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I just watched a trailer for the remake of the Karate Kid starring Will Smith’s son as Ralph Macchio, and Jackie Chan as Mr Miagi. I have no problem at all with remaking the movie. It’s over 25 years old, and it’s not like we’re talking about Casablanca, Star Wars, or Caddyshack. It was a cheesy movie that is due for a remake. Frankly I’m amazed it took this long for it to happen. After all it has been 16 years since we saw Academy Award Winner Hillary Swank in The Next Karate Kid.

You may ask then, “What is your problem?”. For starters it takes place in China, Jackie Chan is Chinese, and the boy is learning Kung Fu not Karate (the spiritual nature of Kung Fu seems to be a central theme of the film). As my friend can tell you Kung Fu is a Chinese fighting style that is very different from Karate. China and Japan are very very very different nations who historically don’t like each other very much.

It’s a well known Hollywood adage, “If it’s worth doing once, rip it off again and again and again.” This is also what’s known as the “Disney” effect, or Direct to Video syndrome. It was revealed today that director extraordinaire Steven Spielberg has chosen his next project. He’s going to remake Harvey. For anyone who hasn’t seen the original it stars the late great Jimmy Stewart as a man who sees a six foot tall invisible rabbit. Yet despite the silly premise its a fantastic movie, what else would you expect from Stewart. While Spielberg is a fantastic director, I think one of the best, the question shouldn’t be Will he make a great movie?, but instead Should this be done at all?

(This is a repost of a letter written by a retired major in the United States Marine Corps. It eulogizes the late Ed McMahon who died this week at the age of 77. I only knew McMahon from my early years watching him as Johnny Carson’s wing man for years on the Tonight Show, Star Search host, and the Publishers Clearinghouse sweepstakes commercials. In a week when several celebrities have died this is a tribute to a man who should be remembered and honored.)

COLONEL ED HAS DIED

He wanted to be a Marine fighter pilot. The US was building up their military force, but they were not at war yet and the Navy required all its potential Navy and Marine pilots to have two years of college. So Ed started classes at Boston College. When Pearl Harbor was attacked the Army and the Navy both dropped the college requirement and Ed applied to the Marines.

As most of you probably know this week is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3 for short. This time of year brings a huge amount of gaming news for all the latest and greatest games to come. Rather than link all of the awesome videos, and I assure you there are many (just keep reading if you doubt), I recommend you regularly check http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/index.html for all the latest news. In no particular order I’m going to talk a bit about some of the amazing things that have been announced so far. I’ll try to add new posts after each days news hits. Since it’s midday Teusday this will include all of the stuff from day 1, and some of day 2.

• There is a new model of the PSP coming with a slide up screen. Yeah I know, I don’t care either but it’s as good a place as any to start

On a recent cruise vacation up the coast of the Western United States I found myself in Seattle WA. After the normal visits to the Space Needle, and Pike’s Place market, we found ourselves back at the Seattle Center. While there we found an incredible building. It was the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. They had numerous authentic, and replica, pieces of memorabilia from throughout the history of Sci-Fi. Despite their lack of Doctor Who it is a must for any geek.

http://www.empsfm.org/

This past Friday I saw the movie that claims to start the summer, X-men Origins: Wolverine. For years the back story of Wolverine has been incredibly confusing. However this all changed a few years ago with a min-series entitled, “Origins”. This finally put the beginnings of one of the Marvel universes most celebrated characters. The movie holds close to this part of the story. However when it comes to other bits of Marvel history it is far less faithful. There will be a few “spoilers” but lets face it, no one who goes to see this movie was expecting The Usual Suspects.

I figure this would be a good place to share any thoughts, ideas, feelings, ratings, rantings, etc about the finale of the show. Feel free to put in any spoilers you want into your comments so that we can discuss what happened. BE WARNED!!! There WILL be spoilers in the comments so either don’t read them or don’t complain if it gets spoiled.

(This is edited from the Los Angeles Times website.)

While watching tonights finale of geek fav Battlestar Galactica take a drink of your beverage of choice each time on the the following happens:

· Gaius is talks to imaginary Six and another character looks at him like he’s loony.

· Admiral Adama cries.

· Anders gets rejected by Starbuck.

· Anyone yells “Gods damnit!”

· Someone on the show takes a drink.

· Every time Grace Park is on screen… Shout the character you think she is: Eight, Sharon, Athena or Boomer. If you’re correct, hand your drink to someone who got it wrong.

· Someone says “toaster.”

· When you think you hear Jamie Bamber’s British accent. (drink two if you didn’t know he’s a Brit)

· Any time you wonder why more people watch “Lost.”

· Every time you’re weirded out by the late-blooming Saul-Six relationship.

As my forum for all things geek I realized that I had to post pictures of this wonderful feat of geeekdom. This is 1085 piece Lego set stands 18 inches high. Prior to completing this my best ever Lego achievement was a Clone Drop ship that had 81 pieces. It took about six hours to put together stretched over a few weeks. With school I’d stalled a bit, but finished him just a few minutes ago. He’s taken a place of honor on my bookshelf in the office in our home, which is yet another example of how great my wife is that she’ll let me display it openly where others can see. Though now I’ve got a problem. Looking around on Amazon there are more sets I want to build, and with the price they each cost this could be a real test of my wife’s understanding.

Pictures below.

So let me come right out and say it, there is a lot of digital blue penis in The Watchmen. Doctor Manhattan, one the stars of the film, is a man made of energy who is naked for almost the entire movie. For a small time he’s in human form, and when out on a mission sports a banana hammock. I’ll be honest that I felt a little uncomfortable seeing a flaccid blue dong on the IMAX screen repeatedly.

Right now that’s out of the way, on to the review.