Tokarski

I love this commercial….and I love Discovery Channel. Well done.

[via Coudal]

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Autoblog posted a sneak preview to Audi’s Super Bowl ad: Audi’s Truth in Engineering Exclusive Preview

Fantastic – a scene-for-scene recreation of the classic horse head scene from the Godfather. The sound of the R8 pulling away at the end is intoxicating.

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Audi A4 ‘park assist’.

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Michael Peña very graciously gave the girls autographs and posed for a picture during filming of The Return. (They were very thrilled).

(L-R: Emily, Anne, Michael Peña, and Allie)

Update: Later in the evening, Allie and Emily also received Tim Robbins’ autograph.

All in all, a great Hollywood day for the girls.

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The chairs for the cast of ‘The Return‘ spent the night in our garage (along with a load of other filming equipment). It was interesting to watch some of the filming last night – on the surface, making movies seems like such a glamorous profession – but in reality it looks like a lot of waiting around and repetition. I must have watched Tim Robbins do the same scene about 5+ times – and, from the distance, I couldn’t see any discernible differences between each. I guess it’s a bit of risk management – capture as much as you can so you can sort it all out later.

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There was a flurry of activity outside the house today as a film crew prepared to start on a portion of a movie called ‘The Return,’ starring Tim Robbins, Michael Peña, and Rachel McAdams. The house of our neighbors across the street is being used for internal as well as some backyard-pool shots. I’ve noticed a few blurbs in the local news about filming in the area – the crew was in Bolingbrook and Naperville recently – and they’re in our neck of the woods for the next few days.

It’s interesting to see a bit of Hollywood right outside our front door.

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I may have been skeptical when Daniel Craig was announced as the new Bond…. but, I saw Casino Royale today and was pleasantly surprised. Craig pulls the role off very well and the story – which takes us back to the ‘birth of Bond,’ just prior to his getting the ‘00′ designation – is quite good. Definitely a must see if you’re at all a Bond fan.

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Ah…Pierce Brosnan.

Since his days on Remington Steele, I always thought of him as a little too slick, trying to be too suave, wearing pinkie-rings, etc… And then, all the hoopla over how great he’d be as Bond, etc. I didn’t think he’d be able to pull it off – but I’ll admit he’s among my top three Bonds (Connery, of course, on top…followed closely by George Lazenby’s all-to-brief appearance in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’).

So, it was with great interest I picked up The Matador, after seeing some commercials a while back with Brosnan as a decidedly un-Bond-like character traipsing through a hotel library wearing nothing but black speedos and boots (for the record, I wasn’t attracted to the black speedos…. it just seemed like a very different role / look for Brosnan and I wanted to see more of it). Brosnan’s portrayal of Julian Noble, a hit-man in the waning days of his career, was fantastic…. almost as if Bond had a seedy evil twin.

Lupita and I truly enjoyed this one…chuckling over many of Brosnan’s frequent one-liners. (Those of you offended by vulgarities may want to stay away, as Julian’s conversation is peppered with some doozies….. I do want to go back through the DVD and jot a few of them down, since they’re pretty off-the-wall….).

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We took the girls to see Cars tonight and loved it. The central theme of the story (summarized in the movie’s tag line above) really resonated for me (in light of this past year).As always seems to be the case for each Pixar feature, it’s a great story surrounded by some incredible visuals. The wizards at Pixar keep raising the visual bar – I had a hard time reminding myself I was watching virtual landscapes during the Lightning McQueen / Sally Carrera driving sequence.

I’ll have to get in on DVD when it comes out eventually so I can digest all of the little nuggets sprinkled throughout – I especially liked CarTalk’s Click and Clack (”The Tappet Brothers”) as the Rust-eze sponsors – and Michael Schumacher’s (Ferrari’s F1 driver) cameo at the end.

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CNN reports this morning that ‘Star Trek’ is set for an ‘08 revival. I’ve loved all of the installments (some more than others) and after Enterprise (the last TV series on UPN) was cancelled, I was disappointed that it may have signaled the end of the franchise.

The article states that the project (a new feature movie) will be directed by J.J. Abrams – who produced ‘Alias’ and ‘Lost’ – so I’m pretty excited about the quality potential of this new installment.

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