With the LEGO movie coming up, I thought maybe I could slip this in here as related. Just go with me on this, okay?

LEGO usually does such a good job with their ads, and this is one of the better ones even. So many ads these days either sell with sex, or with stupidity, or crazy gimmicks, or flashy lack of substance. Not LEGO. Now, I admit that I may be partial, prejudiced. I loved my LEGOs (yes, I know LEGO says you aren’t supposed to make that word plural, but I’m going to anyway) when I was growing up. LEGOs are awesome. My kids have LEGOs but they are not into them as much as me, and…

“Will you tell me how long you have loved him?”

For a generation of fans, Colin Firth is Mr. Darcy, and they’ve loved him from the first time he appeared onscreen in the iconic Pride & Prejudice miniseries nearly 20 years ago. And now that beloved version, also starring Jennifer Ehle, is coming to Blu-ray in a special “Keepsake Edition.”

I am not (too) ashamed to admit that I love this mini-series a lot and it’s great to see it getting the Blu-ray treatment. I have no doubt that my wife will demand the purchase of this for our home, and I will gladly oblige.

You’ll have to click through…

Affleck, fortunately, hasn’t given up acting. In fact, it’s well known that he’ll spend 2014 filming two of Hollywood’s most-anticipated movies: David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, and Zack Snyder’sBatman Vs. Superman. (Psst, he plays Batman.) But before he embarked on those projects, Affleck wanted to revisit Argo one last time. In the new extended edition Blu-ray, in stores today, he reinserted nine minutes of footage that revolve around his character’s family life, fulfilling a promise he made to a now-famous actor whose scenes had been left mostly on the cutting-room…

In a recent interview with MTV, Abrams talks frankly about withholding the Khan reveal (he went as far as complete and outright denial):

The truth is I think it probably would have been smarter just to say upfront ‘This is who it is.’ It was only trying to preserve the fun of it, and it might have given more time to acclimate and accept that’s what the thing was.

The truth is because it was so important to the studio that we not angle this thing for existing fans. If we said it was Khan, it would feel like you’ve really got to know what Star Trek is about to see this movie. That would have…

I love these sorts of things, especially for films that were as good as Thor: The Dark World. And I always love seeing/hearing about those things that we think are probably digital, but are actually practical effects. Obviously a film like Thor: The Dark World is going to have a lot of digital stuff going on but I’m a firm believer that the more actual, real practical effects and real things we can have on film, the better the film will be. Yes, we’re getting to the point where we can digitally recreate people, but even so we can’t quite make them look real yet. I have no doubt that we’ll get…

I would argue, however, that the hire of Catching Fire director Francis Lawrence can not be overlooked as we begin to measure the success of the Hunger Games film franchise. He might not attract as many eyeballs as the pop-culture-savvy J-Law, who’s entrenched – at the moment – as the media’s darling. But his contributions behind-the-scenes are ensuring that those “eyeballs” are satisfied with what they are seeing … and will continue to be satisfied as the series progresses.

I agree. As was mentioned on The MovieByte Podcast Episode 70, Lawrence showed us how good The Hunger Games could be…

Adaptations of books are often difficult to pull off, but 2012′s The Hunger Games (my review), based on Susanne Collins’ 2008 book of the same name, managed to be both a decent adaptation of the source material and a pretty good film, though it was certainly not without its shortcomings. When director Gary Ross was replaced by Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend), the question arose: will this new director be able to improve on Ross’ film, or will he make the same mistakes? I can happily answer that The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is an improvement over the original film in every possible way.

I…

I love Honest Trailers! I’m not sure how, but somehow, I missed this when it came out. I know I could subscribe to the Screen Junkies channel on YouTube, but honestly I don’t use YouTube that way and don’t want to. I see a video, I click and watch, then I go away. I know there’s a whole YouTube culture or whatever where people spend a lot of time on the site and subscribe to a bunch of channels and etc. etc. Well, I still use RSS feeds like they’re the last hope on earth and I found a way to subscribe to a YouTube channel as an RSS feed. So, I have now added the Screen Junkies YouTube channel…

This one is a lot of fun. It sure seems a shame that this is not somehow available in theaters, though I’m not sure how you would get it there. But somehow connect it with Gravity. This is sort of like a deleted scene that was never made. Given the nature of Gravity and the nature of the way the story was told, it would have been odd to cut to this. We only ever get to see things from the perspective of Dr. Stone.

Still, this is the other side of one of the most deeply moving parts of the film. There’s not really a point other than, oh, that’s what was going on. And that’s a lot of fun.