When “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was first released, I was still in grade school. I remember sitting in the back seat of my mother’s old (yes, even old by that day’s standards) Volkswagen Rabbit and being told that while she and Dad would be seeing the new movie in theaters, my brothers and I would not. I guess there were scenes which might have frightened us – like when Toht’s face melts away and Belloq explodes when they open the Ark. Yeah, that was kinda spooky.

I do believe I was given permission to watch Raiders when it ran on television (under adult supervision, of course). Certainly, I had seen the first Indiana Jones movie before the second one (“Temple of Doom”) came out of Hollywood. A group of boys from school and I went to see it together with my mom acting as chaperone. Can’t say I was all that impressed with the Indy sequel, though. There were certainly a few exciting parts – like the white-knuckle mine cart chase – but I wouldn’t say that it’d be my type of adventure movie. The corresponding MAD Magazine parody (“Inbanana Jones”) was funny, though.

Then, there was “The Last Crusade.” I wound up seeing this in theaters a few times, actually – it was easily my favorite of the three Indiana Jones movies that had been produced to that point. I enjoyed the score, the characters, the plot, and the mythology. It was a bit depressing to think that this would be the last time I’d know anything of Indiana Jones on screen.

I did catch a good part of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles when it ran on television (but don’t remember seeing every episode in the series). To me, Harrison Ford was Indiana Jones – young or old. And older he certainly is in “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

Ancient astronaut theories continue to tickle the imagination – and though the Skull plot would seem far fetched for some, I was one of the few who liked it. The Indiana Jones characters seem to live in a parallel universe, anyway – their history unfolds much like ours, but who can say whether or not this piece of their history is closer to our truth? The Nazca Lines exist, the Mitchell-Hedges skull exists, and we certainly did nuclear testing in the southwest.

Well, let’s hope that LEGO exists in Indiana Jones’s universe, too (even if his own brick likeness does not):

Thanks for taking a small bite out of my Amazon wish list! Later, I happened to receive a rather stark (no gun, no whip) Indiana Jones, Mutt, and an Irina Spalko minifig – though recording a separate video for them seemed to be a bit odd after I did this one.

At least I can say I’ve held a crystal skull… made of plastic!

Indiana Jones and the Adventure of LEGO Minifigs

Here’s my synopsis of the movie, Inception:

1. You’re dreaming.
2. No, you’re not – this is real.
3. No, this is a real dream.
   No, the dream is real.

4. No, you’re dreaming that the dream is real.
5. No, the movie reel is showing you that the dream is real.
6. No, the movie is a dream.
7. No, you’re dreaming of the movie.
8. No, you’re really dreaming of the dream of a movie.
9. No, you’re really not dreaming of the dream.

The end.

Oh, and the scene from above was discovered at this year’s BrickCon. Were you there? No, you were just DREAMING of being there. Fail!

LEGO Inception

Someone working with Universal Pictures on the release of Catfish (the film, not a pescoid) reached out to me last night. Apparently, Catfish did quite well at Sundance!

Here’s the scoop:

In late 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story unfolding and began to film the life of Ariel’s brother, Nev. Nev, a 24-year-old New York City photographer, was contacted on Facebook by Abby, an eight-year-old girl who asked permission to paint one of his photographs. After she sent him her remarkable painting, Nev began an online friendship with Abby and her family, eventually falling in love with her older sister, Megan. When Nev uncovered some startling revelations about Megan, the boys set off on a road trip to find out the truth.

Nev, Ariel and Henry had no idea that their project would turn into the most exhilarating and unsettling months of their lives.

A reality thriller, CATFISH centers on a riveting mystery that is a product of our times, where social networking, mobile devices and electronic communication so often replace face-to-face contact. The film is a powerful story of love, deception, and grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue.

It’s hard for a brief description or trailer to really do the film justice – and the shocking reveal and payoff of the last 40 minutes are quite extraordinary – which is why we’d like you to see the film for yourself. We’d love to get you in on the conversation about CATFISH, particularly as it pertains to issues of authenticity and social networking, and the way in which we meet and learn about each other in the digital era. And, just for pure entertainment value, the film also happens to be an amazing ride.

So, yeah – I’m gonna go catch Catfish next week. Apparently, you can request the movie in your area, too.

Catfish Movie

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Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a fantastic movie. Johnny Depp is such a phenomenal actor, no matter what the part calls for. He is funny. He is diabolical. He is a pure genius.

However, it’s not only Depp who can figure out who (or what?!) his friends are. At the end of the day, all I need is my iPhone, my iPod touch and my iPad. With these by my side, I shall never be alone!

Is Sweeney Todd a Geek Musical?

Disney has decided to try something new for Toy Story 3 ticket sales. They’ve created an app on Facebook that lets you buy your tickets without having to leave the site. In return, you’ll be helping to create hype among your friends for the movie. The application is called Disney Tickets Together. It’s an excellent example of using social media in innovative ways.

Buy Your Toy Story 3 Tickets on Facebook

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Someone in our chat room asked me if I had watched any movies lately that I would recommend to everyone. I’ve seen a few seriously good films that dealt with technology in some way – even though it wasn’t in a way you might expect. Three movies in particular stand out: Killer at Large, King Corn and Food, Inc.

Corn production in the United States has exploded in recent years, in direct correlation with obesity rates. Corn is the heaviest subsidized crop in America. As we use more and more corn in our food supply, the amount of obese people also started to rise. You may think this is a conspiracy theory. However, ask a farmer what the best way is to sell their cattle at the market. The answer is that you have to fatten them up. How do you do that? You feed them more corn.

I don’t have anything personal against corn. But if you really want to get a better handle on what’s happening to society, you best understand what’s happening with our food supply. It’s a huge deal – we all have to eat. It’s not only about cutting junk food out of your diet. Problems exist in nearly all food we buy unless we eat organically.

America has become stronger because our food costs less. It’s cheaper to buy a candy bar than it is to buy a stalk of broccoli. You may get energy and calories from the candy, but are those calories worth anything?

Even a few decades ago, we didn’t see much high fructose corn syrup on the market. It has been proven that there is a direct link between the amount of high fructose corn syrup in the diet and the rate at which Americans are contracting Type II Diabetes.

I’m not trying to tell you how to eat or live your life. I’m just trying to open your mind by pointing you towards these movies. Expand your mind and then decide how you want to live your life.

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Killer at Large, King Corn, & Food, Inc.

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I came across this genius video earlier on Mashable, and I’m thankful I did. No way I would have wanted to miss out on this. This Jaydon kid is going to be in the big time soon, mark my words.

Jaydon’s school put on a production of 1983 box-office hit Scarface, which starred Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. This show was a remake from a movie that first hit the silver screen in the 1930s. It follows the rise of Tony Montana, a Cuban immigrant who, along with his friend Manny, builds a strong criminal empire in early 1980′s Miami.

While Al Pacino was brilliant in the original, he has nothing on young Jaydon! You have to watch it to believe it… several times in a row.

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This Video Will Go Viral: Scarface School Play

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Even though I’ve seen the movie a million times now, I still need to watch “A Christmas Story” every year. I don’t have the lines memorized or anything, but… it’s as much a tradition as egg nog and flying lugnuts.

JibJab is so much fun! You really should try it yourself sometime!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

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A Christmas Story

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Have you ever actually watched the entire movie? I did – once. It is a wonderful life, but it would be so much more wonderful if they updated the movie with 3D effects and Dolby Surround Sound.

JibJab is so much fun! You really should try it yourself sometime!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

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It’s a Wonderful Life

Have you seen the trailer for the ’9′ movie yet? I happened to catch a teaser for it in theaters earlier this year (and couldn’t wait to see more). I figured anybody who loved Sci-Fi / Fantasy as much as I did would likely want to see the movie, too.

Yep, this is one I’d want to see on opening night. It’s already captured my imagination, and I’m hopeful we’ll see more from the 9 universe soon enough.

I’ve loved just about everything Tim Burton has touched:

• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• Corpse Bride
• Edward Scissorhands
• Beetlejuice
• Family Dog

9

This is OmniDragon’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway. Feel free to leave comments for this article as you see fit – your feedback is certainly welcomed! If you’d like to submit your own how-to, what-is, or top-five list, you can send it to me. Views and opinions of this writer are not necessarily my own:

Mike Singletary, former Linebacker for the Chicago Bears who was captain of the defense when they went 15-1 in their Super Bowl winning season in 1985, used to watch a certain movie scene before each game. He would put Patton in the VCR and watch the beginning where George C. Scott talks to the Third Army about war and what being a warrior is all about. Singletary would then strap on his helmet and take his position upon the field of battle with the full intention of ripping the enemy limb from limb. And that’s exactly what he did. There are a few movies out there that I would put into the VCR, DVD player, or the computer just so I could watch a particular scene that really gets me going.

1. Heat: In this one, Al Pacino plays Vincent, a homicide detective who spends more time chasing down bad guys than he does paying attention to his family. Robert DeNiro plays Neil, the bad guy who’s on the verge of retiring from a life of crime if he can just pull off this one last score. Well, Vincent has just arrived at his house, late as usual. He goes upstairs to find that his wife is getting all dressed up for a night on the town without him. So, he calls up his cop buddies and has them trail Neil in a helicopter until Vincent can catch up to him and pull him over. He invites him to have a cup of coffee, Neil accepts, and they have a nice little chat in the diner, good guy to bad guy.
2. True Romance: Clarence Worely (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette) are on the run after Clarence killed Alabama’s pimp ex-boyfriend and stole a half a million dollars worth of cocaine. They get married, go visit Clarence’s dad (Dennis Hopper), and then go to Los Angeles so they can sell the drugs, make a bundle of money, and live happily ever after. The day after they left for L.A., the mobster who hired the pimp to sell the drugs in the first place (Christopher Walken) shows up at Dennis Hopper’s place looking for Clarence and his “girlfriend”. As soon as he answers the door, Clarence’s dad gets punched in the face and knocked out cold. He wakes up sitting in a chair with Christopher Walken standing across from him, ready for the interrogation. This is where we get to find out just what kind of father Dennis Hopper’s character really is. I love this scene. And to have it be Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper makes it nothing short of a classic.
3. Lord Of The Rings – The Two Towers: This is an epic movie. But after having seen it a hundred times, sometimes I just can’t wait for that part where the elves show up at the castle, ready for war. And, then of course, the battle for Helm’s Deep. If you haven’t seen the extended DVD version of this film, I highly recommend it. Without which you will never know what happens to all those orcs who retreat into the forest attempting to flee from battle.
4. Tombstone: Kurt Russel really outdid himself in this one. Most of the time, I’ll actually watch it all the way through, though it’s mostly just background noise up until the nighttime scene at the train station. Ike Clanton and Stillwell thought they were going to get the drop on Wyatt and his brother. Little did they know, Wyatt and his friends were already there. Wyatt, McMasters, Texas Jack Vermillion, Turkey “Creek” Jack Johnson, and Doc Holiday. Wyatt kills Stillwell and then has Ike down on his knees crying and begging for his life. He tells Ike what’s what, the scene breaks, and then all hell breaks loose. I get chills every time, though I think my liking of this part mostly stems from everything that follows, all the way to where Jhonny Ringo gets killed.
5. Scent Of A Woman: Charlie Simms (Chris O’Donnell) comes from a working class home in Oregon and currently attends an all boys prep school in New Hampshire on a Young American’s merit scholarship. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade (Al Pacino) is a retired, disabled veteran from the U.S. Marine Corp. He embarrassingly lost his eyesight while practicing a grenade juggling act in the military. The Colonel needs someone to look after him over the weekend while his normal caretakers go on a family trip to Albany, NY. Charlie reluctantly takes the job and he and the Colonel spend the weekend in New York City. Charlie has been stewing over an incident that took place before they left for New York. He and another student were implicated in witnessing a prank played on the Headmaster by other students. When the weekend is over, Charlie and George are called to a hearing so they can name the perpetrators involved in the incident. George has his rich father backing him up. Poor Charlie has nobody…until the Colonel shows up and gives a speech about life and about what “leaders should be made of” that ends in a roar of applause from the spectating crowd. Al Pacino won an Oscar for his performance in this film. Again, I get goosebumps every time.

Honorable mention in this category includes the speech given at the end of The American President by Michael Douglas, near the end of Strange Days when the riot starts, at the end of The Game when Sean Penn says happy birthday to his brother. That one actually brought a tear to my eye. Sean Penn is a genius. One more. The part in What Planet Are You From where Annette Benning sings High Hopes. That was beautiful.

Well, how about you? Are there any movies that you would watch just so you could see that one particular scene? Leave me a comment. I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say about this.

Top Five Movie Scenes

No matter what the reason, there’s always that one movie we wish we would have watched, but just haven’t. I know for me, there are several that fall into this category. I keep promising myself I’ll get around to watching them, but never do. I asked several of my friends what movie they missed out on.

So what movie have you always wanted to see, but didn’t? And… why haven’t you?

What’s the One Movie You Wanted to See, but Didn’t?

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After I blogged recently about wanting to try TiVo, I was sent a unit to review for a few weeks. I’ve been wanting to try it out, so this was a great opportunity. With certain software, you can take programs you record on TiVo and transcode them on your computer. You can then turn them into videos you can watch on pretty much any device. All the DVRs I’ve had are boxes unto themselves, they couldn’t be networked in any way. By networking my TiVo, I can then do as I described, to create videos I can play on my computer, iPhone or any other device I wanted to use. Here are a couple of programs you can use to accomplish this.

TiVo Butler is an application that can track programs from multiple TiVo devices that you have on your home network. It’s free, and allows you to browse the recordings you’ve made on your TiVo. You can download them, encode them and much more. TiVo Butler is only available for Mac OS X.

However…

TiVo Playlist is the Windows equivalent. Everything that you could hope to do with your TiVo, you’ll be able to do with ease using TiVo Playlist.

1. Retrieve TiVo Now Playing lists over an ethernet connection and calculate total recording time and disk space used
2. Support for multiple TiVo units
3. Estimate free space remaining given the capacity of the TiVo hard drive(s)
4. Display either full List View or Folder View
5. Mouseover Title shows description of recorded show along with Year Released/Air Date, Actors, Director, etc.
6. View graphical representation of disk free space and space used by either recording status or recording quality
7. Export of Now Playing lists to CSV files for use in other programs such as Microsoft Excel
8. Batch downloading of recordings to PC (even from multiple machines)
9. Tested to run under Windows 2000 and XP Pro and reported to run under Windows 98/ME, XP Home and Vista
10. Works best at screen sizes 800×600 or larger if running 96dpi, or 1024×768 or larger if running 120dpi
11. Downloads to FAT32 partitions support up to 4Gb filesizes, NTFS partitions support files > 4Gb (Windows 2000/XP/Vista only)
12. Access via HTTP/HTTPS and requires TiVo software version 7.1 or newer

You know how to email me, if you have other DVR or TiVo software or tips to pass along to me! I’ll be glad to check them out and share them with the community.

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What Software do You use with TiVo?

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What was the first movie you ever saw in a movie theater? For me, I remember watching The Rescuers at a drive-in when I was a kid. I’ve been going to movie theaters all my life, even still today. Even though I have excellent home equipment to watch from the comfort of my couch, there’s still a place for the movie theater. There needs to be some changes, yes. And the cost? Don’t get me started there.


I talked to my chat room, and asked them what their thoughts are as to what movie theaters need to be like for the future. Here is what they came up with:

• Free food! We know that’s how they make their money, but maybe they can come up with other ways to make money. I mean seriously. Bring on the popcorn dripping butter! Why not trying free popcorn or soda night?
• Discount licensing. Imagine if you went to a movie and you take your stub… and use it to buy that DVD, or be able to download it. Your ticket would entitle to you to a discount.
• Aroma and audience ambiance That would likely get me to go to the theater for that kind of experience.
• Force-feedback seats. How cool would that be? The only feedback I get on my seat is when I move it around. Bringing the movie off the screen and into the audience is something that would be really cool.
• Interaction! Let the audience choose their own ending. The audience could create a noise level or push a button to choose how they would like to see the movie end.

Excellent Movie-Related Deals!

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What was the First / Last Movie you saw in a Theater?

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One community member wrote in to say: “Over the last few years I have come full circle when it comes to MP4 players. So here are the 5 steps to choosing the right player for you.”

• What do you need it for? If you want your MP4 player for listening to music and taking your favorite video clips with you to watch when you have a minute, you’ll probably be looking for a small screen player with 2 – 8 GB storage. Or if you’re looking for a device to use on the train to watch that TV show you missed last night or on an airplane to watch a movie or two, you’ll be looking for a larger screen player so you don’t strain your eyes with between 10 and 120 GB of storage.
• Choose Your Brand! I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this but whenever Apple comes out with a new iPod, Creative will come out with something a month or so later that does just the same thing, looks a lot uglier but costs a lot less too. So if you’re a big apple fan with no budget, go for the iPod. If you’re not bothered either way, save some money and take the creative. Alternatively, if you’re just going to use it for watching videos, get an Archos.
• Chose Your Model! With each different model you get a different screen size. If you’d rather have a small player, you’ll be looking at the new iPod nano with its sleek design and versatile storage, the new Creative Zen MP4 player with between 4 and 16 GB of storage, or the new Archos 105. If you prefer the larger player, you’ll be looking at the Apple iPod Classic, iPod Touch or the iPhone, the Creative Zen Vision M or W or the Archos 406, 506 or 706.
• Protection. As with all small consumer electronic products, you’d be a fool not to buy a case. The Archos is the only device that comes with a half decent case. The others just come with those pouches to keep away dust and scratches. These are no good if you knock or drop the product so invest in a hard wearing case. It might also be worth looking into extended warranties and accidental damage cover. These things are expensive don’t forget.
• Get the most out of your product! Now that you know what you want, look into the extra features and see how they will benefit you. You’d be surprised what features are on these devices. Wifi and internet browsers, card readers, AV input/output ports, docking stations, TV recording features… There’s a lot more than meets the eye to these players and most people don’t realize it!

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How to Buy an MP4 Player