Following the success of “The Lion King” in 3-D, Disney is planning to theatrically release four other movies in 3-D over the next two years—“Beauty and the Beast,” “Finding Nemo,” “Monsters Inc.” and “The Little Mermaid.”

“Beauty and the Beast” is  the first to be released in 3-D in January followed by “Finding Nemo” in September. January 2013 will begin with “Monsters, Inc.” and its prequel, “Monsters University,” will be released six months later in June. “The Little Mermaid” will come last in September.

“The Lion King 3D” has made over $80 million in the last three  and a half weeks. It surpassed new releases and was the No. 1 movie for two weeks in a row.  

Source: Los Angeles Times

Going to work has never been so fun

DALLAS — The Top 100 Places to Work 2010 from the Dallas Morning News will be coming out in the next few weeks. Out of the 100, The Richards Group, McCarthy Construction and Systemware, Inc. were kind enough to open their office doors to the Blast to talk about how their companies made it on the list.

“Stan gathers the entire agency around the central stairwell,” says Mary Price, the principal of Marketing for The Richards Group. The Group encourages community by having no walls and all equal cubicles.

McCarthy Construction is the oldest general contractor west of the Mississippi. The company is employee-owned, which gives employees the chance to let their ideas shine.

“They give us a lot of room to run the project on our own,” Jeff Wagner, Senior Project Manager, said. This company size grows at a fast rate due to how well the company grows as a whole. More employees join each year. “It is a really great family atmosphere,” said Matt McMullan, Assistant Superintendent of McCarthy.

Systemware, Inc. takes community, work and fun to the whole new levels. They have their own family room, complete with a fireplace. You can find employees playing pool, watching television in oversized chairs and playing shuffle board.

“You don’t ever really feel like your in a work environment,” said Jeana Long, a Contract Document Manager for the company. Who wouldn’t want to work in a place that allows for this type of creativity and relaxation?

There are still 97 more top places to work, and if you think these few places sound like an awesome deal, wait until the revealing of the next top companies.

Quick Hit, Inc has made a deal with Candystand.com so that gamers can play Quick Hit football. This is great news, since it lets people who love free to play football easily access the game. Candystand.com has been a popular distraction for years, so Quick hit, Inc’s deal should come as no surprise. I think there’s going to be a surge in workplace gaming. This will also draw in alot of people who haven’t visited Candystand.com in a while. Needless to say, it’s worth checking out guys!

In regards to Robert Kenner’s latest, “Food, Inc.,” I am not the average moviegoer. I spend my free time honing my culinary skills and reading through medical texts in addition to my addiction to pop culture. Needless to say, I feel that “Food, Inc.” was tailor made for me and my brethren. “Food, Inc.” deals with the industrialization of food production, the culling of small farms, and how they are trying to cover it up behind red tape. It mixes food, health and culture in one big vat, turns the heat up, and the watches it all boil over.

Its PG rating is a bit misleading. I’m sure it got bumped down some because of its documentary status, and I will never tell someone not to go see an educational film, but you might want to leave the kiddies home for this one. I recall being traumatized by Bambi’s mother dying, and I don’t want to be responsible for not warning parents about the hidden camera footage of so called “Kill Floors.” It’s probably a good rule of thumb to never involve you children in anything with a “Kill Floor.”

But these scenes, as graphic as they are, are needed to fully display what goes into our hamburgers and sausage every day. Without getting into debate over the moral aspects of eating meat, the real story here is about the condition of the meat after it’s off the bone, before it heads to the slaughterhouse. Killing the animals might be the least controversial aspect of this section of the movie.

The other aspect is the industrialization of food, specifically about farms. Many people know that the death of the traditional farm seems to inch closer every year. This movie tells you why. It also focuses on the impact of soy and corn on our society and how our little yellow kernelled friend might just be responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Sounds extreme, and it’s meant too.

Now, as you can guess, subtlety is not this movies strong point. It has a very clear agenda: fear. You might learn a few things along the way, but the purpose of this movie is to be “Scared Straight: Fast Food Edition.” Fully knowing all the information in this movie, prior to seeing it, I still can’t help but look at that Burger Joint a little differently. In the end, it’s a good movie. The production is better than a documentary deserves, and the ideas are both informative and controversial. It does everything it wants too: Teaches, frightens and inspires.

However, this movie is going to miss its intended audience. Even large scale documentaries aren’t seen by the single mother, poor families and 20-something college kids that this movie is meant influence. Instead, it will more likely been seen by well-off people who go already buy organic, some granola hippies and probably the starving artists of the world.

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” caused massive changes because it was read everywhere. It forced the issue of safety and standards in meat production in the early 1900′s and you can draw the obvious parallels between “Food, Inc.” and the classic book pretty easily.

However, “Food, Inc.” will not have the widespread appeal to get anything changed, and it’s message to change our current system might be lost in the the fear they used to sell the message.