Blu-Ray

• Sometimes a news event can reveal interesting things. The crash of two satellites last month resulted in some interesting conversations I had with a number of different people. One thing is clear - the vast majority of people I talked to had no idea just how many satellites are floating around the Earth (roughly a thousand active satellites, with thousands of others that are inactive and/or destroyed), or the variety and nationality of said objects. For a good amount of information, check out the Wikipedia entry for satellites.
• Speaking of orbiting things, here's a cool set of pictures of what's involved in launching a space shuttle.
• And on the topic of outer space, here's another one of those astronomical phenomena that's tough to wrap your mind around.
• Ah, the fun of Google's Street View.
• Battlestar's series finale has officially been split into a two parter (well, a three parter, since it was already intended as a two parter with the first part the previous week). So far, I've been enjoying Battlestar's run to the finish, though last weekend's episode "Deadlock" (written by one of my favorite TV writers, Jane Espenson), was one of the weaker episodes of the show for some time. However, this weekend's episode, "Someone To Watch Over Me", was very good. Composer Bear McCreary has done what has to be one of the single most detailed write-ups any single episode of TV score has ever received in his three part analysis. Absolutely outstanding work by Bear - some of his best for the series. And the fact that he snuck Stu Philips' great "Exploration" intro theme from the classic Battlestar series gets him some bonus fanboy credit. It was another great Starbuck episode, and holds up nicely to the brilliant season 2 episode, Scar. Oh, and congrats to Bear on his recent engagement (to Raya Yarbrough - a vocalist who has often been featured on the Battlestar score).
• Rats. Somebody already beat me to an attempt at a video I've wanted to try myself - doing a Battlestar opening title sequence using Bear McCreary's revised arrangement of Stu Philips' classic theme using footage and cast from the new series in the style of the original series. OK, that sounds more complicated than it actually is. The linked video is a bit too tongue-in-cheek, so perhaps I might make my own attempt at it some day, anyway.
• For those of you who want to wear your Blu-Ray pride
• When, oh when, will us Pushing Daisies fans ever get to see the final three episodes? Turns out the DVD's (and hopefully Blu-Ray) of season 2 can't be released until ABC either airs the episodes or their contracted window to do so runs out in September.
• The Discovery Channel will be airing a new documentary special on the amazing US Airways crash on the Hudson. It debuts on Wednesday, the 4th.
• The end of an era - Computer Shopper will no longer be available in print form.
• Cowon is releasing a very light update to their D2 player called the D2+. I've been a happy user of the D2 for the last year and a half or so.
• So Star Trek: The Experience has been saved.
• Could any jury really punish this mother for her actions? I certainly think the dude got what was coming.
• On the flip-side is this sad but charming news story.
• And you thought your pet was quite the conversation piece.
• No matter how much proof I see of the pending release of the first season of Parker Lewis on DVD, such as this cover art, I still find it hard to believe. Perhaps I'll finally believe it as I'm watching the set at the end of June.
• The Simpsons has been renewed for two more seasons (#21 & #22). It'll be truly insane if it ends at that point, just 7 episodes shy of 500 episodes.

• I'd like to congratulate The Simpsons on making the switch to HD with yesterday's episode. I hate to admit it, but this is probably the first episode I've seen all the way through from the last half dozen years (since Weird Al's appearance, anyway). Well, that might not be true. A friend of mine is a Simpsons savant and can quote most episodes. I've probably seen some of the newer ones all the way through at his place, not realizing it was that new of an episode. At any rate, it was a fun enough episode, with some amusing references to their shift to HD. The big, cool change is, of course, the new opening titles. It's downright amazing that the show hasn't changed the title sequence since it debuted in 1989 (aside from the usual changing chalk board and couch gags). The new HD-revamped version is, in my opinion, perfectly done. It updates the title sequence without really "changing" it. It's still the same sequence, just tweaked and expanded, paying great respect to the original. Here's a link to the video of the sequence (don't forget to use the "watch in high quality" option). And here's a cool photo stitch job that lets you see the many new additions in one brief pan motion moment.
• The new trailer for Transformers 2 is now online. Like the first one, I'm being suckered in by a trailer featuring basically just the big action scenes. If only the rest of the first movie wasn't between the action scenes, it would have worked. All I ask is that the characters in the second one not be as stupid and downright silly as in the first. The few tries for comedy they make, the better. It's amusing to see the debris strikes in the trailer. Guess Michael Bay is getting to take another shot at his asteroids impacting all around the world from Armageddon.
• Details for the Trek TOS and Films Blu-Ray releases have emerged, and The Digital Bits has broken it down nicely.
• On the Trek topic, I had to be amused by last week's fun episode of Leverage. It was directed by Jonathan Frakes (Will Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation), and featured Brent Spiner (Next Gen's Data) and Armin Shimerman (DS9's Quark). Quite the little Trek reunion. Toss in an aggressive performance from Lauren Holly and it's a fun bit of entertainment. Despite one particularly bad episode, I've been enjoying Leverage quite a lot. It's up in the top few best new shows of the season. Realism may not be the goal of the show, but it knows how to have fun with the caper genre, and has lots of great character/dialog writing.
• The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan does a nice interview with writers Jane Espenson and Ryan Mottesheard about the Battlestar episode "No Exit" from this weekend.

• So, did those of you who actually care about Valentines Day have a good one today?
• Looks like the Friday night Death Slot is going to claim two more genre victims. Dollhouse did worse than even the low expectations the slot had warranted. And looks like the move for The Sarah Connor Chronicles was a mistake as well. Thanks very much, Fox. Perhaps it sounded like a good idea, but if this doesn't prove that The X-Files was a fluke hit on Friday nights, I think the network will never learn. What's even more sad is that I didn't love the Dollhouse pilot episode. Granted, this is after much rumored behind-the-scenes difficulties between Whedon and the network (when are these shows going to learn to stay away from the Fox network?). It was a decent pilot, with some interesting ideas and a slick enough production, but this is not Whedon's best work. Still, it's just a pilot, and one can rarely dismiss a show on just the pilot. It's certainly worth hanging in there to see where it goes. Since it is Whedon (And Dushku, and Acker, and Penikett, etc), I'll be watching every episode, no matter what.
• The Witches Of Eastwick pilot has signed on the great David Nutter to direct, basically guaranteeing that it gets picked up to series. Nutter is on a 14-for-14 streak of directing/developing series pilot episodes that get picked up by the networks to go to series. So, we'll see if Witches will make it a 15-for-15 track record. While not every one of them may have lasted all too long (Traveler, Dr. Vegas & Tarzan), they've all been very well done. I've certainly been loving his latest success, The Mentalist (my favorite new show of the season, followed by Fringe).
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars has been picked up for a second season. The show has been more enjoyable than I would have initially anticipated.
• Dang it. Looks like Germany will get to see the final 3 episodes of Pushing Daisies long before the rest of us.
• These boots were made for Walken? Indeed. Yikes.
• And on the subject of Rifftrax, I've been enjoying some of the former MST3K gang's "trax" over the last week or two. Great stuff. And if you haven't been following Mike Nelson's month of eating nothing but bacon, you're missing some great coverage.
• Lots of cool news for the TV on Blu-Ray front from a recent Rumor Mill post over at The Digital Bits. Coming to the format is Chuck: Season 2, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Season 2, Torchwood: Season 3 and Fringe: Season 1. Not only that, but there's cover art and news about all three of the Star Trek original series seasons HD remaster sets. But of course the coolest news in that post is that Disney is, indeed, working on a Blu-Ray release of Tron, in anticipation of the upcoming sequel. I imagine it's going to take a whole lotta work to get Tron up-to-snuff for a great quality high def master. The amount of laborious effort that went into the myriad elements and layers of the film resulted in some rough-around-the-edges end results.
• After nearly a year of deafening silence, it looks like things are still moving forward with JPEG XR (formerly Microsoft's HD Photo format). I began a film/slide scanning project (which I will NEVER finish) about a year and a half ago, and committed to the format in it's VERY early infancy. Still to this day, one of the very few apps to support the format is Photoshop, via a plug-in (which is how I'm doing the work with the project). Good to hear that the finalization of the format is now done and that it is imminent for popular use. It'll be nice to have some real support for the format.
• Conan did a funny rant against the NY Times about their boron mistake.
• And Joaquin Phoenix made a dazed, half-hilarious, half-scary appearance on Letterman.
• And you thought your fingernails were long? Ouch.
• Beverly Eckert is somebody who did not have any manner of good fortune with airplane disasters. Definitely a sad set of circumstances.
• If you've never checked out the ultra-cool, Tesla-coil-weilding music group ArcAttack, you should hunt around their site and all the videos of their performances up on YouTube. Awesome stuff.
• I don't care if this is staged/planted or not (I vote not), this is hilarious. Here's a camcorder recording from the audience of the jumbotron. Great stuff.
• Coolness - The Pong Museum. Happy 40th anniversary, Pong.
• And on the topic of video games (and my previous post about Tron coming to Blu-Ray), and of no particular surprise, Disney is supposedly working on a new Tron video game to tie in with the upcoming sequel.
• And I'll transition from Tron to other modern remakes of fun retro-franchises of my childhood. The first is the very cool trailer for GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra. Helmed by a perfectly chosen Stephen Sommers directing, and featuring Christopher Eccleston (The ninth Doctor), I have high hopes for the fun looking movie. If nothing else, it will surely result in a great new score from Alan Silvestri (who has worked with Sommers before on the second Mummy film and on Van Helsing). The second is Land Of The Lost. It is also helmed by a talented director, Brad Silberling, and the great cast includes none-other-than Pushing Daisies' own Anna Friel. The third almost defies belief, The A-Team. I'm a fan of the series, and had been interested in the number of rumored attempts to do a new film based on the show. The newest incarnation of that idea has Joe Carnahan directing (hopefully not as crappy a choice as my instincts would tell me), but most interesting is that Ridley Scott will be producing with his brother Tony exec producing.

• Again, sorry for the delay in posts. I am happy to say that my picks for 2008 movies in all the usual categories will be ready for posting by Friday.
• RIP: Kim Manners, a very talented TV director/producer
• EEEEEEEEK! I'm positively giddy at the prospect of Rob Thomas being in-the-works with a Veronica Mars movie. I'm a HUGE fan of Veronica Mars. My ticket is guaranteed. Heck, I'll see it at least a dozen times theatrically...
• Here's some impressive data tracking the pirating of Oscar screener leaks in recent years.
• Too wild - a ballet of Bear McCreary's score to Battlestar.  ("Balletstar?")
• And speaking of Battlestar, it's awesome to find out that the brilliant Jane Espenson will be taking over as showrunner on Caprica. Very cool news.
• Cops get to have all the fun
• Here's a classic complaint letter
• ABC seems to be regressing to the 80's (I'm not complaining), with new TV series of V and also The Witches Of Eastwick.
• Coming soon: Google Ocean
• Clap your hands. You know you want to.
• Some very cool long exposure photography
• I, for one, welcome our new jellyfish overlords.
• This is one cavalier kitty (don't worry, it doesn't end like you might initially expect)
• The first review of Windows
• I'd like to congratulate Paramount for finishing the run of Wings on DVD. Few things frustrate me as much as studios who stop the releases of shows part way through (I'm never going to forgive WB for releasing 3 out of 4 volumes for Animaniacs then stopping).
• I'd also like to congratulate Universal for releasing a proper season 1 DVD set for House, correcting their poor, non-anamorphic original set. If only CBS would re-do season 1 of CSI (which I think they were rumored to do years ago, but it never seemed to materialize). Heck, CBS needs to just start releasing CSI on Blu-Ray.
• And while I'm congratulating studios/networks, I'd like to congratulate the TNT series Leverage for a great recovery with this week's episode, after the stunningly awful episode last week. Seriously, one of the worst episodes of a scripted show I've seen in a long time. And the visual effects could have embarrassed a low-budget syndicated show from the 80's. It's particularly tough to watch something that stupendously bad when it's from such an otherwise great show.
• Oh, and it's totally old news at this point, but since I've lagged behind in my posts here I figured it worth mentioning - RIP: Circuit City
• Cool

• Sorry for the full two weeks of down time without a post. I'm happy to say that the project that has been eating much of my time for a number of months now is finally 100% complete, and I have started handing out copies of it to folks as particularly late Christmas gifts. If you are somebody who knows me in, you know, the real world, and you haven't gotten one yet, just remind me and I'll hopefully have a copy on my to give you. I'm gonna try to keep at least a couple copies with me wherever I go for a little while. So, without further ado, I'll get back to these posts and try to get some of the many other projects I've left hanging back into gear. There will be plenty of stuff I'll be catching up on in these posts over the next few days.
• RIP: Ricardo Montalban
• RIP: Patrick McGoohan
• So, did y'all love yesterday's Battlestar episode? It was the LONG awaited return of the series, and the first of the final 10 episodes of the series. I was amused that even with this first one, Sci-Fi is already giving them extra air time (3.5 minutes this time). I thought this was an utterly fantastic episode (one of the best of the series), and one of the darkest episodes of television ever aired. Listening to Ron Moore's podcast commentary for it, he reveals that the network was actually quite supportive of the episode. Frankly speaking, that's an amazing thing. If Sci-Fi really was completely behind this episode, they are truly comitted to this final run of the series, and letting them do whatever they think best for the story. This was a staggeringly grim episode of TV, which is the kind of thing a network would reflexively be against. So, thank you, Sci-Fi Channel. I must also single out composer Bear McCreary for praise, and not just for his subtle and great work in the episode. Over the past few years, Bear has been posting blog posts detailing his scoring of the episodes, and the posts have gotten more and more detailed over time. He'd already stated that he'd be doing some really detailed write-ups for these last 10 episodes, and he wasn't kidding. His post for this episode is incredibly detailed. In it we get some interesting details, such as the following: "Even though you’ll only catch a couple lines in the show, we actually recorded a complete performance of “All Along the Watchtower” for this episode, complete with all three verses, set in this trippy, ambient style.  Perhaps it’ll end up on a soundtrack album one day? :)" And then there are statements that just warm my heart, like: "The low strings perform a driving bassline in multiple octaves that almost sounds a bit rock and roll, inspired shamelessly by the energetic string phrases in my favorite Jerry Goldsmith scores." (I'm a huge Jerry Goldsmith fan)  Then there's his amusing closing tease: "PS: Somewhere in the score to this episode I’ve hidden a clue about the end of the series.  Good hunting.  :)"  I sure hope Bear gets all this stuff into a book once Battlestar has finished up. And yes, I actually read the entirety of all his posts. Not that I follow all the technical music stuff, but it's always a great read anyway.
• Holy cow! Awesome casting news for the fantastic and hilarious series Chuck. First, Scott Bakula has been cast as Chuck's father. And if that isn't cool enough, none-other-than Chevy Chase is going to be doing a three episode arc.
• Hmmm, a Jericho feature film is in the works? I'll believe it when I see it, but I hope they can pull it off.
• For you fellow Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone fans, here's some sad news. As if having the shows cancelled wasn't bad enough, ABC has now decided to delay airing the last episodes of the shows until the SUMMER! With a delay like that, I'll be surprised if ABC even bothers airing them at all. Frankly, I'm hoping they see a DVD release by or before then. And as the article points out, the truly sad news is to see what the crap they've chosen in stead has gotten in comparative ratings. I weep for the human race when I look at TV ratings. What is WRONG with you average idiot TV viewers? Seriously, what the @#%* is wrong with you people?
• Speaking of canceled series, Prison Break has bitten the big one. I'm way behind on the show, having only seen up to the first half dozen season 2 episodes. I'll catch up with them on Blu-Ray at some point.
• The first four episodes of The Clone Wars animated series are headed to Blu-Ray (and DVD, of course). I must admit to liking the series much more than I thought I would, and look forward to checking out the BD release.
• So the Watchmen legal fight is over. Good to hear.
• The excellent Gina Trapani bids farewell to Lifehacker.com. I'll miss having her many great posts to the site, but will continue to read and enjoy the great site.
• I suppose that'll do for now. I've got tons more stuff to post, so I'll try and pace myself. Look for my list of 2008 top movie picks in all the usual categories to be posted by next weekend. I've still got a few 2008 movies to catch before I finalize the lists and get them compiled and posted. I caught Slumdog Millionaire a second time tonight. Great film.

• Welcome to 2009. Everybody have a fun New Years Day?
• I guess Blu-Ray has become commodified enough to start marketing in budget 2 packs. I picked up the Patriot Games & Sum Of All Fears 2 pack for $23 at Best Buy. Curiously, I think the transfer on Patriot Games might just be slightly better, though both discs look nice. I bring up the topic primarily to state that I miss Jerry Goldsmith. I'm watching Sum Of All Fears at the moment, and it has such a fantastic Goldsmith score. His scores are uniquely specific, and sadly it was one of his last few scores before dying in 2004. I'm a film score nerd, and Jerry is my all-time favorite composer (or music artist of any kind, really). I'll also state that Sum Of All Fears is a better movie than most think. Other than the score (and Morgan Freeman, of course), I think my next favorite thing about the movie is Liev Schreiber. His performance as the perfectly downplayed agent is pitch perfect. Frankly, I think the thing I most wanna see in the new Wolverine movie is Scheiber's performance.
• You know what movie I was just thinking would be great to see released on Blu-Ray? Pleasantville.
• The 30gb model Zune players all had a great day yesterday
• Congratulations to The Terminator, which has been added to the National Film Registry (among 25 films).
• Rumors are flying about Steve Jobs' health
• I will be posting my list of personal favorite movie awards list for 2008 within the next couple weeks. Still have at least a half dozen 2008 movies on my list to see. I'm headed out of the house for the rest of the evening, so short post for this first day of the year.

• And another one bites the dust. Say goodbye to Tweeter. I can't say that I shopped there much in recent years. I used to be a pretty loyal customer to United Audio Center. Things went a bit downhill, slowly, once that chain was sold to Tweeter, and I slowly lost interest in the stores. Still, it's a bit sad to see the chain die.
• Eleventh Hour has gotten a partial pickup for 5 more episodes. It's a pretty good show, and it would be nice to see it survive.
• The new Battlestar webisodes begin on December 12
• Here's a pretty impressive looking port in Norway
• Google has bought up 20 million historical news pages in their continuing effort to bring more and more info online.
• I've stumbled into the first glitches on my new Panasonic BD35 Blu-Ray player. The sync of the on-screen video for stuff like the on-screen commentaries for the new X-Files movie discs that came out today has trouble staying sync'd with the audio. I must say that otherwise it's been a fantastic player so far. And the new X-Files movie Blu-Ray discs are very nice at first impression. Guess I'll wait for the next firmware update. ;-)

Spent the last few hours watching the two new 3D Blu-Ray releases that came out today. First up was Journey To The Center Of The Earth, which is a movie I consider more fun that most people likely do. It has little basis in reality, but it's well made and quite a lot of adventure fun. Since I now have a nice, new HD front projection system, I was interested to see how well a Blu-Ray release of a 3D film would be on the projector (and 110" horizontal screen which should give it enough size to help the 3D). So, I popped in the Journey BD, put on the cardboard 3D anaglyph glasses that came with it (4 pairs are included), turned down all the lights and sat in the prime viewing spot. Having seen the film a couple times in RealD digital projection theatrically this summer, I was prepared for this anaglyph presentation to pail in comparison. The RealD technology used theatrically is really quite impressive. But as I watched it, I was moderately impressed with the BD presentation. That is to say that the 3D aspects of it come through pretty well. Of course, it suffers quite a bit from the color problems that go hand in hand with anaglyph 3D presentation (which use two alternating color lenses to filter each eye - in other words, the same stuff they've been using since the 50's). The 3D in this form works with varying degrees of success, but I kinda liked it. At the very least, it's good that they include both the 2D and 3D versions on the disc. 3D may not be the format I'll watch it in most of the time, but it's kinda cool to watch it in 3D for the gimmick. So after the moderately successful experience of watching the Journey BD, I then moved on to The Polar Express 3D BD that was also released today. Rather than opening another pack of glasses, I put on the ones I was using for Journey. As soon as the movie started, I was shocked to find that it was in no way right. I took off the glasses and looked at the ones included with the Polar Express disc, and they were quite different. Not only did the colors look reversed, but they were actually different colors. So, I unpacked the Polar Express glasses and put on a pair. I watched through some of my favorite sequences in Polar Express (a great movie), but was FAR less impressed with the 3D experience. After a brief amount of research, it turns out that the Polar Express glasses are more traditional red/blue anaglyph glasses, and they resulted in the terrible quality 3D viewing experience I was expecting before watching the 2 discs today. Seems that they used a different set of colors for the glasses included with Journey, and I was rather startled at the difference it makes. For one thing, the magenta color isn't nearly as opaque as the red used in the older style, which seems to make a world of difference in the 3D ghosting issues I'd been used to with this sort of thing. With both lenses able to be a lighter color shade (green on the other side, I believe - and they are reversed from the older ones where red was over the left eye), the 3D doesn't seem to do that 3D ghosting much at all. Granted, it still has the color troubles with bright colors in the background or foreground taking on horrible shades of the lenses. However, objects in the middle of field have a pretty good color fidelity, and remarkably good skin tones. Of course, it makes me sad that Polar Express wasn't done with the same combination as Journey, because the Polar Express disc is darn near unwatchable in it's 3D form. At least I don't think I'd wanna suffer through the presentation quality for the entire run of the film. I did, on the other hand, watch the entirety of Journey. With that one, you get pretty used to the coloration issues (though it is jarring in some scenes still). I know they are hard at work in coming up with home 3D display technology, but it's still pretty expensive and a ways off. Even with the improved technique used with Journey, I don't see this becoming much of a standard thing in the home video market. I guess the theaters have found their niche for the next few years. One thing is for darned sure, I can't wait to see James Cameron's upcoming Avatar. Cameron is looking to do his usual thing of pushing the movie industry another 10 years into the future with one of his films, and Avatar will be the big 3D push of the decade. And hey, the film score geek in me can't wait for a huge budget, sci-fi film directed by Cameron with James Horner as the composer.

• I guess I should congratulate Alicia Keys and Jack White for coming through with the worst title song for a Bond film in the history of the franchise. At this point in the life of the venerable film series, it takes a good amount of effort to be the single best or worst for any aspect of the franchise.
• Congratulations go out to Doctor Who Magazine for reaching issue #400. DWM is by far the best genre fan magazine ever published, with a long and proud history. It's one of my favorite magazines to read month after month, and I look forward to 400 more (assuming I live that long).
• I mentioned Pushing Daisies winning a creative arts Emmy for composer Jim Dooley's excellent score yesterday, but I forgot to mention that Varese Sarabande is going to be releasing a CD of his wonderful score on October 21.
• For years, I suffered through watching Heathers on crappy quality pan & scan VHS. It was the best there was for quite some time. Then came the widescreen laserdisc, and I was very happy. Later there were quite a few DVD releases, all of which were quite nice. They didn't add much when they kept re-releasing it to DVD, but it was still nice to have some quality releases of the film out there. Now we get another big step in the video release history of this film, as it is being released in high def to Blu-Ray. I know that given the source material that this will hardly be any kind of reference quality demo material. Still, I would have never dreamed of ever getting my grubby little paws on Heathers in such quality back in the days of watching the horrid quality VHS. How very.
• Cool, there's going to be another 3D Blu-Ray release - Journey To The Center Of The Earth. It's a surprisingly fun movie, and I hope they can get the excellent 3D production quality well represented in the home video format.
• Looks like Fox is going to get it right with some very nice sounding Blu-Ray releases of the recent X-Files: I Want To Believe as well as the first X-Files: Fight The Future film. I'm very happy to see them including an isolated score (on I Want To Believe, anyway).
• Greatest news clip. Ever.
• MediaDefender - one year after the e-mail leak.
• And if you think MediaDefender was evil, try these dudes.
• GMail has added one of the cooler and more useful little features to their Labs list - forgotten attachment detector.
• As a new U-Verse customer, I've been keeping a close eye on news items about them. After Comcast's bandwidth cap idiocy, people are misinterpreting and reacting wrong to news like this. That minor adjustment in their service statement is nothing like throttling. They're just giving better definition to the way they divide your connection between data and video.
• Now this is my kind of humor
• I'll get the many pending movie reviews started tomorrow. Gotta end my posting for today with this. I'm busy doing some rewiring of stuff, to best include the new U-Verse DVR unit.

• OK, the Ponderings postings are gonna have to be split up for the rest of the week. After the long down time, things have built up to the point where I don't wanna overwhelm you with too much at once. So, let's see if I can sufficiently whelm you. And I'm hoping to catch up on a number of movie reviews throughout the rest of the week.
• RIP: Isaac Hayes & Bernie Mac
• Check out this fantastic Willy Wonka recut trailer perfectly titled "Wonka" - it's so awesome, I wish I had thought to do it first.
• Happy 100th birthday to animated film
• I can't wait to see James Cameron's new, technology-pushing, state-of-the-art, 3D extravaganza Avatar. Here's an interesting article on it.
• Speaking of 3D, The Polar Express is coming to Blu-Ray in 3D! Now I'd like to see Monster House and Beowulf get 3D releases on BD.
• Holy cow! 9/11 really was a conspiracy...
• Now this is one very impressive obituary
• The crazy Burj Dubai skyscraper is nearly finished. This thing is insane. Check out these photos.
• Here's some very cool lightning photos from the massive lightning storm that rolled through here in the Chicago area a couple weeks ago.
• Speaking of lightning, you've gotta check out this awesome slo-mo footage of a lightning strike
• Still speaking of lightning, here's one crazy video of a CLOSE strike (warning: strong language)
• And if you think that lightning strike was close, how bout being on a bus as it's hit by a tornado (or grazed pretty darn close, at the very least)
• Google Insights is a pretty cool new service
• Now here's some awesome chess set design
• Too cool - Yoda The Cat
• Warp Drive: yet another Star Trek technology that scientists are determined to actually make possible
• In the market for a new car?
• Here's a vantage point that I bet you've never seen a shuttle launch from before
• Slightly older news that somehow got past me, which I had to learn about in print form in Doctor Who Magazine. Anwyay, something I've been wanting since Doctor Who returned to the airwaves is to have Nicholas Courtney return as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. I'm finally getting my wish. Well, almost - he's appearing on spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures. Frankly, that's almost a better show for him to appear on, as he has a direct history with actress Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane.
• Speaking of Doctor Who, congratulations are due for the brilliant Steven Moffat for winning his third consecutive Hugo Award for Doctor Who. This time for the episode titled Blink, which is possbily my all-time favorite episode of the series (new or old). I've watched it dozens and dozens of times.
• Composer Bear McCreary hasn't done as much posting to his blog over the summer, what with Battlestar between episode runs and him being busy on multiple other shows. However, he just popped in with this amusing bit of trivia that was brought to his attention. As always, the stuff he posts is fascinating in its detail. Not only does he point out and provide clips of the two versions of the sequence, but he even provides the clip with the rejected original cue. This is what us film score nut-jobs geek out on (and BSG fans). Yeah, I'm a dork. A dork who's anxiously awaiting the new CD release of Bear's score for Eureka, which I've ordered, and will be winging its way to my door very soon.