Find it, you have! Industrial Light & Magic!

Put me down in San Francisco, I have to sniff something out, so today found our family vacation hijacked to the legendary facilities of the house that George built - special effects mecca Industrial Light & Magic!

Here's a video  peek for you - turn on your volume...

While most of the facility is off limits in a CIA kind of way (we'd have to kill you), ILM has a wonderful greeting area that is open to the public, packed to bursting with Star Wars goodies and tributes to the pioneers of early special effects. Here's a statue of Merian C. Cooper, the father of King Kong.

Just another mild-mannered looking bay area office campus. Right.....

Anthony checks out ILM's library...who's that over his shoulder?

What an amazing visit we had!

Come play with us, Danny - and Johnny!

First off, the humongous, killer news - Stephen King is preparing a sequel to The Shining! He read an excerpt of Dr. Sleep to an audience at George Mason University last weekend. The sequel follows an adult Danny Torrance, now a hospice worker who helps patients end their lives peacefully - until he runs afoul of a band of vampires called The Tribe. Maybe a Salem's Lot crossover? King says he's nearly completed the manuscript. How about them apples?!

Second, here's another shot of Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins from next May's Dark Shadows, with Tim Burton.

Nolan/Hathaway's Catwoman revealed

Here's a few shot of Anne Hathaway in full Selina Kyle/Catwoman garb, on the set of Chrisopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. Hard to tell if she sports the goggles seen on the more modern versions of the character. Hathaway recently said she's on a diet of "Kale and dust" in order to be able to wear the costume.

That's more like it, Barnabas...

A less Captain Eo feeling shot of the cast of Tim Burton's Dark Shadows. That fist shot from the other day was a little disheartening - but this group shot looks much more like the Collinwood we all know and love. That's Johnny Depp in the center as Cousin Barnabas, courtesy of our pals over at Entertainment Weekly.

Click to embiggen: From left to right, Helena Bonham Carter, Chloë Moretz, Eva Green, Gulliver McGrath, Bella Heathcote, Depp, Ray Shirley, Jackie Earle Haley, Johnny Lee Miller and Michelle Pfeiffer. Dark Shadows opens on May 11th, 2012.

Super-colossal year-end movie predictions

All-inclusive? I don’t think so. But with Autumn officially arriving Thursday, it’s time to look ahead to the end of the year and read some tea leaves. So you'd better pull up a chair for this one. Let’s chew the fat over upcoming movie releases between now and 2012. There’s a lot I’m ignoring by choice. Fireflies in the Garden? Sorry, Julia Roberts. No soup for you. A remake of Footloose? Uh, I have to go change a diaper. But here’s a look at films I think do have some promise – or at least promise to raise an eyebrow. Some have loftier aspirations than others, so I’ve tried to sort accordingly.
OSCAR FRONT-RUNNERS

THE IDES OF MARCH – George Clooney directs himself as a presidential candidate with Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei and Paul Giamatti. Gotta be an Oscar in there somewhere.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN – Tilda Swinton tries to understand why her son has become a mass murderer. What a novel (says my wife)!

A DANGEROUS METHOD – DAVID CRONENBERG!!! Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) dukes it out with Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) – by all accounts Keira Knightly snags a nomination.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY – Gary Oldman in a John le Carre’ spy saga with Colin Firth and Tom Hardy. Drooling over here.

CARNAGE – How’s this for a cast? Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Walz and John C. Reilly? Directed by Roman Polanski, this could reach Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf heights.

IRON LADY – Meryl Streep is Margaret Thatcher. Oscar soils himself. Jim Broadbent tags along.

THE DESCENDANTS – Here it is, my pick for the front-runner. Alexander Payne’s first film since Sideways. By all accounts, George Clooney wins the Oscar for this performance. Can’t wait.

WAR HORSE – Steven Spielberg. From the much beloved play, horses pressed into service in World War I. Benedict Cumberbatch alert!!! Nominate him!

BOX OFFICE SMASHES
MONEYBALL – Brad Pitt in a movie about baseball, released just before October? Ought to be a slam dunk – I mean, a home run.

REAL STEEL – Old fashioned rock-‘em-sock-‘em fun with Hugh Jackman in a season unusually bereft of sci-fi fare. Should be a crowd-pleaser.

ABDUCTION – Special Award: the movie you couldn’t pay me to see. Celestial luminaries orbiting a black hole. Alfred Molina, Sigourney Weaver, Jason Isaacs…AND TAYLOR LAUTNER as doe-eyed Jason Bourne Junior. Help me put the fillings back in my teeth.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS – Should be a big hit. The first one was dynamite, but now we have the spectacular Jared Harris as Professor Moriarty. Noomi Rapace and Stephen Fry. Baskerville Hounds couldn’t keep me away.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL – Killer trailer and jaw-dropping stunts from The Incredibles director Brad Bird. Jeremy Renner and Michael Nyqvist. Can we accept Tom Cruise again?

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO – I am normally rabidly against remaking a foreign film simply because “Subtitles is too hard to read.” So this remake of the superb Swedish film will have English speaking actors who speak English but with Swedish accents. I was so set to hate with a capital H. Then David Fincher released that trailer. Objections overruled. Looks spellbinding and should be a colossal hit.

TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN – PART 1 – Bella and Edward travel to the exotic land of Gymboree.

RUM DIARY – Johnny Depp back in Hunter S. Thompson territory. This one just looks intriguing enough to be cool. Hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

THE MUPPETS – I’ll talk like Elmo for a solid week if this isn’t one of the biggest hits of the year.

ATTENTION GETTERS

BLACKTHORN – Sam Shepard as an aging Butch Cassidy returning home from exile in Bolivia? Cool idea!

THE SKIN I LIVE IN – Almodovar and Antonio Banderas sneak into Human Centipede territory? A plastic surgeon imprisons a woman as he tries creating a new kind of human flesh.

TEXAS KILLING FIELDS – Sam Worthington and Jeffrey Dean Morgan hunt a serial killer in a small Texas town.

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THE THING – Ought to be hating this, but I’m intrigued as hell. A “prequel” that feels like a remake with a trailer that looks great. Seems like some John Carpenter reverence here and an aversion to CGI. Please don’t blow it.

BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER’S JOURNEY – This festival hit follows a Baltimore teenager realizing his dream of performing with Jim Henson’s muppets. Required viewing in this house.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE – John Hawkes as a charismatic cult leader? Can’t ignore that!

RED STATE – Long-awaited horror from Kevin Smith. Fundamentalist Christians kidnap and punish sinful teenagers. It won’t be boring – but it could sink like a brick.

DREAM HOUSE – Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz rehearsed A LOT for this horror film, so it should be terrific!

TAKE SHELTER – the phenomenal Michael Shannon (soon to be General Zod) as a man haunted by apocalyptic dreams, building an impregnable storm shelter for his family.

DISAPPOINTMENTS OR BAD TRAILERS?


THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: SECRET OF THE UNICORN – Again with the Spielberg, as he and Peter Jackson go all Zemeckis with the motion-capture. Would like to be hopeful, but the trailer just looks bad. Hoping to be proved very wrong.

THE DARKEST HOUR – Not the greatest trailer. But the screenplay by John Spaihts is so legendary, it got him the gig writing Ridley’s Alien prequel. Unusual take on an alien invasion.

HUGO – A transporting, magical book and Scorsese. I want to love this. But that trailer. Looks ham-fisted and oafish. What happened?

Barna - HUH?!? Collins...

I've definitely been excited about Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's Dark Shadows reimagining. But what the heck is this turning into? Is Collinwood turning into Neverland Ranch? Check out Depp as Barnabas Collins!

Still very hopeful that this could mean Burton's return to his fondness for horror - I remember him hosting AMC's Monsterfest back in 1998 and his enthusiasm and glee for the genre was a delight. This is the man who gave us Vincent and Frankenweenie and Sleepy Hollow.

Burton's let Depp indulge all kinds of outrageous looks, from Edward Scissorhands to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Alice in Wonderland. This iteration of Depp as Barnabas Collins looks to be one of their most outrageous turns yet. Stay tuned.

Sure hope this deleted scene ain't on the Blu-rays...

"Judge me by my size, do you?" Is it me, or does this make you want to take a shower? It really looks like "Mac Daddy" Yoda is putting the moves on Luke here. You really have to watch those puppets. The Star Wars Blu-rays hit today!

Showing my age - it's Al Mundy!

"I'm not asking you to spy, I'm just asking you to steal..." Showing my age, but do I ever remember watching reruns of It Takes a Thief - Malachi Throne as Noah Bain, Dave Grusin's cool late-sixties theme music... and Robert frakking Wagner! Alexander Mundy (Wagner) is the world's greatest cat burglar...until he gets caught - but being a talented thief is an asset in the world of espionage, so Mundy is pardoned if he agrees to use his skills to help steal for the U.S. Government. On the heels of Mission: Impossible, It Takes a Thief was a bell-bottomed turtle-neck classic, with guest stars ranging from Fred Astaire to The 5th Dimension! That price is no steal, Amazon, but when this sucker bargains-out one day, definitely check it out.

Jump in the Way-back machine with me...the opening says it all:

Another reason to love Sesame Street

When you have a wee one in the house, you end up getting exposed to lots of Sesame Street - you may even find yourself talking like Elmo in meetings...but there are lots of great discoveries to be found - like this lovely chestnut - what can I say? I guess I've just had Next Gen on the brain this week...

Thee must turn on thy volume!

Fall TV Calendar

With the debut of favorite Sons of Anarchy last week, the new TV season is finally upon us, so it's time to map out our viewing for the coming weeks. A few things have changed since last May's fall preview. Alcatraz, from J.J. Abrams has moved to mid-season 2012 on Fox (Mondays at 9:00). Likewise ABC's The River also moved to mid-season 2012 (TBD), as did the animated Napoleon Dynamite.

Here's a handy calendar of the fall premieres I'm most interested in. I've left off a few that may have potential, such as Maria Bello's Americanization of Prime Suspect (lose that hat, Maria) on 9/22 and Portland-shot Grimm (10/21) - focusing mainly on the new and most intriguing genre shows or returning faves that I just can't wait for. Sharpen your knives!


Person of Interest - CBS Thusdays 9:00 - debuts Sept 22nd - Hopeful - love Michael Emerson - but this could fizzle fast. Better be a dynamite pilot.

Fringe - Fox Fridays 9:00 - returns Sept 23rd - Without a doubt, one of the best shows on TV right now with an ever-widening and always fascinating mythology. Fringe has long ago evolved beyond being an X-Files clone and was relentlessly suspenseful and fascinating last season. Can't wait!


Pan Am - ABC Sundays, 10:00 - debuts Sept 25th - Can a network even come close to aping the Mad Men vibe? The Sixties era makes it hard to look away and Ricci is terrific. Definitely worth a look.

Terra Nova - Fox, Mondays, 8:00 - debuts Sept 26th - Still intrigued as heck here. I'm worried about some of those cast members, but this still looks to be the genre debut with the biggest budget and could work. It could also be a huge flop. Stephen Lang has me tuning into the premiere no matter what.

Dexter - Showtime Sundays 9:00 - returns Oct 2nd - The return of Edward James Olmos?!? Say no more! - Let's not mention The Green Hornet, okay? - Always unhinged and very hard to predict, word on the new season is extremely positive.

American Horror Story - FX Wednesdays, 10:00 - debuts Oct 5th - Lots of buzz building here - Jessica Lange makes this hard to ignore.


The Walking Dead - AMC Sundays 9:00 - returns Oct 16th - Say no more! Other than a lot of post-Darabont-departure angst - not the kind of dread I was hoping for, but I gotta keep the faith on this one.

Hell on Wheels - AMC Sundays 10:00 - debuts Nov 10th - Quite a ways down the road, but anything new from AMC is worth a look and they're already running previews during Breaking Bad. Any new western has me at "Whoa."

What new or returning show are you most looking forward to?

Keep looking up

Much love and many thoughts to our family, friends and everybody in New York today, as always.

UPDATED WITH DATES: Next Gen on Blu-ray - episodes confirmed

While an official announcement is still pending, we've confirmed that CBS is hard at work on a Blu-ray "sampler" disc of Star Trek - The Next Generation Remastered episodes, for release sometime in the fourth quarter.

The four episodes on this disc will be Encounter at Farpoint, Parts 1 & 2 (the pilot), The Inner Light  and Sins of the Father. This represents episodes from seasons 1, 3 and 5.

The Inner Light is incredibly deft and moving science fiction, beautifully written. Sins of the Father is a cracking good episode that begins the long road to redemption for Lieutenant Worf and stands as the first episode of the outstanding Klingon Civil War story arc.

Encounter at Farpoint has always been a bit stilted - everyone was definitely still finding their sea legs - but it's bizarrely fascinating, after watching some of the later, more polished episodes. It's also one of the episodes most in need of an effects face-lift, so it could be very revealing to see what kind of remastering work has been done here. Stay tuned for an official release date, which should be coming any day now.

UPDATE: CBS will make their official announcement on 9/28, the 24th Anniversary of Next Gen's first broadcast back in (gulp!) 1987. Likely U.S. street date is 12/06.

Last chance to drool over steel and chrome

If automotive design sometimes takes your breath away, don't miss the final week of the jaw-dropping Allure of the Automobile exhibit at the Portland Art Museum. I had the pleasure of enjoying this show last June as a Father's Day treat and if you're any kind of car fan at all, you really owe it to yourself to check this show out before it ends on September 11th. The show highlights the stylistic development of cars against prominent design movements such as Art Moderne, contrasting European and American engineering and design influences from the 1930's - 1960's. Bring something to mop up the drool...

Daddy's favorite space vehicle - 1959 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

Steve McQueen's 1957 Jaguar XK-SS Roadster - perfect for tooling around the curves of Mulholland Drive

 

1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR "Uhlenhaut" Coupe

1954 Plymouth Explorer Sports Coupe

1948 Tucker Torpedo

1933 Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow

Check out this wasp's-nest chrome exhaust pipe!

No more complaints about changing a tire - we have it easy.

1937 Dubonnet Hispanno-Suiza H-6C "Xenia"

She's huge! Like a DC-3!

1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Roadster - Baroness Gisela Von Krieger used this car to escape Nazi Germany just as the war broke out.

Anthony has the right expression! That's a 1961 Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato Coupe, behind him.

Take Anthony's advice and get over to the museum this week while you still can.

We guarantee you'll walk out with that same look on your face!

Star Wars Blu-rays -- Bantha dung included

The time may have finally come where it seems our buddy George Lucas is screwing with fans just to vex and annoy them. All six Star Wars films make it to Blu-ray in a couple of weeks and "the community" is already seething at yet another series of arbitrary head-scratching "adjustments" Darth Flannel has made to the beloved Original Trilogy, as well as some of the newer films.

In Episode I: The Phantom Menace, puppet Yoda has been replaced with digital Yoda. This looks to actually be an improvement, particularly given how good Yoda looked in Revenge of the Sith.

In Return of the Jedi, the Ewoks eyes will blink now, which is okay (Ewoks have eyes?!).

Other changes, however, are particularly galling, if not downright annoying. In Star Wars, Ben Kenobi's fake-out dragon call now sounds like Darcelle in distress...I mean just compare these two...!

...and in Return of the Jedi, heretofore cool moment where Vader stops Emperor Palpatine from torturing Luke, now gets the addition of a completely unnecessary "NOOOOO!" from about to be redeemed Anakin.



While many folks will wonder what all the to-do is about, it's kind of like having Charles Foster Kane blurt out, "My sled...Rosebud was my sled," or Rick Blaine embellish "We'll always have Paris...you know, that city where we first met."

What else we have in store is anybody's guess. The arrival of Star Wars in hi-def should be (and frankly, is) cause for celebration. The deleted scenes alone should prove fascinating. But Lucas seems so completely out of touch with and disrespectful of both his fans and of cinema preservation as a whole. None of this would matter if he was also restoring and making the original cuts of the films available. But when his tweaks and tinkerings start to actually damage the films and lessen their impact, it may be time for us to suggest that George put down his paintbrush and take a nice long break...on Carbonite, of course...