Did I read that right? We’re getting full on 1080p action through DISH? No, not exactly, they will only be offering 1080p video on demand movies (pay per view). Will this cost extra? It doesn’t say if the 1080p pay per view movies will cost more than the standard definition like Xbox and the PS3 are currently doing through their networks.

All DISH Network HD customers have been Turbo-charged! In the early morning hours of 8/1 DISH Network reinvented high definition! Current HD customers had the next generation of HD downloaded right to their receivers!

It sucks that this is for pay per view and not for all of their HD channels. Sort of a non announcement. Turbo … what?

Add to that today seeing the release of Starship Troopers 1-3 trilogy Blu-ray (2008) for $56.95 at Amazon or $59.99 at Best Buy (where we bought it). Oh yeah it’s a beautiful day to be at 1080p!

The trilogy offers the first Starship Troopers movie (a classic!), Starship Troopers 2 which was kind of lame and the newest straight to DVD Starship Troopers 3 Marauders. This is BD-live enabled which means extras and goodies through a separate menu including the ability to "join the fight" against the bugs by uploading a headshot of yourself. Just click on the "BD-Live" option in the main menu screen and wait for BD-live to load.

Expect to be staring at this for an awkward amount of time, even if you have a fast connection:

Waiting. Man, why does the loading take so long for BD-live? And it’s every me too. I have a PS3, use the hard drive already, cache some content, buy some faster servers, whatever it takes. Once you get into the BD-live menu, you still need to register for an account before you can "join the fight." That only takes a little bit of time, but then you are sent to your email to find a link to upload a head shot.

It’s a clumsy, laborious process. Will save you some hassle, make sure your headshot is 640×480, anything larger or that much smaller and your face will not fit in the matte. Once you’ve done that you can watch scenes with your face super-imposed on a Starship Trooper solider. Would have preferred a networked game blasting bugs with a fellow Starship Troopers fan.

As for the Starship Troopers 3 movie? It’s better than the second movie, but not as good as the first. Good to see Casper Van Dien back but I miss Denise Richards. Her absence isn’t explained in the movie at all. The Marauders part doesn’t come until the last act of the film and feels kind of Robocop to me. Grade: C

This morning skeptical, but curious, I told our recently graduated son who has been working with me in our online business: “Hey, you want to go see this really quick?” At first he wasn’t that interested, but then he read some of the reviews and changed his mind.

The single line synopsis of this movie is irresistible:

What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off?

Off to the 10:45am PST showing we went, intrigued.

There was a deaf person with her family in front of us buying tickets who were having some animated sign language about the movie. We ended up sitting behind the family during the movie. About 30 minutes into the movie I realized just how great a movie this is for the hearing impaired. How many movies are made that don’t need subtitles?

The first 40 minutes of the movie have almost no dialogue and the final hour have very little dialogue. WALL-E is one of those extremely rare films that don’t need much in the way of dialogue or subtitles and yet can not only sustain interest but entertain. While we’re on the “how many movies …” kick, how many movies can get laughs out of sporks?

Sporks!

WALL-E is Pixar’s latest compelling animated tale. A science fiction love story about a final remaining trash compactor named WALL-E operating on a trash-ridden future version of earth somewhere around the year 2800. Where did all the people go? And what happened to humanity? WALL-E offers a bleak, and somewhat believable premonition of mankind 800+ years from now. Without spoiling the movie, I’ll just say we haven’t become the most sedentiary beings. You’d think mankind would learn not to leave too much control to robots. This is a well-trodden path many science fiction writers have been writing about and warning us against for the last 75+ years.

The only company WALL-E has on earth is a cockroach (who doesn’t speak thankfully) until a probe droid named Eve (”Eva”) is sent back to earth. WALL-E who spends his time making cubes out of garbage and picking out the good stuff like old VHS tapes (what, no DVD?), watching movies through an old iPod, and popping bubble wrap, takes an immediate liking to Eva to stave off his loneliness.

Can’t say I ever imagined liking a romantic story involving a trash compacter but WALL-E fires on all cylinders. This is the best animated movie I’ve seen in a long time. No animated movies come to mind to compare it to, which is a high compliment. I’ve written hundreds of reviews and never given an A+ to anything. I have no problem giving WALL-E the first A+. It’s that good. It’s family friendly too. The 98% Rotten Tomatoes reviewers are giving it is well-deserved. My son gave it a B-, but his only other favorite animated movie was Toy Story. WALL-E is better than Toy Story. Get out of the heat and into the air conditioning. Take your loved ones to see this film. Grade: A+.

Theater atmosphere was crowded but unceremoniously quiet. One person clapped at the end of Crystal Skull and throughout the flick there were no cheers and only a scattered few chuckles.

The crowd seemed exhausted.

My bottom hurt in the seat which I had to keep switching to get comfortable. The popcorn even tasted old. This sums up the experience which was the opposite from Iron Man (go see that one, if you can, it’s great), which we saw a few weeks back.

Crystal Skull wasn’t terrible, I mean come on, it’s Indiana Jones, but when compared to Temple of Doom, the weakest movie in the franchise to date, it measured up too few times to matter.

The plodding plot
The plot takes place in 1957 and Indy (Harrison Ford) is sporting gray. It’s not long before the KGB is up to no good and thrusting him into a warehouse in Nevada in search of a crate of great value at gunpoint. He’ll escape, of course, but in a more lethargic way than the past. You’ll wonder at times during the fight scenes if Indy is mired in quicksand (and unsurprisingly, there is a quicksand scene later!).

Following a totally unbelievable escape from danger (lead-lined?! BS), Indy is met by a biker with a switchblade fetish in a coffee shop. I couldn’t decide if this was suppose to be the passing of the torch from old to young, but Shia LaBeouf is no young Harrison Ford. I found LaBeouf whiny, unpolished and forcing the overplayed action too much. No thanks if the series continues without Harrison Ford. Spielberg has already said there is no Indiana Jones without Ford, but I’m not buying it. I think Indiana Jones will turn out like James Bond and the franchise will continue well beyond Spielberg’s and my death.

I’ll try and stop with the plot description there. Trust me, you’ll start yawning too if I go much further.

Spielberg and company should have kept the science fiction out of Indiana Jones. The Nazi backdrop worked better than the Crystal Skull using the late 50s. The ending left me shaking my head, not cheering. While exiting the theater a guy in front of me was griping about the science fiction elements too. His friend replied: “hey, it’s Indiana Jones, you expected realism?” If you’ve read the Tommyknockers by Stephen King, or heck many of Spielberg’s past sci-fi flicks, key parts of Crystal Skull feel way too familiar.

Cliche.

That is arguably Crystal Skull’s greatest flaw: the story feeds off other stories we’ve seen before — not in an Indy film, no — but stories that no longer fascinate the way they did the first few times around. We paid $19 for two tickets and $19 for lousy popcorn and soda. There were a few bright spots in Crystal Skull, particularly the romantic interplay and paying some respect to past Indy’s, but it all begged for a power nap. I’d recommend waiting for Blu-ray/DVD. It’s better than the average blockbuster and will make plenty of money, but it’s not the Indy film we’ve been waiting all this time see.

I would have liked the eye candy better in 3D on IMAX, if that is an option, go for it. Worst of the four Indy flicks to date, but still somewhat respectable. It isn’t the abortion that Lucas did with Phantom Menance, and is more in line with Revenge of the Sith vs. the first three Star Wars films. I’m left wondering if the Spielberg + Lucas magic is gone? Hope not. Grade: C+

The 3 free song downloads sung by Brian Johnson for Totally Baked movie: Chain Gang, Chase The Tail and Who Phoned The Law sound very AC/DC-like and aren’t bad. Give them a download, queue and listen to ‘em.

Speaking of AC/DC, they just finished recording their newest studio album which is due out at the end of 2008. It’s been 8 years since their last studio album Stiff Upper Lip. There are some rumors that this album might be accompanied with a farewell tour. Hope this isn’t true.

The downloadable content will range from bonus movie scenes and trailers to "interactive movie-based games."

"With Blu-ray established as the high-definition optical disc standard, more consumers are ready to jump in and take advantage of everything the format offers," said Scott A. Steinberg, vice president of product marketing, in a statement.

Interactive movie-based games? Like Dragon’s Lair? Or how about a version of the upcoming Indiana Jones where you control Indy through perilous situations? One wrong move and Indy’s toast. I’m just dreaming aloud here, so don’t get too excited.

While this might work with action movies, it won’t work well with romance flicks. Or maybe it would? Oh boy, I better stop the brain before I get into trouble.

"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation

The writing was already on the wall with Wal-mart and Netflix saying they would only carry Blu-ray following the CES 2008 bombshell that Warner Bros. was going only Blu-ray. Now watch those PS3 sales soar even further.

Where does this leave the Xbox 360 which has the HD DVD as an add-on drive? Making a standalone Blu-ray Xbox 360 drive, possibly available in a few months, if you believe what alleged insiders told SmartHouse:

Insiders at Microsoft in the USA have told SmartHouse that Microsoft has already configured a standalone Blu-ray player that can be connected into an Xbox 360 and that subject to internal marketing and sales approvals the model could be on sale within 3 months

There is further speculation that Microsoft is working on a newer version of an Xbox 360 with a built-in Blu-ray drive, but I don’t think that will happen, at least in 2008. Microsoft would be wiser to continue to promote their Xbox Live Marketplace as a viable next generation movie download platform. They have the best online gaming and video area but Sony has HOME up its sleeve.

One big problem that Microsoft has is that their downloads are all wrapped in a DRM scheme on a proprietary drive while the PS3 supports using any hard drive. You can easily copy downloaded content on the PS3 to an external drive and can even run Linux. The Xbox 360 even with their 120GB hard drive is outclassed by the PS3 storage architecture.

Back to HD DVD, set your bargain bin sensor on high alert. In particular, watch for goodies like the Star Trek Original Series HD DVD sets. Star Trek Original Series Season One HD DVD (affiliate) I’ve seen the first season at the local Fred Meyer and hope the other two will be released. It’s possible all three will be available on Blu-ray.

More TV Seasons, please
I’ve been saying for some time that one major weakness in both nextgen HD formats is the lack of TV seasons.  A few TV seasons are trickling in on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, but not nearly the amount that are available in DVD. When/if this changes, Blu-ray might have a fighting chance for a little while staving off downloads.

It remains important when looking at the future of movies to remember collectors. People like buying and owning physical media. You can touch, display, there’s artwork and inserts and creative packaging. You can’t do any of that with downloadable media.

Who knows how good Indiana Jones Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be that comes out on May 22? I’ve been fooled by seductive trailers before (Dragon Wars anyone?). May is shaping up as a potentially great movie month with Iron Man in theaters everywhere May 2.

I can hardly wait to see how good both these May movies look in HD. What movies are you looking forward to, if any?

It doesn’t take long for Rambo to get in the middle of a civil war and this time he goes on a machete wielding tear a la Jason Vorhees. I’m smelling sequel at the end and cinemablend stokes the fire:

For Rambo V, the rumor is that Stallone wants to use an alternative script he wrote for Rambo IV, which involves Rambo’s daughter being kidnapped by cult leaders. Until there’s some kind of official announcement though, consider it conjecture.

Even though the reviews aren’t that good, if Rambo makes enough money at the box office, there will be more. I don’t think Stallone is ready to hang up his weapons, although the series is in danger of becoming a farce, similar to the neverending stream of horror flicks.

Rambo (#4) official website: http://movies.break.com/rambo/. I’d wait for the DVD unless you’re a big Rambo fan. And if you’re squeamish, don’t see this at all. No spoilers but there is extreme gore in this film. I thought I’d miss Colonel Troutman who is only in voice in the film but didn’t. Here’s how I’d rank the Rambo films to date:

(best) First Blood
Rambo 2
Rambo (#4)
(worst) Rambo 3

Grade: C+

Update 1/28/08 5:10am PST: The Rambo kill chart has a breakdown of the Rambo franchise kill stats.

Last night we signed up (again) for the unlimited Hollywood Video DVD rental plan 3 DVDs out at a time which runs $19.99 for the first 30 days and $29.99/mo. thereafter, but I’m feeling buyer’s remorse after reading Netflix has expanded their streaming option.

With Monday’s change, virtually all Netflix subscribers will be able to stream as many movies and TV shows as they want from a library containing more than 6,000 titles. There will be no additional charge for the unlimited access.

So essentially we paid $3 more + gas and travel time to/from to be able to cycle through the Hollywood Video inventory of movies we haven’t seen. I’m certain the quality of the DVD streaming will be less than watching DVDs, but will it be worth the extra $$? We’ll be canceling at the end of the month and going back to Netflix to try the streaming option.

Netflix move looks intended as a spoiler to Apple’s expected announcement that they will be offering movie rentals for $3.99 a movie at their annual MacWorld event which kicks off today. This pricing is similar to the Xbox Live movie service which our family has enjoyed, renting over a dozen movies. Good quality and convenient. Getting in the car to go back and forth to the video store might be exercise of sorts, but it gets old. That’s why we only do the unlimited Hollywood Video in one month surges once a year or so.

Another downside of Netflix deal is selection. 6,000 titles available for streaming versus 90,000 DVDs. On Xbox Live the selection of movies is even smaller. No idea yet how many movies will be available from Apple. Selection and video streaming quality will ultimately decide how long we stay subscribed to Netflix.

From the photo at the top of this movie you can see our first three movie picks at Hollywood: Epic Movie, Ball’s Fury and Hot Rod. Epic Movie was one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen. Ball’s Fury was medicore, but had some funny parts. Will be watching Hot Rod later today but it won’t be difficult to be better than the other two.

Panasonic, who is responsible for the 150 inch plasma TV at CES shared a concept that sounds similar to that movie scene:

… concept called LifeWall, and something called “You Know Me TV,” which involves having full wall adjustable video screens. This a lot like a concept of full-wall HD screens that Microsoft’s Bill Gates mentioned in his keynote.

Still in search of that “must be there [at CES 2008] to see this” moment. With the cool media advancements of Podtech’s Bloghaus with live video through Mogulus (see mogulus.com/podtech_ces_live), it’s like you are almost in the room talking to the people beating their feet (literally) up and down the show floor.

Update 1/8/08 2:03pm PST: Gizmodo has pictures of the 150-inch TV showing an elephant next to a man. Gives perspective of the size.