Sigourney Weaver narrates this first look at the world of Pandora, as portrayed in James Cameron’s epic new motion picture, Avatar.

King Kong is a 1976 American motion picture produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by John Guillermin. It is a remake of the 1933 classic King Kong, about how a giant ape is captured and imported to New York City for exhibition.

The remake’s screenplay was written by Lorenzo Semple Jr., based on the original movie story written by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace, which had been adapted into the 1933 screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose. It starred Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, and Jessica Lange, in her first movie role, playing a part similar to the one made famous in the original by Fay Wray.

Jessica Lange in King Kong 1976

Directed by
  John Guillermin

Writers
  Idea
   Merian C. Cooper and
   Edgar Wallace
  1933 screenplay
   James Creelman and
   Ruth Rose
  Screenplay
   Lorenzo Semple Jr.

Producers              
  Dino De Laurentiis … producer
  Federico De Laurentiis … executive producer
  Christian Ferry … executive producer

Cast
  Jeff Bridges … Jack Prescott
  Charles Grodin … Fred Wilson
  Jessica Lange … Dwan
  John Randolph … Captain Ross
  Rene Auberjonois … Roy Bagley
  Julius Harris … Boan
  Jack O’Halloran … Joe Perko
  Dennis Fimple … Sunfish
  Ed Lauter … Carnahan
  Jorge Moreno … Garcia
  Mario Gallo … Timmons
  John Lone … Chinese Cook
  Garry Walberg … Army General
  John Agar … City Official
  Keny Long … Ape Masked Man
  Sid Conrad … Petrox Chairman
  George Whiteman … Army Helicopter Pilot
  Wayne Heffley … Air Force General
  Forrest J Ackerman … Fleeing Extra in Crowd (uncredited)

Rick Baker as King Kong

Make Up Department
  Del Acevedo … makeup artist
  Rick Baker … makeup effects
  Jo McCarthy … hair stylist
  Rob Bottin … makeup effects

Special Effects Department
  Joe Day … special effects
  Carlo Rambaldi … special effects
  Glen Robinson … special effects
  Terry W. King … special effects technician (uncredited)
  Andrew Miller … special effects (uncredited)
  Wayne Rose … special effects crew (uncredited)

Visual Effects Department
  Lou Lichtenfield … matte artist
  Barry Nolan … photographic effects assistant
  Aldo Puccini … miniature coordinator
  Frank Van der Veer … photographic effects supervisor
  Harold E. Wellman … additional photographic effects

Thunderbirds Are Go is a British science fiction-adventure motion picture released in 1966. It was the first film based on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s popular Supermarionation television series Thunderbirds, and followed the first manned mission to Mars.

Trivia:

“Sleeping and Waking” is the latest film from director Joe Banno.

The Story: Sullivan Daniels (Jeff Allin) is an artist known for extremely detailed and harsh religious paintings and woodcuts. Faced with terminal cancer, he opts for an experimental treatment. Following the procedure he can’t draw as he once had, his mother believes he’s thwarted God’s will and his wife won’t touch him. He now must find a way back from the darkness of his decision.

Stars: Jeff Allin, Hope Lambert, Helen Hedman, and Ray Ficca.

For more information, check out the website at: www.sleepingandwaking.com

NOTE: The movie opens on Friday, December 4, 2009 at the Regal Park Terrace Stadium 6 theaters in Charlotte, NC.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is a 1986 motion picture released by Paramount Studios. It is the fourth feature film based on the Star Trek science fiction television series. It completes the story begun in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and continued in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Intent on returning home to Earth to face trial for their crimes, the former crew of the USS Enterprise travels to Earth’s past in order to save their present from a probe attempting to communicate with long-dead humpback whales.

After directing The Search for Spock, cast member Leonard Nimoy was asked to direct the next feature, and given greater freedom to the film’s content. Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett conceived a story with an environmental message. After dissatisfaction with the first script produced by Steeve Meerson and Peter Krikes, Paramount hired The Wrath of Khan writer and director Nicholas Meyer, who collaborated with Bennett to rewrite the script.

James Horner, the composer for the previous two films, declined to return; Nimoy’s friend Leonard Rosenman was given the job instead.

The film earned four Academy Award nominations, for Best Cinematography, Best Effects, Best Music and Best Sound.

Trivia:

• The device Dr. McCoy uses to heal Chekov’s head injury is part of a model kit of an AMT movie version Klingon Battlecruiser.
• The punk on the bus is played by associate producer Kirk R. Thatcher. He also wrote the song that is playing on the boom box during his scene.
• Some shots of the whales were in fact four foot long animatronics models. Four models were created, and were so realistic that after release of the film, US fishing authorities publicly criticized the film makers for getting too close to whales in the wild. The scenes involving these whales were shot in a pool underneath a Paramount parking lot. The shot of the whales swimming past the Golden Gate Bridge were filmed on location, and nearly ended in disaster when a cable got snagged on a nuclear submarine and the whales were towed out to sea.
• The film was originally supposed to have Eddie Murphy instead of Catherine Hicks. Murphy was supposed to have played a professor concerned with UFO’s who spots the de-cloaking Klingon ship at the Super Bowl. Apparently, all others are convinced the ship is a half-time special effect while Murphy believes it is real. Paramount declined this script for two reasons: Paramount didn’t want to combine their two most profitable franchises (“Star Trek” (1966) and Beverly Hills Cop (1984)), and Murphy had signed on to do The Golden Child (1986) instead.
• According to George Takei, when McCoy, Scotty and Sulu are standing in front of the building with Yellow Pages advertisement, a door opens and an Asian woman appears. The scene in the movie ends at this point but originally this woman was to begin shouting for a young boy named Hikaru, who would run into Sulu. Sulu would realize that this boy was his great-great-(etc.) grandfather. The young boy hired for this scene began to cry on the set before the shot and they were unable to get him to do the scene. With no one to replace him, the scene was never shot.
• Sulu (George Takei) was supposed to leap into the Huey helicopter when the pilot was outside, looking the other way, and make off with it. Takei had just run the San Francisco marathon when they were supposed to shoot this scene, and was too sore to leap into the helicopter. They tried having a grip throw him in, but couldn’t get it to look realistic, so the scene was cut. In the final edit, Sulu is shown talking to the pilot, then shows up flying the helicopter a few minutes later.
• Cameo: [Bob Sarlatte] The waiter in the restaurant.
• The Cetacean Institute is actually the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California. The Institute’s logo also belongs to the Aquarium.
• When Kirk, McCoy, and Gillian first enter the hospital and are walking around trying to locate Chekov, a voice on a loudspeaker in the background says “Paging Dr. Zober… Dr. Sandy Zober.” Sandra Zober was director/star Leonard Nimoy’s wife at the time.
• The officer on the Saratoga who announces that the thruster controls are offline is of the same alien race as the Federation President in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). This race has never been officially named, but some promotional materials identify the race as the Efrosians (named after Mel Efros, unit production manager for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)).
• During Spock’s memory tests, the computer speaks very rapidly, almost too rapidly to discern. The first question it asks Spock is, “Who said ‘Logic is the cement of our civilization, with which we ascend from chaos, using reason as our guide’?”
• The time-travel method used in the film comes from the “Star Trek” (1966) episode ‘Tomorrow is Yesterday’.
• A scene written for but cut from the film explained why Saavik stays on Vulcan: she is pregnant with Spock’s child, stemming from an event in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). This was the character’s final appearance in a Star Trek film.
• Jane Wyatt’s final cinematic appearance.
• The computer graphic consoles that became standard on the 24th century Star Trek bridges and also called “Okudagrams” (named for designer Michael Okuda), make their first appearance on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-A. It is also the final appearance of the entire original Star Trek movie bridge set as only small parts were reused for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989).
• Scenes of the Enterprise’s final moments and its self-destruct were reused from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984).
• During the film’s 1 hour 59 minute runtime, there’s only a total of about 1 minute 13 seconds worth of shots of the Enterprise – the shortest amount of time the Enterprise is seen on screen in any Star Trek movie. The first 33 seconds of it during the beginning courtroom scene was stock footage of the Enterprise’s destruction from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). The other 40 seconds of it were shots of the Enterprise-A towards the end.
• One early draft script was subtitled ‘The Trial of James T. Kirk’. This script involved Kirk being ‘court-martial’ed at the request of the Klingons, who were indignant about the events in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). One particularly interesting facet of this script is that it included the character of Harry Mudd (Roger C. Carmel)as a character witness. When the time-travel script was approved instead, the trial was included as a minor sequence. The trial-by-Klingons idea (and portions of the dialogue) was later re-used in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).
• Cameo: [Jane Wiedlin] The Go-Go’s rhythm guitarist appears as the captain of a ship rendered powerless by the Probe. She is seen on the right of three huge video screens amid a chaotic control room on Earth. Her line: ‘The condition remains the same. The Probe has neutralized all power supplies. We are functioning on reserves only’.
• The captain of the USS Saratoga, seen at the start of the film, was the first female captain ever seen in a Star Trek story. The success of this film led to offers by several US TV networks to produce a new Trek TV series with the original cast. Instead, Paramount gave the green light to produce the syndicated “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987) starring an all new cast. A woman (Kate Mulgrew) was cast as ship’s captain in the Star Trek series Star Trek series ‘Star Trek: Voyager (1995)’.
• The miniature of the Spacedock interior (some fifteen feet across) had been destroyed at the end of production on the previous film and had to be rebuilt from scratch.
• As part of a deal with reincarnating Spock in the previous film, Leonard Nimoy took the director’s chair.
• When Chekov is running through the Enterprise (the aircraft carrier), trying to get away from the Marines, the words “Escape Route” and an arrow can be seen on the bulkhead walls.
• The ‘USS Enterprise CVN-65′ was actually The USS Ranger CV-61. The Enterprise was out to sea during filming.
• According to Spock’s computer on Vulcan, Kiri-Kin-Tha’s First Law of Metaphysics states that “Nothing unreal exists”.
• Kirk R. Thatcher did such extensive work on the film that he was promoted from “Production Assistant/Visual Effects” to “Associate Producer” by the end of the film.
• Scenes filmed on location in San Francisco marked the first time any Star Trek installment had been filmed outside the Los Angeles region.
• When Nicholas Meyer was asked to help with the script, the first thing he wanted to do was change the location from San Francisco to Paris because he had previously written and directed a movie about time travel involving San Francisco called Time After Time (1979). But since Starfleet is supposed to be located in San Francisco, he was overruled. Oddly enough, scenes in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), as well as scenes from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” (1993) depict the Office of the Federation President to be in Paris.
• The scene with the punk music on the bus was written by Nicholas Meyer to revive a scene that was cut from his movie Time After Time (1979), that had H.G. Wells encountering a teenager with music blaring from a boom box.
• The scene with Chekov and Uhura kneeling on rocks looking at the Aircraft Carriers was shot in San Diego at North Island Naval Air Station.
• It is often claimed that this is the only Star Trek film where no weapons are fired. This is incorrect, as Kirk uses his phaser to weld a door shut, and the whaler fires its harpoon. Chekov also tries to use his phaser, though it doesn’t work. It is also one which no cast member from this film is killed, as the only deaths were from the reused footage from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984).
• The whale hunters speak Finnish. The older Finnish hunter says “What the hell was it, that hit the harpoon?”
• The film bore the dedication, “The cast and crew of Star Trek wish to dedicate this film to the men and women of the spaceship Challenger whose courageous spirit shall live to the 23rd century and beyond…”
• The computer that Scotty uses to show transparent aluminum was originally going to be an Amiga, but Commodore would only provide a computer if they bought it. Apple was willing to loan them the Mac.
• When the alien ship is approaching Earth at the beginning to look for the humpback whales, there were originally subtitles saying things like “Where are you? Can you hear us?”. The studio wanted to keep them despite Leonard Nimoy’s objections. In the first test screening, however, test audiences indicated the subtitles were unnecessary so they were cut.
• For the shot of Sulu flying the helicopter over San Francisco bay, the filmmakers tried to get a pilot to fly a Huey, but they were unable to. The long shot was accomplished using a radio controlled model from Japan.
• The Probe is modelled after Rama from Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama”.
• While attempting to escape from the security agents aboard the USS Enterprise, Chekov tosses his phaser to one of the agents; although it is representative of twenty-third century technology, it is never retrieved.
• After Leonard Nimoy allowed Kirk R. Thatcher to play the punk on the bus, Thatcher expressed displeasure at the music chosen for his boom box on the bus scene. He then asked to write and perform a song that he felt would be more representative of his character than the pre-selected music that was to appear. The result was the song “I Hate You”.
• The original script called for the whales to be intercepted during aerial transport over the Golden Gate Bridge. San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein objected, saying that the city already had enough trouble with jumpers on the bridge, and that the scene would only encourage more. This led to the scene showing capture of the whales in Alaska.
• One of the questions Spock is asked by the Computer on Vulcan asks about the major historical events of 1987. We never see or hear the answer to that question as the film was made in 1986.
• The sounds of static from the computers heard in the background when the Bird of Prey comes out of timewarp are the loading sounds of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer.
• The location where Dr. Gillian Taylor picks up Kirk and Spock is not an actual street. It’s a parking lot that runs alongside the main road.
• In order to find the best actress to play Dr. Gillian Taylor, two prospective actresses were brought out to William Shatner’s ranch by Leonard Nimoy to meet with the man himself. It was Shatner who personally chose Catherine Hicks saying that she was “spunky” (According to Shatner and Nimoy in the DVD Commentary).
• The idea of having Spock give the Vulcan nerve pinch to the punk rocker was inspired by Leonard Nimoy who was walking down the street in New York when a punk came out of a store with his boombox blaring, disturbing everyone around him. Annoyed, Nimoy thought “If I was REALLY Spock, I’d pinch his head off!” (According to Nimoy in the DVD Commentary).
• This film features the only instance in which Kirk says “Scotty, Beam me up”
• During the final scene of the movie, where the Enterprise crew is in the shuttle Sulu says “with all due respect I hope we get Excelsior”. In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), Sulu is the Captain of the Excelsior.
• The scene where Chekov and Uhura are asking a woman about “nuclear wessels” was almost completely improvised. Her line about them being in Alameda was ad-libbed by her, and although she wasn’t supposed to say very much, Leonard Nimoy enjoyed the spontaneity of the scene so much he left it the way it was.
• The sound the probe makes is taken from the sound of baby’s heartbeat during a sonogram, slowed down and digitalized.
• Final cinema film of Robert Ellenstein.
• The antique glasses that Kirk sells to make some cash are the pair that was given to him by McCoy for his birthday in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982). It’s suggested that once sold in the antiques store, those glasses hang around until they’re bought by McCoy, in the future, and then Kirk takes them back in time, and so on, in which case one has to wonder where the glasses “originally” came from. This constitutes an “ontological paradox”, an old favorite of science fiction writers, and raises too many questions to discuss here. (It is possible that these glasses existed in two places simultaneously, like characters in the “Back to the Future” films, rather than being caught in a causal loop.) The same paradox arises when Scotty explains how to make transparent aluminum. If the formula is “found” for the first time in the 20th century, but only because Scotty took the information back, then it was never invented in the first place! (This may not be a paradox if Scotty only gave Doctor Nichols the chemical formula but not the manufacturing process.)
• Scotty provided the formula for transparent aluminum in this movie. Interestingly, this state of matter was discovered in 2009.
• According to Leonard Nimoy, about 95% of the Humpback Whale footage in the final cut of the film was man-made.
• Susan Sarandon was among performers that were considered for the main guest lead of Dr.Gillian Taylor.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/a-turbulent-flight/

There are certain books that begin with a great premise and a great main character but which are simply unable to deliver on the promise of a well-told story.   This is one of those books.   This 303-page tale of a modern airline traveler loses its interest, its energy and its wings at about the 200-page mark.   From then on, the engines are stalled and the story glides awkwardly to a crash landing on a foam-filled runway.

Up in the Air is the story of Ryan Bingham, a so-called Career Transition Counselor, who is hired to help downsizing companies get rid of employees without having them go postal.   Bingham must be part psychologist, part upward mobility trainer and – to a large part – a fraudulent New Age guru who’s supposed to convince the terminated workers that its all for the best.   Of course, Bingham (who views himself as a type of glorified and special purpose accountant) never has to stick around to view the actual damage – the failed marriages, lost homes and suicides.   He convinces himself that he does more good than harm as he flies every day or two on Great West Airlines circa 2001.

As we meet the not-t00-likeable and self-absorbed Bingham, he’s submitted his resignation because he is about to accomplish the main goal of his life.   His primary objective is to be the tenth person in the domestic carrier’s history who has flown 1,000,000 miles without leaving the U.S.   Bingham travels so much that he has no home or apartment, he lives in the thin atmosphere land he calls “Airworld.”

There’s a lot of inside baseball talk that frequent flyers and frequent lodging chain sleepers will find entertaining…   For example, there’s much debate about the merits of Hilton-owned Hampton Inns versus Marriott Courtyards.   Which one is the best base for corporate warriors, and why is it that a traveler feels almost invisible at the larger Marriott and Hilton properties?   (And why is it that frequent travelers come to need Sound Soothers to sleep?)   Bingham also has this marvelous machine called the Hand Star, the apparent precursor of today’s BlackBerry smartphone.

The first problem with Air is the realization that Bingham is the only character that is remotely believable or plausible, and even this is a stretch.   The next problem is that the once-serious story turns into a hybrid science fiction-dark satire two-thirds of the way through its telling.   A lot of paranoia emerges among Bingham and those he encounters, which may mean that he’s gone insane…   Worse, it may signal that this tale was a put-on from page one.

I prefer to think that author Walter Kirn came up with a great start but had no finish.   (Nevertheless, he’s received a very large check from George Clooney’s people who are turning this into the star’s next film.)   Not recommended; simply not worth the time or effort required to get through it.   There’s just no payoff on arrival for frequent readers.

Shabana Ali expone en su web sus trabajos en los que emplea  desde acrílicos hasta técnicas de diseño y animación digital. La página en sí casi es una obra de arte…

From Examiner.com:

Soundtrack review: The Twilight Saga – NEW MOON movie score by Alexandre Desplat

“New Moon” is a fantastic opener, because it practically carries you to this other world, while offering hints at what to expect throughout the proceeding experience. As standard fare for Desplat involves heavily-stringed emotional outpouring, New Moon is no exception. However, he injects a serpentine quality that recalls classic vampire films from previous eras. You can definitely hear echoes of Elliot Goldenthal’s Interview with the Vampire and Wojciech Kilar’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Even flavors of John Williams’ Dracula score from 1979 add inspirational texture to Desplat’s work.

He is elegant to a fault, even when building tension. Of course, elements of need, yearning, passion, and depression are all prevalent, but not in the same confinement that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button displayed. It is entirely possible that Desplat’s foreign upbringing helped add an exotic tone to New Moon. The entire score bears a gentle hand, as though working to avoid suppressing the listener’s imagination. Something else interesting that seems to leak into the compositions is a classic, “old world” Asian sensibility, which effectively adds a tribal mystique to New Moon.

Click here to continue reading this full article.

This just in:  I love classical music.  Can I name them off the top of my head? Such-and-such song in the key of E Minor?  LOL, nope.  But, if you played it, I could probably hum right along to it.  I have many a-memory of a sleepless night or two and listening to the greats like Mozart, Bach and Beethoven to get to sleep as a child.  To this day, I can listen to some of those songs and I feel immediate ease and relaxation.  I love modern classical music, as well.  How modern music can forge with the traditional classical style and it’s a totally new song?  I love that so much.

One reason why I love major motion pictures is because they generally have a soundtrack that goes along with it.  Dick Clark once said, “Music is the soundtrack of your life” and that couldn’t more right on with what I’m trying to say here.

Music can tell you so much.  Answer so many questions, help you feel emotions you never felt before.  It’s like the watercolor painting in the museum.  You want to look into it, take it apart, learn more– what were they thinking when they painted this?  Well, that’s what music does for me.  It answers questions.

After reading Mark’s article and listening to previews [Part 1 + Part 2] of the tracks, I think I will once again equally love (if not even more) The Score compared to the soundtrack just like I did with the original motion picture soundtrack and score.  Wait, with the exception of Rob’s tracks, of course.  Those are just.. well, you know LOL

 OK, so I do believe I have elevated my excitement from ‘excited’ to ‘estatic’ LOL  I know, and this wasn’t even my favorite book.  *Gasps* I know, I know….

Source.

Special Thanks:  Mark Morton, Soundtracks Examiner for Examiner.com

PS – Thanks again, Mark for allowing us to share your reviews with everyone. It’s been a definite treat!

National’s Treasure director Jon Turteltaub and Naked Gun’s producer Jerry Zucker will team up behind a new film detailing the birth of the environmental organization Greenpeace.

According to the Guardian, the story will be told through the eyes of Greenpeace’s charismatic founders, Bob Hunter and Rex Weyler.

“We want to look at these unlikely heroes who became activists in spite of themselves,” Janet Zucker (one of the producers) told Variety

“Jon likes to make a big adventure movies. And we’ve found that the best way to reach people’s hearts and minds is through entertainment.”

The title of the movie is yet to be determined.

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Los Fantasmas de Scrooge. A Christmas Carol. USA 2009

• Dir. Robert Zemeckis
• Reparto: Jim Carrey, Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright Penn, Fionnula Flanagan

Calificación 4 estrellas

La técnica ya no es nueva para nosotros, pero no por eso deja de parecernos sorprendente.  Después que Zemeckis nos había mostrado las posibilidades del  soprendente motion picture en cintas como Beowulf y El Expreso Polar,  ahora nos muestra como no hay mejor camino para alcanzar la perfección que la práctica.

Basado en el archipopular cuento de Charles Dickens (Cuento de Navidad), que narra la historia de un viejo ávaro que recibe  la visita de tres espíritus para entender el valor de la generosidad y el verdadero espíritu de la Navidad, la película supera bien el reto de contar una historia que nos sabemos todos de una manera diferente.De verdad, aunque todos sabemos en que acaba, nos mantiene hipnotizados la caracterización y gesticulaciones de Jim Carrey, y el tratar de reconocer a los actores protagonistas, ya que en esta ocasión hay tomas directas a los rostros y las expresiones. Vemos a Carrey enojado, sorprendido y sobre todo muy aterrorizado.

Ese – el terror-  quizás el componente que permite volver a ver la historia con interés. Al parecer nadie había reparado en que estamos hablando de una historia que incluye elementos sobrenaturales y que la relación de los hombres con lo espíritus está marcada por el miedo a lo desconocido, y a la necesidad de responderse la pregunta que más ha  inquietdo a la humanidad: ¿qué es lo que sucede después de la muerte?

Y si bien Dickens usa el recurso como una manera muy extrema de dar un mensaje positivo, perosnalmente es la primera ver que veo a un Scrooge verdaderamente aterrorizado y un mundo fantasmal tan bien logrado.  Al final cantaremos villancicos, pero eso solo se logra después de haber visto el más allá con toda su crudeza. Una visión oscura del cuento que – eso sí- es toda una novedad en la revisitación de la historia

Lo mejor:

• A mi sólo me gusta Jim Carrey cuando no se parece a Jim Carrey. Y este es un perfecto ejemplo.  La caracterización vía el uso de la tecnología es sorprendente.
• Una enorme ventaja es que vemos a los actores como probablemente nunca podremos en la vida real. La agilidad de Bob Hoskins para el baile es sin duda un buen ejemplo.
• El diseño de los espíritus es sorprendente. El primero, por ejemplo es absolutamente perturbador. Una especie de llama de hablar pausado y mirada fija… seguramente le dará pesadillas a más de un niño.

Lo peor:

• Los niños pequeños se asustan mucho!! especialmente con el último espíritu parecido a la muerte. Niños llorando y padres que no entienden por qué la película es clasificación doble A
• Hay pasajes cruciales que pasan a segundo término, como ese de la antigua novia. Es importante para entender otras cosas y en realidad ocupa muy poca atención dentro de la trama.
• Personalemente, no me gusta la caraterización de Gary Oldman. Creo que no le hace justicia a un hombre que tiene una increíble capacidad camaleónica.

To pre-order your copy of the score, click here!  It will be released on Friday, November 20th.  What else is happening that day, oh yes… the nationwide premeire!  WOOHOO!

Source.

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By DAVID GERMAIN (AP)

LOS ANGELES — It’s the end of the world as we know it, and Hollywood feels fine.
Global warming, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, continuing terrorist threats and the economic meltdown have people in a gloomy, even end-of-days frame of mind. Filmmakers are tapping into worries about humanity’s future with apocalyptic sagas such as “2012,” “The Road” and “The Book of Eli,” along with documentaries about environmental or economic doom.
End-of-the-world stories have been a cinema subgenre since the early Cold War days with such nuclear-war movies as “On the Beach,” “Fail-Safe” and “Dr. Strangelove.” The advent of environmentalism and overpopulation concerns resulted in another wave of films depicting bleak futures, among them “Soylent Green,” “Silent Running” and “The Omega Man.”

“We always need a boogeyman, we always need the end of the world,” said Terry Gilliam, whose films include 1995’s “Twelve Monkeys,” about a world where plague has wiped out most of humanity. “I think it’s the problem of being in a Christian society. It’s based on it. If you don’t have the end of the world, you don’t get heaven and eternity.”
On the heels of Al Gore’s global-warming alarm “An Inconvenient Truth,” doomsday is an especially fertile subject today, and current tales of the apocalypse take many forms:
_ Plagues of vampires with Ethan Hawke’s upcoming “Daybreakers” and zombies with the horror comedy “Zombieland” and “George Romero’s Survival of the Dead.”
_ Economic calamity with the documentary “Collapse,” a portrait of a pessimist convinced industrial civilization is poised to crumble.
_ Environmental catastrophe with the part-fiction, part-fact “The Age of Stupid,” about a mid-21st century archivist looking back on our times from a world ravaged by global warming.
_ Devastating warfare between humans and machines with the sci-fi sequel “Terminator Salvation” and the animated adventure “9.”
“The big difference now is it’s multiple things,” said John Hillcoat, director of “The Road,” opening Nov. 25 and starring Viggo Mortensen in an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel about a father and son trekking across a decimated America.
The Cold War “was all about Russia and America and the nuclear threat, but now it’s on so many levels. The environment, there’s still the nuclear threat in a way that’s more viable with rogue terrorists, and there’s kind of the economic thing,” Hillcoat said. “Also a decade I think of the Bush administration is enough for anyone to seriously contemplate it on a daily basis.”
Denzel Washington’s “The Book of Eli,” opening Jan. 15, also is a post-apocalyptic road trip across America. He plays a warrior-prophet traveling the land as keeper of knowledge that can save humanity.
In theaters Friday, “2012″ is the latest disaster story from director Roland Emmerich, this one taking the devastation even beyond what he depicted in the alien-invasion tale “Independence Day” or the global-warming saga “The Day After Tomorrow.”
Pretty much all of us would be condemned to a nasty death in the scenario laid out in “2012″ — the Earth’s crust shifting and tumbling into the oceans after solar neutrinos heat up the planet’s core. Yet the filmmakers also see it as a fresh start of sorts, at least for a few lucky survivors.
“The disaster on our film, I see it as a backdrop of a much bigger story, which is a new beginning, not the end,” said “2012″ producer and composer Harald Kloser, who co-wrote the screenplay with Emmerich. “How do you handle a new beginning after a disaster of this magnitude?”
The answer is to build giant arks complete with a Noah-style menagerie of wildlife and loaded with the best of our artworks and the best — or at least, the richest — of humanity to carry on the species.
John Cusack, who leads the “2012″ cast as a writer struggling to find room on the arks for his family, said another hopeful aspect the movie depicts is governments leaving behind ideology to work together on saving what they can of humanity.
“Cutting through all the kind of petty divisions. No more China, Russia, United States. Jew, Palestinian, Christian, Muslim,” Cusack said. “It’s just people.”
“The Road” presents an unspecified disaster that has caused an entire collapse of civilization, the landscape scorched and barren, handfuls of survivors scrabbling for food and water.
Mortensen represents the Everyman best of us, a man with nothing left to hope for who nevertheless tries to instill virtue and goodness in his young son.
The film also shows the worst of humankind, packs of roving brutes resorting to savagery and cannibalism.
“Most people like to think that they’re decent, but I think it’s one of those situations that you really don’t know until it happens,” said Mortensen, who is hopeful that the nightmare vision of “The Road” will never come true. “I think essentially that people are good and resourceful everywhere in the world, not just in America. I tend to think it’s going to be all right.”
Whatever our fate, Hollywood can give audiences a taste of doomsday, then cut them loose to return to their lives.
“In disaster movies,” Cusack said, “you can get that without having to pay the price of a real disaster.”

Flash Memory maker, Kingston Digital announced that has struck a deal with Paramount Pictures to bring full-length movies on SD memory cards.

With so many formats of storage out there, and falling prices for SD cards, this might just be the idea to be a hit with the masses. DVD drives and SD card slots are in most computers. If you have a netbook, an SD card slot is most likely in there, making Kingston’s decision a no-brainer.

Then again, it might not be such a smart idea. Other flash makers such as Sandisk have tried to load music albums onto microSD cards with little success. I believe it’s just simpler to skip any physical media storage and go right to digital. The success of the iPod comes to mind. With storage capacities for gadgets ballooning by the month, even SD cards may be dead in five years time.

No information on whether or not the movies would be HD-ready video or not.

Kingston Technology