This week Mike and Jeanne take a look at Dreamworks animated film “How to Train Your Dragon” which follows the young character Hiccup. His name is truer to his character than you may think, he is the hiccup in the village, where he goes disasters often follow. Hiccup is not your normal Viking and he sets out to prove himself in an unconventional way. The movie is not really about training a dragon, but more of a coming of age and growth opportunities for our young warrior and his competitors. The move is also presented in 3D and IMAX where available. With voice talent of Gerard Butler as Stoick, Craig Ferguson as Gobber, America Ferrera as Astrid and Jay Baruchel as Hiccup.

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Thanks for listening and hope you enjoy the show.

This week broke a few very interesting stories.  First we have Apple taking the fight against all things titillating and taking the now familiar step of banishing apps from the iTunes store aka super Jobs nirvana land.  Seems that someone had the nerve to make apps that had cleavage and bare chested men and such…who would have thought.  Good news is that Apple has got the mothership servers on full alert and are wiping out vast swaths of applications.  The bad news is, as usual, no one is exactly sure whats ok and what isn’t.  But come on, when your app can be rejected because its icon doesn’t meet the “aesthetic standards” of Apple, what do you expect?

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But our main stories this week have nothing to do with Apple, no this week I take a peep at just what those school administrators in Pennsylvania call loss mitigation.  More specifically, why someone or more likely (if not unbelievably) several someones though it was ok to turn on the web cameras of laptops given to children without then knowing about it, while it was in child’s home, or more specifically bedroom.  Now so far its not as bad as that sounds, but its not much better.  The level of DUH this one required is hard to comprehend

Also a story this week about all the new 3d Televisions.  Apparently its not all a good thing, as some researchers believe that watching too much 3d may make a documented issue with watching 3d images on a screen called Binocular Dysphoria, permanent or at least last long enough to be a real issue.  I don’t know what you consider a real issue, but since a few million of these people are going to be driving within minutes of watching 3d stuff, I’d say its just a little more important.

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–Mike James

This week we review the much anticipated James Cameron film… Aliens…I mean Terminator…no no that’s not right..it was Titanic. Actually, hard to believe, but Titanic was the last Big movie directed by Cameron.  Do I have your attention now?  I meant Avatar of course!!!  Written and directed by James Cameron, with a MONSTER budget of sources say anywhere from 280 million, plus marketing (Los Angles Times) to almost 500 million (The New York Times), but we will not know the real figures for months.  Regardless to say this is one of the highest costing films of our time.  With the director putting in some major capital to develop the technology that would make his dream of Avatar into a reality.  And 161 minute timestamp, they really wanted to get their monies worth.

The movie follows our paraplegic Marine into the world of Pandora.  Where the locals are 10 feet tall and BLUE called the Na’vi.  This environment is hostile to humans but rich in unobtanium (Mike prefers to call it Plot-tonium since it moves the plot along), yeah I know, hard to believe they named it that.  The goal is to get to this rock which is worth Billions and the way there is BY FORCE or Peaceful relocation.  This is where our Marine, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) comes in, with the help of Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and Norm Spellmen (Joel Moore) they intergrate their minds with the human/Na’vi hybrid avatars.  This is a story on so many levels, listen as we tell our thoughts and take you to into the vivid imagination of James Cameron.

Planet 51

This week we decided to watch the kid friendly release of “Planet 51″.  The animated feature brought to the screen by Ilion Animation.  Written by Joe Stillman, who is also known for Shrek and Shrek 2.  The movie takes a unique view on first contact and is situated it the ’50s version of the planet.  The voice acting includes Dwayne ‘The Rock” Johnson as Captain Charles “Chuck” Baker our intrepid austronaut, Justin Long as Lem, the teeenager trying to find himself and stumbles upon “the alien”, Jessica Beal as Neera, the love interest of Lem and Gary Oldman as General Grawl, the over the top by the book Miltary presence.

Listen now for our thoughts on the movie, and as always you can call us at the voicemail hotline, 347-BUG-MIKE.

This week we take a look at a new twist on a classic tale, “A Christmas Carol”, written by Charles Dickens.  The movie is animated by using motion capture technology, which has seen some increase in recent years beginning with The Polar Express in 2004 and most recently, Beowulf in 2007.  These movies are also easily adapted to 3D, which A Christmas Carol has also been released in this format as well.

The voice acting includes the talented of Jim Carrey, playing the following characters: Scrooge / Ghost of Christmas Past / Scrooge as a Young Boy / Scrooge as a Teenage Boy / Scrooge as a Young Man / Scrooge as a Middle-Aged Man / Ghost of Christmas Present / Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, as you can see he is quite busy in the movie.  I must say my favorite was the Christmas Present.

Also in the cast are Colin Firth, playing Scrooge’s nephew Fred and Gary Oldman playing the characters: Bob Cratchit / Marley / Tiny Tim.

And don’t forget to enter the Jeanne and Mike Movie Bits giveaway, as always you can reach us at 347-BUG-MIKE or Letswatchmovies@gmail.com

Join Mike and Jeanne as they take a look back to Toy Story and Toy Story 2, presented in 3D. These movies bring some of our favorite toys to life in a way only Pixar can. With the voice talents of Tom Hanks as Woody and Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear, lets go “to infinity and beyond”.

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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

When Clint Lockwood maks something, he makes it spectacular….or more precicely, spectacularly bad.  When your invention can solve the problems of no food, how bad could it be?

G-Force is brought to you by Jerry Bruckheimer, with such film credits as Top Gun and Pearl Harbor.  And with the great voice talent of Nicolas Cage, Steve Buscemi and Tracy Morgan as they attempt to bring to life the average guinea pig and mole.  So if you were expecting some super cool CG and live action stunts take a moment to listen

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Disney Pixar have taken us on some memorable journies, some better than others in the case of Disney…but I digress.  What do you get when you take an old man, a wilderness scout, a wood frame house, a dream, and a few thousand baloons?  You get UP, and adventure story with a heart.  Far too often in life we all do things that we think we need too, but put off the things we really want to do.  Up shows us that we should take each day and live it to the fullest, and sometimes that means letting go of what we though was most important.

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Staring Edward Asner and Jordan Nagai

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Length 95 minutes

Rated PG

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Monsters vs Aliens movie review by Mike and Jeanne at Lets Watch Movies

Rated PG for sci-fi action, some crude humor and mild language.

Length 94 min

Staring Reese Witherspoon and Seth Rogen

For decades the government has covered up the existence of monsters.  Quietly hiding away those creatures that just don’t fit in with society norms, and allowing the population to concentrate on more important things, like paying their taxes.  Monsters vs Aliens is a new 3d animated film to kickoff a summer chock full of new films shot for specially equiped 3d theaters.  Can MvA hold its own against Pixar classics like The Incredibles or Toy Story, or will it fall short and become another Chicken Little?  Listen as Mike and Jeanned review this three dimensional sci-fi romp.

Plus whats going on at the box office, and on DVD, and of course the Movie Bits Givaway

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