There's an indie film coming out soon called We are the Strange. The director/producer of the film, M dot Strange, describes it as "Monsters Inc meets The Nightmare before Christmas inside of a retro Japanese videogame", which right there should be an indication of just how strange this film is. If you don't believe me, check out the trailer, up now on YouTube. According to M dot Strange, the film will be released for public consumption (means as of yet undetermined) sometime in 2007.

Thanks to OM at pabook for the heads up.  Read more »

In other news, I just got back from watching Clerks II, which opened today. Kevin Smith's fans are going to love it, obviously. Fans of Clerks (but not of Smith's later works) are probably going to love it too. People who didn't like Clerks or any of Smith's movies, however, probably won't like it. All that goes without saying, though. So what about the movie itself?

Walking in, I figured the movie had about a 50/50 shot... either it was really good, and finally gave closure to the characters in a way that gave them justice and at the same time didn't come off as too hammy, or it was just going to be a rehashed revisit of the same old thing, courtesy of the commercial and critical failure Kevin Smith's last movie, Jersey Girl.  Read more »

I just rewatched The Royal Tenenbaums for the billionth time, and god is this film great. The first time I saw the film I didn't really care for it, because it didn't seem to have a point, but every time I watch it after that, I pick up more depth and purpose, and the movie just gets better.

Wes Anderson's directing style is odd but interesting. With very few exceptions, all of the actors' lines are delivered in an almost deadpan manner, yet the acting doesn't feel wooden and the characters' emotions, as complex as they can get given the plot, are generally fairly clear. The camera work, too, is quirky. All of this makes the film feel oddly surreal and magical, even though its plot and setting are realistic enough.  Read more »

After spending my Fourth of July indoors with Amber (we were both feeling under the weather), I stopped into Best Buy on my way home and picked up a new harddrive, keyboard, and mouse. The harddrive was a Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB SATA hard drive, 7200RPM and 8MB cache. The keyboard and mouse combo was the Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 1000 package. Both were on sale.

Oh, and I also picked up the special edition DVD of Napoleon Dynamite, which was also on sale for $6.99. Sweet.

I forgot to mention that yesterday Amber and I went to see Nacho Libre (imdb), which was surprisingly good. I went into theaters with mixed expectations: I think Jack Black's humor is about as dumb and unfunny as Will Ferrell's, but I find that Jack Black's antics are somehow still tolerable and endearing, while Will Ferrell's obnoxious inanity generally makes me physically ill. So while I was anticipating two hours of staring at the screen and "not getting it", I wasn't worried that I would feel that I wasted those two hours. I was pleasantly surprised. Before you ask me to get my head checked, I'll lay this out on the table: the movie was incredibly stupid, and the humor was generally tasteless and inane, but, despite all that, I found myself laughing hard throughout the whole thing, and I left with that warm, fuzzy feeling of time well-spent.  Read more »

The Simpsons Movie is coming to a theater near you, next year!