Toy Story, the franchise that made Pixar a household name will be back in theatres for two weeks starting October 2.  Toy Story 1 and 2 will be presented in 3-D and shown as a double feature.  I had the opportunity to watch both movies at D23 and they were still great.

Toy Story plot from IMDB:

A cowboy toy is profoundly threatened and jealous when a fancy spaceman toy supplants him as top toy in a boy’s room.

Review:

Released in 95 as the first full length CG flick, Toy Story became a phenomenom.  It was adorned by critics and …

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Disney’s first expo, D23, was a lot of fun.  Highlights include hanging out with the Red Queen from Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, watching Toy Story 1 & 2 in 3D (which was awesome) and the interactive booths such as the Storyteller Sandbox and Autonomatronic Show.  Below are some pics I took from the event.  Stay tuned as we’ll have extensive reports from the event, including future Pixar movies and new Disney attractions and of course, Toy Story 1 & 2 in 3D review!

Entrance to the expo

Exhibit Hall

Lolita versions of Disney Princesses

Abraham Lincoln in robot mode

John …

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Fear Itself is an ambitious horror anthology which aired on NBC to low ratings and was promptly canceled before all the episodes were aired. Like many horror anthology series not every episode is a winner, and the series is quite uneven at times. The best episodes of Fear Itself push the boundaries of what can be aired on network television and were quite impressive. The series brings together an impressive roster of horror writers and directors which include John Landis, Ronny Yu, Stuart Gordon, Mick Garris, and many others.

The three best episodes of the series are “Eater: Director’s Cut” (Stuart …

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Crank was a real surprise when it debuted a few years back. It was written and directed by two unknown guys who go by their last names only. Billed as “Neveldine/Taylor”, they are extremely inventive and are adept at making hardcore action flicks that while not to everyone’s liking, are hard to ignore. The flick starred Jason Statham as a hitman betrayed and poisoned by some gangsters. Statham survives long enough to get revenge and the film ends with him plunging to his “death” out of a helicopter. Crank 2 picks up at the exact moment the first movie ends and …

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For a movie titled Fighting, you’d at least expect some good fight scenes, but Fighting fails on even that basic level. The movie has actor Channing Tatum (GI Joe: Rise of Cobra) and Terrence Howard (who barely tries at all in the movie) as a street fighter and his manager respectively. There’s also a dull but pretty love interest and some villains who wouldn’t pass muster on a Saturday morning cartoon series. The real shame of the movie though is that the fight scenes are so poorly edited and choppy, viewers can barely tell what is happening while they are going …

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Sons of Anarchy is a biker drama from the FX Network. FX has prided itself on being the home of edgy and violent fare like The Shield, which is still its best series. Before The Shield came along, FX was mostly known as a dumping ground for reruns of old Fox series. Sons of Anarchy is the newest drama from FX and its a bonafide hit.

Anarchy is well-acted, compelling, and sometimes even disturbing. Critics seem to be complaining that the series is derivative of other crime sagas, most notably The Sopranos. Sons is not the most original series in the …

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Ponyo is the latest spectacular anime from Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke). Miyazaki has been making magical animes for years now and you can add Ponyo to his list of classics. Aimed towards younger kids (much like the near-perfect Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro), Ponyo is a colorful delight from start to finish. The detailed hand-drawn animation has a beautiful watercooler look to it that you just can’t achieve in CGI. A huge hit overseas, Ponyo was dubbed with loving detail by the Disney/Pixar crew and given a first-rate voice cast including Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Liam Neeson, …

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I like short movie reviews, so I’ll distill this down to the most important aspects.  This movie is essentially a drama, with some good comedy, and some of the best dialogue and acting I’ve ever seen.  The opening scene has a famous Nazi, titled, “The Jew Hunter”, Colonel Hans Landa, who is played by the fantastic Christoph Waltz.  This first scene sees Landa searching a dairy farm for jews in hiding.  As the audience becomes aware that the jews might be found, the music is queued and plays perfectly with the scene, which caused body-tensing in probably every person in the …

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The following is a readers comment poll. By posting YOUR choice in the comments section YOU can make yourself heard!

I have been asked by multiple people; which version of Cobra Commander is my favorite? That can be a hard question to answer. So I’ll give my answer in the comments and the reason why.
Although there are many versions of the Cobra leader to choose from; I’ve picked 4 of the more well-known.

METAL PLATE: In 1983, viewers first saw the Cobra Commander in this outfit.  The shiny metal plate covering his face, paired with the helmet made him …

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District 9 is an ambitious, deeply flawed new science-fiction/allegory released in theatres to great acclaim last Friday. District 9 benefitted greatly from an excellent marketing campaign and some amazing pre-release buzz. Sadly, the movie cannot live up to the avalanche of hype. An intriguing but often muddled and overlong mess, District 9 is best in spurts. Towards the end, the movie becomes overlong overkill, the kind of which people associate with Michael Bay. Scenes go on too long and the socio-political allegory gets tossed out the window in favor of nonstop gore and ultraviolence. District 9 also rips off half a …

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