Awesome little video

Got 8 minutes? Then watch this:

The franchise is safe

We were lucky enough to get tickets to an advance screening of the new Star Trek movie (sister-in-law's husband won tickets, but it's on the night of said sister-in-law's birthday). It totally rocks (although one thing did bother me: [spoiler alert] Kirk goes from Iowa farmboy to starship captain in three years?!). It was also nice to see that Leonard Nimoy had a proper part in the movie, not a Leonard's-still-alive-and-we-got-him-in-the-movie part.

Fantastic short movie

Thanks to blue cat for the heads-up on this, here's an absolutely fantastic short movie:

Stop the press! Common sense breaking out!

So the infamous Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment Act is having its implementation "delayed". I didn't vote for National -- I don't trust them -- but I'm delighted to see John Key et al take a step back from implementing a poorly thought out law that (a) won't do what it's supposed to do, (b) breaches the fundamental innocent-until-proven-guilty principle that underpins our entire justice system, and (c) props up an irrelevant business model for the recording and movie industries, who seem to be led by people too lazy or too stupid (or both) to find an alternative.

And who's to blame for this? The former minister, the "Hon." Judith Tizard, who put Section 92A back in, even though the select committee had taken it out, and lectured anybody who dared suggest it might be a bad law, and generally looks like the recording industry's stool pigeon.

And here's an interesting factoid. According to TorrentFreak, here are the top 10 most downloaded movies of 2008, along with their worldwide grosses (from Wikipedia):

1. The Dark Knight (US$1,001,082,160)
2. The Incredible Hulk (US$263,427,064)
3. The Bank Job (US$63,754,550)
4. You Don't Mess With The Zohan (US$201,780,186)
5. National Treasure: Book of Secrets (US$457,363,168)
6. Juno (US$229,911,304)
7. Tropic Thunder (US$188,056,525)
8. I Am Legend (US$585,349,010)
9. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (US$105,173,115)
10. Horton Hears A Who! (US$297,041,149)

Yup, piracy's killing the movie industry....

Really cool video clip

14 months, 42 countries...



On a side note, we did go to see Indy IV tonight, and really enjoyed it. Several people "warned" us that it wasn't as good as the previous movies, but I don't know what movie they saw. The one we saw was terrific (maybe not as good as Raiders, but definitely better than Temple of Doom, jury still out on whether it was better/worse than Last Crusade). It did everything we ask of a movie: we went in, and when we came out some two-and-a-half hours later, we had been thoroughly entertained. So yah-boo-sucks! to all you naysayers! :-P