Poster of the Week #21

Renato Cesaro has done some amazing posters for Conan, Rambo, Total Recall, Escape from New York... Maybe soon you will see some of them posted on my blog. But today it is time for my favourite: FLASH GORDON

I absolutely love the movie, and about 5 years ago as a tribute I did a drawing of my comic book character Jmork, inspired by this poster and one of Boris Vallejo's paintings.

For more of my drawings and comics I did back in high-school you can visit: http://class-z.hit.bg/comics2.html

Intro of the Week #21

Тази седмица интрото е моя отговор на Stranger-a и играта на държави и асоциации

Първото, което изплува в главата ми при споменаването на Обединените арабски емирства е "Арабските нооооощиии, под арабски луниии..." - Аладин!



Версията от филма, с БГ дублажа на Disney Character Voices International.



Жалко, че няма и версията на Канал 1 от сериала, там предова е по-различен и също доста сполучлив.


"Изток вятър изви
Запад слънцето скри
Здрачът м чашите пясък налива

Тихо времето спри
На килимче литни
В арабската нощ красива"

И така, правилата на играта са прости:
1. Намисляте си на кого да предадете щафетата – човек, който има блог
2. Питате го да напише коя е първата дума която му хрумва за дадена държава в света и играта започва.
3. Молите го след това да продължи играта като предаде нататък по същите правила.

Сега е ред на:
Еми - Бирма
Tataf - Беларус
Бла - Украйна

Happy 70th Anniversary, Batman!

Probably it's not the exact date on which "Detective Comics" #27 was published, back in May 1939 - the very first appearance of my all-time favourite comic book super hero, Batman. But because of the number of the issue my bro decided that we should celebrate today :)

When I got back from work he had already turned the living room into a bat-cave and after dinner we watched a documentary on Batman's history, followed by one of my favourite episodes of "Batman: The Animated Series" - Beware The Gray Ghost! And then bro blew the candles and we had a piece of bat-cake :) (the photos from our celebration will be soon up on Realm of the Bat )

Happy 70th anniversary, Batman!

Thank you, Bob!

Poster of the Week #19 & 20

Albert Pyun is one of my favourite B-movie directors, which is not surprising since I have a passion for postapocalyptic flicks. But except kickbox and cyborgs he's done some fantasy too - actually he started his career with "The Sword and The Sorcerer" (1982)

The second poster is by Peter Andrew Jones, a renowned illustrator and cover artist - take a look at some of his works

The news is that Pyun is just about to release a sequel to "The Sword and the Sorcerer", titled "Tales of an Ancient Empire", starring Christopher "The Highlander" Lambert and Kevin "Hercules" Sorbo. Hopefully it will be enjoyable. Hopefully...

Intro of the Week #19 & 20

My all-time favourite Batman on screen is the classic WB Batman The Animated Series from the 90s, but that doesn't mean that I don't like the rest of the interpretatons. Currently the kid-friendly retro-take on teh character in "Batman - The Brave and The Bold" is really entertaining and amusing.

But what I feel like posting today are the openings of "The Batman". Great ne look with Jeff Matsuda's character designs and awesome opening theme composed and performed by non other but The Edge from U2



With Robin and Batgirl on board for the next seasons, the tone of the series got lighter, the theme more enegretic and slightly James Bondish



And here's what The Edge has to say about his involvement on The Batman



For all things Batman visit my bro's blog "Realm of the Bat"

Short of the Week #19 & 20

Two great anime shorts by Studio 4C!

Kung-Fu Love
Demo/promo/pilot for a prospective animated feature, based on a feature-length storyboard by Yasuhiro Aoki



Chamber of Fear
A Nike add with LeBron James and sound by RZA

Ray Bradbury's Bulgarian Bibliography - The Storyteller throughout the years

“The Americans call him “The Great Moralist”. Which Americans? Because after all it was the Americans who set his home in Los Angeles on fire a couple of years ago, furious because of his merciless satire against their “Greatest Society” – this is how Venko Hristov began his afterwords of “Hail and Farewell” in 1974. Americans set Ray Bradbury’s home on fire?! Then he’s a real prophet, “Fahrenheit 451” is actually happening!
Or is it? After I searched on the net quite a lot I could not find any information on such an event! It is no wonder that back in those days the political propaganda on our side (and not only) was way over the top. But is it possible that they not only did their best to present the works of the translated western writers as anti-capitalistic satire, but they even added some imaginary facts to the biographies in order to create some communistic guerilla halo around them?! Imagine poor Ray Bradbury, chased out of his home in LA by a crowd of angry Americans armed with pitchforks and torches!
Venko Hristov goes on with some more harsh anti-USA pathos, and he even gets Lenin involved, claiming that Bradbury clearly has “a system of positive ideals” and his works have “their own moral, philosophical and social charge”.
And it gets me thinking, “Geez, if he goes one step farther he will say that Ray Bradbury is actually from the USSR!” Then I read the next line and I start laughing: “It wouldn’t take much more for us to say that Bradbury is “OURS!”. Well, Hristov didin’t go that far, instead he pitied Bradbury for being “class restricted” – the unfortunate writer is unable to grasp the real deal and fully develop his talent in that decadent western society.
Among the propaganda and the criticism of the West, Hristov still praises Bradbury’s style and admits the value of his stories. He calls his language “easy to understand for the general mass of readers”, but still “provoking intellectual and aesthetic tension”. “His protagonists” – Hristov claims – “are common men from the people, uncorrupted by the capitalistic social structure.”
Towards the end Hristov asks himself if Bradbury actually realizes that he is a supporter of the Socialistic ideology or not, and if the anti-capitalistic messages in his stories are consciously put there. He says that whatever the answer is, the result is what really matters – “the whole lifework of the great science fiction writer (who is actually a realist) carries one continuing idea – the world of the capital is degenerate and doomed, it has to go away and make place for a more humane, more sensible, happier way of life”.
I have no idea if this Venko Hristov actually believes in what he wrote, or it was just an unpleasant necessity, so the translation can pass some Commie Commission and get a permission to be published.

Years later, 1981, George Markovski’s preface of “The Halloween Tree” begins with the very same words: “The Americans call him “The Great Moralist”. Fortunately here the propaganda is brought down to a minimum. Probably it was the personal and abstract nature of the book which allowed on the preface to focus on Bradbury’s personality and childhood inspirations, instead on his political ideas and the social criticism of his works. The result is a much closer and warmer insight on Bradbury and his interests. In the preface Markovski also makes use of the famous Bradbury quote: “Jules Verne was my father. H.G. Wells was my wise uncle. Poe was the batwinged cousin we kept in the attic. Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were my brothers. And Mary Shelley was my mother. There you have my ancestry” (though I’m not sure if back in those days the Bulgarian readers were familiar with Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers… even now many people have no idea about them)

1982’s edition of “Fahrenheit 451” contains a preface by Dimitry Ivanov. He concentrates on facts from Bradbury’s biography, bibliography and filmography. Ivanov describes Bradbury’s stories as “steeped in loneliness and sad, unostentatious irony” and calls him “a romanticist from the American prairie … emotionally engaged in the dilemma of scientific progress against humanistic tradition”. But he then switches to the political aspect again - “But where do you see Bradbury talking about politics? On what basis you turn his literary portrait into a political comment? – they ask” (yup, and I ask the same). Ivanov mentions again that Ray Bradbury’s home was set on fire, but he gives us some “details” about it – it was “burned down by a storm team of the reactionary organization called “The John Birch Society”. Again I search on the net, such a society surely exists ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society ) and their ideas seem to fit the story (the society supports traditionally conservative causes such as anti-communism), but still I couldn’t find any information about them (or anybody else) burning down Ray Bradbury’s house. Besides this paragraph Dimitry Ivanov’s preface focuses on Bradbury as a storyteller, on his personality and the characteristic features of his stories. Ivanov calls Bradbury a visionary, compares his stories and the metaphors he uses to the traditions of Ancient Greek mythology, classical fairy tales such as “1001 Nights” and dark gothic fiction. He praises Bradbury for his humanity and love for mankind.

Svetoslav Slavchev is one of the most renowned Bulgarian sci-fi (and comic book) writers as well as one of the editors of the famous “Library Galactica” science fiction book series. He compiled a collection of stories titled “Sound of Thunder”, which was published in 1986, and also wrote the preface to it, titled “Bradbury with the many faces”. Slavchev pays attention to the wide variety of themes and topics throughout Bradbury’s stories. He underlines the “nostalgic sorrow which almost always colors his plots” and that this “nostalgia often grows into a denial of progress”. Of course, again we have some political aspect to the preface, even not so strong as in the previous two. Slavchev says that Bradbury criticizes “his society … driven by greed … where human relations are absurdly deformed.” Well, Bradbury really does that, but it’s not HIS society in particular that he criticizes, his ideas are universal and can be applied to literally any society, any form of authority and any political regime. The final paragraph categorize Bradbury as a humanist writer who is “against the fake moral of a fake society”, but still Slavchev does not name this society in a straightforward way.

Two decades after we have abolished communism the publishers have finally decided to let Ray Bradbury speak for himself. In the 2008 translation of 100 Разказа (The Stories of Ray Bradbury, 1980) we have a preface not by the translator or the editor, but by the author - http://www.chitanka.info:82/lib/text/10292


This bibliography is probably still incomplete, so if you know about some other of his books published in Bulgarian, please let me know.

Поредица Грийн Таун (Green Town)

Вино от глухарчета (Dandelion Wine, 1957)
— Превод от английски: Жени Божилова, 1979, „Народна младеж“, София
— Превод от английски: Жени Божилова, 1983, „Георги Бакалов“, Варна
— Превод от английски: Жени Божилова, 2008, „Бард“, София

Сбогом, лято (Farewell Summer, 2006)
— Владимир Зарков, 2008, ИК „БАРД“, София, 2008

Повести

Дървото на вси светии (The Halloween Tree, 1972)
— Превод от английски: Белин Тончев, 1981, Книгоиздателство „Георги Бакалов“, Библиотека „Галактика“ № 23, с предговор от Георги Марковски


Романи

451° по Фаренхайт (Fahrenheit 451, 1953)
— Веселин Измирлиев, превод от английски, Публикация: Издателство „Народна култура“, София 1966
— Веселин Измирлиев, превод от английски, Публикация: Издателство „Народна култура“, 1982, с предговор от Димитрий Иванов
— Веселин Измирлиев, превод от английски, Публикация: Издателство „Народна култура“, сборник „Черно слънце“, София 1990
— Веселин Измирлиев, превод от английски, Публикация: Издателство „Медиасат“, София, 2005
— Веселин Измирлиев, превод от английски, Публикация: Издателство „Бард“ (Рей Бредбъри – Избрано, том 1), София 2009

Смъртта е занимание самотно (Death is a Lonely Business, 1985)
— Превод от английски: Жени Божилова, Издателство „Народна младеж“, София 1988
— Превод от английски: Жени Божилова, Издателство „Бард“ (Рей Бредбъри – Избрано, том 1), София 2009

Гробище за лунатици: Друга приказка за два града (A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another tale of two cities, 1990)
— Превод от английски: Филипина Филипова, Издателство „Yassen Atanassov Company“, София 1992
— Издателство „Бард“ (Рей Бредбъри – Избрано, том 1), София 2009

От прахта родени (From the Dust Returned, 2001) — Превод от английски: Крум Бъчваров, ИК „Бард“, София 2002


Сборници с разкази
Карнавал на трупове (Dark Carnival, 1947)
— Превод от английски: Григор Попхристов, Владимир Германов, Издателство „Де ла Корт“, София 1996
The collection includes these stories:
"The Homecoming"
"Skeleton"
"The Jar"
"The Lake"
"The Maiden"
"The Tombstone"
"The Smiling People"
"The Emissary"
"The Traveler"
"The Small Assassin"
"The Crowd"
"Reunion"
"The Handler"
"The Coffin"
"Interim"
"Jack-In-The-Box"
"The Scythe"
"Let's Play 'Poison'"
"Uncle Einar"
"The Wind"
"The Night"
"There Was An Old Woman"
"The Dead Man"
"The Man Upstairs"
"The Night Sets"
"Cistern"
"The Next In Line"



Марсиански хроники (The Martian Chronicles, 1950)
— Превод от английски: Никола Милев, Издателство „Народна младеж“, София 1966
— Превод от английски: Никола Милев, Издателство „Народна младеж“, София 1977
The collection includes these stories:
1.1 Rocket Summer (January 1999/2030)
1.2 Ylla (February 1999/2030)
1.3 The Summer Night (August 1999/2030)
1.4 The Earth Men (August 1999/2030)
1.5 The Taxpayer (March 2000/2031)
1.6 The Third Expedition (April 2000/2031)
1.7 —And the Moon Be Still as Bright (June 2001/2032)
1.8 The Settlers (August 2001/2032)
1.9 The Green Morning (December 2001/2032)
1.10 The Locusts (February 2002/2033)
1.11 Night Meeting (August 2002/2033)
1.12 The Fire Balloons (November 2002/2033)
1.13 The Shore (October 2002/2033)
1.14 Interim (February 2003/2034)
1.15 The Musicians (April 2003/2034)
1.16 The Wilderness (May 2003/2034)
1.17 Way in the Middle of the Air (June 2003/2034)
1.18 The Naming of Names (2004-05/2035-36)
1.19 Usher II (April 2005/2036)
1.20 The Old Ones (August 2005/2036)
1.21 The Martian (September 2005/2036)
1.22 The Luggage Store (November 2005/2036)
1.23 The Off Season (November 2005/2036)
1.24 The Watchers (November 2005/2036)
1.25 The Silent Towns (December 2005/2036)
1.26 The Long Years (April 2026/2057)
1.27 There Will Come Soft Rains (August 4, 2026/2057)
1.28 The Million-Year Picnic (October 2026/2057)



Възпявам електрическото тяло (I Sing The Body Electric, 1969)
— Превод от английски: Нели Константинова, Александър Бояджиев, Издателство «Христо Г. Данов», Пловдив 1982
The collection includes these stories:
"The Kilimanjaro Device"
"The Terrible Conflagration up at the Place"
"Tomorrow's Child"
"The Women"
"The Inspired Chicken Motel"
"Downwind from Gettysburg"
"Yes, We'll Gather at the River"
"The Cold Wind and the Warm"
"Night Call, Collect"
"The Haunting of the New"
"I Sing the Body Electric!"
"The Tombling Day"
"Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine"
"Heavy-Set"
"The Man in the Rorschach Shirt"
"Henry the Ninth"
"The Lost City of Mars"
"Christus Apollo"



Гръмна гръм (The Sound of Thunder)
— Превод от английски: Лидия Ценова-Маринова, Александър Хрусанов, Издателство „Георги Бакалов“, Варна 1986, Библиотека Галактика №75, съдържа 22 разказа, съставител и предговор - Светослав Славчев

Нощен влак за Вавилон: Нови разкази (Night Train to Babylon)
— Превод от английски: Крум Бъчваров, ИК «Бард», София 2002

Здравей и сбогом (Hail and Farewell)
— Превод от английски: Нели Константинова, Издателство „Христо Г. Данов“, Пловдив 1974, с послеслов от Венко Христов

100 Разказа (The Stories of Ray Bradbury, 1980)
— Превод от английски: Венцислав Божилов, ИК «Бард», София 2008
The collection includes these stories:
"The Night", 1946
"Homecoming", 1946
"Uncle Einar", 1947
"The Traveler", 1946
"The Lake", 1944
"The Coffin", 1947
"The Crowd", 1943.
"The Scythe", 1943
"There Was an Old Woman", 1944
" There Will Come Soft Rains", 1950
"Mars Is Heaven", 1950
"The Silent Towns", 1949
"The Earth Men", 1948
"The Off Season", 1948
"The Million-Year Picnic", 1946
"The Fox and the Forest", 1950
"Kaleidoscope", 1949
"The Rocket Man", 1951
"Marionettes, Inc.", 1949
"No Particular Night or Morning", 1951
"The City", 1950
"The Fire Balloons", 1951
"The Last Night of the World", 1951
"The Veldt", 1950
"The Long Rain", 1950
"The Great Fire", 1949
"The Wilderness", 1952
"A Sound of Thunder", 1952
"The Murderer", 1953
"The April Witch", 1952
"Invisible Boy", 1945
"The Golden Kite, The Silver Wind", 1953
"The Fog Horn", 1951.
"The Big Black and White Game", 1945
"Embroidery", 1951
"The Golden Apples of the Sun", 1953
"Powerhouse", 1948
"Hail and Farewell", 1948
"The Great Wide World over There", 1952
"The Playground", 1953
"Skeleton", 1943
"The Man Upstairs", 1947
"Touched by Fire", 1954
"The Emissary", 1947
"The Jar", 1944
"The Small Assassin", 1946
"The Next in Line", 1947
"Jack-in-the-Box", 1947
"The Leave-Taking", 1957
"Exorcism", 1957
"The Happiness Machine", 1957
"Calling Mexico", 1950
"The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit", 1958
"Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed", 1949
"The Strawberry Window", 1954
"A Scent of Sarsaparilla", 1953
"The Picasso Summer", 1957
"The Day It Rained Forever", 1957
"A Medicine for Melancholy", 1959
"The Shoreline at Sunset", 1959
"Fever Dream", 1948
"The Town Where No One Got Off", 1958
"All Summer in a Day", 1980
"Frost and Fire", 1946
"The Anthem Sprinters", 1963
"And So Died Riabouchinska", 1953
"Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!", 1980
"The Vacation", 1963
"The Illustrated Man", 1961
"Some Live Like Lazarus", 1960
"The Best of All Possible Worlds", 1960
"The One Who Waits", 1949
"Tyrannosaurus Rex", 1962
"The Screaming Woman", 1951
"The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place", 1980.
"Night Call, Collect", 1949
"The Tombling Day", 1952
"The Haunting of the New", 1969
"Tomorrow's Child", 1948
"I Sing the Body Electric!", 1969
"The Women", 1948
"The Inspired Chicken Motel", 1969
"Yes, We'll Gather at the River", 1969
"Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You!", 1976
"A Story of Love", 1976
"The Parrot Who Met Papa", 1972
"The October Game", 1948
"Punishment Without Crime", 1950
"A Piece of Wood", 1952
"The Blue Bottle", 1950
"Long After Midnight", 1962
"The Utterly Perfect Murder", 1971
"The Better Part of Wisdom", 1976
"Interval in Sunlight", 1954
"The Black Ferris", 1948
"Farewell Summer", 1980
"McGillahee's Brat", 1970
"The Aqueduct", 1979
"Gotcha!" 1978
"The End of the Beginning", 1956


Париж завинаги (We’ll Always have Paris, 2009)
—ИК «Бард», София 2009

Произведения на Рей Бредбъри са включени още в антологиите:
“Магьоснически свят - Разкази и новели” (1998)
“Девет живота” (1993)

From Books to Films – A Liberating and Democratic Experience

Being the Seventh Art Cinema usually borrows elements from the previous six arts and blends them together creating a new kind of experience. Art number six, poetry and literature, often serves as an inspiration and provides a narrative to be visually interpreted and represented on screen. Since the dawn of Cinema, books have been recreated on film.

Some prefer to stick to the paper, seeing someone else’s vision of his favourite story and beloved characters on screen can bring disappointment. Many movies based on works of literature are bombed by the readers for “not staying true to the book” or “deviating from the author’s vision”.

And some find this new way of presenting the books as a breath of fresh air, something new and interesting, a liberating and democratic experience.

I support the last point of view.

But before I support my choice and illustrate it with some examples, let’s define what liberty is and what democracy is.

Liberty - the condition in which an individual has the ability to act according to his or her own will.

Democracy is a form of government in which state-power is held by the majority of citizens within a country or a state.

So whether liberty and democracy are identical or confronting ideas depends entirely on the individual. Are you part of the majority? Do you agree with their decisions or you are obligated to obey the authority against your will?

The word “democracy” itself is derived from the Greek δημοκρατία (dēmokratía), which means "popular government". So if we apply this term to books and films, then everything pop-culture is democratic. The bestsellers and the blockbusters are what readers and audience “voted for”.

But on the other hand you don’t have to agree with the general audience, you don’t have to read what the critics say about this or that title. You are free to decide what to read and what to watch; you follow your own taste and choose the titles for yourself. So it’s not only democratic, but liberating as well.

Is it the same with the mix of cinema and literature? I think yes. A new treatment of a story, a new point of view, re-imagine and recreate somebody’s work in a new format – if this is not liberating I don’t know what is.

Let’s look at Tim Burton’s interpretation of Roald Dahl’s celebrated novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. Burton is the perfect choice to bring to life the words from the pages and turn them into moving pictures. Not only did he stay true to the story and captured all of its bizarre and dark atmosphere, but he also added a whole new layer to it. Willy Wonka’s back-story was never written by Dahl, but Tim Burton's 2005 version added a history of the character: Willy Wonka (played by Johnny Depp) is the son of dentist Dr. Wilbur Wonka (played by Christopher Lee). Wonka had a traumatic childhood: his father forbade him to eat candy and forced his son to wear large and unsightly orthodontic headgear. Eventually, he tastes chocolate and starts getting ideas for other candies. When he becomes an adult, Wonka opens his own candy store, with Grandpa Joe being one of Wonka's first employees. It’s a brilliant addition and it gives a dramatic depth to the one-dimensional character that Dahl created.

Another good example is Frank Darabont’s movie “The Mist” based on Stephen King’s novella of the same name. After the amazing “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile” Darabont is a real expert on filming Stephen King’s stories. In the novella King left his characters driving through the mist. Darabont conceived of a new ending in translating the novella for the big screen. The ending surely is a shocker, and after he saw the movie Stephen King himself praised it: “Frank wrote a new ending that I loved. It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last 5 minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead.” (Actually I was about to retell the ending, but it would be cruel of me if you haven’t seen the movie yet… and by the way I’m afraid that Stephen King might hunt me down and hang me!)

Also one of my personal favorites is Disney’s “Treasure Planet” - a science fiction adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure novel “Treasure Island”. Writer Rob Edwards stated that "it was extremely challenging" to take a classic novel and set it in outer space, and that they did away with some of the science fiction elements ("things like the metal space ships and the coldness") early on. Co-director John Musker explains “We wanted people to breathe in space rather than have helmets and space suits, which would take all the romance out of it. We wanted to keep the lyrical quality of the original”. For the characterization and design for Jim Hawkins, John Ripa cited James Dean as an important reference because "there was a whole attitude, a posture" wherein "you felt the pain and the youthful innocence". I find it truly incredible, what a crew of talented and creative people can do with a given story and how they contribute to the original vision of the author.

However, recreating somebody else’s creation is a risky endeavor and it takes a lot of responsibility. Quite often turning books into films can be a real disaster. And in case you watch the movie first your experience with the book can be greatly spoiled – as the saying goes, “Read it before Hollywood does!” Whether parts of the book are left out for the sake of timing and pace, actors bring a different approach on a favourite character or moviemakers just fail to translate the literary source on screen – the film experience can be dissatisfying… or even painful. (you just try and watch “Screamers 2” or “Starship Troopers 3”, I dare ya!)

But the good thing is that even if the film adaptation is plain awful you can just ignore its existence. Try to wash away the bad taste and forget you ever saw it.

Like it or not, the border between books and movies will continue to get crossed. It’s a liberating and democratic process it which filmmakers become co-authors along with the book writers and bring the original story to a new realm of storytelling.

Intro of the Week #18 - Godzilla: The Series

And after this poster of the week...



I just love the music with the Goddzilla sound effect!
The show was a continuation of the 1998 American Godzilla interpretation (later called just Zilla in "Godzilla: Final Wars", to be distinguished from its Japanese cousin) and I find it quite enjoyable. The show starts right after the movie, the little Zilla that hatches from the egg at the very end of the movie grows up and Nick takes care of it and tries to protect it from the military, and as the same time try to help other people around the world, battling against all sorts of mutations and giant monsters.

Poster of the Week #18

Godzilla (1984)
Simply awesome!

Terminator 4 Trailer and Terminator 3 - Sgt. Candy (Deleted Scene)

The horror, the horror...
The very fact that this was written as part of the script for T3 is disturbing... But FILMING IT and intending to PUT IT IN THE MOVIE is simply unbelievable. I'm really happy that this didn't make it to the final cut.

I'm really a huge fan of the Terminator franchise. And I'm really worried about the upcoming T4.

I admit, I kinda liked T3 Rise of the Machines. I definitely didn't hate it, as many people did. I love the Dr. Silberman cameo, the story (once you get it, with the Skynet being a software, developed by Kate's father, who John never met because of the T2 events and by postponding the Judgement Day back then they actually created another oportunity for Skynet to be created...) works and the ending is cool.

But what the hell are they going to do with T4?! Like T3 didn't have enough plot holes, like the TV series didn't ruin the timeline enough (I absolutely ignore the whole alternate reality crap they try to push on us, I gave this show a chance and watched it half was season 2, but what can I do - it just blows!)...

Now, in T3 it is said that in the future Kate is John's wife, John is killed by the same Terminator that saves him and Kate, and actually it is Kate who sent it back in time. It is also said that in the future kate and John's children are also important. Now, let alone that Batman is now John Connor too, where the heck is kate and how they are going to explain it this time?!

We'll have to wait and see... or maybe we'd better not?

Release Date: May 22, 2009

Terminator 4: Salvation (Trailer #3)
aka Mad Max meets Transformers

Alive in Joburg - Short of the Week #18

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_9

More Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neill_Blomkamp

District 9 - Trailer

The most promising trailer I have seen in a long time!
Based on the original short by Neill Blomkamp.

Short of the Week #17

I watched "Fanboys" today and what can I say? It's not as good as I hoped it will be. It's definitely worth watching, but after seeing most of the funny moments in the trailer and they toned down the drama element and added extra profanity I feel like they wasted a great idea. I was waiting for it for like 3 years and what I got is just another geek comedy with neat cameo-s and tons of references. I have to admidt though, I absolutely loved the THX-1138 metalhead cops as guards in the Skywalker Ranch, and Ray Park being one of them :)

Anyway, it's a good oportunity to remember about the 1st "Fanboys" film, the 2003 fan-film sharing a similar idea.

In the year 1999, a group of rebels enlists the aid of a young Star Wars fan to steal a copy of The Phantom Menace to aid their cause. But are their motives as noble as they appear?

I love the idea and it's original and enjoyable little Star Wars fan-film :) Check it out on TheForce.net: http://theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/fanboys

Intro of the Week #17

The opening of the fisrt "Wild Arms" PS game, anime spaghetti western RPG with several sequels and TV series spin-off. I absolutely love the Morricone-like music composed by Michiko Naruke!

Wanna know more? Wiki :)

Poster of the Week #17

After I've been disappointed by most of the movies that come out lately (unfortunately including the much anticipated "Fanboys"), I decided to watch something really classy :) - "America 3000"
Canon Films / Golan-Globus production - this is enough to get my attention, but when we're talkin' 80s postapocalyptic B-movie - it's simply a must!
The poster as usual looks way better than the movie itself, and the Yeti thing with the boombox is the best thing in there, surely made me laugh :)

IMDbigbrother is Watching You!

I was quite unpleasantly surprised when IMDb refused to accept my Star Trek comment and I had to edit and re-edit it several times. First of all they now have a 1000 words limit. And second - you can't use "inappropriate words and phrases" and it doesn't even tell you WHAT is inappropriate! OK, I removed "Spock, you lucky bastard", and it still told me I'm being rude or something. Finally I fugured out that it's because of the "pissed off Romulans"... Like 3 days after the comment was finally published it got deleted. This time you do not get an e-mail notification. You see it yourself if you care to browse through your comment history.

The excuse: none!
Just some general note they post above every deleted comment:

Deleted Comments

This is a list of the comments that you've either deleted yourself, or have been deleted by us (since 2004). This does not include comments which were rejected without ever being published on the site. All comments must comply with the guidelines and the listing here is not an invitation for you to repost a deleted comment again. Please consider why any comments may have been deleted by IMDb and modify them accordingly if you wish to resubmit them to the site.

Please note in some cases, owing system glitches, comments can be accidentally published two or more times. When these duplicates are deleted, they will still show up here so not all comments listed below necessarily break the guidelines. Please check to see whether another copy of the same comment is still live.

Interesting... Seems I'm not teh only one complaining... On the IMDb borads there's a topic:

All BAD REVIEWS of This Movie DELETED? Why? Censorship?

You can follow the topic here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/board/thread/136867071?p=1

And my unedited Star Trek review is here:

http://nsg1138.blogspot.com/2009/04/movies-24-star-trek.html