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June sees the release of a rather nice addition to the current Lego airport and City themes. Proving that some minifigs are just like their real-world counterparts and insist on special modes of transport, set #3222 provides a helicopter and stretched limousine.

Whether or not the limo will make it through the tight alleys of Lego City remains to be seen…

Set #3222 is a special edition and may not be available generally available in retail outlets.

While we’re waiting for that set to be released, we’ll settle back and enjoy our copy of The Adventures of Clutch Powers.

The DVD contains the first ever, full-length Lego movie, featuring the hero Clutch Powers. Clutch makes his way through the entire gamut of the Lego universe, from the mines to the City to finally battle the evil wizard Malloc the Malign.

The Red Baron is a movie about the famous German flying ace. I didn’t get to watch the original language version, something that is probably far more enjoyable. Instead, we saw the English version. Never having spent too much time reading about the life of Manfed von Richthofen, the movie served as a reasonable introduction. Though factually accurate to some degree, there are a number of scenes and occurrences that are not historically true.

That doesn’t detract from the quality of the movie at all: the aerial combat scenes are spectacular and the overall depiction of World War I life one that reminds the viewer that war cannot be a good thing.

Von Richthofen is a young pilot who, together with a bunch of close friends, partakes in the sport of flying fighter aircraft. The aim is not to kill the pilot of an enemy plane; instead, it’s all about disabling that aircraft and ensuring no one comes to any harm. This ideal is slowly but surely eroded. As the war takes its toll on the German army and as von Richthofen climbs through the ranks of the airforce, it is inevitable that victory takes top priority. Through battle after battle, friends of the Red Baron die in combat, causing him to question his motives and the sense of the war.

With the enemy closing in, the German army prepares for its last stand. At the young age of 25, Baron Manfred von Richthofen is shot down in combat over France, respected as much in death as during his short life by enemy and countrymen alike.

Overall, the two hour long movie is interesting and entertaining. At times, the action shifts a bit too quickly from one scene to another, with abrupt changes from high action to serene scenes quite common.

For anyone with a passing interest in history or aviation The Red Baron is recommended viewing, in my opinion.

Lego has added another popular franchise to its existing toy line-up: to coincide with the release of a new Toy Story adventure and the re-screening of the first two movies in 3D in the next two months, a few Lego Toy Story sets are available. Aimed at smaller builders, the range includes a box with the characters from the famous Andy‘s truck chase scene in Toy Story.

Complete with Buzz, Woody and RC with a pull-back motor, these look like a lot of fun.

It’s been ten years since moviegoers got to see the first installment of The Matrix. As a tribute, a number of fans with a passion for Lego have re-created the now iconic bullet-dodge scene in spectacular detail as a stop-motion movie.

The stop-motion clip is frame-accurate: each video frame from the segment in the actual movie was reproduced as a frame using Lego elements and minifigs. According to the website, almost 900 frames had to be painstakingly reproduced for 44 seconds of footage. The result is impressive to say the least. Check out the video clips here.

I can’t believe I hadn’t hear anything about this movie until this morning, seeing posters and then listening to some podcasts in which this movie was mentioned. District 9 is a science fiction movie directed by South African Neill Blomkamp, featuring unknown actors. I have a feeling that will change – the movie has opened to rave reviews in the USA and will open on the local circuit next week Friday.

I’ve enjoyed watching the trailers and am most impressed and intrigued. It feels odd watching a trailer for a movie shot entirely on location in South Africa – none of those nondescript NY skyscrapers…

Here’s an excerpt from the synopsis on IMDB: the film opens with a documentary-style series of interviews that introduce the situation. Twenty years before, an alien ship is seen coming towards Earth and arrives above Johannesburg, South Africa. It hovers above the city for three months without any contact; eventually humans take the initiative and cut into the ship. They discover a large group of aliens who are malnourished and sick. The aliens are later assessed as apparently being all “workers”, with their leadership mysteriously missing (it is hypothesized that a plague may have wiped out all of the leadership-caste). Grainy footage shows part of the ship (supposed to be a command module) falling to Earth, but nobody has been able to find it, leaving the ship inoperable.

Cannot wait to see this one!

Of all companies, Lego has been staunch in resisting licensing deals and Hollywood exposure. Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Sponge Bob are a few examples of how licensing deals saved the company from disaster. With a brighter sales outlook and toys that are becoming more and more popular, Lego is now setting its sights on Hollywood.

According to Variety, the movie will mix live action and computer animation. The action adventure is aimed at families and will be set in an alternative Lego world.

Somehow, I can’t see this working too well…but I’ll probably be one of the first in line to see it if/when it makes it to the local cinema.

A number of well-known movie posters have Lego counterparts, didn’t you know?

300:

I am Legend:

Quantum of Solace:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine:

In certain instances, I would hazard a guess that the plastic minifigs could come up with as much emotion as their flesh and blood counterparts…

I love science fiction as much as anyone. Probably more than anyone. Funny that I’ve never latched onto the whole Star Trek thing, however. Never. Star Wars was cool, and still is. Star Trek was always a show with guys sitting on chairs pretending to be in a spaceship, and not really pretending very well either. Worse still, pretending to be in a spaceship that was under attack, being shaken about. That’s sort of what Star Trek was to me.

The hype surrounding the new Star Trek movie and the great reviews I read prompted me to go along and see what the fuss is about. I’m afraid to say that Star Trek in 2009 is pretty much what it was in the early 1980′s: guys standing around in a pretend spaceship, pretending to be bumped about. J.J. Abrams tries hard to breathe new life into the old franchise. His reboot of the series by bringing up the possibility of an alternate reality opens the door for many sequels, which there will be, based on the many positive reviews out there. For me, time travel tales don’t work. They especially can’t work when a character in one reality meets up with himself in another. That blows the story for me.

There was an obvious requirement to showcase an original Trek cast member in the new Trek incarnation. Nimoy as an old Spock has that honour, meeting up with a younger version of himself towards the end of the movie. By that time, we’ve seen a wildly reckless James T. Kirk drive a vintage Corvette like a maniac, being beaten up by Starfleet Academy recruits, cheat himself through the Kobayashi Maru test and climb onboard the USS Enterprise to aid the threatened planet of Vulcan even though he’s been grounded. Those feats are peanuts compared to the other hi-jinks Kirk gets up to, making Star Trek a dead ringer for movies like Agent XXX.

Carbon copies of the well-known crew are introduced too, of course: Uhura, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov. Spock appears twice, in a young and an older body. They try too hard to be what the original characters were.

There’s plenty of action, good special f/x and an ingenious reboot of an old favourite. As someone who’s never been a Star Trek fan, there’s little to commend the movie, however. I was somewhat disappointed that the hype didn’t quite materialize in what I saw…

The first X-Men movie was good, the second interested me very little and I gave the third one a miss. It was with much interest then that I followed opinions and reviews of the much-hyped Wolverine movie, a motion picture focusing on a single character of the mutant superhero team. Hugh Jackman certainly looks the part – his hair styled into those pseudo-ears together with the beard and sharp chin makes him a dead ringer for one of the more popular characters in the Marvel universe. Whether he could hold his own in an origin story was an interesting topic of conversation.

Reviews and opinions range from the hyperbolic to the disappointed. I, for one, think the movie as a whole was well executed and it stays true to the Wolverine backstories I’ve been exposed to. Young James and his half-brother flee home after a violent night in their home sometime in 1845. By virtue of their mutation that enables their bodies to be healed, both James and Victor get enlisted in every armed conflict known to the USA, from the American Civil War to Vietnam. In modern times, Major Stryker enlists them into a team of mutants from which James Logan departs, sickened by the violence the team exhibits. His half-brother is still in the service of Stryker some six years later, when the Major starts hunting down mutants for experimentation and the creation of a super soldier. It is at the hands of Stryker that Logan receives his adamantium skeleton and becomes the Wolverine.

The movie is fast-paced and I enjoyed some of the more exxagerated shots of Jackman on his motorbike, being pursued by a chopper and two Hummers – almost carbon copies of panels one would expect to find in a comic book. Jackman plays his part well, as does most everyone else. A number of other characters from the X-Men universe make an appearance, but they seem to fit in well and aren’t used to simply fill up the running time. Once again I remembered the Weapon X program, something I had completely forgotten about and that’s a graphic novel I need to dig out of my collection.

There was nothing much I disliked about X-Men Origins: Wolverine. To come up with something would be nitpicking. It was an enjoyable spectacle for the comics geek and should appeal to those in the mood for an action picture, too. Though you’ve undoubtedly heard many opinions and made up your own by now, I’ll give you mine: if you enjoy the X-Men mythos to any degree, you’ll want to see this movie.

It’s a movie that fanboys have been waiting for years to see on the silver screen. Thankfully, technology has enabled Zack Snyder to produce a worthy movie adaptation of the twelve part comic book series that has featured on Time‘s most influentual literature list.

By now, you’ll know the story even if you haven’t ever been exposed to the Watchmen. It’s an alternate future for the USA: Nixon has been re-elected more times than anyone cares to remember after having won the Vietnam war through the intervention of Doctor Manhattan, erstwhile physicist Jon Osterman who has gained true superpowers in a freak laboratory accident. The US victory in Vietnam has increased tensions with the USSR and those tension cause both nations to teeter on the brink of nuclear war at the time the story starts with the murder of The Comedian in late 1985. The murder of The Comedian is investigated by Rorschach, part of a group of costumed crime fighters who have been outlawed in recent times. The mystery of the murder deepens as Rorschach‘s investigation continues.

So I’ll come out and say it: this is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’ s by far the best adaptation of any comic book I have ever witnessed and it remains as faithful and true to the original as possible. The costumes are fantastic, as is the 1985 street scene in New York. The CG effects utilized to bring Doctor Manhattan to life and Nite Owl‘s flying craft Archie are too cool. I enjoyed this one from start to finish and cannot find fault with it. The two and a half hour running time provides ample time for the story to be developed and the most relevant elements of the iconic comic book to be included.

I can’t wait for the three hour DVD edition to be released in July. Before then, I planning to see the movie at least one more time. If you’re a fanboy, you should already have seen this movie