Public Enemies – in the 1930s there was a famous bank robber in Chicago named John Dillinger who couldn’t be contained in prison. Crime is running wild during this time and FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christain Bale) has his eyes set on Dillinger (Johnny Depp) in order to clean up the city. Directed by Michael Mann (Collateral, Heat).

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs – the sequel to the previous two animated films has Sid getting into some trouble which leads Manny, Ellie, Diego, and Scrat to save their friend. They discover an underground world of dinosaurs beneath their icy homeland. Voices by Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and others.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li – Kristen Kreuk plays Chun Li, a young Chinese-American girl set out for revenge for her father’s death. She sets her eyes on M. Bison, who is the leader of a crime syndicate, and his league of cronies. Meanwhile, Interpol agents are also on his tail. Loosely based on the popular video game.

12 Rounds – WWE wrestler John Cena plays a detective who accidentally causes the death of a criminal’s girlfriend while he is arresting them. When that same criminal gets out of prison, he vows revenge on Cena by kidnapping his girlfriend and making him go through 12 rounds of challenges to get her back. Directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2).

Two Lovers – an aspiring photographer (Joaquin Phoenix) returns home to Brooklyn after a failed career. He finds himself torn between two women who are complete opposites. Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) is the safe choice while Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow) is the party girl in love with a married man.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – Sam Witwicky is off to college where he starts having weird visions. Meanwhile, the Decepticons once again invade Earth in order to resurrect Megatron and kill Optimus Prime at the orders of their new boss, The Fallen. The Autobots come back to defend their friends. Directed by Michael Bay. Starring Shia LeBouf, Megan Fox, John Turturro, and more.

My Sister’s Keeper – Abigail Breslin is looking to earn emancipation from her parents, Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric. Until now they have relied on Breslin to help keep their leukemia stricken other daughter alive. Directed by Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook).

Inkheart – Brendan Fraser is a bookbinder who has the power to bring characters to life when he reads aloud. When he is captured by one of the evil characters he reads about (Andy Serkis), his daughter must rally her real and imaginary friends together to rescue him.

Confessions of a Shopaholic – Isla Fisher plays a woman obsessed with shopping until she gets herself in serious debt. She ironically scores a job writing an advice column for a financial magazine to help her pay the bills. Of course she also meets a guy there.

The Pink Panther 2 – Steve Martin reprises his role as Jacques Clouseau, the bumbling inspector who gets assigned to another case of a thief attempting to steal a historical artifact. This time he teams up with an International squad of detectives that are as dumb as he is.

Missed last Saturday’s recording? It’s okay, we have your monthly dose of SRP available right this moment! Sure we’re a little late, but hey, it’s still here. July is looking to be a busy month for us and we’re not quite sure when we’ll get to the podcast. There is a slight chance we’ll be doing that on the 11th of July. You won’t want to miss it, because if everything goes according to plan, we’ll be going through lots of reviews and comments about the latest short. Yup, we’re *that* close.

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Yesterday I headed over to Wizard World in Philly for the second time ever, but the first time as a regular guest. You might remember that Frank and I headed there about two years ago trying to plug Shamoozal.com. We were so under prepared for that event, with only a handful of flyers, some tiny character cut outs, a “Shamoozal” yellow table cloth, and a laptop that only ran for about two hours a day to actually show our shorts. Oh, and the stickers we wanted to hand out didn’t come until AFTER that weekend… and I’m still stuck with about 500 of the things all this time later. This year was all about just enjoying the show, which I didn’t have much of a chance to when we were trying to sell people on typing in our URL when they got home.

Wizard World isn’t really my thing since I’m not really into comic books. That is essentially the bulk of the show, a way for collectors to buy MORE comics and more toys. I love toys, but I chose not to look at them this year since I’m in the process of figuring out what to do with the current toys I already have. The good thing is that there is enough other stuff to still make it an interesting trip. For instance, getting to meet the friendly Newgrounds staff, the always great B-List celebrity alley, the more grass roots Artist alley, and of course lots of video game stuff. Oh, and plenty of cosplay and Jedi too.

This year the Newgrounds guys had a huge booth in the front of the show floor with lots of goodies to buy and several of their popular artists chatting it up and doing commission work. I introduced myself to Tom Fulp, the creator of Newgrounds and he seemed like a really nice and down to earth guy. It was nice being able to chat it up with him. I also had the chance to meet the extremely popular Egoraptor, which was a really fun encounter. Frank and I spoke with him for a bit about the show and Newgrounds in general. He’s a really nice guy and is about as quick witted as you’d expect. I also met Steve V (SardonicSamurai) who was also a really nice guy. There were a bunch of other regulars there that I saw but didn’t actually get to speak with like Swain, HappyHarry, and Tomamoto. To be quite honest, it was actually a really overwhelming moment for me because there were so many people there. What I can say is that is a pretty tight group and they came from all parts of the US to be there, which is pretty impressive and shows they’re dedicated to the brand that Fulp created. Pretty cool stuff, I look forward to running into those guys again and hopefully spending a bit more time with them.

Hey guys. I can say that the past two weeks have been pretty productive for the most part with the short. I’m moving along to what is one of the final shots of the short, and thanks to the rest of Stern Show and the MGS4 OST, I was able to sink about 3 and a half hours into it tonight. I got these roughs squared away last night, and tonight I was able to clean them up and get a little animation in there. I actually threw some animation out that wasn’t working. It wasn’t a huge deal though because I was able to salvage what was there and instead decided to build some straight in-betweens between the two keys. It has a little more snap now. The above pic is what I roughed out last night. I like the square nose I gave Jacquo.

Anywho, this beast that is GFG#5 is getting close to completion. Its starting to all come together.

Since John is on vacation this week, I figured I’d take up the home releases for the week until he gets back. The big release this week would have to be the 25th Anniversary Bluray edition of the classic Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters is one of my all time favorite films, and the chance to own it in HD is extremely tempting. You can’t really do wrong by picking this one up.

It’s also a big Friday the 13th week with the release of the 2009 remake on both DVD and BD, along with Part 2 and 3 on BD. Sad fact, I have never actually seen a Friday the 13th movie in its entirety before. However, I have seen all of TV series Lost, and the BD releases of Season 1 and 2 have also been released this week, making the entire series (outside of this past season) available on BD.

We also have the sleeper hit Madea Goes to Jail, and the sure to be awful straight to DVD The Cell 2. For those that want to get pumped up for the next Transformers movie, there is also a 25th Anniversary DVD release of the complete first season of the original animated series. Mel Brooks’ comedy classic, Spaceballs, also hits BD today.

Sorry guys, I’m gonna plug my own work again here. Aaron Simpson over at Lineboil.com posted a little article about my latest job I played a small part of. The British Gas spots are mixed-media combining real-life models of planets and props and photos of actors stylized into flat 2D characters. This newest one, “Switching” included a heavy dose of 3D CGI. I was one of three After Effects animators who handled the character animation. In this spot, I handled the Mom and the Kid in the kitchen. The CGI and compositors totally kicked it into high gear on this one, and they did an awesome job of seemlessly blending everything together. “Switching”’s camera flies through entirely CG interiors, through windows, tracks video of real life models of the planets, and firmly roots the After Effects characters in the envronments.

Of course, these commercials are for British Gas, which means you won’t see them airing anytime soon on U.S. televisions, but thanks to the power of the internet, you can check it out over at Lineboil.com.

I just got in from “Up”. God damn, those guys at Pixar know what they’re doing. They know how to take a simple story, apply a far fetched concept to it, and somehow make it all work. Of course, the animation is top notch. Alot of the acting choices are very subtle and smart, and the characters are well rounded and believable. The pack of dogs that get introduced later into the film were pretty fun.

There is also one thing that I noticed that Pixar did in “Up” that I don’t think they or any other family friendly animated film has done in recent years in the narrative, and that is the use of blood. They use blood twice in the film, and both times it carried weight and meaning. Normally, this is something that a board of trustees and know-nothings will instantly dismiss by saying, “umm, we cant show blood on screen. kids will be scared of it so take the blood out. Let’s just have the guy make a goofy face after getting git over the head.” It is this type of thinking that Pixar eschews, and its why their films are home runs every time. They take risks and never talk down to their audience. Up is a great film that the kids will dig, but hits the heart-strings on an adult level. Go see it.