It’s not even that long since I last posted about Threadless, but at the moment they have an awesome sale going on. All tees are part of the sale, with some of them going for $8! The slightly more newer tees are going for $10 and $15, but it’s still a pretty good discount. The sale is till Monday 17th August, so you’ve still got a week to order some amazing t-shirts!

I couldn’t resist and seeing that I had a couple of streetteam points to spend, I bought the following two tees:

The Gaming Revolution

Shoot The Baddies

You can see why I couldn’t resist, right? I think these two tees are perfect for me!

Interesting links for July 28th through August 9th:

• How Different Groups Spend Their Day – Cool interactive graph of how americans spend their day.
• Shooting Stars: 71 Portraits From Comic-Con 2009 – Ooh, pretty famous people. Love some of these pics.
• 25 Various Styles of The Wizard of Oz Illustrations | The Design Inspiration – I especially love the one on the second row.
• Melancholia – “I didn’t say she stole my money.” A sentence with 7 meanings.

The Lovely Bones: Centers on a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal. This is directed by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, King Kong), and while somewhat controversial I think it looks amazing. Release Date: December 2009 (US), January 2010 (UK)

Check out the video on the official website

The Vampire’s Assistant: Based on the Cirque du Freak novels from Darren Shan. Pulled into a fantastic life of misunderstood sideshow freaks and grotesque creatures of the night, one teen will vanish from the safety of a boring existence and fulfill his destiny in a place drawn from nightmares. Release Date: October 2009 (US, UK)

I Sell The Dead: 18th century justice catches up with a pair of grave robbers. With only a few hours to go before his date with the guillotine, Arthur Blake (Monaghan) tells his life story to Father Francis Duffy (Ron Perlman). Before long, Arthur spills the beans on how he got started in the grim corpse peddling business with seasoned ghoul Willie Grime. This just looks so unusual and fun; definitely going on my “to-see” list. Release Date: 7 August 2009 (US)

The Other Man: Starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, this is the story of a husband who suspects his wife of adultery, and then sets out to track down the other man. I’m not too sure about this, although Liam Neeson might be enough for me to want to see it. Release Date: September 2009 (US)

The Blind Side: A poor, oversized and under-educated teenager is recruited by a major college football program where he is groomed into an athletically and academically successful NFL prospect. Based on Michael Lewis’ book. Apparently most of the movie is about football, but the trailer barely shows any of that. It could turn out fine, but Sandra Bullock seems horribly miscast. Release Date: November 2009 (US)

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell: A guy tries to patch things up with his soon-to-be-married pal after botching things up at his bachelor party. Based on Tucker Max’s best-seller. This just looks horrible (plus I can’t believe it’s based on a “bestseller”, who reads this type of thing?). Release Date: October 2009 (US)

I’m slowly making my way through most of the Comic-Con panels, but as I’ve said before a lot of the ones that were uploaded straight away though are crappy mobile phone type videos. However, I love that most studios are beginning to realise that it’s much better to edit the videos themselves and make it available for fans. What better way to attract more people to next year’s event than showing how awesome it was this year?

One of the surprising new shows this year was Fringe. When I first heard about it, I thought it was a bit of rip-off from X-Files. It’s got some similarities, but I love the direction it has taken, and the characters are just adorable. There are two videos from Fox of the Fringe panel at Comic-Con, but they both get pretty spoilery (so if you haven’t seen the first season of Fringe yet, don’t watch this):

The second video is of the fan questions:

I always find it a bit surprising to find that certain actors have a completely different accent in real life (both “Walter” and “Olivia” are Australian), but it only epitomizes how much actors put into their characters. I’m really curious to see where the next season is going, especially with the character that was revealed at the end of the last episode.

A master of subterfuge, a rogue thief with a noble air, Seregil of Rhiminee has taught his young protege, Alec of Kerry, his greatest secrets of the trade. Together they’ve made their way with thieving jobs large and small, winning friends and enemies, their lives in constant danger and yet charmed by an aura of magic, friendship, and trust. But now, as their adopted country prepares for war, Seregil is called away by an ancient wizard Nysander to face the ultimate challenge of loyalties, and entrusted with a deadly knowledge that, if breached, could cost both Seregil and the unwitting Alec their lives. And as Alec learns the shocking truth of his own shadowed heritage, he, Seregil, and a handful of loyal companions are catapulted into a tumultuous conflict with the ultimate evil – in which magic alone may no longer shield them from harm…

Stalking Darkness is the continuation of Lynn Flewelling’s Luck In The Shadows; these two books are clearly meant to be read together. The book picks up where the other one left off: Seregil is helping Nysander with his very secret mission, yet still doesn’t know exactly why and what he is risking his life for.

Again like it’s predecessor this book is very character driven, focusing mainly on the friendship between Alec and Seregil, and the other characters. Slowly the relationship between the two main characters evolves into something more, and while not every reader might like this development, I adore the way Alec and Seregil interact with each other.

My only annoyance with this book was when I read it the first time, I was expecting this to be a trilogy. I thought the third book would finish the main story line, but it doesn’t. The main plot from the first book is completed in this second one, while the third book is pretty much standalone (still with the same characters). It’s not too much of a complaint; it’s just annoying when you’re expecting one thing, and get something else.

Stalking Darkness is part two of The Nightrunner Series by Lynn Flewlling – £7.50 on Amazon.co.uk, $7.50 on Amazon.com

Last Tuesday to celebrate the release of the Watchmen DVD, Paramount arranged a special art exhibition. Below the Southbank Centre in the skate park, graffiti artist Chu showcased his artistic talents, as he and the Watchmen illustrator, Dave Gibbons worked alongside each other giving fans a one-off Watchmen experience to remember.

I arrived during Chu and Gibbon’s break (of course), so I didn’t get to see them creating anything. However when I got there most of the graffiti mural was already done:

It was pretty cool, although I would have loved to see the artists actually at work. I still managed to grab some pics of Dave Gibbons, when he was posing for one of the other (official) photographers:

Check out this Twitpic for the finished product. I don’t think there’s that much difference; most of it was done already, except the polaroid photo in bottom left corner. One thing I’m not too sure about is what was done with the graffiti after the event. I was there during the past weekend for the Hide & Seek fest and I don’t remember seeing it (or was I just blind?).

One of the highlights for a lot of the Comic-Con attendees was the panel with the cast and crew of Chuck. And no wonder: NBC renewed it in the last minute, after a two month “Save Chuck” campaign mounted by fans, and it seems the cast wanted to give back to their community.

If you haven’t seen Chuck yet, I definitely recommend it. I liked the first season, but it was very much ‘bad guy/mission of the week’ type stories. The second series really picks up on the background story and mythology of the show; it slowly became one of the shows I was most looking forward to every week. And then the finale of Season 2, wow! (That being said though, if you haven’t seen it, but now want to, don’t watch the second video in this video; there are spoilers for that ep in it)

The panel started with a surprise performance by JEFFSTER!, the in-show band of characters Lester Patel and Jeff Barnes. Awesome:

If you’re really interested in seeing it all, the complete panel is available online on YouTube (check out this video for the first part), but here’s a clip with one of the funniest moments:

I kind of ignored all i heard about this movie in the past couple of weeks; somehow I just thought it was a simple stop-motion picture and one that didn’t even look that pretty. Seeing this trailer though makes me realize what a weird and quirky movie this is going to be.

It’s directed and written by Wes Anderson, who previously did The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Tha Darjeeling Limited. So that should give you an idea what type of movie this is going to be. Here’s the description:

Mr. and Mrs. Fox live an idyllic home life with their son Ash and visiting young nephew Kristopherson. But after 12 years, the bucolic existence proves too much for Mr Fox’s wild animal instincts. Soon he slips back into his old ways as a sneaky chicken thief and in doing so, endangers not only his beloved family, but the whole animal community. Trapped underground and with not enough food to go around, the animals band together to fight against the evil Farmers — Boggis, Bunce and Bean — who are determined to capture the audacious, fantastic Mr. Fox at any cost.

And here’s the trailer:

Quirky, right? After reading the description, I’m guessing it’s not exactly what you were expecting to see. At least it wasn’t for me; I was very much surprised (although I shouldn’t have been: it’s Wes Anderson) at how much I liked this trailer.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox – Release Date: October 2009 (UK), November 2009 (US)