I’ve never understood those people that like dressing up their pets. I mean, having matching outfits with your dog just seems to weird to me. Now this post from Shiny Shiny, however, shows a new even more disturbing horror:

You can now turn your cat into an actual Hello Kitty cat with the Hello Kitty cat transformation set! Who could ever put their cat through such a thing? And what kind of cat docilely accepts wearing such an outfit?

Ooh, just heard that this was just reported:

Joseph Fiennes, Stuart Townsend and Naomi Watts are the latest addition to the 6th Harry Potter movie “Half-Blood Prince”.

It isn’t known yet what roles they’ll be playing, but my new plaid pants has some good ideas about it. I can easily see Naomi Watts playing Narcissa Malfoy; she was the only suitable actress I could think of that would pull Narcissa off (kind of drawing a blank on young blond English actresses, some help people?). Joseph Fiennes, being the brother of Ralph Fiennes who plays dark and twisty Voldemort, should definitely get the part of one of Voldeemorg’s relatives (grandfather, father, uncle? how old were they all supposed to be?). I think Tom Riddle Sr. (his father); didn’t Voldemort look like him?

But Stuart Townsend? Who’s he supposed to be playing? I looked up which (male) characters appear in book 6 and haven’t made an appearance yet in any of the films:

Fenrir Greyback
Marvolo Gaunt
Morfin Gaunt
The Muggle Prime Minister
Tom Riddle Sr.
Rufus Scrimgeour
Horace Slughorn
Bill Weasley

My guess for Townsend is Bill Weasley; I can easily picture him with red hair and I’d think he’d fit in the Weasley family. There are still some big parts that haven’t been cast yet (namely professor Slughorn). So, who do you want to see cast in the movie?

It’s been a very busy week for me and I haven’t had time yet to post about any of the stuff I’ve done. So here’s a quick overview of what I’ve been doing. Reviews will come soon, I promise.

Tuesday: Went to Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix
Thursday: Moo’s Hot and Sticky Summer Party
Friday: Read all the summaries of Harry Potter Books 1 to 5 and reread Book 6 (in 9 hours!)
Saturday: Patiently waiting for HP Book 7 and then madly reading once it was delivered :D.
Sunday: Still reading HP7, went to an evening preview of Transformers (very cool!!), continued reading HP7 till 4am and finished it 😀

Yesterday the Emmy nominations were announced and I couldn’t be a called bona fide TV geek if I didn’t have my own favorites. I’ll only be discussing the categories that I’m interested in; the rest of the nominations you can find here.
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Yesterday I went to see Harry Potter 5 in the Odeon Leicester Square cinema (review coming soon). I’ve been now to three of the cinemas around Leicester Square (Odeon, Empire and Vue) and I must admit that I’m kind of disappointed. These cinemas are way more expensive than regular ones and I kind of expected that the experience would be worth my money. Here’s a review of what I found of the cinemas:
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I just read on the AICN site this description of a movie in development called Mr Nobody:

It’s set in the near future and focuses on Leto who reminisces at the age of 120 about his marriage. Some of it is real, some of it is imaginary. Oh, and he’s also the last mortal man on earth. Every other person is happily immortal.

It sounds a lot like a short story I read in the Elemental anthology called The Last Mortal Man by Syne Mitchell. That was actually my favorite story from that whole anthology. The story is told from the perspective of the live broadcast from the last deathbed in human history. The viewer (= the reader) can experience the memories of the last mortal man Lysander Sterling by connecting with their “full emmersion units”. The story then alternates with the memories that influenced Lysander’s choice not to become immortal and the actual broadcast with interviews from family, friends and nanology specialists. I guess, nanology is supposed to be some form nanotechnology; it’s described as it will “replace your cells with perfect replication and error checking”.

I’m not sure if the movie is based on this story, but so far it does sound a lot like it. I know, I know, most probably there have been million incarnations of this type of tale and I’m only focusing on one of them. Who knows? Maybe this movie is completely original and will leave us jaw-dropping surprised (not very likely with my track record). I’m definitely going to keep my eye on this one and if it is indeed based on The Last Mortal Man: I called it first!

By now most of you must have heard at least one aspect of the marketing around the Simpsons movie. This could be the competition to find the real life Springfield or the transformation of several 7-Eleven’s (in America) into Kwik-E-Mart’s (Squishees and donuts). But I don’t think any of you have seen this yet:

In the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar one of the fashion spreads is The Simpsons go to Paris. It shows the Simpsons wearing this season’s designer outfits, such as Versace and Chanel. It also pictures some well known fashion celebrities, like Linda Evangelista and Donatella Versace.

Have a look at this post to see scans of the spread and the real-life counterparts.

After the successful Battlestar Galactica webisodes from last summer, the SciFi channel announced they are coming with two new sets of webisodes. The first will be a Farscape revival , which “will revive and expand the beloved “Farscape” universe”. I think this means that we shouldn’t expect any of the original characters reappearing, but I’m curious to see what they will come up with.

The second set of webisodes will be Battlestar Galactica related, focusing on William (Bill) Adama in his younger years as a pilot. Quite some time ago there were rumours about Caprica, a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, which would be “television’s first science fiction family saga”.

Now this was more then a year ago and due to the lack of further developments it’s likely that Caprica was shelved. However, these webisodes might be an adaption of those original ideas. If they turn out to be any good, they might consider looking into the Caprica series again.

I just watched Jonathan Ross (BBC interview show) and this time Bob Hoskins and JK Rowling were two of his guests. During his interview with Bob Hoskins, Jonathan mentioned it was weird Bob had never starred in any of the Harry Potter films. Bob then told about a previous encounter with JK Rowling, where she had promised to write a character for him. Cut to: JK Rowling who kind of cringed, clearly having forgotten that she had ever promised that. She did, however, say that there will be a new character in book 7: a older male wizard, which could be played by Bob Hoskins. This could be only useless interview prattle, but it might turn out to be an actual casting.

Update: I sent this same bit of info to AICN and they’ve actually posted it!

A couple of weeks ago I finally saw The Fountain. It’s written and directed by Darren Aranofsky, who did Requiem for a Dream and Pi (two films on my very long “still to watch” list) and stars Hugh Jackman (X-Men, The Prestige) and Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener, The Mummy).

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