My goodness, it has already been two months since my last post. A quick update to let you know that things are going well, just busy as usual. I recently took a week off work so that we would work on a home renovation project: redo the basement. We got rid of the old industrial carpet that was on the floor and put in some laminate floor. Andree also patched up the walls and did some painting with help from our friend Jean and Andree’s father Mario.

On the entertainment front, we managed to catch The Incredible Hulk on the big screen and really enjoyed it. I was hoping to write a little review for it but have not had a chance yet. It was extremely well written and Edward Norton is just perfect for the role. The action was good from beginning to end and it was extremely interesting to see Tony Stark show up at the end and mention that they are putting a team together.

After a bit of digging online, I saw that an Avengers movie is announced for 2011 with Captain America, Iron Man and Hulk. It’s far, but hopefully it will be worth the wait.

I was taken by surprise yesterday when I stumbled upon the trailer for a new full-length feature Star Wars film that is set to come out in August. Completely done in computer animation, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, will be set between episodes 2 and 3 and will tell us more about the devastating Clone Wars. The movie will be followed by a regular TV series on the cartoon network this fall. I will go back to drooling now.

A few weeks back, my wife and I just tried out a new babysitter and went out to enjoy the movies. Of course, we already had my sister and mother-in-law look after the kids after they were in bed, but this was the first time that it was someone outside the family. Through the scarce listings, we settled on Iron Man. While the preview looked very cheesy, we decided to give it a chance and were really not disappointed.

Check out my review of the movie.

Now that we have a new option for babysitting, we’ll be able to enjoy many of the other comic book movies that are coming out this summer (The Dark Knight, Hellboy II, Incredible Hulk).

I mentioned a few weeks ago that things looked pretty grim for the HD-DVD camp as Warner decided that it would soon only be releasing its movie in Sony’s Blu Ray format. Well, as of two weeks ago, Toshiba has announced that they were officially dropping out of the High-Definition format war and stopping to produce all HD-DVD players and support for the format. There will still be a few HD-DVD discs coming out over the next few months, but that will be the end of this adventure.

Now, as mentioned before, that does not necessarily mean that you can just run out and pick up a Blu Ray player since most stand-alone players produced today are not going to be compatible with the next version of the BD format, which is usually referred to as BD Profile 2.0. The one player that is a safe bet is the Playstation 3 since it will be upgradeable through a firmware update to support Profile 2.0. There are also starting to be a few stand-alone players that are promoting the fact that you will be able to upgrade them to the new version.

Personally, I am leaning more towards a standalone player than a PS3 for one main reason, the lack of an infrared port on the unit. Its controllers and optional remote control only work via Bluetooth so it is not possible to control it with a universal control such as the Harmony 550 that I have. For a unit that is supposed to become the center of a home theater system, that is quite a way to be closed to other controls and fit inside of a larger environment. I have read a few things about a third-party controller that comes with a USB component that you can jack into the PS3 to get an IR port but I am not sure how well these work. If you’ve tried one of these devices before, drop me a note and let me know how useful they are.

I just saw a preview for the next Steve Carrell (The Office, 40 year-old virgin) flick, which is a remake of the classic Get Smart TV series, originally created by Mel Brooks. It’s basically about the adventures of a goofy secret agent trying to save the world. Here’s the trailer so you can see what it’s all about.

The adventures of Pollux the little dog and all of his friends is coming to the big screen in a computer-animated movie that looks like a lot of fun.

I loved watching the old animated shows starring this dog and it will be a pleasure to see him again in full CG glory and introduce our little daughter to this cute character Check out the movie site for a trailer and many other goodies.

This title will sound familiar to all who enjoyed the Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2 movies in the ’80s. I recently reviewed both movies for UnePorte.net. Seeing these movies again renewed my love for this universe and I found out that a mini-series of Ghostbusters comic books was printed last year. I’ve ordered a copy of the new paperback collection that has just been released and will let you know how it fares when I read through it. The art in the book looks great and the story and dialog seem to keep the spirit of the characters from the movie.

Some people have way too much time on their hands… Grocery Clone Wars, produced in association with the Organic Trade Association, is essentially a spoof of Star Wars made with vegetable and fruit characters. Luke become Cuc Skywalker (a cucumber), and Chewbacca become Chewbrocolli, among others. Some of it is pretty funny while other parts are a bit more boring since they talk about the goodness of organic produce against other types of cultures. An interesting watch that runs for a bit less than ten minutes.

After giving us the excellent Nightmare before Christmas all done in Claymation, Tim Burton goes back to animation with a computer-animated tale using a similar visual style. Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride will star Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, two Burton favorites.

A trailer has been released for the new computer-animated movie from Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age) called Robots, which I talked about a while back. As the title implies, this is a movie that talks about a world made up of robots. The trailer looks really good.

I also just saw the trailer for Batman Begins. I was a bit skeptical about this one after the many previous movies in the franchise that did not live up to the comic. However, this one seems to have hit very well on the dark side of the character.