On May 7, Iron Man 2 will be released. This is the most anticipated sequel to the 300 millions dollar hit from two years ago. Robert Downey Jr. joins a stacked cast who includes: Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke, Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sam Rockwell and Samuel L. Jackson. Projected opening weekend gross: 155 million dollars

Following Iron Man 2, on May 14, is a team up of Director Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe in Robin Hood also starring Oscar winning actress Cate Blanchett as the Maid Marion.

On May 21 two big name movies are set to release. One being the hit “SNL” comedy sketch starring Will Forte MacGruber starring Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillipe and Val Kilmer, and the other being the forth and final movie of the Shrek franchise, entitled Shrek Forever After starring the original cast plus “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm, “The Office” actor Craig Robinson, “Glee’s” Jane Lynch and Kathy Griffin will all be joining the cast. The last three Shrek movies have grossed over two billion dollars worldwide so this movie should yet again become a box office hit.

Over the next two weeks, several potential box office hits are set to release. They are: May 28- Sex and the City 2 (on Thursday) and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time starring Jake Gyllenhaal, June 4- Forgetting Sarah Marshall spinoff Get Him To The Greek starring Russell Brand and Jonah Hill along with a lot of musical cameos, including P. Diddy, Katy Perry (Brand’s real life fiancée) and Pink; Ashton Kutcher Katherine Heigl action comedy Killers; Owen Wilson has the beloved 1950s comic dog Marmaduke; and Adrien Brody’s Sci-fi Horror movie entitled Splice.

June 11 is the remake weekend with The A-Team set to release starring Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, District-9’s Sharlto Copley and Quinton Jackson as Sgt. Bosco ‘B.A.’ Baracus formerly played by Mr. T in the 1983 series. Also to release that day is The Karate Kid starring Jackie Chan as Mr. Han and Jaden Smith to play the lead.

June 18 has the most anticipated animation movie since its predecessor in 1999. Toy Story 3 in 3-D with the original cast plus newcomers Michael Keaton, Bonnie Hunt, and Whoopi Goldberg. Look for this movie to become the highest grossing Pixar film of all time (Finding Nemo at 339.7 million dollars). Josh Brolin is set to play Jonah Hex the cowboy from DC Comics, also starring Megan Fox and John Malkovich.

The next movies to be released are as follows in this order…

June 25- Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in Knight & Day, July 2- M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, and the third movie from the Twilight series called The Twililght Saga: Eclipse, July 9 has Despicable Me and a remake of Predators. July 16 has Nicholas Cage and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin) in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and also that week is one of the most anticipated movies since Avatar, called Inception. This movie, directed by Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Memento) will star Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine. Nobody knows anything about this movie because Nolan wanted to surprise everyone with the movie some critics are saying Leo could finally win his well-deserved Oscar.

July 23 has two big movies; Dinner For Schmucks with Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, and also Angelina Jolie as Salt the movie originally written for a man. July 31 has Beastly, Cats and Dogs sequel, and Charlie St. Cloud starring Zac Efron.       

August brings a lot of blockbuster movies with: The Other Guys and Step Up 3D on August 6, Eat Pray Love, Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World on August 13, the over the final two weeks of summer blockbusters, the movies to spend money on are Bow Wow’s Lottery Ticket on August 20 and Piranha 3D on August 30.

So ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy the show and remember: “State Law prohibits smoking in this auditorium.”

Here the prawns become not welcomed, but feared, and their camp they call their new home turns into a prison.  Fearing alien attacks, humans demand that the prawns be relocated far from town and a clueless man named Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is placed in charge of this task. The prawns are not eager to move. A private security force, led by van der Merwe, moves in with armored vehicles and flame-throwers, encouraging them to leave at once.

This science-fiction film, directed by newcomer Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson, takes the form of a mockumentary about van der Merwe’s relocation campaign, his infection by an alien virus, his own refuge in District 9 and his partnership with the only alien who behaves intelligently and reveals human emotions. This alien, named Christopher Johnson, has a secret workspace where he prepares to return to the mother ship and help his people, including his son, return safely.

Later on in the film, van der Merwe discovers alien weaponry, which can only be used by aliens, targeting a new assignment: figuring out how to use them against the aliens. Things end up going van der Merwe’s firm’s way as that infection starts to spread, leading to him developing a lobster-looking hand (as that of the alien). Unfortunately for van der Merwe, these are not all the transformations he is going through. He loses all his teeth, picks off all his fingernails and throws up a blue liquid. As van der Merwe goes through these transformations, his boss and father-in-law, Piet Smit (Louis Minnaar), wants to use him as a test-subject to kill the aliens because he is the only human being able to operate the weaponry.

What Neill Blomkamp somehow does is make Christopher Johnson and his son, Little CJ, sympathetic despite their appearances. This is achieved by giving them, but no other aliens, human body language, and little CJ even gets tearful, like E.T did in Spielberg’s film.

A lot of fans seem to be disappointed in the third act, where there is a gigantic shoot-out and no attempt is made to resolve the situation, but the action in the film is what gives it that difference maker that all of the other nine Oscar-nominated movies lack. Blomkamp combines the ability of “prawns” to show human emotion, the transformation of van der Merwe into that of an alien and the superbly done action sequences in the film into a Best Picture nod that brings along three more nominations in arguably the best movie of firsts.

First acting role for Sharlto Copley, the directorial debut for Neill Blomkamp and the entire supporting casts’ first movie. District 9 grossed 115 million dollars domestically, putting it in fifth place among Best Picture nominations.

This is all happening in Philadelphia on October 9 to October 11. Ticket prices are as follows: 9 dollars for youth single day, 20 dollars for youth full weekend, 15 dollars for adult single day and 28 dollars for adult full weekend.

 Kids and adults spend hours touring the expo floor, viewing the history of The Video Games Museum, participating in workshops, competing in competitions, exploring the Video Game Festival, or playing games in the VGXPO Arcade.

“It is like Comic-Con for video games” said VGXPO founder Amber Dalton. “All the gamers in the country gather up and meet new people to discuss new games coming out, favorite games and games they hate.”

 The Expo even has a costume contest, which consists of people dressing up like favorite video game characters.

Courtesy of www.videogame.net

All those who choose to wear costumes hope to win the best dressed title or other awards. Some of the prizes include winning unreleased games and a one on one conversation with a favorite game’s creator, if present.

 The convention will begin Friday October 9 at 2 pm and will last until 9 pm. Saturday hours are 11-9 and Sunday 11-5.

 Anyone who appreciates the art of videogames can have the time of their lives by attending the Video game expo. If one likes getting a flashback by playing the original Donkey Kong and Super Mario from 1988 or getting a thrill from playing new and improved games from 2009, the Video Game Expo at Philadelphia is a place for videogame enthusiasts to enjoy.

On November 23, a two- hour TV movie/prequel called 24: Redemption aired on FOX. The network wanted to shorten the gap between Season 6 and Season 7, in addition to setting the tone for the new season. According to tvbythenumbers.com, “Redemption” attracted around 12 million viewers eager to see Jack Bauer return. The DVD for the prequel is already available and notable extras include a sneak peak at Season 7.

24: Day 7 had a two-night, four-hour season premier special on Jan. 11-12. The show brought had essentially the same ratings as with “Redemption”, attracting around 12 million viewers. The first four episodes showed that only four characters from previous seasons will be returning to the latest season. In addition to Jack, Chloe (Mary Lynn-Rajskub) will be returning after her season six-finale pregnancy, ex-CTU agent Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) and finally Jack’s partner from earlier seasons Tony Almeida will be returning after his “death” in season-five.

Returning “24″ fans will find some noticeable changes in Season 7. There is no CTU for the first time. It is now going to be taken place in Washington D.C instead of Los Angeles. It was also revealed in “Redemption” that Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones) will be the first female president on “24″. Jones may be best remembered for her roles in The Perfect Storm, Signs and Oceans Twelve as well as her stage work on the Doubt play.

Other well-known actors appearing on this season include Emmy-nominated actress Janeane Garofalo (The Larry Sanders Show) and Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight (National Treasure).

Look for many surprises to happen this year in “24″ and look for Jack Bauer to use his phenomenal interrogation skills to get what he wants.

The Pro Bowl has been held in Honolulu, Hawaii since 1980.

Not only will it have a new location after 30 years, but it will also take place at a different time. It will be held January 31, 2010, which is one week before Super Bowl XLIV.

Also, whichever teams make it to Super Bowl XLIV, cannot have any players on the Pro Bowl roster. This is due to possible injuries to those players. This would have been good news for Redskins ILB London Fletcher- Baker this year after his comment for not making the Pro Bowl once again, “To have it happen, year after year after year after year, you can’t tell me … an 8-time alternate, c’mon man.” If Carolina were to make it to the Super Bowl this year, Baker would be bumped up onto the roster for the NFC for his first Pro Bowl appearance in his eleven-year career.

This could also cause some controversies, because what makes the Pro Bowl fun to watch is seeing the NFL’s best all competing against each other. If this happened last year, eight of the Pro Bowlers would not have played because of making it to the Super Bowl.

For the conference losing teams with players who made the roster, some of them might not even want to play in the game. After you lose the final game before the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl might just make it worse.

Last year, fourteen Charger and Packer players were selected to the Pro Bowl roster, after losing the game before the Super Bowl their attitude could have changed toward playing in the game. They lost one of the biggest games of their career and playing in the Pro Bowl game probably would have just made it worse.

The NFL is supposed to have a rule that at least one player from each of the thirty-two teams will be selected to the Pro Bowl, now they are changing it by having the exception of the top two NFL teams’ players not on the roster and the possibility of the third and fourth best teams’ players not wanting to play.

From a recent poll on Espn.com 67% of 77,000 voters think the Pro Bowl should be after the Super Bowl instead of before.

The Pro Bowl in Honolulu has been sold out every single year and once they started to do work on Aloha Stadium, the Pro Bowl gets moved to Miami. Goodell said that there is a slight chance the Pro Bowl will be back in Hawaii, but not likely.

Losing the Pro Bowl, combined with slowdowns in tourism because of the sluggish economy, is a double-dose of bad news for Honolulu, which estimates that 25,000 people came from out-of-state for Pro Bowls.

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Dexter is going through a crisis, dealing with many tough dilemmas. His sister, Deb, is trying to find the drug-dealing killer Freebo, so Dexter needs to find him first. Also, Dexter has to deal with the shocking news that he may be a father. Dexter keeps having these random “dreams” that his future child will turn out just like him, a killer. Meanwhile, Miguel and Dexter find themselves tracking down the same killer, Freebo.  Deb, on the other hand, has found a very useful lead, an informant named Anton (David Ramsey), hoping to find Freebo so she can receive her “shield” (a.k.a her promotion). 

 Thoughts:  

Following last week’s episode I didn’t know how this show could get any more interesting. First, Dexter broke Harry’s “code,” then we find out Rita is pregnant with Dexter’s child, and that Dexter is on the brink of getting caught for killing renown prosecutor Miguel Prado’s little brother. However, Dexter always seems to find a way out of his troubles. When Dexter and Rita were invited over to the Prado house for dinner, Miguel presses Dexter for more information on his brother’s case, and tells Dexter that his other brother, Ramon, has acquired some of his own information– Freebo’s mother’s cell phone number. Dexter gets worried that this information may lead Prado to find Freebo before Dexter has a chance to get to him. So Dexter does anything and everything he can to track down Freebo. He even goes to a college sorority party to find information on Freebo’s ex girlfriend, whom Freebo killed recently, and to find out where she lived to see if Freebo is hiding there. It turns out that Freebo was actually at the house that belonged to his ex girlfriend. As Dexter leaves the house to retrieve his “supplies,” Rita is there at his doorstep wanting to talk about their baby. She decides to keep it, and Dexter, still in shock, goes back to where Freebo was to continue his “killing process”. 

As Dexter begins his “routine,” we find that Miguel arrives at the house with his gun drawn searching for Freebo, as Dexter is completing the task. Dexter, with his blade in hand and covered in blood, gets confronted by Prado and immediately begins to panic and say it was self-defense. Prado recognizes the knife and gives Dexter a hug, telling Dexter he wasn’t sure if he would have been able to follow-through with killing Freebo himself. Dexter urges Prado to leave the scene without going into the garage to allow him “plausible deniability” so he won’t realize that Dexter had intended to kill Freebo. Prado grabs Dexter’s face and gives him a heart-felt “thank you,” just as we see that some of Freebo’s blood has gotten on the back of Prado’s shirt. It will be interesting to see if anyone notices the blood on Prado’s shirt and if he will get framed for Freebo’s murder. 

Grade: B+