Regular readers of this blog know how much I love my Threadless tees. I’ve got 6 of them myself at the moment and have bought 7 as presents for others. And I keep seeing more designs that I want. I’m not typically a t-shirt person, so it’s really the designs that makes me want to buy them. That’s why these new products are perfect for me.

They’ve been around for some time now, but Threadless (teaming up with Blik) offer also wall graphics of a select number of their designs. And most of them are so pretty! Depending on the size and complexity of the design, the price ranges from $30 to $50. It’s not something I could justify buying right now (not with the small flat we have, wouldn’t be worth it), but I can imagine once I have a larger place getting a couple of these.

The wall designs consist (most of the times) out of multiple smaller stickers, so you’re not restricted to arranging them in the same way as the original design. There are a couple designs that are also part of the Re-Stik collection, specially designed so you can use them over and over again (perfect for kids).

The US shop only delivers to US and Canada, but there is also an overseas distributor in the UK. Sadly though, this is more expensive (for instance £40 instead of $45), but it’s better than not being able to get them at all. To see all the designs head on over to the Blik website.

I sometimes manage to get free tickets to pre-release screenings, but rarely get to share this with my friends. With Wall•E though I was able to get about 20 tickets and with a lot of coordination via email and Twitter, I got a great repsonse of all the people willing to go. So last Saturday morning a huge group of geeks gathered together at the Vue cinema in Shepherd’s Bush to watch the wonder that is Wall•E.

Wall•E is a small waste allocation robot, left behind on Earth to clean up the mess humans made. It’s been a couple of hundred years, since the humans left, and he’s the only one of his kind still working. Wall•E fills his lonely days with compressing trash, building large towers of processed waste, while collecting little treasures, like christmas lights and Rubik’s cubes. His whole life changes when Eve, a shiny white robot, arrives on Earth with a important classified mission.

I don’t want to give any more than that away of the plot, cause I think the less you know, the more you’ll enjoy it. I for one loved Wall•E! It’s definitely my favourite Pixar film now and I guess it may even be my favourite film of this year. So many things just work and it’s just this little perfect gem of a movie. As with most other Pixar movies, Wall•E is a true family movie, that everybody any age will enjoy. And it’s timeless. In 20 years time, people will still look back at this film and laugh at the same moments. While some may say that is true for previous Pixar animations, I truly think Wall•E will be the one to go down in history as a classic.

You may have heard there is no dialogue in Wall•E and that is only partly true. There is some dialogue, but none from our two main characters Wall•E and Eve. They largely communicate through beeps and body movements, with the occasional robotic “Wall•E” or “Evah” thrown into it. Any other studio might have messed this completely up, but in Pixar’s competent hands it works. The noises the robots make convey their meanings perfectly; every beep, rattle and ting feels like a sentence, as if they’re just talking some language you don’t understand, but do comprehend. It shouldn’t be a surprise though. Pixar didn’t just get any sound effects editor, they got the best in the business: Ben Burtt, who was also responsible for the sound effects in all the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. Besides that, Wall•E and Eve are animated brilliantly, expressing their emotions through movement. Anger, shock, fright, happiness: it’s all conveyed through wonderfully choreographed motions. This and the sound effects together help describe a relationship that should be recognized across language barriers.

I think that relationship is one of the main reasons I like Wall•E more than other Pixar movies. Wall•E is first and foremost a love story, and the romantic in me just resonates better with this movie than the previous ones. There’s more to the movie than only the love plot though and to some that may be Wall•E‘s only pitfalls. I can’t go in to it, cause I don’t want to spoil it for you, but for me it fitted perfectly as part of the story (cut it away and the movie just wouldn’t have worked). 

I already said a bit about Wall•E’s and Eve’s animation, but I should also highlight their designs. Wall•E does look a bit like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, but it doesn’t feel as if they were ripping that off. It seems to me that if you want a robot that is similar to the human form (that doesn’t have legs), you’ll quickly come down to a comparable design. And Wall•E feels much more functional; all his parts are integral to do his work. Eve on the other hand does look as if she’s been designed by Apple; she slick, white, shiny, round and everything (like her arms) clicks away to form one smooth object.

If I haven’t made it clear already, Wall•E is visually stunning. Besides the design and animation of our two main characters, the rest of the world is also as amazing. Earth is just how you imagined it could be if trash was overflowing so much (although I hadn’t expected the towers of processed trash) and it serves as a great desolate backdrop to our lonely protagonist. Other scenes are jaw-droppingly beautiful and I can only imagine the amount of work that must have gone into creating them. Even if the story and characters hadn’t been this great, I still would have recommended this movie for the visuals alone.

Wall•E may be the most perfect movie of this year and I don’t think anybody could dislike this movie. If you could only see one movie in the cinemas this summer, go see Wall•E (although The Dark Knight might give it a good run for it’s money). I have a feeling this will remain one of Pixar’s greatest movies and it’ll go down in cinematic history.

A couple of months ago I told you all about Joss Whedon’s during the strike created web show called Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Well, now it’s almost about to be launched!

Dr Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) is a super villain, just not that good a one. His arch nemesis Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) keeps beating him up and he’s too shy to talk to the cute girl from the laundromat (Felicia Day). It’s a comedy and it’s a musical, so it’s going to be silly, funny and oh so sing-alongable.

I loved Buffy’s musical episode Once More With Feeling (I’m not ashamed to admit I know all the lyrics of those songs), so I have high hopes for Dr Horrible. The casting of Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion to me is just a great added bonus. Even if they weren’t in it I would have adored this, but with both of them it just makes it a bit more special. If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, check it out:

Teaser from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo

The idea is to have three acts (episodes) of about 15 minutes debut online on DrHorrible.com in the next couple of days. Act 1 will be launched tomorrow (Tuesday July 15th), Act 2 on Thursday (July 17th) and Act 3 on Saturday (July 19th). All three acts will be available for free online till Sunday midnight (July 20th). After that they’ll be downloadable for a small fee and eventually also released on DVD.

There’s also a mini comic book story that serves as a preview called Captain Hammer: Be Like Me!. It’s not that important to the story, but it’s a great little extra marketing. I so hope this whole setup is going to work, but if there’s one guy out there who can make it happen it’s Joss Whedon. 

So don’t forgot! Tomorrow is the first installment of Dr Horrible. Will you come along to see evil take over the world?

Episode 67: “We deserve fans, man”

I hate trailers that give too much away and if possible, would rather forgo them completely. That’s why I love these type of promotional videos for movies; they show the spirit of the movie without spoiling anything (the Wall-E and the vacuum cleaner/magnet/etc set is another good example). The video shows Hellboy (the titular character of the upcoming movie) and Chuck (from the tv show Chuck) together playing a video game:

I love how they combine these two worlds! There’s also a second one:

Do you ever play that game where you just sit somewhere, watch people and try to create their back stories? This photo somehow catches that type of game for me. I can keep staring at it, wondering what each person in it was wondering at the time.

About a week ago Sizemore twittered he was organizing another bloggers screening, this time for the Brazilian movie City of Men. I was interested, but I hadn’t actually seen the critically acclaimed sort-of-prequel to it, City of God. Although I had heard a lot of good things about it, I didn’t feel it was my type of movie and had avoided watching it. Now with this screening of it’s sequel coming up, I finally sat down and took some time to give it a go. And I am so glad I did.

City of God is a Brazilian drama directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund. It’s an adaption of the novel of the same name (by Paulo Lins), which in turn is based on a true story. The Cidade de Deus is a slummy lower class neighbourhood, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, teeming with drug dealers and gang members. Rocket is a teenager who lives in Cidade de Deus in the seventies and the movie opens with him caught in the middle between a gang and police shoot-out. It then jumps back to ten years earlier (the sixties) and Rocket tells us how he got into that situation, which includes tales about his family, friends and neighbours.

I hadn’t expected to like this movie; I thought it would be all dramatic and serious because it’s about the slums and drugdealing. I’m not saying it isn’t (cause it is), but Meirelles and Lund manage to embed an unexpected lightheartedness in how the movie is told. There’s a weird light black comedy vibe going on, making you laugh one moment and shiver in shock the next.

The movie is about the slums and drugdealing, but most of all it’s about kids growing up. Yes, they have to deal with guns and drugs and death, but they also have to deal with the standard stuff: figuring out what to do with their lives, overcoming their insecurities and how to get that first crush to finally kiss them. But they’re doing this all while trying to survive in this gang ruled world, full of both ruthlessness and humanity.

The look and feel of this movie is superb. Initially, the story flashes back in one big jump of ten years, but after that Rocket gives little glimpses of stories he will tell. For instance, at one point he introduces a character briefly, who’s not that relevant to that scene, only to say he’ll came back to that story later. It gives a great dynamic to the film, eluding to future events and giving the viewer something to wonder about. The cinematography is beautiful; it’s gritty and harsh, but that all contributes to the bleak realism of the movie. There are a couple of wonderful camera pans and freezes, highlighting key moments.

City of God is a film you have to have seen. Not everybody may think this film will be for them, but even then I recommend giving it a try, you may be surprised. There’s a very good reason why this film is so high in a lot of “Best-Of” lists and I imagine it’s going to stay in those lists for a very long time.

Interesting links for July 7th through July 8th:

• Square brings tactical RPG to the iPod – Damn, it’s things like these that make me wish I had a newer iPod nano (the video one). Song Summoner is an RPG where you create and level your character up by listening to different types of songs. Brilliant!
• Michael Bay’s Rejected “The Dark Knight” Script – If you’ve seen a Michael Bay’s movie (Transformer being his last one), this is just hilarious!
• VOTD: Hellboy vs. Chuck | /Film – Funny marketing vids promoting Hellboy, featuring Hellboy playing a videogame with Chuck (from the series Chuck). Nice little crossover.

I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, but I just haven’t come around to do it. First off, the recurring A Video A Day post is being relabeled to Video of The Day. The why of this should be apparent; the idea initially was to post a video every day, but I soon discovered I was posting videos just for the sake of having to post a video. Not because I necessarily liked it or wanted other people to see that video, but just because I needed a video for that day. So it’s now renamed Video of The Day.

Next to that I also wanted to start the recurring post of Photo of The Day. Unlike the videos though, most of these will be my own photos that I want to highlight. I’ve lately been playing around with Cristiano’s Nikon D40 (although if you ask him it’s “our” camera) and would really like some feedback of what people think of some of my photos. That’s not to say though that all featured photos will be my own; I will post cool pics of other people when I come across them.

Besides that, I’m introducing two other new recurring topics: Geek Girl and Geek Crush. In Geek Girl I’ll feature a geeky girl from a movie, tv show, video game or real life. There are enough geeky woman out there to make this a regular thing and if you have any suggestions, let me know (geek@missgeeky.com). Geek Crush is inspired by a recent conversation I had where I said I had a geek crush on David Tennant. With geek crush I mean a crush on a star from something reasonably geeky, be it a movie, tv show or anything else. Again, if you have any suggestions, email me at the above emailaddress.

That’s it for the inhouse announcements for now. Nothing major changing, just some little new things. Hope you continue to enjoy this blog!

Much to my amazement when I wanted to step on my balcony this afternoon, I discovered this:

Yes, that’s a squirrel. A freaking cute small squirrel asleep in my beanbag. A squirrel. Asleep. In my beanbag. How cute is that?! I’ve never seen a sleeping squirrel before, let alone one in a beanbag! By accident I then woke the little thing up and it jumped away, but a few minutes later it was back. Eyes shut and sleeping peacefully:

These pictures (and a couple more photos up on Flickr) don’t do it justice; you can actually see it breathing heavily as if it was snoring. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had gotten closer that it was doing just that (cats snore, so why not squirrels?). I didn’t want to open the door and step out, cause I’m sure it would have ran away then. It’s dark now outside, but it’s still there.

With the pigeon nest (I’ll come around to that in another blog post) in the other corner, this balcony is turning out to be quite the wildlife shelter. What’s next, I wonder?

Episode 66: “Their intelligence is an intrinsic reason as to why you’re supposed to find them interesting”

Back in May I linked to a write-up of a talk from Neal Stephenson called “The Fork: Science Fiction versus Mundane Culture”. What I didn’t know then was that the whole talk was actually filmed and is available to watch online. The whole talk is about 40 minutes, but it’s definitely worth listening to: