This movie is getting more hype than all the other holiday movies put together.  Is it all just overblown or is this the beginning of a whole new way of thinking about filmmaking?

According to the movie’s Web site, “'Avatar' takes us to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on an epic adventure, ultimately fighting to save the alien world he has learned to call home.”

OK, this plot line sounds familiar, but this doesn’t begin to describe the movie.  According to its publicity, “Avatar” is designed to “deliver a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story."

What’s this “revolutionary technology”?  Made in stereoscopic 3-D and combining live-action and computer animation, the film was created using such innovative techniques as a new kind of “image-based facial performance capture,”  intricate “head-rig” systems, a “Fusion Camera System,”  a “Simul-Cam,” and an “AMP — Amplified Mobility Platform — Suit.”

What?

I’m not sure what all this means, but I think it’s worth the price of movie ticket to find out.

What do you think? Has this movie been overhyped?

No, I'm not hanging Christmas lights quite yet, but with Halloween behind us and Thanksgiving just a mere two weeks away, it's time to start lining up the Holiday movie schedule.

What are you planning to see this year?

A fairy tale centered on a young girl named Princess Tiana who lives in New Orleans' French Quarter during the Jazz Age.

Fairy tales?  Princesses?  Jazz Music?  YES, please.  Coming December 2009.

What movie are you most excited about between now and the end of 2009?

It's been confirmed!

Ellen DeGeneres will be taking Paula Abdul's spot on American Idol this upcoming season. She'll be joining veteran judges Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson along with no-longer-the-newbie Kara DioGuardi. Her debut kicks off with the 2010 season in January.

First of all, it must be noted that I absolutely adore Ellen. I've read her books, seen her sitcom, watched her show, LOVE her.

Anyway, let's talk about this. She was a guest judge this past season on FOX's So You Think You Can Dance, which I thought was a great and natural fit for her. If you've ever seen her show, you've seen her dance her way into the crowd as the show starts. You can find on YouTube a video of her dancing with now-President Barack Obama (then, President-Elect). This made sense. I really enjoyed how real and genuine she was in her guest role there also. She was emotional, involved, and genuinely invested in each of the performances.

But will that translate to Idol? Frankly, I wonder if she's too nice. Simon's obviously never been afraid to voice his opinion when he hates something (or, it should be noted, when he loves something, though those instances are fewer and farther between). Randy's not outright mean, but he's been harsh on a contestant or two in the past. Paula and Kara just about got into fisticuffs with Bikini Girl last year.

Those chicks are scrappy.

But Ellen? Scrappy? I kind of get the feeling she'd be more likely to give someone a hug and congratulate them: "you gave it your best shot! I'm so proud of you!" than she would be to tell someone that they sing like a dying crow. Or William Hung.

But will I watch it and love it? Absolutely. I've been a wishy-washy fan of the show for years, catching it every other to about every third year. I think this was the hook needed to get me to tune in this year, which will make FOX happy to hear I'm sure.

I'm interested to see how her relationships develop with the other judges. Another initial thought I'd had was the possible expansion to a younger fanbase, but then I remembered that the median age of Idol viewers is closer to 40 than it is to 14. (I know, right?)

So Ellen? Dance your way right on up to the judge's table and have a blast this year. I'll miss Paula and her "seriously, I promise I didn't spike my Coca-Cola"-type outbursts, but I think this could definitely be a fun change.

A 2009 Indie film festival darling, (500) Days of Summer is a beautiful, charming, and sincere not-a-love-story love story.  Paired with a gorgeous soundtrack, I'd say this one nails it.

I'd been checking out the soundtrack since its release a couple of weeks ago and have completely fallen in love with this indie, mellow, emo-mix of everything from Feist to The Smiths to She & Him (naturally, female lead Zooey Deschanel's adorable vocal stylings found their way into the soundtrack).

Finally seeing the scenes set to the soundtrack, I absolutely adored this movie.  The narrator tells the audience in the beginning that this is a story about boy meets girl, but it's "not a love story."  And it's not, in the Hollywood definition of love story.  It's emotional and honest, in every way possible.

I'm no cinematographer, but I can greatly appreciate the lighting and filming that was used in this movie; characters looked real and unedited.  Flaws and sweat were visible.  Conversations were believable, and I loved how Los Angeles didn't look like Los Angeles.  In fact, it looked like a quirky New York City neighborhood until they showed the skyline and told you it was Los Angeles.

The story unfolds out of chronological order, which is endearing in that it slowly pieces together the events as if they were a puzzle.  

All in all, I thought this was an refreshingly honest take on a boy-meets-girl story that was just charming and quirky enough to be absolutely adorable, one I'll see over and over so as to never miss a single detail.

Last week, Twitter experienced, defended against, and recovered (kind of) from a hack attack that rendered its services unusable. The same attacks also affected social networking sites such as Facebook and LiveJournal.

What did this mean for daily and heavy users of these social media applications?  How did we respond?

My first thought, obviously, and as I later found out I shared with many others, was to tweet the outage.

Except Twitter was down.  This was not only impossible, but it was annoyingly ironic.

Perhaps I'll update my Facebook status to let people know that Twitter and Face-... oh.  Right.  Can't do that either.

So, I instant messaged friends and we whined and moaned about it, speculating conspiracy theories and waiting patiently constantly refreshing pages to see if anything was back up yet.

Eventually, normalcy returned and thanks to the meme/hashtag #whiletwitterwasdown, we all got to see just how much of an impact Twitter has in our daily lives - for ill or for good - and how much we depend on it for information sharing and seeking (the value of said information being different to each consumer, obviously).

Some examples of things Twitter users did #whiletwitterwasdown...  

- ... took a nap
- ... tried to trend other ridiculous topics including: #iranelectedkevinjonas
- ... texted friends what would have been tweeted
- ... read books
- ... got a haircut

and my personal favorite:

- ... I composed a symphony, drafted a plan for world peace, and did my laundry.

One of the biggest points these few hours drove home is how much we not only use, but RELY on the Internet in general for up-to-the-second information.  

We're overlooking the fact that it took an actual outage for people to consider doing things like read books and run errands. 

Instead what I'm considering and pointing out is that the first reaction when ANYthing happens that affects a group of people is to share the information virally - via Facebook, Twitter, a blog post, or a news article - is an extremely telling of how online media is being consumed.

We see this now with celebrity deaths, political news, pop culture gossip, and of course social media accessibility.  Twitter has gone beyond asking and providing answers to the question "What are you doing?" and instead provides a place to not only address the question, "What are WE - as a community, as a country, as a world - doing?" but also "How are we reacting to it?"

Intriguing. (P.S. You can now follow @BuzzDish on Twitter!)