With the emphasis on dark. Usually, Batman movies have some humor to break up the action and violence, but The Dark Knight has none of that. Don’t get me wrong, it is a great movie, but it is nothing like all of the Batmans that have come before. At 2 1/2 hours long, The Dark Knight is more like two or three movies in one. The twists and turns keep coming just when you think nothing more could be packed into the story. I wouldn’t recommend this movie for any kids under 12 unless you want to have trouble at bed time. There is way too much stress and violence in this movie for younger kids. It is going to be a busy night at Regal Cinemas in Salisbury tonight. The 7:00 PM showing of The Dark Knight was sold out at noon today.

It looks like one of the next trends in web tools will be applications that bring the web to you rather than making you go out and search for sites that match your needs or interests. One tool that I started playing with recently was StumbleUpon, which links users to sites that have been stumbled by surfers with similar interests. SU reminds me of the Next button on WordPress with some degree of logic involved in determining your next destination.

I ran across another site today that promises to serve up all the latest news on your pop culture interests from music to TV to movies. PopBandit.com creates pop pages for each band or actor or TV show that you might be interested in. The pop page includes photos along with a feed of the latest news, product releases and videos. PopBandit also features a social networking aspect that allows you to see other visitors who are fans along with other popular pages.

I decided to see if PopBandit had a pop page for the Arctic Monkeys, since I was listening to them on the MP3 player today. Even though they might not be a mainstream band, sure enough there was a pop page for them with links to the latest news and videos about the band.

There is a new song playing on the radio with Tom Petty on vocals, but it is not his usual band backing him up. Petty is currently playing with members of his early 70’s band, Mudcrutch, which never made it past there first single, but led to Petty’s eventual success.

PopBandit also has pages for new movies like Get Smart, and the site will even send you an alert when the Weeds Season 3 DVD comes out. Check out PopBandit and find what you’re in to.

It was just five years ago that a mediocre movie called The Hulk came out, and with a budget of $137 million, the film barely broke even and musters a lowly 5.8 out of 10 stars on the IMDB rankings. Now we can look forward to The Incredible Hulk, which opens on June 12th. It appears that this new movie could be considered a sequel to the first Hulk, since the working title listed on IMDB is Hulk 2. Stan Lee of Marvel Comic fame gets a writing credit on both movies, but the screenplay of the latest incarnation was written by the movie’s star, Edward Norton. Apparently, during the search for a cure, the Hulk’s DNA is stolen, and a new monster is created. And guess who gets to fight him. No, not Iron Man. The Hulk has to battle the evil version of himself. Reminds me of the black Spiderman character from Spidey 3. Not many movies entice me enough to go see them at the theatre, and so The Incredible Hulk will have to wait for DVD to make it to our house.

We went to see a movie this past weekend. The choice was between Iron Man and Speed Racer. Iron Man was getting better reviews, so that was the movie that we settled on. After all was said and done, I wish we had gone to see Speed Racer. On IMDB, Iron Man was rated 8.4 out of 10. Now I want to ask the same question that Bugs Bunny used to ask. What’s all the hub bub, bub? First of all, Iron Man definitely earns its PG-13 rating. If you are expecting the Iron Man from the comic book, you won’t find him here. The movie includes a lot of violent military battle scenes along with the off camera execution of a large group of civilians. Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark, a heavy drinking womanizer whose family business is military weapons. Stark is indifferent to the destruction that is brought on by the products of his company until he makes a trip to the Middle East where his convoy is attacked and he is kidnapped by terrorists. Stark is tortured by his captors including a scene of simulated drowning. It is possible to take away an anti-war message from this movie. Some of the scenes in the movie made me uncomfortable for those families who brought younger children to the theatre. That includes a scene with Stark and a seemingly nude young woman rolling around in the sheets.

The iron suit was Stark’s ticket out of captivity, and once home, he perfected the design to provide the final Iron Man. The Iron Man armor does not get enough screen time. The movie gets bogged down in sarcastic dialogue from the main character and a weak performance from Terrence Howard who plays a military liason to Stark’s company. I’m not sure why this movie got so much hype, and it definitely doesn’t deserve all of the acclaim that it has received. I won’t buy the DVD, and you shouldn’t buy tickets to Iron Man. There is nothing special about this film. I knew that the Black Sabbath song Iron Man would be part of the soundtrack, but it only makes a short instrumental appearance during the credits. And if I haven’t convinced to skip this movie, make sure you stay until the end of the credits for a short bonus scene.

I watched a movie tonight called The Future We Will Create. It was made in 2006 about the TED Conference in California. TED = Technology Entertainment Design. TED is the kind of event where the creators of Google meet Bono and change the world. The content of TED can now be seen online at ted.com. The ideas in the TED videos create the kind of experience that makes you believe that the solutions are not all that complicated after all. That they are within reach. The innovations that will take place in the next decade could be the most exciting of a lifetime. That is the kind of feeling you get from TED. BTW, if you have Netflix, the movie is available to Watch Instantly. If you are a fan of Alias or Lost or movies in general, watch the TED video of J.J. Abrams at ted.com.

What was all the fuss about? This movie made many top ten lists and had lots of Oscar buzz, but I do not agree. The parents take a vacation to Morocco to be alone(while riding a tour bus?) following the death of their baby from SIDS. They leave their other two children in San Diego with their illegal immigrant nanny, and of course, nothing goes well for any of them. It seems that the goal of the movie was to include as many stressful psychological situations as possible into two hours and twenty minutes. We see several families connected in a six degrees of separation way, and then they time slip some of the situations to compound the stress that all of these people are going through. If you need more stress in your life, then watch this movie. I think this film was completely unnecessary.

If you liked Saving Private Ryan, you will like Flags of Our Fathers. The battle scenes on the island made me wonder how anyone came home alive from this place. Lots of bullets whizzing through the air, and more than enough blood and gore to remind us what war is really like. The back story about the raising of the flag provides an occasional breather from the intensity of the gun battles. I need to read more about this movie to understand how much of the story was based on fact. The main storyline follows the soldiers who raised the flag on Iwo Jima and were immortalized in one of the most famous war time photographs. If you can sit and watch this one with your teenager, it might help them appreciate what their grandparents or great-grandparents lived through. We have lost the widespread patriotism and will to sacrifice that defines this war time generation.

I watched this movie for the second time last night. It is an amazing view into the life of a nomadic Mongolian family. The events occur over a few days, and as the movie starts, it has a documentary feel. A very subtle story unfolds as one of the children brings home a stray dog. The family has a great appreciation for the land they live upon, and the oldest child, who can be no more than six or seven, bears a great amount of responsibility for her age. This is one you can watch with the kids. Some audience members may want to cover their eyes as the father skins a sheep that was killed by wolves, but there are no violent scenes or offensive topics. The scattered dialogue is in Mongolian with subtitles. The personalities of the children jump through the screen. The closest comparison I can make to a wide release movie would be Whale Rider. When this movie ends, you will be glad you watched it.