brainwagon

Well, the Academy has released their Oscar Nominees, and I’m pleased to see that The Incredibles was nominated in four categories: Best Animated Feature Best Screenplay Achievement in Sound Editing Achievement in Sound Mixing Congratulations to Brad Bird, everyone at Pixar, and congratulations to me! Addendum: Yahoo! has a complete list of all the nominees.

I had intended to go catch Elektra, the latest of the many Marvel epics, last night after Wil Wheaton’s booksigning, but by the time we got out of that it was after 10 and we really weren’t up to it. So, instead we waited till this morning and caught as a matinee. On the way […]

I haven’t done a movie review in quite some time, but I did manage to get out with my better half to see White Noise, starring actors Michael Keaton, Chandra West, Debra Unger and Ian McNiece. The film begins with the tragic death of author Anna Rivers under mysterious circumstances. Her husband, Jonathan Rivers, is […]

Slate is running a scathing article by science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. Apparently a movie with a title similar to some of her books is running on the Sci Fi channel, and she’s not enormously happy about it.

Apple has just posted the teaser for Stephen Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds. Not much to see, but try comparing voice over to the great introduction done by Orson Welles for his famous Mercury Theater Broadcast. Orson’s radio voice and delivery may be unequalled in the history of radio, and he’s at his […]

Today is the opening day for the latest Pixar Animation Studios film, The Incredibles directed by Brad Bird. In the interest of full disclosure, any opinions I have about it are highly suspect, since I have two credits on the film, but you can trust my wife, and she thinks it is the best movie […]

Wherein your movie going host gives a brief update on his experiments with Asterisk, and reviews the mediocre new movie release Team America. Sorry folks, it just wasn’t very funny.

Wherein your host experiments with a remote on-the-street feed, thanks his patient and benevolent listeners for their comments, and reviews the British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead. Download the MP3 for the complete review, but the summary is: it’s a terrific zombie movie and a terrific comedy welded together to make a really great […]

It’s sometimes important for me to remember that working for Pixar Animation Studios does have its perks: today we were blessed with a preview screening of the new movie, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and were also blessed with a special guest appearance by its director Kerry Conran, editor Sabrina Plisco and production […]

Well, today’s weekend movie extravaganza was the long awaited (at least in the VandeWettering house) Resident Evil: Apocalypse. For those of you who have been living in a hole for the last decade, the Resident Evil franchise began as a popular videogame series on the Sega Dreamcast and Sony Playstation. I must admit that I […]

Hero is the U.S. release of the movie Ying xiong, starring Jet Li as Nameless, a man who has defeated the three top assassins who were all sworn to kill the king of the Qin. I’m not sure what else to say about it without spoiling the story, which unfolds slowly and with some finesse. […]

This weekend’s movie extravaganza was Garden State, starring, written and directed by Zach Braff. Braff is perhaps best known for his role on the TV show Scrubs, but here he stretches beyond the comedy antics and tries to tell us a story of considerable warmth, emotion and humanity. Braff plays Andrew Largeman, an L.A. actor […]

I had a rare “middle of the week” movie attack last night (there was nothing on television) so the wife and I trundled off to see Michael Mann’s latest noir-ish creation Collateral. An aside: I’ve got a pet theory that 50% of a movie’s gross is determined by it’s choice of title. By my estimation, […]

Warning: This may contain something you will view as a spoiler. You’ve been warned. It was with some mixed feelings that I decided to go see Alien vs. Predator this weekend. After all, if you average out all four Alien movies and both Predator movies, you end up with a grade of C. In each […]

Friday nights are terrible for television. Usually I’m out teaching people how to make telescopes, but last night I was just not in the mood. In fact, I was in a tremendously grumpy mood. It turned out to be 9pm, and I just didn’t want to be in the house anymore. A quick check of […]