.::REALITYRECALL::.

There is no other way to put it. The summer of 2009 was probably one of most disappointing summer movie seasons I can remember in a long time. Of the 47 or so movies that came into wide release this season, I can almost count on one hand the number of films I really enjoyed. At the beginning of the summer I predicted it would be about 14. Soooo wrongggggg.

So as we come to a close, I thought I’d take some time to wrap up the summer of 2009 highlighting what I found to be:

1) THE BEST MOVIES OF THE SUMMER

2) THE MOST DISAPPOINTING MOVIES OF THE SUMMER

3) THE “NOT GOOD BUT NOT NEARLY AS BAD AS YOU THOUGHT OR HEARD” MOVIES OF THE SUMMER

and finally

4) THE WORST MOVIES OF THE SUMMER

So with that little intro out of the way… let’s proceed with this postmortem shall we:

THE BEST MOVIES OF THE SUMMER

#1 – UP Hands down, no questions asked, easily and by far and away the very best movie of the summer of 2009 and of 2009 in general

#2 – JULIE & JULIA Trust me, I’m as shocked as you are, but aside from “UP” there wasn’t another film this summer that so entertained me as this one. Meryl Streep MUST get nominated for an Oscar for this film. Touching, funny as hell and amazingly charming all at the same time. Fantastic story.

#3 – STAR TREK Many thought it couldn’t be done (including me to be honest), but somehow they found a away to faithfully re-invent Star Trek in a way that was both nostalgic and fresh all at the same time. Such a great job. Can’t wait for the next one!

#4 – DISTRICT 9 Highlighted by a brilliant break out performance by Sharlto Copley and some of the summer’s best visual effects and action with dramatic tension, District 9 becomes the sleeper hit of the summer.

#5 – THE HANGOVER What initially looked like just another throw away comedy, The Hangover had us in stiches and finally may have given Bradley Cooper a shot at being a legit leading man in Hollywood.

THE MOST DISAPPOINTING MOVIES OF THE SUMMER (not the worst, but high hopes leading to bad films)

#1 – TRANSFORMERS 2 I’m still angry about this. The first Transformers is one of my all time favorite summer popcorn flicks… this one… just shit all over me. From the new Jar Jar twins, the leg humping robot, Devastator who didn’t actually fight anyone and just a general lack of doing anything right. If it wasn’t for some of the mind blowing effects and frantic action, I’d put this on the worst list instead of this one.

#2 – FUNNY PEOPLE Before it opened I actually thought this film might have a chance at some Oscar hype. Not a chance. A dry and confused movie that had no sense of identity or direction populated with highly unlikeable characters who were unable to generate any sense of sympathy. Yes, it pretty accurately depicted the lifestyle of many comedians… but that doesn’t make it good. You can accurately depict the life of a parking attendant, doesn’t mean I want to pay to see it

#3 – TERMINATOR: SALVATION When we heard Batman decided to join the cast a wave of optimism flooded over the internet about this film. Trailers looked half decent too. Movie didn’t.

THE MOST “NOT AS BAD AS YOU HEARD OR THOUGHT IT WOULD BE” MOVIES OF THE SUMMER (finding entertainment value where you didn’t think any would exist)

#1 – THE UGLY TRUTH Not going to say this is a great movie or anything silly like that, but I found myself laghing my ass off most of this film and walked out entertained. Much more than I was expecting. Line of the movie: “You wanna know the secret to finding Mr. Right ladies? It’s called a stair master”. So wrong… yet so funny.

#2 – GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST Not even going to say this was a “good” movie… because it wasn’t overall. However, considering how horrible it looked, gotta say it had value. Was pleasantly surprised by how it turned out

THE WORST MOVIE OF THE SUMMER

THE LAND OF THE LOST Worse than Year One. Worse than The Proposal. Worse than Bandslam. I swear it’s like they didn’t even try. Reconfirming yet again that Danny McBride is the most overrated actor in comedy today.

So there is my little postmortem on the summer that was 2009. Such a let down. We can only cross our collective fingers and hope for better things next summer. Hope is a wonderful thing… till it punches you in the balls.

Pop star Michael Jackson’s death has been ruled a homicide by the L.A. County coroner.

Today the highly anticipated Batman Arkham Asylum game has been awarded a Guinness World Record for the Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever.

This one caught us by surprise, but it comes from a source that has always been 100% reliable: Not only Apple may be working on a 10-inch tablet, but also in 13″ and 15″ models, one running Mac OS X.

This source claims that the two touchscreen prototypes—made of aluminum, but on the shape of big iPhones—were in a factory in Shenzuen, China. One of them "was running Mac OS X 10.5." When I asked, the source didn't know if these were built for demonstration purposes, or if they were preproduction units. The company has a tight relation with Apple but "it's not FoxConn."

As I said before, with everyone focused on the 10-inch tablet with iPhone OS, this sighting is quite surprising. It is possible that Apple may be just exploring other form factors, and these two models may or may not end being future products.

According to rumors, Apple is in the final stages of developing the Apple wet dream, a 10-inch tablet allegedly running the iPhone OS. Several sources claim that Steve Jobs—back in Campus—is now personally driving this project. However, until now there has been no reliable rumors on 13″ and 15″ models, much less one running full Mac OS X.

This shouldn’t really come as too much of a surprise, but anyone wanting to enjoy Twitter and Facebook on Xbox Live will have to pony up for Gold member subscription, the same premium prerequisite currently needed for Netflix Instant Watch and pretty much all online gaming. Silver membership will be given a “free trial,” but exactly what limitations that entails, or if they’ll be an option to “upgrade” to the full version, is anyone’s guess.

Filed under: Gaming

Twitter and Facebook for Xbox Live will be free for Gold members, ‘free trial’ for Silver originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Dutch national museum said Thursday that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by U.S. astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood.

Facebook has agreed to make changes to better protect users’ personal information on the social networking site and comply with Canadian privacy laws within one year, Canada’s privacy commissioner said Thursday.

While most of us don’t frequently find ourselves needing to translate our documents to various languages on-the-fly, Google Docs just announced a new feature that’ll be great for those who do: The service now automatically translates docs in 42 different languages with a few mouse clicks.

Translating docs is a breeze: Just hit up the Tools menu, select Translate document, then choose the language you want to translate to. Docs will open the translated document in a new window, then offer to replace the original document with the translation or copy the translation to a new document. It’s probably not for everyone, but it’s a nice feature, nonetheless, and yet another example of Google’s continued march toward integrating their various services.

Mary Jo Foley is reporting that Microsoft is planning a Windows 7 launch party on October 22 in New York City. Microsoft has been extremely secretive about the launch details but according to Foley company officials have begun sending out invites to bloggers and the media: "We also wanted to let you know that you will be receiving an invitation to a Microsoft event in NYC on October 22nd to celebrate the availability and launch of Windows 7. With Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speaking and exciting new hardware from our partners, we're looking forward to sharing Windows 7 with the world." With Steve Ballmer looking after the launch it's bound to be a good show.

Read full story…

Owners of Sony eReaders, users of the Stanza iPhone book reader, and anyone else with a device that reads the ePub format can now grab more than 1 million works from Google Books’ archives. The books may contain some mistakes, as most were simply scanned and run through an OCR image-to-text process, but it’s free content in a free format, which is hard to beat. [Inside Google Books via ReadWriteWeb]

Royal Bank of Canada beat analysts’ expectations by posting a 24 per cent surge in third-quarter profits on Thursday.

Starting Friday, August 28th (tomorrow) the price of the Xbox 360 Elite is getting a one-hundred dollar price cut in the United States.

Here is how the new pricing breaks down:

Xbox 360 Elite	$399.99	now $299.99*
Xbox 360 Pro	$299.99	now $249.99*  While supplies last
Xbox 360 Arcade	$199.99	$199.99*
		* (ERP) Estimated retail price in the United States

Betcha didn’t see that coming…did you ?

 

In addition, we’ve rolled out some new packaging, that some of you may have already spotted in your local stores. I’ve uploaded pictures of the new packing images to my Flickr account you can take a peak.

 

Epson has been fined $26 million for its part in a price-fixing scam, says the US Justice Department.

One person and two companies are the first telemarketers to be fined by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for violating its do-not-call list.