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There's a glowing playtest review of the game on Ain't It Cool News. Part One, Part Two. Part Three should be posted some time today.

There's a glowing playtest review of the game on Ain't It Cool News. Part One, Part Two. Part Three should be posted some time today.

There's a great deal of info about the new edition on Massawyrm's review, over at AICN (which also took me by surprise on how positive it is). You can find them here and here.
A third part will be coming as well.

There's a great deal of info about the new edition on Massawyrm's review, over at AICN (which also took me by surprise on how positive it is). You can find them here and here.
A third part will be coming as well.

hollywood is just generating some advance publicity for their upcoming 2nd x-files movie

in the coming months, they are going to "disappear" some boats in the bermuda triangle and then plant area 51 documents on los alamos national laboratory computers, and then "leak" it

Nothing beats the screenwriter's infamous defense of his work on AICN.

"A five minute trip to any online encyclopedia source (either MSN Encarta or the Britannica service) would let you know that the model of the Earth's Core I used for the movie is correct."

No, seriously.

It's a contract, and there are penalties for breaking contracts, the point of the original article and the bill in front of Congress is upping the penalties for breaking copyright (the contract).

You realize that under contract law, you are not allowed to do that, right? You can't change the original contract without the consent of both parties? Of course, on the other hand, the democractically elected representatives of the people should have the authority to agree to to those changes, unfortunately those representatives have been corrupted by the very people who are asking for these changes. They are beholden to the people who want to change the contract and thus can no longer be considered impartial representatives of the people. It is clear this new law is not a good deal for the people, in fact, it would not be binding under contract law because no additional consideration is given to the people for the additional obligations placed upon them. Contracts are not allowed to be one-sided, one-sided contracts are just a legal means of slavery.

You realize that the RIAA already does collect fees from the radio stations for playing their music? So the radio station takes care of that RIAA usage fee.

That does not change the fact that the listeners are using the music without paying for it, which according to your stated opinions, is unethical and illegal. Hell, humming or singing to yourself a song you heard is just as illegal. You are using the music without paying for it. Jail time for you, Mr. should-have-known-better 9-year old! Happy Birthday is copyrighted!

My point is if you don't agree with the contract don't enter into it, i.e. don't use their product. Don't knowing go and break the contract and then try to use some lame excuse about them charging an unrealistic price for their product, the price is what the producer says it is.

I don't think you understand my point, maybe it's too outside the box for you. People aren't loosing faith because there is one thing that is priced too high, they are loosing faith because everything is priced too high. There are oligarchar price controls being used to extract monopoly rents from CDs and DVDs, prices remaining consistently high despite the ability to reproduce them dropping to a point that's near 0. You don't seem to understand that when people loose faith in copyright, they ignore it's existence entirely. Copyright is, at it's heart, an artificial limitation on the spread of information, if you no longer believe in the artificial limitation the only reason to respect it is the threat of legal punishment.

People don't rebel against an onerous system by simply not using some of it. At best they ignore it's entire existence, at worst they destroy the system and everyone who supports it. Essentially you are using the same ethical models as the South did when they told the rest of the world that if they believed slavery is unethical, they should pay their slaves a wage. You can't fight a corrupt system by adhering to it's artificial imposed limitations.

And their right, the consumer did break the contract first, the consumers are infringing on their copyrights, and not paying the producers what they feel their products are worth. The argument that they charge too much and hence they broke the contract first doesn't work, because it's their product and they can charge whatever they want for it.

Payola
Price Fixing
Term Extension
Censorship
Technology Suppression

Who broke the contract first is very much open to debate. For example, for decades the RIAA and it's member companies have been working to reduce the variety of music offered to

On the other hand, I hear that Harry Knowles is considering her as a design consultant for Ain't It Cool News.

Despite the recent resurge of rumors, there isn't a GB3 in the works, according to many sources including Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. Aykroyd has had a script ready for ages, but Bill Murray had zero interest in it, studios weren't into it, and even Harold Ramis has cooled on the idea at this point.

Economists Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine detail the rent-seeking behavior of those frightful miscreants, the RIAA, in their book Against Intellectual Monopoly. Slash-dotters should be pleased to see economic and game theoretical arguments levelled against copyright and intellectual property.

I was going to elaborate on this in some detail, but on consideration of the chutzpah of this legal action by the RIAA, I find myself agreeing with posters that the RIAA should sip a Polonium spiked tea.

Weird Al Yankovic's Don't Download This Song is amusing, though he understates the social and economic evil of the RIAA. These people are the scum of the earth.

• It will probably contain some concepts based on the design for the movie
  
• It will probably contain voice acting from some major stars who are probably TBA right now
  

I'm far more interested in what, if anything, Peter Jackson has planed for Naomi Novik's "Temeraire" series which he recently optioned.

Same here. I just finished the latest book a couple of weeks ago.

I read the first part of the interview, but it seems like Jackson is way too early in the process to have anything beyond, "This would be really cool."

I hate to break it to you, but this is _very_ old news. As much as I despise AICN: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23493

I'm not generally in the "how is this news?" camp, but if something was the topic of a Penny Arcade rant more than three months ago ( http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/06/07 ), how is this news?

It's a movie coming out: Who Killed the Electric Car.

Good Idea

It might also be helpful with silly copyright holders "don't have" the original.

"SILENT HILL worked for me because of the confidence and command of director Christophe Gans. I'm not familiar with the source material at all, so I'm not going to discuss it as an adaptation, except in the broadest terms. I can't tell you how faithful it is to the already-established mythology of the various SILENT HILL games, but I can tell you that there are certain touches in the way the film's put together that seem like a sly nod to the basic experience of gaming. ...

Roger Ebert seemed to find the film's explanations baffling even as he was impressed by it technically. I'm not sure why this would confuse anyone... basically it boils down to a vengeful spirit looking for payback against the town that did it harm... but I also think the answers are far less important than the way the questions are presented. For example... I have no idea what the fuck Pyramid Head is, or how he's connected to the Demon, or what purpose he serves aside from freaking my shit out, and frankly, I don't care. He's one of the most striking images I've seen in a horror film in recent memory, and both of his big scenes are exhilarating. If you're tired of teenagers in danger and you're tired of remakes of

The one site in particular that sticks out in my mind has having particularly bad design is MySpace. Total information overload, poor organization of content, and horrible horrible backend code (servers are slow as molasses, and my sessions are frequently expired inexplicably).

I understand that it's a 'community' site, but I honestly don't feel a part of that at all. It's difficult to build a huge online community unless users can selectively segregate themselves into groups. This is part of the reason why Facebook and Flickr are both extremely successful.

Granted, there are ugly sites with truly great content that balances out the fact that the site's rather ugly. Likewise, there are a host of very pretty sites that are lacking in the content department.

Although I used to consider myself more of an content guy and the type of guy who uses the command line for most tasks, I find myself gravitating toward sites that although they may not offer as many features, are easier to use, and are visually appealing. Flickr is probably the best example of this. With CSS, there is no excuse to have a poorly designed site. CSS makes it ridiculously easy to propogate an attractive design across your entire site. If you already know basic HTML, you can pick up all the CSS you need to know in a few days. Likewise, CSS also means people can finally stop using Photoshop as a design tool.

With CSS, formerly ugly sites can make themselves pretty with very little effort. Slashdot went to great lengths with their stylesheet to make sure they preserved the old ugly layout.

Alien 3 was further brutalized by the studio cut that utterly ripped the guts out of the film. If you haven't already, go and watch the Director's Cut on the Quadriology (you can often rent it by itself). The film is infinitely better, and actually works as a small, dark, claustrophobic piece. It's not what fans were promised, it's not what they were expecting, it's not what should have been filmed. But it works. That's tough to admit, but it's nice to find a silver lining to the nightmare that was the movie's production.

Which brings me to...Alien 5

Since in the minds of Alien fans, Alien Vs. Predator simply does not exist, Alien 5 was intended to be something along the lines of what Alien 3's teaser promised. Long story short: James Cameron and Ridley Scott went to the studio with the pitch, the studio told them they were going to do A vs P instead, Cameron told them if that movie was made, he would walk. You know the rest. The film is officially, 100% dead.

Ain't It Cool News has a review up as well. Oh, and another here although both are mostly comments on Uwe as a person.

Ain't It Cool News has a review up as well. Oh, and another here although both are mostly comments on Uwe as a person.

This little blurb seems completely contrary to

http://whedonesque.com/comments/9027 and

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=22059 (look towards bottom of article).

premiere at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and air on IFC in Fall 2006

Article on AICN at http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=21980

Fingers crossed that its' Guillermo Del Toro.

Here is AICN's mirror via DT.

Is it just me or does yoda's ship strangely resemble his head? with the wings being his ears? *shrug*

yoda's ship landing on dagobah

Aint it cool news had this story yesterday or the day before. They've got several pictures here.

He also gives what he makes on the movies away to the artists of the comics, even though he can't really afford to do it.

I don't think I'll be going to see this movie, the Wachowski's clearly don't seem to get it. I respected them after the Matrix but subsequent movies have shown how superficial they are. Making it look cool for the sake of it.

The script has already been slated on AICN. Looks like another League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to me. Poor Alan.

Man, you really are dense. Seriously, you guys shouldn't even mention the film until you understand the subplot of mecha in the movie. It seems the greatest critics of this movie are people who seriously don't get the ending (it was a horrible ending, but certainly had continuity).

Referred to as "superrobots":
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212720/trivia

Spielberg on the super-mecha

Ian Watson who worked with Stanley Kubrick on AI's story:
And as for sentimental, well, at the end of his perfect day David is alone without his mother for ever and ever in a universe which contains no other life, only the evolved Mecha (robots, not visiting aliens!) who can only study the traces and leftovers of extinct human life.
Watson Interview

Yet another interview on the ending:
Kubrick Collaborator Jan Harlan

My "Phantom Menace" review, 1999: "Those of you waiting in line for Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace are, in my opinion, setting yourselves up for a grave disappointment. Either that, or you're about to brainwash yourselves into the short-term, delusional embrace of a sub-par cinematic product - which is even worse."

My "Attack of the Clones" review, 2002: "If these last two Star Wars movies have taught me anything, it's that all my prior rantings about Star Wars needing to be mythologically and thematically coherent and profound no longer apply. Those rantings were, in retrospect, most likely the justifications of a young adult who wanted to explain why she'd liked a pulp sci-fi/fantasy series so emphatically - and who gleefully adopted as her own the 'Power of Myth' mental gymnastics handed to her on a platter by Joseph Campbell and the Lucasfilm P.R. machine."

My "Phantom Menace" review, 1999: "Those of you waiting in line for Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace are, in my opinion, setting yourselves up for a grave disappointment. Either that, or you're about to brainwash yourselves into the short-term, delusional embrace of a sub-par cinematic product - which is even worse."

My "Attack of the Clones" review, 2002: "If these last two Star Wars movies have taught me anything, it's that all my prior rantings about Star Wars needing to be mythologically and thematically coherent and profound no longer apply. Those rantings were, in retrospect, most likely the justifications of a young adult who wanted to explain why she'd liked a pulp sci-fi/fantasy series so emphatically - and who gleefully adopted as her own the 'Power of Myth' mental gymnastics handed to her on a platter by Joseph Campbell and the Lucasfilm P.R. machine."

Alexandra DuPont

It's a girl, not a guy.

There are some reviews of Sith that are coming from people who a) are filing their last review b) publicly hated 1 and 2 and c) don't entirely gush (but come close) over Sith.

It looks like the movie manages to touch on whatever it was that made people stand up and take notice of 4 and 5. It has relatively simple characters (just like all of the rest) and some really cliche moments (just like all of the rest), but gets back into the spirit of what SW had lost.

My personal take on this is the same as the review that I linked to above: Lucas had a LOT ends to tie up and had to cut the story down brutally until it fit. He essentially became his own editor, and what 6, 1 and 2 needed more than anything else was an editor. All of that "so-and-so was an awful actor" that you heard from 1 and 2 was really more a factor of script and the pacing that the movies ground the audience through. If the actors had all been well-established like Ewan McGregor, you would have been able to easily pick out the difference between bad acting and horrid pacing.

I love the landing gear metaphor for 1 and 2. It's very apt. and really captures the problem with those movies. LK helped get the pacing right in 5, and I think AG had a lot to do with the pacing in 4. Finally, GL has found the strength to build decent pacing in 3, so let's hope that he learns from this. I look forward to another 20 years of great story-telling WITH good pacing from this master tale spinner.

One other factor that you might consider: as this movie tries to tie 2 and 4 together, it must act as a transition back to the story that we grew up loving. In that sense, perhaps 3 also directly draws some of that feel back from the 70s....

I've been reading the reviews, too, with a bit a skepticism... but I liked this one most of all. She's an occasional columnist for AICN, and definitely one of their better and more trustworthy writers. She trashed the last two movies, but this one, well...

To quote:
Q. Give us a four-word review.
A. Bloody hell! It's good!

The pre release review from Ain't It Cool for Episode II was filled with just enough concern to make him sound cautious, and therefor non-objective, but then Harry threw caution to the wind and began to gush. Then I lost all respect for him when he dropped these mature and non-objective statements:

When I saw this, I screamed like a little girl.

And my favorite...

Ah, yes. Ep. II was just sooo exciting. We had the Sound of Music picnic, the little orphan Ani/Amidala "feel my pain. I just slaughtered an entire village. - ooh, you poor dear" scene, and the bouncing, green CG Yoda fighting machine scene. Why do cool stuff with the force like hold spaceships in place since size doesn't matter when you can mix it up with the boys and let the bad guy get away? No, none of the glowing pre-reviews held up once the movie came out. Everyone still felt raped, unless they were fanboys...

I think I'll pass.

There's already been a couple of reviews to hit the net. Here is one of them based on a screening in Australia.

Actually, there are already a few reviews out there from an Australian screening. Here's one...
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=20089

Its by a big Whedon fan, so probably a little biast.

Since the real article is slashdotted I went out looking on google for a mirror.

Well, this is what I found.
It's just the beginning of the full article but atleast it confirms wether Kevin likes or dislikes the movie.

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=20046

Hopefully someone will have a real mirror up soon.

Mvh: Ezel ... Malmoe, Sweden

You make some very good points, and yes when you think of "hollywood" as a monolithic entity, it is easy to believe that little good comes from it.

However, the other article someone posted earlier shows the perspective of someone I trust more; a person who understands what an unfinished film looks like. It is laudable that MJ Simpson wishes to preserve DNA's legacy such that he does not wish it tarnished by a bad film; however what looks like a bad film to him, from another angle looks like an unfinished film. And in fact some of his biggest complaints (jumbled plotlines, unexecuted and unfunny jokes) are the sort of thing that shake out in the test screenings and recuttings of films. Anyone who doubts this can watch the Mallrats deleted scenes (yes its a guilty pleasure - still one of my favorite Kevin Smith films), where KS explains how the entire setup of the movie (again the same area of the film that has taken the biggest beating - which is also the most important and difficult to cut correctly in a comedy) and you can see firsthand that the beginning of the movie as seen by test audiences was catastrophically timed and paced.

In fact I think one of the problems of modern audiences is their lack of sensitivity to the importance that pace has on their experience of a film as a whole.

Here is another review of the movie.

"One thing's for sure... Douglas Adams would be very proud. In the end, that's the greatest success that Robbie Stamp and Spyglass Entertainment and Jay Roach and Touchstone could have hoped for."

Wow, what a cool looking place to work, I mean you can make your own space, nice furniture, spacious - OMFG - is that a Garfield doll ?! What kind of mindless idiots do they have working there?

Pick from server room

Someone isn't labeling all of their racks. Naughty naughty.

but Pixar keeps its staff in them

That image came out back in March. It appeared in "Star Wars Insider". There's a much better shot here.

Yah, they should do Logan's Run

It no longer has an entry on IMDB, but a remake of Logan's Run is still in the works for X-Men director Bryan Singer. See this interview on Ain't It Cool News. He's planning to do Logan's Run after Superman Returns

Aint-It-Cool news reported on the 11th that Nausicaa.net had a news item on 11/23 that Pete Docter, the director of Monsters, Inc., would be directing the US release.

The Nausicaa site points back to a Japanese language press release from the 20th of November.

So this is hardly news.

RUMOR #5: Ridley Scott will direct the film version of Halo, in which Ed Harris and Samuel L. Jackson will star.

Source: German site Sci-Fi News and Ain't It Cool News, the most loathed and loved movie-info site on the Web.

The official story: "Microsoft does not comment on rumors or speculation"--Microsoft spokesman. Warner Bros. said "No comment."

What we heard: In a bit of a coup, Sci-Fi News scored the first pictures of the storyboards for the Halo movie, of which there are several on the site. It also claimed that the same source said that the project will be announced shortly in Variety, with full cast and crew details. According to the site, Ed Harris will play Captain Keyes, the Pillar of Autumn's doomed captain, and Samuel L. Jackson will play Sergeant Johnson, the hard-boiled UNSC space marine who assisted the Master Chief's Covenant-killing crusade. Sitting in the director's chair will be none other than Ridley Scott, director of sci-fi classics Alien and Blade Runner and arguably the most intense war film ever made, Black Hawk Down.

The mere thought of such talent bringing Halo to the screen is enough to give any geek heart palpitations. However, on the other side of the planet, Ain't It Cool News (AICN) was telling a much different tale. AICN received a tip from an informant claiming to work at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. According to said informant, two designers from WBIE-owned Monolith were in a meeting with Warner Bros. executives about the game adaptation of the 2006 sci-fi movie 2176, about "a futuristic retelling of the Revolutionary War." During the discussion, the subject of the Halo movie came up. According to the "WB informant," Warner Bros. approached Bungie at this year's E3 about acquiring the Halo film rights. Their response? "Unless you got the writer and director of the original Alien, everyone can go fish." And, according to AICN, Scott had already passed on the project, based on the script. However, since Halo 2 sold 2.5 million copies the first day, Warner Bros. has asked Scott to reconsider--and AICN says there's been no answer yet.

Although the quality of its writing lowered the bar for online film journalism to ant-height levels, AICN has been a steady source of Hollywood rumors for nearly a decade. Many are false. But many are spot-on, and the one posted today rings truer than its German counterpart.

Bogus or not bogus?: Bogus, although we'd love to be wrong on this one.

They had a top-notch 3D shop. The Secret Lab. You know, the people that did Dinosaur, the digital dogs in 102 Dalmatians, and lots of other VFX and animation for Disney's features. They shut the division down a couple of years ago. Now they're starting over again.

As far as a "bricks and mortar" studio, they've been down this road before...

Anybody remember this (pretty cool-looking) Disney flick?

Dinosaur
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130623/

No, it wasn't a Pixar film...

The Secret Lab was credited at the end... But that's not the whole story...

Disney has had a CG team at Feature Animation for some time.... But Disney proper has also farmed a lot of work out (around the world) for their various needs, and as such, has relationships with studios and individual artists, making an endeavor such as a divorce from Pixar a viable proposition.

I hate to cite AICN, but this is a pretty good read, and it jives with what I'd heard at the time:
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=12700

Dinosaur credits:
http://www.dinosaur.org/disneydinosaur.htm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130623/fullcredits

Anyone out there closer to the source care to shed more light?

There's an old saying in animation:
"Everyone works for Disney at least once."

Oh, and technically, it wasnt John Barry's version of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it was the Propellerheads' mix, which combines the title theme from OHMSS with a musical bridge from You Only Live Twice.

I don't think I knew about the Propellerheads' version; thanks for the heads-up. However, when talking about film music, I generally talk about it as the creation of the composer, not the (performing) artist. I was referring here to Barry as the composer, so I'd have still referred to it as Barry's music even if I'd thought it was the Propellerheads' rendition thereof.

FWIW, though, according to writer-director-actor Brad Bird in this AICN interview, it's not actually their version, but a new recording:

Moriarty: In terms of the score, you cut that original teaser to the Propellerheads version of the "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" theme...

BRAD: Actually, that was a live performance than we recorded, because we messed with it a little bit. We got the rights to that piece of music and kind of reorchestrated it.

The whole interview has a little more about the score, as well as the movie in general.