• OK, time to resume the ponderings posts. I’ve got a ton of backlogged stuff to mention, so I’ll try to space it out for the rest of the week. Some of this stuff will be from over the last month or two (during my connectivity blackouts at the house).
• First, I must wish Battlestar Galactica a happy 30th birthday today. I was a Galactica fan as a little kid. I adore the original series, and I’m a rabid fan of the current remake - one of the greatest series in television history. Darth Mojo also posted a nice history of the cylons.
• Speaking of Battlestar, here’s a very cool look at the impressive book that was given to the cast and crew of the series when the series wrapped.
• Here’s an awesome bit of news from way back at Comic-Con: The character of Mary Ann Marie Beetle from Wonderfalls (one of the greatest TV series of all time) will be making an appearance on Pushing Daisies this season. Since that was also a Bryan Fuller show, it’s cool to see him cross over some characters. His mention of wanting the lead character of Jaye Tyler from Wonderfalls to appear would be SO awesome if he could pull it off. There’s plenty of quirky characters from Wonderfalls that could easily drop into Pushing Daisies (which, btw, is the best show on network TV - which is a convenient way of ruling out Battlestar Galactica, being a cable series).
• Speaking of Pushing Daisies, congratulations are in order for their two creative arts Emmy wins last weekend. Both are well deserved, but I’m particularly proud of Jim Dooley winning a best score Emmy for the show. He does fantastic work on the series.
• And just to prove that I can’t get off the subject of Battlestar, I must also congratulate them on winning two creative arts Emmy awards as well. And like last year, Galactica took home a VERY much deserved visual effects award. No other TV series comes anywhere close to the fantastic vfx work that Battlestar cranks out. Most feature films should be jealous of the show. How they pull off the stuff they do on a TV budget and schedule is a mystery, but boy do they ever.
• While it’s fantastic news to hear via yesterday’s online chat with Warner Home Video that Night Court will be seeing another season set on DVD, as will Everwood (hopefully they’ll get this one right, too), and that Moonlight will be getting a release, it’s downright frustrating news that the brilliant folks at Warner really aren’t going to release the 4th and final volume of Animaniacs. It’s a darn good thing that Pinky & The Brain fit onto 3 sets, so it didn’t suffer the same retarded fate. Come on WB, finish what you started. Seriously, how stupid and annoying could it be to release 3 out of 4 sets for an entire series run then stop? For this one colossal screw-up alone, Warner gets the spot of worst studio for video releases in 2008. This completely negates all the amazing work you did with Blade Runner.
• Mr. & Mrs. Vader
• You think you’ve got dialing skills…
• An actual feral girl - and a sad story.
• Coolness. A TARDIS cabinet for MAME play.
• How to protect your car in a hurricane
• The awesome ninja cat
• The Dream Hamster, indeed.
• That’ll do for today. Much more will be on the way, including some movie reviews. I’m going to try and start doing at least a movie review a day. If I’ll actually manage that will be another matter entirely.

• So, longer space between posts than usual this time. I’ve had a fairly chaotic couple weeks, and have barely been home. So, let’s cover some of the stuff from the last couple weeks.
• With Comic-Con 2008 going on this week, there has been plenty of news. I’m not gonna attempt to comment on most of it, cause there’s just too much of it. But there’s one bit that I just CANNOT avoid geeking out on in a major way. Anyone who knows me knows how big of a Tron fan I am (one of my all-time favorite movies). Heck, I sit here typing this on my computer which sits right next to a Tron arcade machine. Anyway, Disney surprised the attendees at Comic-Con in a major way - a VERY cool teaser trailer. FEATURING JEFF BRIDGES, NO LESS! This sequel has been on-again off-again at Disney for many years, but it’s clear seeing this promo that there’s no turning back now. Despite the fact that the clip has only floated in poor quality cam recordings so far, I can’t help but get goose bumps every time I watch it. Seriously, too cool for words. OK, I’m a dork…
• In almost as big news, Ebert & Roeper And The Movies is now over, and in ending brings to close the end of an era.
• As expected, The Dark Knight smashed records on opening weekend. And it deserves to, as it’s a great film. My review for it will be posted tomorrow, btw.
• This just in from the “I never thought I’d hear these in the same sentence department” - Darren Aronofsky is set to direct a Robocop movie.
• SciFi has released a promo video for Caprica
• Can’t Hardly Wait is coming to Blu-Ray. I’m a fan of the film, and think it’s something of an overlooked comedy gem. Now Sony, could we please have the original cut of the film on this disc, from before it got cut down for the rating? (restoring Amber Benson’s drunk character, etc)
• Here’s a fun Worth1000.com Star Wars photoshop contest
• Looks like us fans will soon get our grubby little paws on a lot of material by the late, legendary Delia Derbyshire (of the fantastic BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who was the key person behind the sound of the Doctor Who theme).
• The hilarity of suicide
• Could it be? Actual season sets of Spin City on DVD? And from a quality producer like Shout Factory? One can hope.
• While I still have my doubts about anyone ever adapting The Prisoner successfully, I’ll be intrigued to see the results.
• In anticipation of seeing the new X-Files movie (for which I will post a review tomorrow), I’ve been watching my favorite couple dozen episodes of the series over the last couple months. While watching the episode titled The Goldberg Variation, which is one of the great 7th season episodes from 1999, I was suddenly struck by the realization that the actor playing the little kid in the episode was Shia LaBeouf. Sure enough, when I looked it up, I was right. Given how young he is in the episode, it’s actually a little tough to see the similarity. It was in the delivery of the dialog that I noticed it was him.
• Sadly, I’ve seen similar shipping stupidities on the part of large companies before.
• I have no response to that
• Eh, that’ll do for now. There’s plenty more that I need to roll into the post, but I’ll try and do another one tomorrow with more. Too much time between posts, dang it.

Put simply, WALL-E is the reason I’m a movie fan. I’ve been a PIXAR fanboy for many years. In fact, I’ve been a fan of theirs longer than most others, because it predates Toy Story. I’ve been a follower of the technologies of computer animation ever since seeing (and loving) Tron when I was 7 years old. It’s no secret that PIXAR was partially born out of John Lasseter seeing the production of Tron, having worked at Disney as an animator while it was being produced at the studio (though he didn’t have any involvement with said production). During the 80’s, PIXAR formed and started producing animated shorts, including the likes of Red’s Dream, Tin Toy, Knick Knack and the historic Luxo, Jr. When I initially heard they were going to produce the first fully CG feature film, I was thrilled to see the final product. And I wasn’t the only one, as Toy Story changed the world of animation forever. Since then, PIXAR has been firing on all cylinders, producing hit after hit, in stark defiance to those who continually predicted each film to surely be their first failure. Always imaginative, PIXAR continues to come through, time and time again. They are easily the best thing to happen to Walt Disney Pictures since Walt himself.

Writing: Despite the fact that PIXAR is on the leading edge of technology, always a step ahead of anyone else, it’s not the technical aspects that primarily drive a PIXAR film, it’s the story and character. WALL-E is a different film compared to the rest of their feature length productions. It actually has more in common with their short films. It has a minimal amount of dialog (their short films are notable for their lack of dialog) and is much more rooted in physical performance and precisely choreographed energy and blocking. The character of WALL-E himself may very well be one of the most fundamentally engaging and sympathetic characters ever committed to film (or saved to disk). The determined nature of the character combined with the effortless charm makes it basically impossible to not love him. I’m not typically much for action figures, but I think I will pick up one of the inevitable WALL-E action figures/toys. The story itself is actually rather simple, rooted in a great many science fiction staples and character stories. While PIXAR has proven themselves perfectly capable of more complex storytelling, they have an amazing talent at nailing the most simplistic of ideas and making them endlessly entertaining. Their animated shorts are just such examples. Speaking of which, WALL-E is preceded by yet another wonderful animated short, Presto.

Production: Having said all that, I continue to have my mind blown with each successive PIXAR movie I see. The technical aspects of this production are peerless. The cinematography is simply gorgeous, not to mention wonderfully dynamic. Production design is also spectacular, from the garbage-strewn, used up Earth to the hyper-real world on board the spaceship Axiom. The editing is extremely slick, keeping a brisk and smooth pacing throughout. The computer animation is breathtaking, not just in texture and quality, but in character animation. WALL-E is a remarkably animated character, both drawing on previous robots such as Number 5 or R2-D2, but also as a fantastically original design. We also get to meet a number of other fun robotic characters.

Cast: With such a small amount of dialog, it’s hard to think of the performances in the film in terms of casting. The real star is Ben Burtt, who is interestingly credited as the cast performer for WALL-E, as well as M-O, pretty much giving him top billing. It’s well deserved, as his sound design is a key component to making the character of WALL-E work so well. It’s no surprise that he is able to do such a good job, given the fact that he’s the man responsible for R2-D2 himself. I will be rather shocked if Burtt isn’t at least nominated for a sound award or two come Oscar season next spring. Other voice castings are amusing, such as having the Axiom ship’s computer voiced by none-other-than Sigourney Weaver. Fred Willard gets to perform a first for a PIXAR movie, that of an actual live action character. He’s a fun choice for the role. And of course it wouldn’t be a PIXAR movie without John Ratzenberger performing one of the voices. This time, they amusingly just went ahead and named the character “John.”

Music: While not his greatest score, nor the greatest score for a PIXAR film, Thomas Newman’s score is very good. Actually, Thomas Newman’s other PIXAR score is the best of the PIXAR scores, for Finding Nemo (also for writer/director Andrew Stanton). For WALL-E, Newman balances the ethereal sci-fi with the action and emotion of the film quite nicely. Of course it features Newman’s typical rich orchestration and unique instrumentation. A worthy score to a fantastic film.

I can’t praise this movie enough. Everybody get out there and see this one. I’ll be seeing it again very soon.

• RIP: Sydney Pollack
• RIP: Dick Martin
• (where’s the third?)
• After a second viewing of the new Indiana Jones movie, I’ve bumped my review down ever-so-slightly to a 9 out of 10. It has a few definite problems, but I still very much enjoyed it the second time around. Speaking of which, it pulled in $126 million over the long weekend.
• Speaking of George Lucas, check out this write-up of “Attack Of The Phantom.” I’m going about hunting down a copy to check out.
• Could it be, an actual multi-track digital music format, the “MT9“? Like the world needs another music codec, I know, but I’ve always wanted the next revolution in music formats to be a popular multi-track (a distinctly different thing than multi-channel).
• Talk about a case of mistaken identity
• Make of this what you will, but it’s staggeringly insane
• Need something cool to drink on that next cross-country trip?
• Oh, I also bumped up my review of Iron Man to a 10 after multiple screenings, loving it at least as much as the first time with the subsequent viewings. I’m not a paid, official critic or anything, so I’m allowed to tweak the reviews…

• I meant to continue my run of movie reviews, but my posting to the blog got back-burnered when things at work this week went completely off the rails. I’ll resume postings here now that things are under control.
• I may not have particularly loved Be Kind Rewind, but it has spawned the “sweded” film movement. While many of these attempts are as lame as one would expect, you have purely brilliant efforts like this sweded version of Tron. It’s shot-for-shot perfect.
• Check out this sanity-numbing flash animation of something that Minolta has done. If this stuff wasn’t pretentious enough, they had to add the aimless piano plunking to it. As I sat there watching this animation of their stupendously fantastical accomplishments in such a globally groundbreaking breakthrough, I couldn’t help wondering who on Earth dreamed up this presentation. And if that weren’t enough, I was presented with the final screen at the end, which is probably the single most hubris spouting piece of drivel I’ve read in a number of years. I won’t repeat it here. You must suffer through the animation if you want the depraved pleasure of that final screen. Now, if Minolta spent .0005% of this effort developing print drivers…
• The SCO legal case never seems to cease, which is amusingly become enough of an annoyance to those involved that they have stopped using properly reserved legal speak in their filings and are openly venting their frustrations.
• An amusing Star Wars advertising campaign from SpikeTV
• Here’s some great online ad targetting
• Adobe has opened up a beta of their new, free, online Photoshop Express program. I played with it a bit, but not too much. What I saw looked fairly nice.
• I would in no way get my hopes up about this, but the powers that be are trying to shop Jericho around for a new home.

• OK, bit of an absence in posts for the last week (more, actually). They’ll be picking up in frequency, finally. To kick things off, we’ve got a handful of over-due movie reviews that’ll follow this posting shortly.
• Neato. USB 3.0 is coming.
• The hilarious and hugely underappreciated series Psych has been picked up for a third season on USA. Psych and Monk are the single best scheduled pair of shows on network or cable TV. Rarely in the history of TV has their been two shows that so perfectly fit together in consecutive time slots. To be honest, and as much as I love Monk, I’ve enjoyed watching Psych even more lately.
• If you’re a Battlestar fan or a science geek, or both, here’s a cool interview with Dr. Kevin Frazier, Battlestar’s science advisor. It’s really a cool interview session, and he amusingly geeks out on 2010, admitting he likes it better than 2001. I’ve always been fond of 2010 as well, though not quite for all the same reasons as him. Still, a great interview session worth checking out.
• Speaking of Battlestar, here’s some info on the state of the show and the network ponderings of late. Now, I know that networks are all about the bottom dollar. Truly, if you think any decisions at a TV/Cable network are driven by anything less than 99% care about the bottom dollar, you are living in a world made of gingerbread and should be waiting for your fairytale prince/princess to walk through that door. But still, as a Battlestar fan, can I just request that the execs at Universal tie their “money people” to a chair and tar & feather them? Just do it for the fan base. They are the pointy haired bosses of such an equasion. What do these money people think their money is driven by? As one of the first commenters on the linked story wonders, have they learned nothing from Jericho? If you’ve got the choice, KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE NEEDLESSLY IMMENSE GAPS IN AIRING SCHEDULES! Seriously. I’d much prefer it if more shows do what Fox & ABC did for a bit with Alias & 24. When you’ve got a heavily serialized show like Battlestar (or Alias, 24, etc), air them as close together as possible. And in those examples, do it one a week, with no breaks. It’s something else if you’ve got a very self-contained anthology/procedural like CSI or Psych. I’d still prefer smaller breaks, but it’s not as critical a thing. Oh, and on the topic of Caprica, I’d love to see it finally go into production. I think the mini-series test approach is fine. It worked for Battlestar, it can work again. Like they say, at worst, they should be able to break even with video sales if it completely falls flat on the air.
• So, figure I’d chime in on the Emmy’s for this year. Overall, a good ceremony. Despite the mocking by many of the presenters, I rather liked the 360 degree approach to the awards, grouping the shows (Speaking of which, it was fun to see Kristen Bell already included with the Heroes cast). Battlestar didn’t win the writing or directing awards, but I didn’t expect them to. At least they won the visual effects award at the tech ceremony a couple weeks previous, which they most surely should have won. Great to see 30 Rock pick up best comedy series. Absolutely fantastic to know that this was the last and final Emmy awards to include anything Sopranos. Good riddance. The highlight of the awards was the Colbert/Stewart stuff. When Stewart & Colbert presented the award that Ricky Gervais won but wasn’t there to accept, they proceded to award it to also-nominated Steve Carrell (and fellow Daily Show alum), who came up and enthusiastically accepted it, I was laughing. But the real highlight of thiers was with the other fellow nominees for writing in a variety or music show. Colbert’s montage of writers abusing him and Stewart’s C-Span dubbing were hilarious. Somebody saved me the effort of editing that bit out to post. Great fun.
• Pushing Daisies picks up another guest actor, Molly Shannon. I think she’ll be a fanstastic addition to the cast. BTW, if you wanna see some truly fanstic acting by Molly Shannon, you need to see Year Of The Dog, a movie from earlier this year. She’s fantastic in it. The movie is charming and excellent as well. Can’t wait for Pushing Daisies to hit the air at the beginning of October. If you can only watch one new show this year, Pushing Daisies (ABC) should be it. No contest. If you can only watch 2, make the other one Reaper (CW).
• Here’s a post that stirred up a little debate & controversy on a handful of sites. It got attention when it made it to the front page on sites like DIGG (where I stumbled upon it). It’s worth reading through, as it takes an interesting left turn in topic. It’s a write-up I fully agree with. He posted a follow-up second post that’s linked at the bottom of the main one, explaining his sentiments, primarily due to the amount of attention it got. I won’t spoil what his topic is really about, but I will say that I’ve seen numerous examples of this over the years (more than most people would believe) and am often times dumbstruck by it.
• So, we all knew this day would come eventually - Google has begun testing the rollout of flash-based ads. It’s no big shock, but it still drops their coolness factor a couple points as a company.
• Wow, MediaDefender is getting pummeled upside the head. First, a bunch of their internal e-mail is leaked, and they poorly try to send out take-down orders for them. Then their source code is leaked. Sucks to be them. This time for more reasons than the usual.
• An amusing write-up about DHS’s interesting spy tower initiative.
• Wanting to learn another language? Try out the new, FREE online system called Mango. After kicking the tires for 5 minutes, it seems pretty simple and nice.
• Who knows, perhaps the Star Wars TV shows will turn out cool after all. It’s possible.
• For those of you like me, who were wondering where all the Blu-Ray copies of Smallville Season 6 were on Tuesday, despite the fact that everyone had the HD-DVD version, here’s why.
• Speaking of the HD formats, here’s a story with a shocker revelation. Consumers are confused and frustrated by the format war? Well shut my mouth wide open…
• Speaking of speaking of the HD formats, I’ve been scrounging up whatever Blu-Ray and HD-DVD titles I could get good deals on or just couldn’t resist getting lately. While it’s awesome to see recent big-budget hit movies like 300 in their HD glory, I get the nicest warm fuzzies when seeing gorgeous HD transfers of older movies. Paramount’s HD transfer of Black Rain is beautiful. That movie has never looked better. Seriously. Never. The combination of Ridley Scott and Jan De Bont on that movie resulted in a visual look far surpassing what the material really deserves, and it really stands out in this new transfer. It’s amusing how many of the urban Japanese location shots looks like stuff out of Blade Runner. Then again, there are older movies that just CAN’T manage to look much better in HD, like Universal’s new HD-DVD release of The Last Starfighter this week. Sure, there are moments that look nice, but much of it just can’t look any better than it already did. Hey Paramount, can we get Ridley Scott’s 1492 on HD-DVD? Please? You morons never even managed to get the standard def DVD released (though y’all did manage to get a nice 2 disc SE standard DVD releases in Brazil!).
• While the general public has become annoyed by NBC/Universal’s split with iTunes, I think it’s a good move. If they can do their own version better, go for it. Sure, it sounded like the main reason the split happened was NBCU being too greedy in their contract demands with Apple, but what the heck do I care? iTunes doesn’t need to be the end-all/be-all. Heck, I’d prefer they not be.
• For the very small handful of people who couldn’t see the downfall of SCO coming YEARS ago, when they started the whole lawsuit fiasco, the delisting of their stock on NASDAQ might actually come as a surprise. For the rest of us, it’s more like “I can’t believe it took this long to happen.”
• More historical proof that Fox’s advertising department sucks. And this is probably the best promo they came up with for the show.
• Speaking of Firefly, it’s so cool to see the DVD set still popping up into top sales lists (#27 on the linked one). I mean, check out that weeks-in-release number.
• Did we really need more proof that The View is an astoundingly retarded program?
• Google reveals their new “Shared Stuff” platform. I don’t consider it useful yet. Once they start tying in their other services to it, then I’ll play with it again. Still, interesting to see.
• OK, one of my longer Ponderings posts. Probably cause I waited too long after the previous one. And I refrained from adding more than twice as much as I did include.