A few weeks ago I shared my love of all things Gondry with his little RUBIK'S CUBE TRICK. I have just discovered that he is directing a new film starring Jack Black and Mos Def called BE KIND REWIND. I love the concept. Jack Black's acting can get annoying...but the same can be said of Jim Carrey...and Gondry made magic with Carrey in ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.I can't wait!

As is usual with Comicon, most of my pop culture discoveries happened at home visiting websites upon returning from the Con. There's so much to take in at the Convention that it's impossible to discover all the new developments while you are there.My favorite discovery is the design for the "Mach 1" version of the Iron Man armor from the upcoming feature film. It's the first version of Iron Man's armor (one of many that will be revealed in the film) inspired by the original Jack Kirby design. Call me crazy, but this blows away all the designs for the Transformers movie.So far IRON MAN has a great cast and some wonderful design choices. Hopefully they will result in a decent superhero flick.

I just saw the TRANSFORMERS movie. It was okay. Lots of Bay stylized action. Way more Robot fighting than I expected (which is a really good thing). I'm still missing those Japanese designed robots from the original toy lines, but the Americanized remakes held up pretty good on screen. Still a stupid popcorn film...but it was worth it.But what really got me intrigued was the 1-18-08 TRAILER that was shown before TRANSFORMERS. All we know is the date of the movie's release and that there's some creative involvement by LOST'S JJ ABRAMS.It has that shaky handi-cam BLAIR WITCH PROJECT feel that is even more relevant in our world of digi-cams, photo-taking cellphones, and Ipods. It also has a far more familiar resonance in our post 9/11 world...call me crazy, but digitized explosions on celluloid are more frightening since I witnessed the Twin Towers going down on Live TV.This unnamed genre flick appears to be playing into all of that. Better yet, it's a monster flick. So, is it GODZILLA? Or something altogether original?I'm looking forward to finding out!Check out the nicely executed trailer:

This is one the Japanese trailer of a movie I love: UZUMAKI. One of the many adaptations of Junji Ito's manga. Junji Ito is the author of the TOMIE or GYO series. UZUMAKI is the second movie of Higuchinsky, a Russian director who lives in Japan. The movie isn't as good as the manga but it's definitely worth watching.

OK, everybody saw NAPOLEON DYNAMITE at least 10 times and everybody knows all the good parts by heart. Anyway, this still makes me laugh. That Rex guy was a huge inspiration for PROFESOR FURIA, one of the character of LUCHA LIBRE.

On KUBRIK2001.com, you'll find an interesting explanation of the meaning of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. It's in nine different languages and it'll takes you 20 minutes to watch but it's worth it. Enjoy.