Iron Man lived up to my expectations. Looks like it’s going to be a great summer blockbuster season.

Watched Cloverfield last night. If you are prone to any motion sickness, you probably will not be able to watch it as the entire movie was shot handheld to impersonate an average amateur videographer. I didn’t start feeling sick until probably 3/4 through the movie. It reminded me a lot of the Blair Witch, due to the camera work and *mystery* and while I hated Blair Witch I did enjoy this movie. It’s basically the perspective of a group of people fleeing the city as a large *godzilla* monster is beating the crap out of NYC. Unlike the Blair Witch there is payoff as you get to see the monster with decent amount of detail.

There were a lot of influences / callbacks (probably intentional) to other movies. The camera-work was interesting as it could control what you were able to see and add to the mystery but after about 10 minutes once the *action* starts I wish the director would’ve put a title up saying: ‘pretend the video is still being shot by an amateur but for your sake we’re switching to a steadycam!’ Probably the best thing about the movie was the BOOMING sound. There was sound coming from everywhere and a ton of it coming from the Subs!

I look forward to a second viewing to see how it holds up but I’ll probably wait until it comes out on DVD.

Forgot to mention, Star Trek teaser looked awesome, I’m excited for it!

Saw Dan In Real Life and I thought it was real good! Steve Carell plays a great character you feel sorry and just can’t help to laugh at the situations he’s in. Dane Cook was in the movie and for once I didn’t want to punch him, he was just enough of a jerk for the role to not be overly offensive. I’d suggest seeing the movie, I may even go again.

Lori and I watched I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Another amusing Adam Sandler movie full of typical Adam Sandler humor. The funniest part was the Dave Matthews cameo in the movie.

I’ve realized I’ve been so busy and sick that my queue of movies has grown very large and I need to start watching some. I’ve also realized so far there haven’t been any Oscar contenders, though it does seem like they are starting to come out this month, we’ll see.

After a busy week I was looking forward to a hopefully less busy weekend…

Friday evening I sort of surprised Lori with a sporadic (I planned it) dinner and movie (outside the Home Theater even!). We saw Across The Universe.

The movie is great if you’re a Beatles fan. It’s sort of cheesy, the singers are great and there are a ton of little references. There is a loose storyline and along the way they’ve taken a song and interpreted it into a scene in the movie. We both really enjoyed the movie and it really makes me want to go back to see the Love show again in vegas.

Saturday I did some cleaning up around here, talked to Jason L. Parks, and ran some errands until we left to go to the Revo Downey pumpkin carving event. This brought us to Eric and Ashley’s place which happens to be located on the Peacock farm in Norwalk next to the Target. It was fun to be on the farm, eat chili, hang out and watch people carve FAKE pumpkins! The pumpkins were fake so we could give them to the children of city of hope where Ashley works. Later a few of us continued to hang out and have some cocktails at the Chili’s at the Landing…

Sunday morning started out with me somehow sleeping through my alarm (a super rare occasion… Kevin I must be catching this from you!) I raced over to the Lakewood campus and helped finish the setup, troubleshooting and educating the band on operating the new system. Still half-asleep I raced over to the Downey to start our setup. After church I took a mid-day break at home and then met up with Paul at the Lakewood campus to educate and observe the night service.

The sound at Lakewood has improved so much, the range and clarity was staggering. However, the new amp was failing so I decided to stay and pull it out after the service so it could be exchanged for a newer one with room for a bit more overhead.

Overall it was a busy and eventful weekend. I had fun, worked hard at times and I learned a few more things about myself that I’d like to continue to work on improving.

New Burton Flick: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. Starring Johnny Depp (of course), Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman and Sacha Baron Cohen (wha?).

Interesting looking movie (style wise). Looks to be another Burton remake and one based on a musical also.

It will be out just in time for Christmas, though I’m not sure why. I may wait until video for this one.

Not to be confused with PaulyWally… WallE is the next full length feature film from our fine friends at Pixar! The finally released the teaser trailer online, though if you’ve already seen Ratatouille then you’ve seen this.

I’m allready excited for the movie! This time Pixar also launched a fake company (Buy n Large) website to go along with the movie. It’ll be interesting to see how they market this one as it appears you can already buy products from the fake company (logowear and the likes)… must be Disney on the back end starting to push the product aspect of this project as they do so well/agressive.

In other Pixar news Cars, Ratatouille and Pixar Short Films Collection - Volume 1 will be out November 6th on BluRay… I can’t wait to watch Ratatouille again and in HD!!!

YEAH! New Wes Anderson Flick! Boo staring Adrien Brody!

Check It Out: The Darjeeling Limited

Hopefully I’m wrong about Brody!

Very silly and totally entertaining!

Pixar’s done it again!

Finally had a free moment to see the latest Pixar movie: Ratatouille. Great movie. It’s easily another instant classic for Pixar. I realize that I usually have a bias towards Pixar before going to see them. This may be true but it’s still full of the typical Pixar goodness, great characters, great story, beautiful styling and rendering quality and overall fun good feelings. In fact the styling: overall look and feel of this movie are done so well that you easily forget you’re watching and animated film because it feels so natural. Lori even said, watching this makes me want to go to Paris (boo The French). It’s hard not to like this movie.

Personally I love that Patton Oswalt voices the rat Remy, though I could also see Paul Giamatti in the same role (think Sideways). Overall, a top quality film I’d be proud to show my children for years to come. What is funny is Disney pads the movie previews with their upcoming releases and most are just crap. It’s very comforting to see Pixar hasn’t lost their touch going over to Disney and producing 1 movie per year. Lesson to Disney good movies/cartoons take time. I have a feeling this one will end up in my top 3 Pixar films list.