Recount
It’s not my cup of tea, but I’m sure there a lot of people who will be interested in this movie. Recount is a behind-the-scenes retelling of the 2000 presidential elections. Written by Buffy-alum Danny Strong and directed by Jay Roach (Meet The Parents, Austin Powers), it features a solid cast (Kevin Spacy, Laura Dern, John Hurt, Denis Leary and Tom Wilkinson). [Trailer]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars
If you haven’t heard about it already, this year a new chapter of the Star Wars saga is coming out… and this time it’s an animated TV show. To kick it off a feature film will be released in theatres, hence this trailer. Set between Episodes 2 and 3, it centres on Anakin, Obi-Wan, Amidala and Anakin’s padawan learner Ahsoka battling the clones and their masters. Before seeing this trailer I was a bit apprehensive of this project; after the previous 3 crappy ones, did we really need another Star Wars movie? Seeing this trailer though does give me hope for this actually turning out pretty okay (although I’m not a fan of the animation/CGI style). But does anyone here truly believe new character Ahsoka won’t die sometime during the series? [Trailer 1] [Trailer 2]

Traitor
I hadn’t heard of this movie before, but it looks intense and dramatic. Don Cheadle plays a former special operative working for terrorist organizations and Guy Pearce is the FBI agent after him. From the trailer though it doesn’t seem to be as clearcut as that; expect no bad guys and good guys in this movie, but a whole lot of shady grey characters. [Trailer]

The Mummy: Tomb of The Dragon Emperor
I admit: I was a huge fan of the previous Mummy movies. Both of them (not The Scorpion King though; that was crap). So I was kind of excited when I heard they would make a third movie. And then I heard that Rachel Weisz wasn’t coming back. And that this time it would be Chinese mummies. And that the son would be all grown-up now. Yeah, not that excited anymore. This trailer though has gotten my hopes up a bit; it still could be a great entertaining summer movie. Plus it’s got Jet Li as a fighting magic-wielding mummy; that’s gotta count for something! [Trailer]

August
Somehow the little I had heard of this movie, gave a complete different impression on what it actually is about and it actually looks interesting. Josh Hartnett is Tom Sterling, a entrepeneur attempting to keep his company afloat in August 2001, when the dot-com bubble burst. To me it seems a hipper, younger Wall Street type of film and I wonder if we’ll look back at it with the same appreciation. [Trailer]

Tropic Thunder
A couple months ago I had posted the first (normal) trailer for this movie and claimed it could be the dark horse of this movie season. Now a Red Band trailer has also came out and to be honest I’m not that crazy about it. I want to like and love Tropic Thunder (especially Downey Jr.‘s character), but this trailer is cause for worry. [Red Band Trailer]

Vicky Christina Barcelona
I’ve always found it difficult to predict whether or not I’ll like a new Woody Allen movie. Somehow you never really know what type of movie it’s going to be. With Vicky Christina Barcelona I’d expected no difference. It stars Scarlet Johansson and Rebecca Hall as friends on a holiday in Spain, who get involved with a painter (Javier Bardem) and his ex (Penelope Cruz). Strong cast and an unusual premise, I think this is going to do pretty great during awards season. [Teaser] [Trailer]

The X-Files: I Want To Believe
I never was much of an X-Files fan; I’ve seen about half of the episodes (only started watching in the sixth season) and never watched the ending. So I have no idea how this movie exactly relates to the series. Yes, it stars Mulder and Scully, but I wonder if there are any important plotlines hailing back to the show. [Trailer 1] [Trailer 2]

Righteous Kill
You’d think a movie with Robert de Niro and Al Pacino should be pretty amazing. And this film isn’t. I’m not saying it’s bad, terrible, horrible, etc, but for a film with two legends in it you’d expect a little bit more. De Niro and Pacino play two veteran NYPD detectives on the trail of a serial killer, who might be a fellow cop. [Trailer]

City of Ember
Based on the young adult’s book of the same name, City of Ember revolves around the titular city, a sealed-off underground settlement of which the electrical system is failing. The two main characters, 12 year-olds Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, race to figure a way out and save their people. I love the idea of this and if the effects and acting are any good, this could turn out to be an amazing movie. [Trailer]

It’s exactly three weeks ago that we held this dinner, but I still wanted to dedicate a short blog post to it. Cause it was the first Geek Dinner I’ve actually partly organized. I’ve helped a bit with previous events, but never anything that required too much work (or stress) on my behalf. This time I arranged the venue and food, and on the day itself kept track of all the attendees and payments. You’d think it wouldn’t be too much work, but with over 70 guests (!) I was kept busy the entire dinner.

Photo by Craig Murphy

After our previous (regular) venue kind of screwed us over, we were forced to find a new location. Now finding a Geek Dinner venue isn’t as easy as it may seem, cause we need quite a lot of flexibility. For starters, we don’t want to pay for the venue, so it has to have free room hire. Then the food can’t be too expensive. Plus, we never are really sure until the day itself (and even then it remains a rough estimate) of the number of people that are coming. Which for a lot of venues is a problem, cause they want to order the food at least a week beforehand. Besides that we really need a separate room, not some balcony or back part of a pub, cause otherwise nobody can hear the speaker. So yeah, pretty specific. (Btw, if anyone knows any other good venues in central London, please let me know. Any suggestions are always appreciated.)

Photo by Craig Murphy

Purely by accident, I stumbled on the Thai Smile restaurant, situated above a pub, close to Holborn. And they did exactly what we wanted. They were even fine with me phoning the numbers through a couple of hours before it started. The food was about 8 pounds per person and almost everybody thought it was delicious (I at least didn’t get any complaints). We’re definitely going to go back there, cause they did exactly everything we needed.

The Moo crew talk was great; they hadn’t prepared a real presentation, they just explained the origins of their company and then accepted questions from all the guests. There were some cool little moments, like Moo was first called ‘PleasureCards’ and, while talking about the Moo.com url: ‘The cows were annoyed’. Ciaran’s got a short video of part of it up on Qik (quality isn’t that super, but it’s better than nothing). Cristiano also made a timelapse of the entire evening:

GeekDinner with Moo Timelapse from Cristiano Betta on Vimeo.

It was a great event and I’m glad it went so well. I was pretty much busy the whole time, but I guess that’s the price you pay for volunteering for these type of events. If we don’t organize it, who will? That being said though, do contact me if you want to help out; the more people that get involved, the more events we can organize!

One last question: what would you think of a GeekDinner hosted Chocolate Party (your “entrance fee” is a box of chocolates)?

Because of a conversation this afternoon with londonfilmgeek on Twitter, I was reminded of the brilliance that is Labyrinth. This was one of my favourite films as a kid and it still remains one of my “rainy day” or “I’m sick and want chicken soup” movies. Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is one of the first movie heroines I could identify myself with (it helped that I had a younger brother named Toby too) and the movie never fails to lift my spirits. And I love the Escher inspired hallways:

So you’d think with a blog post title named ‘Return to Labyrinth’ I’d be reminiscing about the movie, going on about how much I loved it and adored it. Well, not exactly. You see, while browsing this afternoon for all things Labyrinth, I stumbled on… Return to Labyrinth. It’s an original English-language (OEL) manga based on Labyrinth. Set 13 years after the events of the movie, it centers around Toby, now a teenager, who Jareth the Goblin King still wants as the heir to his throne. The manga is supposed to be a four part series with the first two parts released in August 2006 and October 2007.

Why have I never heard of this? The first volume came out back in 2006. 2006! That’s almost 2 years ago! So why does nobody I know know about it (I’ve got some big Labyrinth fans friends)? Bad marketing or just a very bad story? I’m hoping it will be a great and worthy sequel, but if it isn’t we can always pretend it never existed (yes, Wachowski brothers, I am looking at you).

To make it better though, there’s also an online version, so you can start reading right away. I haven’t tried it out yet, so I’m not 100% sure that all of it is available, but from what I can tell it seems to be the whole thing. Three chapters are available; it’s about 60 pages from the 208. So far I’m really enjoying it and will order paperback. If you want the dead-tree version, you can get it at the TokyoPop store or Amazon.

Have you played aroung with Wordle yet? This fun tool has been popping up everywhere the past week, so I thought I’d try it out and see what all the fuss is about. It basically generates a word cloud from whatever text you provide, giving prominence to words that appear more frequently in it. You can play around with all types of setttings, like Font, Layout and Color, creating your own personal tag cloud.

This is what it came up with for my del.icio.us account.:

Pretty cool, huh? I’d love to have a T-Shirt with this on it! I’m not sure what else I’d really use Wordle for, but I can imagine you could create some pretty cool presentation slides with it. If you want to make a cool word cloud yourself, just head on over to the Wordle site.

Interesting links for June 16th:

• Can You Guess The Movie From Just One Letter? – Little game/puzzle where you have to guess the movies with only one letter cut out from the poster as a clue. I’m still working on it and I refuse to give up an check the answers (which btw is only possible by looking at the source code).
• Mystery on Fifth Avenue – A couple with 4 kids bought apartment in New York and gave the renovator full creative freedom; he secretly filled the whole place with puzzles and codes. I would looove to have a house like that (although I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I “solved” it a
• Deadly Glasses – 7 Glass designs based on the 7 Sins. I especially love the Envy and Sloth designs; they completely capture the spirit of those sins.
• Mall of misfortune – Article about an abandoned Chinese mall that was “doomed” from the start. At the time hailed as the biggest mall ever (with an indoor/outdoor rollercoaster) it just completely failed to attract customers and retailers.

Episode 64: “We need some time to talk”

I love me some Doctor Who! So here’s some more lovely David Tennant:

Sorry, for not posting the last couple of weeks. Since BarCamp I’ve been sick as anything, spending most days in bed and only last Thursday I finally was out and about again. Enough about that though, yesterday I went to Stonehenge!

Trish had some Dutch/Danish friends coming over for a few days and had the great idea to hire a car for the whole day to visit Stonehenge. Strangely, the only car rental hire big enough to fit six people and which didn’t close at 1pm, was the Sheraton Hotel near Heathrow. Ehm, why? Wouldn’t it just make sense that people would want to hire a car for trips for the entire Saturday? Anyhow, traveling to Heathrow, taking the (expensive) bus to the hotel and filling in all the paperwork took a bit longer than expected, so we only really left London around 11:30. Then we got slighty lost detoured along the way, so we arrived at Stonehenge at about 1.

I’m still trying to rack my brain about what to actually say about Stonehenge. It’s pretty impressive, but, well, they’re just a bunch of giant rocks. Cool to see and to experience, but that’s all there is to it. Big rocks in practically the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by lots and lots of grass. That being said, Stonehenge is one of those places you have to have been to yourself. It’s just part of The List (you know the one with the Colosseum and the Pyramids of Gizeh) and now I can finally cross it off. Don’t get me wrong though, I didn’t only go there for the sake of going there. It’s a brilliant piece of ancient creativity and the awe and mystery that still surround it have always intrigued me.

After admiring Stonehenge (including a short sunbath), we decided we should drive to Bath in an attempt to see the Roman baths. Because of road works and a detour, halfway there we stumbled on a small quaint village and stopped to have lunch/dinner there. It was a beautiful little town with a small canal winding through it and (although I say so myself) I made some pretty nice photos there. It might have been a bit too relaxing there, cause by the time we were ready to continue our journey it was already 5 o’clock.

Which of course meant that we only arrived in Bath around 6 (including driving around the center trying to find a place to park). And of course all the museums and the Roman baths were already closed. So I can say I’ve been to Bath, but I haven’t actually seen that much of it yet. It’s definitely worth another (proper) visit, but I’ll make sure I’ll do my research first and actually check out the closing times etc.

All in all, it was a great day out. And I’ve finally seen something of the UK outside of London, which wasn’t a BarCamp. I’ll have to figure out what our next trip is (I think Bath), but if anybody has any ideas I’m open to suggestions. I’ve got more photos up on Flickr and Cristiano’s got photos and this funny little video of our trip:

Interesting links for June 5th:

• 70 Amazing Business Cards – I love my Moo cards, but some of these business cards are so clever; they’re sure to get your attention.
• The Letter in the Pond – Guy buys a new house and digs up the pond in the backyard, cause it’s too dangerous for his kids. Underneath it, he finds a laminated letter to whoever “destroyed” the pond. Brilliant!
• Writing Assignment – Funny story about a writing assignment where two students were randomly matched and had to co-write a piece together. First one does a paragraph, then the other and son on. The result is hilarious.
• Hair Hats: Animal Magnetisms – Weird, weird hats made out of hair. Can you see a celebrity wearing something like this??

I haven’t blogged for the last couple of days, because of a not-so-fantastic combination of being extremely busy and sick. Last Thursday I had the first Geek Dinner I in part had organized (meaning I was “working” for most of the evening) and then last weekend I attended BarCamp London 4. Added to that, I caught some bug at the Geek Dinner, so since then I haven’t been feeling that well, spending Friday, yesterday and today in bed. Despite being sick though, I had a great time at BarCamp London 4!

With all the fuss surrounding the sign-up for this BarCamp, I was going in with my fingers crossed hoping it would turn out to be a good BarCamp. And it was. There were some minor “glitches” which I’ll come back to later, but overall it was a great experience. This time it was held at the GCap offices in Leicester Square and was organized excellently by GCap’s Ross Bruniges. I’ve split this post up in two parts (this doesn’t necessarily mean though Day 1 and Day 2), cause it just got too long.

Breakfast, Registration and Lunch

So last Saturday morning together with Cristiano and some Dutch friends who were specially here for BarCamp (Reinier, Martijn and Joost) I made my way to London’s cinema center. We were there quite early (9ish) to first grab some breakfast at a small cafe near Leicester Square, meeting up with Simon and Kevin. Completely satisfied by a yummy traditional English breakfast, we then headed to the GCap building, where the BarCamp magic (well, the registration at least) was about to start.

After registering, we found much to our delight that the venue had a roof terrace and spent the next hour waiting there till the intro talk began. As always we got a general dos and don’ts speech (“fires are bad”), a thank you to the sponsors and the “every single person in the room introduces themselves”, which takes like forever. After the talk, lunch was served and everybody got to fill in the session boards. Osmosoft sponsored the lunch, a great batch of Pret-A-Manger sandwiches and salads. I decided to do my talk in the very first slot, getting it quickly over and done with. Btw, I won’t write about every single session I went to; just the main ones that stood out for me.

My Talk: Probabilities Explained Through Poker, Werewolf and Deal Or No Deal

I noticed at previous geek gatherings that a lot of people don’t get their probabilities right and thought it might be interesting to do a hands-on session on that topic with some easy and cool examples. Idea was great, execution though… not that great. I hadn’t prepared that much (just some examples) and during my talk I fell silent way too often. Plus I don’t think I actually know/play enough poker to say a lot about it. I might do this talk another time, but I’ll have to polish it up a great deal. Cristiano actually filmed the entire thing (and a lot of the other sessions), so you can watch it here:

The Quest for a Open Source Event Management Solution
I went to this session expecting a demo of an event manager, which for me was interesting with Cristiano having just created his own event manager for the Geek Dinners. Instead though it was about gathering people together who are all interested in helping on an open source event manager. There wasn’t anything implemented yet; it was about how a general “use for every type of event” solution could be created.

Faceball Tournament

If you don’t know what Faceball is, check the official website out. The main idea is to hit the other person in the face with a pink or blue Flickr ball (don’t worry they’re very soft). I wasn’t planning to participate, but after seeing all the previous people play, I wanted to know for myself how difficult it was. Surprisingly though, while I didn’t win (Cristiano beat me in the semi-final), I did get the highest score! I’ve got a bunch of Faceball photos up on my Flickr and the video of it here, only the grand finale is missing. Cristiano won though and got us two Flickr pro accounts.

Beauty in Web Design

This was a great (and pretty) presentation from Cennydd on what beauty is and how we should attempt to create beauty in websites. He showed a couple of great examples of how art is perceived and how beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. My short description doesn’t do it justice and I wished I had recorded this, although sometime this month podcasts should be coming out from all the sessions. For the mean time, check out the slides on SlideShare.

The rest of this blog post will follow tomorrow or sometime later, once the videos become available. To check out the videos we already have, head over the Vimeo BarCampLondon4 Channel. I’ve also got more photos up on Flickr.