Clark, if there's one lesson I've learned from you ...

 I finally had the chance to see this film last Saturday and outside of an instagram I completely blanked on talking about it online, but I’m rectifying that now.

Saw it this afternoon. Was unexpectedly spoiled yesterday on tumblr with a pic of Tom Hiddleston's spoiler tweet (DAMN LOKI). Still think its crazy the buzz for this movie. I wonder how much of this has more to do with Robert Downey Jr who seems to be box office gold since the first Iron Man.

Trailers wise. Frankenweenie looks cute. Brave looks awesome. Prometheus looks interesting. Some Shia Labeauf/Tom Hardy movie looks curious. Battleship I have no interest in and I don't know. No TDKR or TASM. SAD.

( Spoilers! )

I finally saw Red this week. Came out around this time last year, and I'd been wanting to see it since I'd first gotten a glimpse of it.  Starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich & Helen Mirren, it was adapted from a comic that I never read or knew about before the movie.  That said, this was pretty fun action movie with a dash of comedy sprinkled throughout it.  I think the characters I enjoyed the most were the two that I had no idea were in the film from the ads I'd seen of it, the damsel in distress played by Mary-Louise Parker and the agent put in charge of eliminating Bruce Willis' character played by Karl Urban. And Ernest Borgnine is 94!! Amazing to see him still so active of an actor at his age. 

Almost done with S1 of Glee, and upon the discovery that there's only been 2 seasons (thought there had been 3 for some reason) I am hoping to find S2 online so I can catch up completely before S3 starts and watch it on time with the rest of the world.  I have however found a ship that is greatly growing on me (a good sign that the show is becoming one of my favorites) and the ship even has a cute name: Quill! (Quinn+Will)  Of course I doubt there will ever be any actual movement on the show of that ship, I will begin to scour the fandom for fic.

The last two Saturday mornings I've put on the Nolan Batman movies and watched them again for the first time in a year or two.  AND THEY ARE STILL SO GOOD.  I think the most underrated parts of Batman Begins are the scenes with Thomas Wayne and I really like the evolution of that relationship that gets transferred to then Alfred & Bruce.  The Dark Knight gets you pumping a bit more and is nearly a perfect film but I do have some minor complaints. First the underrated part probably has to be the end scene between Dent, the Gordons & Batman. Dent's pain, then Batman's decision to take on the blame and then Gordon explaining to Jim Jr. why Batman's running.  Still gives me chills when Gordon says "the dark knight" and then it goes right to credits.  The negatives: feels slightly too fast paced and maybe a bit too focused on the Joker, that whole plot hole of Batman jumping out the window after Rachel and leaving a whole room of Gotham's elite alone with the Joker and his armed henchmen, and that Katie Holmes did not return to her role as Rachel Dawes.  I'm a big fan of continuity with sequels and having a different actor play the same role in a continued story just bugs me, although I've softened my stance against Maggie Gyllenhaal a bit since The Dark Knight first came out.  Still can't say the same for Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2.

I also watched Tangled again this week and I still love it. Think it ranks up there with Tarzan, Hercules, The Lion King and the other classic 90's Disney films, just missing catchy/memorable songs.  When Will My Life Begin, I Have a Dream, Mother Knows Best & I See the Light are great songs just not the easiest to remember the lines to unlike some of the 90s movies that you can at least say a line.  Although I think the opening number and Mother Knows Best are the closest to that point.   Also don't stream something you own on a big screen because about 30 minutes in to watching I stopped streaming on Netflix and just popped in the Blu-Ray to enjoy the visual beauty of the movie.  I can't wait for the animated short coming out next year.

I just had to write this out because I thought it was a good idea and I had to put it somewhere lol. I was talking the other day with a fellow Potter enthusiast and I started thinking, boy wouldn't it have been fun if Warner Bros. had decided to create a straight-to-disc animated feature of Harry Potter that say came out when Deathly Hallows Part 1 became available and it covered some of the storylines that weren't able to be covered in the films.

Sort of like the Animatrix dvd that went with the Matrix movies or the Batman anime thing that went between Begins and Dark Knight.  I definitely think the Remus/Tonks storyline would have been perfect for something like this since their marriage and baby were pretty much erased from the film, with a series of 10 minute shorts with the voices of the film actors doing the parts.. you could even maybe have done one segment focused on Ron after he left Harry/Hermione and his struggle to get back to them.  Maybe have shown some of the Hogwarts life while the trio was on the road, how things changed etc. THE DUMBLEDORE BACKSTORY!

I have too many ideas.

I see ads for the DH2 video game. It looks good but I really hope it was better than the kinect-friendly DH1 game I have. It was my least favorite experience with a Potter video game because it basically was like a really bad shooter.

So whether we like it or not the end is coming and on Wednesday and Thursday, were the London photocall and premiere for Deathly Hallows Part 2. And it's just so interesting to see the pictures and how time has passed. 10 years. It's strange but Smallville just ended in May and now comes Harry Potter and both started in late 2001 and ending in Summer 2011. Strange how two of my fandoms line up so perfectly like that.


This was the photocall and OMG its crazy to see the kids now. If they were American actors I'm sure they'd have been snatched up for a CW show they look so great. XD


And from the premiere that was shown live on Youtube which was AMAZING. And the speeches were so emotional, I was so happy to catch that part live.

Also there were some great moments caught on video:


Here are the speeches from the end of the premiere.


And after the photocall there was also a press conference where this great question was asked for the cast to give their character's favorite line. Only wish Dan had been there to find out what his was.

I recently decided to finally jump on the Dr. Who bandwagon this Spring when after the first few episodes of the new season were getting some big buzz and I wanted to understand what the deal was since there is such a pretty big fandom.  Outside of a random episode I'd seen last year, I never had watched the series before so this is all a new experience for me.  Anyway, I'm three episodes in (the two part opener + the pirates episode) and it's been an interesting ride.  I like the eccentricity of the Doctor, but I don't know how I feel about Amy and her keeping secrets or whatever is happening to her with the visions and her baby; and still undecided about Rory.  There is a lot of WTF moments throughout the episodes but the Doctor and his clever solutions/revelations keep me coming back.  That solution to defeat the Silence was so damn brilliant my mind literally was blown away.  I'll try to watch more over the next few weeks and once I catch up I can now go back and watch all the DW episodes that are on Netflix Instant.

I don't think I've mentioned it on here, if I did my bad, but I saw Tron: Legacy recently and OMG! I loved that movie so damn much.  I was really surprised with how much I enjoyed it, I hadn't seen it in theaters and had held off on seeing it despite having a copy of it on hand.  But now after seeing the amazing visuals, I really wish I had seen it in theaters.  I mean Blu-Ray is a great second best but it's no big screen atmosphere.  I loved Olivia Wilde as Quorra, and the character's chemistry with Sam Flynn. I hope that if there is a sequel that it deals with the idea that the grid has been without a leader and it is up to Sam and Quorra to bring everything back together into the dream his father wanted originally.  I also saw the special features and really liked the shirt Sam wore in the next day featurette.  I've looked online and the only one I've found is this but I can't tell if it's an official shirt or not.

Lastly, I just saw Knight and Day this past weekend thanks to Netflix and I really don't understand how it didn't do better in theaters.  It was a lot of fun to watch.  Sure, it's very unbelievable and over the top when it comes to the action but you have zany Tom Cruise with quirky Cameron Diaz and there was plenty of laughs to be had with some of those crazy scenes.  Glad i finally got to see it.

So I finally saw Thor this morning and wow! I'll write a lengthy review later but I will say now that it was really fun and much better than I expected.

Does anyone use Sidereel? They seem to have a programmable calendar to follow your TV shows that makes me think of the pogdesign calendar that I use for this purpose but it also has a phone app (iphone only right now so I haven't jumped on and tried it yet) that seems like a handy thing to have on the go.

I thought this was a pretty neat site for those looking for a way to archive your tweets and have them displayed in a neat timeline. I give you Memolane (short for Memory lane I imagine) where besides twitter or facebook you can even connect photo sites, video sites, social check-in sites and rss feeds to have displayed for your visual needs. The only downside on the twitter part is that it seems to have the same problem all of these sites has is the limit twitter puts to the last 3,000 tweets you've done from the moment you first connect your account.

I don't know if I've asked this before on here but has anyone tried purchasing refurbished technology? I've always steered away from it and preferred to just go new but lately I've been having thoughts that anything that was wrong with the tech would be fixed before they sell it and most of the time they come with a warranty/guarantee of some kind.

I did it last year and had pretty good results, so I thought I'd go ahead and play the game once again this year and see how it goes.

The goal of the game is to pick the top ten grossing films in the U.S. with three extra choices to make the top ten that aren't sure things.
--Here's an overview of the rules.
--Here's a page to see the list of 2011 Summer movies (through August is applicable).
--How the Scoring Works:

Getting number 1 or number 10 dead-on gets you 13 points (each).

The rest of the scoring goes like this:
10 points for numbers 2-9 dead-on
7 points if your pick was only one spot away from where it ended up
5 points if it was two spots away
3 points if your pick is anywhere in the Top 10
1 point for each dark horse that makes it into the Top 10
The scoring is tabulated so that you get the SINGLE HIGHEST point value for each pick- that is, if you get number ten right, you don't get 13+3, you only get 13.

MY PICKS
1) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
2) Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
3) Transformers: Dark of the Moon
4) Kung Fu Panda 2
5) Cars 2
6) Green Lantern
7) Thor
8) Super 8
9) Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World
10) Fast Five

DARK HORSE PICKS
The Smurfs
Cowboys & Aliens
X-Men: First Class

Some might remember back in May when I made predictions on what I would think would be the highest grossing films domestically in the U.S.
Slashfilm posted the results and here is how i did with my list:

1) Toy Story 3 (+13)
2) Shrek Forever After (+3)
3) Iron Man 2 (+7)
4) Eclipse (+7)
5) Sex in the City 2 (+0)
6) Prince of Persia (+0)
7) Knight and Day (+0)
8) The Last Airbender (+7)
9) Sorcerer's Apprentice (+0)
10) Inception (+3)
DARK HORSES
Despicable Me (+1)
Robin Hood (+0)
A-Team (+0)

TOTAL PTS: 41 (Not bad. Compared to the featured participants on Slashfilm i would have finished second with my picks. It feels awesome that I was right about Toy Story 3 rising to the top. I overestimated Shrek's staying power but after how Shrek 3 did who can blame me? If i had put it lower i would have had the top 3 exactly right! Then I struck out with the next few, I thought the same about Sex in the City 2 but again proved wrong by the public. I think the public missed out on Prince of Persia (fun movie) and Knight and Day but haven't seen the latter yet. Feels wrong that the Last Airbender made the top 10 and PoP didn't but maybe that was more the power of the Avatar brand. Sorcerer's Apprentice was another fun movie I think people missed out on and I had a feeling about Inception but didn't think it would get so high. Same with Despicable Me, still haven't seen it though.)