It’s been 65 years since World War II ended. We seem to be more obsessed with it than ever. There are two big reasons for this. First, WWII is the last war we unequivocally won and which had a clear, morally reprehensible enemy. Korea was a tie, Vietnam was a loss, and our only other official war (not currently being fought) — Gulf War I didn’t get rid of the tyrant. It was the last war (not currently being fought) that wasn’t a war of choice. Korea and Vietnam didn’t attack us; we just had to protect the world from communism. Gulf War I was about protecting our allies and sources of oil, no one attacked us. Second, *because* it’s been 65 years, most of the veterans are in their 80s and 90s.

I’m a big Tim Burton fan and I also tend to like his casting of Johnny Depp.  But I’m no fanboy:  I found Tim Burton’s take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be worse than the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  The first thing I have to get off my chest and the thought that was pervasive in my mind nearly to the point of preventing my enjoyment of the movie is that this movie should really have been titled Return to Wonderland.  If you’re into movies, you probably already knew this, and so did I.  But I can imagine lots of people who just see a commercial or see the name and think it’ll be a live action version of the old Disney movie.  (It doesn’t help that Disney is behind this version as well)  So, in this version, we have an adult Alice about who runs away from her marriage proposal and into the rabbit hole.

I don’t recall if I’ve ever mentioned it on this blog, but I hate going to the movies. I’ve nearly given it up. The only exceptions are Pixar movies and the very few movies that I can’t wait until they come out on DVD to watch. So today I went to see WALL*E with my wife and slightly younger brother. It is, literally, the BEST Pixar movie ever created. The only reason I’m okay with the fact that they waited this long to come out with the movie is because it allowed them to get so awesome at creating movies that it looks beautiful!!!

Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

Here’s the Blender Institute’s latest movie.  It’s much, much better than Elephants Dream.  Check it out!

This short film won a contest over on MyToons.com and it’s no wonder!

Check it out!

I am not an unreasonable man and I full understand your need to focus on making your “watch now” feature debut available exclusively to Windows users. After all, they do make up about 90% of computer users. However, I do have some problems with this as a long time plan.

First of all, it does require me to use Internet Explorer. This is extremely shortsighted. What about those of us who use Firefox? My wife was excited about “watch now” until she found out that IE was required and said, “f&ck that!” So you should open up this service to other browsers.

Looks like, mentioned a couple of times in this post that there will be a Dilbert movie. This one seems to hint that it will be a live movie rather than a cartoon. I think that would be a horrible idea. Cartoon/newspaper comics make lousy movies - see The Flintstones movies and The Dennis the Menace movie. I was excited with the first and disappointed with the second one. However, he seems to mention in the first one that he doesn’t think it’s actually going to get made. (That, IMHO, would be a good idea)

The Departed - for best picture.

I stayed up, so I figured I’d blog it. The movie also won Scorcese his first Oscar.

A group has redone the entire Star Wars Episode 4 in ascii art. You can see the javascript version of Star Wars Ascii Art here. Or, if you don’t have javascript, just telnet to towel.blinkenlights.nl.

The website is a better experience because it comes in a little faster and you can fast forward and skip around. These are some ridiculously talented guys.

May the force be with them.

Want to crack up? Want to see the movie sure to be so cheesy it MUST be watched, then check out Fight Club: Members Only. A Bollywood remake of the Ed Norton and Brad Pitt movie.