2010 Blockbusters

So now that 2010 has finally arrived what movies are the early favorites

1. Iron Man 2
Sure to be a crowd pleaser, fresh off the success of Sherlock Holmes the comeback of Robert D seems complete. If this movie goes well watch for "Thor", "Captain America" and "Avengers" to follow close behind.

2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows....Part 1
Yes, that's right the final movie broken into 2 pieces. Warner Bros isn't stupid they know the HP series is the highest grossing movie franchise of all time so why not milk it a bit further.

3. Robin Hood
One more attempt at the epic tale, this time with Russell Crowe playing the lead and Ridley Scott directing. Am I the only person that liked Kevin Costner in both Robin Hood and Waterworld?

4. Tron: Legacy
Yet another remake, with this one not being out until late 2010. The Dec release of Avatar should help this Sci-Fi movie bring in the fans.

5. Shrek the 4th and Toy Story 3
Wow, is there no original movies anymore? These two kid movies are sure to do well, I know I will be taking my family.

6. Alice in Wonderland
Who doesn't love Johnny Depp raise your hand. I don't see many hands and with tim burton at the helm this will be unusual to say the least.

7. Inception
Finally an original story by Christopher Nolan. Is he becoming the next James Cameron? Nolan is best known for Momento, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. I am excited to see what this sci-fi thriller turns out to be. I am posting the trailer here for those who haven't heard of this yet.

Woo Hoo Summer's Here

UPDATE:

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

As always I need to update my summer movie prediction page with the final totals for 2009

Rank	Title	Gross	My Pred
1	Transformers:	$402	4th
2	Harry Potter 5	$302	3rd
3	Up	$293	1st
4	Twilight 2	$284	N/A
5	The Hangover	$277	N/A
6	Avatar	$269	6th
7	Star Trek	$258	2nd
8	Monsters Vs. Aliens	$198	N/A
9	Ice Age 3	$196	N/A
10	The Blind Side	$193	N/A

Well, looks like I was close on a few and totally missed the mark on the Twilight movie.

I'm glad to see Transformers go out on top but I think Avatar may beat it, judging by the pace it's setting.

Can't wait for next year


******
As many of you know summer for me kicks off in May with the start of the movie season.
So, if you were paying attention you probably noticed that I hadn't wrote about the 09 summer movie season yet? Well without further ado I bring you my

Top 5 movies of 2009

UP
Ok, not that one but I would go see that too.
Real trailer, UP in case you live in a cave, in which case I wonder whose internet you are stealing

Ahh, Disney & Pixar the perfect relationship. There's absolutely no reason to think this movie won't take in buckets of money. Once again John Ratzenberger will provide his voice for the movie, being the only person to have a role every Pixar movie.

If you doubt the success, Pixar movies have grossed $4.8 Billion and won 30 Academy Awards. I think they have the formula figured out.

Star Trek
Well, originally this was #4 in my list but after seeing it last weekend, I am moving it up. Yeah, I know that's cheating but I don't care. This was one amazing movie. Best Sci Fi movie since Revenge of the Sith in my opinion and some people didn't even like that one. JJ Abrams truly has a gift for directing and I can't wait to see his next project.

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 95% rating, that hasn't happened to a sci fi movie since The Truman Show(98), or Terminator II(91) for a true action sci-fi movie.

Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince
Really? Harry Potter? Aren't people sick of this franchise yet?
Well, how about this little fact. As of Nov 2008, the Harry Potter film franchise is the second highest grossing film franchise of all time, with the five films released so far grossing $4.48 billion worldwide. Without adjusting for inflation, this is slightly behind the 22 James Bond movies and the 6 Star Wars movies.

This movie has been complete for months, originally scheduled for fall 2008 but after the huge success of Dark Knight Warner Bros. executive Alan Horn noted that the move went ahead "to guarantee the studio a major summer blockbuster in 2009"

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
In 2007 the first Transformers movie was #3 taking in $319 million, with Harry Potter close behind at $292 million. This time I think it will be the other way around with Emma Watson unfortunately edging out my girlfriend Megan Fox. Just seeing if anyone is reading this.

This one is bigger, badder with an even more obscene budget.

Night at the Museum 2
I'm going out on a bit of a limb here putting this at #4 but the first one made $250 million and there is a smaller batch of "family" movies this summer to choose from. I guess Hollywood expects everyone to take their kids to X-Men or Terminator. My kids happen to love the first one, watching it about once a week.

With almost all of the cast returning this looks to be a fairly entertaining sequel.


Honorable Mention

The Princess and the Frog and Avatar are both coming out in December but it will be too late to make a run at the top 5 but if I know Jim Cameron I predict Avatar will break $250 million before Valentine's Day

Have a great summer everyone

Project 10 ^100 Please Vote for the Best Idea

Hello fellow readers. I haven't posted for a while since Facebook has basically been my replacement for blogging but I thought this was worth a post.

A year ago Google came out with this idea called

Project 10¹⁰⁰

It's basically a collaboration of ideas across the world. Google has compiled and condensed this list into the 16 best ideas and they are letting the general public vote for the best one.

Some great ideas. Even if this doesn't result in any action I think the simple act of bringing awareness to this type of Project is a great step toward becoming Borg

Please stop sucking me dry!

565K new jobless claims, lowest level since Jan.

"Continuing claims, meanwhile, unexpectedly jumped to a record-high. While layoffs are slowing, unemployed workers are having a difficult time finding new jobs."


Ok, I understand there are people out of work. I also understand it can take a while to find a job. In fact I have several friends that have been looking for months, and by looking I mean flying all over the country for interviews.

However, just yesterday I heard another example on the radio of people that are actually enjoying the extended unemployment benefits and don't really care when they find a job.

Are we simply making the problem worse by offering so many advantages and programs for everyone to enjoy?

If you haven't used very many government programs do you start to feel "cheated"?

To me it feels like there is a lower and lower sense of urgency as the economic situation gets worse and worse. It's almost a feeling of entitlement.

"Ohh, not to worry I don't need a job right away, the government will help me out"

This topic can snowball into the much larger social security topic but I will save that for another day.

Is Blogging Dead?

So, judging from my personal blogging habits and online observations Facebook and Twitter definitely seem to be taking the place of daily blogging.

I ran across a great article and I thought I would post it as somewhat of a transition to TwitBook

Blogging Is Over With

Analysis: Online trend chronicler says blogging "feels old" -- says he's moving from a blog to a "lifestream."

It's hard to remember that blogging was once deemed faster, less formal and often shorter than typical online prose.

These days, the online experience is often about Facebook updates and 140-character Tweets. More stream of consciousness, fewer essays with links.

Google Killer?

So, there has been some buzz lately about the next big thing, Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha LLC announced Monday the general availability of Wolfram|Alpha, a "computational knowledge engine" available on the Web that shares code with Mathematica, Wolfram Research's renowned technical computing software.

I've been following this a bit myself and I think it will take a very big leap to topple Google, and an even larger leap to replace it as my home page. That being said, it may have some future advantages over Wikipedia. I would love to have a bit more organization in the data on Wikipedia. Inevitably I do find what I'm looking for but sometimes it's in no logical order and 3 pages deep. Google gives me too many results and Wikipedia makes me work to find it.

The next big leap will be the one that can almost anticipate what you are looking for and then bubble those results to the top. Here's an example of where I hope technology is going.

The iPhone has an app called Shazam where you can simply hold the phone up and it will identify the song it hears, let you buy it, share it and watch the video. Damn cool if you ask me and almost reason enough for me to buy one.

How does this relate to online search software?

Well, I would like a similar experience when finding information.

1. Take me to the facts
2. Bring up recent news items
3. Find related youtube videos
4. Find related products to buy from places like Amazon

For example, let's say someone just told you how cool "Angels and Demons" is so you search on it and...

Hey look at that, through a Google search;

First link is the official site
Wikipedia page
YouTube video trailer
links to Books.google.com and Amazon.com
and even a news article on how this movie will damage the Catholic church

Good luck finding anything better than that, I don't anticipate my home page changing anytime soon, no matter how great a few people say something is.

Hat Tip: Bex

Google Does It Again

Never ceases to amaze me when something new shows up on Google.

So type in your favorite team followed by schedule and BAM! the current game stats show up.

How cool is that?