Andy Wood

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Cars cruises like a well lubed automobile because Joe Lasseter and Joe Ranft take this formula concept and improve upon it by delivering great characters and funny dialogue; However I think that the movie lacks that sly, intellectual edge of most Pixar films but don’t get me wrong, this Pixar flix is keeper.

What has not changed is the quality of Pixar’s extraordinary animation. The pioneers in this field, Pixar continues breaking down the barriers of what can be done with computer animation. The films opening scene is a mindblowing series of race scenes that look beyond real until you get closeup and see the anthropomorphized race cars with soft human features, bumpers for mouths, eyes in the windshield et al.

The Cars of the title are so well animated that they take on truly human personas. You obviously never forget they are automobiles but at a certain point you stop pondering the mechanics of humanistic vehicles and just laugh along with the compelling characters.

Look at the details of the Hudson Hornet voiced by Paul Newman. Watch closely for the ways this stately vehicle evokes the real life Paul Newman in the animated eyes and lips. What an awesome piece of work this is.

Cars is not the creative home run that Finding Nemo and The Incredibles were but it is certainly lives up to the standards of the Pixar brand. And, of course, when compared to genre competitors it’s absolutely no contest.

Sega’s squad-based ‘Mech game, Chromehounds, went to gold master today, putting the XBOX 360 game on track to ship in North America on July 11.

Developed by From Software, Chromehounds lets players choose from a customize six ‘Mechs, then take their vehicle through both a single-player campaign and a variety of multiplayer options including a persistent Neroimus war mode, capture the flag, deathmatch and “free battle.”

Chromehounds also will be the first game to take advantage of the Xbox Live Server Proxy, which ensures that no two online battles are alike.

Through my sabbatical from work, I have been doing some ‘major league’ dvd player feeding.

If you click on the above image, it should shoot you over to the flickr image and you will be able to hover your mouse and see what they are. If I understood more about HTML and image tags. I would have done it here.

American Dad! follows Stan Smith, a super-conservative CIA agent whose dedication to his country leads him to think everyone’s a terrorist and everything is a threat to national security.

Unfortunately for Stan, only his nerdy son Steve believes in his politics - his daughter Hayley and wife Francine see through his act and aren’t afraid to lock horns with him. Meanwhile, Klaus, a goldfish with a German Olympian’s brain and Roger, an alien living with the family, make Stan question whether he actually believes in the politics he fights to protect.

This box set is packed with extras:

“All in the Family” is a decent making-of featurette which we get some interesting background and footage. “Secrets of the Glass Booth” is a bit more fun and goes deeper into the history of the characters and where their voices come from. “American Animatics” is like your regular animatic feature - showing the sketch draft of the show against the actual show itself. It’s not amazing, but animation fans will like to see the amazing dichotomy between the beginning and final products.

There are 43 deleted scenes, although that only comes to about fifteen minutes of footage. There’s very little reference to where the scenes belong in the show, so it’s hard to tell where some of the jokes stand, but it’s still fun. You’ll watch it once, because most of the deleted scenes were best left on the floor, but there are some gems.

My favorite episode (which is hard to really put my finger on) would have to be Francine’s Flashback where Stan attempts to erase an argument that Stan and Francine had which happened 20 hours ago; however the CIA nerd got his buttons mixed up and erased 20 years and she started to act like a high school ‘bad girl’ again.

The upcoming WORLD WAR Z: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE ZOMBIE WAR is in the works and Bard Pitt just won out a bidding war against Leonardo DiCaprio for the rights to the upcoming novel about the events in the future that take place when an epidemic wipes out a portion of the world’s population only to have them reanimated into zombies.

The book was written by Max Brooks, son of Mel Brooks, and author of another zombie related book “The Zombie Survival Guide.” No word yet on whether Pitt would star in the film, but he will produce the film for Paramount. “World War Z” hits bookstores this September.

I caught this over at Comic Continuum where If a scene in Superman Returns of Superman lifting a car over his head clicks in your brain, it should.

Screenwriters Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty confirmed that the imagery is a direct nod to the cover of Action Comics #1.

Part of the scene was shown Monday night during A&E’s abridged broadcast of Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman, and an image is shown above.

Harris and Dougherty said there are several homages in the film to past incarnations of Superman.

“I think whenever you do a Superman project, whether it’s a comic book, a TV show, or a new film, you have to acknowledge the legacy,” Dougherty said. “You can’t be cocky about what you’re doing and say, ‘Well, I’m not gonna use the theme, and I’m not gonna use any situations from before. I’m just gonna be brand new and fresh and original.’

“No, you’re doing Superman. You’re part of the bigger picture, so acknowldege what came before.” “Obviously this character and this history is bigger than any of us put together,” Harris said.