A “gay zombie porn” flick which shows aliens engaging in necrophilia has been pulled from Australia’s biggest film festival after being rejected by censors, organizers said Tuesday.

“L.A. Zombie”, which also features homosexual sex and full-frontal male nudity, is the first film in seven years to be banned from screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, which starts on July 22.

Festival director Richard Moore told The Age newspaper he had received a letter from censors rejecting the film by Canadian director Bruce LaBruce.

Described by Moore as a “video art zombie film”, “L.A. Zombie” stars French porn actor Francois Sagat as a man convinced he is an alien zombie sent to Earth to roam the streets of Los Angeles in search of dead bodies and gay sex.

Australia’s film classification board said the movie had been denied an exemption from classification, not banned as Moore had claimed.

An exemption would have allowed the film to be shown at the festival, but board director Donald McDonald said he had concluded, from the film’s synopsis and the director’s previous classification history, that “L.A Zombie” was not suitable for screening.

“In the opinion of the director, the film, if classified, would be classified X18+ or RC (refused classification) and, in this circumstance, the law requires the director to refuse an exemption,” McDonald said in a statement to AFP.

Films may not be screened publicly unless they are classified, while classifications of X18+ or RC prevent a film from being shown in most public cinemas.

Moore has defended the festival’s attempt to show the film, telling public broadcaster ABC that people have a right to judge it for themselves.

“They know they’re not gonna go and see Fantasia or Bambi,” said Moore.

“L.A. Zombie” will have its world premiere next week in Locarno, Switzerland.

Last year’s festival drew protests from China and had its website hacked over the decision to show “Ten Conditions of Love”, a biopic of Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer.

“Avatar” will be back on 3-D IMAX screens in August, and it will be longer than ever. IMAX and 20th Century Fox said on Friday said that they planned to re-release James Cameron’s science-fiction epic for a two-week run beginning Aug. 27. The film, which had a running time of 162 minutes, will include 8 minutes of new material. Fox executives had been mulling a re-release ever since “Avatar,” which came out last Dec. 18, got nudged off IMAX screens in March by Walt Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland.” The blockbuster has sold about $2.7 billion in tickets worldwide.

Actor Sir Patrick Stewart paid tribute to a former teacher as he was knighted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

The 69-year-old said he owed “literally everything” to the English teacher who first encouraged him to perform.

“Although many people in my life have had great influence on me, without this man none of it would have happened,” he said following Wednesday’s investiture.

The classically-trained actor is best known for his roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men films.

He was recently seen on the London stage appearing alongside fellow actor knight Sir Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot.

Sir Patrick said his knighthood – announced in the New Year Honours List – had been “an unlooked-for honour”.

“But as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theatre and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier [and] Sir John Gielgud,” he continued.

“The knights of the theatre represented to me not only the pinnacle of the profession but the esteem in which the profession was held.

“To find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me.”

The Yorkshire-born star said he would be celebrating his knighthood with Cecil Dormand, the teacher who first encouraged him to consider acting as a profession.

“He was the one that put a copy of Shakespeare in my hand [and] said, ‘Now get up on your feet and perform’.”

Earlier this week it was announced that Sir Patrick would chair a jury and deliver a talk at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The actor was recently seen at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester playing William Skakespeare in the Edward Bond play Bingo.

I know I have that moviesign blog, but you know, I haven’t been doing a very good job of working on that. Blame Shotalicious. Blame lackluster films I’ve been seeing. Films like Russell Crowe’s “Robin Hood.” I took my mom to it for her birthday, so as long as she was satisfied with it, the outing would be a success. Well, she did like it, so that was good. And it was free. Got tickets from MyCokeRewards. I’m telling you people, you gotta work the systems you’re giving. In fact, I got another free ticket from AMC Moviewatcher Club when getting these.

But back to Robin Hood. Do I have to talk about it?

Why don’t I just mention the only part I really liked. Okay two parts. I liked Robin’s merry men. Even though they weren’t really called that, they kind of reminded me of Merry and Pippin so that was fun. And the other thing were the lost boys of Nottingham that were in the outskirts of the flick. You could just make a flick about them. They even called them Feral Boys in the credits.

Now they were cool. Old ass Cate Blanchet with her lack of bosoms and angry faces. She sucked. Russel Crowe sucked too. And the movie just never wanted to end.

Well this review is ending. But what should I spend my free ticket on? I’m thinking this maybe?

I was honored to be asked to write a quiz for AVATAR for the very awesome site How Well Do You Know.
I took my time and really tried to make it my best. Take it (along with my other three quizzes) tonight! Tell me what you think.

It’s been a very active weekend here in my life. It all started once I got off work Friday (though that was busy as hell too.) Courtney came over and we watched Zombieland. Yes, I know I haven’t been updating my MOVIESIGN! page like I wanted to. Just so much gets in the way. The movie is very very good though and I had a great time. A bit more sadness than usual after taking her home. I guess it’s just I feel like I need some closeness right now and am not getting as much as I’d like.

Saturday started early as I changed rooms with my sister and her kidrockboyfriend. It went smoothly enough, though it did take a lot of the day. Sadly my Windows XP machine died in the process. When you press the on button, it sounds almost like a car trying to start up, but never doing so. Another bad thing was that kidrockboyfriend felt he had to go all redneck and burned the bags of ancient stuff I was going to be throwing away. We’re talking childhood and teenage stuff that really ought to have been gone already. So that was pretty awful and bad environmentally.

That evening was DJ Tony Moran at Heretic. While I expected lots of my friends to go, not a single one did. Fortunately, like, a thousand other boys did so I was not alone. The place has changed so much in the last 6 months with all the remodeling. It almost looks classy. The music was good and I just danced my heart out until 4am. Yup, he went an extra illegal hour. Oooooh! I also gave my number to this Latin guy who asked for it. I’d seen him once before on a Wednesday a week ago. We’ll see.

Sunday started early as mom wanted to go to grandmothers and I was thinking since I’d lost my XP machine, maybe my uncle could help me partition my Windows 7 machine and have both operating systems on one computer. Sadly, that didn’t work out so well. Eventually I ended up with a new version of Windows 7 than the one I started with. THAT actually has been working out well. Rather than the 64bit Home Edition, I now have a 32bit Enterprise Edition. It seems to be running my programs that I’d been having a lot of problems with better. But that whole process to get things back to comfortability took until 3am this morning.

Of course, severe thunderstorms came down at 6am this morning, so it’s not like I got much sleep. And there was the truck I had to unload at work at 9am this morning.

So it’s really just been a non-stop kind of thing. I think now that I got most everything situated now, I can go to sleep. Zzzzzzz.

ACTION star Steven Seagal is being sued for US$1 million by a former personal assistant who claims he hired her and then expected her to be “on call for sex”.

He is being sued for sexual harassment, illegal trafficking of females for sex, failure to prevent sexual harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination and false representations about unemployment, RadarOnline reported.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Kayden Nguyen, 23, claimed Seagal flew her to New Orleans in February after hiring her to be a personal assistant.

However, Ms Nguyen said he expected her to be on call for sex and the legal documents claim Seagal “treated Ms Nguyen as his sex toy.”

The documents claim Seagal had two female Russian attendants on staff “who were available for his sexual needs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

When one decided to leave, Ms Nguyen was hired to replace her.

It also claims that Ms Nguyen was required “to watch as ‘Sasha’ (the Russian attendant) and Mr Seagal performed sex acts on each other.”

Seagal used Craigslist to hire Ms Nguyen in Los Angeles and flew her to New Orleans where he is filming a reality TV show.

Ms Nguyen claims on her first night of work, Seagal allegedly engaged in physical and sexual assault by “pushing his hands under her shirt and attempting to fondle her bare breast,” and “forcing her head against his bare chest.”

The next morning he allegedly “forcibly held her legs apart” and “forced his hand down her pants.”

Later, when Ms Nguyen left the house Seagal allegedly chased her as she ran to a cab while holding a flashlight with a gun attached to it.

Seagal has not responded to the claims.

I want a personal sex slave available for my needs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I dunno about you, but I love reward programs. But I only like the ones that actually reward me. Sometimes my CVS card gives me a few dollars free here and there which I spent to buy candy while fawning over this hot straight guy named Juan on Friday and Saturday nights. Oh man does his long hair and brilliant smile make me want to bitch slap his girlfriend and steal him for my very own.

But I’m getting off topic here.

Here are a few rewards programs I’ve been using online for quite sometime and how rewarding they actually are.

1. Swagbucks.com.

Recently this site changed their denominations for their Swagbucks, which is essentially a point system used to get things. There is more than a little work you have to do in order to get rewarded, but I find it fun. It takes me about a month to get enough Swagbucks to exchange for a 5 dollar gift card for Amazon.com. In the past, I’ve even traded them in for 5 dollars deposited directly into my PayPal account.

Of course, this is without me doing any of the real big ways of getting Swagbucks. I only check out their blog and facebook and use their toolbar search engine. You could find it more rewarding than I do. Still, I give Swagbucks my seal of approval for being a legitimate program that actually works.

2. Opinion Square.

Honestly, I don’t really like taking surveys like I used to. But I don’t mind the ones I get sent to my email from this rewards program. See, if you don’t qualify for what they’re looking for, instead of getting jack squat like you do at most places, you get a token for their instant win game. Even better, you cannot lose when you play that instant win game. You’ll at least get 25 points closer to whatever you’re shopping for in their rewards catalog.

This program takes kind of a long time for me to be rewarded. But when I do finally reach my goal of 2 AMC Gold Movie Tickets (allowing me to see any movie regardless of when it was released) I certainly am happy. Besides, it doesn’t take much of my time at all, unless I DO qualify for a survey. And those get me closer to the reward faster. My opinion is that Opinion Square is a legitimate program that actually works.

3. MyPoints

This is the rewards program I’ve been a part of since 2000, but sadly it’s becoming one of the slowest to cash out lately. Essentially, I allow myself
to get spam emails sent to me. I click on them. I get points. I’d get more points if I actually have a use for and buy whatever the spam email is selling, but that doesn’t happen very often. I’d also get more points if I shopped online via the MyPoints store. But that doesn’t happen very often either.

Still, even at its glacial pace, I still get rewarded and it doesn’t take that much time to work their system. I usually turn in my points for Target Gift Cards, though I’ve also got ones for Chili’s or even gas cards back when it was like a million dollars per gallon. One time, I actually won one of their jackpots that they run seasonally. That was pretty cool and got me lots of free stuff. MyPoints is a classic and is a legitimate program that actually works.

4. MyCokeRewards

What can I say. I saved the easiest and best for last. While I’ve complained that they keep changing how things work over on Coke’s website, I have to tell you this program pays out the most. Yes, it can be very annoying trying to figure out what the codes are on the tops of Coke products. And yes, it’s very annoying you can only enter 120 points worth per week now. But every month, I’m earning a free silver AMC movie ticket (allowing me to see a film for free, just not on opening weekend) and a large drink.

Of course, that’s just what I’m getting. There are lots of other things on there that I’ve snagged too. A pair of Avatar limited edition 3D glasses recently were going for 40 dollars on ebay. Even though I’m not a huge fan, I’m getting Entertainment Weekly for free for a number of months. In fact, you could bury yourself in magazines pretty quickly over there. They also have Napster MP3 downloads, POGO memberships, and lots and lots of Coke printed items.

So I absolutely recommend MyCokeRewards. Especially as many Cokes this household and my grammies household go through. Maybe if you look around, you’ll see you get your 120 allotted points per week pretty easily too at this legitimate and highly rewarding program.

Got my first glimpse of this trailer before Alice in Wonderland. While I’ll save my thoughts on that film until tomorrow when I post them over on Moviesign, I gotta say this 2 minutes and some change was some of the most beautiful animation I think I’ve seen yet. Stellar.

They say that March comes in like a lion, but goes out like a lamb. Well, this year, I’m starting March a couple of days early. Sorry, February, I already know you get the short end of the stick with that 28 days crap. Hell, you even had a movie called “Leap Year” come out and it wasn’t even a Leap Year for you.

But alas, I got bigger fish to fry.

I mean, maybe if I move the calender up a few days, the weather will cooperate. Actually, the Deep South is expecting another snow storm to come blowing through here on Tuesday. WTF!

At least the dance floors here in HOTlanta will be getting an early dose of summertime goodness with DJ Abel tonight spinning a mega party at Jungle.

And speaking of parties, pixiesticks.org is celebrating its 9th Birthday on March 11th, so you know you can expect some surprises then.

And the personal celebrations just keep on coming! March 23rd will see me having quit smoking cigarettes for 1 whole year.

So normally while March is just such a tumultuous month, not to mention those Ides of March you gotta worry about, maybe this year by kind of starting it just a hint early, we can make this one something special.

Filmmaker Kevin Smith, fresh from delivering a speech at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, unleashed his fury on Southwest Airlines after the pilot on Smith’s flight from Oakland to Burbank ejected him for being “too fat to fly” Saturday evening.

“I’m way fat, but I’m not there just yet,” Smith wrote on his Twitter.com account after the incident, adding that he was able to lower both arm rests at his seat. “I broke no regulation.”

Southwest Airlines measures whether a customers too large to fly based on the passenger’s ability to lower both armrests while sitting on the plane. If the passenger cannot lower one or both armrests, the carrier typically requires the passenger to purchase an additional seat or make arrangements on other flights that may accommodate for extra space.

“Wanna tell me I’m too wide for the sky?” Smith inquired on his Twitter account. “Totally cool, but fair warning folks: If you look like me, you may be ejected from Southwest Air.”

The director of Clerks and Chasing Amy, who is also known for playing a character named “Silent Bob” in several films, added that Southwest Airlines did offer him a $100 voucher for his troubles. Additionally, Smith wrote that a female passenger seated next to him was also “chastised for not buying an additional seat.”

A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines wrote an apology on the company’s Twitter account following the Twitter-lashing unleashed by Smith Saturday evening.

Smith is expected to further address the Southwest Airlines issue on his podcast Sunday evening. The director eventually landed in Burbank on another flight.

I can’t remember seeing a movie in recent history 4 times in theaters. I know I saw many twice. I probably saw standard epics like entries of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars a number of times. But four times? If I did, I certainly can’t recall. Today, I saw James Cameron’s “Avatar” for the 4th time.

2 times in Real 3D
1 times in Digital 3D
1 time in fake IMAX 3D. (See this for more information on LieMax)

Now, granted I’ve only actually paid 13 dollars to see it all of those times thanks to various freebie tickets and delightful friends, now that I know just what an amazing motion picture “Avatar” is, I would have paid full price. It just simply is perhaps THE theater experience of my lifetime.

I love every single thing about the movie, but wouldn’t consider myself a big enough fan to join a fan site, post on movie message boards, and participate in some Na’vi role playing or anything. But I certainly am unapologetic about my defending of the film of those who move past expressing their dislike to generating attacks on it. Who doesn’t like a nerdy movie cockfight?

Really, I cannot stress this enough. Even if you have already seen the flick once, I absolutely highly recommend you getting back out there and immersing yourself once again in the beauty and danger that is Pandora. Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” (another movie I am interested in seeing, mind you) is going to come out March 5th and will almost certainly take the lion’s share of “Avatar’s” 3D screens. For those of you who still have been reluctant to take the plunge, you simply won’t be able to appreciate this at home on DVD. Go! Now!

James Cameron’s ” Avatar” has completed its three-part flight into history, surpassing a domestic box office record that’s stood since the filmmaker’s “Titanic” completed its theatrical run in 1998.

The 3D phenom previously shredded the international and worldwide b.o. records set by “Titanic.”

On Wednesday, “Avatar” distributor Fox said the sci-fi epic had rung up $601.1 million in domestic b.o. through Tuesday. “Titanic” registered $600.8 million in U.S. and Canadian coin.

So how high can “Avatar” fly?

“I have no idea where we go from here,” Fox domestic distribution president Bruce Snyder said. “The only picture that has gotten this high was “Titanic,’ but ‘Avatar’ is coming off of a $30 million weekend while ‘Titanic’ was ending its theatrical run at the same point in the cume.”

“Avatar” — which scored nine Oscar nominations Tuesday — boasts a foreign tally of $1.48 billion and counting, shaping a worldwide cume of $2.08 billion.

Box Office Prophets has a more in depth rundown.

(Ed note: I’ve seen Avatar in 3D and in digital 3D — there is a difference, the latter is much sharper — and believe I’ll probably get one more time in before Alice in Wonderland takes the screens.)

LOS ANGELES — James Cameron’s “Avatar” is on a course to sink “Titanic” at the box office.

No. 1 for the sixth-straight weekend with $36 million, the 20th Century Fox sci-fi spectacle lifted its domestic total to $552.8 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. “Avatar” raised its worldwide total to $1.841 billion. That’s $2 million shy of first place behind Cameron’s last movie, the 1997 shipwreck epic “Titanic,” at $1.843 billion.

“It defies all superlatives,” said Chris Aronson, head of distribution for Fox.

The studio said “Avatar” has hit $1.29 billion in international ticket sales, passing the $1.24 billion mark set by “Titanic.” The saga set on the alien world of Pandora is also enroute to overtake “Titanic” in domestic sales. After 37 days in theaters, “Avatar” soared past “The Dark Knight” on Saturday to become the second highest grossing film.

“We’re witnessing box office history,” said Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com. “We’re watching all of these big records fall, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. ‘Avatar’ is dominating at a time where it has no big summer blockbusters to compete with it. It’s perfectly poised to keep breaking all these records.”

“Avatar” is also positioned to win acclaim during awards season. While the computer-assisted performances didn’t earn any honors at Saturday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, it captured the best drama and director trophies at last week’s Golden Globes and is considered a likely best-picture front runner when Oscar nominations are announced Feb. 2.

Screen Gems’ apocalyptic thriller “Legion,” featuring Paul Bettany as an Armageddon-fighting fallen angel, debuted behind “Avatar” at No. 2 with $18.2 million. Fox’s family fantasy comedy “Tooth Fairy,” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a hockey player who spreads his wings as a magical deity, took flight in the No. 4 spot with $14.5 million.

Warner Bros. grabbed the No. 3 position with “The Book of Eli” at $17 million in its second week, despite three other films debuting in wide release this weekend. The post-apocalyptic action flick stars Denzel Washington as a traveling prophet who battles a villainous gang leader played by Gary Oldman while protecting the last known Bible.

The medical drama “Extraordinary Measures,” the first film from new distributor CBS Films, opened with a disappointing $7 million in the No. 7 position. The film features Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser as a doctor and businessman who collaborate to develop a drug that will treat a rare genetic disorder affecting children.

“It did well in middle America,” said Steven Friedlander, head of distribution for CBS Films. “This is not a shoot-’em-up or fantasy film. It’s the true story of people doing courageous things, and it’s building good word of mouth. This is the kind of movie that plays well to a family friendly crowd who doesn’t need to see the movie the weekend it opens.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. “Avatar,” $36 million.

2. “Legion,” $18.2 million.

2. “The Book of Eli,” $17 million.

3. “Tooth Fairy,” $14.5 million.

5. “The Lovely Bones,” $8.8 million.

6. “Sherlock Holmes,” $7.1 million.

7. “Extraordinary Measures,” $7 million.

8. “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel,” $6.5 million.

9. “It’s Complicated,” $6.2 million.

10. “The Spy Next Door,” $4.8 million.

A 42-year-old Taiwanese man with a history of high blood pressure has died of a stroke likely triggered by over-excitement from watching the blockbuster Avatar in 3D, a doctor says.

The man, identified only by his surname Kuo, started to feel unwell during the screening earlier this month in the northern city of Hsinchu and was taken to hospital.

Mr Kuo, who suffered from hypertension, was unconscious when he arrived at the Nan Men General Hospital and a scan showed that his brain was haemorrhaging, emergency room doctor Peng Chin-chih said today.

“It’s likely that the over-excitement from watching the movie triggered his symptoms,” the doctor said.

Mr Kuo died 11 days later from the brain haemorrhage, and the China Times newspaper said it was the first death linked to watching James Cameron’s science-fiction epic Avatar.

Film blogging sites have reported complaints of headaches, dizziness, nausea and blurry eyesight from viewers of Avatar and other movies rich in 3D imagery.

(Ed note: This is stellar. The more controversy and wacko crazy ass stories about this motion picture, the better! It’ll propel it even higher into the stratosphere.

Hey remember those old time horror film posters that warned prospective audience members of the shocking dangers of seeing their movie? LOL.)

China plans to pull Avatar from most cinemas, despite the long queues for tickets, to make way for a more patriotic film the censors deem more appropriate – a life of Confucius.

The move comes amid government anxiety that many Chinese are making a link between the plight of the film’s Na’vi, who face being displaced form their homeland, and that of those in China who are subject to often brutal evictions by property developers.

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily said the state-run China Film Group had instructed cinemas nationwide to stop showing the ordinary version of Avatar from January 23 on orders from Beijing’s propaganda czars.

The newspaper said: “Reportedly, the authorities have two reasons for this check on Avatar: first, it has taken in too much money and has seized market share from domestic films, and second, it may lead audiences to think about forced removal, and may possibly incite violence.”

China’s favourite blogger, 20-something writer and race-car driver Han Han, was among those who quickly caught onto the resemblance of the plot to real life in China. He wrote: “For audiences in other countries, such brutal eviction is something outside their imagining. It could only take place on another planet or in China.”

Popular views of the film as an allegory for predatory property developers across China may not have gone down well with the Propaganda Department in Beijing.

Blogs are buzzing with the news of Avatar’s imminent disappearance.

The film opened on January 4 and soon drew lengthy queues despite one of the coldest winters in years.

Box office takings hit a record 56 million yuan (£5m) for a single day and IMAX cinemas are booked up for weeks.

The film had been due to play until February 28 – meaning it would be showing over the Chinese new year holiday that begins on February 14.

In the southern city of Wuxi, a Cineplex posted a notice on its website warning that Avatar would now finish on Saturday and viewers with tickets beyond that date would receive a refund.

“We ask your understanding!” it urged. “To satisfy the viewing needs of the audience, the cinema will add midnight showings from the 21st and 22nd. Grab them quickly!”

That notice was swiftly removed from the Internet by the officials and the cinema said only 2D screens would stop showing the film.

China has about 1,700 cinemas and 4,500 screens, of which only 550 are 3D – ensuring holiday audiences will flock to see Confucius, featuring Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat as the sage.

UPDATE!

BEIJING (Reuters) – China on Wednesday denied that it was forcing the box office smash “Avatar” off local cinema screens, saying a move to take down the 2D version was a commercial decision and that the 3D version would still be shown.

Chinese media have speculated that James Cameron’s sci-fi spectacular, which has grossed more than $1.6 billion worldwide, had been pulled to make way for domestic movies over the upcoming Chinese new year holiday, including a biopic on philosopher Confucius.

Many Chinese theatres will pull the 2D version of “Avatar” from Friday to make way for “Confucius,” though the wildly popular 3D version will still be available.

“Avatar” has already earned more than 300 million yuan ($43.94 million) at the Chinese box office.

“Whether a movie closes or not, it’s a market behavior decision,” an official at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television told Reuters. “The government will not interfere.”

The regulator’s deputy chief, Zhang Hongsen, went further in comments quoted by Chinese media.

“The box office performance of the 2D version has not been great, whereas it’s been really hard to get tickets for the 3D version,” Zhang said. “So it’s normal to take the 2D version off the screens. There’ll be no change for the 3D version.”

“Avatar” is already widely available on pirated DVDs in China.

Studio Twentieth Century Fox said they hoped audiences would still be able to see the film at the cinema.

“As of today, January 19, ‘Avatar’ is still playing in cinemas nationwide in China. Twentieth Century Fox hopes that cinema-goers in China will continue to have the opportunity to see this film, which has been enthusiastically embraced by audiences there and throughout the world,” it said in a statement.

Zhang did admit that perhaps there was a connection with the new Confucius movie, staring Hong Kong’s Chow Yun-fat and mainland Chinese actress Zhou Xun.

“Perhaps it’s because that ‘Confucius’ is just coming out, but ‘Confucius’ has no 3D version, so there ought not to be any conflict,” Zhang said.

“Confucius” has received only tepid reviews in the Chinese press.

There is an unwritten rule in China that at certain times of the year, such as the Spring Festival or National Day in October, Chinese movies have to be given precedence at the theater.

China allows only 20 foreign movies every year to be shown on the big screen, but widespread piracy means that even the most sensitive films can be bought for around $1 on the street, irrespective of any official ban.

James Cameron’s completely immersive spectacle “Avatar” may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.

On the fan forum site “Avatar Forums,” a topic thread entitled “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible,” has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope. The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their confused feelings about the movie.

“I wasn’t depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ,” Baghdassarian said. “But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don’t have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed.”

A post by a user called Elequin expresses an almost obsessive relationship with the film.

“That’s all I have been doing as of late, searching the Internet for more info about ‘Avatar.’ I guess that helps. It’s so hard I can’t force myself to think that it’s just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na’vi will never happen. I think I need a rebound movie,” Elequin posted.

A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site “Naviblue” that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.

“Ever since I went to see Avatar I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it,” Mike posted. “I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’ “

Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.

Cameron’s movie, which has pulled in more than $1.4 billion in worldwide box office sales and could be on track to be the highest grossing film of all time, is set in the future when the Earth’s resources have been pillaged by the human race. A greedy corporation is trying to mine the rare mineral unobtainium from the planet Pandora, which is inhabited by a peace-loving race of 7-foot tall, blue-skinned natives called the Na’vi.

In their race to mine for Pandora’s resources, the humans clash with the Na’vi, leading to casualties on both sides. The world of Pandora is reminiscent of a prehistoric fantasyland, filled with dinosaur-like creatures mixed with the kinds of fauna you may find in the deep reaches of the ocean. Compared with life on Earth, Pandora is a beautiful, glowing utopia.

Ivar Hill posts to the Avatar forum page under the name Eltu. He wrote about his post-Avatar depression after he first saw the film earlier this month.

“When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning,” Hill wrote on the forum. “It just seems so … meaningless. I still don’t really see any reason to keep … doing things at all. I live in a dying world.”

Reached via e-mail in Sweden where he is studying game design, Hill, 17, explained that his feelings of despair made him desperately want to escape reality.

“One can say my depression was twofold: I was depressed because I really wanted to live in Pandora, which seemed like such a perfect place, but I was also depressed and disgusted with the sight of our world, what we have done to Earth. I so much wanted to escape reality,” Hill said.

Cameron’s special effects masterpiece is very lifelike and the 3-D performance capture and CGI effects essentially allow the viewer to enter the alien world of Pandora for the movie’s 2½-hour run-time, which only lends to the separation anxiety some individuals experience when they depart the movie theater.

“Virtual life is not real life and it never will be, but this is the pinnacle of what we can build in a virtual presentation so far,” said Dr. Stephan Quentzel, psychiatrist and Medical Director for the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. “It has taken the best of our technology to create this virtual world and real life will never be as utopian as it seems onscreen. It makes real life seem more imperfect.”

Fans of the movie may find actor Stephen Lang, who plays the villainous Col. Miles Quaritch in the film, an enemy of the Na’vi people and their sacred ground, an unlikely sympathizer, but Lang says he can understand the connection people are feeling with the movie.

“Pandora is a pristine world and there is the synergy between all of the creatures of the planet and I think that strikes a deep cord within people that has a wishfulness and a wistfulness to it,” Lang said. “James Cameron had the technical resources to go along with this incredibly fertile imagination of his and his dream is built out of the same things that other peoples’ dreams are made of.”

The bright side is that for Hill and others like him who became dissatisfied with their own lives and with our imperfect world after enjoying the fictional creation of James Cameron, becoming a part of a community of like-minded people on an online forum has helped them emerge from the darkness.

“After discussing on the forums for a while now, my depression is beginning to fade away. Having taken a part in many discussions concerning all this has really, really helped me,” Hill said. “Before, I had lost the reason to keep on living — but now it feels like these feelings are gradually being replaced with others.”

Quentzel said creating relationships with others is one of the keys to human happiness and that even if those connections are occurring online they are better than nothing.

“Obviously there is community building in these forums,” Quentzel said. “It may be technologically different from other community building, but it serves the same purpose.”

Within the fan community, suggestions for battling feelings of depression after seeing the movie include things like playing “Avatar” video games or downloading the movie soundtrack in addition to encouraging members to relate to other people outside the virtual realm and to seek out positive and constructive activities.

(Ed note:
yo listen up here’s a story
about a little guy that lives in a blue world
and all day and all night and everything he sees
is just blue like him inside and outside
blue his house with a blue little window
and a blue corvette
and everything is blue for him and hisself
and everybody around
cos he ain’t got nobody to listen to

I’m blue (if I was green I would die)

The new movie review page is all wired up and ready to go. I decided to host it via blogspot so that it didn’t require so much muss and fuss like pixiesticks.org does behind the scenes.

My goal is to watch more movies in theatres, and more movies overall. Reviewing movies is something I’ve done for a long time and it never ceases to be entertaining for me. While movie critics have popped up over the internets, I like to think that there is always room for one more. Especially someone who’s been in the game before and is glad to make a return.

When Netflix released a trove of “anonymized” information about consumers as part of a contest for a better recommendation tool, it only took a few weeks for researchers at the University of Texas at Austin to show how easily the data could be de-anonymized.

“An adversary who knows only a little bit about an individual subscriber can easily identify this subscriber’s record in the dataset,” they wrote.

If Netflix was chagrined by this development, you’d never know it. Not only did the company continue with the contest, but proudly declared it intends to hold a second one — for which it will release even more information than last time. For the new contest, Netflix will make available customers’ gender, ages, ZIP codes and previously rented movies in hopes of gleaning insight into users’ tastes.

Stunned privacy experts wasted no time bashing the plan. University of Colorado law professor Paul Ohm implored Netflix to reverse course. “Researchers have known for more than a decade that gender plus ZIP code plus birthdate uniquely identifies a significant percentage of Americans,” Ohm wrote. Even without birthdates, he said, interested researchers will be able to figure out many people’s identities.

Attorney Jay Edelson predicted that Netflix would face a class-action lawsuit if it went through with its plans.

As it turns out, Edelson’s law firm, KamberEdelson, along with Joseph Malley of Dallas and other lawyers, decided not to wait for Netflix to start the contest. This week, they filed suit on behalf of four Netflix consumers, arguing that releasing the information would violate the federal Video Protection Privacy Act — a 21-year-old law, passed after a newspaper obtained the movie rental records of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork — that bans movie rental stores from revealing personally identifiable information about consumers.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in San Jose, Calif., seeks damages on behalf of people whose information was released by Netflix in the past.

The consumers also seek an order prohibiting Netflix from making any information available about their video records. One of the four, who sued under the pseudonym Jane Doe, alleges that she is a closeted lesbian who would be harmed if people figured out that she had rented a number of “gay-themed” movies from Netflix. “Plaintiff Doe does not want her movie selection or rating transactions to be included in any public disclosure of data for purposes such as the Netflix contest, regardless of any attempts by Netflix to anonymize or perturb the data,” the lawsuit alleges.

A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit.

For those of you who have already raped Hulu for all of its delicious bounty, perhaps this won’t be news to you. But for the rest of us, they now have episodes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

That was penultimate to pretty much crafting me to the person I am, so as far as one entertainment medium can influence a person I should say.

Watch.
Laugh.
Enjoy.

Get ready to see a lot more of your favorite wizard, as director David Yates said Daniel Radcliffe will appear nude in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Yates told the U.K.’s Telegraph that nudity will be involved in a scene in which Radcliffe and Rupert Grint are fighting a monster, and the beast shows naughty stuff of Danny and Emma Watson to Grint’s character, Ron Weasley.

“We’ll create something that feels very sexy and very intriguing to bring about a reaction in Rupert,” the director said. “Dan has appeared nude in the past. There are a couple of scenes in the new film in which he will undress, but we’re still thinking about how we present it.”

This also includes a scene at King’s Cross station, in which Harry is nude after being almost killed and sees Dumbledore, which is unsettling in several different ways. But the real problem is what Yates says is his favorite scene: “It’s where Hermione and Harry dance together and is not in the book. It’s something we create for the film and is actually very tender,” he said. “They also reveal some secrets about each other while dancing.”

The War On Kids: Official Site
Interview with Stephen Colbert

Schools have become prisons. In fact, they are designed by the same architects.
Natural child-like behavior has become criminalized.
Zero Tolerance has replaced common sense.
There is a war on kids, and now there is a documentary about just that.

NORTON SHORES, Mich. – Police in southwestern Michigan no longer are looking for a man they initially believed had bitten a teenager’s neck following a recent screening of the hit vampire film “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.”

Norton Shores police on Wednesday told The Muskegon Chronicle, WOOD-TV and WZZM-TV that a 17-year-old girl who told them she was bitten Friday by an unknown man in the theater wasn’t completely truthful.

Detective Lt. Timothy LaVigne says the teen now faces possible criminal charges.

Police talked with the girl and concluded that much of her story was exaggerated.

The case will be turned over to the Muskegon County prosecutor’s office for review.

Seeking to capitalize on the teen vampire movie craze it launched last year, Summit Entertainment will re-release its original “Twilight” movie Nov. 19, hours before the midnight debut of its highly anticipated sequel, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.”

Summit is in talks with U.S. theater operators about how many screens they will make available, for a single night, to show the picture. The studio said some theaters would sell tickets for “Twilight” at a reduced price. A person familiar with the plan said other theaters might charge full price.

Nonetheless, “Twilight” is expected to play in many of the same venues that will show “New Moon,” opening , Nov. 20.

Released last year, “Twilight,” the first film based on Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling teen book series, became a runaway hit in theaters and on DVD. The modern-day vampire tale, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as chaste lovers, generated $383.5 million in worldwide ticket sales and has been this year’s No. 1 DVD, selling about 8 million units in the U.S. and Canada alone.

Summit said it was undertaking the unusual re-release of “Twilight” to satisfy demands by fans who wanted to see the movie again on the big screen. But potential double ticket sales from both “Twilight” and “New Moon” would also be a financial benefit to Summit, which bankrolled and distributes the movies, as well as theater owners.

Industry analysts believe that the anticipation surrounding “Twilight’s” re-release, coupled with the debut of “New Moon,” could provide a bump in “Twilight” DVD sales.

“I would expect ‘Twilight’ to come back into the top 10 bestselling DVDs,” said Bruce Nash, president of box-office research firm Nash Information Services, who estimates an additional 500,000 units could be sold domestically.

This would be the second time Summit has re-released “Twilight” in theaters. In July, the movie had a one-night-only theatrical run during the annual Comic-Con Convention in San Diego the day before the studio unveiled exclusive footage of “New Moon.”

The third movie in the series, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” directed by David Slade, is scheduled to be released in June 2010.

1. “Paranormal Activity,” $22 million.

2. “Saw VI,” $14.8 million.

3. “Where the Wild Things Are,” $14.4 million.

4. “Law Abiding Citizen,” $12.7 million.

5. “Couples Retreat,” $11.1 million.

6. “Astro Boy,” $7 million.

7. “The Stepfather,” $6.5 million.

8. “Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant,” $6.3 million.

9.”Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” $5.6 million.

10. “Zombieland,” $4.3 million.

(Ed note: While I’m not one to appreciate such silliness as Paranormal Activity, any film that kills off the annual Saw tradition is alright by me. And look how close Wild Things is to beating it too? That may happen when the actuals come in tomorrow.)

NEW YORK — The Weather Channel plans to show movies for the first time in its 27-year history and it’s easy to guess which one is leading off.

“The Perfect Storm,” of course.

The George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg movie about a horrific storm off the New England coast will air on Oct. 30, the 18th anniversary of the actual storm. Network executives had been thinking about adding movies, and the timing proved too good to pass up, said Geoffrey Darby, the network’s chief programmer.

The network in recent years gradually slipped in longer programming, including a morning show hosted by Al Roker, to complement its constantly rotating forecasts.

“The Perfect Storm” begins a four-week period in which The Weather Channel will try some Friday night movies.

The films areeither weather-themed or have plots in which weather plays a key role, Darby said. Meteorologist Jennifer Carfagno will host movie night and offer commentary.

Other movies include the documentary “March of the Penguins,” the thriller “Deep Blue Sea” and “Misery,” for which Kathy Bates won an Academy Award.

The weather angle is pretty clear in “The Perfect Storm,” but “Misery”? Darby noted the nightmare endured by James Caan’s character begins with a blinding snowstorm.

For The Weather Channel, the risk lies in alienating its regular weather-obsessed viewers, who tune in for news of high pressure systems rather than high drama. The potential reward is that new fans will tune in, and they’ll stay on the station for a longer period, pleasing advertisers.

Darby said most viewers on Friday night aren’t interested in much more than the weekend forecast, and that will be updated on the screen six times an hour.

“It’s a way to respond to at least a significant portion of our audience that says, ‘Let’s expand the definition of weather,’” he said.

The idea predates NBC Universal’s purchase of The Weather Channel, Darby said. None of the first four movies are distributed by NBC Universal.

(Ed note: I get annoyed when I turn on their channel and they’re doing Storm Stories or something like that. At least then I know the real weather is coming on within a half hour or so. Leave the movies to the other channels.)

Watch The Last Days of April Trailer in Drama  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

(Ed note: Further proof perhaps that my novels are not so out there crazy and one day could be turned into motion pictures.)

Fan frenzy is already breaking records for “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.”

Online ticket sellers MovieTickets and Fandango report that the follow-up to last year’s hit from Summit Entertainment, which sold $191.5 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada, is selling out screenings earlier than any other movie to date.

“New Moon” has sold out 50 showtimes of nearly 22,000 offered on Fandango and 13 showtimes of 2,912 offered on MovieTickets. Most of the sold-out shows are at or around midnight Nov. 20, when the movie debuts.

The two websites started selling “New Moon” tickets extraordinarily early — Aug. 31 for Fandango and Sep. 10 for MovieTickets — as the theater chains they work with began scheduling screenings in anticipation of a huge first weekend. The first “Twilight” grossed a stellar $36 million on its Friday opening, reflecting pent-up demand among fans of the best-selling books.

For most movies, online ticket sales start about 45 days before they debut.

Though “New Moon” holds the record for selling out screenings the earliest, 20 Century Fox’s event film “Avatar” started offering tickets even earlier, on Aug. 21, more than four months before the film’s Dec. 18 debut. Neither Fandango nor MovieTickets have yet sold out any “Avatar” shows, although they’re currently offering only a tiny fraction of the nearly 25,000 available for “New Moon.”

MIAMI — It sounds like a new book in the Harry Potter series, but “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey” will be a high-tech ride and the marquee attraction at the “Wizarding World of Harry Potter,” a new theme park area opening in spring 2010 at Universal Orlando Resort.

The “Forbidden Journey” ride was named by author J.K. Rowling and described Tuesday by Universal officials in a Web cast revealing details of what the Potter park will look like.

The ride will take guests through scenes and rooms from the blockbuster movies inside a richly detailed remake of Hogwarts Castle made to look 700 feet tall. Hogwarts is where Harry attends a boarding school for witches and wizards.

Guests will enter the “Wizarding World” through a station archway named for Hogsmeade, the magical village near Hogwarts. A plume of steam and a train whistle will sound the arrival of the Hogwarts Express. The goal is to make the experience immersive, so nothing outside is visible after guests pass the Hogsmeade station archway.

Rowling, known for carefully guarding the Potter franchise, hasn’t yet journeyed to Orlando, but the design team has made several trips to London to consult with her.

Other rides include the “Dragon Challenge,” a twin high-speed roller coaster themed after the “Triwizard Tournament” and the family roller coaster “Flight of the Hippogriff,” named for a creature with an eagle’s head and a horse’s body.

“Along those journeys they’re going to be swept up into the greatest parts of the movies and the books. We’vepushed every technology available to us to give guests a theme park experience unlike any they’ve had before,” said Paul Daurio, producer of the Potter area.

The Harry Potter park will be part of Universal’s Islands of Adventure.

Art and set directors from the films, including Oscar-winning production designer Stuart Craig and art director Alan Gilmore, were hired to translate the movies into the park.

Every shop and eatery is Potter-themed. Honeydukes sells chocolate frogs and “Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavour Beans,” Ollivander’s peddles magic wands, Zonko’s joke shop has Sneakoscopes, and the British restaurant Three Broomsticks pours Butterbeer.

At The Owl Post, guests can send letters with a certified Hogsmeade postmark. Magical instruments and equipment are available at Dervish and Banges, including everything needed to play Quidditch — a game like soccer played on flying broomsticks.

“The interesting thing about Harry Potter is that the stories are so rich in themselves, so deep,” said Universal Creative President Mark Woodbury. “There wasn’t so much difficulty of creating the look, it was, ‘How do you execute at a level of authenticity that is unquestionable?’”

Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids’ online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children’s chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.

“This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology,” said Parry Aftab, a child-safety advocate. “You don’t put children’s personal information at risk.”

The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids’ information at risk, since the program does not record children’s names or addresses. But the software knows how old they are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.

Five other makers of parental-control software contacted by The Associated Press, including McAfee Inc. and Symantec Corp., said they do not sell chat data to advertisers.

One competitor, CyberPatrol LLC, said it would never consider such an arrangement. “That’s pretty much confidential information,” said Barbara Rose, the company’s vice president of marketing. “As a parent, I would have a problem with them targeting youngsters.”

The software brands in question are developed by EchoMetrix Inc., a company based in Syosset, N.Y.

In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms.

EchoMetrix CEO Jeff Greene said the company complies with U.S. privacy laws and does not collect any identifiable information.

“We never know the name of the kid — it’s bobby37 on the house computer,” Greene said.

What Pulse will reveal is how “bobby37″ and other teens feel about upcoming movies, computer games or clothing trends. Such information can help advertisers craft their marketing messages as buzz builds about a product.

Days before “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” opened in theaters on July 15, teen chatter about the movie spiked across the Internet with largely positive reactions.

“Cool” popped up as one of the most heavily used words in teen chats, blogs, forums and on Twitter. The upbeat comments gathered by Pulse foreshadowed a strong opening for the Warner Bros. film.

Parents who don’t want the company to share their child’s information to businesses can check a box to opt out.

But that option can be found only by visiting the company’s Web site, accessible through a control panel that appears after the program has been installed. It was not in the agreement contained in the Sentry Total Home Protection program The Associated Press downloaded and installed Friday.

According to the agreement, the software passes along data to “trusted partners.” Confidentiality agreements prohibit those clients from sharing the information with others.

In recognition of federal privacy laws that restrict the collection of data on kids under 13, the agreement states that the company has “a parent’s permission to share the information if the user is a child under age 13.”

Tech site CNet ranks the EchoMetrix software as one of the three best for parental control. Sales figures were not available.

The Sentry and FamilySafe brands include parental-control software such as Sentry Total Family Protection, Sentry Basic, Sentry Lite and FamilySafe (SentryPC is made by a different company and has no ties with EchoMetrix).

The Lite version is free. Others range from $20 to download and $10 a year for monitoring, to about $48 a year, divided into monthly payments.

The same company also offers software under the brands of partner entities, such as AmberWatch Lookout.

AmberWatch Foundation, a child-protection nonprofit group that licenses its brand to EchoMetrix, said information gathered through the AmberWatch-branded software is not shared with advertisers.

Practically speaking, few people ever read the fine print before they click on a button to agree to the licensing agreement. “Unless it’s upfront in neon letters, parents don’t know,” Aftab said.

EchoMetrix, formerly known as SearchHelp, said companies that have tested the chat data using Pulse include News Corp.’s Fox Broadcasting and Dreamworks SKG Inc. Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures recently signed on.

None of those companies would comment when contacted by the AP.

EchoMetrix has been losing money. Its liabilities exceeded its assets by nearly $25 million as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing that said there is “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

To get the marketing data, companies put in keywords, such as the name of a new product, and specify a date range, into Pulse. They get a “word cloud” display of the most commonly used words, as well as snippets of actual chats. Pulse can slice data by age groups, region and even the instant-messaging program used.

Pulse also tracked buzz for Microsoft Corp.’s “Natal,” a forthcoming Xbox motion-sensor device that replaces the traditional button-based controller. Microsoft is not a client of Pulse, but EchoMetrix used “Natal” to illustrate how its data can benefit marketers.

Greene said children’s conversations about Natal were focused on its price and availability, which suggested that Microsoft should assure teens that there will be enough stock and that ordering ahead can lock in a price.

Competing data-mining companies such as J.D. Power Web Intelligence, a unit of quality ratings firm J.D. Power and Associates, also trolls the Internet for consumer chats. But Vice President Chase Parker said the company does not read any data that’s password-protected, such as the instant message sessions that EchoMetrix collects for advertisers.

Suresh Vittal, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said EchoMetrix might have to make its disclosures more apparent to parents.

“Are we in the safeguarding-the-children business or are we in the business of selling data to other people?” he said. If it’s the latter, “it should all be done transparently and with the knowledge of the customer.”

1. William Shatner isn’t always an ass. He actually can be brilliantly entertaining even if he mostly appeared like he was talking with co-panelist Lenard Nimoy. Reoccuring themes included why he wasn’t in the movie, picking on Georgia natives (Nimoy has a lot of history in this city actually), the ongoing feud with George Takaei, and getting the lowest fare on priceline.com. Nimoy wins the battle however since he hates Glenn Beck as much as I do.

2. Movie trailers are always a big draw. People like watching them in the theatre, people like watching them at a convention. Even an hours worth of them can really be entertaining filler during a day’s worth of activities. The screen is big and you may get to see some you (or perhaps even the general public) has never seen. Avatar looks downright stellar if Second Life-like.

3. The name of your panel is very important. If you’re going to talk about the books rather than the television show, don’t call your panel True Blood. Call your panel The Sookie Stackhouse Novels. Because otherwise, it just looks obnoxious to bitch and whine and complain about the HBO series. This goes for any fandom really. You all need to get over the fact that books and television or movies are DIFFERENT. That’s why they’re called ADAPTATIONS.

4. The Con Suite really stepped it up this year. Either that or I got really lucky with what times I decided to drop in. For the uninitiated, this is a room set up by the staff, run 24 hours (except for a moments here and there for cleaning) that features food and drink. Sometimes you get something like Chex Mix, sometimes you get bacon and eggs like I did one morning. Other awesome dishes were red beans and rice, and Pocky. One of the misses was a huge ass pickle at 3am. Thanks but um, well I kind of wanted a real penis at that hour, I mean srsly.

5. Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) has indeed become the hot delicious young adult I knew he’d be. Another member of the “delicious accent club,” he also has the benefit of playing a bad guy who finally found himself in The Half-Blood Prince. He couldn’t help but constantly flood the panel with fan service stating his favorite scene was with Harry in the toilets, that he actually prefers a Draco x Ron pairing, and that he’s a bit unsure about the photo-real slash out there.

6. I’m still unsure why the whole MST3K gang can’t seem to get back together all together even now. They all seem to talk about how they can’t get work in Hollywood and they really like doing their projects Cinematic Titanic and RiffTrax respectively. They all share a deep seeded hatred for Jim Mallon. Why not put your peanut butter in their chocolate already?

7. Malcolm McDowell was one of those celebrities that did indeed charge a premium for pix and autographs… HOWEVER!!! Unlike many of those other crappy actors that aren’t really worth the oxygen they’re sucking up at their empty Walk of Fame table, this guy is a real nice man who if you don’t have the money will still chat for a moment. I told him that I really like his work, which is technically true since I HAVE INDEED seen so many of his films that even he probably doesn’t remember doing. You know, because they’re bad.

8. I missed out on seeing Adam Savage because I got my hotels mixed up. It was in the Sheraton not the Marriott. The 4th hotel was added I believe last year and it’s kind of a haul as it sits away from the main three (which are lined up in a row across the three blocks). It was also ice cold for other panels like Crow vs Crow — No matter who loses, Tom Servo wins — and so maybe it’s not so bad I missed out seeing another Mythbuster this year. Besides, would it be right to see Adam without Jamie?

9. 3 Years ago in the Self Publishing panel it was filled with so-called experts who said it wasn’t a good idea. You should polish your letters and send them out to all the publishers and get yourself a good stack of rejections. This year they say that this is the way of the future and that while there still will be the big names, this is the best way to go forward. Durr. I told you so. That’s why I self-published “Later, Skater” and “Freakshow” and ignored your so-called advice. Bitches.

10. Steam Punk has taken over. An instant fandom (just add water) this re-envisioning of the way the world works if only we powered things by steam. While this isn’t exactly a new concept, per say, this is the first year it got its own track of programming at DragonCon. Yes, they did underestimate the appeal and gave it too small of a room. But considering how obviously overwhelmingly popular it was, I think that’ll be remedied quite quickly. The fact that Best in Show at the Masquerade went to a steam punk group will not be lost on those in charge, I’m sure. I’m quite pleased to be honest. It’s a far more interesting concept than Twilight or Browncoats or sucking the teat of Joss Whedon that’s for goddamn sure.

Dishonorable Mention: Furries still suck. Not content to stink up the internet, they continue to troll our conventions this time wearing shirts with the acronym FAP (Furry and Proud.) Die in a fucking fire.

AS anyone who has seen the box-office phenomenon “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” surely noticed, the movie’s main characters have grown up. And so has its audience: many of those who are streaming to theaters are in their 20s.

The sixth film in the series was released almost a dozen years after the book that started it all: “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

The generation that ignited Pottermania as preadolescent readers is approaching college graduation or entering the workplace, and they have kept alive this flame of their early adolescence.

Indie rock bands have sprung up inspired by their obsession, with names like Harry and the Potters, the Half Bloods, and Voldie and the Wiz Kidz, playing songs inspired by Potter lore.

Last fall, teams from Princeton, Vassar, Boston University and a dozen other schools competed in the Quidditch World Cup, in which students play a real-life version of the soccer-like contact sport featured in the books and films. (They can’t fly, but still compete with brooms between their legs.)

The continuing pull of all things Potter is a testament to the franchise’s enduring sway. But it also seems like something else: the advent of Generation Y nostalgia.

(more at the NYTimes website)

Harry Potter continues to work box-office alchemy, turning his latest movie adventure into an overnight blockbuster.

The sixth installment, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” took in $79.5 million domestically over opening weekend and $159.7 million since debuting last Wednesday, according to estimates from distributor Warner Bros. on Sunday.

With some of the best reviews of any “Harry Potter” movie, “Half-Blood Prince” was off to the fastest overall start in franchise history.

The audience was a bit older for the new movie, with more elder teens turning out to see Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and pals Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) as they deal with adult concerns such as heartache, jealousy and romantic triangles.

Fans have grown up with the franchise, from young readers whose parents had to debate whether the early movies might be too intense for their children to see.

“When the first movie came out, they fought to go. The mother was like, well, should I take them, should I not take them?” Fellman said. “Now they’re driving themselves to this and going to the midnight show.”

Fox Searchlight’s romantic comedy “500 Days of Summer,” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, got off to a big start in limited release with $837,588 in 27 theaters. That amounted to an average of $31,022 a cinema, compared to $18,376 in 4,325 theaters for “Half-Blood Prince.”

A hit with critics, “500 Days of Summer” expands gradually into wide release over the next few weekends.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” $79.5 million.

2. “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” $17.7 million.

3. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” $13.8 million.

4. “Bruno,” $8.4 million.

5. “The Hangover,” $8.32 million.

6. “The Proposal,” $8.3 million.

7. “Public Enemies,” $7.6 million.

8. “Up,” $3.1 million.

9. “My Sister’s Keeper,” $2.8 million.

10. “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” $2.7 million.

(Ed note: Let me say right away that I liked Harry Potter for its drama and characterization. I really really really admire how these people have filled these beloved roles so well and strongly, especially over the last three movies.

As someone who actually has not read the books, I still know for a fact there must have been ALOT missing this time around.)

Things are really satisfying with KT. The relationship has a time and distance constraints on it that keep a simmering yearning within my chest (among other places) and when we do get to spend time together it’s a mesmerizing mix of gleeful abandon and coy seduction.

Yesterday during one of the times we did get together in the flesh, we went to the mall to eat and see a movie. I finally had some sushi which was fantastic. He, too, claimed some and I think we’re real comfortable with one another now during these dates.

“My Sister’s Keeper” was his movie selection. While it’s not been officially arranged or anything, it seems we do alternate fairly between our activities which is nice. I found my attention was kept very strongly by the tearjerker, even though it wasn’t so much about the engineering of one child to be used as spare parts for another with cancer but above the overall picture.

KT was moved to tears, I was moved to try and comfort him.

I can’t find myself BAWWWing during movies that seem specifically created to cause such a reaction in me. I was much more on the verge of tears during the first section of “Up” since it caught me so blindsided.

After the film, we went home, rather affected by the movie. I was thinking that perhaps we’d only lay down for a while and then I’d go home without doing any thing involved. I would be wrong. It was involved, quite involved actually, and I ended up losing the fun battle we were having on who’d be seme first. And while I could have quickly reclaimed the title in the very same evening, I decided to wait a bit longer.

After all, this is six weeks into this thing and I’m elated enough as it is.

You might have gone down the rabbit hole before. But never with a guide quite as attuned to the fantastic as Tim Burton.

Those who have grown curiouser and curiouser about what the offbeat reinventor of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory might conjure up in his version of Alice in Wonderland can feast their eyes on this array of concept art and publicity images, due to hang in movie theaters this week to promote the March 5, 2010, release.

“It has been Burton-ized” is how producer Richard Zanuck describes the director’s vision of the Lewis Carroll classic. Many elements are familiar, from the enigmatic Caterpillar (Alan Rickman) to the fierce Jabberwock (Christopher Lee). But none has been presented in this sort of visually surreal fashion.

“We finished shooting in December after only 40 days,” Zanuck says. Now the live action is being merged with CG animation and motion-capture creatures, and then transferred into 3-D.

(more including stellar art from the film)