Happy Birthday, Octo!!

Happy, Happy birthday to this awesome guy.  An amazing brother, husband, father, uncle and friend.  Love you so much!

What it would be like if your emails were real life

Thanks, Internet!: The Most Emotionless Slingshot Rider Set To Simon And Garfunkel's 'The Sound Of Silence'

From geekology, This is a video of an emotionless Slingshot rider set to Simon And Garfunkel's classic 'The Sound Of Silence.' It is the very reason I log onto the internet every morning. Also, why is this guy so emotionless? You think he used to be a human cannonball in a circus? I bet he used to be a human cannonball in a circus. "Next time I want you to cut the cords before we reach the top," I imagine him telling the ride operator as he got off.

WTF? 'Monster Hunt' trailer

Box Office

From darkhorizone, Critics have long despised his films, but the appeal of the Adam Sandler comedy label amongst wider audiences seems to be on the wane too. Despite a fun high-concept, the critically derided Sandler-led "Pixels" opened this weekend to $24 million and second place.

It fell behind Disney's "Ant-Man" which scored first place and $24.8 million in its second outing, bringing it to a $106.1 million stateside haul. Both films opened in the wake of a cinema shooting in Louisiana which saw three deaths and nine injuries, and has prompted discussion of consumers steering clear of cinemas.

Two other new films opened. Fox's "Paper Towns," the next film from social media celeb and "The Fault in Our Stars" author John Green, opened to $12.5 million which was only about half what was projected. The $12 million budget means it'll be profitable, but it certainly hasn't gone past the core base like 'Fault' seemed to.

The other was the Jake Gyllenhaal-led boxing drama "Southpaw" which scored $16.5 million and proved better than expectations, helped by Gyllenhaal getting out there and doing publicity on a lot of sporting outlets.

"Minions" and "Trainwreck" picked up $22.1 million and $17.3 million respectively, while "Jurassic World" scored $6.9 million and flew past "Marvel's The Avengers" to score the third highest title on the domestic all-time box-office list with $623.8 million. Bill Condon's "Mr. Holmes" continues going strong in limited release with $2.8 million in its second week.

Don’t Cry for Me, I’m Already Dead (is the name of this thing I want you to read)

Take a moment to read this short Simpsons-related comic by Rebecca Sugar, creator of Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe.

(Picture only marginally related.)

Well That Was Something: Trippy Animation Of Edvard Munch's The Scream Set To Pink Floyd

From slashfilm, This is a video imagining Edvard Munch's iconic painting "The Scream" as a short animation, complete with Pink Floyd's 'The Great Gig In The Sky' serving as the soundtrack. It was just the right amount of weird and beautiful. Like kissing a frog. Jk jk, there is nothing weird about kissing a frog, it is only beautiful. Also, if anybody is looking for a prince, there definitely aren't any at the two Petcos closest to my house.

Average US Movie Ticket Price Climbs to All-Time High

From slashfilm, Sorry everyone, but it’s that time again. The last time we had a shocked, raised-eyebrow update on the average price of movie tickets was in 2013, when the average US price climbed to a record $8.38. (Which might not really seem that bad, depending on where you live; that’s just over half the price of an evening ticket at the multiplex closest to my house, to say nothing of seeing a 3D IMAX presentation.)

Now the average US movie ticket price has climbed again. The good news: it’s still under nine bucks. The bad: we’ll probably have to write this story again, and sooner rather than later.

THR reports the average US movie ticket price is now $8.61, which is 3.36% more than the average for this quarter last year, and quite a lot more than the $8.12 average for the first quarter of 2015, which didn’t have as many 3D and event movie releases.

Prices like that, bolstered by 3D surcharges and higher IMAX prices, help set records. That’s one reason Jurassic World justclimbed to the #3 spot on the all-time box office earners list.

Doing a rough calculation from domestic grosses ($614m) versus average ticket price ($8.61) leads to a guesstimate of about 71.4m tickets sold in the US for Jurassic World. By contrast, the same math for Jurassic Park ($357m domestic gross against $4.14 average 1993 ticket price) leads to a guesstimate of 86.2m tickets sold for Spielberg’s first film.

That’s nearly a 15m difference in ticket sales, a vast discrepancy that suggests the dismal downward attendance spiral of which the entire industry is aware. If Jurassic World sold as many tickets as Jurassic Park, it would be closer to the $750m mark right now, in domestic dollars alone.

And, of course, Jurassic World likely had a significant trade in 3D and IMAX ticket sales, in which case its own individual average ticket price could be significantly higher than $8.61, meaning it put even fewer butts in seats than that basic calculation suggests.

So we trumpet box office numbers instead of ticket sales, and records are set, and everything is hunky-dory, right?

One question is: how long will this average hold? The fourth quarter of 2015 will be very busy, with new releases including the final Hunger Games movie, Pixar’s second film of the year The Good Dinosaur, and that little film Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Expect to hear some new box office record reporting in December and January thanks to Star Wars; we’ll see if we have to revisit the subject of the average ticket price then, too.

'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Went Even More Old-School with the Effects Than We Realized

From iwatchstuff, We've already had a couple looks at the ways The Force Awakens will be a throwback to the practical effects work of old. We've also already seen that the aged Millennium Falcon still has its little holographic chess (dejarik) table. Now, Adam Savage brings word that said little chess table thing will have the most practical, old-school effects of all: stop motion!

Speaking to io9, the Mythbusters host revealed that the new Star Wars film will imitate the dejarik of A New Hope with not just the same animation techniques but the same animator, legendary go-motion innovator Phil Tippet.

"I got to go watch him shoot it," Savage said. "It was so cool--the old school technology. Theoldest school technology: his animation. And it's beautiful."

So rest assured that those tabletop creatures will still lumber about with the slightly awkward, unnatural movements of current-day Harrison Ford.

Mr. Potato Head Is Back: Don Rickles Returns For Toy Story 4

From slashfilm, Tim Allen and Tom Hanks have already confirmed they are returning for Toy Story 4, but what about the rest of the toy box gang? Well we now know comedian Don Rickles will officially reprise his role as Mr. Potato Head in the fourth installment of the Pixar animated film series

89-year-old comedian Don Rickles confirmed the news to Closer Weekly:


“They just signed me to do the fourth Toy Story. We start [work on it] in September, and I’m very delighted with that. … “When John [Lasseter] approached me for the first one, I said, ‘I don’t do comedy with cartoons, dummies and toys. Leave me alone.’ And [John] said, ‘No, you’re gonna love this!’ Then he told me the money and how nice it was going to be and, I said, ‘Yeah, I can give it a try.’ All of a sudden it’s going on 17 years.”

Rickles’ returning for Toy Story 4 shouldn’t come as a big surprise. A fourth Toy Story film has been rumored to be in the works for the last five years now. Last year Toy Story 4 was officially announced as it was revealed that John Lasseter would return to direct a screenplay written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack based on a story dreamed up by the Pixar dream team of Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter and Lee Unkrich. Lasseter has insisted thatthe sequel is not about money, but they came up with a great story idea worth exploring.

We still have no idea what the story will be about (but that didn’t stop us all from taking some guesses), but it is expected to reunite Woody, Buzz and the whole gang in an all new adventure. Pixar animation studio president Jim Morris has said that the new film will not be a continuation of the story of Toy Story 3, offering only some vague hints about the film’s plot:


It is not a continuation of the end of the story of Toy Story 3. Temporarily it is, but it will be a love story. It will be a romantic comedy. It will not put much focus on the interaction between the characters and children. I think it will be a very good movie.

Toy Story 4, which will hit theaters on June 16, 2017, will be co-directed by Josh Cooley, the head of story on Inside Out.

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