‘Mars Needs Moms’ Trailer: A Sci-Fi Flick For The Kids

Readers familiar with Berkeley Breathed’s charmingly off-kilter comic strip Bloom County will be pleased by the news that Walt Disney Pictures has adapted one of the writer/illustrator’s other works, Mars Needs Moms, into a feature-length motion picture.

Disney has unleashed the trailer for its adaptation of Mars Needs Moms, but did the cleverly warped story from Breathed really need to be brought to life via Robert Zemeckis’ motion-capture technology?

The premise behind Mars Needs Moms is simple, but fun: Nine year-old Milo (Seth Green) learns the hard way about how important his mom (Joan Cusack) is when she’s kidnapped by Martians who are, for whatever reason, suffering from a shortage of maternal types. Milo teams up with a “tech-savvy, underground earthman” by the name of Gribble (who, as played by Dan Fogler, acts like Jack Black’s long-lost brother) and an alien gal called Ki (Elisabeth Harnois) to rescue his beloved parent.

Zemeckis produced Mars Needs Moms, which uses the same performance-capture techniques as his films Polar Express and A Christmas Carol -- hence how the 36-year old Green is able to physically portray a kid about 1/4th his age. But has Zemeckis’ mo-cap technology improved enough to avoid being negatively compared to that of James Cameron’s from Avatar?

Watch the Mars Needs Moms trailer below and find out:

Mars Needs Moms looks to pander far less to the under-10 crowd than next month’s Yogi Bear, but the 3D sci-fi pic is still very much for young moviegoers. The plot and characters seem satisfactory, if not especially memorable, and the trailer at least doesn’t go overboard with the pop culture references (aside from the obvious Star Wars homage), which bodes well for the film.

While the performance-capture animation is a vast improvement over that in The Polar Express, it still is weak, judging by this early footage. The characters’ expressions just look off, unnatural, and distract from the rest of the visuals on display, which are otherwise colorful and realistic enough in their own right.

It’s possible that Mars Needs Moms will benefit from being viewed on the big screen and that the characters’ features will look less wax-like. What do you think?

Mars Needs Moms hits 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D screens in the U.S. on March 11th, 2011.

Source: Walt Disney Pictures

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Google needs to face facts: Nobody needs Chrome OS at this point

November 23 2010 by admin in News |

A week ago at the Web 2.0 Summit, Google CEO Eric Schmidt made the clearest statement yet about the difference between Android and Chrome OS: Android is for touch and Chrome OS is for keyboards. He also made it pretty clear that Chrome OS will not be available in 2010 – but then again, maybe it will. But regardless of when/if we actually see it, all of this is really good to know, because it makes it much easier to say this:

While some people might be interested to play with it, nobody needs Chrome OS at this point – it would be dead-on-arrival.

It should be pretty apparent by now that hardware manufacturers are in no way thrilled by the prospect of Chrome OS. They keep deflecting questions not only about when they will offer netbooks/laptops with Chrome OS, but also about whether they will ever do so. There is a pretty good reason why too: Windows 7 is selling like hotcakes.

When Google announced the ‘idea’ of Chrome OS in July 2009, everyone went gaga, and put in the context of 18 months ago, it’s not that hard to see why we all did: there was no Windows 7 or iPad, Android was frankly just terrible and Chrome (the browser not OS) was not nearly where it is today. People might not have exactly known it at the time, but they were dying for a bigger iPhone (Steve Jobs certainly knew) and the promise of Chrome OS just seemed to be a way to get there. We didn’t understand how far Android would come so quickly, and the iPad was just a dream.

Beyond that, at the time, netbooks were selling like crazy, and everyone was high on ‘the cloud’ (in many ways we still are), so beyond Ubuntu, which never caught on with the public – though it is a super OS – there was a need for something new in ultraportables, and Chrome OS at the time was seemingly as good a shot as anything.

However, the technology landscape is vastly different now than it was 18 months ago because of the three reasons listed above. First there was Windows 7, which frankly is sufficiently good enough for anyone with a netbook, and it is almost universally pre-installed in netbooks now, and we just don’t see how Chrome OS will displace it from that spot. Then there is the iPad, which, with the addition of iOS 4.2 today becomes even more of a netbook killer. Then of course there is Android and the Chrome browser.

Plain and simple, the existence of Android also with the rapidly iterating Chrome browser are the most compelling reasons to believe that we do not need Chrome OS. Chrome the browser is rapidly gaining not only adoption but functionality, and since it is cross-platform, it really has the best chance to accomplish what Google really wants to do, and that is have complete lock-in to your Internet experience (witness Google TV). While Android might “be for touch” as the iPad has demonstrated, if you don’t want to type on a tablet, you just get a bluetooth keyboard, and you’re ready to go. Assuming that Android 3.0 is even half of what it is being cracked up to be, Google will have a mature-enough-tablet-OS that will quickly have plenty of apps.

Granted, Apple splits its software development focus between OSX and iOS, but as we’ve seen with the MacBook Air, even Apple is trying to converge and bring more touch to OSX. There are two major differences between Apple and Google, however, on this front. First, Apple has been producing desktop software (i.e. for keyboards) for around 30 years, so it’s not like Apple is saying, “Great, iOS is doing great, now let’s build a keyboard-based OS” – which is exactly what Google is doing.

Second – an possibly more importantly – Apple builds hardware, something Google has stated numerous times that it has no plans to do (which of course is the right strategy). So Apple produces an OS for its popular Mac line, which makes perfect sense. However, Google is apparently building an OS that doesn’t have a hardware use (at least not officially announced).

So this really begs the question: is Google actually still building Chrome OS for a consumer market, and if so why? Google has shown a penchant – even to extent of making it a point of pride – that it is willing to drop major initiatives when they reach the ‘fail’ stage, as evidenced by Google Wave. Here’s our prediction: Google has already basically given up on Chrome OS – at least as a consumer product, though we could see a scenario where it offers it as an enterprise version that is bundled for Google Apps customers, especially as Google is apparently still hiring for the Chrome OS team – and is stalling until it can roll out Android 3.0, at which time it will officially send Chrome OS the way of Wave (at least in the consumer realm). Both products were good thoughts at the time, but on was too early and the other it’s turning out, is too late to the game.

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Mighty Google needs you for airwaves campaign

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Mighty Google needs you for airwaves campaign

Google may have a lot of political power, but it unusual to see it being used openly. Now, however, the corporation is currently waging a very public campaign, and appealing for help from you, the public.

The aim of the fight is to to fight to free the "white space" between US terrestrial TV channels for long-range, high-speed wireless broadband.

A campaign website was launched in August to swing public opinion in favour of the idea, and to provide a place for people to give it their backing. As well as a petition, the site helps people create videos explaining why they like the idea.

Google is open about the fact it stands to make money from free white space. But you are reminded that consumers stand to benefit too - for example, from phones and other portable gadgets empowered with fast, always-on connections.

Of course, Google wouldn't be campaigning if there wasn't opposition to the idea. There are fears that annexing the white space will cause problems for TV channels, as well as existing users of white-space using gadgets, like wireless microphones. New Scientist took an in depth look at the issue in January.

The graphic below, from that article, illustrates the worries of TV broadcasters.