Steve Jobs is quoted as saying that the iPad is “a revolutionary device” and is “magical”.  Where’s the magic?  Well, it’s thin.  A half inch thin with nicely tapered edges on the back to make it look even thinner.  The back cover is a nicely-curved piece of aluminum and the front is a beautiful 9.7 piece of glass with an LCD screen behind it.  The screen is bright has great viewing angles but they still pack 10 hours of battery usage (and weeks of standby) into the guts behind the screen.  And, if you do go to the Apple Store and try one out in a couple months, you will most likely enjoy touching the screen and watching a video on it.  But I don’t think it’s magical or that everyone need save up their pennies to get the $499 device.

On the stage that they presented it, Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller demoed the new Apple iPad while sitting in a cushy living-room style chair.  And that’s just what Apple hopes you’ll think you need.  I carry my iPhone when on the go.  When I need to get serious work done, I go into my room and work on my laptop computer.  But although my laptop is portable and I could bring it into the living room for hanging out or personal entertainment, Apple would rather see me keep this lying about the living room.  I guess I wouldn’t mind, but I’m actually plenty comfortable watching videos and doing pretty much everything on my MacBook Pro or iPhone, thank you.  There will be the millions of Apple fans who will get one and maybe the rich who want another unique computer will get one, but it’s not yet apparent why I’d want an iPad if I’ve got the rest of the Apple family covering my needs.

As per usual, Apple has taken their popular, built-in iPhone apps and made them even more impressive.  With about 5x more screen real estate, the ability to browse through e-mail, contacts, calendar, photos and videos is even better looking and there’s much more room for ancillary features and buttons all over the screen.  And, of course, web browsing is really smooth and slick-looking.  Apple has also re-built their iWork suite for the iPad, building entirely new and intuitive ways to enter text and manipulate documents.  One of the standouts in this area is the input pads replacing the virtual keyboard: one that is a number pad, one that includes more of the common functions, and one that makes it really easy to input dates.  Also, there’s simple and beautiful interfaces for moving around slides in Keynote and text in Pages.  While these iWork apps are not as full-featured as the Mac OS X counterparts, most of the features of its bigger brother are retained, as opposed to the iPhone and iPod touch, where users can currently only view these documents.  The iPod functionality looks more like iTunes in its browsing and playback functionality as well, thanks to the bigger screen.

One of the main features of the iPod touch and iPhone is the myriads of apps that are available for free and for pay on the iTunes App Store, and the Apple iPad piggybacks on that very well.  Any iPod touch/iPhone app will run in a fifth of the screen area just as it is on the iPad’s smaller family members, but you can also quadruple the size to get a more full-screen feel to your old apps.  Even more exciting, though, is the great new ideas that developers will be coming up with over the coming months for the iPad.  At the event, The New York Times showed a beautiful app that displays the paper’s content in a way that resembles paper really well but also gives much more control over to the user in that they can change the columns, text sizing, and easily flip through sections without ever losing that newspaper feel.  No word of this yet, but I hope that an easy way to browse my favorite print magazines in full color comes out of this.

Gameloft and EA showed off games that use the bigger screen, touchscreen area and the new Apple A4 processor to show better graphics, but also to add more display bells and whistles such as maps and gauges as well as more controls, some of which can even be moved around the screen to wherever the user preferred to have them.  Also, MLB.com showed an updated version of their popular app that got me excited for April’s season opener: the Gameday screen on the Apple iPad has pretty much every statistic that MLB collects available on screen or with one swipe of the finger.  Also, they showed full screen live games and the ability to pull up lots of those statistics right on top of the live video in transparent overlays.  That will sell the iPad to those who want more than their transistor radios to follow baseball, I think.

The major problems with the Apple iPad are almost exactly the same as the iPhone: Apple is too controlling to make it a very useful device.  Developers such as EA, The New York Times, and MLB.com have been able to create cool apps.  But, as I said months ago, there are many ideas developers have for apps for iPad/iPhone, but they are not sure if Apple will let them sell it because it may compete with something Apple is building or one of Apple’s partners has created.  Also, especially with a more powerful machine such as the iPad, Apple needs to be allowing the iPad to run more than one program at once.  Yeah, only allowing one program to run makes the iPad seem faster, but all we’d really like to do is play Pandora (or some similar live streaming audio) in the background while browsing a site or working on a document.  Apple, in my opinion, needs to get these types of things fixed and figured out before real success will be seen among power users.

On the other hand, the reason Apple loves this closed platform they’ve built is because they control all of it and get a couple cents for every transaction made with their device.  There are other downsides, as well.  It’s not a great movie device because the screen is square and not widescreen so over a third of the screen will be black bars when viewing movies and video podcasts.  The base product has WiFi including the speedy 802.11n, but another $130 (and then $30/month) is required to get 3G cell phone data access and GPS capabilities, so it is not cheap to use this out of your house where you have the WiFi.  Also, there are a number of features of the Apple iPad that require fairly regular syncing with iTunes in order to be useful.  In a related note, there’s no way to use the iPhone or iPad as a USB hard drive and it is unclear as to how you get your iWork documents on the iPad, especially now that the iPad has (up to) 64GB of storage.

Even though I see no need for an iPad in my living room and in the living room of most people, there are some applications that may be perfect for the iPad.  One thing that Apple announced was the new iBook store.  In the iBook store, users of the iPad can purchase bestselling books that include full-color photos and even videos and users can change the font size and even the typeface of the book on the fly.  This may be a preferred view for those who currently enjoy the Amazon Kindle, and there’s talk of the iBook store selling textbooks and therefore it may be popular to give to students instead of carrying around piles of textbooks.  Persons who are on the road and manipulate geographic data will enjoy applications that use the big screen for maps and built-in GPS and compass data.  Medical applications may find the iPad useful, although some expect that the lack of the ability to write on the iPad to be a downside.  Another interesting application will likely be for artists, as some have been using the iPod touch and a program called “Brushes” to make professional artwork and the brilliant 9.7-inch display will no doubt bring in more creative opportunities.

Overall, the Apple iPad is a fairly impressive device looking for a market.  Only time will tell what that market is and how successful it will be.

First, many Marvel fans seem to think that being associated with Disney means that Spider-Man and Wolverine will be portrayed as kids stuff just like Mickey and Hanna Montana. To many, that’s all the Disney brand means. Remember that Disney is a multinational corporation that owns Disneyland, Disney World, Walt Disney Pictures and PIXAR, as well as other Hollywood studios such as Touchstone Pictures, Miramax, and Hollywood Pictures. Disney also owns The ABC Network, ESPN, as well as a couple music labels and a radio network. People don’t think of Wes Anderson’s first four films, most of Quentin Tarantino’s films, as well as Scream, Spy Kids, and Farenheight 9/11, but that’s because Disney doesn’t stick the mouse ears right on the screen. Not everyone in the world is fans of Mickey and Donald, and Disney still does business that caters to them.

Second, Disney is always looking for some of the hottest properties out there. Marvel Entertainment, a leader in the comic book world, is definitely a great new business to get into when looking for more avenues to make profit. Marvel used to sell the movie rights to other studios for such things as X-Men, Spider-Man, and The Fantastic Four. But more recently Marvel Entertainment has been financing and producing the movies themselves. So far, with films such as Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, the production quality and the reception by the fans has been even better than before Marvel Studios was formed. Marvel and Disney did say that the distribution agreements with Paramount, Sony, and Fox are going to be continued. I can see Disney wanting to buy back some of these rights, but it shows that Disney knows Marvel has done things right and they don’t want to ruin that for the rather small distribution fees. Also, the news also cited that Disney has many hot properties for the female market such as Hanna Montana and The Jonas Brothers and are looking for more products to capitalize on the male teen and adult, and that’s right where Marvel is at the top of the list.

Third, I think Marvel does stand to gain from the help of Disney. George Lucas may be known as the one who started “merchandising” for movies, but Disney definitely brought merchandising to a whole new level and does it in smart, intelligent ways that cater to their audience. Will we see cool Superman or X-Men rides at Disney World? That could be awesome! Will we see more Iron Man toys? Probably. One quote from Disney CEO Bob Iger, who brought Disney back from the brink of losing its magic touch four years ago, was that PIXAR Animation Studios is excited about working on Marvel properties. (Think the action of The Incredibles with some of the world’s best-known comic book characters.) Also, Marvel has over 4,000 characters, but they don’t really have the money to make movies for even a fraction of those characters. With the financial muscle of Disney, I think we can expect plenty more Marvel content in the future.

Don’t get me wrong. Disney could screw this up really bad. However, for these reasons and others, I think it’s too much in Disney’s best interest to let Marvel do their thing and help them out. In that, I mean that Disney sees the dollars rolling in with the acquisition of Marvel, as long as they stay smart. The last four years since Bob Iger’s takeover as CEO has been Disney’s best in the last decade, and with smart business decisions like this, I think Disney may get even better.

Like the Dominion Trilogy that Parrish released the last couple years, Offworld starts with a mysterious hook. Everyone is gone. Everyone. It’s 2033 and the first manned mission to Mars has returned to earth successfully, but no one is there to greet them. Even the animals and bugs are mysteriously gone. After four years by themselves in space, this is hardly the welcome the team wanted.

Thus, the crew sets out to unravel this mystery. Along the way, the reader finds that these astronauts have their own personal secrets. Plus, there’s an anti-social young woman who seems to have spent her whole life on the streets and is the only person to not have disappeared. Not to mention that it seems that nature itself is trying to stop them from finding the answers.

Within Offworld, Robin Parrish creates characters that are as flawed and realistic as they are NASA’s biggest heroes. Throughout all his books so far, the characters have always had some mystery, such that just when you think you know them, they surprise you with a new wrinkle to their story. These are definitely no exception, and with less than a half-dozen main characters, there’s plenty of time to get to know them well. Although the character development has very little action to it, this was probably my favorite part of the novel.

Speaking of action, I found this the hardest book yet to put down. Nearly every chapter ends on a total cliffhanger. As many have said before me, Parrish’s books will someday do really well as summer blockbuster films, and Offworld is no exception. (That is, as long as Roland Emmerich doesn’t direct it and make the climax happen in New York.) In fact, the book was so intense I finished it less than 24 hours after picking it up. Good thing it was a weekend, or else I would have suffered at work from either sleep deprivation or thinking of nothing but what might happen next.

So what about Parrish being a “Christian”? Does the book create some big allegory to our life in Christ? Do some of the main characters get “saved”? Thankfully, no, Parrish’s books are not preachy. The heroes of the book exude characteristics that Christ teaches us like selflessness, hope, and sound morals. Some characters beg a higher power for help, but Parrish doesn’t slow the story down with any theological lessons. In my opinion, it’s great to see persons of faith writing positive, engaging stories that are for everyone, not just a church-going audience.

If you’re looking for a fun, engaging read during the heat of summer, check out Offworld. I’m hoping it’ll be hitting theaters in Summer 2013, but don’t count on it; get the book now and you’ll be ahead of everyone else.

P.S. – Going back to my old days with Robin Parrish publishing his early revisions of novels on the Internet, I hope something like that continues. I don’t read many novels, but because Parrish’s stories were released (at least partially) for free on the Internet, I was hooked. I’m not exactly sure if the first chapter will suffice for me as a hook to get me to buy the book – I’d like to see more to promote upcoming books online.

However, I decided I still wanted to talk about my favorites of 2008. Yeah, it’s about a quarter of the movies I saw this year, but I thought these were notable and that probably not everyone had seen them. So, without further ado, I give you some of my favorite films I saw in 2008. If you missed them, I’d recommend checking them out.

• WALL-E: I expect a PIXAR film to be the best film of the year every year, and this one definitely did not disappoint. At first, I wasn’t sure about the whole bleak future of humanity, but after a while I realized that it wasn’t the point. The point is the passion, love and kindness of both the humans and the two main characters, which are robots. And, like every Pixar movie, they take computer animation to a whole new level.
• Speed Racer: Larry and Andy Wachowski sure set the expectations of their fans high by making what became a huge hit, The Matrix. While most moviegoers will not see this as a groundbreaking film, Speed Racer is as groundbreaking as The Matrix in terms of special effects. Every moment of the film is a rainbow of the most vibrant colors and even the slowest parts of the film are cut together in really fast sequences. The Wachowski’s definitely took anime into the live-action world with this one. Plus, the story is clean enough for most kids and will keep the adults entertained for the entire show as well – just don’t expect a really deep philosophical metaphor or something. (Update: After another screening, it’s not as clean as I thought and pushes the PG rating to new levels with language and some sexual innuendo, so parents may want to check if it is appropriate for their family.)
• Iron Man: Before this film came out, I’d never really heard much about the Iron Man comic book character and wasn’t expecting much. When I saw it, though, I was totally blown away. Robert Downey Jr. plays the smart and geeky Tony Stark, and after a traumatic experience, he decides to build a superweapon – an armored suit that he can wear. The technology displayed throughout the film is futuristic but in a fairly intelligent way, and Stark does a great job kickin’ butt in that suit. Director Jon Favreau does an amazing job with this action film, and stick around for a hint of things to come from Marvel Studios in the next couple years.
• The Fall: This film is just one wild ride. At first, it looks a bit droll as it follows a 10-year-old Indian girl through a 1920’s hospital after she broke her arm. Soon, she meets a young stuntman for motion pictures who had also fallen, and this is where the real story begins. The stuntman begins to tell a fantastical story, which then becomes even bigger through the girl’s overactive imagination. As the story progresses, both parties make stuff up as they go and insert themselves into the story. The film is rather violent and sometimes disturbing, but a great sight to behold, as most of the frames could be displayed in an art gallery.
• The Visitor: A couple weeks ago, we were watching The Incredibles and a man from my parent’s generation gave us a hard time about liking the movie so much. While I still consider The Incredibles one of my favorite films, he did have a point when he said, “Go watch To Kill a Mockingbird instead.” He’s right, they just don’t make movies like they used to. When I left the theater after viewing The Visitor, one fellow moviegoer said, “It’s kinda like the movies they used to make.” Richard Jenkins does a great job as a boring, old professor until he finds a couple immigrants living in his New York apartment and he decides to let them stay until they could find a home. Jenkin’s character, Walter, finds some new passions in life through music and new friends. Some may be put off by a somewhat heavy-handed social agenda, and although I think it’s something important to think about, the main draw of the film is getting to know these vibrant characters.

What do you think? Have you seen these? Do you like them? Feel free to leave a comment and tell me and my readers what you think.

Microblogging services such as Twitter, Pownce, FriendFeed and their social media friends are also another fun place to express an opinion.  Twitter has one interesting limitation – that is, all posts have to be 140 characters or less.  In some ways, this makes it as much of an art form as a short form blogging service.  For my personal account, one of the reasons I use Pownce is because I like to convey a unique thought without having to edit for 140 characters.  But, for more rehearsed messaging, I figure that the 140-character limit can be a sort of editing challenge.

With this in mind, I created the trailer_review Twitter account.  On this account, I post an 140-character or less review of the movie preview, starting with the title of the movie and ending with a link to the preview.  But, after posting a couple trailer mini-reviews, I decided that I’d want a website to go along with that I could provide more information at a later time, if I wanted.  Plus, not everyone is yet on Twitter, so maybe others would like a separate site where the could grab an RSS feed, leave comments, etc.  Thus, thanks to the power of Drupal, it took a couple hours to get a functional, decent-looking website working.  This is the store of Trailer-Review.com, my first-ever Drupal weekend project.  (Full disclosure: It took me two weekends to do all these steps because I was working on a couple paying freelance projects and doing other things, but these processes could easily be done in one free weekend.)  To paraphrase Strong Bad, “Feel free to follow along with my simple step-by-step instructions. I make [Drupal] FUN!”

Step I: Setting Up The Site

To set up a site, you need to have a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server that you can set the site up on.  OK, so I lied, you could run it on Windows, you can run it on IIS, and of course you and run it on Python (or even Oracle, I hear).  So, basically, you need PHP, but the LAMP stack is the easiest.  Set up the site, then download the latest version from the drupal.org website and decompress it.  (We used Drupal 6.6.)  Access the public URL of the site and follow the instructions to install the site.  You will need database information and will be able to set up an administrator account.

Step II: Adding Contributed Modules

Download the following modules for Drupal 6.x:

• Twitter
• CCK (Content Construction Kit)
• Link

Uncompress these folders and place those in a folder called sites/all/modules folder. Then, go to “Administer”->”Site Building”->”Modules” and turn on these part of the modules:

• Content
• Link
• Trigger
• Twitter
• Twitter actions

Now we’re ready to start configuring the modules we’ve installed.

Step III: Configuring Content and Link

To setup the content items, we want to have the title and body as well as the URL for the site to watch the movie trailer.  The title and body are included in the default stories, but we’ll use the Content Construction Kit to create that URL field and the link to that trailer.  Here we go:

1. Go to “Administer”->”Content Types”.
2. Click on the “manage fields” link next to “Story”.
3. Under “Add,” type the label “Trailer Link”, field name “field_trailer_url”, and “Link” for the type of data.
4. Click on “Save”.
5. On the next page underneath “Global settings,” check “Required”.
6. Select “Static Title” for the “Link Title” section.  Click “Save field settings”.
7. Towards the top of the page, click on “Display fields”.
8. Change “Label” from “Above” to “<Hidden>” and click “Save”.

Step IV: Configuring Twitter

For this site, we want Twitter to be posted to any time new content is posted to the site.  To do this, we use the Twitter Actions part of the Twitter Module.  We will set up an Action and then use the Trigger module to make it run every time we create some content.  Here’s how we want to configure it:

1. Go to “Administer”->”Site configuration” and click on “Actions”.
2. At the bottom of the screen under “Make a new advanced action,” select “Post a message to Twitter…” and click “Create”.
3. Type in your Twitter account name and password and then type in the message. (Note the use of the % symbol with specific keywords allows you to add the new content – for my site, I used %title: %teaser %node_url.)
4. Click “Save”.
5. Next, go to “Administer”->”Site building” and click on “Triggers”.
6. Under the “Trigger: After saving a new post” section, select the “Post a message to Twitter” action (or whatever you named it during Step 3 and 4).
7. Click “Assign”.

Voila!  Now we’ve got a working site that posts to Twitter when we post and also provides a link to the trailer.  However, there’s a couple things more.

Appendix A: URL Shortening for Twitter

First, we want to give us more space on our Twitter posts so that, instead of Twitter using http://www.trailer-review.com/node/14 as our URL, we get a shorter URL. There are a number of fancy URL shortening services such as TinyURL, but I chose Bit.ly because it’s a bit shorter than TinyURL anyways. After signing up for an account, I can write some code to request a shortened URL for my longer URLs via their handy API. Unfortunately, in order to get these in the Twitter Actions module, I have to hack the sites/all/modules/twitter/twitter_actions/twitter_actions.module file. I took this part:

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  // Node-based variable translation is only available if we have a node.
  if (isset($node) && is_object($node)) {
    $variables = array_merge($variables, array(
        '%uid' => $node->uid,
        '%node_url' => url('node/'. $node->nid, array('absolute' => TRUE)),
        '%node_type' => node_get_types('name', $node),
        '%title' => $node->title,
        '%teaser' => $node->teaser,
        '%body' => $node->body
      )
    );
  }

and replaced it with this:

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  // Node-based variable translation is only available if we have a node.
  if (isset($node) && is_object($node)) {
    $node_url = url('node/'. $node->nid, array('absolute' => TRUE));
    $headers = array('Content-type' => 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
    $short_url_json = drupal_http_request('http://api.bit.ly/shorten?version=2.0.1&longUrl='.urlencode($node_url).'&login=BITLY_API_ID&apiKey=BITLY_API_KEY', $headers, 'POST', NULL);
    $short_url = json_decode($short_url_json->data)->results->$node_url->shortUrl;
    $variables = array_merge($variables, array(
        '%uid' => $node->uid,
        '%node_url' => url('node/'. $node->nid, array('absolute' => TRUE)),
        '%node_type' => node_get_types('name', $node),
        '%short_url' => $short_url,
        '%title' => $node->title,
        '%teaser' => $node->teaser,
        '%body' => $node->body
      )
    );
  }

If you read PHP code pretty well, you can see that I added one more variable to the options for the configurable Action we made. I’ve created a %short_url variable that has taken the old %node_url data and retrieved a shorter version from the Bit.ly site. To get it to print out the shorter URL, though, you have to go back to “Administer”->”Site configuration”->”Actions” and configure the action we made in Step IV to use %short_url instead of %node_url. (Of course, to get this to work, you have to replace the BITLY_API_ID and BITLY_API_KEY with the ones supplied in your Bit.ly account page.)

Appendix B: Keeping Track of the Character Count

Since I want to post these pithy reviews to Twitter, I want to know how many characters long the title and body with all the formatting is.  Therefore, I created the “count_characters” module.  First, I created count_characters.info file as follows:

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; $Id$
name = Count Characters
description = Adds a custom listing of how many characters are left.
php = 5.1
core = 6.x

Then, I created the count_characters.module file where I Add space to list the characters in all content add/edit forms and include the forthcoming JavaScript file:

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< ?php
/**
 * Implementation of hook_form_alter().
 */
function count_characters_form_alter(&$form, $form_state, $form_id) {
  if (substr($form_id, -10) == '_node_form') {
    drupal_add_js(drupal_get_path('module', 'count_characters') .'/count_characters.js', 'module');
    $form['count_chars'] = array(
      '#type' => 'markup',
      '#prefix' => '<div>',
      '#value' => '<strong>Character Count:</strong> <span id="character_count">Unknown</span>',
      '#suffix' => '</div>',
      '#weight' => '-5',
    );
  }
}

Finally, here’s some JavaScript that uses the JQuery library built into Drupal to count up the size of the title and body and tell you how many characters this will be on Twitter. This is count_characters.js:

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if (Drupal.jsEnabled)
{
	$(document).ready(function()
	{
		$("#edit-title").keyup(function() { calculateTotalChars(); });
		$("#edit-body").keyup(function() { calculateTotalChars(); });
		calculateTotalChars();
 
		function calculateTotalChars() 
		{
			titleCount = $("#edit-title").val().length;
			bodyCount = $("#edit-body").val().length;
			totalChars = titleCount + 2 + bodyCount + 1 + 19;
			$("#character_count").html(totalChars);
		}
	});
}

Note that in line 11, we not only take the length of the title and body together, but add some more characters. The Bit.ly URL should be 18 or 19 characters, at the most, and then we have 2 characters for “: ” between the title and the body and 1 for another space between the body and the URL. Save these files in sites/all/modules/custom/count_characters/ and then enable the module via the “Administer”->”Site building”->”Modules” page. Now we know exactly how many characters our Twitter post will be!

Final Thoughts

For a weekend project, this is a great start of a site hat may prove to be a useful little site someday. There were a couple other things I did, such as customizing the color of the Garland theme, customizing the comment settings, and enabling OpenID for commenters to login via OpenID if they like. Of course, there’s always more work to do, such as creating a custom design, added embedded versions of movie trailers to each post, and maybe integrating with other social media services. But that’s for another weekend project!

Because that’s what this movie is about: WALL-E is the protector of EVE and the life she carries inside of her. It’s one of the most beautiful — and perhaps unexpected — metaphors for life, and the role of a husband to protect his wife and family, that I’ve ever seen.

This is just a tiny bit of a great article, so go read it already. Also, check out Joe’s blog for more great stuff about gaming, life, and cool movies. Who knows, you might even find Joe and I doing some sort of discussion podcast sometime in the future. I know, that sounds scary. I’d probably get bored listening to it myself.

First we stood out on the Endless Bridge, which is a cantilever stuck 178 feet out of the side of the building and puts you right above the center of the beautiful downtown river area.  We watched a huge wall cloud move across the sky and even withstood 70mph winds for a minute or two.  Then, of course, the rain started pouring, so we went into the indoor part of the Endless Bridge.

After hanging out in there for a bit, we went up to the Dowling Studio space, also known as the “Yellow Box”.  This was an even higher overlook of the river area, but all the windows were colored a bright yellow.  I’d never been in this space, but it was really fun to watch the sun set and lightning flash through the sky in this alternate yellow world.  After the rain fully subsided, we went back to the Endless Bridge to see the lightining flash through the sky in its real bright purple hue.  It was amazing to see because you could see lightning for miles around in all directions.

Towards the end of that, we watched the huge lit-up photos from the Red Bull Illume exhibit turn on and it looked amazing.  (You can see a photo taken from the same spot on the home page of the Red Bull Illume site if you browse the photos at the bottom a bit.)  We then went down there and found some amazing photos, most of extreme sports of all kinds.  They were amazing, and if you have time some evening to come down in the next week, you really should do it.  The exhibit seems to be open pretty late, because the photos were still lit up at midnight when Isaac and I left the theater as well.

That’s right, Isaac and I actually had to hurry past the Red Bull exhibit because we wanted to catch this weekend’s blockbuster film, Hellboy II: The Golden Army.  In usual St. Anthony Main theater fashion, we walked in 3 or 4 minutes late for the start of the film due to 10 minutes of ticketing lines, but the rest of the experience was positive.  The second installment of Guillermo Del Toro’s Dark Horse Comics adaptation almost matches the first one, although most of the “character development” revolved around a romance of some sort for almost every major character.  It was nice to see more of Doug Jones’s Abe Sapien character, although he rarely kicks butt.  Del Toro goes a bit overboard, in my opinion, with the sets and otherworldly characters, making some look too much like Pan’s Labrynth, which brought me a bit out of the Dark Horse Comics characters, I think.  Ron Perlman continued to do a great job as the reluctant but prideful superhero, Hellboy, while I felt Selma Blair’s character continues just to be an emotional wreck.  The theater was pretty packed, but who knows if the series will warrant another installment or if Guillermo Del Toro will be doing it after the next four years or so on the Hobbit projects.  All in all, it was an entertaiing film, but definitely not one I’m gonna run out and buy on DVD (just like the last one).

I’ve only seen a couple movies so far this year, but so far my favorites have been the ones I wasn’t expecting – I had see the movie trailers and wasn’t planning to go see them. After the movie was in theaters, there was enough buzz (not hype) about the films that I ended up catching them in the theaters. These films were Iron Man and Speed Racer. The former was a fun story of another self-made superhero like Batman – Tony Stark realizes that someone has to stop the violence in this world and therefore starts his quest to build an armored suit filled with amazing nanotechnology. It was lots of fun.

I just got back from seeing Speed Racer, which was an amazing sight to behold. Probably my favorite thing was that every frame of the film was filled with the most vibrant rainbow of colors, even more than the amazing Curse of the Golden Flower. It’s the most psychedelic film I’ve probably ever seen and the twisting, ridiculous tracks the characters race on were more than exhilarating for the viewer (think MegaRace taken to a whole new level, for you old-school PC gamers). Also, it was possibly the most fast-paced movie I’ve seen throughout the film’s 135 minutes, with most slower plot points mashed together via fast cuts and innovative wipes. The plot was a heartwearming tale of fast-paced racing, family values and sportsmanship pitted against those who make the game into big business.

Although the film was only rated PG, I don’t think it’s a great one for young kids. One of the major comedic elements is a young kid and the family monkey, which are obviously aimed at the kids, but there is some language and a bit too many scenes of immodest women to show this to the youngsters, in my opinion. John Goodman and Susan Sarandon do a great job as parents of the main character, Speed Racer, as he deals with his growing success and making his own decisions.

Of course, this time of year is the time of the summer blockbuster, a huge movie event that is full of special effects and is, for sure, best viewed on a big screen. These films are from the first crop of the year’s blockbusters, and so far it’s been a good ride. The other major blockbusters, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian were both more of a spectacle than their previous incarnations, but both failed to blow the mind in the same way as these newcomers did (as is often the case). Of course, in any given year there are the non-blockbuster movies, which I get to whenever I can because they’re not something you have to witness in the theaters. These types of films just aren’t the same at home on DVD, at least not yet (or at any of my friend’s houses).

For any of those who are wondering, here’s the films I’m looking forward to checking out this summer (although we’ll see if they’re all as good as I hope):

• The Incredible Hulk (June 13) – Edward Norton can make this one work, I think.
• The Happening (June 13) – Hopefully M. Night Shyamalan can get Mark Whalberg to do something interesting for the first time.
• Get Smart (June 20) – This one might be good.
• Wall-E (June 27) – No doubt. This is the movie event of the year.
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army (July 11) – Guillermo del Toro is back to work his magic.
• The Dark Knight (July 18) – Christopher Nolan is back for an amazing thrill ride.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars (August 15) – Who knows if this will be good, but it looks like it could be a nice 3-D animated fleshing out of the Clone Wars.

Well, maybe it’s not that people don’t respect my opinion; maybe it’s that I have too many types of films I enjoy. I mean, my favorites from last year were Ratatouille, Hot Fuzz, and There Will Be Blood – how many people do you know that liked all of those films and has a modest collection of Disney films in their DVD collection? The only one I know is me.

First and foremost, there’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, written by J.R.R. Tolkien and directed for the screen by Peter Jackson. This one was epic. Everything was so masterfully done that every detail screamed “this is Middle Earth”. With the long film runtimes (and especially in the extended editions), they were able to put in many of those touches that made it as close as you can get to authentic Tolkien. The films were made on such a big scale that they were events to behold. There were a number of aspects of the films that grossly misrepresented and misinterpreted Tolkien’s vision, in my opinion, but the films were, overall, very enjoyable and at least in the overall spirit of the Middle Earth that Tolkien chronicled.  I went to see each movie a couple times in the theater and watched all the extended versions once.

The second and most contemporary of the fantasy epics is the Harry Potter series, which tells the story of young Harry Potter in his years at Britain’s foremost school of wizardry.  The first couple films were slightly lacking in the special effects department, but all of them solidly brought J.K. Rowling’s magical world to a vibrant life.  I’ve enjoyed every film immensely, but for some reason I’ve never had the desire to watch any of them a second time.  I guess I don’t watch movies numerous times unless I find them so cool that I want to show them to all my friends, but I never felt that with Harry’s movies.  Maybe it’s just because everyone else is into them.  Maybe it’s because it follows the books so closely that I feel like I’ve already seen it before.  And maybe it’s because I find the book was better and my imagination found it cooler, but I’m not sure.

This brings us to the first installment of The Chronicles of Narnia in feature-length film, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I went to see it with a friend on opening weekend just a week after reading the novel it was based on.  I’d read it a whole number of times in my childhood, but I found it still was a great read even in my mid-twenties.  However, when I saw the film, I was a little disappointed.  I didn’t feel the filmmakers captured the epic land of Narnia that well, and I found the movie’s special effects a bit too unpolished to be believable.  It was a good, faithful adaptation of the book, but it lacked the connection I felt with Jackson’s interpretation of MIddle Earth.  Even in the couple years since the Wardrobe released, I’ve had no strong desire to give it another look.

In my opinion, Prince Caspian is going to be pretty hard to make into a film.  The book lacks connection with the main characters for long gaps, as the first third follows the Pevensie’s as they rediscover Narnia, the second talks about the titular character, and the ending has almost all of the action and brings both parties together.  It could easily be a problem for the pacing and development of the film.  Also, with the basis of the first film firmly behind us, there’s actually not that complicated of a plot, so I can see why the old BBC version just spun it into the start of Dawn Treader.

All this is to say that I hope they can do better with Prince Caspian and not just try to churn out a sequel.  It could be with less to do in the 140 minutes that they will do a better job of bringing Narnia to life.  Walden Media has historically done a great job with creating films from books, and with Douglas Gresham helping out with production just like the last film, it could be the best film of the year.  On the other hand, Andrew Adamson’s only film experience besides Wardrobe is directing the immoral and unintelligent Shrek and Shrek 2, so there’s very little depth to draw upon from the director.  I’m still going to see it this Friday, but here’s to hoping that the production team can overcome the film’s inherent hurdles.  If not, we have next to look forward to a possible adaptation of The Screwatape Letters sometime in the next couple years and the film adaptation of one of my favorites, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in May 2010.

From the preview, the film looks promising. There’s evil witches and a boy who loves a girl. The boy says he’s going to fetch a fallen star for the girl. Robert DeNiro seems to play a pirate of a zepplin pirate ship. There’s kings and princes and other magical stuff. But this isn’t The Princess Bride.

Much like movies such as Shrek, Stardust quickly maintains that the magic is poisoned by making sure that every character from the land of Stormhold is dysfunctional like every other modern movie. The hero of the movie is borne of a one-night stand with a princess enslaved to a witch. We find that the king of the land of Stormhold is determined by all of the seven brothers killing each other and the last living heir is the ruler (so much that the princes are named only in the order of which they were born). Robert DeNiro is not a swashbuckling pirate, but a cross-dresser who is trying to hide is true effeminate side from his crew. Also, most if not all of the characters flaunt their sexuality to the point where the film almost surpassed the PG-13 rating.

I don’t know about my readers, but when I’m looking for a good fantasy or fairytale film, I’m going to stick with Tolkien or Disney, who know how to put together a convincing story without insulting the viewer’s sensibilities. Speaking of which, Enchanted is a modern fairy tale that doesn’t totally ruin the boundaries of the genre but still plays with it in intriguing ways. Of course, don’t watch these with your kids unless you’re ready to answer some of the hard questions of life.