Movie based video games suck. But they have come a long way since the infamous Atarti 2600 version of ET: The Extra Terrestrial. But what if movies from today were made into Atari games?

The wonderful people at Penney Design have created some brilliant game covers for modern movies.

From Penney Design:

Netflix has changed the way America watches movies. But are you ever curious what people are watching in your city? The New York Times answered that question for a dozen cities across the US, showing us what people were renting by neighborhood (and also what they weren't renting).

It's cool to see how the tastes change across different cities, and even across neighborhoods. Take a peek into the Netflix queues of America HERE

There are some really creepy videos on YouTube about how to make your self look like a character from Avatar. Like this one...


Comedian Joe Mande came up with his own Avatar makeup tutorial, but this one is for the guys. Very funny. (via BoingBoing)

Photo by Best Blog

In Back To The Future II, Marty McFly foils Biff yet again, but this time on a hot pink hover board. The year was 2015.

Although we are 5 years from 2015, we aren't anywhere near having hover boards in the toy stores. So I did some research to see how its coming.

Some guys on YouTube have a hover craft-ish thing for sale. It's kind of cool, but it is not anywhere near the Marty McFly board. Check out this video .

Future Horizons Inc has a site that lets any eccentric inventor sell their blueprints to anyone wanting to build a jetpack, laser gun, or time machine. Luckily on their front page, they have a link for hover boards.

Avatar has been gaining hype for a few years now, and rightfully so. Director James Cameron certainly has the resume to garner the attention of the masses. In 1997, Cameron's Titanic was the highest grossing film of all time, and won eleven Oscars. It also introduced the world to the wonder of LEO! 


Along with a box-office busting director, Avatar can boast WETA Digital, the company responsible for the  eye candy on the Lord of the Rings Triology and King Kong. The big names were a major source of the buzz, but also the talk of the mindblowing photorealistic 3D and rich and engaging story set Avatar above the rest. 


Check out this extended trailer for an idea of what Avatar is all about:


My Avatar experience got off to a rocky start. At the midnight viewing, the theater played A Christmas Carol by mistake, which was not met with much understanding by the 300 nerds in 3D glasses. After several minutes of boos, they finally got our Avatar experience up and running.

I am happy to say that this film lived up to the hype in every way. This film is an audio visual masterpiece that should only be experienced in 3D. It is worth the extra $3 to experience this film the way it was meant to be. 


From the first scene, Avatar is breathtaking. The 3D is like nothing you have ever seen before. And the best thing about it is that it is used to enhance the film, not as a gimmick. Many simple shots are so impressive, such as a look down a corridor or a pan across a room. The incredible depth and realism of the shots really feel like you are looking at what they are showing you. And this isn't even getting to the CGI...


You can't help but read into the many underlining analogies present in the film. You can't help but think "Iraq war" when you hear the the head honcho of the mining project Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) talk about "winning the hearts and minds" of the Na'vi in order to obtain a valuable underground resource. This eventually translates into an all out assault on the seemingly defenseless natives. Also within this story are tastes of early American genocide of Native Americans, and even a major 9/11 moment when the humans, lead by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) blasts down the Home Tree in which all the Na'vi live.

Judging by the alluring shades of ocean blue and the delicate charm bracelet on the cover, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold seems like it would be a standard chick-lit murder mystery; entertaining, suspenseful, overly-sentimental, even addicting.

But the identity of the murderer is revealed on page 2 of the novel. This is the first clue that The Lovely Bones has something quite different to offer readers. Another clue is that the story is told in first-person from the perspective of the victim, who watches, from her vantage point in heaven, the murder investigation and the effect it has on her family.

The novel begins: “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.” In the same quirky, matter-of-fact, teenaged way she introduces herself, Susie unflinchingly explains to the reader the story of her brutal rape and murder (Alice Sebold herself was raped as a college freshman and wrote about her experience in the memoir, Lucky). It is Susie’s voice that captivates and causes the reader to buy into the basic premise of the novel. She is young, and honest, and good.

Susie’s heaven is the realization of all of her wishes in one place. It is a high school with a swing set and fashion magazines for textbooks. She and her roommate live in a duplex (she disliked her family's split-level house). There is an ice cream shop down the road that carries seasonal flavors, like peppermint, all year long. But it is not enough: “I could not have what I wanted most: Mr. Harvey dead and me living. Heaven wasn’t perfect. But I came to believe that if I watched closely, and desired, I might change the lives of those I loved on Earth.”

So, Susie looks to Earth. She tries to point her family in the direction of her killer and she also tries to experience the life she was deprived of through her family members – to satisfy the desires she feels in Heaven for what can only be experienced on Earth. She leaves clues. She watches as her family copes with the extreme grief and anger. But she also begins to live through her family members – she watches her older sister, Lindsey, and her younger brother, Buckley, grow up. Growing up is the experience Susie longs for most. She experiences what Lindsey feels as she graduates high school, falls in love, has sex for the first time, and gets engaged.

In many ways, The Lovely Bones is also a portrait of a suburban, 1970’s family. Through Susie’s omniscient point of view, the reader witnesses the conflict that develops between Susie’s mother, Abigail, and her father, Jack. Grief, stress, and cultural changes all leave their mark on the Salmon family over the novel’s span.

Near the conclusion of the novel, Susie summarizes: “As I watched my family…I thought about how their lives trailed backward and forward from my death…These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections – sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent – that happened after I was gone.”

The film adaptation of The Lovely Bones is set to debut in theaters on December 11, 2009. Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan will be playing the challenging role of Susie Salmon. Based on the trailer, it seems that Director Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) has captured the fragile, ethereal quality of the novel which emerges despite its gruesome plot.



Overall, The Lovely Bones is an original, thoughtful narrative which explores the nature of family, grieving, and growing up, all through an imaginative portrayal of heaven.
The Lovely Bones
 at Amazon
The Lovely Bones Movie Official Site

 Kaity Chapman is the Books writer for The Everythingist. Kaity is an English and Social Work major at Greenville College. She aspires to be a children's librarian and a freelance writer. Check out her personal blog at: http://www.alliknowonearth.blogspot.com.

Check out the newest short film by Montage 4

Written and Directed by Matt Shead and Matt Hickey



Jered is the senior editor of The Everythingist. 
Contact Jered: Email-Twitter

Jered is the senior editor of The Everythingist. 
Contact Jered: Email-Twitter