'Transformers' star Shia LeBeouf sings 'The Touch'

Haha. I LOVE that Garrett will HATE this. I am so cruel!

Look at Shia's stupid face! It rules!




Also, I never saw the first Transformers movie (and by "first Transformers movie," I clearly mean the Michael Bay-directed, Megan Fox-sexified Transformers, i.e., the only one ANYONE CARES ABOUT) (I'm not even going to link to the totally-forgotten animated movie's IMDb page--suck on that, Garrett!). So, if you could, maybe let me know what happens in that atrocity fun movie. In, like, 8 words.

The Little Nemo That Wasn't

Anyone who was watching animated features in the early 90's should be familiar with Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland. Now, I doubt that it's anyone's favorite film, but it has it's moments. The animation is fluid, the characters are endearing, and most importantly, it's fun. With that said, what could have made Little Nemo better? The love and care (and immense talent) of Studio Ghibli, perhaps?

In pre-Ghibli 1982, Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) and Isao Takahata (Grave Of The Fireflies, Pom Poko) were developing the then titled Nemo as an American/Japanese joint project for TMS Entertainment. One of the duo's key animators, Yoshifumi Kondo (Whisper Of The Heart), put together this test pilot, which in under five minutes, far surpasses the version that we ended up with.



The production folded due to creative differences (i.e. Big American Dollars = Our Way Or The Highway), and Miyazaki and co. decided to pursue other projects. Namely, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind; the movie that sparked the formation of Studio Ghibli. Although I admire them for leaving a production that compromised their integrity...I really, really wish they made it anyway! Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland holds a little place in my heart, but it's a little place. Not a BIG place like Ghibli's phenomenal library. C'est la vie.

Little Nemo didn't get a US theatrical release until 1992...a decade later! It's production is a bit of a legend in Hollywood animator circles due to the vast number of "hands" the movie went through before it's completion. Oh, and remember this?


Little Nemo: The Dream Master for the NES

Trek Covers Tracks

The final trailer for Star Trek hit the web today. Watch it, then read the rest of the blog. Resistance is futile.



Much of my disappointment with the announcement of Star Trek XI was in learning that it wasn't Star Trek XI. It's more appropriately Star Trek 0. A prequel dealing with Kirk's angst ridden youth that eventually led him to Starfleet? No! What happened to the idea of Tom Hanks being captain of the Enterprise years after The Next Generation crew logged their final voyage?

When taking on a franchise as vast as Star Trek, don't you think you'd want to set it in the future to avoid continuity hassles? Instead of that, JJ Abrams decided it was easier just to not give a shit and make the prequel without even trying to keep any sort of continuity. Blasphemy.

As we got closer to the film's release (which at the time was Dec 2008), more and more continuity errors and all around stupid crap began to surface. The major thing that stood out for me being the main villain, Nero, who is a Romulan...in a film dealing with young Kirk...when any Trek fan knows the Romulans made their first appearance in the episode "Balance of Terror." Why is the villain a Romulan when the film takes place many years before Starfleet encounters the freaking Romulans?! Did they do any research? Has Abrams even seen Star Trek?

As it turns out, no, he never really did watch the series. He even went on record saying, "I've never really been a fan of Star Trek." He wanted to make it more like Star Wars, more like something he'd like. I'd like to run him over with some sort of large construction vehicle. If more true fans were making these movies (i.e. Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings), then maybe we'd be seeing better movies.

But I'm getting off subject. In regards to continuity with the series, it was revealed that Star Trek takes place after Star Trek: Nemesis. Nero travels back in time (to where the bulk of the film takes place) and has somehow altered time by doing so. The above trailer had a revealing line of dialogue from Nero: "James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life." Ahhhh, so to cover your tracks, time has been altered and this Captain Kirk is not THE Captain Kirk, thus, this isn't really Star Trek.

I'm oddly okay with that. It's a bit of an easy out, but I prefer it to simply disregarding 40 years worth of Star Trek mythos. The bridge looks like an Apple store and the crew are a bunch of annoying twenty-somethings, but I can let out a sigh of relief. If it sucks, which is very likely, I can pretend it doesn't exist. After all, it's not really Star Trek.

'He's Just Not That Into You' Makes Me Want to Smoke a Cigarette, or Two

(Surgeon General's Warning: The Cigarettes Depicted in the Photo Above are Fictitious. They Were Drawn, Poorly, Using Microsoft 'Paint', and Are In NO Way Meant To Condone Smoking And/Or Being Sexy In The Workplace.)

According to an article in the New York Times, the American Medical Association Alliance plans to present an official complaint to Warner Brothers (and it's parent company, Time Warner) about the "disturbing images" of specific cigarette brands in the recent film, He's Just Not That Into You.

A representative of the volunteer-member AMA alliance cites "various studies" estimating that 200,000 young people pick up cigarettes annually because of displays of smoking in films--and "there is," the rep is quoted as saying, "absolutely zero artistic justification for this."

The outcry stems from several appearances of a bright yellow cigarette box, suggestive of the Natural American Spirit brand of cigarettes, and the (questionable) appearance of a red Marlboro carton (a person who worked on the film disputed this).

...Nevermind that the film doesn't ever actually show anyone smoking those cigarettes. And nevermind that there is an entire subplot about losing your wife because of smoking. Yes, I imagine large quantities of 15-year-old girls will be picking up tobacco after seeing a vague, brightly-colored pack of cigs in the vicinity of Justin Long, in a romantic comedy based on a self-help book with a title taken from a Sex and the City quote. This is definitely a huge problem. Or not.

I understand--completely--the argument that there is no "artistic justification" for having cigarettes in He's Just Not That Into You; after all, there's no art in He's Just Not That Into You, and very little logical justification for much of anything. Ha ha. But seriously, people get riled up over this?

I'm definitely not condoning smoking, but to attack a movie studio on such flimsy grounds, based on conjecture and subjective artistic opinion, seems nonsensical. And to so clearly ignore the intentions of the plot--“It doesn’t really matter if the story line is negative or not in terms of the impact on kids”--in favor of pure images, like a glimpse of a cigarette box, seems dangerously obtuse and entirely beside the point. Even if movies do get almost a quarter of a million kids to start smoking every year, there must certainly be other factors weighing into this choice, no? Lifestyle habits, parental guidance, discipline, social pressure, etc. are, in my mind, more likely the culpable parties, with a child's taste in movies more of a symptomatic byproduct. To make movies into the bad guy, and to do so by trotting out phrases like "artistic justification," sounds too much like needless censorship.

Anyway, the MPAA already considers smoking when rating movies for young viewers, and as far as I can tell (I freely admit to not having seen He's Just Not That Into You) the movie is neither glamorizing nor ignoring the consequences of smoking in its (non-)portrayal. So what's the big deal?

...It is true, though, that that little yellow box is kinda pretty. And its kinda making me crave...something. I can't quite put my fingers on it.