Three years ago today, on 19 June 2005, we had a great day in Italy on our city trip to Napels. In the morning we took a bus from Napels to the foot of Vesuvius and in the afternoon we visited the ruined and partially buried Roman city of Pompeii nearby. Here are few photos of our visit to Europe’s most famous volcano.
This is my favorite picture of the week. Woody from Toy Story watches Space Shuttle Discovery lifting off on May 31st with Buzz Lightyear onboard, finally fulfilling the toy’s dream of going into space. The 12-inch action figure is visiting the International Space Station this week along on mission STS-124 as part of a new educational partnership between NASA and the Walt Disney Company and to commemorate the opening of Toy Story Mania! at Walt Disney World and Disneyland.
Just a few more weeks and Disney Pixar’s highly anticipated movie WALL·E comes out on 27 June in the US. I just know it is going to be huge! I am really looking forward to seeing this one, but here in the Netherlands we have to wait until 30 July. Over the last months Pixar has been releasing short clips of WALL·E and commercials for the fictitious company Buy n Large (buynlarge.com) that makes the robots in the futuristic world of WALL·E. People who have seen sneak previews of the film are saying it is one of Pixar’s best. The trailers and photos that have been released look amazing. Check out this most recent commercial for Buy n Large featuring their different robots:
Check out this cool eBay auction of the original 1937 Mercedes-Benz 300 that the Nazis used in Raiders of the Lost Ark. With an opening bid of $2,500,000 this is the ultimate Indiana Jones collectible.
Amy Maniatis of Cafepress, wearing an Obama t-shirt from Lekker Politics, was on MSNBC recently talking about the sales of products with Obama, Hillary and McCain. They actually have a really nice Elections 08 Cafepress Meter that shows they sell about three times as many Obama than Hillary.
This morning we saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and it was great! I wouldn’t say it was better than Raiders or Crusade, but it was an Indy film through and through. All the elements that made the first three movies so great were there.
Since we got back I’ve been reading a lot of comments and reviews (on boards and social networking sites) of people who think that the movie is a piece garbage and should never have been made. These purists are complaining about the story being unbelievable, has over the top scenes and there being too much CGI. These people should stop whining and enjoy themselves. This is frickin’ Indiana Jones! It’s supposed to be supernatural, over the top and silly!
It is finally May 22nd and the latest Indiana Jones movie is out. We’ve been waiting for this day since Paramount announced the release date more than one year ago. Just twelve more hours and we’re going to see it at Pathé in Amsterdam. There’s a lot of new TV spots and a new featurette on the official website. Here’s the latest TV spot with review quotes and some new clips:
PicLens (www.piclens.com) is one of the coolest browser plug-ins I’ve seen so far. It allows you to watch photos and videos from Google, Yahoo, Flickr, PhotoBucket, SmugMug and DeviantArt in full screen and 3D. It works really fast and it’s a great new way of going through content quickly. What I really like about it is that whenever you start it it shows you the photos or videos from the page that you’re on, so for instance on Flickr you can start it from a photostream, collection, set or search results and the slick PicLens viewer will show only items that are available from that page. It’s available for IE, Firefox and Safari. Check out this cool demo:
… and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull comes out!
We got tickets for the first show on Friday morning. Meanwhile it’s fun watching the videos and photos from the big premiere in Cannes yesterday. I’m trying to not read any spoilers but managed to accidentally read a few anyway. D’oh!
Disney and more has some great photos from the red carpet:
When Ireland banned smoking in all enclosed public spaces in March 2004 it made big news. Critics said that pubs and restaurants would suffer, but the ban has actually been a huge success. Cigarettes sales in pubs dropped by as much as 60%, thousands of smokers quit in the first year and more non-smokers ventured out to the pub. Since Ireland’s success story most other European countries have adopted anti-smoking laws. More »