Observations on film art and Film Art: A great blog for film students and movie lovers by the renowned film studies text-book authors Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell.

Noisy Decent Graphics on The Design Disease: “…it’s there in every aspect of life. You can’t stop looking at things through your designer eyes. Everything you do is clouded by this thing that lives inside you.”

Mass Tram America: Here’s a rather interesting concept for a monorail built entirely from decommissioned, de-winged Boeing plane fuselages. Powered by renewable energy sources the tram can theoretically travel from 100-200mph. (via Danny’s Land)

I’d also love to see these driverless electric and biofuel hybrid buses too. They work by following magnets on the floor, satellite navigation and with onboard sensors. Is the future finally here?!

The guardian reports that the PS3 will launch on the 23rd March 2007 for £425 for the 60Gb model. Ouch. The 20Gb model will be released later, depending on demand, at an unknown cost. Sony haven’t announced how many will be released to the UK but have said that one million will be shipped to the EU.

Did you know that Disneyland’s Dumbo ride used to have flapping ears? … No? Well now you do.

This Penny Arcade strip really couldn’t be any closer to the truth. I’ve left my World of Warcraft Paladin, Hellioni, in cryo-stasis for the past few months and, like Tycho, have a copy of Burning Crusade sitting on a shelf. I’ll play it one day, I know.

Talking of World of Warcraft, Wonderland’s Alice pointed out this great audio/photo essay introduction to the game on Time magazine’s (of all places) website.

I didn’t know much about Dragon Quest, other than having seen commercials for a crap looking kids shows on TV, until I picked up a copy of the spin-off game Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime for the DS; a great little mini-RPG with cannon fights. Anyway, I decided to look into Dragon Quest a bit more after playing that and discovered this awesome looking RPG for the Nintendo DS due in Japan at the end of the year.

The DS isn’t known for it’s powerful hardware so this video for Dragon Quest IX was a bit of an unexpected treat. From the video it looks like it has a multi-player option planned as well; if it’s wifi enabled I’m sold! Of course, whether the game play matches the visuals remains to be seen, but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one. In the mean time I’ll have to check out Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2, which I’d also overlooked until now.

A word from the wise: If you’re going to slack off at work, don’t document everything you’re doing (or, not doing) in a journal and save it on your office computer like Sheraton hotel employee Emmalee Bauer did. (via Gawker)

Remember Orville Redenbacher? Yes, the popcorn guy… the one that died about ten years ago? He’s back! Well, at least a scary rubber-skinned zombie version of him is. For comparison, here’s the real one — can you tell the difference? I’m not sure what’s scarier: the ad itself or that it’s directed by David Fincher.

The Walt Disney Company have just released their latest annual report, containing all sorts of numbers and junk that mean absolutely nothing to me. What is interesting, though, is that there’s a section within it entitled “Dreaming” which contains an array of concept art.

Concepts include “Carland”, a covered “urban entertainment center”, a new theme park, a “Pirate-themed adventure” (I wonder if this is linked to the Tom Sawyer island overhaul), a Monsters Inc. attraction and a new “night-time water spectacular” (a suggested replacement for Fantasmic, perhaps). (via The Disney Blog)