Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes: The first teaser trailer for the final installment of the Middle Earth saga, The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, debuted at Comic-Con, and now Warner Bros have made it available online. While the trailer contains some nice shots on a visual level, very much in keeping with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, about 80% of the trailer's awesomeness is provided by the background music. Pippin's mournful song from Return of the King plays intercut with the doomed mission that Faramir leads on his father Denethor's orders.

An anonymous reader writes "The highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto V was released at midnight yesterday, and to no surprise has managed to break the record for highest sales in 24 hours. Distributors Take-Two Interactive have announced that the game has managed to achieve a staggering $800m (£490m) worth of sales within the first day, and is certainly going to break the forecasted $1 billion within the week. The record was previous held by Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops which made $500m within 24 hours in 2009. The game also holds the title for the quickest entertainment product to achieve $1 billion in sales as they hit the mark by day 15."

An anonymous reader writes "According to ABC entertainment president Paul Lee: 'We'd love to do something with Lucasfilm, we're not sure what yet. We haven't even sat down with them. We're going to look at [the Star Wars live-action TV series], we're going to look at all of them, and see what's right. We weren't even able to discuss this with them until [the deal] closed and it just closed. It's definitely going to be part of the conversation.' Not only that, but it's also been announced that some of the 50 completed episode scripts that producer Rick McCallum has previously mentioned have been written by none other than Ron Moore of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica fame."

An anonymous reader sends in this thoughtful article about the format of Doctor Who: "The New Series has given itself two basic tasks. One, to put back and keep on our screens a program by the name of Doctor Who that maintains substantial visible continuity with the classic series in many ways. Two, and this is where conflicting elements start to come in, to seek to define this resurrected program against many aspects of the classic series, even fundamental aspects, in pursuit of task one. In itself this is neither good nor bad. If anything it is on balance probably a good thing to seek to redress the shortcomings of the classic series, but what matters, ultimately, is the choices involved and their execution."

An anonymous reader writes "Just after half past seven on the evening of Friday 19th October, history was made at the Destination Star Trek London event at the capital's ExCel centre; when Captains Archer (Scott Bakula), Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), Sisko (Avery Brooks), Picard (Patrick Stewart) and James T. Kirk (William Shatner) appeared together on a European stage. This momentous event, which had occurred just once before, at the Wizard World Comic Con in Philadelphia in June, not only lived up to the expectations of fans, but exceeded them by a good light-year."

An anonymous reader writes "In this chat with the originator of the light-saber in Star Wars and the Nostromo in Alien, director Roger Christian argues that the Academy Awards needs a special category for 'best science-fiction film.' It's a thorny subject, since such a new category would inevitably either get lumped in with fantasy/horror or further 'ghetto-ise' the genre. But with 2001 and Avatar snubbed for best picture, among many others over the years, does ANY sci-fi film ever have a shot at Best Picture?"

An anonymous reader writes "Somehow my brain, so addled by pop-culture and videogames, drew a link between the alteration of the game-play mechanics in a 20-year-old series, and growing up. I want things to be how they were. I want to play the games I played when I was a child, only I want them to be new. Naturally, this just can't happen. Things will never be the way they used to be. Summer days are no longer spent running around outside before collapsing on a sofa to try to beat Labyrinth Zone; instead they're spent in a sweltering office full of morons who watch The Apprentice. Life has changed. Circumstances have changed. Even if the perfect 2D Sonic game were released tomorrow, it still wouldn't feel right, because I'm no longer the person who played those games.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Peter Jackson has announced via his Facebook page that The Hobbit is being shot at 48 frames per second, ameliorating the '3D headaches' that many viewers have complained of in the last few boom-years for the format. Film has been shot and projected at 24fps since the 1920s, with the exception of Douglas Trumbull's 60fps 'ShowScan' format, used for the Universal Back To The Future ride, amongst others. Jackson himself predicts that the widespread adoption of 48fps workflow could not only improve the 3D but also the general cinematic experience, though it may earn itself some backward-looking critics. But until digital principal photography completely usurps celluloid, this may be good news for Kodak, who now have even more reason to lament the death of Stanley Kubrick."

An anonymous reader writes "Of all the Hollywood properties consigned to development hell in the reductionist policy of the last 3-4 years of bad economy, the very last to have a prospect of a green light are expensive fantasy and SF projects that fall outside the 'family' remit. Not even the addition of James Cameron to David Fincher's Heavy Metal remake has stopped its begging-bowl passage from studio to studio; Robert Rodriguez's propriety of the Barbarella remake likewise toured the world in vain, apparently unmindful of the very unusual set of cultural and demographic circumstances that caused a major studio to back an 'erotic space opera' in 1968 — and to the fact that these circumstances are not likely to reoccur. David Fincher lamented in 2008 that the creation of dazzling artificial movie worlds is limited to family-friendly output — but in the long wake of the box-office disappointment of the 'R'-rated Watchmen movie, there seems no current prospect that the adults will ever get to play with the kids' toys again." The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.

An anonymous reader writes "A year before the major movie companies were offered the chance by YouTube to 'block, monetize or track' uploaded copyrighted material, studios such as Disney were already commissioning PR companies to create bogus YouTube users — complete with authentically 'trendy' semi-literate user-profiles, on accounts that appeared to be set up by young and 'edgy' teenagers. These faux 'users' were able to post high-definition videos from copyrighted movies without being penalised or impeded by YouTube's Content ID algorithms, and their posts, deliberately crammed with piracy-related search terms and timed (even to the day, in one case) to coincide with related DVD and Blu-ray releases, sometimes accrue a million and a half hits or more, whilst those of genuine YouTube uploaders fall at the site's Content ID firewall. This article looks at how the major studios have reacted to YouTube in the last four years, and also examines in-depth three such examples of apparent 'astroturfing' involving the theatrical or disc releases of Toy Story 2, Speed Racer and Spider-Man 3."

An anonymous reader writes "Fringe creator J.J. Abrams has said of the show's much-maligned move to Friday nights, 'Fringe deserves to live beyond season 3. If we're going to fail, let's go down doing the most bad ***, weirdest, interesting, sophisticated version of a series that we could possibly do.' Previous announcements about the move were more defensive, claiming that Fringe's shift to Fridays was an attempt to draw younger viewers back to the 'dead zone' of Friday nights. But season three has been confused enough in tone and approach that it's no surprise to hear yet another contradictory statement about its future..." Good episodes of Fringe have been great TV. I've really enjoyed the first half of the season and am looking forward to seeing what they do with it. A lot of mediocre SciFi has been shut down recently (Caprica? SGU?) and a lot of bad SciFi continues (V?) but Fringe flirts with greatness with regularity. I hope it makes it... even though on Friday it's not likely.

An anonymous reader writes "The announcement that the new series of Red Dwarf is likely to be shot in front of a studio audience, which hasn't happened for the show since 1998, has made one of the show's actors wary of the practicality of it. Commenting on his blog, Robert Llewellyn, who plays servile robot Kryten in the hit British SF comedy show notes: 'The fear among the producers now is that it's impossible to imagine an audience of around 400 people at the recording of a TV show like Red Dwarf, where nobody does a bit of a hint on Twitter, or sneaks a picture on Facebook or posts a bit of badly shot video on YouTube.'"

An anonymous reader writes "With Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox announcing that the much-vaunted 3D Alien prequel has now mutated into an original SF film project called Prometheus, starring Noomi Rapace, the author of this article recalls his 2007 interview with the late Dan O'Bannon, who presumably is happy about the news, wherever he is. Asked what he'd like to see happen to the xenomorph franchise, the Alien co-creator said: 'I'd like to see it stop. A horror movie's a fragile thing, and once you've gotten past the original, it isn't scary anymore. So you do a bunch of sequels to a horror movie, all they do is drain any remaining impact out of the original...it's not as effective as it would have been if you had just left it alone.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Great news for Alien franchise purists, as conceptual artist H.R. Giger has been confirmed as a contributor to the prequel that Ridley Scott is set to begin shooting in February. The originator of the 'xenomorph' design, Giger was left out of James Cameron's Aliens (1986), since Cameron only needed a new 'Alien queen' design, and had come up with that himself. This article features the Swiss TV broadcast where Giger's wife broke the news, and a full gallery of Giger's conceptual work for Alien."

An anonymous reader writes "Hollywood has yet to find any video game property it is willing to treat with the same respect as J.R.R. Tolkien or J.K.Rowling, arguably still following the principles that led to the appalling Super Mario Bros. movie in 1992: 'A game lacks the complexity that a movie requires.' Yet a modern gaming masterpiece such as Mass Effect has the depth and breadth to deserve better treatment in the proposed trilogy. Is Hollywood again going to disrespect fans who, in this case, have as much right to see a good plot respected as the readers of Lord Of The Rings? This article discusses why and how Hollywood should grow up regarding these adaptations."

An anonymous reader writes "This article argues that Rupert Murdoch's bid to own complete control of BSkyB is only part of an ongoing process to make the internet a totally 'linear' experience. The increase in the use of paginated content and the proliferation of video over transcribed interviews are, the author argues, part of a tidal shift from a browsable internet experience to a linear one that will move the user's experience of media from genuine choice to a series of locked-down 'information rides,' in order to re-secure advertising exposure. The author also writes, 'Current worries among publishing houses that magazines and newspapers will succumb to the digital written word on the internet are perhaps analogous to Victorian fears about mechanical horses taking over from real horses in the drawing of carriages. The point is being missed, the wrong fear being indulged.'"

An anonymous reader writes "When George Lucas added the 'ring around the Death Star' effect to his 1997 re-release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the revision was almost as hated as Greedo shooting first, and to boot was seen as a knock-off of the seminal 'Praxis effect' in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). But a debunking astronomer claims that the Federation got it wrong and the fan-boys should thank Lucas for adding some scientific accuracy to his fictional universe."

An anonymous reader writes "Not everyone who fails to be wowed by the latest Hollywood wave of 3D movies is necessarily criticizing the movie or the 'gimmick.' The author states: 'At least 12% of people have some type of problem with their binocular vision but less than five percent have severe visual disabilities, making appreciation of 3D tricky or impossible... For the 12%, two-eyed vision can be improved with supervised vision therapy. If anyone else out there, like I did, suspects 3D is a giant con, then perhaps a trip to the optometrist is due.'"

An anonymous reader writes "'Alien' and 'Star Wars' art director Roger Christian was given £25,000 by George Lucas in 1979 to make a 25-minute medieval B-feature called 'Black Angel.' This spiritual tale of a knight on a strange quest was inspired by Christian's near-fatal fever when he fell ill in Mexico making 'Lucky Lady.' 'Black Angel' made a huge impression, not least because it shared the dark tone of 'Empire Strikes Back.' John Boorman showed it to the crew of 'Excalibur' as a template for how he wanted his film to look, and 'Black Angel' went on to influence films such as 'Dragonslayer' and 'Legend' throughout the 1980s and beyond. But it has not been seen by anyone since 'Empire' finished its theatrical run. Two weeks ago Roger Christian unearthed a print of a film that was thought lost forever, and in this interview he talks about 'Black Angel,' and provides the only picture from the film that has ever hit the Internet."