Jurassic Park 4 gets a 2014 release date

Deadline is reporting that Jurassic Park IV is set for a June 13, 2014 release date. No director is signed on yet, but it will be shot in 3D (no post-conversion) and the new script is by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) who were hired last year producers Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy. The movie has been in and out of development for 10 years, and some thought the death of author Michael Crichton might finish the project for good, but it seems like one of my all-time favorite movies really is going to get another sequel. A 3D rerelease of the original film is set for April 5 this year.

Week Links: Arrested Development and more!

So, here's the secret to the "Week Links" posts: They are compiled over the weekend from the items I've saved in my Google Reader feed, plus any particularly awesome links that I've been emailed over the week. Then every now and again there's some breaking news at the last minute. That's what happened this week as the interwebs provided me with the following.

Week Links: Nerds, Spielberg and Abrams

Following up on last week's resolution to post links weekly, here's some things that stood out to me. Click ahead to see them.

Another collection of links

Pandas and Airships and movie stuff. These are some interesting things from the interwebs, that I think that you should probably be aware of. I have a new goal to make this a weekly feature, we'll see how that goes.

Cool bits from the interwebs

Comic-con has come and gone since my last post of links, and as expected, there were some exciting pieces of news and great reveals over the last couple of weeks. I'm not going to try to cover everything that came out of the con, but here's a few of things that particularly stood out to me.

A few awesome things

Here's a few things that have been sitting in my RSS feed just waiting to be shared. There's some Marvel movie news, a final piece of Hunger Games casting and news on Steven Spielberg's long-delayed Abraham Lincoln movie, plus a couple pieces of technology that belongs to the future, and my favorite TV show gets a final season. It's all after the jump.

Flashback: Jurassic Park

I'm going to start a series of posts looking at my favorite stories of all time. I going to talk about how these influenced me and what I think where some of the significant themes and features that made them work. Mostly, this will be movies and books. I'm starting with one that's both a book and film. The Michael Crichton (RIP) novel and Steven Spielberg film: Jurassic Park.

I generally list Jurassic Park first among the major influences of my life, and put it at or near the top of lists of favorite books and movies. My dad read me a parentally-edited version of the book when I was three or four, and my parents took me to the movie when it was released in '93. I don't remember it specifically, but Dad's version of the story has me standing on my seat saying, "This wasn't how it was in the book." Apparently I haven't changed much.

Now it's entirely possible that the Jurassic Park's significance for me comes from permanently burning it into my physique by seeing the movie and reading the book more times than I can count and has nothing to do with any qualities of the original work. It's possible, but I don't seem to be only person who appreciates it.

Full Super 8 Trailer

Super 8, the highly secretive film that for a long time was simply known as the J.J. Abrams tribute to Steven Spielberg is one of the movies I'm most looking forward to this year and has new full-length trailer that actually shows what the movie's about. And it's awesome. Abrams seems to have captured the wonderment of Spielberg's early alien movies Close Encounters and ET perfectly, while bringing his own lens-flare visuals. Basically, this movie looks like cross between ET and Cloverfield, and my brain just won't make that into a bad thing.

20 movies I want to see

There's probably a few glaring omissions, and some of these are almost certain to disappoint. One thing I noticed typing this up. There are definitely too many colons and numbers here (though Super 8 is off the hook), and Harry Potter picks up both of them. See the list after the jump.