Creative Loafing presents Ed Loves Bacon

By popular demand, Paramount Pictures announced screenings of their underground horror flick Paranormal Activity midnight tonight at Atlantic Station.

Over 230,000 people have requested the studio release the film through an innovative distribution promotional website, paranormalmovie.com. On the site, users “demand” the showing of the film selecting their city or by adding their city to the growing list. Los Angeles and New York topped the list, while Atlanta ranked 10th in total demand requests followed by Miami and Las Vegas.

In Paranormal Activity, a young couple tries to figure out what’s causing the strange occurrences in their home each night, especially while trying to sleep. Armed with a video camera and low-tech recording devices they soon capture evidence they’re not alone in the house when something forcibly make its presence known to them.

From viewing the trailer, its clear the film was shot as a mocumentary in the same vein as its low-budget predecessor, The Blair Witch Project. According to various reviews and viewer comments, the film is truly unnerving, and the website bloody-disgusting.com describes it as “one of the scariest movies of all time.”

While that remains to be seen, there are reports that director Steven Spielberg had his own account of paranormal activity while viewing the movie. In the Paranormal Activity Wikipedia entry, its noted that Spielberg witnessed a bedroom door inexplicably close and lock from the inside while he viewed the film. He returned the screener in a garbage bag stating that his copy was haunted.

Paranormal Activity, Screening October 2, 2009 12:01 am, Not Rated, Directed by Oren Peli, Stars Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat. Exclusive midnight showing at Regal Atlantic Station.

Marvel Comics released a trailer of their upcoming motion comic Astonishing X-Men: Gifted today. The story was written by Buffy series creator Joss Whedon and illustrated by John Cassaday (Captain America series).

The story according to Marvel:

Cyclops and Emma Frost re-form the X-Men with the express purpose of “astonishing” the world. But when breaking news regarding the mutant gene unexpectedly hits the airwaves, will it derail their new plans before they even get started? As demand for the “mutant cure” reaches near-riot levels, the X-Men go head-to-head with the enigmatic Ord, with an unexpected ally – and some unexpected adversaries – tipping the scales!

Gifted is Marvel Comic’s second motion comic release. Last month, Marvel launched its first series, Spider-Woman on August 19th.

Astonishing X-Men: Gifted is scheduled for release on October 26, 2009. Marvel motion comics are available for download exclusively on iTunes.

Has this ever happened to you – you get to the theater early, grab a large $10 soda, engage in witty convo with your movie buddy, survive 15  minutes of coming attractions. Then just as the movie gets well underway, your bladder starts screaming for release. As you walk down the dark corridor out of the auditorium, you hear roaring laughter or screams or my favorite, “oh Hell naw!” You get back later with your friend telling you, “you missed the good part.”

Well worry no more, now you can know exactly when to step away to “pay the water bill” with a quick visit to runpee.com before heading to the movies.

Runpee.com flushes all colorful commentary and gives its readers the facts – what times and what scenes should movie goers head to out to take a bathroom break. What I like most is the interface. There’s no reviews to wade through, no fussy graphics – just a easy-to-use panel showing how many four minute breaks and at what times are essentially worth skipping. If you wanna know what happened while you were out. hit the “unscramble” button and scene spoilers are decrypted.

The “pee times” are submitted solely from the site’s registered users and thus subject to some scrutiny. That said, new movies and previously submitted updates are consistently added. Registration is free and movie updates are not moderated so they appear on the site immediately.

Recently, the Runpee’s creator/developer, polyGeek announced the release of a mobile version. Runpee is available for download for Apple iPhones for $.99.

As part of the official movie site for Fox’s upcoming teen film, I Love You, Beth Cooper, Hayden Panettiere encourages teens to submit their own video confessions or “Moments of Truth” to be featured in an upcoming commercial for the film.

You can go to the official movie website and click “submit” to post your own video, view submission or if you prefer to be anonymous, you can tweet your moment of truth via the Twitter interface on the page.

According IMDB Here’s what ILUBC is all about:

A nerdy valedictorian proclaims his love for the hottest and most popular girl in school – Beth Cooper (Panettiere) – during his graduation speech. Much to his surprise, Beth shows up at his door that very night and decides to show him the best night of his life.

Definitely one for teens, but the moments of truth submissions (Twitter and YouTube) are pretty interesting.

The Japanese kid channel icon, Domo-Kun has been a favorite of mine for some time now. He’s just so cool, and I can’t figure out why and that’s what makes even all the more hip. I mean seriously, he’s a plush block with tiny legs, knobby arms, beady eyes and the largest mouth I’ve ever seen since the original Japanese monster Gojira.

My fascination aside, Domo has crossed the ocean and made a big splash here in the states. Target has some Domo merchandise and NickToons airs two minute episodes each week. My favorite episodes usually involve big D trying to rock out or dance – it cracks me up. Due to licensing, not many of the NickToons versions of the episodes can be found online, but you can Google fan vids and some official clips as well.

Maybe I’ll try to get a Domo costume for Halloween, there’s several sites to show you how to make them, but like Domo-Kun, I’m probably too lazy for that.

Watch Domo Music Video – Check out Domonation.com in Animation |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

While cruising the web feeds today, I got wind that Facebook is launching a fresh new design next week. The new page is streamlined and looks more refined and elegant in its presentation – very “2.0″ as my contemporaries like to say. What’s up with the new view? According to their official announcement:

We’ve updated our home page to make it easier to understand what’s going on with the people you care about. Now your friends’ posts are streamed in real-time and you have more control over what you see.

The new Facebook features better filter control, real-time streaming of posts in the news stream and revised publisher settings so its easier to post links, photos, videos and more. Here’s a summary of the publisher improvements:

• Link (add a web address to external content)
• Photos (upload a photo, create an album, or take a webcam photo)
• Video (upload a video or record a webcam video)
• Note (add from Facebook’s Notes application)
• Import (add external blogs or RSS feeds)
• Gifts (add from Facebook’s Gift Shop)

I must admit I’m excited to see the changes. Facebook’s interface is rather cumbersome when adding  any external items, so this new interface is a welcomed improvement. I really like the sleek new skin and realtime updates without hitting the refresh key is just pure candy in my book. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg sums it up brilliantly in his blog.

There’s an interesting blog post in the LA times that states that Facebook’s changes are a means to combat the growing popularity of Twitter. Well duh, these two have been the only real players in the networking game for some time now. It was only a matter of time before Facebook behaved more like Twitter or vice-versa.  It will be interesting to see how Twitter will responds to its competition.