This is basically a thank you shout out to Maria for the awesome (and early) Christmas present she sent my way in the form of "Touch Detective" for the Nintendo DS.

I love cute and quirky games and I love DS games, so combining the two made this something I had to have. However, this year in particular, I've had trouble nabbing everything I mean to as a lot of lesser known titles slip through the cracks and a lot of stores stop carrying them after rather short time frames. I thought I was going to have to eBay this one sometime after the Christmas shopping sprees came to an end, but Maria beat me to it. Excellent call!

The day before it arrived I was also discussing games such as this and interesting mixes of style and puzzles such as Professor Layton (if you don't know it, you should check these out) with Shelby, one of our producers at work who happens to live in my neighborhood with her husband, and I told her she could have first dibs on playing it when I got around to picking it up. So I get a nifty new game, and she gets to play through it over Christmas (while I'm trying to finish up Phoneix Wright, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, and Uncharted - I may have over extended myself here).

So, thank you, Maria for scoring me bonus points with a married woman! Thank you for the great present, and I hope you like yours when it arrives in the mail soon! ;-)

Oh, and seriously, if anybody reading this doesn't know about Professor Layton, you should really check out those links down there!

Trailer for Part One: Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Trailer for Part Two: Professor Layton and Pandora's Box 

This isn’t the first time I’ve spent a holiday on my couch, and there’s no way it will be the last, but I ended up feeling a little guilty by over achieving at not doing anything during the long weekend. I’ll start with Thanksgiving, since that’s really the only time I went out.

After being on fifteen different planes this year I as pretty adamant that I was through with travelling until 2008, and it was pretty unlikely anybody was coming up to spend the holiday with me, so Thanksgiving weekend was mainly going to be between me and my new TV (thanks, Henry!). Chris also didn’t feel like making the drive over the frozen mountains to visit the town he was so happy to escape, but with Will already long gone to San Diego a home cooked meal simply wasn’t going to happen. We opted instead to hit up Marie Callender’s for some good food and fantastic pie. Henry and Joel, our fellow home bound fools, also left their respecitve caves breifly to join us. Dinner was delicious, and the half of a pumpkin cheesecake we left with kept Chris and I sugared up for the rest of the weekend. That meal was also the longest amount of time he and I spent in the same room until we went back to work on Monday morning. Both of us had new and intriguing glactic adventures awaiting us.

Chris set up shop in the living room to dive deeper into the space opera he’d been dabbling with since Tuesday and really started on Mass Effect. He started out wavering between Paragon and Renegade, but I was sure it wouldn’t be too long before he ended up back in old habits. I can’t tell you how much he really played, or how long it ended up taking him to switch over and start playing that team killing she-bitch he rolled up full time, but he is still working on it, so between the graphic glitches, AI, and lazy elevators there must be something good enough to hold his interest. I, meanwhile, had temporarily relocated the Wii to my room and launchd into my own space adventure with:

Now, I was a little slow getting started here, as this one came out a week earlier but I hadn’t had a chance to pull it out of the plastic wrap the previous weekend. Obviously there had been hype, and I’d heard some of my co-workers getting excited about their experience and comparing the number of collected stars in the game, so I was starting to feel a little left out of the excitement. With time on my side, and the Wii to myself, I finally cracked it open and popped it in. I typically only give review scores so much credit, and most major titles like this one end up with so much hype or with such a wicked nostlagic curve that the numbers end up being pretty misleading. (Off topic: Halo 3 was a perfect 10/10? I may be slightly jaded, but seriously I didn’t think people were that gullible. I guess the sales don’t lie. I’ve played it, enjoyed it, put it down, and am thankful that I didn’t end up buying it for myself.) Super Mario Galaxy is the first time I’ve been forced to agree with a pretty much perfect rating in a long, long time. Early on I was inlcined to call it too easy and made more accessable to non-gamers like Zelda Wind Waker was, but by my second day (somewhere between 40 and 90 stars deep) I realized that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t easy, it was smooth! It was FUN! The pace never really slowed down, and the missions didn’t end up feeling monotonous (except maybe one or two of those last purple comet levels), and sure the boss battles were simple enough for the reflexes of the experienced player, but it was all so incredibly satisfying... more than I had really imagined a platform game could be. Much like the incredibly satisfying feeling of getting more than I imagined I could hope for out of Portal, Super Mario Galaxy really went a long way to make me enjoy being in that world and scouring (wreaking mushroom havok over?) every corner of every galaxy they had to offer.

Oh Thanksgiving I’d collected 30 stars. Black Friday saw me gather 60 more. Come Saturday I had all 120 stars that could be found and had beaten the game twice for good measure. I really got sucked into playing, almost as deep as my Zelda experience at the beginning of the year. I was proud of myself in that kind of geek fashion that we can be over things like XBox achievemnt points, and kind of excited to compare notes back at the office with the others who had surely beaten it by now and even discuss the bonus ending one gets for collecting every star... unfortunately... I over did it. Sol had been the most excited about it the day of its release and had been feeling the pressure from Ian who had managed over 60 stars in that first week (an impressive feat for a father of two young boys, but I understand they were enlisted to co-star part of the time), Zac I know is a major completionist and has a tendency to burn through games faster than even I can, but by the time I was done, or even a few days later, I was alone at the end game. I guess I didn’t count on the fact that I can free up a lot more time than most other people and can still run some massive marathong gaming without it seeming too out of place. Ironically it feels a little lonely to have been able to accomplish so much in a single player experience and then not have anyone to share it with. I guess I’m a little envious of Ian and his co-stars. I’m also a little sad that Mass Effect has taken up some of my peers’ attention in the meantime, but I can’t really fault them. That game was also eagerly anticipated and saw a number of perfect 100 scores (a questionable number considering the bugs I’ve seen, but one I won’t dispute because I’m just as eager to play it for the serious drama and sci-fi story as any of them) so I guess it comes back to personal priorities.

I should also take a moment to mention another pretty good cosmic experience I had over the weekend when I finished reading the final volumes of the manga "Planetes"

The frst volume was picked randomly from the library a little over a month ago and I liked it enough to look up the second one, after which I had to get my hands on the rest (which turned out to be just three more volumes) which I breezed through between Mario sessions. I think I’m going to have to own these books and get around to checking out that anime sometime soon. It was short (only five volumes, so a bonus for me since I like complete stories) and was a really entertaining space sci-fi story that wasn’t so heavy on the "fi" part. Its set in the future and in space, yeah, but its basically about a couple of debri collectors cleaning up space junk that old missions and accidents have created to keep the skies clear for other star bound vessels. No secret alien plots, no rogue AI controlling unstoppable sattelite weapons, not even any crazy plans for world conquest. It was just good character interaction with a dash of "why am I here" from a space garbage man. Thumbs up!

I am WAY out of date with this one post, but since I've been busy enjoying myself, I'll just have to get on with the details and move on.

With the final submission of Godzilla: Unleashed to Atari at the end of August Will, Chris, and I decided to take a little bit of that vacation time that had been stacking up while we were busy working 10-15 hour days. Will's parents were kind enough to invite us to visit their home in Hawaii and, looking to check off another state that I've visited, I figured that could be nice and relaxing. Will had also extended the invite to a number of his friends from Cali, so we also ended up with his high school chums Mindy and Joe, plus as an added bonus, Diane accepted the invitation forwarded by Chris and also flew out from CA (she and Joe even ended up on the same plane, though they didn't know eachother yet). From left to right featured here, posing proudly in front of the legendary shrimp truck, we have Joe, Will, Mindy, myself, Dianne, and Chris.

Will's mother was there to greet most of us right off the plane in Honolulu and escorted us to both of their condos using the mini-van she had already rented for us to use while we were visiting. The first visit was to the Waikiki Sunset condo that was completely available for us to use and accomidated four of us pretty well. The second was the Diamond Head Vista (probably named for its phenominal view of the Diamond Head Ridge) was where Will's parents actually lived and had a spare bedroom they were happy to share, which ended up housing Chris and Diane.  From the spare condo we had a great vantage straight down to the beach which was 2 blocks away, and a fantastic view from the 29th floor. This is what I got to wake up to every day.

We spent quite a bit of time (and many, many meals) with Will's folks, particularly when his father was free from work over the Labor Day weekend, and were grateful for their 'native' hospitality, helping us tour all over the island. A nicer pair of tour guides we would have never been able to afford!

Over the first few days we managed to squeeze in a submarine ride, visiting the international markets, driving up the cliffs, swimming under the Waimea Falls, getting shrimp from the legendary Giovanni's truck (partially pictured above), desserting at the world famous Matsumoto's Shaved Ice, and eating well at more awesome restaraunts than I can even remember. By the time the weekend rolled around and Will's dad was finally ready to REALLY show us around I was already getting exhausted! I decided to cut back on my activities during vacation time and ended up skipping out on the snorkling trips and the surfing lessons. I partially regret missing both snorkling runs with Will's dad and his underwater camera, but those excursions also left far earlier in the morning than I was willing to wake on vacation, so most of my regrets were washed away by being well rested. The surfing I just wasn't terribly interested in, though it was fun to head out to the beach and see Will, Joe, and Diane all putting their lessons to good use. Chris had had enough of that water nonsense after the falls, so I joined him on the beach to take some pictures and laugh at some fools who were actually doing pretty well for their first hour on board. Will's dad, however, was geting the best shots by wading out waste deep in the water with his camera to catch them in motion as they zipped by. My favorite shots were actually the videos he caught as they posed, blundered, and half the time distracted him long enough that the wave they were riding sent him and his camera for a roll as well. This is a shot he got of Joe and Diane catching the same wave on the way in.

While we were planning the trip Will had a lot of talks with his mom abot what we all might want to do while we were out there, and thankfully very few of them actually required having any real planning other than just a ride to accomidate that many people. Among those things that did require planning was the request he forwarded in quotes: "that thing where you eat the pig," as well as as to see "one of those dudes juggle fire." He clarified that we were obviously refering to a luau, but that actually telling everybody that we might be able to get both those things at once might just be too much for us to handle. And so, come Sunday, a luau at Paradise Cove we did attend. There was, indeed, pig and fire dancing, along with dancing, spear chucking, copious amounts of alcohol, and more neckalces and leis than we could handle. Good times!

As a coincidental perk to our visit, the Labor Day that we were there happened to also be Will Senior's birthday, so that evening we took a walk down to the Oceanarium, a resort restaraunt with an indoor aquarium where we could eat and watch the sea life (particularly their rather impressive stingrays) drift. Will's mother had put in a reservation with the diver that feeds the aquatic residents to swing by our table with a big "Happy Birthday" sign that nobody seems to have gotten a picture of. I don't really know his folks enough to have really thought of a present or anything for the occassion, but after our many discussions about how awesome the Cold Stone Creamery right off the main road was, I couldn't miss the chance to pick up an ice cream cake for the occassion. THAT was a fun three blocks to haul my ass across, carrying an ice cream cake through the Hawaiian sun back to their condo. Thankfully it made it just fine and Will's mom helped me stash it in the freezer until that evening.

Our last day there was much more casual as Will senior went back to work and the lot of us tidied up, got our last walks on the beach, and bits of shopping in (I came home with 10 new Hawaiian shirts), and started trading digital photos on their family computer, basically just hanging out until our flights started leaving at around 9pm that evening. The three of us had a red-eye back to Portland where we'd left Chris's car before another two hour drive back to Eugene. Once we got home, I had about two hours to shower and readjust my bags until I got a ride to the Eugene airport this time and hopped another couple of flights, this time heading South to Arizona once again. That story, however, is much less exciting as it mainly involved visiting my brother (who was sick most of that week, anyway) and my mom. I also don't have any pictures from that part, though.

*** SPOILER ALERT! This is the bad part, you're allowed to skip it. ***

Overall it was a fun trip, and by skipping out on some of the activities I did manage to get some of the rest I'd been slighting myself on over the past few months, but I did manage to have ONE awkward experience: the catamaran. Once upon a time, many many years ago, I had a fairly stable constitution. My dad would drag my brother halfway across the country and back in the car, and by the time he lived over seas I was flying across continents, if not just states, a few times a year and for the most part was fully capable of enjoying it. Then, sometime during my high school years, that stopped. Now I'm ridiculously succeptible to carsickness if I'm not driving, so much that I can't even open the glove box, and no matter how many drugs I manage to ingest flying now causes me physical pain that basically washes out the rest of the day (which is why I like flying late, if possible). So I have no one to blame but myself for setting foot on that little yellow boat in the first place, but less than 60 seconds after pulling away from the beach I knew I was in for a LOOOOOONG hour and a half at sea.

We all (Will, his dad, Joe, Mindy, and I) started out at the front of the boat where we knew we'd be enjoying the sea breeze and probably generous amounts of the splashing waves. I thought that if I was watching the horizon instead of being able to see most of the boat I'd be fine, kind of like looking out the car window. I was wrong. I was really, really wrong. Let me tell you about how I was wrong: in the choppy waves that we were crashing through as the wind whipped us out to sea that boat was getting some incredible air, swinging its bow probably 10 or 12 feet up and down every 4-6 seconds. I retreated rather quickly to the less mobile middle of the ship, and reclined against the railing, relaxing and just trying to breath peacefully to keep the contents of my stomach in place. It worked. Almost. After bouncing around the ocean for about an hour, as we finally started approaching shore once again, we found a groove and some pleasant waves where the ship stopped its crash course and began gently rocking  as it sailded smoothely. That, it would seem, was an unnacceptable shift to my intestines as I struggled even harder to keep from being ill. When I finally conceeded, I gripped the rail beind me with my hand, held position a moment to find a gentle groove in the waves, then whipped around and projectile vomitted the (thankfully mostly liquid) contents of my stomach into that beautiful blue ocean in less than a second before turning back around to resume my seat, smacking my lips against the taste as I settled in for the much easier remainder of the ride. I felt bad about having a weak stomach up until that point, at which I was inexplicably proud of my expulsion and resultant recovery. I know my own party knew nothing of the experience until I mentioned it (probably inappropriately) around dinner time that evening, and if the other guests or the boat crew noticed, they made no note. Kind of makes me feel a little better about how I handle myself under pressure (pun intended).

This is me only starting to get worried as we were setting out. I look roughly the same upon our return (damn, I'm smooth) except that my hair was pretty much destroyed by the salty water and whipping winds. Oh, and somewhere along the trip my kneecaps managed to burn to a crisp. Go figure!

Anyway, that's the gist of it. Hope everyone else had fun. Turns out we had a LITTLE bit of Godzilla work left over for us when we got back, but nothing that's going to delay its release in November, so my work schedule has been much nicer since then. I've taken that time to get caught up on a number of the games that have been waiting patiently for me. I'm not dead set on trying to wrangle my comp time and some of the extra vacation hours I've got left into a pattern that keeps me from working on a Friday for the rest of the year. THAT should be fun! I'll be back sooner next time, I promise! Oh, and go pick up your own copy of Godzilla Unleashed on the Wii! With Smash Bros getting delayed until next year, we've just made the coolest brawler game that's going to be available this holiday season! WOOT!

Its funny Will dug this one up shortly after I let him try the game.

... called me at lunch to let me know he was getting drunk on champagne in Rome with some friends to celebrate his 60th birthday.

We had an early birthday party for him and my brother (who coincidentally turned 30 this year) while we were all in St. Louis. Its kind of hard to compare those two parties.

Way to go, Dad!

We pulled in from SIGGRAPH 2007 at around midnight last night and, uncharacteristically, I headed straight for bed knowing I'd have to head into work early and start getting my buckets lined up to put out the fires that had erupted while I was away.

Godzilla is in Beta, so from the art side we're pretty much done except for the occasional exploding character or beam firing out of someone's ear. You'd think, then, that this would be a perfect time to let two of the five character artists take an educational trip to San Diego to learn about the latest and greatest in the field of digital art. So after an almost boring day at work on Monday, we took off in the evening, arriving in Cali around 10pm. Less than 24 hours later I almost ended up on a flight back when a couple of conversations that took place around my empty desk went horribly, horribly wrong.

There was a sketch on the rigging in Pixar's new film, Ratatouille coming up on Thursday morning, so Stephen and I decided to use our free Tuesday evening to check out the film and let Will go catch up with his friends. Stephen spent about a quarter of the movie bouncing in and out of theater on the phone, but I hate being interupted (especially when almost $20 of movie and snacks are on the line) so I just let my phone do its thing in my pocket. It was just Will and Chris, after all. Those guys never have anything to share except vulgarities anyway.

We finally get out of the movie and I get the message that I have to call our company head NOW. About an hour and four phone calls later and things have finally calmed down (though I still owe some people a few e-mails in the morning) when I sort out where the communication breakdown happened. Suddenly I'm a little concerned for the security of some of my coworkers, and more than a little afraid of what happens to the animation department if I ever leave the company.

It was made pretty clear to me a year ago when our old lead/technical artist left that I would be managing Godzilla's monsters in a temporary position. I was just an artist with a little more accountability. Considering the shit storms I've sailed through (and I KNOW that its been a relatively smooth ride), I'd hate to imagine what the actual art leads have to deal with. I'm sure Jarrett is fine, he probably eats the hearts of his fallen foes anyway, but I feel for Robert having to manage all the level and concept stuff. His schedule looks like mine a lot of the time, but he actually has a wife and daughter that miss him at home. These fuckers probably barely notice I'm gone (though I'm sure the cat misses me as long as her bowl goes empty).

So, I guess it goes without saying that Friday, once again, was a day I spent almost 14 hours at work, but didn't animate for a single one of them. I really need to learn how to read and type faster...

Everybody else went out for the 4th of July, but honestly, I feel more like enjoying the micro-weekend right here at home.

This past weekend was actually the first one I'd had after working 26 days in a row for anywhere between 10 and 16 hours a day. I love what I do for a living (most of the time), but seriously, that shit drains a fucker! I really SHOULD have been in over the weekend to tidy up stuff thats supposed to be shipped off Thursday morning, but figured it would be easy enough to take care of on Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately, due to a network error, I (nor any of my animators) couldn't actually submit the work we'd done yesterday evening. So guess where I just spent four hours of my federal holiday? Yep! Back at work. Again, if I didn't love what I do, this'd be some serious buesheet.

A weekend was fantastic, though. It had been a while since I'd enjoyed doing nothing like that. I beat God of War II. Chris and I started watching Bleach. Henry actually dragged me out of the house to go see Live Free or Die Hard (thank you, Henry). He also challenged me to a couple rounds of HeroClix to try out the new Avengers we got earlier in the week. Altogether, I accomplished very little. It was beautiful.

Going into the next milestone I expect to still be putting in some overtime for the rest of the month (sigh, I really do love my work...), but after this next one there's going to be very little I can devote excess hours toward. Coming home at dinner time with the guys and having my weekends off... That actually sounds like more of a vacation than the whole Hawaii thing!

So, screw you, fireworks! I'm going to plant my butt back in my nice comfy (over-worn) easy chair and enjoy being HOME! Hope the rest of you are enjoying yourselves as much as I am.

I recently had the opportunity (obligation?) to be profiled in the F9E newsletter. They sent me a list of questions to get a better personal rounding, but the final article seemed a lot slimmer than I'd expected. That's usually the case with interviews, though, isn't it? For a bit of insight, I dug back out the e-mail I sent back, so here's the lot of it. Feel free to go surf for porn now, if you wish. Obviously I won't insist/encourage anyone to read this boring stuff!

What do you do at F9? How long have you been with the company?
I'm a lead animator (as of Godzilla: Unleashed) and have been with Pipeworks as a general purpose artist/animator since February 2004.

What's the last title and current project that you've/you are working on?
I was working on Prince of Persia Rival Swords for the PSP before lending a hand to the Wii release of Rampage:Total Destruction, but RTD came out at launch while PoPRS just hit the streets this April. Currently I'm neck deep in Godzilla: Unleashed for the Wii and PSP.

... and I can barely remember him. He was 20, and the last time I think I saw him or his family was more than 10 years ago at our over crowded family reunion in Miami. My brother and I are two of the oldest of our generation of the family, so its a little wierd to have this kind of context thinking about 'this kid' I used to know and that his life is over before he even got to where I am now. Its hard to think about really knowing everyone in my huge family, but I'm also realizing how disconnected I am from most of it even without the numbers being against me. Though I don't seem to be alone in being alone: Mario's older brother, Benny, was driving the car when the accident happened and is now lying in a hospital bed with minor injuries. Appearantly there was an e-mail request among the massive group list of aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws of all steps and degrees asking if anyone from my generation around the area would help keep him company while he was being watched, but no one was close enough... at least not emotionally. I can't even imagine how he's doing right now; what he must be going through. 

And their mom, my mother's younger sister, happens to be an anesthesiologist at the hospital they were taken to. She was waiting on the roof when the helicopters brought her two sons in, and only one of them made it there. Again, I'm not even sure what to think at this point: this is a woman I haven't seen in over a decade, whom is on the other side of the familiar divide that has kept most of my aunts and uncles from talking to eachother (civilly) in years. Its impossible to imagine her situation.

She had four boys, Benny being the oldest. I spent a good part of Sunday morning, after having been rung out of bed, on the phone with another of my aunts trying to help her get in contact with his younger brother Joey who's studying at St. Martin's in the Caribbean through his LiveJournal account because nobody had a phone number for him. Last I'd heard, the youngest brother, who would be graduating from high school today, hadn't yet been told.

I may have a smaller immediate family, but I cannot imagine their loss is lessened by the fact that they have more shoulders to cry on, more survivors to hold and be grateful for. Obviously its nothing compared to what each and every one of them is going through, but its put me in a weird spot, knowing I DON'T really know this part of my family and realizing how disconnected I am. Not even just from them, but in general. I pride myself on a cool head, and being able to remain calm even as others fall apart around me, but is that really good? I'm clearly confused at the moment and its distracing me from work. More confusing is that I'm having trouble figuring out which is more important... to me, at least.

My heart, at least what I've found of it, goes out to the rest of Mario's family. I'm relieved to know today that literally hundreds of people have been contacting them to share memories and sympathies.

Hmm, I guess it has been a while since I posted. Here I was trying to keep it up every other week or so and I let almost two months go by! Oh well, it makes it interesting that in that time the monster vote I posted about last time has been settled, now he needs a name! The temporarily titled "Magmouth" is being voted on (you guessed it) back at IGN. Stop by and give him some love: http://wii.ign.com/articles/788/788349p1.html 

Beyond the intense amount of work the fast approaching Alpha date is promising me, this summer is also chock FULL of movie goodness! May has gotten off to a pretty good start with Spider-Man 3 and 28 Weeks Later in the past two weeks, now I've got Shrek 3 to look forward to this weekend and Pirates: World's End coming up on the good ol' 3-day birthday weekend! (There's also the release of Paprika which I'm super stoked to see, but won't hold my breath waiting for it to come to Eugene) So, yeah, May is a hell of a month for sequels, it seems.

I'll say right now that though Spider-Manz was enjoyable it did fall well short of parts one and two. It doesn't QUITE suffer the law of trilogies where part three has to suck as bad as Batman Beyond or Alien 3, but it really didn't hold up to the previous ones as well as we had hoped. I will admit that part of this was my own expectations for how they would treat the black suit the previews have been flashing at us. Knowing the original story of how Peter Parker picked it up in space during some intergalactic Marvel hoop-a-joop I figured they were going to use the Ultimate Spider-Man version which had a much better background story and some strong emotional ties to Peter's actual father. I liked that story. Alas, they chose a midground that was... dissappointing to me. Oh well. Either of those plot points would be hard to address while trying to address Harry Osborn, Gwen Stacy, Flint Marco, and Eddie Brock at the same time. Too many plot points, too little flow. I guess I'll just have to complain about it again when I buy the DVD. 

28 Weeks Later, on the other hand, was a fantastic surprise! I don't know how many of you saw 28 Days Later, but that was a pretty good little intense piece of horror/sci-fi. Weeks didn't have the same kind of "survivor" drama and tension that Days did, but it wasn't trying to. It switched gears from a smaller produced bit thrilling drama to an all out "run, muthafucka, run!" scarefest! They won me over by not TRYING to more of the same, but actually by switching gears. Oh, and they're cheezy sub-plot point? The one that any horror movie has to have? It was well excecuted and perfectly believable. I know it didn't stand a chance in the theater against Spidey, but it was totally worth seeing for me, at least. I'm also glad that we got to see it in a fairly empty theater without distracting chatter (again, thanks to Spidey).

Shrek 3 is probably the one I'm most excited about, seeing as how Shrek 1 is one of my all time favorite movies. I'm expecting an amount of "trilogy-ism" but I can hold out hope that it won't be as bad as Spidey. The lighter nature of the animated feature should help ease the transition. We'll see.

Beyond May there are still a number of flics I'm just going to HAVE to go out and catch. Dare I admit that we'll probably be seeing Day Watch? This is going to be one of those "fool me twice" moments, I'm pretty sure, but even after Night Watch showed me such an incredible movie only to destroy all my hopes and dreams at the very last second, Day Watch promises to be just as cool... and... MAYBE not have such a shitty ending. I'm going to regret this, but in the words of our boy Henry: "I can't help it!"

Not long there after I'll be braving the depths of questionable sequels to catch the Fantastic Four: Rise of the SIlver Surfer movie. Yeah, see? Part one was far from fantastic on its own, but it had some promise, so we can't help but hold out hope that FF2 may yet deliver. Having seen the Silver Surfer in the trailers, I'm allowing myself that slim shade of hope.

Live Free or Die Hard was a title that caught me off guard. I'd actually forgotten that they were putting another Die Hard out! I knew I'd have to see it just based on principle, but we got to see the trailer for it before 28 Weeks Later last weekend and... wow. Die Hard got aweful black all of a sudden, but that action also got pretty intense. That'll be a nice roller coaster!

You know whats after that. No, that wasn't a question. You KNOW what's after that. NO ONE has been able to dodge the huge ass banners and the multimedia teasing that's been going into the movie launching on 7-4-7. That's right! My childhood is officially being dug up, defiled, and fed back to me by none other than Pearl Harbor making fool Michael Bay: Its Transformers time, baby! It actually frightens me how excited I am about this movie. I mean, seriously! I've READ the prequel comics, so I even KNOW how horrible the story is going to be... Yet... I mean, come on... those car chases are going to be fan-fucking-tastic! And can you imagine the dog fights? The pure potential has me almost ready to wet myself! I've really got to finish watching more of the old TV series with Forest to bone back up on my Transformers lore before this one drops.

The last in the immediate line-up that I'll have to be seeing is the ol' Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I'm a sucker for good fantasy, and these have been remarkably entertaining thus far. Prisoner of Azkaban was my favorite of the movies, so I'm really looking forward to the return of Gary Oldman to the major cast.

Beyond the immediate titles there's one more coming this summer that's going to be drawing me back to the theater before summer is out. Neil Gaiman's Stardust. I may have mentioned I'm a fan of the fantastic. Well... this looks it in every way imaginable. Tell me I'm wrong. See you at the movies!