Heist. I think I missed a little of this trailer as I walked into the theater a bit late. Looks like Gene Hackman has to do "one more job" for big boss Danny DeVito. Something happens and now they're at each other. There's a woman who looks remarkably like a short Sharon Stone. Rebecca Pidgeon. This one is due out in August also (I'm going in chronological order).

Rush Hour 2. While last time it was Jackie Chan jokes about being in the West (ok, I don't remember the first movie), this time it's Chris Tucker jokes about being a tall black guy in Japan or some other city in the Orient. Lots of action, who knows what the plot is. But it looks like it'll be an ok movie. August.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I have no idea why Harry Potter is such a popular childrens' book series, especially since they are big long books. From the preview the plot is Harry Potter is accepted into a school of wizardry but trouble is brewing and it'll be up to Harry and his friends to use their magic to save the day. Bohhh-ring. Sometime past July.

Legally Blonde. Reese Witherspoon playing a dumb pretty blonde girl. Her boyfriend dumps her because she'll be a liability if he ever goes into politics, so she decides to enroll in Harvard and become a lawyer. Sort of like Clueless meets-- eh, the analogy fails me. But it looks like a typical underdog girl overachieves and realizes that she really is capable and smart. A reversal over the usual geek against the bods. Maybe interesting. Coming out sometime this summer (Yahoo movies didn't list them, maybe they didn't pay Yahoo enough money?).

Windtalkers. I knew that this is going to be a war movie about the Navajos who were used by the US Marine Corps to secure their communications. With Nicolas Cage starring I really hoped that he wouldn't play one of the Navajos. From the trailer it looks like he doesn't. Instead he is a Marine assigned to protect one of the Navajos ("Protect him at all costs, or make sure he isn't captured by the Japanese.") Other than that I got no plot from the preview, although it looks like there'll be lots of action. Christian Slater is also in the movie, as I saw his name flash by in the preview credits though I did not see him in the preview itself. Another movie whose company didn't pay Yahoo their blood money, so I don't know when this one comes out.

Well, that's it. Out of the other coming soon movies, I didn't really see any interesting ones. I'm up to 10 movies seen this year. Not too bad, looks like I'm on a pace to reach 20 to 25 movies this year. Probably will start seeing more now that the regular tv season is over and I don't have a dozen hours of material to watch on Sunday.

I did see one weird ad while looking thorough the Internet Movie Database. Celebrity biographies. Real books. But people like Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Neve Campbell. I'm thinking "these people are barely into their career and life, why a biography?" I guess you want to strike while these stars are popular. Note that none of them looked like autobiographies or official biographies. Just some hack trying to make a quick buck. As I've often heard from Eric, you only need to sell 5000 copies to make a modest profit. Oh, the link led to an Amazon.com store front.

And you've seen those store fronts. Some "independent" book store, usually dealing in a specific subject, that is really using Amazon as the back end fulfillment service. I also found out that Amazon bought out the Bibliofind, which is a network of used book stores that have their inventory in a common database. You can search for books, mark them, then buy them from each place (meaning lots of separate shipping and credit charges, but at least it's a useful service).

Not so much a problem with Amazon itself (though they are becoming evil company, although maybe that's just the Slashdot influence. Then again I seem to recall a stupid one-click patent and dynamic pricing). But unfortunately Amazon's storefront engine only seems to handle individual purchases. You can buy one item from any store, not two or more, just one. If you want to buy two items, they're both separate charges with separate shipping. Maybe I'm just dumb and didn't see how to do it or maybe Amazon is just too nuts.