Warner Brothers announces LoTR Blu-Ray sweepstakes

A Warner Brothers representative dropped by the SF-Fandom forums to announce a Lord of the Rings sweepstakes announcement tied to their upcoming Blu-Ray release for Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" movies.

I mentioned this news in Episode 21 of Middle-earth Talk Radio, which we recorded last night. You can almost here me describe it (sorry about the audio quality -- that will be fixed in an updated version).

The chess set is designed "by The Noble Collection with an ancient map of Middle-earth mounted beneath the playing surface and a base with actual images of the memorable characters and scenes from the thrilling motion picture trilogy."

By the way -- when I said (on the talk show) that no one cared about TORN's birthday, I was only swept up in the passion of the competitive moment. Of course it's great that they've been going strong for 11 years. I check their site often and they are a great bunch of people.

Normally our off-the-cuff remarks are reviewed and edited before the Middle-earth Talk Radio episodes are released for download. I just wanted Hawke to get a scoop up on the Web this time.

So, congratulations to TheOneRing.net on their 11th birthday!

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So what is "Inception" all about?

Have you seen this High-Def trailer for "Inception" starring Leonardo diCaprio?



I can't tell if it's about an alien invasion or something like "The Matrix Redone". I'm leaning a bit toward a Matrix-like false reality where one person wakes up to realize that a computer is controlling his world.

Or maybe the world has become so dismal and dreary that someone has decided to lead humanity into a state of suspended animation while the Earth repairs itself, and the conflict arises from people who fear the machine more than they fear death at the hands of their own toxins.

Hey, Hollywood, I'm available if you like that elevator pitch. "Call me".

Discuss the trailer at SF Fandom.

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Spike Jonze' "Where The Wild Things Are"

I thought I would try something different today. I wanted to coordinate posts about Spike Jonze' movie, "Where The Wild Things Are", on two or more sites today. The movie opens in theaters tomorrow (October 16) and I'm going to see it!

I've watched more than one trailer for the movie but the "official" trailer is below. People have expressed real enthusiasm when they've seen this trailer (and others) in theaters where I've seen it. And I think the fact that Maurice Sendak, author of the book on which the movie is based, was involved in the production of the film only promises that it will stay true to the spirit of the original story.

Sendak's tale of a child who goes on an adventure with the wild monsters he was afraid of when he went to bed helped make the night a little more interesting for many children. It's a time-tested tale that inspires the imagination and gets you to thinking about what you would do if you were lucky enough to be in Max's place.



And you may recall that I recently ranted about about bad Warner Brothers' movie sites are. Well, they did a better job for the official site than they have done for other movies' sites, but they could have done so much more. I just don't understand how movie studios cannot come to grips with reality on the Web: people want MORE, not LESS.

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Hayao Miyazaki's "Ponyo"

If there is one thing the Disney Company knows how to do, it's create kid-friendly movie sites. Unlike Warner Brothers, whose skimpy sites are a waste of time, Disney at least provides you with some stuff to download, things to do, and cast and crew information. They're not so cheap as to rely upon the IMDB to tell people all the little details.

I'm sorry, was I not talking about "Ponyo"? I wish I could show you the trailer that is on YouTube but one thing Disney does that I hate is it prevents people from sharing its videos.

Clearly, someone at Disney doesn't understand viral marketing (ironically -- most people in the SEO industry mistakenly believe viral marketing is all about embedding links in blog posts, so I'm pretty sure I know where Disney got this dumb marketing idea).

But let's talk about Hayao Miyazaki. This is the legendary Japanese film-maker who gave us "Howl's Moving Castle", "Princess Mononoke", "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds", and "Castle In The Sky" (to name just a few of his great films). Miyazaki is a great story-teller, and his work stands out amid all film-making around the world as being imaginative, creative, inventive, entertaining, and hard to hold down.

Miyazaki's films are the kind of treats you bring home for yourself and hope the kids don't get upset because you want to watch them over and over again. "Ponyo" came out earlier this year but if it passed through my area we missed it (probably because it was released on so few screens. It looks like we'll have to wait for the DvD.

It would be nice if the studios that schedule their films for mass release across thousands of screens would also create decent Web sites. Oh well.

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Trailer for "The Book of Eli"

There is something about post-apocalyptic movies that bugs me: the Earth is always a desert in such movies. Why is that? We now know that even under intense radiation plant and wildlife somehow manage to go on. A thermo-nuclear war would, I am sure, clean most life off the planet but the odds are pretty good that unless we figure out a way to boil the oceans off into space life would continue on Earth.

So I quibble over speculative details. I just wish someone would make a post-apocalyptic movie that doesn't portray the Earth as an inhospitable desert. Oh, wait, Kevin Costner did that in "Waterworld". Never mind.

So Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Malcolm McDowell, Jennifer Beals, and Michael Gambon will lead a rag-tag fugitive cast in search of a good movie concept next January when "The Book of Eli" debuts in theaters. There is an official Website where you can watch the trailer I've embedded below. But there is nothing else, really.

Why do movie studios waste our time with these crappy, no-content sites? I'm not signing up with their Facebook account so I can carry their ads. I want to see interviews with the cast and producers. I want to see production stills. I want to see background material. I want to see a good, old-fashioned, fan-oriented Web site that digs deep into the story and helps me identify with it.

Because, frankly, I'm not sure I'm going to be all buzzed up to see yet another post-apocalyptic movie set in the desert. I'd rather see some imagination go into the movies I watch. The advance promotion suggests that imagination is probably the biggest deficit this film carries with it.



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Roddenberry pilot shows to be released on DvD

TrekWeb reports that Warner Brothers is releasing the pilot shows "Genesis II" and "Planet Earth" to DvD.

"Genesis II" starred Alex Cord as a 20th century scientist, Dylan Hunt, who was trapped in an underground stasis experiment for 200 years. Revived by a group of explorers from the 22nd century, Hunt learned that mankind had nearly wiped itself out in a nuclear war. Humanity had become divided into two groups: mutants and "true" humans, descendants of survivors who had protected themselves from radition.

"Genesis II" was actually a pretty good television movie but it apparently did not resonate with network executives and critics. So we were served up the less satisfying "Planet Earth" starring John Saxon and Diana Muldaur. I always enjoyed watching Saxon's work. I could never stand Muldaur on Star Trek or anything else. She simply grated against my nerves (so did Barbara Walters).

The second pilot was also rejected and Saxon went on to star in a season of episodes for "Strange New World" which looked like a "Planet of the Apes" remake of "Wonder Bug" (a silly Saturday morning TV show that I will admit to watching because it killed time).

"Wonder Bug" was much more entertaining.

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