Surprisingly, I’ve never actually seen either “Toy Story” movie before. And oddly enough, I actually do have both movies on DVD. I picked up the first Toy Story movie when it was reissued as a 10th Anniversary edition, and the second one either at the same time or shortly thereafter. But I’m guessing it might have been a buy both get a better discount kind of deal. But both DVDs are still shrinkwrapped to this day. I know the first one at least had to have been good based on the fact it spawned a sequel, but it also launched Pixar into the mainstream and I have enjoyed several of their movies over the years.

I don’t know why this seems to be true for me, but I never seem to find the Pixar movie trailers interesting enough to ever want to see the movies when they happen to be playing on the big screen. I had never seen any of them on the big screen, not “Monster’s Inc.”, not “Finding Nemo”, not “Cars” not even “Wall-E” or this year’s “Up” and yet, ultimately I’ve been told how great and wonderful they are, and I’ve checked them out on DVD and ended up buying them. I will probably even get “Up” when it comes out next month. All of the ones I’ve seen ended up being extremely good, so I just don’t quite get why their trailers strike me as lame and I don’t see them in the theaters.

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I went into seeing “Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen” with fairly low expectations as it’s not been reviewed very positively by critics and a few of the people I follow on Twitter didn’t have the best of things to say about it. But I wanted to see it anyway and so I went with a couple of people from work today and I thought it was just okay.

The movie itself had a reasonably decent plot line, and the stuff involving the parents of the main character, Sam, were fantastic comedy bits. As with most Michael Bay movies, it was loaded with lots of explosions and as one friend on Twitter put it, a great recruiting video for the Armed Forces. The explosions were definitely bigger and better than the first movie. One of the nice touches I liked was the return of the same voice from the animated Transformers cartoon for the character of Soundwave. Fortunately, they didn’t make Soundwave a tape deck, but rather a satellite in space who taps into a US Military satellite and relays information to the Decepticons below. I think from the animated show the voices of Optimus Prime and Soundwave definitely are key to those of use nostalgic enough to remember the original cartoons back when they were at their peak of popularity.

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When I got my teeth cleaned during my most recent bi-annual visit to my dentist, my hygienist and dentist decided that a couple of areas on my teeth warranted some additional protection to prevent them from becoming problems. Apparently what’s occurring is that the enamel has weakened in those spots and to prevent them from becoming full blown cavities, I was prescribed some 3M ESPE Clinpro 5000 Toothpaste, which apparently has three times the amount of fluoride found in store bought toothpaste as well as additional calcium and phosphate which allows for the teeth to remineralize and become stronger.

Personally, I think that sounds like something that happens to the dilithium crystals on the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek as opposed to what can happen from this prescription toothpaste. In any case, I’m going to use it because I didn’t enjoy the process of having the few cavities I do have filled. Granted, those were all preventable on my part, I just never took the flossing requests of my dentists seriously until I finally had some cavities, all of which in the gaps between the teeth where floss can reach but a toothbrush can’t.

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I’ve been hesitant to write a review for the movie because it was just an absolutely amazing experience. I saw the film on the night of its release in IMAX and in the week since seeing it for the first time, saw it two additional times. And to be honest, I might go back and see it again, at least one more time. It was just brilliant. Star Trek is officially revived.

J.J. Abrams, who directed and produced the film, has made it quite clear that he was not a Star Trek fan, but wisely decided to surround himself with people who were. Additionally in developing the characters of the Original cast characters, Abrams conducted interviews with the surviving cast members to get their insights into their portrayals of the characters so that it could help guide how the new cast members would fill those roles. Tapping Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, two long time fans, to write the screenplay, the script brilliantly is laced with loving references to the Original Series as well as previous films that provide the ultimate homage to all that has come before. It also is a welcome tribute to the long time fans because it’s like an acknowledgment that the script is in the hands of people who want to do justice to the legacy of Star Trek without trampling over it.

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Best Buy stores are offering an incredible deal this week for Star Trek fans who want a great deal picking up the new Star Trek Movies collection on Blu-Ray if they also pick up a brand new Samsung Blu-Ray Player.

As the Star Trek Movies collection got released this week in two special box sets, the first of which is the set of all six Original Cast movies from “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” through “Star Trek Vi: The Undiscovered Country” and includes an exclusive seventh disc “The Captain’s Summit” which features a seventy minute round table discussion between William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, and hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. The second set is entitled “The Star Trek Trilogy” which contains the movies, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” “Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, ” and “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” which never officially were a trilogy, but their plot lines continue each other. The Blu-Ray sets, both are on sale individually for $89.99 the six movie set and $39.99 for the trilogy set.

However, the best deal comes when you add on a Samsung Blu-Ray player. When paired with a Samsung Blu-Ray player this week, the sale price for the Star Trek Blu Ray box sets drop to $19.99 for the six movie collection, and $4.99 for the trilogy. And the low end and high end models of Samsung Blu-Ray players are also discounted by $50 each. So quite literally, it’s possible to get Samsung’s BD-P1600 model for $249.99 with the first six Star Trek movies for $19.99 more, and even with sales tax added, you’re still walking out of the store getting a discount on the player and getting the Star Trek movies for free. It’s less than $300 total for the player and the six movies. What a deal.

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You know movies are getting to be expensive when it costs about the same to see it on screen as it does to buy the DVD when it comes out. Talk about fleecing the hell out of consumers. In this case, it’s the insanely expensive ticket to see “Star Trek” this Thursday night on an IMAX screen at the Regal Cinema in Escondido.

I’m hoping the experience will be good because this will be the first mainstream movie I’ve seen in IMAX since “Spider-Man 3″, a couple years ago. At the time it was the premiere feature at the Edwards Cinema in Mira Mesa which was just opening it’s IMAX theatre. Basically it converted one of it’s largest theaters into an IMAX auditorium. And I caught a 6 am showing of the movie (the third screening since the midnight premiere showing) and I was a little underwhelmed by the IMAX experience. It could just be that “Spider-Man 3″ was a not quite the best film, but I do think the auditorium contributed to the experience, as I felt the screen was just not size wise up to par for an IMAX experience. All my previous IMAX experiences have been at theme parks with these giant larger than life screens, and this screen just felt average. Not quite the sensory overload experience I was hoping for.

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I was never much a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or MST3K as it’s known by its fans), because I just didn’t want to suffer through really old movies. However, I loved the concept behind the idea, where basically an additional added commentary or making up some added dialogue to scenes in movies could make for a fun evening. However, for a relatively low budget comedy show that relies on movies to make the effect work, the only way it could be achieved was through licensing very cheap movies, hence the reliance on older than dirt, long forgotten movies no one could give a rats ass about.

The comedy writing team behind Mystery Science Theatre 3000 consisting of Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett, have reformed and now thanks to the Internet, are now no longer limited to shitty old movies with dirt cheap licensing fees. They can now put their attention on big budget Hollywood epics that recently got released on DVD, or really, the types of movies you’re more likely to want to watch anyway.

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I don’t often get fussed about the summer movie season, but this year looks to be loaded with some movies, I actually want to see. Having suffered through a disappointing viewing of “Watchmen” earlier this year, the best thing I could say was three of the movies previewed before the film looked really good. Those films being “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”, “Star Trek”, and “Terminator: Salvation” and today I got to see the first one of this batch of three.

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is the first “prequel” movie of the X-Men movie series to come out of the gate. I’m sure the powers that be at Fox want to explore origin stories for additional characters, and the first one to see release was this one that focuses on arguably the most popular X-Men character. Here Hugh Jackman reprises his role as Wolverine from the X-Men trilogy and it covers his past prior to the first X-Men film. There were a couple of points that seemed inconsistent with “X2: X-Men United” but I still quite enjoyed the movie.

Without giving too much away, there was some gorgeous shots that were supposed to in Canada. I hope that’s where they filmed those shots because they did look like Canadian Rockies, but one never knows anymore. I really enjoyed the movie and think it’s a well done addition to the X-Men line of films. So far of all the comic book genre films, as a whole I think the X-Men series has definitely been one of the best and this film adds to that series wonderfully.

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Amazon.com is having an incredible sale on the First Season Blu-Ray Box set for Star Trek: The Original Series. Amazingly they are offering it before it’s release on April 28th, 2009 for 50% off the list price. I don’t know how long the sale price is going to last, but it’s probably the lowest it’s going to be offered for a while.

The Original Series finally hits Blu-Ray after the failed attempt by Paramount to go HD-DVD exclusive. The previous HD-DVD release of the first season of Star Trek only had the brand new digitally enhanced versions of the show, where all the special effects had been replaced with brilliant new CGI versions. (Think how George Lucas did with the original Star Wars movies, except the Star Trek folks exercised far better restraint on adding extraneous crap to the episodes). The episodes look as if they were made today.

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Like many other Star Trek fans, I am anxiously awaiting the relaunch of Star Trek that is set to happen on May 8th, 2009 with the new film by Director J.J. Abrams. The new filmed version, simply called “Star Trek” with no other subtitle or even a number (it’s the 11th Star Trek film for the record.)

The new film features a band new cast of actors playing younger versions of the Original Series cast. Only Leonard Nimoy from the original cast makes an appearance in the film. My best guess so far is that the story somehow involves some time travel allowing both Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto to play the role of Spock in the same film. Oh course, this is speculation on my part, so please don’t read into it that I have any insider knowledge. For the most part I’ve been avoiding press about it as I really want to enjoy it on the big screen and I may even go see the IMAX version as well.

To get ready for the release of the new film, Paramount in association with IDW Publishing and iVerse Media to create an interactive comic book prequel to the film. The prequel comic sets out to bridge the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” universe we last saw in the film “Star Trek: Nemesis” with the new “Star Trek” film by introducing the character of “Nero” who appears to be the Romulan antagonist of the new movie played by Eric Bana.

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