I’m not generally a fan of musicals, but I’m going to make a special exception next month. If you’ve never heard of Sweeney Todd, I highly suggest you check out the almighty Wiki. In short, Sweeney Todd is the quintessential villain/anti-hero. This is essentially a character which you know is wrong yet you cheer them on anyways. In the original story that this is based on, our anti-hero is a wrongfully imprisoned barber named Benjamin Barker who returns under the name Sweeney Todd to London after fifteen years in Australia only to find that the judge responsible for his imprisonment has raped and murdered his young wife, adopted his daughter and intends on marrying her. He swears revenge, but instead he begins to slash the throats of his customers. Sounds like fun? Here’s what’s going to make this movie incredible.

Tim Burton is directing. Every movie that Tim touches usually turns out to be obscenely twisted gold (Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, etc.). You can be guaranteed a few all-important things in a Tim Burton movie: the casting will be perfect, the music will be perfect and the execution will be perfect. As eccentric as ol’ Tim is, he wouldn’t sign his name to a movie that wasn’t quality. It’s like an unspoken guarantee.

Johnny Depp is starring. Even the Depp haters can’t argue with his talent. It’s infectious and he brings that to every movie. Who got tired of Cap’n Jack? Not I. And neither did you. Depp’s habits of exerting his influence into every movie continues. The whole white-streak-in-the-hair-thing? Yeah. His idea. It helps him develop his character and is precisely what’s needed to play this lead role.

The supporting cast includes Helena Bonham Carter (Burton’s real-life lady) and Alan Rickman (think Professor Snape), two of the finest and understated actors around. We all know that Rickman can play the villain, and we’re well aware that Bonham Carter can play the accomplice/temptress. There are other notables amongst the cast, but I’ll leave that for you to figure out. Hit up the website at SweeneyToddMovie.Com, or…

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll check out the trailer. Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street will hit theaters December 25th, 2007.

Larz and I had been planning to see Beowulf (IMDB) for about a week before we actually saw it, so as you might imagine the anticipation was pretty thick as we rolled into the movie theater Friday evening. Let me start by suggesting that if you see this movie, do so at a theater that offers it in 3D. Not IMAX. 3D. Two different things. To be honest, I’m not so sure I’d have enjoyed the movie as much if I didn’t get to see Angelina Jolie’s computer-generated breasts in breath-taking 3D.

As an aside it should be noted that I haven’t witnessed anything 3D in some time. My last encounter was probably a comic book with some cheesy-ass red and blue paper glasses… fifteen or so years ago. So you might say it’s been a while. Nor have I kept up on any emerging three-dimensional technologies. Nonetheless, I was a bit surprised when we were handed a pair of dorky looking sunglasses after paying eleven dollars a ticket (don’t worry, it’s worth it). Hardly fashionable enough to wear in public, yet I didn’t feel like I looked the part of a special education student either. I was pretty psyched when we took our seats and I anxiously tore open the packaging containing our newly bought pseudo-sunglasses. Since we arrived early after hearing that this movie was rather popular, and hence wanting to ensure our viewing pleasure, I was feeling rather on edge with waiting twenty minutes before using my glasses. So I test fit them over my regular glasses. Fit like a charm. After conversing for at least fifteen minutes, yelling at the obviously-didn’t-make-it-in-Hollywood filler host on the pre- pre- previews, the first real preview came on. I put my glasses on because Larz had told me one or two of the previews would be in 3D as well. Bad, bad move. Don’t put those puppies on until you’re instructed. The first preview, which was not 3D, came on and if I had epilepsy I’d have gone into a fucking coma. Thankfully I don’t and so I didn’t enjoy a nice relaxing seizure all over the theater floor. Thankfully. It did, however, give me one massively huge headache. Again, don’t put the 3D glasses on until you’re instructed.

And the movie itself? Amazing. From a technical standpoint computer-generated characters are becoming so lifelike I almost had a difficult time distinguishing between what was real and what wasn’t. It’s for that reason that if you plan on taking kids to see this… don’t. It’s bloody, it’s gory and it has loads of nudity and sexual situations. While Angelina Jolie’s character doesn’t show everything, she certainly doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. I’m not joking… kids: no-no. Just because it says PG-13 doesn’t make it okay, and that’s coming from a fun-loving, foul-mouthed, sexually-active, blood-thirsty action geek (basically your typical mid-twenties American male), so you know it ain’t appropriate. I was somewhat amazed that this wasn’t rated R, but I digress. The movie.

The storyline was pretty good, and as far as I can tell, accurate to the original story (Wikipedia). The only part that wasn’t as faithful as it could have been was Beowulf’s relationship with regards to Grendel’s mother. I don’t recall a translation or telling of the story that includes Beowulf engaging in a one-night stand, nor do I recall one in which that encounter bore a child that could later morph into a dragon. Fuck it. Who knows. Anyways, the movie was very entertaining. I highly suggest seeing it if you’re in the mood for something different or if you’re a fan of the story.

It snowed today. Fuck. I hate snow. If it never snowed again I can’t say I’d be too pissed. Today, it was only a light feathering of snow. Tomorrow, or some time soon, it’ll be a fucking blizzard. Roads will shut down. Breathing the ice cold air will become painful. I’ll be relegated to my living room because the roads will be too unsafe to drive. My five-year-old son (well, he’ll be five in three weeks, but who’s counting) will not have school and guess where he’ll be? He’ll be at home. With me. In my ass. I fucking hate snow.

Alright, so on with the show then.

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving. Mine was spent in Indianapolis with my gramma and grampa. Gramma and grampa pretty much rock. I haven’t been to Indy for a major holiday in years. It felt nice to do something out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, the Indy trip put the final nail into my tires coffin. The day after I got back from Indy, the Bimmer suffered a major tire blowout (at 55 miles per hour, no less) as my front passenger side rubber gave up the ghost. I thought I had inspected the tires before and after the trip, but apparently my inspection was for shit. This tire failure did, however, reveal a much more serious issue: the other three tires are very close to crapping out as well. Oh well, just another item to add to the pre-season list for 2008. What’s money if you don’t get to enjoy it. I didn’t need it. I can’t take it with me. Might as well spend it.

Tomorrow’s blog (because I’m too tired and lazy to write it tonight): a couple of movie reviews from the weekend. I had the privelege of seeing Beowulf in 3D and the disappointment of witnessing the miserable fucking trainwreck that is The Mist (hint: not everything Stephen King puts his name on is gold).

Yeah, it’s a shit picture, but hey… at least I bought it. It had occurred to me, as I clicked to buy this thing, that this was not only cutting a rug out of my wallet but that there were obviously a great many tasks ahead of me that I hadn’t even thought of. I have no doubt that Avery will love this thing until a) it falls the fuck apart or b) he grows out of it and into a bigger one. No doubts there. I’ve had more than a few people question me on my decision to go through with this, but it just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me. If he learns something and has fun with it, that’s all I really give a shit about. Will I feel like a complete and utter fucking tool if he drives it once and hates it? Probably. But that’s improbable and so I put it out of my mind.

A new feature for the season on rob-morrow.com is the inclusion of a cost counter to see just how commercialized Hallowthankschristmas is becoming. This should be no shock to most people, but I’ve never really monitored how much I spend on my son in a given year. With that in mind, the first entry…

Avery Christmas Counter: 1 present, $1000 spent.

I received my GPS receiver yesterday in the mail and I spent most of last night learning about NMEA and GPS standards. I’m a little dismayed at how long it takes for the receiver to get three locks to triangulate my position, but I finally figured out that it doesn’t work exactly like wireless (which easily passes through walls because it’s a hell of a lot closer than three miles away, which is the approximate distance into the sky that GPS satellites are locked into an asynchronous orbit) and so it would take a minute or two to connect through three floors worth of house and many, many, many feet into the air. As an experiment I walked outside and had a lock in under a second. Figures. It’s no longer the season to be sitting outside and it’s now that I’m choosing to start work on the navigational systems for my upcoming nMotion in-car PC project.

I must say, however, that programming for GPS is remarkably easy. I had a library (re-usable, accessible code) built by the night’s end that could not only give me my coordinates, but give them to me on a map. Seems paltry until you consider that I have to hand create everything, as opposed to just running Microsoft Streets and Trips. Werd.

Yeah, I’ve been busy the last few weeks. Between planning for Christmas, work, planning for Thanksgiving, hanging out with my grampa before he heads to Texas for the winter, planning the logistics for the three BMW projects I have for this winter, and making plans to start working out twice a week with my buddy Ryan, I’ve been a busy little bee. Hence the lack of blogging lately. I apologize. I’ll try to keep my pace steady, my writing spectacular.

At the moment, I’m completely consumed with accomplishing project numero uno for the BMW this winter. This particular project has actually been in the works for almost two years, but I’m just now to a point at which I could brag about it just a little. I call it nMotion ICIE (In-Car Interactive Entertainment).

When I bought my car it didn’t have anything but the factory radio it rolled off the showroom floor with. It still, in fact, contains only that. I’m exceptionally limited to what I can listen to in my car, and while radio is all fine and dandy, being an audiophile has its disadvantages. Such as I can’t stand sub-quality music. Anything broadcast over the radio lacks in quality, no matter how good the music might be, which is why most people have CD players in their rides. I’m aiming to do everyone one better.

nMotion is simply the “software-side” of a larger project. The end result will be a dash-integrated touchscreen interface to more than 3000 songs, movies and videos. In addition, I’ll still have the use of the radio waves, albeit with slightly more functionality than the standard CD player you get from your friendly neighborhood stereo shop. nMotion is the “front end,” or “interface” to all of these things. But I couldn’t stop there. No, no. I have to drive myself insane by seeing just how far I can push a concept, so nMotion will also include the following:

• GPS navigation w/weather, traffic (and traffic light camera) and construction updates
• radar detector integration
• cellular phone integration
• car climate control
• OBD-II diagnostics
• voice-activated commands
• screen gesture integration
• sport mode/seat control/traction control interface
• remote start (perhaps from my laptop from anywhere)
• remote tracking (just in case someone wants to joyride my toy)
• scheduling/e-mail/calendar which will auto-sync to my home network

Yeah, I know, I’m a glutton for punishment. I’ll be writing a few blogs on the creation of these features as I write them. For the moment, I’ve got a good solid framework in place. When it’s complete, I may make it available for purchase or perhaps open-source, complete with SDK. For the moment, however, it’s just another typical project of mine… scope-creeping out of control.