PHOTOS OF THE DAY... Yesterday, Scaled Composites’ White Knight II (a.k.a. VMS Eve) and SpaceShipTwo (a.k.a. VSS Enterprise) took off on their very first "captive carry" flight from an airfield in California’s Mojave Desert. This 2-hour, 54-minute flight started what is scheduled to be a year-long series of airborne tests for the private spaceliner. If things go well, SpaceShipTwo will begin suborbital flights into space in 2011...and the vehicle should begin ferrying paying customers 68 miles above Earth later that year, or early 2012.

If I was one of those 300+ lucky SOBs who already shelled out $200,000 to ride onboard the Enterprise, I’d totally be more ecstatic. But I didn't, so I won't. But these vehicles sure are cool.









All images courtesy of Virgin Galactic / Scaled Composites

FOOD FOR THOUGHT... 1.) What would John McCain have done (in terms of the whole health care reform issue that apparently reached a climax last night) if he got elected? 2.) What was up with that whole Michelle Obama arse-kissing fest on yesterday's episode of The Simpsons if she didn't even do her own voice (Angela Bassett supplied the voice of the First Lady)? And 3.) Kogi chicken tacos are good. You’d have to live in Southern California to know what I’m talking about.




PS: I voted for McCain in ’08...so really, what would he have done?

YESTERDAY, I saw the gory action thriller Repo Men (starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker), and I’m still pondering about how I feel about the ending. Was it a neat twist? Or was it totally f**ked up that the audience was watching a friggin’ dream during the entire final half of the movie? This reminds me of that one Family Guy episode where Stewie finally manages to kill Lois...only for us to find out that this was actually happening in a fantasy Stewie had while wearing a pair of virtual reality goggles. And Brian the dog told him afterwards that this plot device was cheating the audience, much like how the ending to the final episode of HBO's The Sopranos screwed over the fans (I never watched the TV show...but I heard that this episode concluded with a cut to black in the middle of an intense scene). What were we talking about again? Oh yea— Repo Men was okay. I wait for the day when people can actually get ear transplants (like in the movie) that come with a built-in socket where you can plug in an earphone. You heard right.



I also watched She’s Out of My League (for free, that is). I like how the screenwriters took advantage of the whole "romance flick ends with guy and girl making up at an airport" cliché by actually having the main dude (Jay Baruchel...best known for his role as one of Seth Rogen’s douchie friends in Knocked Up) work at an airport. This movie was a’ight as well... Alice Eve and Lindsay Sloane are hot. ‘Nuff said.

VIDEO OF THE DAY... Check out this hot music video by Shakira for her song "Gypsy". Not to sound presumptuous, but it seems like some airbrushing was done on that see-thru outfit she’s wearing...just to make this clip PG-rated. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then oh well.


The lucky SOB who gets to be touchy-feely with Shakira in this video is Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY... Since a flawless first launch of this rocket would somehow validate President Obama’s (crappy) decision to cancel the Ares rockets and the rest of NASA’s Constellation moon program last month, just thought I’d post up pics of the successful "hotfire" test of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle yesterday. The hotfire test involved the ignition of all 9 Merlin engines that comprise the first stage of the rocket. The engines fired for only 3.5 seconds, put presumably this was enough time for SpaceX to verify whether or not its newest vehicle (SpaceX's other one being the Falcon 1 rocket) will be ready for a maiden flight that is currently scheduled for April 12. We shall see.

FYI, an on-time launch of Falcon 9 on April 12 would be pretty symbolic...since Columbia ushered in the space shuttle era with the liftoff of STS-1 on April 12, 1981...and Falcon 9 will be ushering in a new age of commercial spaceflight to—low earth orbit. But not to deep space. That’s NASA’s job assuming it gets proper funding from Obama and Congress starting next year. Most likely not.

All images courtesy of SpaceX / Chris Thompson

IRON MAN 2... Check out the newest trailer to this upcoming blockbuster, which comes out in theaters on May 7. This trailer was released online right after the Academy Awards last Sunday. War Machine is lookin’ cooler and cooler with each new footage that gets released...though it’s a bit odd that Scarlett Johansson doesn’t speak at all in this preview. Hopefully her dialogue will be as good as she looks in Iron Man 2, though that may be asking for too much. I liked her in Lost in Translation and The Island though.



Below are my customary screencaps from the trailer, in case you couldn't tell.







Images courtesy of Marvel Characters, Inc. / Paramount

HUBBLE 3D... I’m lookin’ forward to this new space documentary, which gets released in IMAX theaters next week (on March 19). The trailer below was first shown in front of Avatar at IMAX (or should I say, "fake" IMAX) screenings last December. Kinda weird seeing NASA documentaries being advertised at regular AMC theaters and whatnot...but I'm glad America's space program is getting this kind of exposure.

82nd ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS... Congrats to Kathryn Bigelow and the rest of the crew behind The Hurt Locker for tonight’s 6 Oscar wins, including one for Best Picture (duh)! Pretty much the only Academy Award that Avatar truly deserved was for Best Visual FX...which it received. And props to Christoph Waltz on winning the Best Supporting Actor award for Inglourious Basterds, and Sandra Bullock on winning an Oscar for The Blind Side. She won a Razzie Award (for All About Steve) AND an Academy Award on the same weekend. Good for her.



Did District 9 win anything tonight? No? Oh well. It’s still kewl in my book.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND... I watched Tim Burton’s latest flick today, and with the exception of some moments (most of them towards the end) in the movie, I was disappointed. After being immersed in the awesome world of Pandora that was created by James Cameron in Avatar, I was underwhelmed by Burton’s depiction of Wonderland...possibly because the visual FX in Alice in Wonderland was pretty poor. I read an article late last year about how Burton was in a rush to complete this latest reincarnation of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale in time for opening weekend... I didn’t know he was in that much of a bind. Just watching this movie made me realize that Avatar should at least win the Oscar for Best Visual FX tomorrow.



Acting-wise, there was nothing special to note in the film. Johnny Depp’s portrayal as the Mad Hatter pales in comparison to his funny portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies...despite the bizarre look Burton gave to the Hatter in this flick. Speaking of Pirates of the Caribbean, there were lots of moments in Alice in Wonderland where I (and most likely a couple of other people in the theater audience) couldn’t hear or understand a damn thing some of the characters were saying (some of this due to Danny Elfman’s music score playing essentially nonstop throughout the movie). This problem was also prevalent when I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest in 2006 and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2005. These two flicks were also let-downs.



Helen Bonham Carter’s portrayal of the Red Queen was the one positive thing that stood out from Burton’s movie (FYI, Carter and Burton are domestic partners in real life. Just thought I’d share). It might be attributed to her huge honkin' head in this film. Mia Wasikowska, who plays Alice, is very attractive...but performance-wise? Think Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace to know what I’m about to say.




One last note... What’s up with that song that played during the end credits of the movie? It totally didn’t suit the film. To give props to James Cameron again: At least he was shrewd enough to have Celine Dion incorporate James Horner’s main love theme from Titanic into her song "My Heart Will Go On", and again have Leona Lewis incorporate Horner’s love theme from Avatar into her song "I See You" (which, admittedly, still seemed out of place at the end of the sci-fi epic, haha). And Linkin Park and Steve Jablonsky collaborated on the score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen...with the song "New Divide" being the main music theme for the Michael Bay sequel. Anyways. That is all.

IMAGE OF THE DAY... The Mariana Trench (the deepest part of all of Earth's oceans): to scale, that is. Courtesy of the I Am Bored website. 'Cause you know, I was bored when I posted this. Click to enlarge.


I-Am-Bored.com