Box office numbers for this past weekend. 1. Happy Feet – $37 million. 2. Casino Royale – $31 million. 3. Deja Vu – $20.6 million. 4. Deck The Halls – $12 million. 5. Borat – $10.3 million. 6. The Santa Clause 3 – $10 million. 7. Flushed Away – $5.8 million. 8. Stranger Than Fiction – $5.7 million. 9. Bobby – $4.9 million. 10. The Fountain – $3.8 million.
I promised a review on the new Transformers The Movie 20th Anniversary DVD. Transformers was my thing when I was little. I grew up watching that and never have outgrown it. I remember when they brought the old G1 series back but formatted it different while I was in high school and I recorded it every morning. I jumped on with Beast Wars and liked it ok. I’ve slacked some with the newer cartoons but have started watching the Cybertron cartoon a bit. I can still somewhat remember seeing Transformers The Movie at the theaters in 1986 as a kid. I remember mom taking me but I don’t remember a whole lot about actually watching the movie that first time. I clearly remember going there for it though. The one thing that is always talked about with the movie is them killing off Optimus Prime. Not just killing him off but the fact that they did it about 30 minutes into the movie. Ask any Transformers fans and they will still be sad about the moment. 20 years later, I still can hardly watch that scene as that is one bad childhood cartoon memory that I didn’t want. I don’t really remember my reaction to it but I asked my mom recently how I reacted and she just basically said that I was very unhappy. I don’t know if I’ve blocked it out or what but I can’t remember that very moment. On this DVD, the writers talk about how they didn’t realize at the time that he was an icon. They wanted to introduce some new characters and give kids a new hero in Rodimus Prime. They heard stories of people leaving the theater during the movie after Prime was killed off. They heard one story of a kid that locked himself in a room for two weeks and just got a ton of nasty comments from people over it with how kids all over the world had been tortured by it. A couple of writers say that if they had it to do over again that they probably wouldn’t have killed him off. One writer talks about a scene that didn’t make it into the movie where they were basically going to wipe out the whole 1984 toy line to intro the new ones. He also jokes about the bad feedback and knowing at the time that they had an upcoming episode where they basically bring him back as a zombie and then kill him again. The uproar over them killing Optimus Prime did have an effect on the GIJOE movie. The original plan was to kill off Duke and it was actually set to happen including in the animation. They changed their mind after the uproar over Prime. Lots of good special features on the DVD including the original movie trailer and the TV spots for it. I remembered several of them when I saw them. Several US and Japanese toy commercials make it on there along with some deleted, test, and alternative footage of the movie. They have an extra on the DVD where they do a side by side comparison of how they’ve cleaned up the animation compared to previous releases. I do think this edition looks the best. The episode of Scramble City is on the DVD as an extra. The Scramble City episode was made in Japan and didn’t air here. It was basically made as a link between seasons 1-2 and the movie. It introduced several of the movie characters to give some background. Seeing Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus interacting is very cool as their interaction in the movie is extremely limited. We don’t actually get the audio from the cartoon but instead commentary over it explaining things. Very informative and I’ve never actually seen that. Another extra that I highly recommend checking out is the fan commentary on the movie. I LOVED this extra. It is really informative and fun as I learned a ton of stuff that I didn’t know about. Some things mentioned in it are that some parents actually started taking kids out of the theater after the first killing of autobots on the ship. One of them has the storyboards to the movie and points out a lot of interesting stuff that wasn’t put into the movie. For one, that ship scene was set to be a lot more gruesome that it turned out to be. They decided it was pushing limits on a PG rating. They put the one cuss word in the movie as a way to bump it up to a PG rating as they didn’t want it to be just a kids movie with a G rating. They point out several animation errors where a character will be spotted in a scene flying around when the character shouldn’t be there. A lot of the season 2 characters aren’t in the movie and the reason is that the movie was beginning to be produced at the end of season 1 and beginning of season 2 so they couldn’t add the new ones in. One of the fans mentioned that he was I think 8 when he saw the movie in the theater. He had a great line after seeing all the destruction at the beginning of the movie. After Megatron is dumped from the ship, he says that “everything I’ve known that was right in the world had been destroyed”. You really do get that feeling even watching it now. They completely just rip out G1 in the first 30 minutes. After listening to them, I again have to ask this question. Did anyone like Ultra Magnus??!! ha ha. They point out how he always made the wrong decisions. I’ll ask another question. Did anyone like Wheelie? That is a character that fans really dislike with a passion. I never really minded him. I never really was a big fan of Magnus though. He just didn’t do much for me. My overall thoughts are that if you are a Transformers fan, you need to buy this DVD. It is TONS better than previous DVD releases of the movie and contains a ton of new extras.
Also on the Transformers DVD is a little tease about the upcoming live action Transformers movie that will be released next year. There is the teaser trailer but also a featurette where they talk a little about what is going on but give you some looks at the movie.
I apparently was reliving my childhood last weekend with a lot of stuff that I ended up watching. A movie that I have waited for to come out on DVD for a long time finally was released a couple of months ago. This movie was The Wizard. Some of you are probably thinking that you’ve never heard of this movie. If you are the same age as me, then you probably do know this movie. The Wizard starred Fred Savage, Christian Slater, Beau Bridges, and Jenny Lewis which was released in 1989. Fred Savage plays Corey who helps out his brother, Jimmy, as Jimmy has never been the same since his sister died years before. It is decided to put Jimmy in an institution. Corey breaks him out and a road trip ensues. They end up on a mission to go to the video game championships in Los Angeles after it is found out that Jimmy is a quickly learning video game master. This was a big time promotional tool by Nintendo as you kind of get the feeling that the movie was an infomercial for Nintendo. That was fine by me cause we loved the movie as kids. The movie also helped debut Super Mario Brothers 3. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve seen this movie but I haven’t seen it in probably 5 years but yet still knew the movie inside and out. The movie is a lot of fun even watching it now. It’s just a fun family movie to enjoy. The cast was really good in this thing and I always loved the scenes with Slater and Bridges together. They were hilarious. Good soundtrack to the movie and it definitely helps set the era for the movie. A little trivia for you with the movie. Did you know that Tobey Maguire is in the movie as an extra? Yep, it’s true. He is in the movie for a whole 10 seconds and has not one line. He’s just standing there with the other big video gamer named Lucas. He doesn’t even get his name in the credits. I actually found this out cause fans of the movie have been discussing the DVD release on this DVD board I go to every day. As far as the DVD itself, no extras. Zero. Disappointing but just having the movie on DVD is enough for me. It is in widescreen format which is good news. It looks and sounds great on DVD.
HUGE episode of Veronica Mars this past Tuesday. The episode was heavily promoted promising shocking twists and including a death. The episode did the highest ratings for the show this season and also had the CW’s highest 18-34 demographic numbers yet. The episode didn’t disappoint and I was on the edge of my seat glued to the last 15 minutes of the episode when everything started to play out. First off, the actual promo that they were running with the Fatboy Slim song, Right Here Right Now, attached to it, awesome!! The Greek system at the college was dismantled but the decision is later changed as the Dean had pressure put on him about it. He had to vote to keep it which leaves him really disliked by the Lillith house including his vehicle getting egged by the women as he is driving out of the parking lot. The Dean found out about his wife having an affair with Professor Landry. Keith had been hired to investigate this by the Dean. The Dean ended up drunk and snuck off with a gun going to catch them in the act. He did but the end of the episode saw Eli find the Dean dead in his office. Who did it? That is the mystery that will be solved in the rest of the season. Logan and Veronica broke up as he said that he just couldn’t do this anymore. He wanted to protect her from things but she just hasn’t let him. She has always been so independent at taking care of herself not allowing him to help when he wants or needs to. Veronica and the crew attend a party where a threat is made. They have a tester able to put in drinks to see if it tests positive for the drug that the rapist has been using. The rapist does end up drugging a girl and Veronica finds out. The rapist is indeed Mercer who had been cleared by Logan’s alibi a few episodes ago. Veronica ends up attacked by Mercer but runs out finding Moe, the RA. She stays with him while he goes to get help to the room that the girl was in. Veronica then starts stumbling around and she has been slipped the drug in Moe’s room. Yep, Moe was in on it. He was the set up guy for Mercer and helped provide an alibi. Veronica blew the rape whistle before she passed out as she was in the room later with Mercer and Moe. Parker heard it and saw Mercer and Moe with Mercer having been injured from the fight with Veronica. Parker yells rape and the whole hallway of dorms opens up with everyone trying to figure out what is going on. Mercer and Moe run off. The people get into the room and help Veronica. Keith ends up getting to Mercer and Moe later on and says he is taking them back to Neptune. Great twist on that whole story. What I love about this show is that everytime you think you have something figured out, a twist smacks you in the face leaving you dumbfounded. Mac’s “Ask me about my STD” shirt was hilarious. She is definitely a character that I want to see used more. The episode did leave us with several unanswered questions. Why did Logan smash the windshield of the cop car to get thrown in jail? What does that have to do with Mercer? Is he there for revenge for what happened to Veronica? Who killed the Dean and why? I’m sure Logan is there to get to Mercer but it’s like I keep expecting Logan to go bad but he hasn’t. Kristen Bell is one of the best actresses on TV right now in my opinion. She can deliver the simplest of lines that will make you crack up. New episodes of Veronica Mars will return on January 23rd. Noooo!!!! ha ha. That is way too far off!!
Kristin also got an interview with show creator of Veronica Mars, Rob Thomas. He said that they are talking about just doing stand alone episodes the rest of the way instead of a big mystery throughout the season. He said that they are going to do more stand alone episodes and less of the big mysteries. Here is his comment on it: One feeling is that the big mysteries keep away the casual TV viewers, and the other is that the thing that has been least successful since season one meaning the things we get the most complaints aboutóare the big mysteries. My design in season one was that Veronica’s best friend was dead, and every season regular had an integral role in the mystery. And unless they wanted every year to kill Veronica’s friends, it’s hard to have the same emotional connective that Ãs worth spending seven, eight, nine episodes on a mystery. It’s one of the things we are deciding on right now. She then asks if it was his idea or the network’s and he said: Both. Honestly, I brought it up to the network, and they jumped at the idea. But what I think we might do is the final mystery we were going to run instead of running it as our final five is just to play those as stand-alone episodes and maybe contract that big mystery into a two-episode thing with a cliffhanger as just a trial balloon. And hopefully before season four, weÃll see how it works. It seems like a good time to do it, a good fun test balloon. Try it over five and see how fans and non-fans react.
Superman Returns is now in stores on DVD.
NBC announced some midseason changes in their programming. Friday Night Lights is being moved to Wednesday at 7pm beginning on January 10th. The move is to get the show out of the way of the returning American Idol. Deal Or No Deal will follow Friday Night Lights at 8pm. Sundays will be changed as January 7th will see the premiere of an on-Broadway reality show called Grease: You’re The One That We Want. The Apprentice will be moved to Sunday nights at 8pm. Crossing Jordan will return on Sundays beginning January 21st at 9pm.
Ebay is reporting that 15,000 PS3’s were sold on the site in the first couple weeks of release. The first day of release saw some sell very high including the one that sold for $9,000. The average overall going price for PS3’s on Ebay have been $1,186. Ebay is reporting that 26,708 Wii’s have been sold for an average price of $412. Nintendo is reporting that 600,000 Wii’s have been sold since the launch. The new Zelda game is a hot seller as they are saying that 75% of the Wii buyers have also picked up that game. In other gaming news, the XBox 360 was sold real cheap on the big Friday sale on Amazon.com. Amazon made 1,000 XBox 360’s available for $100 a piece. The sale got so much attention that the Amazon site crashed for 10 minutes.
Lots of rumors flying around about The O.C. Rumors of it being cancelled are being talked about. Kristin from E Online is saying that she has heard the same thing that everyone else has but that the show still has an order of 16 episodes and has not actually been cancelled. She does warn that if people don’t start watching that it might be cancelled in the future though.
This is going to be an exciting finish to this season’s Amazing Race. The Blondes were almost eliminated this week but were saved with it being non elimination. They have done a lot of dirty tactics on the race and it’s funny that every time they do something like that, it comes back and bites them. Karma is not nice to them at all. Team ‘Bama sure has made a late surge after being in the back for most of the race. The Blondes and James and Tyler are for sure the teams to beat. It looks like Rob and Kimberly are going to have a meltdown this week from what the previews showed. I don’t really have a team that I am cheering for this time. The all stars version is now being taped and I’m surprised to see that Rob and Amber are apparently on it. I didn’t see that coming.
Survivor is also heating up with every episode. So, Jonathan has continued to get himself in more and more trouble. Even before he made the decision on how to vote in the last episode, he was in big trouble with the people that he has made mad. He continues to get into these no win situations where he could have went home last week if Yul was voted out and Yul showed the idol. I would have loved to have seen that idol get played last week to see the look on some faces when they realized that Yul had it. This week saw Yul reveal to everyone at the Survivor auction that he had the idol. Wow, I don’t know if that was a good idea or not. We’ll see. Jonathan continued to make people mad with how arrogant that he has gotten being with the tribe that has numbers. He almost won all the food at the auction. Can’t see him lasting much longer unless people keep him around at the end cause they know they can win against him. Candice was again sent to Exile Island for the fourth time in a row. They should name the island after her at this point. She won’t be going back though as she was voted out tonight. I’m really liking this season.
DVD sales chart for November 12th.
- Cars. 2. Little Man. 3. Over The Hedge. 4. Mission Impossible III. 5. Monster House. 6. The Little Mermaid. 7. The Sopranos Season 6 Part 1. 8. Nacho Libre. 9. MASH. 10. The Break-Up. 11. Click 12. M: 1: Ultimate Missions. 13. Beverly Hills 90210 Season 1. 14. James Bond Volume 1. 15. Transformers The Movie. 16. James Bond Volume 2. 17. Curious George. 18. The O.C. Season 3. 19. X-Men The Last Stand. 20. Jag Season 2
TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, December 5th. 24 (Season 5, Animaniacs (Volume 2), Dukes Of Hazzard (Season 7), Dungeons and Dragons (Complete Animated Series), Mission: Impossible (Season 1), Pinky and the Brain (Volume 2), Roseanne (Season 6), Saturday Night Live (Season 1), Survivor Vanuatu, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Volume 6), What’s New Scooby Doo? (Volume 10)
You Tube Video Of The Week: Shopping chaos on the biggest shopping day of the year.
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