Watch! DESPICABLE ME 3 Trailer gets the funk…
The team who brought you Despicable Me and the biggest animated hits of 2013 and 2015, Despicable Me 2 and Minions, returns to continue the adventures of Gru, Lucy, their adorable daughters—Margo, Edith and Agnes—and the Minions.
Despicable Me 3, directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda, co-directed by Eric Guillon, and written by Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio, will be released in theaters on June 30, 2017.
The animated film is produced by Illumination’s Chris Meledandri and Janet Healy, and executive produced by Chris Renaud.
Joining Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig in Despicable Me 3 is Emmy, Tony and Grammy Award winner Trey Parker, co-creator of Comedy Central’s global phenomenon South Park and the Broadway smash The Book of Mormon.
Parker voices the role of villain Balthazar Bratt, a former child star who’s grown up to become obsessed with the character he played in the ‘80s, and proves to be Gru’s most formidable nemesis to date.
Watch! VALERIAN Final Trailer will leave you speechless…
VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS is the visually spectacular new adventure film from Luc Besson, the legendary director of The Professional, The Fifth Element and Lucy, based on the ground-breaking comic book series which inspired a generation of artists, writers and filmmakers.
In the 28th century, Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are a team of special operatives charged with maintaining order throughout the human territories.
Under assignment from the Minister of Defense, the two embark on a mission to the astonishing city of Alpha—an ever-expanding metropolis where species from all over the universe have converged over centuries to share knowledge, intelligence and cultures with each other.
There is a mystery at the center of Alpha, a dark force which threatens the peaceful existence of the City of a Thousand Planets, and Valerian and Laureline must race to identify the marauding menace and safeguard not just Alpha, but the future of the universe.
In Theaters July 21, 2017
Cast: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, John Goodman, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu
Watch! SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING Trailer 3 keeps Stark in the picture…
A young Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland), who made his sensational debut in Captain America: Civil War, begins to navigate his newfound identity as the web-slinging super hero in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Thrilled by his experience with the Avengers, Peter returns home, where he lives with his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), under the watchful eye of his new mentor Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.). Peter tries to fall back into his normal daily routine – distracted by thoughts of proving himself to be more than just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man –
…but when the Vulture (Michael Keaton) emerges as a new villain, everything that Peter holds most important will be threatened.
See it in theaters July 7 🕷️
What’s it like to drive a 1980 MERCEDES UNIMOG 406? Bitchin…’
What’s it like to drive a 1980 MERCEDES UNIMOG 406? Bitchin…’
Every now and then at Malibu Cars & Coffee, this unbelievable truck would show up and leave jaws dropped. But to say it was a rugged off-roader would be an understatement, and you’d also expect that it would be driven by a beer guzzling, pot-bellied, semi-driving, chew spitting kind of guy. Well, you’d be so wrong.
Ari Soffer’s 1980 Mercedes Unimog 406 is what any off-road enthusiast would dream of having. And, of course, living in Malibu, we have one. So, I reached out to Ari and said “I need to see this beast up close and feel what it can do.”
Ari is a long time Malibuite and manages that by being an incredible Jewelry and leather designer at www.sofferaristore.com. His standards are very high and when he snagged this Unimog, it had the potential that he wanted.
“I’ve owned it for three or so years and bought it on Ebay with 1,600 original miles,” Ari said. “It came from a guy in Chicago who bought it from the Mercedes dealer there and was never titled because it was used as a snowplow on the dealer lot and was never driven on the street. After they were done, it sat for a while until they decided to sell it at auction. It’s technically a tractor.
We removed the snowplow which weighed 3,500 pounds and recycled the metal in Chicago. The truck arrived here in Malibu on a car carrier and I had it titled as a pick-up truck. Spent the next two years restoring and rebuilding it into what I have now.”
And it’s as military spec as it gets, with 125 horsepower, 5.7 liter military diesel inline 6 with a “hot rod tune.” Ari advanced the timing and turned the diesel pump up which brought the power from its stock agriculture tuned 75 horsepower up to 125horsepower. Night and day difference.
He then raised the rev limiter from 2200 rpm to 3100 rpm. This, along with the taller tires, brought the top speed up from 45mph to 58mph. The entire truck has been gone over with a new leather interior and a custom Ipe wood bed on an aluminum frame.
There’s a custom spare tire carrier, crane mounts for a little military grade crane and hand made parts all over the truck.
“Blood sweat and tears went into this truck,” he said.
“It’s the most unique and cool looking truck anybody has ever seen,” Ari said. “It’s also the most fun to drive, more than my Turbo Porsche. It’s slow, but the 4 wheel drive and air locking diffs let it climb straight up anything in front of it.
I had always seen them in the mountains in Europe and loved them and they have an almost cult like status. I wanted to take my then-girlfriend to dinner in it.”
Ari runs to pick up pallets of chicken feed as well as hay and alfalfa bales for his goats and horses. It’s also used for moving his motorcycles to and from the mechanic and any heavy lifting. He built a crane attachment point on the back so it can lift 900 pounds straight up and swing it over and onto the bed.
“We took the truck to the Rowher Truck Trail near Santa Clarita.” Ari’s said of his best story with the truck. “Along the way, there were other trucks being pulled out from being stuck — small caravans of off-roaders helping pull others out, all heading up parts of the trail that I couldn’t understand why they were unable to navigate without getting stuck.
And we are just idling by them at a steady fast crawl so easily. When we got home at the end of the day, I looked up Rowher Flats in a trail book I had at home. Apparently this trail is rated as an ‘Expert Rated Trail.’ Extremely steep and rutted; a long and relentless climb up one side of a mountain and down the other.
The Unimog barely flexed its muscles getting over the trail. The truck drove up and over this trail barely above idle. It’s so impressive, it turned an extremely difficult trail into a Sunday drive.”
Ari’s favorite thing about driving in Malibu is all the dirt roads and little hidden areas of off-roading that nobody but a handful of people know about. For me, that would be worth searching for.
And if he got his hands on a favorite movie car?
“The Bandit from ‘Smokey and the Bandit,’” he said. “But if you are speaking about trucks, which would be more appropriate for the interview, then we should never forget the 1982 Ford Bronco named Pepe. The Little Mule from ‘Romancing The Stone.’”
Ah, yes. I’m familiar with that as the writer of that movie actually owned my house before me. That script was written in the office were I’m currently writing this.
WORLD’S LARGEST BANANA CAR! – FIREBALL MALIBU VLOG 610
After a day of cool cars, Fireball spots the world’s largest banana… And it’s a Car!
From WIKI… The BANANA is an edible fruit – botanically a berry[1][2] – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa.[3] In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called plantains, in contrast to dessert bananas.
The fruit is variable in size, color and firmness, but is usually elongated and curved, with soft flesh rich in starch covered with a rind which may be green, yellow, red, purple, or brown when ripe.
The fruits grow in clusters hanging from the top of the plant. Almost all modern edible parthenocarpic (seedless) bananas come from two wild species – Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. The scientific names of most cultivated bananas are Musa acuminata, Musa balbisiana, and Musa × paradisiaca for the hybrid Musa acuminata × M. balbisiana, depending on their genomic constitution.
The old scientific name Musa sapientum is no longer used.
Musa species are native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia, and are likely to have been first domesticated in Papua New Guinea. They are grown in 135 countries,[6] primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent to make fiber, banana wine and banana beer and as ornamental plants.
Worldwide, there is no sharp distinction between “bananas” and “plantains”. Especially in the Americas and Europe, “banana” usually refers to soft, sweet, dessert bananas, particularly those of the Cavendish group, which are the main exports from banana-growing countries.
By contrast, Musa cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit are called “plantains”. In other regions, such as Southeast Asia, many more kinds of banana are grown and eaten, so the simple two-fold distinction is not useful and is not made in local languages.
The term “banana” is also used as the common name for the plants which produce the fruit.[3] This can extend to other members of the genus Musa like the scarlet banana (Musa coccinea), pink banana (Musa velutina) and the Fe’i bananas.
It can also refer to members of the genus Ensete, like the snow banana (Ensete glaucum) and the economically important false banana (Ensete ventricosum). Both genera are classified under the banana family, Musaceae.
RIP… SIR ROGER MOORE leaves us
Sad news today from the family of SIR ROGER MOORE. He has passed at 89.
A fantastic Bond in film, Moore was truly the only bond that I felt had a clear sense of humor. And that humor, mixed with action sequences like the above made him a star. We will miss him greatly miss him as a true inspiration.
Sir Roger George Moore (October 1927 – 23 May 2017) was an English actor. He played the British secret agent James Bond in seven feature films between 1973 and 1985. He is also known for playing Simon Templar in the television series The Saint between 1962 and 1969.
Moore took over the role of Bond from Sean Connery in 1972, and made his first appearance as 007 in Live and Let Die (1973). The longest serving Bond to date, Moore portrayed the spy in six more films:
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), and A View to a Kill (1985). Appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1991, Moore was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for “services to charity”.
In 2008, the French government appointed Moore a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the same year he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Is this the new 2019 BMW 8 SERIES?
2019 BMW 8 SERIES? Could be, although we’ll be finding out soon…
Today’s CONCEPT CAR… The Nissan Gripz Electric
What’s it like to drive a 1969 AUSTIN FX4 LONDON CAB? Cool, that’s what…
It boggles the mind when you realize how similar and how different people are. Similar in that we all want the same thing, but we go about it in infinitely different ways. One example is that we all want cars to get around in — most of us — but our tastes are as diverse as you can imagine.
The other week, I was at my show Wheels and Waves, admiring the cool rides like the muscle cars, exotics and customs. And as much as I appreciate them, it’s always nice to see something unique. And what was it that caught my wandering eyes?
John DeRoy’s 1969 — maybe 1970 — Austin FX4 London taxi. Yes, a taxi. And a green Taxi, at that. So the question popped into my pea brain, “Why would someone want to collect a London cab?” Now, they are very cool, but that’s a given. So are Ferraris. But John’s kills it.
“As a kid, I went with my family on a European vacation,” John said. “In London, I went nuts over these and when we got home, I badgered my parents to get one. But they nuked that idea pretty quick…”
“Fast forward several decades to 2012, my wife and I took our 10 year old twin daughters to Europe. We were riding around in London and Edinburgh in the newer version of the taxi, and all of a sudden I was 12 years old again. So when we got back I started poking around and found that I could have my fantasy — aka, mid-life crisis — at considerably less than the cost of a Porsche — and finally bought this 3,500-pound hunk of steel.”
Ah, this must be AutoTherapy.
In the past, John was a business analyst — “number cruncher” — for a large biotech/pharmaceutical company, but became a licensed marriage and family therapist while attempting to become a social entrepreneur.
“I realized I wanted to help people parent better, deepen and improve their relationships with their kids, and impart those kids with the kind of emotional intelligence needed to thrive in today’s world.” Part of that is taking them for a ride in a cool car, I always say. Nothing that wind in your face and your tongue hanging out won’t solve. Wait, OK, that’s about my dog, but kid’s love cars too.
But John has had this gem only about a year and bought it from a guy in St. Louis, who ironically had purchased it a few years earlier from a guy in California. Nearly all the mods were done by the two of them. Wait, mods on a taxi? Let’s get into this.
RHD, 4-cylinder diesel BMC engine, automatic Borg-Warner 3-speed transmission, drum brakes, Lucas (“Prince of Darkness”) wiring, 15’ L x 5.75’ H x 5.75” W. But it’s been modified and now has a Chevy Blazer V6 Vortec with the accompanying automatic transmission, Edelbrock manifold and Holley 4160 4-barrel carb, Proform 67080 distributor, new plugs and wires, Carter GP4594 electric fuel pump, Lokar throttle cable, new radiator, rear end gears of 4.00 to replace the 5.00 ones, rebuilt front end, top-of-the-line radial tires, seat belts, dual exhausts and some “mellow” mufflers. Power brakes and an extra cooling fan sits in front of the condenser.
John drives around town 3-4 days a week and has the time of my life. “It never fails to get a lot of smiles, waves, thumbs-up and great conversation with total strangers. And I love taking it to car shows and letting people climb in and sit in the back. I say, ‘Touch — have fun — but please be gentle.’”
“I used to drive it to my last job which was on a big corporate campus. To get into the parking structure, you’d have to swipe your badge by a reader for the gate to open. But the reader is on the left side. I solved that by buying a 4’ long grabber, and all I need to do is lean over and shove the end of the grabber with my badge out the window and up against the reader.”
My final question to John was in regards to dark or milk chocolate. He had this to say, “Ah — another trick question. Average dark is like a Ford; good dark is like a Porsche; great dark is like a Maserati or a Lamborghini. Milk is like a Yugo.”
That would be a pretty awesome answer if I didn’t love milk chocolate so much. And with that notch coming down one, the car is still too cool to ignore.
WHEELS AND WAVES First Shots from Dano Patten!
Big thanks to Big Kahuna Dano Patten for these great shots from yesterday’s WHEELS AND WAVES in Malibu. More coming soon!
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