This week the first official (non-teaser) trailer for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are has been released. Its a mix of CGI and costumed actors. Looks like its going to be something special. As a fan of the children’s book, I’m excited to see it.

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I feel dirty, and not the good kind of dirty. I’m feeing the kind of dirty that comes from being tricked into watching a two-and-a-half-hour commercial and liking it. Yep, you probably all ready know where this is going. I went to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I love it. Who doesn’t enjoy fighting, transforming giant robots shrouded in over the top, amazing special effects? Don’t look at me, because the inner nerd sings majestic when Optimus Prime puts his fist all the way through another robot’s face.

There was a scene where jets are taking off from a Navy carrier and soldiers are working their high-tech radar stations and I’m thinking, “Wow! That looks like an awesome job.” Inside my head, a little warning is going off—the one that goes off when I’m at the check-out counter picking up all the impulse items. I NEED an extra memory card, toothbrush, bug spray and mascara. I NEED to join the Navy, Air Force, Special Forces and….no I don’t. Try and tell me that isn’t an advertisement for the military. It totally is, and I’m not sure I care.

Then my movie-watching buddy leans over and asks, “Why doesn’t Bumble Bee transform more?” And I realize that it’s because GM wants us to look at the car, not the giant much cooler transformed robot. If the car could really do that…well damn I’d be the first one on my street to have one scaring the crap out of the neighbor’s noisy dog. What about that new Corvette concept car? Did it ever transform? What did it transform into–another Corvette concept car?

That’s the tip of the huge product placement extravaganza that is this summer’s blockbuster film. You will want to rush right out and buy a new phone, car; no, make that two phones, DVD’s of Naruto, a Hummer2 etc. Here’s a tip, take your new Ipod/touch/phone and listen to the soundtrack while you watch the film. The dialogue is obviously written by community college interns.

Girl: “Say it.”
Boy: “No, you say it first.”
Girl: “No, YOU say it first.”

Don’t get me wrong I totally LOVE the movie. They can sing Kum-bah-ya and hold hands in the background as long as the robots keep fighting. Those are the best action scenes I’ve ever seen and I was front row center seat for “Kung-Fu Hustle.” I just wish there had been better dialogue connecting all the amazing action in the thin but plausible story which still needs some splainin’ after the movie is over.

I keep going, “Why didn’t they just do that thing with the thing? It would have saved everyone and there would not have been half the carnage.” But the answer to my question lies in the question itself and would be a spoiler. We can’t have that. GM needs your butt in that theater seat eating good popcorn and bad Skittles for their brand new two-and-a-half-hour commercial. You will go, and you will like it. Spit out the pink Skittles, they are gross.

Photo: Tony Crider

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What’s the best power to have?  How would you get said power?  Through a genetic mutation in your DNA?  Through a chance encounter with some infected creature or substance?  The how isn’t so much as important as the what.  What is your personal pick for super power?

You will find that this article, like the two before, have nothing to do with Mothers Day.  So we clearly HAVE NOT prepped a week’s worth of awesome stuff for your mom.  Unless she’s into picking superhero powers.  Which I doubt.

Before we proceed, I believe we can all agree that Jubilee’s power of shooting lame ass fucking fireworks out of her hands is the most worthless power ever.

A lot of people say they wish they could fly.  That’s pretty passive and dull to me.  Just flying?  BORED NOW.  Flying should be a secondary to another, more awesome power, like super strength or weather control.

Invisibility is also lame.  So you can go places without being observed.  After the pervy thrill wore off what fun could you really have with invisibility?  Not much. 

If you had the chance to pick superpowers you have to decide what kind of life you want to lead.  Do you want to be a hero and wear the cape and fight the bad guys?  Or would you prefer to maintain a low profile and keep your current lifestyle.

If I were to keep my current life I would want one of two powers:

Psychic/Telekinetic powers- Moving objects with your mind.  How much easier would your job be if you could hear what asshat co-workers and bosses were thinking?  If you could move things by thinking about it, it could save a lot of time.

Transportation Powers-  I’ve modified my ideas about this power a few times now.  Instead of teleportation to a place you can see or think of, I’ve decided that teleporting to a picture thats in your line of sight is my personal pick.  This way you could visit imaginary places like Middle Earth, Tatooine, and Mainframe.

If I were to become a superhero I would need more offensive powers.  Something I could do more damage with. I’m afraid that I’d be a bit greedy in this event.

I would want Elemental Powers.  That is, I’d want control of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Gravity.

If I could only have one of those however, I’d choose gravity.  With gravity I could fly, crush the spines of my enemy, launch people into the atmosphere and even navigate traffic jams with ease.

If I were to be TRULY greedy, I would want Elemental Powers AND Adamantium Wolverine Claws.

How could anything be more badass than that?

What powers would you choose?

***Marvel owns pretty much all of the cool superheroes and I clearly don’t wish to infringe on their awesomeness.  Though I do wish they’d reclaim the movie rights to X-men, Fantastic Four, Spiderman and ect, since Fox and Sony seem hellbent on ruining these franchises.   Also, no one at this site owns or has any rights to DC properties either.  But then why would we want to?

(Photo by: Stoichiometry)

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In the past, the summer movie season kicked off on Memorial Day weekend, but in the same way that Christmas has overshadowed Thanksgiving and is sneaking up on Halloween, summer movie season keeps creeping up earlier each year. For example, this year’s first blockbuster action film,  X-Men Origins: Wolverine, opens May 1st. If this keeps up, we’ll be seeing the next James Bond or Jason Borne movie on Valentine’s Day.

Sadly, the globe is an an economic recession, making the public more selective over films are worth the ticket price. The competition is tough this year, with a slew of cool movies being released starting this spring. I would love to go see all of them, but at $10-12 per ticket, there is no way I can justify this expense. I’m going to try to narrow it down to two movies.  Painful as that might be.

I’m personally going to pass on seeing Wolverine.  After the major leak of the early cut to the internet and the massive spread of early reviews, I have decided to skip seeing this in the theater.  I’ve read some reputable sites doing reviews and they aren’t so kind.  Obviously these are reviews on the early cut that has been leaked, but you can’t make cheesecake out of mud.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:  Opens June 24

It might be super geek of me to say, but I’m really excited for this movie to come out.  I never go see movies on opening weekend.  I wait for the matinee and go at a time children and teenagers are less likely to annoy me.  I know its not very cool to like Michael Bay, but I dig fun action movies, and he makes them well.  I really liked the first movie and if the second is anything like it, my money will happily go towards seeing it.  This is a movie I would strongly consider waiting til Monday for.  Its Transformers.  There are going to be screaming children filling the theater.  Save yourself the headache and wait two days.

Star Trek: Opens May 8th

I was never a big Star Trek fan.  I liked Next Generation enough, but I’ve never really been a trekkie.  I’m more of a Star Wars girl.  However, there is something about this movie that demands that I go see it.  J.J. Abrams doesn’t really sell me either.  I have become tired of his meandering television plots that end up no where.   All things to the contrary, I really want to see Star Trek.  Perhaps the idea of seeing Sylar as Spock is the clincher.

As much as I would like to go see the new Harry Potter, it will have to wait for DVD release.  Sorry Harry, you aren’t making the cut.  You should have come out in November as planned when I still had money.

What movies are you most excited about this Summer?

(Photo by: jspatchwork)

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Disney has made a lot of money marketing their princesses, but their princes are boring, dull, and lifeless. The prince characters exist only to rescue the princess and become a last minute solution to poverty, abandonment, and loneliness.  The princess hardly knows a prince before she is carried away to his castle to spend the rest of her life with him.  What has she got herself into?  Some of the Disney princes don’t even have proper names and are only an archetype of a strong male savior, swooping in to save the day and validate the princess’s struggle.  Let’s look at the worst offenders:

Snow White and The Prince:  She doesn’t even properly meet him before she’s led to the woods by the huntsman and she goes into hiding.   Their only interaction is when he interrupts her singing to the doves and she runs away, probably in fear.  He sings to her briefly from below her balcony and that ends their brief courtship.  Though the fact that he hears her shrill piercing voice and is still interested, does give him points in his favor.

However, the next time Snow White sees her prince she’s woken from a roofie cocktail and he whisks her away from her friends, to what we can only presume is a life of servitude and sexual favors.  While living with the dwarfs might have been meager, at least she was appreciated and loved.  The Dwarfs tried to avenge what they thought was her death, they build her a beautiful monument and guard her glass coffin day and night.  Prince Date Rape rides up after all the hard work has been done and takes her away to who knows what end.  LAME.

Cinderella and Prince Charming: Prince Charming only loves Cinderella after she’s had a rat-assisted, magically induced makeover.  Her hair and dress are perfect. She even has glass slippers!  This is not Cinderella as herself.  She is masquerading as a princess.  She’s basically had the magical, magazine cover, airbrush treatment of perfection when he meets her.  They dance and sing together at the ball and fall in love, but she has to run off since the magic spell that makes her so perfect wears off at midnight.  Way to perpetuate the myth that a man will only love you if you have a ton of makeup on, have your hair just right and come from a proper background.  That’s right, you can never be yourself and expect to be loved.  Cinderella flees into the night, leaving behind her shoe, and its back to her rags and reality before she knows it.

The prince then sends his manservant (a weaselly old guy with a foot fetish) out to find his “true love”.  Romantic?  Find your true love based on shoe size?  No description of her hair color,  face, or demeanor?  He gives no distinguishing characteristics of his love, only her glass shoe.   Sounds like a crappy Internet dating service, not the stuff of fairy tales.  The next time the prince sees Cinderella she’s been cleaned up again, nothing of her former life as a maid remains, and they get married.  Joy and happiness forever.

Not all the princes are losers though.  In the third of the princess movies they start to get things right.

Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip: There is little to complain about here.  This is the first time that both the princess and the prince have names, character backgrounds at last!  Prince Phillip and Aurora have an arraigned marriage, which is an archaic tradition, but still common  in European fairy tales. The arrangement was set-up but their parents, who are old pals and want their kingdoms united by marriage.  When Aurora is born the prince goes to meet her, which is a little creepy in modern western culture. He’s slightly older than her (5 years or so?), but this visit is  acceptable considering they’ve been betrothed.

He crosses her path again shortly before her coma when the goofy woodland creatures that Aurora has been talking to go steal his clothes to re-create the prince she’s been dreaming about.   They too sing a song together and dance before parting ways again.   He travels to the castle and gives up his future kingdom so that he can marry who he thinks is a peasant girl.  He gets kidnapped, by the most awesome Disney villain and is possibly tortured while locked in the dungeon.  After a magical assist he breaks out and fights through briers and brambles to the castle gate where he does battle with the Maleficent Dragon.   By the end, viewers know more about Phillip than Aurora, considering she’s comatose for a third of the picture.   After true love’s kiss awakens the kingdom, the couple shares a dance.  They don’t get married, they only dance.  Aurora is after all only 16!

Aurora’s situation isn’t bad, but poor Snow White and Cinderella!  They’re doomed to lameness.  Their princes have no personality or emotion.  I hope divorce exists in fairy tale land.   The love at first sight is idiotic in these movies.   Love takes time.  Not necessarily a long time, but longer than the length of a song as Disney would suggest.  Love also takes two sides.  The Prince and Prince Charming are bland vegetables who are dead behind the eyes.  These princes don’t come to the rescue, they warble somewhere off stage while someone else does the work.

I’m left wondering why our culture has idolized the idea of these fairy tale princes.  They don’t really do anything all that charming or caring.  Only in a fantasy world do these guys have any good qualities.  What good are dragon fighting skills when I have a bad day at work?  How will bursting in to song help me stave off foreclosure?  What good is a giant castle in the sky if there is no love or friendship?  In real life, a prince is someone who holds your hair back when you’re sick from too much Tequila and makes you alka-seltzer and grilled cheese the next day.

In Disney’s defense, they were able to produce a movie that poked fun at the various plot holes and campy musical nature of the princesses (Enchanted) and produce a strong male lead in Aladdin, yet, they still have two new princess stories (Princess & the Frog, Rapunzel) coming out that are bound to rely on the bland leading man. As usual, the prince characters are barely mentioned in press releases and pretty much seem like the same type of droll stand-ins that I’ve seen before. I’d love for them to prove me wrong.

A prince is someone who makes you laugh when you’ve had a shitty day and no one else is on your side.  Disney, I’m done with the false, empty princes and dramatized ideas of fairy tale love. You’ve sanitized the stories to the point where the “the dream” is actually a nightmare. If Prince Charming is the ideal model of male behavior, then we’re all screwed.

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When we first met, I knew it was love.  We spent hours together discovering hilarious movie quotes and remembering long-forgotten TV shows I once loved.  Your wealth of trivia was unmatched by any I had ever met!  You had all the answers for me.  You knew everything I asked you.  You were magnificent!  You helped me grow and strive for more knowledge and connect with others who shared my interests.  Even after connecting with others, I consulted you on a regular basis!  I found, in you, everything I had been looking for in a movie website.  But I’m afraid you’ve changed IMDB.  And not for the better. 

At first you only hinted that I support you. That was fine, because after all, you were giving me so much!  We would go on study dates together — looking for inane film trivia — and you would give me that little nudge, suggesting that I’d need to pay to keep this relationship afloat.  Against my better judgment I stayed loyal to you, but those days are over IMBD!  Your demand for money to gain access has really hurt our relationship. You have locked me out of the intimate details in your world, only willing to submit if I join your “professional” club.

I am now denied the details I so desperately want to know!  I have given to you, even submitted a few corrections and engaged in the community. I understand that you need money, but they way you do it is just wrong. Why do you want me to pay you? You don’t have exclusive information!  Why do I need to “go pro” to read about upcoming movies I’m interested in?!

I’m trading you in for someone younger IMBD.  Someone with a bit less experience and knowledge, perhaps, but someone who will eagerly feed me the information I require.  I miss the days when we could be together without these “barriers” but those days are over.  You’ve seen to that.  I wanted to make it work out but I’ve been looking for your replacement for a while now.  The net is a big place and so many others are looking to woo me.  Others who don’t withhold information and demand I pay up.

This is it.  We had a good run, but I cant live like this anymore. I don’t want to be pressured all the time to pay you just to find out who’s been cast in the Thundercats movie. By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. I’m seeing a few other movie web sites. Its difficult, but its for the best.

So F— you IMDB!  You were lousy in bed anyway!

P.S. I’m not linking to you anymore!

P.P.S. I might still pop by for a booty call now and then.

Any single movie database web sites out there?

(photo by: abhinav.s)

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And the bad guys are clear too.  They might as well be wearing black hats and Tee-shirts saying ” Hi! I am the villain in this piece. I will do all I can to make everyone’s life hell and generally F— up your day!”  Unfortunately life is not like this…at all.  Life is messy.  Real people have deeper motivations and back stories.  Its difficult to tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.  Who are the evil forces in your life?  There is no Death Star to blow up, no Ring to melt in the fires of Mt. Doom.  No, life is not so simple.  You have to unclutter things and find your own goals. They might change a thousand times.  You might think you want to storm the castle, but later change your mind, and in real life, that’s OK.  So choose your path for now…  But know, that unlike in the movies, you’ll take a fork in the road and go to a different place than the one you started towards.

On a side note:  Can you imagine what would have happened if halfway down the Death Star trench Luke had decided he really really wanted to be a moisture farmer?

(photo: Helico)

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The 80′s are hot right now, but do we really need to see it all again?  Wasn’t  once enough?  I can almost understand the Transformers, Thundercats and Dragonball movies.  Almost.  Soon you will read a separate article about DragonBall Evolution, but that is for another day.  For now however, I ask you why.  Why internet?  Why must Hollywood remake everything?  Do we have no original ideas anymore?  Do we really have to squeeze every last penny out of every idea anyone has ever had?  More importantly… Why do we all continue to support this recycling with our money?  Seriously.  We really didnt need the shot for shot remake of Psycho and we dont need this. I beg you now to not go see the Karate Kid remake.  Please avoid this NeverEnding Story remake.  Enjoy the original for what it was.  In fact, stop seeing stupid movies all together.  Please!?  What upcoming rip offs and remakes are you most dreading?

(Photo by Michael Kleinhenz)

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Captain Planet was the brainchild of cable-mogul Ted Turner. The show aired globally on various affiliates and on TBS and Cartoon Network in the US. It combined action and adventure with a strong ecological message. I’m not sure if it was the lame puns or the green mullet, but the show has left its impression on pop culture. Love or hate it, Captain Planet brought concepts such as recycling and ecological ethics to the mainstream.

Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the show, and to celebrate Mother Nature Network (MNN) is going to be posting 20 full streaming episodes of the series throughout the next 12 months. The site was founded on the same premise as Captain Planet — to promoting “green” values and empowering people to make better choices for our planet. Along with the episodes you’ll see many behind-the-scenes featurettes, including a very interesting one about the Captain Planet feature film that started the production stage in 1995.

The film was set in a post-apocalyptic world, similar to the one seen in Blade Runner. The characters all seem to remain the same but with an updated, futuristic look. While I’m not completely convinced that any of this was a good idea, it would have been fun to see Captain Planet (a sketch the featurette didn’t show) and how his look would have been altered for the movie. Let’s face it, spandex and speedos have never done anyone justice. If you’re a fan or new to the series, I’d suggest you check it out. With re-runs being sparse on cable, this might be your best chance to catch up with your childhood favorite.

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