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You know how you love movies so much that you watch them every minute of the day, but sometimes you have to pull yourself away from the DVD player in order to take a shower? Don't you wish there were a way you could clean your body AND watch movies, without the danger of putting a TV next to the shower, or the humiliation of bathing in a washtub that you dragged with you to a movie theater and filled with hot water from the restroom?

Now there is! Industrial designer Wu Chenghou has created the Waterdrop Shower Room, a fully functional shower/tub combination enclosed by a wraparound wall that doubles as a movie screen. It's shaped like a giant drop of water. Once you're inside, you fill the tub or turn on the shower, and whatever you've selected plays on the movie screen that now surrounds you. It's not "3-D," exactly -- well, unless it's a 3-D movie and you're wearing the glasses -- but it will certainly make you feel like you're part of the action! Especially if it's a movie with a lot of wet, soapy people!

Here's the blurb on the product from the Yanko Design blog: "The Waterdrop Shower Room brings to life the childhood fantasies of role-playing while taking a bath. Sometimes you're a beastly pirate and sometimes a brave hero rescuing your ducks. This exciting enclosure comes with a tactile touchscreen that almost envelopes you. Its giant screen happily plays for you [I'm glad the screen is happy in its work] soothing melodies of the Chinese Opera to Nemo (although I reckon the big guys will opt for something more seductive!) and transports you to fantasy land!" [Note: "the big guys will opt for something more seductive" means "adult men will probably watch pornography."]

Now that most of us acquire our music online these days, radio DJs don't have the same sway as taste-makers that they used to. But in the '70s, the final word in rock music was Rodney Bigenheimer. In George Hickenlooper's 2003 documentary about the infamous DJ and rock music icon, Mayor of Sunset Strip, we are shown Bigenheimer as an awkward and strange little fellow who, in the end, did it all for the music. Now, thanks to the nice folks at SlashControl you can now watch the documentary as one of their collection of (pretty awesome) free movies.

You wouldn't know it to look at him, but Bigenheimer was one of the biggest names in the rock music scene, and was credited with helping to break bands like The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Nirvana, and even Coldplay. Bigenheimer has been relegated to the 'graveyard shift' these days at KROQ, but considering that Hickenlooper was able to get appearances from some of the biggest names in rock (everyone from Mick Jagger to Rob Zombie) you can't deny Bigenheimer still has some clout.

Hickenlooper's film is more than just a walk down music history lane. It also manages to show you someone who truly loves the music, and maybe it's a little sad that it never quite loved him back. But this documentary reminds us that his legend lives on -- you might even remember a certain homage to Bigenheimer in Cameron Crowe's rock n' roll tale, Almost Famous when he works in one of Rodney's famous quotes "It's all happening!", and during the 'Mayor's' reign at KROQ, it really was...

Watch The Mayor of Sunset Strip at SlashControl

OK, so just before we start, I want you to know that I'm going to try very hard not to make any jokes about the French in this post (even though a certain line of dialog from The Last of The Mohicans keeps running in my head). But, back to the news at hand: Variety is reporting that more than 2,000 French movie theaters will be turning off their lights between 6 and 7PM in protest of a new anti-piracy law, and since Wednesday is new release day in France, exhibitors thought that would be the most opportune time to make their point.

So what is their point exactly? Well, it turns out that French movie distributors are starting to feel the pains of rising services like VOD competing with first-run movie theaters for business. Originally, movie theaters were granted a six-month window of exclusivity before a flick could move on to other distribution channels, but under their new anti-piracy law, the home entertainment market will now only have to wait 4 months before a film becomes available for the DVD and VOD market. French cinema owners claim that this law is, "degrading of theater owners' economic conditions." (Even though, according to statistics, the box-office is up 3.4% from last year).

After the jump; French movie theaters aren't the only ones suffering...

While tooling around online I came across a post over at Brobible on the 15 Best Man Caves on the Internet. A Man Cave, for those who do not know, is usually an area somewhere in the house (normally the garage or a spare room) designated for the guys to hang out in and do "guy things" like watch tons of sports or, in the case of one Australian homeowner, tons of The Dark Knight. I'm not exactly sure how much this cost, though Gizmag tells us the screening room won the highly commended prize in the 'above $100,000' category at CEDIA Asia Pacific annual awards, so more than likely this sucker cost a pretty penny to produce.

The room took about 20 days to piece together, while the installation of equipment and acoustic took another 8 days. Apart from very cool-looking and comfortable seats, as well as a big screen, the room also features a full wet bar and a bathroom that can be accessed via a remote-controlled sliding door.

From Gizmag: "Entry to the 'secret location' is via a remote-controlled pneumatic sliding door (unfortunately, not bat poles). A touch of the panel outside and the door opens, the lights turn on to a predetermined level, the projector and scaler come to life, and the processor goes into action. So, by the time you've chosen your movie and had your first mouthful of popcorn, everything is humming along, just like a well-oiled Batmobile."

Check out some images below and more stats on the equipment over at Gizmag. If you had the dough, would you put something like this in your home?

I am Jack's raging annoyance.

If you haven't heard yet, Fight Club is finally hitting Blu-ray on November 17, jam-packed full features including new bits about sound design, a search index, a bajillion commentaries, those great PSA's, and behind-the-scenes fare. In other words: a must-have disc if it is even half as good as it sounds. (Read the press release after the jump.)

To kick off the event, a new website has been created at www.welcometofc.com. As Coming Soon says: "The site connects to your Facebook and... you'll have to see what happens next!" For me, that means 30 minutes of annoyance as it "loads" whilst phrases get spray-painted on the wall over, and over, and over again. Marketers might be trying new techniques to connect with the audience, but something tells me that grating on their audience's last nerve is not one of them. With the help of Horror Squad writer Alison Nastasi, I found out this is what happens: You need to have an account with pictures, and then the website will create a video with Fight Club highlights and classic text laid over the photos in your account.

If Tyler Durden and his more passive self were ever told to sign up for a popular website notorious for shady practices, they'd ... well, there'd be big acts of vandalism, maybe some hacking, and possibly even an unsanitary soup or two. The first-come, first-serve soap that came with the big DVD release years ago, that was a cool marketing twist.

Nevertheless, this release is yet another reason to go Blu-ray.

On November 10, 2009, Walt Disney Home Entertainment is releasing a 4-disc Blu-ray set for Monsters, Inc., Pete Docter's feature directorial debut. Much like Finding Nemo set the stage for what Andrew Stanton eventually did on Wall-E, the 2001 Pixar film offers a glimpse of what was yet to come from Docter – who went on to direct this summer's Up, also out next week – but it also reiterates some of the themes that run throughout all of the studio's best work, including the concept of an alternate perspective on a place or idea that seems obvious, and the idea of families that are both familiar and unconventional. But how effectively does it examine and explore those things, particularly in light of what the studio has done since?

Suffice it to say that the Blu-ray set offers not only the best presentation of the film imaginable, but a bounty of extra content that expands the film's universe in new and interesting ways. As for the movie itself?

The 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray and DVD of Say Anything came out yesterday, and to mark the occasion, numerous men with lots of free time dressed up in trench coats and hoisted boomboxes above their heads and marched throughout New York City serenading people with the strains of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes," and a cover version of the same song by The Lloyd Dobler Effect. Check them out in the gallery below.

Damn, that movie came out 20 years ago? That makes me feel incredibly old. The first time I saw that movie will be forever burned into my brain since it was my first and only date with the captain of the women's volleyball team in high school. However, the movie on Blu-ray looks better than it ever did back in theaters, circa 1989, and hopefully it'll inspire legions of Lloyd Dobler fans for years to come that will fare better than I did.

The Blu-ray version of the movie is a 1080p high-definition upgrade of the original DVD release from 2002, along with a newly remastered 5.1 audio mix. In addition to the upgraded image and sound, this includes all the features from the previous version (commentary from Cameron Crowe, John Cusack, Ione Skye, deleted scenes, and more), along with three new featurettes. The best of the bunch is "An Iconic Film Revisited: Say Anything... 20 Years Later" featuring new interviews with Crowe, Cusack, Skye, John Mahoney, and Nancy Wilson.

Amazon sellers are selling copies of Ken Russell's Salome's Last Dance on DVD for a minimum of $214.89. It's not on Netflix. However, if you're in the mood for the kind of bizarrely decadent films that only writer/director Ken Russell (Gothic, The Lair of the White Worm) can serve up, it's high time you headed over to this hard-to-find Oscar Wilde adaptation for free over at SlashControl.

In Salome's Last Dance, Russell plays around with Oscar Wilde's banned play Salome, adding a bit of meta-goodness to the whole shebang by making the film about Oscar Wilde (Nickolas Grace) and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas (Douglas Hodge) watching a performance of the famous play in a brothel. The actors are all employees or patrons. And it's no accident that this is also Guy Fawkes Day.

Alfred Taylor, the brothel-owner played by Stratford Johns, announces, "Guy Fawkes wanted to strike a spark for freedom and blow up a Parliament he considered oppressive; you have done the same with your play, Salome... In defiance of the law and in honor of our greatest playwright, the premiere of Salome will take place here tonight, the 5th of November, 1892."

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Here's my problem with the picture: a furiously-filmed chase through the streets of Paris should be spectacular and thrilling. Instead, it's incoherent, routine, even disappointing. Director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, Van Helsing) turns in another by-the-numbers action spectacle, this time starring Dennis Quaid, Channing Tatum, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Marlon Wayans, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There are better ways to waste your time and money. Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Tony Scott's remake is a higher-grade disappointment, coming achingly close to delivering an unqualified success. Derailed by John Travolta's unrepentant scenery-chewing, which goes far beyond the bounds of bad taste, and an unhealthy preoccupation with explaining everything, the film motors along reasonably well, fashioning a paranoid tale of post-9/11 terror and ticking time bomb suspense. Denzel Washington is eminently watchable, and James Gandolfini has a good turn as the Mayor of NYC. Recommended with reservations. Rent it. Also on Blu-ray.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

I Love You, Beth Cooper
As I wrote in my review, Larry Doyle's very funny book has been transformed into a dreadfully boring movie. Hayden Panettiere and Paul Rust are miscast as a rule-breaking dream girl and the boy who loves her from afar, respectively. The spend a night together that seems endless. Chris Columbus directed, without distinction. Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

Add to Netflix queue | Buy at Amazon

Also out: Aliens in the Attic.

Indies on DVD, more Blu-ray picks, and Collector's Corner -- after the jump!