Order of the Phoenix Date Set.

This week the tentative release date for the next Harry Potter movie was announced. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix now has a street date of July 13th 2007. This comes into a small bit of conflict with the 7th Harry Potter book that is set to be released on July 7th. Even though the they could promote each other, a release date this close could actually draw attention away from the book only a week after its release. I bet they will move the dates around still to at least put a month or so between the releases.

No Matter Where You Go,,,,There You Are !

This coming week I will be gone at the Indiana NENA Conference in Indianapolis. Posts will be kind of hit-or-miss all week. Sorry for any gaps, and I will be back at it next week before another trip, this time to Boston and Kennebunkport Maine.

Have a good week.

Another 28........

Fox Searchlight has announced that a sequel to 28 Days Later (2002) is now in development. At this time the title stand at 28 Weeks Later. Variety says that 28 Weeks Later will be produced by Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and Andrew MacDonald. Boyle directed the first movie. Garland, who penned the first film, will script the sequel as well.

28 Days Later was a great shot in the arm for the Horror genre and was almost solely responsible for the reemergence of the Zombie film. It gave us a new look and Zombie fair and introduced us to the "fast" Zombie that would later show up in the Dawn Of The Dead remake. The movie also has one of the best opening scenes, with the main character walking thru a deserted London. It will be interesting to see how the story is expanded and if the original characters will return. Cillian Murphy now has films like Batman Begins and RedEye under his belt and Naomie Harris is set to be in the upcoming Miami Vice and Pirates of the Caribbean 3. So it might be hard to nail them down for a new horror movie. Although Cillian's newest movie Sunshine is also directed by 28 director Danny Boyle.

The $10,000.00 Dell.

A few months ago Dell unveiled its new XPS 600 Renegade Super-Gaming computer. It was being toted as the extreme of the extreme, with 4 GeForce 7900 Graphic Processors, 2GB graphic memory, NVIDIA nForce SLI Chipset, Pentium Dual-Core at 4.26GHz, 2 HHD, 2 GB ram and a flaming custom paint job by Mike Lavalle of Killer Paint. For those who don't understand all the computer mumbo-jumbo, just say its the computer of any gamers wet dreams. Dell only made a undisclosed limited supply of these babies and they sold for the rock bottom price of $9,930.00. Yes that is not a typo, almost $10,000 for a computer, and that does not even include a monitor. You must really have a lot of disposable income to drop that much on a computer. I am more than happy with my 4 yr old HP and my Dell laptop.

Enough Is Enough Already .........

I have always had to vent my rage and frustration at the practice of having multiple releases on DVD of the same film. Now don't misunderstand, sometimes the 2nd release is much better, sporting new extras and a extended cut worthy of the release. Some examples of this is Legend, the Alien movies and most recently Sin City. But sometimes there is really no reason for it. As with this .............

Sony Pictures has announced another release of the movie Black Hawk Down. The new release is being dubbed as The Extended Cut with a whopping 8 minutes, yes that's right..8 minutes of added footage. This will mark the 4th release of this movie on DVD. Come on,,,don't you think that 4 releases of the same movie is pushing it a little. And to top it off the new release will have no new extras, just rehashings of what appeared on the 3-Disc release. So now you have the choice of the normal release (widescreen or full), the 3-disc Deluxe Edition, the Super-Bit edition and now the Extended Edition. There is no way that I would shell out even more money for eight more minutes of film. In my opinion the best version has been the 3-disc set. It had a great transfer and tons of extras including the History Channel doc on the real-life events of the movie.

So a 4th release of a movie. And there is more coming. Upcoming new releases included so-called Extended Editions of Enemy Of The State, Crimson Tide and even Con Air. Will they really be worth it. If I am going to spend more money on a movie I already have it better really be worth it. Look at the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy. The 2nd release Extended versions had over 60 minutes of additional footage and so many extras you had to spread your viewing over days, now that is worth spending money on. But 8 minutes,,,sorry Sony, I will have to pass on that.