Author: Mike P. Lewis

Best Trailers Ever

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I find movie trailers absolutely amazing. They are often better than the movie itself. Trailers are an art form that has emerged over the past 10 years and are truly a great piece of entertainment. I'd like to take this blog moment to recognize my favorite trailers over the past few years.

  1. Star Wars: Episode I – No trailer has never gotten me so pumped to see a movie as this one did. My senior year in college, working on my final CS project, i played this trailer repeatedly in anticipation of Darth Maul kicking ass! Seriously, it is just a well crafted trailer, giving you a great crecendo of action right until the end. I know i'm a nerd, no need to say it out loud.
  2. Garden State – a great trailer and one that Matt Lewis obsessed with for a good 2 months. He even hit the chat rooms based soley on this trailer.
  3. Jarhead – the Kanye music and the oil scenes make this movie look like this this generation's Apocolypse Now. The movie didn't deliver on the promise, but the trailer still gets you.
  4. X-Men III, which is coming out soon has a great trailer. The final confrontation between mutants and humans couldn't look any cooler, and all the character building they've been doing in 1 and 2 look like they'll pay off big-time in this one.
  5. The Vanilla Sky trailer got me really pumped up when i saw it as Cameron Crowe films are always great (Fast Times at Ridgemont, Almost Famous, Say Anything) and he always uses music so well in his films (Say Anything – Lloyd holding the stereo, Almost Famous' classic Zepplin and Elton John bus scene), so when i heard the Peter Gabriel music and Penolope Cruz in this one, i thought i was going to be quite a modern classic. Oh well.
  6. Sliver – it's actually a sucky movie and a horrible trailer, but i just wanted to see if you were still paying attention. I'm putting it up here just because Sam Lewis said he loved it and i want us all to mock him. You should check it out still, it is pretty comical.
  7. ADDED (5/5/) Mock Trailers – they're all good. My personal favorite is Brokeback to the Future, but i think Big is good and the Shining (thanks Walker) is not bad either. 

What sucks about alot of these trailers (Vanilla Sky for instance) is that they often tell the entire movie – i mean the entire plot. I hate that. But, i have to admit, it makes me more likely to go to the movie, but it does make the viewing experience much worse – i guess that's what the trailermakers care about – getting the audience, not necessarily enjoying the flick.

LaLa is Great!

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For the past few months i've been hearing about a music searvice site called Lala and how it's supposed to be a great service, but i could never get in. Well, i finally got in and starting using the service. And let me tell you – it is, in fact, great.

What is it? Lala is a CD sharing service that lets you receive (in the mail) other people CD's and makes it easy – by providing you with easy mailing envelopes – for you toLala Ships Discs send your CD's to other people.

Their site is very slick and very easy to use. You

  1. List CD's you have and claim the ones you want (by click on them in the site)
  2. Get CD's in the mail from any other member who decides to send you their CD. It notifies them on their lala site that their CD is wanted. Each CD costs you $1 (plus 50 cents shipping) and the number you get depends on how many you ship.
  3. Mail your CD's to people who have selected they want it. Lala provides you with prepaid envelopes so the shipping is really easy.

The claiming of CD's you have and selecting what CD's you want is very simple. I just received my first CD and it came in a plastic case. I never have to return it and just have to send a CD of my own once i get a notice from someone that they want it. It's just a P2P netflix for CD's. Pretty great. If you have time, sign up and start swapping

An interesting thing about the service is Lala claims to be setting aside 20% of their revenue to compensate the artists who get traded on the service. This is a nice little secondary market for these artists but it will remain to be seen how much revenue there actually is. Lala has raised $9 million in startup cash and is cleary burning through it on site development, labels, and even in client software (an iTunes plug-in). I see them needing more money in about a year with around 100k regular users. Nevertheless, i still think it's a slick site.

Beer Belly, the World Cup Blog, and World Cup Power Rankings

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First, check out the beer belly, which is an ingenious way for fans to get beer into thebeer belly stadium. It looks like a great way to get a belly full of brew without having to haul in a bunch of cans – also, with the flexy straw there's no need to remove your hands from a few hot dogs and nachosSecond, there's now an entire blog set up to track the World Cup at worldcupblog.org. I know i just added to my Netvibes. I'm looking forward to seeing the US kick some ass on the world stage.  Although the blog's latest post has the power rankings which has the US at a lowly 15th.  The top 15 are:

  1. Brazil (1) – So good even Maradona wants to wear yellow.
  2. Spain (3) – We have to rank them high so they can fail to live up to expectations.
  3. Argentina (2)– Will Riquelme take the penalty kicks?
  4. Italy (4) – Totti is back and looking fit.
  5. Czech Republic (7) – Nedved might retire before World Cup.
  6. Germany (8) – Maybe Lehmann is alright after all.
  7. England (9) – Big Phil is the one, now they can concentrate on Beckham’s hair
  8. Portugal (5) – Scolari news overshadows uncertain keeper situation.
  9. Netherlands (6) – Makaay won’t play in Germany.
  10. France (12) – Zidane to make one final stand.
  11. Croatia (10) – Defender Jurica Vranješ faces injury concerns
  12. Mexico (13) – Rafa Marquez first Mexican in Champions League final
  13. Sweden (11) – Zlatan fighting with Juve teammates; Östlund wants to lose weight
  14. Ukraine (14) – Shevchenko struggling with his form.
  15. USA (16) – Where are the goals going to come from?

Coolest New Fuel Efficient Car

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Driving sucks. I've been driving back and forth from DC to Frederick alot lately and putting all those miles on Chester (my car) has been taking its toll.  That, and i'm feeling a need to be better to our environment.  Our poor planet hates us and i want to be one of the good guys.  Plus, Chester is sooo pretentious that he doesn't even care. 

Clever CarSo, what can be done? Well, take a look at the new CLEVER car.  It's a kickass one-seater.  Mixing the efficiency and compactness of a motorcycle with the comfort and safety of a car, the CLEVER car can go up to 80 mph is tops on my list of what i want to get to tool around town in. 

I was very psyched on the Tango's from Commuter Cars, but they seem to be a little to futuristic in a bad way – in a similar way that everyone wearing silver colored fullTango2.jpg body suits (onesies) with a purple 'V' on the front is futuristic in a bad way.  (Note – the CLEVER car is futuristic cool similar to shooting laser beams out of pencil is cool).  An amazing thing about the Tango is that it's an electric car and can go 0-60 in 4 seconds, so it's fast as hell and totally environment-friendly.  The Tango (see pics) is closer to reality – you can order it now – and while it would be a fun way to get around town, i like the look of my half-motorcycle/half-car CLEVER.

Ajax Project Management System Needed

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As someone who works with a diverse staff and likes to keep a tight schedule, i online project management tools. I also love gantt charts. The current product i’ve been using is dot project – but this is a pretty cumbersome app. Seeiing that there are so many people who are taking web 1.0 tools and spicing them up for 2.0, can someone please do this for the Project Management tools?

It makes sense for click-intensive tools like mail, calendar, bug reporting, and maps – see: gmail, new Yahoo Mail, Google Calendar, CalendarHub, 16Bugs, and Google/Yahoo Maps – why can’t someone do this for PM tools?

Anyone know of some good stuff? Talk to me

Browswer-Only Google Computer

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GoogleHP2.jpgToday if you look at www.Google.com on IE, you'll see an ad for users to get Firefox. If you look at Google on Firefox, there's nothing. I think this is super ballsy. They are giving the double birds to Microsoft. Why would they do this? It is my belief that this is because Google will release in the next year a browser based PC for consumers to buy at an incredibly low price (say $100).

Google is building a world where all that is needed is the browser. All their services – Video, Search, Mail, IM, etc. – all work only in the browser, there is no concept of an application to them. This is the exact opposite of of what MS does, which is to create almost exclusively applications – Word, Excel, Outlook, etc..

Think about this:

  • A $100 computer that has no hard-drive, just 500 MB of flash, a keyboard, mouse – and you can pay extra for a monitor if you want one
  • OOBE: Upon bootup, which only takes a second because there's no hard-drive you get a Firefox browser which loads Google.com and a suite of applications:
    • Writely for text docs
    • Gmail
    • Google Chat
    • Google Calendar
    • Google Video
    • Google SocialNet (whatever this is – Orkut?)
    • Management of Google's Wimax connector to get internet anywhere

This would change the world. People could get 4 of these for around there house. Anytime you have any question or comment, you boot up a browser. With HD tv sets, you could have a browser available at every TV set. I'm telling you, this would be awesome and it's completely doable and looks to be what's coming. You heard it here first.

Silent Hill Is Terrible

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So terrible in fact, it's hilarious. The plot is so absurd that it was kinda enjoyable. Let me list some of the things in the actual movie:

Actual Things in The Plot

  • The main characters are a mother/daughter team who take a road trip to a ghost town (because in the daughter's dreams she is called there of course). The ghost town is actually an alternate world where everyone's already dead – but apperenty their cell phones can reach the other side, although its pretty staticy
  • In the ghost town, every hour or so, sirens sound and "darkness" comes where mutants appear out of thin air and come into town to terrorize and kill anyone wondering around. After about 20 minutes of terrorizing, they disintigrate into thin air and the sun comes back out.
  • it is raining ash all the time due to underground coal fires that have been burning for 30 years. But the ash is either from that or the mutants who come out b/c after an hour or so of terrorizing the people, they burn up
  • Immediately after entering the spooky ghost town, the daughter runs away from her mom. The mom then goes around trying to find her and rescue her . To help her the daughter has left clues within the different buildings in the town that the mom – doing good detective work – finds.
  • There are bad guys (who knows who they are) wearing fumigation suits and masks (note: nobody else does and nothing bad happens to them). These guys go around town with metal pipes killing humans as they believe they are "sinners" or something like that.
  • There's a mutant guy with anvil head and huge-ass 20 foot knife who commands an army of cockroaches.  He comes with "the darkness"
  • The main character (adopted daughter) is adopted by the main family but coincidentally she looks exactly like another young girl who died 30 years ago who was killed because her mom wouldn't tell the town who the father was. Because of this apparent sin the people of the town decided to burn the girl in a bonfire they made inside the middle of the church. If you're going to build a bonfire to burn people, you might want to do it outside 
  • Every women in the film has huge boobs and a really tight shirt – even the mutants who have no heads, they have big boobs. I thought it made them even scarier. 

Transformers – The Movie

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TranformersAs a kid, my favorite toy was transformers. I loved them. What a genius idea to instead of making something half robot have man – make it half robot / half car. Awesome. And if you're a bad guy, you half-robot / half plane or gun.

After a good 20 years since the last transformers movie, they're making another one. Although this one isn't a cartoon and it isn't just for kids. With "I'll blow anything up and make everyone look as cool as possible but with the worst dialouge" Michael Bay at director, Steven Spielberg as hands-on creative producer, and some big name stars signing on, this movie has the makings of being fantastic. Just announecd this past week is Shia LaBeof, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jon Voight, Bernie Mac, Tyrese, John Turturro, Megan Fox, Travis Van Winkle (who was on an OC episode this year), and John Robinson (guy from Elephant – the worst movie ever). I don't think any of these guys are playing the actual transformers, but rather the people who interact with them.

I couldn't be more excited for this movie and i wish they'd bring back the toys too. It seems like the kids of today don't have heros and villans as cool as rotots turned cars and with great names like Megatron, Optimus Prime, and Omega Supreme.

Update (4/23): Not 8 hours after i posted this, the site Ain't It Cool News posted an article about a sitdown they did with Michael Bay about the movie. Apparently it'll be the first movie to every show the new F-22 jet that can hover. All in all, it still sounds like it's going to be sweet.

Update (5/9): IGN (here) has more news and some actors have been confirmed , such as Jon Voight, Megan Fox, Bernie Mac, and Josh Duhamel. Filming begins soon to be ready for next summer.