Caddickisms

Back in April I wrote a list of the movies I want to see this year in the theater. So far I’ve seen all the ones I called as a must-see and missed all the others (which, so far, is just Speed Racer).

When I go to the theater, I love to see the previews. I consider them an art unto themselves. It can’t be easy to tease an unfinished movie by pulling out the enticing bits and telling you just enough to get you interested in the story without revealing the whole thing. Good editors can even make a bad movie look great. Conversely, great movies can be hidden behind a poor trailer. But a great movie with a great trailer makes you sit up and go, “wow!”

The problem with seeing all these previews is that they are essentially commercials. Commercials are made to make you want to purchase something you didn’t know you needed. They are there to separate you from your money. So for me, loving trailers is a two-edged sword.

Case in point: when we saw our double-feature, I saw trailers for movies I somehow hadn’t heard about before, and newer trailers for movies I was already somewhat interested in. Then I read Lee’s review of The Incredible Hulk. I thought I was set with my list for the summer, but now it seems I have some revision to do.

So here’s the new list, in order of release, with release date (and my thoughts, if I’ve seen it). Boldface indicates movies I will not miss in the theaters. Italics are the ones I’m going to whine about incessantly if I miss in the theater - the ones that it hurts me to not put in bold. The others I will be disappointed if I have to miss for one reason or another, but once I see them on video I’ll be okay:

1. Iron Man - May 2 (review)
   
2. Speed Racer - May 9 (judging by general reaction, glad I missed it)
3. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - May 16 (review)
4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - May 22 (review)
5. The Incredible Hulk - June 13 (This is so close to being in bold it’s not even funny)
6. Get Smart - June 20
7. Wall-E - June 27
8. Hancock - July 2
9. The Dark Knight - July 18
   
10. The X-Files: I want to believe - July 25
11. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer - August 1
12. Star Wars: The Clone Wars - August 15
    
13. City of Ember - October 10
14. Quantum of Solace (James Bond) - November 7

The astute among you (i.e., the ones who have nothing better to do but follow the minutiae of these posts) will notice that City of Ember was added to the list. Bill Murray and Tim Robbins in a sci-fi adventure movie. I love Bill Murray and Tim Robbins, and I love sci-fi adventure, but I would not be sold by that pairing. It’s on my list. That’s the power of a trailer.

Hancock has also been upgraded to painfully close to a must-see (as has Hulk). When I saw the first trailer, it looked like a fun, but relatively light, superhero movie. This most recent trailer shows that it actually has a plot of redemption and seems well formed. (And they even surpassed the whale bit for funny. Jason Bateman is perfect for this movie.)

So many movies… so little time.

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(Okay, there is a lot of YouTube in this post. I got a little carried away. If you’re not seeing it ’cause your IT department is lame, come back when “the man” isn’t holding you down. If your Feed Reader is lame, click on through.)

Walt Mueller pointed to the MTV Yearbook site in his blog, Learning my lines… on Friday. He picked his favorite two years and his favorite video. I thought… hey, I can do that! Guess what… I can’t. My favorite would be somewhere in the eighties probably, since that’s where I spent my teen years, where I was most closely plugged in to the current popular music, but as I went through the years online, I realized that I still don’t know at least half the songs in almost every year.

I’ve known this about myself for years, but when it comes to popular music, I was usually at least 6 months behind everyone else… and that was when I was paying attention. As I moved up through the years in the yearbook to the present, I realized I was recognizing fewer and fewer songs per year as I approached the present.

Not quite sure what to make of that. I’m hoping it’s because the MTV selections started skewing away from my tastes after VH-1 was created. (Hmmm… wonder if they have a yearbook…)

Anyway… of the ones I recognized, there were some that I loved, many I didn’t, some I related to, and some that made me nostalgic. My trip down this particular memory lane led me in a few unexpected directions.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I just recently found out that two of my brothers-in-law didn’t know anything about the new Clone Wars movie or the TV series it’s setting up. This post is for them…. but there’s a nice treat at the end for those who know all the rest.

First, the basics: as I said back in August…

As most people know already, there are two Star Wars TV shows in the works, one live action and one computer animated. The latter of those is much closer to completion, and it’s release is still over a year out. But on the official Star Wars website, they’ve released a trailer for the “Clone Wars” show, and it blows me away. This series looks like it will be awesome. It covers, as the name implies, the Clone Wars, which begin at the end of Episode II: Attack of the Clones and end in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. There was a short cartoon series run on the Cartoon Network (approximately 5 minute episodes totalling 2 hours), that covered some of that war, and this series will fill in the gaps.

Here’s the “Sneak Peek” trailer I was referring to:

Then, in February, Lucasfilm announced that they would be releasing an animated theatrical movie to kick-off the animated TV series. At the time, I said:

To be honest, it’ll be a little weird to see an animated Star Wars on the big screen, and it’s a bit of an odd idea to launch a TV show with a theatrical pilot (though there will be a TV pilot, too), but if any franchise can pull that off, it’d be Star Wars.

The theatrical release will be on August 15th, followed by the TV debut on Cartoon Network (and TNT) in the fall.

Here’s the trailer for the movie (notice, some of the shots are the same, but there’s some cool new stuff) [edit: if the video below is "no longer available" click here to see it - embedding is apparently blocked on all versions of this one]:

The thing about Jabba’s son… I’m trying not to think about it… but it looks awesome. The fluidity of the movement is amazing. Those lightsaber battles are going to be great.

The new young girl they focus on in the trailers is called Ahsoka, and she’ll be Anakin’s padawan (apprentice).

The movie premieres on August 15th. It should come as no surprise that I’ll be seeing this in the theater (it’s the last of my “essentials” group this year.)

Now… on to the Obi-Wan debate.

The best lightsaber battle ever was against Darth Maul in Episode I: The Phantom Menace. (For my money, it was worth sitting through Jar-Jar to get to that.) One of the frequent nitpicks of that sequence, though, is that Obi-Wan didn’t use his force speed power to quickly go through the laser gates, thereby catching up with Qui-Gon and probably preventing his death. Why wouldn’t he do that? The beginning of the movie established that particular power when they escaped from the destroyer droids. Why not use it now in this critical moment battling the Sith?

At last, we know the answer!

That settles it for me. Totally plausible.

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Star Wars: Video

Catch the trailer for the August 15th Clone Wars movie. This debuted with Speed Racer tonight.

This.

Looks.

Awesome.

Click through and watch it.

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This is one of the “prettier” explosions I’ve seen. Love the compression wave.

The sound of the shrapnel flying past through the end just completes the goodness.

And one more… underwater boom…

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My company has recently shut down all access to YouTube. I get that. I completely believe that many people are using company time and bandwidth to watch all sorts of inappropriate — or just plain time wasting — content. From a certain perspective, I can support the decision to prevent that from happening.

There is a war between those who would waste company time and resources, and those who are tasked with keeping that from happening.

I am collateral damage.

Part of my job within the training department is to research new content creation and distribution technology, and to integrate that into our training delivery. YouTube is, for better or worse, an important part of that responsibility for two main reasons:

1. It is itself one of the most popular examples of that new technology.
2. Due to it’s popularity, it is used by many other people to showcase their own discoveries and new uses for content and distribution technology - thereby making it a valuable resource for me to do my job.

Information sharing is critical to my job. The ability to see what other people are doing/have done in converging technology and training is a significant way for me to not keep reinventing the wheel. The ability to create and deliver training products that appeal to a culture steeped in these new technologies requires me to have access to these technologies to begin with.

Is YouTube the only way for me to keep up with these advancements and new ideas? Not at all — far from it, actually. For example, blogs are actually a great source for these ideas as well (in fact, here are two that I keep a sharp eye on: e-Learning Technology, and Corporate e-Learning Strategies and Development). The interesting thing about these blogs, though, is that they frequently use embedded movies from YouTube as examples of what they are talking about! I can’t see these things when I’m inside the Corporate firewall, so I’m missing a significant portion of the point!

I’ve also used YouTube videos to help me explain the concepts and technology that I am trying to ’sell’ internally. For example, I used this video to help me showcase the concept of a wiki - and even embedded it in my wiki for the pilot group to see. Now it’s just an unexplained blank space on the page because the video is blocked.

That same video, and others like it, are also good examples I can use with our training team to help think about other ways to create training that may appeal more to a large portion of our employee base. Now I can’t share those examples anymore.

Collaboration, sharing, and openness - that’s where we should be going. That’s what would help us work more efficiently, smarter, and more effectively, in many cases. But the barriers to doing this at a large organization (like mine) are hard to overcome. There are times it feels like I’m fighting an uphill battle. This is just the latest setback.

Blah.

Technorati Tags: corporate IT policies, YouTube, productivity, training, development, new technologies

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Star Wars: The Clone Wars | Star Wars: The Clone Wars In Theaters and on Television in 2008

The Clone Wars animated series is going to start with a theatrical release!

This is great news. To be honest, it’ll be a little weird to see an animated Star Wars on the big screen, and it’s a bit of an odd idea to launch a TV show with a theatrical pilot (though there will be a TV pilot, too), but if any franchise can pull that off, it’d be Star Wars.

The theatrical release will be on August 15th, followed by the TV debut on Cartoon Network (and TNT) in the fall.

On the front lines of an intergalactic struggle between good and evil, fans young and old will join such favorite characters as Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Padmé Amidala, along with brand-new heroes like Anakin’s padawan learner, Ahsoka. Sinister villains — led by Darth Sidious, Count Dooku and General Grievous — are poised to rule the galaxy. Stakes are high, and the fate of the Star Wars universe rests in the hands of the daring Jedi Knights. Their exploits lead to the action-packed battles and astonishing new revelations that fill Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

For some nice shots and behind-the-scenes info, check out this starwars.com video.

And for good measure… here’s the Sneak Peek released a while back.

Technorati Tags: Star Wars, Clone Wars, George Lucas, animated tv

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Star Wars: Gaming | Swords and Lightsabers Clash in Soulcalibur IV

(Wow, that’s a weak post title … sorry)

Go to the link above for a news release and trailer for a cross-over from Star Wars to head-to-head battle game SoulCalibur 4.

I have a hard time getting the trailers to run smooth off the Star Wars site for some reason… lots of jumpiness… so if you’d rather see it smoother, try this page (though you’ll have to either watch two trailers or drag to the middle of the movie - for some reason they put in two trailers back to back, and the second one is the relevant one).

Technorati Tags: gaming, Star Wars, Darth Vader, Yoda, Soul Calibur, video games

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Afternoons with Amit: How to watch TV online…legally

See, that’s the kicker - doing it legally. Anyone can find illegal TV. Given the option, though, I’d much rather support the companies creating these shows by going the legal route. If that means I have to put up with four 30-second commercials, I’m okay with that. Just don’t skimp on the quality, and make it easy to navigate.

Amit puts a description of each along with his preferences, but here’s the basic list:

• Hulu - currently in private beta, but looks like a good option from NBC
• Veoh
• MSN Video
• Fox on Demand
  
• ABC
• CBS Innertube
• NBC
  

That’s it for his list. If anyone knows of other free, legal outlets for TV shows online, post a link.

Technorati Tags: free TV

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