New DVD Releases.

The premise of In Time reminds me of Logan's Run. Whereas in Logan's run life ended at age 30, In Time life ends at age 26. The movie brought in $37,508,853 and is rated 6.6 on the IMDB.

I am not overly fond of movies that are basically car chases, so I will pass on this one. the movie brought in $35,038,051 and is rated 8.0 on the IMDB. With that rating the movie is listed at number 220 on the IMDB's top 250 movies.

Dream House brought in $21,302,340 and is rated 5.7 on the IMDB.

This is the third time that The Thing has been made. This one brought in $16,928,670 and is rated 6.3 on the IMDB.

The Big Year has a great comedy team with Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson as birdwatchers. The movie brought in $7,204,138 at the box office and is rated 5.9 on the IMDB.

The movie that I think will sell best this week is the latest in Disney's dog buddies series, a direct to DVD movie called Treasure Buddies. Disney has had a lot of success with these movies, and I don't expect anything different from this one.

Mini-Vader.

Sunday Song.

Autographs.

It is amazing how many cards show players signing autographs. This is just a small example of the them.

Creative Marketing.

The last couple of weeks I have not been the person who puts out the new releases. They have had me working in other departments instead of electronics. Had I been the one putting them out I would've mentioned this on Tuesdays post about new releases. Paranormal Activity 3 is available only in a Blu-ray/DVD combo. What they don't tell people is that the DVD by itself will be available on February 10. This is the third time that I have seen that happen. The other two releases were by Disney, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and the re-release of The Lion King. In both of those cases, the DVD was released about a month after the combo.

What they are doing is basically shoving Blu-ray down your throat. It is inevitable that DVD will be gone, my estimation is two years. Right now the hangup is the cost of a Blu-ray player, which continues to drop. Once you have an assortment of models under $50, then DVD will be gone. The same thing happened when the format was switched from VHS to DVD. One of the nice things about Blu-ray is that your regular DVDs will play on them. I do not like this tactic, but I think will be seeing a lot more of it in the future. One of the reasons it is happening is that DVD is no longer the cash cow that it once was, and the movie studios are doing everything they can to increase their revenue. I will be keeping an eye on this and any time that I find it is happening in the future I will be mentioning it. It is not a real hindrance to me personally because I rarely buy anything when it comes out. I would much rather wait until the price goes down to about $10. That is what keeps my inner Jack Benny very happy.

Topps American Pie, Part 2.

My plan for this set has changed dramatically. Originally I figured I would just select five cards or so, post scans of them here, and move on. Instead, this will be an ongoing project and I'm not exactly sure yet how many parts it will contain. I will not be posting on these daily, but there will be at least two posts a week until I cover them all. Right now, I do not have a full set, but hope to correct that shortly. I remember learning about the Doomsday Clock in grade school. The clock was originally set at seven minutes to midnight. I wasn't sure if they still used the clock. It still is being used and the current time is five minutes to midnight. Hopefully, the world leaders can come to some kind of agreement and the clock will no longer be necessary. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. I really don't look that good in blue.

In 1948 Polaroid introduced the first instant camera. For the first time people could actually take a picture and have it complete in a few minutes. They called it the model 95, named for its price of $95. Polaroid kept improving upon the camera. But, of course, as digital took over the need for instant pictures dramatically dropped. In 2008 Polaroid got out of business altogether. The company has fallen on hard times and has twice filed for bankruptcy in the last 10 years.

The first credit card came into existence because a businessman forgot his wallet. He was at a restaurant, and his wife bailed him out. He came up with Diners Club and the rest as they say, is history.

When pagers first came out they were only available to doctors. They weren't approved for everyone's use until 1958. While no way near as common as they once were, they still are used today.

A professor in Turkey ran a computer program and determine that April 11, 1954 was the most boring day in the 20th century. The conclusion was achieved because there were no major events that happened on that day.

Topps American Pie, Part One.

Topps has issued a new American Pie set. This is the third set that they have done, but the first since 2002. The previous sets were a combination of baseball players and non-sports figures, historical events, and other assorted subjects. This set focuses mainly on history, starting at World War II. I bought a hobby box, which guaranteed me three relic cards. Those cards include autographs, celebrity worn memorabilia, patches, stamps or coins. The first one I got was from Louie Anderson.

Until I read the card, I did not know who Justin Willman was. Until I lost cable a few months ago Food Network was one of my favorite channels and I had never heard of Willman. Then I found out he was on some of the shows that I never cared to watch, Cupcake Wars, Last Cake Standing, and Halloween Wars.

I saved my favorite card for last. What you see is actual dirt from the Lewis and Clark trail. I like offbeat stuff like that. Tomorrow I'll talk about the basic set.

New DVD Releases.

When the first Paranormal Activity came out in 2007 it was a surprising hit. Made on a budget of $15,000 it grossed over $193 million worldwide. The budgets have gotten bigger, but people still flock to see the movies. The third chapter in the series brought in $104,028,807 in the United States and almost that much overseas. It's not my kind of movie, but it does have its audience. It is rated a 6.2 on the IMDB.

 
When I first heard about the movie Real Steel, I joked that it would turn out to be Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots, the movie. The movie did very well at the box office where it brought in $85,255,428. It was a huge hit overseas, bringing in $210 million. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to watch it, but I have enjoyed most of Hugh Jackman's movies. The IMDB rates the movie a 7.3.

50/50 is a comedy about cancer. It was inspired by a true story about a young man diagnosed with cancer and his subsequent battle with the disease. The young man was screenwriter Will Reiser.  After a six-year struggle he was declared cancer free. The movie brought in $35,014,192 and is rated an 8.0 on the IMDB.

Smile, It's Monday.

Sunday Song.

Baseball Cameramen.

Overreaction.

An elementary teacher for the Gwinnett County, Georgia school district has resigned due to some poorly worded math problems that were assigned to some students. The questions attempted to teach a little history as well as math. His question about Frederick Douglass was in poor taste. The question asked "If Frederick got to beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in a week?    In two weeks?" Why he thought that was a good idea, he has not explained. He did say his intentions were good, and when the controversy came out, he turned in his resignation before it was asked for. I really don't think he should of had to resign, but some kind of punishment was called for. A suspension without pay could have covered that. Of course, since he did resign it is a moot point. That is not the overreaction that I was referring to with the subject of this post. The overreaction is mentioned in the story where some parents are now requesting that counseling be made available to the students who received these questions. It is ridiculous to believe that simply reading that question would emotionally scar a child. It would not surprise me for a lawsuit to end up being filed over this. It is an unfortunate happening, but life really will go on.

The second overreaction took place at a Subway in South Carolina. A 19-year-old employee there made sandwiches for his friends and charged them $1.50. It's not clear how many friends were involved but instead of firing the young man, the manager had him arrested. I agree that the young man was in the wrong, but having him arrested is going a little too far. I can only assume that this was done as a warning to the other employees, but unless he had 50 friends in there being fired should have covered everything. The way the story reads it was a one time occurrence. Why the harshness in dealing with it only the manager can explain.

Active Toys.

I was going to blog about this game for Christmas, but since I basically took the month of December off, it didn't happen. The object of Doggie Doo is to go around behind this dog and clean up after him. I'm not sure exactly how popular this game is since I don't work in toys very often, but I do assume that it sells fairly well. After all, it's disgusting enough that kids would have fun with it.

Baby Alive is billed as the real surprise baby. You give the doll something to eat and drink and she does what real babies do. Fortunately, one of the accessories that you can purchase is disposable diapers. I think that's taking realism a little too far, but at least I don't have to clean it up. You can buy food packets, drink packets, and diapers to go along with this doll.

I like finding weird stuff like this. This will probably become the Thursday theme. I'm going to limit this to items that you can purchase in, as they call it online, the brick-and-mortar stores. It's more of a challenge that way than just simply going online, because there is so much weird stuff that you can purchase online only.

A Nightmares End.

I don't buy as many comic books as I used to. The biggest reason is I am not a fan of the direction that they're using for superheroes today. Someday soon I will talk about the titles that I do buy, but one title that I have been getting just came to the end of the tale. Marvel Comics has finished a 31 issue adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. I will do a full review of it at a later date after I have reread it. This adaptation was very well done and I have enjoyed revisiting the story.

I was first introduced to The Stand by She Who Left in the Middle of the Night. My introduction was the TV miniseries. After watching that I bought the revised edition of the book that King put out, the one where he added 400 pages. I'm a big of Stephen King and this is my favorite of all his works. A few years ago, when I heard that Marvel was going to adapt the book, it immediately went on to my pull list. For those of you who are not familiar with that term, each month, the comic book store that I go to, Fantasy Factory in Dalton, saves for me the books that I want. That is call my pull list. Now that The Stand has ended the only Marvel title that I am buying is an adaptation of Stephen Kings Dark Tower. There is talk that the next adaptation will be Salem's Lot. If they follow through with that I'll be getting those.

The thing that I am not enjoying about today's superhero titles is too many titles are being tied into one major story, or in the case of DC comics, they have restarted everything. I don't have a problem with characters being refreshed, but I have read too many restarts and really don't want to go there again., Heroes have also gotten darker which just isn't my cup of tea. A lot of my friends of been enjoying what's going on and I'm glad that they are, but I'm going back and rereading the tales from the time that I like best. One great thing about fictional characters is that you can pick and choose the tales that you prefer. If you don't like a certain story, you can simply ignore it.

New DVD Releases.

The Ides of March is a movie about a political campaign. I get enough of that with regular news and really don't care to watch a movie about it. The movie brought in $40,962,534 and is fairly well thought of by the people on the IMDB where it ranks a 7.4.

Courageous is the fourth movie from Sherwood Pictures, which is owned by the Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. This is their most successful movie so far. It brought in $34,311,609 and is rated a 5.8 on the IMDB.

A lot of people in Hollywood think that Taylor Lautner will become one of the next big stars. Outside of the Twilight movies he has not been very successful so far. Abduction brought in $28,087,155 and is rated a 4.4 on the IMDB.

Speaking of major disappointments, Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star will go down as one of the worst movies ever made. It had the dubious honor of getting a zero rating at Rottentomatoes.com. If you not familiar with out Rotten Tomatoes works, they gather all reviews of a movie and rate it according to the number of positive reviews the movie receives. No reviewer liked this movie. It only brought in $2,529,395 and is rated a 2.5 on the IMDB.

Monday Mayhem.

Yesterday my neighbor knocked on my door. When I opened it I looked at and said "Yes?"
She asked  me, "Why do you always say yes when I knock?"
I told her, "You never come over unless you are wanting something."
She said, "That's not true. Will you take me somewhere?"
She really did not see the irony there.