theMediaman.com

After last week’s orgy of posts, I probably won’t be writing as much this week. From Thursday to next Monday, I’m finally getting my time-in-lieu following the DVD launch. BONUS - I’m also getting to borrow the projector for the weekend… so I’m unofficially inviting you to watch all 11 hours of Lord of the Rings with me starting around noon on Sunday.

You’ve all talked about doing it, but I’m going to do it.

…such a geek.

But this is indeed a year in the movies for geeks. We’ve got Hitchhiker’s Guide coming out at the end of April, Star Wars in May and War of the Worlds in June. The comic book sub-genre will deliver Sin City, Batman Begins, and The Fantastic Four… and I guess Aeon Flux fits into the same category, although I never really got into the show. The body proportions were so disturbingly out of whack, it made your average anime look like the 1978 LotR movie!

It also looks like the DOOM movie might actually get made. With the amount of post-production special effects they’re going to need, I figure it will either miss the proposed August 5 release date, or it will suck. All I can think about is the last movie The Rock was in that had disappointing CG effects - the Rock-Scorpian at the end of The Mummy Returns.

Other movies of note are 3D cartoons Robots (by the Ice Age people) and Madagascar (by the Shrek people). Pixar’s “Cars” has been moved to Summer 2006. We saw Robots on Friday. I have to agree with whatever critic wrote tongue-in-cheek that the plot was a bit “mechancal”, but it was still a fun movie. The only nasty part is a teaser with Ice Age’s Scrat at the very beginning, concluding with “To Be Continued…”. We stayed until the end of the credits, and it was certainly NOT continued. Very angry!

The Japanese-To-Hollywood Horror sub-genre delivers The Ring Two, and Dark Water - both based off books by Kôji Suzuki.

There’s also a movie called “Mindhunters” with an interesting cast (LL Cool J, Val Kilmer, Jonny Lee Miller, Christian Slater) but I could swear I first saw the trailer for this movie at least a year ago… UPDATE - yup… the trailer on Apple’s web site says Copyright 2003, which means it’s been up there at least 15 months. Good news is that it looks like Christian Slater bites it early in the movie. Bad news is that the trailer tells you The Big Plot Twist. Watch at your own discression.

In the same weekend we get “The” blockbuster of the Summer, War of the Worlds, we also get Bewitched (Nicole Kidman and Will Farrell in one of his twenty movies he’s releasing this year), Herbie: Fully Loaded (with the brilliant thespian, Lindsay Lohan) and The Dukes of Hazard (with Stiffler, Jessica Simpson and the Jackass guy). So, if a couple-hundred-million special effects extravagandza is too intellectual for you, then you’ve got options.