the mob part, though I do step lightly). The first time I saw The Sopranos, it was "hey look, they
have our bedspread ... and our bedroom ... and our kitchen cupboards..."
(update) the soundtrack is totally over the top. Is this a time-ism thing, or did it suck also when the movie came out?
Rick McGinnis would
know...
Variety.com reports that Harrison Ford will reprise his role as Dr. Jones after a nearly 20-year hiatus. At the moment, plot details are more heavily guarded than the Ark of the Covenant.
I'm wondering if that guy ever saw Temple of Doom.
"To Your Scattered Bodies Go" is an excellent choice for the list; I like the immediate set of sequels. I'll have to dig these books out of storage
"Sword of Shanara"? WTF? Was this list edited by retarded munchkins?
I like "Ringworld", though Known Space is more important as a collection than as any one individual book.
There's lots of stuff I read years ago and I'll have to dig out and read again; I may pick up a few more of these just to check it out, though I find a lot of pre-70's SF kind of tedious.
This Michael Richards mea culpa about his racist outburst against hecklers is pathetic—mentioning Katrina and war as he tossed out banalities about the nation’s “hate” and “rage.” The outburst and the apparent apology are right up there with the Judith Regan creepy confessional about her grotesque O.J. non-book event.
Let me get his Seinfeldian logic: a hip, sort of leftist cynic unloads on some impolite blacks in his audience with language right out of the Ku Klux Klan lexicon, and then tries to weasel out of it by suggesting some rage unleashed by things like the Katrina diaster? Apparently he thinks that hip nihilists like himself can’t be redneck racists. And if they slip up and show that they are, then it’s only because they suffer from a temporary sort of Bush-derangement syndrome brought on by the general “rage” unleashed in the country.
We need a new word in the vocabulary for this increasingly common syndrome where a liberal spouts far right nonsense that no conservative would utter and then blames his outburst apparently on the conservative climate. We all thought that the apology would be the alcohol or abused childhood common refuge, so surely “rage” is something new. Do we all suffer from it, or just Richards that evening?
And what is this new throat-clearing about the “war made me do it” (e.g. Richards’ reference to the “rage” between “this country and another nation”)? Even Mel Gibson sought cover in that idea of global conflict when his anti-Semitic rage boiled over in his cups (“The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”). Apparently he thought the Iraqi and Lebanon fighting was both “the world” and were caused by the “Jews.”
He gives it 2 1/5 stars and according to Kathy, "the hate mail is already flowing in". Didn't Rick get the memo that speaking our betters speaking truth to power is a lecture, not a dialog: no talking back!
The film is basically a filmed version of a lecture Gore claims he claims he’s given over a thousand times since 1989. Near the end of the film, after dire warnings about our addiction to oil and the disastrous effect that we’re having on the environment, he lists all the places where he’s given the lecture; even if you didn’t count his stint as Bill Clinton’s number two, it’s an impressive record of jet fuel and gasoline consumption.
No doubt many viewers might have an occasion to wince about their own energy consumption habits, but they needn’t fear; just as Gore’s personal hydrocarbon tally gets a pass, his film will let you imagine that you can become part of the solution to the global warming crisis by making only the most reasonable sort of sacrifices, while offloading the greater burden onto governments and corporations.
It would require much more space than a movie review to consider Gore’s science. He claims a universal consensus of scientists on manmade climate change that doesn’t exist, and relies on questionable anecdotes to illustrate its effects, such as the one about polar bears drowning as they lose their ice floe habitats – and illustrates it with a cloying cartoon. The lynchpin of his lecture is a graph that shows the earth’s temperature rising exponentially with the levels of greenhouse gases; even if this now-famous graphic weren’t in dispute, he neglects to mention that levels of atmospheric hydrogen have tended to echo temperature, not the other way around.
[H]ow conservative, really, are the guys behind South Park?
“I hate conservatives, but I really f***ing hate liberals,” said co-creator Matt Stone, in an oft-repeated quote from when Stone and partner Trey Parker accepted a People for the American Way award in 2001. But if the creative team’s spitballs are lobbed mostly at people like Rob Reiner and Sean Penn et al, that’s mostly because the liberal elites are the ones mostly in charge.
“Hollywood views regular people as children, and they think they’re the smart ones who need to tell the idiots out there how to be... South Park was based on our hatred and loathing for Hollywood,” Parker and Stone told Hollywood, Interruptedauthors Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner.
“We still believe that all people are born bad and made good by society,” Parker told Time this spring. “Actually, I think that’s where we’re conservative,” added Stone.
Brief notes on 
Here's what I
have queued up for watching this week:
I just finished watching 80's vampire movie, 
Here are a few thoughts on 
