This movie sounds confusing:

Colossus is the top battle fighter for the Red Army and the nephew of General Red, head general of the Red King Army. Using a computerized system and armed with a robotic battle suit, he leaves the Real World and goes into the Third World by way of the Passage World to battle the Death Rebels, outcast robot race. General Red is kidnapped after a massive attack by the robots from the Third World. The Red King Army Council gives Colossus orders to find and rescue the general, but his real MO is to find his kidnapped pregnant wife, Sarah whom also was taken in the attack. Colossus journeys into the unknown to find information on his Uncle’s and wife’s whereabouts and to rescue them.

Heathers 2, unlike like Ferris Buehler’s Laid Off, is a bad idea.

9 or nine?

My head is confused. EDIT: this one’s better.

“DVD sales historically have been how the studios earn a profit on movies, because ticket sales are barely enough to offset production and marketing costs”

I’m pretty sure the Chicago Tribune’s sense of the word “historically” is different than mine.

One of these things is not like the others.

The NYTimes is pretty down on It’s a Wonderful Life:

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

Dr. Brown’s house burned down.

Shibuya Crossing is one of the busiest intersections in Japan. Traffic is stopped in all four directions and pedestrians are allowed to cross the intersection in any direction they so please (this is apparently called a pedestrian scramble). Here’s a video of the intersection at a not particularly busy time, with a really irritating background song that I now regret using:

This intersection was used in Lost in Translation:

Sadly we didn’t get to see the big dinosaur.

One of McCain’s strongest blocks of supporters is in the Vietnamese community (at least compared to other Asian immigrant communities) — do we have a Manchurian Candidate on our hands?

Ebert reviews the first eight minutes of Tru Loved and then writes a blog about it.

My brother linked to an old interview with the Wachowski brothers with one point about The Matrix that I found particularly interesting:

[Concerning the a]gent training where woman in red dress appears
People don’t realize how important this scene is. Because we are all staring at the woman in the red dress! There’s actually twins and triplets that we hired in that scene. And all of the clothes are based on black and white costumes, like nuns, chefs, brides, sailors. We had the idea that Mouse just doubled people instead of making originals. But we couldn’t afford to do it digitally, so we ended up hiring as many doubles, or as many twins, as we could find in Sydney. It was kind of like a bad dream on the set.

There’s something fundamentally sad about going through a lot of effort to do something interesting, only to have it go totally unnoticed by everybody. It must happen all the time in movies, where a point is conveyed in what the director thought was a subtle, but elegant, manner, only to go totally unobserved. I’m sure they’re probably used to it, but it still seems sad. Directors’ commentary tracks on DVDs probably help fix this a little bit.

Anyway, here’s the scene. Now that you know there are triplets in there, can you see them?

I still can’t.

Sylvester Stallone explains the three seashells from Demolition Man:

OK, this may be bordering on the grotesque, but the way it was explained to me by the writer is you hold two seashells like chopsticks, pull gently and scrape what’s left with the third. You asked for it…. Be careful what you ask for, sorry.

Now you know.

I-Mockery draws up a handy explanatory graphic (featured to the right) to make this clearer than it needs to be.  Click to enlarge a disturbing vision of our future. (Mildly NSFW).

Man oh man, I really hope Soul Men is a sequel to Soul Man.

Would it be possible to create a list, from scratch, of every movie I’ve ever watched, or every book I’ve ever read? And if so, how long would it take me?

From AFP:

The protest is not only directed against the anti-immigration movement, but also the meat plant itself, which over the years has left a long trail of workplace safety and environmental violations, including amputations and spilling 40,000 gallons of turkey blood into a nearby stream.

This gives me an idea for a movie, it’s The Insider meets The Prince of Egypt meets Carrie. It’ll make a million bucks!

Despite mediocre reviews and a slightly goofy trailer, I really do love the concept of Noise (just like I loved the concept of The Believer). The poster, like the concept, is great:

I’m perplexed as to exactly when this movie came out, but it’s evidently been released… somewhere. I’ll have to pick it up on DVD at some point.

Oh, and check out the DVD’s cute tag line. Awwwwww.

NYTimes has the most misleading headline of this political season: “Cast of 300 Advises Obama on Foreign Policy.”

Last year it was Copyright Infringement High, now it’s Copyright Infringement Elementary:

How do you think E. B. White feels about this?

The top has played an important role in modern history. Without top hats, we wouldn’t have had the Civil War, World War II or Guns n’ Roses. Since the top hat’s impact on important human events is often overlooked and underestimated, here’s a collection of pictures of famous people wearing top hats:

Abraham Lincoln:

UPDATE: I’ve added a few more famous people to our top hat collection:

Bob Dylan:

Beep beep beep beep beep beeeep beeeep beeeep beeeeeep beeeeeep beeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeep.

Dasani, Coke’s water brand, has a line of drinks called Dasani Plus which includes Cleanse + Restore, Defend + Protect and Refresh + Revive. They’ve got some fruit in them. Anyway, the weird part is that they include both the word “plus” and the symbol “+” in their names, making their full titles Dasani Plus Cleanse + Restore, Dasani Plus Defend + Protect and Dasani Plus Refresh + Revive. It seems like an odd titling inconsistency.

This reminds me of my confusion about (and a little bit of anger towards) the naming of the 101 Dalmatians Sequels. First we had One Hundred and One Dalmatians, then a re-make titled 101 Dalmatians (we’d forgotten how to spell numbers, I guess), then a sequel titled 102 Dalmatians, and another sequel titled 101 Dalmatians II. They couldn’t come to an agreement on how to number sequels, so they just did, you know, whatever?

In fairness to Disney, 102 Dalmatians was a sequel to the remake, while 101 Dalmatians II was a sequel to the original, and they probably felt some obligation to maintain independent numbering systems, but I only blame them further for oddly deciding to do sequels to both a remake and an original in reverse order. They brought this bizarre inconsistency on themselves.

Writing for Dreamworks sounds difficult and frustrating. Via Metroblogging.