Blockbuster, formerly America’s Starbucks of video rental stores (remember those?) is expected to file for bankruptcy next month. It’s not hard to see why since they’ve lost so much ground to Netflix, Redbox, Hulu, and P2P. In fact, Blockbuster has lost over 1.1 billion since 2008, is sitting on 920 million in debt, and was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange last month. Not good for them, but will anyone really miss them? I know I won’t.
Source: LA Times
You’ve all heard of ChatRoulette right? It’s that website that matches you up with a random stranger and you chat via webcam. Well, LionsGate has found an awesome use for the site that doesn’t involve horny 20 year olds showing you their raging boners or hoping to jack off to naked chicks that might be on there. To promote their upcoming film, The Last Exorcism, LionsGate has set up a couple videos which play to unsuspecting visitors. It shows a girl looking all sexy and capturing your attention. Then, out of nowhere her eyes roll into the back of her head and she attacks the camera while screaming. Then a card that says www.thelastexorcism.com shows at the end. To show off their work, the movie studio has compiled a clip of real people reacting to what they think is a girl that’s going to take it off (warning: contains NSFW language).
OH YES! This is what we’ve been waiting for! At the Star Wars Celebration V convention this past weekend, George Lucas finally announced that Star Wars is coming to HD for the first time. Now, before you get your hopes up too much, it’s only the new versions. So all you purists out there, you’ll have to stick to those DVDs they issued. Why? George Lucas said that to transfer the old versions would have been very very expensive because a lot of restoration would have to be done to bring them up to par. I suppose that could be true, but still…Regardless, the set will also contain new special features including some never before seen deleted scenes from the movies. One of these deleted scenes was shown at the Celebration. Look it up on Youtube because by the time this article goes live, chances are the video I put in this post will be removed for copyright infringement.
Why did it take so long for Star Wars to come out on Blu-ray? George Lucas was playing the same card he did when DVD came out: he waited until it caught on with consumers and more people were able to buy it. Makes sense since putting it out right away might not be a good idea since a lot of the early Blu-ray titles weren’t that great. But yeah, Star Wars, Blu-ray! EXCITEMENT!
Source: Blu-ray.com
So, last week was pretty much Scott Pilgrim week for me since the movie and the game both came out and I reread all the books. For those of you not familiar, Scott Pilgrim is a graphic novel series penned by Bryan Lee O’Malley. It’s about a 23 year old guy named Scott Pilgrim who’s pretty much a slacker. He’s “in between” jobs, plays bass in a band called Sex Bob-Omb (obvious Mario reference), and is dating a high school girl. That changes when he meets Ramona Flowers, an Amazon.com delivery girl. They hook up and in order for Scott to continue dating her, he must defeat her seven evil ex boyfriends. Interesting concept, isn’t it?
That’s the basic premise of the story, but there’s so much more going on here too. What’s great about it is that it isn’t all about battling these evil exes, there’s many emotional layers too. The characters in the story all have flawed relationships and we not only experience what Scott and Ramona go through, but what all the others go through as well.
Now on to the main subject of this article, the movie. It’s directed by one of my favorite directors in the world, Edgar Wright, who previously worked on the TV series Spaced and most famously, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. If there was ever a perfect pairing of material and director, this is it. Edgar brings the world of Scott Pilgrim to life in an astonishingly stylish way that just leaps off the screen and grabs you by the throat. It isn’t all style though, there’s still all the emotional complexity of the novels. In fact, this is probably one of the better book to movie adaptations I’ve seen because Wright has such respect for the source material. It does start to veer off the storyline of the books about half way through the movie, but the plot points are mostly the same. The reason for that is because Edgar started writing Scott Pilgrim while he was working on Hot Fuzz, and not all of the books were out yet. So him and Bryan Lee O’Malley worked very closely on making sure the story was mostly the same.
And of course, the film retains much of the video game feel of the graphic novels and is littered with all sorts of pop culture and geeky references. There’s Zelda music (Koji Kondo is credited in the movie! 
), Earthbound references, Final Fnatasy references, the 8-bit rendition of the Universal logo, and much more. There’s so much more I want to say about the movie, but I’d rather just leave you to go watch it yourself. If you’re a geek, and between ages 16-35 or so, this movie is tailor made for you. Be sure to check out the original graphics novels too. All 6 volumes are rather cheap on Amazon right now (like $7 per book). Here’s the trailer:
File this one under awesome, that is if it’s true. According to trusted sources at Engadget, the Motorola Droid 2 is coming to Verizon on August 12. It won’t be a hyped up launch day, but marketing will take effect in the weeks following. However, what’s awesome about the Droid 2 is that the sources claim that there will be a special Star Wars edition of the phone with R2-D2 on the back! How cool is that?! Motorola is recognizing the roots of the phone’s name (they had to license it from LucasFilm) by putting R2-D2 on the back of it! No word on if it comes with any neat Star Wars related bonuses other than having R2 on the back, but it would be cool if they replicated the projector feature of the LG Expo and the Samsung Galaxy Beam to make it fit in even more with the Star Wars Canon, but I might be dreaming a little big. I’d probably expect a Star Wars related theme/apps on the phone.
Source: Engadget
With the proliferation of electric cars coming out, there is a growing concern that people will unwittingly walk in front of an electric car since the car’s engine make no noise whatsoever. One company is putting a directional speaker that emits a sound akin to a Star Wars spaceship. While it might not be the exact sound from the movies we’ve come to know and love, it apparently has the futuristic sound most people associate with spaceships.
Some people are not too happy with the idea, though. One gentleman says that the cars have made drivers and pedestrians more cautious. Since you can’t hear the car coming, people don’t just walk into the street without checking first and drivers are a little on edge expecting someone to not notice them. Adding sound will make people go back to being less careful and increase noise levels. Others, and these people I side with, are more concerned with blind pedestrians who don’t have the benefit of being able to see oncoming cars. Besides, we’d be one step closer to the type of future we’ve been shown in cartoons and movies from the 1940s and ’50s. I’ll take my electric car with an X-Wing engine, please. Use the Force when driving, I must.
I was born in 1977 so I obviously missed Star Wars’ initial theatrical release. I was old enough to remember seeing the second movie in theaters, and I have been a fan of the series since then. I dragged my family to the theater to see Return of the Jedi 6 times. As a kid, some of my favorite toys were the Star Wars toys. While my parents weren’t poor, we didn’t exactly have a lot of disposable income, so some of the bigger toys remained fantasies in my head. MSNBC just did a story today on some of the most memorable Star Wars merchandise not only from the original trilogy but also from the prequels. Some of the memorable merchandise is not necessarily for the better either. This one, for instance, had me shaking my head. Now, some fans would love to have put Jar-Jar Binks’ head on a plate as a war trophy. I didn’t have a grudge against him, but he was definitely not one of my favorite characters. But to make a loolipop in the shape of a tongue then encase it in a set of Jar-Jar lips that pop open just creeps me out. Think about this. A kid would look like he or she is kissing Jar-Jar in some overly affectionate passion. And this was marketed to kids. All I have to say is, “What were people smoking?”
Fox news took a page from Conan O’Brien (you don’t think they’re courting him too much, do you?). They took celebrity photos and mashed them with politicians, with some comic results. The one that got me the most was the James Bond image. While this one doesn’t use a politician, they took several actors who have played the title role and created the ultimae 007. Now, the fun part comes in figuring out who they used. There have been so many, I don’t think they were able to use a feature from every actor.
Really?
According to Newsweek, there has been a true civil war concerning the Chinese movie theaters. Chinese officials ordered several hundred movie theaters to stop showing the Hollywood movie Avatar and screen the government sanctioned biopoc Confucius. Chinese officials probably wanted to pull Avatar due to the unflattering comparisons people can make between the Chinese government and the military portrayed in the movie. Film goers responded by essentially boycotting Confucius to the point where the Chinese government allowed the movie to start screeening again in some theaters.
I always thought of Avatar as an allegory of the US/Native American relations in the 1800s, but I guess this is more of a movie with applicability to a variety of situations.
Well, to show that I can see what passes for entertainment in Hollywood, I think I might need a pair of polarized sunglasses like these.
photo from tag_mclaren's at flickr.com
Avatar won for Best picture at the Golden Globes last night. While I haven’t seen the other movies, I would have to give them the edge in terms of story. But I guess story is secondary as long as you have CGI and 3D effects.
Tony | 
08 30th, 2010| 