Disney-​Pixar will in a couple of months release an action adven­ture movie called Up, to be pre­cise: On May 29th the adven­ture of Carl Fredrick­sen (Edward Asner) will begin. Carl spent his entire life dream­ing of explor­ing the globe and expe­ri­enc­ing life to it’s fullest.

But at age 78, life seems to have passed him by, until a twist of fate (and a per­sis­tent 8-year old Wilder­ness Explorer named Rus­sell (Jordan Nagai) gives him a new lease on life.

Up takes audi­ences on a thrilling jour­ney where unlikely pair encounter wild ter­rain, unex­pected vil­lains and jungle creatures.

Under­world: Rise of the Lycans (due in 2009) is a pre­quel to Under­world (2003) and Under­world: Evo­lu­tion (2006). The pre­quel story is about the impos­si­ble secret love of Viktor’s daugh­ter, Sonja (played by Rhona Mitra), a Death Dealer and a Lycan­thrope (were­wolf) called Lucian (played by Michael Sheen). It’s a centuries-​old blood feud between the aris­to­cratic vam­pires and their one­time slaves, the Lycans. In the Dark Ages, a young Lycan named Lucian emerges as a pow­er­ful leader who ral­lies the were­wolves to rise up against Viktor (played by Bill Nighy), the cruel vam­pire king who has enslaved them. Later Lucian is joined by his secret lover (Sonja), in his battle against the Death Dealer army and his strug­gle for Lycan freedom.

iTunes (Music) (Games) (Movies) Store hence the name! iTunes already left it’s origin a long time ago. Apple should work out some­thing (iMedia Store or what­ever). iTunes is a strong brand, but it doesn’t cover it’s orig­i­nal propo­si­tion any­more! Apple lost the Com­puter in it’s name to state: more then just com­put­ers. The iTunes brand has to be updated! It’s an online store where the con­sumer can buy music, games, movies, audio­books etc. not just music! If I’ve under­stood cor­rectly Apple’s is going to offer soft­ware in it’s line-​up. The iPhone/iPod Touch are the first to receive it’s apps through iTunes.

Online ser­vices are the next big evo­lu­tion­ary thing after Web 2.0. You already see some com­pa­nies making the shift, like Adobe with it’s Adobe Pho­to­shop Online (PSX), Adobe even branded the Pho­to­shop line with a new very much dis­cussed (Web 2.0 Aquaish) logo. Google is also exper­i­ment­ing with online apps (Cal­en­dar, Docs, Talk etc.) and Apple already has it’s .Mac ser­vices for years (thanks to WebOb­jects). I think and pre­dict that a lot of com­pa­nies will offer these kind of ser­vices in the future and see a tighter inte­gra­tion between web-​based appli­ca­tions and desktop-​based appli­ca­tions, maybe even elim­i­nat­ing their desk­top cousins and trans­form into a sub­scrip­tion based model.

The Show­down between Blu-​ray Disc (BD) and HD-​DVD is prob­a­bly over. Warner Broth­ers announced that they would be moving their titles from HD-​DVD to the Blu-​ray format. Many have sug­gested that this marks the end of the next gen­er­a­tion DVD battle, though two major stu­dios con­tinue to have exclu­sive HD-​DVD dis­tri­b­u­tion deals in place.
Warner Brother’s switch, places the major­ity of movie releases on Blu-​Ray.
Even before this new mar­ket­share advan­tage, Blu-​ray titles out­sold HD-​DVD offer­ings as much as 2 to 1, and had even been chosen for exclu­sive dis­tri­b­u­tion by Block­buster.
This is also a seri­ous jaw­breaker for de VC-1 format (sorry, Bill), BD which includes both AVC and VC-1 favors AVC. AVC (MPEG-4 Part 10 or MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding) is from a tech­ni­cal point of view a supe­rior format.
Apple has been a member of the Blu-​ray consortium’s Board of Direc­tors since March 2005, but has not pub­licly announced their Blu-​ray plans. Let’s hope Apple will offi­cially launch Blu-​ray sup­port at Mac­world San Fran­cisco 2008.
Update 05-01-2008: It is now clear that New Line (Owned by Warner Bros.) will also drop HD-​DVD in favor of Blu-​ray. The announce­ment comes on a day that can only be described as a night­mare for the HD-​DVD camp.Rumor 08-01-2008: Para­mount Pic­tures is poised to drop its sup­port of HD-​DVD in favor of Sony’s Blu-​ray format, land­ing a deci­sive blow to the Toshiba-​backed next-​generation DVD format and all but assur­ing Blu-ray’s role as the future stan­dard for all high-​definition dig­i­tal video discs.

Tim Burton: Corpse Bride (2005), Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­tory (2005) directed and pro­duced a new movie called: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street a musi­cal thriller based on the hit Broad­way musi­cal which tells the infa­mous story of Ben­jamin Barker (Johnny Depp: Pirates of the Caribbean 1/2/3 and Once Upon a Time in Mexico), a.k.a Sweeney Todd, who sets up a barber shop down in London which is the basis for a sin­is­ter part­ner­ship with his fellow tenant, Mrs. Lovett. Alan Rick­man plays the twisted Judge Turpin, we all know Alan from movies like: Per­fume: The Story of a Mur­derer (2006), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Die Hard (1988)

Apple has just released (on their trailer web­site) the second WALL•E trailer. This trailer reveals more detail on the movie and Luxo + WALL•E are also part of this one. I think we have an other winner on our hand…

A friend at work said I should watch this TV serie called Dexter. My first reac­tion was Dexter’s Lab­o­ra­tory? Dexter is an Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion drama series based on the novel Darkly Dream­ing Dexter by Jeff Lind­say and adapted for tele­vi­sion by Emmy Award-​winning screen­writer James Manos, Jr. The show pre­miered on Octo­ber 1, 2006 and has since enjoyed wide crit­i­cal acclaim. Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) plays the char­ac­ter of Dexter Morgan, a Miami-​based serial killer who works for the Miami Metro Police Depart­ment as a blood spat­ter ana­lyst. Inter­est­ing twist ay

I don’t watch TV reg­u­larly but he pointed me to some good stuff (thanks Rodi): like Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion with David Duchovny (X-Files), who plays Hank Moody, a trou­bled nov­el­ist whose move to Los Ange­les and has prob­lems with his job and a com­pli­cated rela­tion­ship with his ex-​girlfriend Karen (Natascha McEl­hone) and daugh­ter Becca (Madeleine Martin). I love these series so much, I watch almost every day an episode on my iPod Touch.