Well it's official folks! You can all scream like little girls and then pass out from complete exhaustion as Blizzard officially announces Diablo III at the 2008 Worldwide Invitational. Mike Morhaime told the audience at the opening ceremonies that they had a special announcement to make, the lights dimmed, and a guitar player took the stage, playing the unmistakable opening strains of the Diablo overworld theme. A trailer played, and Jay Wilson, lead designer of the game took the stage...to demo the game.
Blizzard has the official website for the game up and ready, already filled with pages of screenshots, a gameplay video, and the cinematic trailer, as well as concept art and one hell of an attractive aesthetic. Some of the links may not work, but we have to learn to crawl before we learn to slay hordes of bloodthirsty demons.
SARATOGA SPRINGS -- A 19-year-old man dressed as a penis was arrested for disturbing a high school graduation today at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
Calvin Morett of 337 Pyramid Pine Estates allegedly interrupted the Saratoga Springs High School graduation by marching across SPAC's stage in an inflatable 6-foot penis costume while diplomas were being given out, Saratoga Springs Police Sgt. Sean Briscoe said.
Morett purchased the full-body costume and sprayed parts of the 5,000 people in the crowd with Silly String, Briscoe said.
His motive? ``He thought it would be funny,'' Briscoe said.
Morett was ticketed for disorderly conduct, a violation, and will face the charges in City Court on Tuesday, Briscoe said.
Morett graduated from Saratoga Springs High School last year. He tried to streak away from law enforcement, but could not.
``Once I stopped laughing, he was pretty easy to catch because he was tripping on the lower portion of the costume,'' said Briscoe, who made the arrest.
There is water ice on Mars within reach of the Mars Phoenix Lander, NASA scientists announced Thursday.
Photographic evidence settles the debate over the nature of the white material seen in photographs sent back by the craft. As seen in lower left of this image, chunks of the ice sublimed (changed directly from solid to gas) over the course of four days, after the lander's digging exposed them.
"It must be ice," said the Phoenix Lander's lead investigator, Peter Smith. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice."
The confirmation that water ice exists in the area directly surrounding the lander is big and good news for the Martian mission. NASA's stated goal for the Mars Phoenix was to find exactly this -- water ice -- and then analyze it. With the latest news, the first step is accomplished. All that's left now is to get the water into the Phoenix's instruments, a task which has occasionally proven more difficult than anticipated.
Still, this is the best opportunity that humanity has ever had to analyze extraterrestrial water in any form. That had the Phoenix Lander's persona fired up.
"Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!!" the Mars Phoenix Lander tweeted at about 5:15 pm.
Their suspicions about water ice beneath the surface of Mars confirmed, scientists and the world will have renewed interest in the outcome of the soil analyses currently being conducted by the lander.
The samples are being examined for traces of organic molecules, among other substances, but the lander does not have instruments that could directly detect life.
News: Batmanime! Gotham Knight Mashes Bruce Lee, Memento
Posted: Dr. Zoidberg @ Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:57 pm
The Dark Knight is coming soon, but the straight-to-DVD anime Batman: Gotham Knight is thankfully coming sooner. Feeding Bruce Wayne's superego through the animated filter of Pacific Rim cinema so far looks very sweet indeed, and new pics and news confirm that comics nerds and late adopters alike are probably going to be impressed.
On the nerd front, animated Batphiles should be pleased to know that Kevin Conroy is returning to voice Wayne, as he has for the last couple of decades in various iterations of the mythology. Adam West would probably not be pleased to know that it is Conroy's pipes that have ruled Batman's tech-noir corner of television, proving that an animated Batman is truly a resonant one. For his part, Conroy says he believes the multiple-narrative Gotham Knight movie will resonate more than any other when it hits store shelves July 8.
"It's a really rich experience," promised Conroy. "The artwork in this film is so beautiful. It's like getting six movies in one."
And perhaps as many personas, especially now that anime and Batman have merged after being on a collision course for decades. Bruce Wayne may be voiced by Conroy, but he's also carried the weight of everyone from Michael Keaton to Christian Bale, with probably too many big names in between. But lately in the series The Batman and the new Bale iterations, Bruce Wayne has been more like Bruce Lee. He looks the part in one segment.
But Batman: Gotham Knight is freaking memes in more ways than one. For his Rashomon-like segment "Have I Got a Story For You," History of Violence screenwriter and Batman fanboy Josh Olson sampled Memento's narrative slipstreaming in honor of Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan's crossover film.
"I thought it would be fun telling the story backwards," explained Olson. "You'll notice that each time the villain appears, he seems to be gaining weapons instead of losing them. That was an intentional nod to Chris Nolan's film."
Regardless of its source material, Batman: Gotham Knight is planning for the future and giving the Dark Knight's expanding mythos some interesting twists. From a tasteful decapitation to bare-knuckle brawls and into the BatBot, this East-West détente has enough material to keep fandom occupied for awhile. Gotham Knight screenwriter and Batman regular Greg Rucka just wants them to keep their cool, especially when they bump into something that may make them nervous.
"The great thing about comics fandom," Rucka explains, "is that it's immediate. I write a novel and it'll be a year before people tell me what they think of it. Comics fans react that day."
Plus, in the age of the internet, they have more power and influence than ever. That's a trade-off that the economically sensitive producers have to deal with, one way or another.
"Comics are in many ways like soap operas, in that the fan base rests mostly in the characters," Rucka says. "Consequently, the fans can be prone to hysteria. With the prevalence of the internet, there's been this movement where everyone wants to be an insider, everyone has an opinion, and everyone wants to spread the information as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, a lot of times, the information is wrong or horribly incomplete. But these things don't exist without that fan base. They are devoted, and vocal."
Jack Thompson has very recently been paid a friendly visit by a pair of U.S Marshals following one of the silver-maned crusader's madcap letters. In writing to Chief Judge Federico Moreno, the notorious defense attorney (for the time being) suggested that Al Qaeda terror suspects have more rights than he does:
We find yesterday that enemy combatants at Guantanamo are to get more due process from federal judges than what I am to have. I guess my "mistake" was not killing 3000 people to make my point...
I demand a hearing.
Jack's crazy hyperbole prompted the visit from the Marshals, and although the full details of such a meeting are unclear, it's been made obvious that they considered him a threat. This is what happens when you write crazy letters filled with over-the-top sarcasm to judges.
I was visited today by two U.S. Marshals who were nice gentlemen, and very professional and courteous in their dealings with me. My complaint is not with them...
I have been asking the Justice Department simply to meet with me about [the video game industry's] criminal targeting of me for harm... Our US Attorney here has obstructed that effort... Instead of being afforded the Justice Department investigation to which I am entitled, I get today harassment from that same Justice Department...
When you and the Justice Department dispatch U.S. Marshals to my home because of a letter I wrote you last week complaining about misconduct by District Court Judges here in the Southern District, the purpose of that visit was to intimidate and harass me...
The notion that I pose some sort of physical threat to you or to the judiciary or to anyone else down here is a cruel joke. The two Marshals said, “If you had actually hand-delivered the letter to Judge Moreno, we would be concerned.” To that I said, “But I did. I did that last week because the gentlemen at the metal detectors would not deliver it, and THEY TOLD ME TO DELIVER IT TO YOU. I buzzed into your inner offices on the thirteenth floor, and I politely handed the letter to your clerk, who politely took it.
If I were a danger to anyone, that would have been the time for me to have proven it, right? In fact, I have never threatened anyone in my entire life, and you know that, and the Marshals said they knew that. They were apologetic about being dispatched to my home. This is outrageous, Judge. Simply outrageous.
News: This smut case is extreme, even in Los Angeles
Posted: Roofus @ Wed Jun 11, 2008 11:57 am
What violates community obscenity standards in the nation's reputed pornography capital? Federal prosecutors think they have a case.
Ira Isaacs readily admits he produced and sold movies depicting bestiality and sexual activity involving feces and urine. The judge warned potential jurors that the hours of fetish videos included violence against women, and many of them said they don't want to serve because watching would make them sick to their stomachs.
"It's the most extreme material that's ever been put on trial. I don't know of anything more disgusting," said Roger Jon Diamond — Isaacs' own defense attorney.
The case is the most visible effort of a new federal task force designed to crack down on smut in America. Isaacs, however, says his work is an extreme but constitutionally protected form of art.
"There's no question the stuff is disgusting," said Diamond, who has spent much of his career representing pornographers. "The question is should we throw people in jail for it?"
Isaacs, 57, a Los Angeles advertising agency owner who says he used to market fine art in commercial projects, calls himself a "shock artist" and says he went into distributing and producing films about fetishes because "I wanted to do something extreme."
"I'm fighting for art," he said in an interview before his federal trial got under way. "Art is on trial."
He plans to testify as his own expert witness and said he will cite the historic battles over obscenity involving authors James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence.
One of his exhibits, he said, will be a painting of a urinal by famed artist Marcel Duchamp.
Diamond said Isaacs also will tell jurors the works have therapeutic value for people with the same fetishes depicted on screen.
"They don't feel so isolated," Diamond said. "They have fetishes that other people have."
Isaacs makes a brief appearance in one of the videos he produced; others that he distributed were imported from other countries.
The business has been lucrative. At one point, he has said, he was selling 1,000 videos a month at $30 apiece. Then his office was raided by FBI agents who bought his videos online with undercover credit cards.
The government obtained an indictment against Isaacs on a variety of obscenity charges, including importation or transportation of obscene material for sale. Prosecutors have declined to comment about the case.
Jean Rosenbluth, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at University of Southern California, said such prosecutions were rare until the creation of the U.S. Department of Justice Obscenity Prosecution Task Force. Child pornography cases are handled by a separate unit.
"The problem with obscenity is no one really knows what it is," she said. "It's relatively simple to paint something as an artistic effort even if it's offensive."
The test of obscenity still hinges on a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held that a work is not legally obscene if it has "literary, artistic, political or scientific value."
Jurors also are asked to determine whether the material in question violates standards of what is acceptable to the community at large.
"This task force was quite controversial and many in the Department of Justice felt that it was a waste of resources," Rosenbluth said. "Because of the pressure, they seem to have chosen the worst cases they can find to prosecute."
Each of the six counts against Isaacs carries a five-year maximum prison sentence. Prosecutors also are seeking forfeiture of assets obtained through his video sales.
"A lot of this is about sending a message — 'Don't make this stuff. Don't put it on the Internet. We don't want it here,'" Rosenbluth said.
Rosenbluth said prosecutors would be emboldened to pursue similar cases if Isaacs is convicted, though there would be lengthy challenges on appeal.
In an unusual twist, the trial is being presided over by the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Alex Kozinski, under a program that allows appellate judges to occasionally handle criminal trials at the District Court level. Kozinski is known as a strong defender of free speech and First Amendment rights.
When jury selection began Monday, he urged prospects to be open about their opinions and incurred an onslaught of negative statements. Within the first hour, he dismissed 26 men and women who said they could not be fair to the defendant because they were repulsed by the subject matter. By day's end, half the panel of 100 had been excused.
"I think watching something like that would make me physically ill, nauseous," said one woman. "It's affecting me physically now just thinking about it."
One man fired angry comments at the ponytailed Isaacs.
"Hearing stuff about feces made me sick and the defendan...
"The Simpsons" cast has signed a four-year deal that solidifies the animated hit's 20th season, reports Variety.
Production on the show has been delayed for several months as voice actors and 20th Century Fox TV hammered out a deal. The new pact bumps the stars' salaries up to about $400,000 an episode; the actors previously made somewhere in the mid-$300,000 range.
The deal means most of the key "Simpsons" cast members -- Dan Castellaneta (Homer), Julie Kavner (Marge), Nancy Cartwright (Bart), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), Hank Azaria (Moe) and Harry Shearer (Mr. Burns) -- will be back to work and attending the show's first table read of the season this morning.
As part of his deal, Castellaneta has been named consulting producer on the series. He'll now serve as a writer in addition to continuing as a voice performer.
Although the voice actors are now locked through the next four years, it doesn't necessarily mean "The Simpsons" will be back beyond season 20. Gracie Films' deal with 20th expires at the end of this season, and Fox hasn't renewed the show beyond this upcoming year.
News: Phone home: Purported UFO video to be shown Friday
Posted: Dr. Zoidberg @ Sat May 31, 2008 10:20 pm
A video that purportedly shows a living, breathing space alien will be shown to the news media Friday in Denver.
Jeff Peckman, who is pushing a ballot initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver to prepare the city for close encounters of the alien kind, said the video is authentic and convinced him that aliens exist.
"As impressive as it is, it's still one tiny portion in the context of a vast amount of peripheral evidence," he said Wednesday. "It's really the final visual confirmation of what you already know to be true having seen all the other evidence."
When Peckman went before city officials this month to discuss his proposed ET initiative, he promised to show the video.
Peckman said the general public will have to wait to see it because it's being included in a documentary by Stan Romanek.
"No one will be allowed to film the segment with the extraterrestrial because there is an agreement in place limiting that kind of exposure during negotiations for the documentary," he said.
But people won't have to wait too long to see it for themselves.
"There is an open, public meeting in about a month in Colorado Springs," Peckman said. "We'll hope to do one in Denver at some point, and then in a few months, there will be the documentary that anybody can have, and it'll have the footage."
An instructor at the Colorado Film School in Denver scrutinized the video "very carefully" and determined it was authentic, Peckman said.
Peckman, 54, said the video was among the reasons he was "compelled" to launch the proposed ballot initiative, which has generated news as far as South Africa.
"It shows an extraterrestrial's head popping up outside of a window at night, looking in the window, that's visible through an infrared camera," he said. The alien is about 4 feet tall and can be seen blinking, Peckman said earlier this month.
In a statement, Peckman said "other related credible evidence" proving aliens exist will be shown at Friday's news conference, too.
In 2003, Peckman authored an off-beat ballot initiative that would have required the city to implement stress-reduction techniques. The "Safety Through Peace" initiative failed, but garnered 32 percent of the vote.
Rocky, Rambo, Die Hard and Indiana Jones have made successful comebacks after long absences, thus the studios have begun dusting off their other 80's action franchises looking for milking more potential revenue streams out of their previously retired warhorses.
According to Variety, Paramount intends to bring back detective Axel Foley in a fourth installment of "Beverly Hills Cop". Eddie Murphy is attached to reprise his role, whilst Brett Ratner ("Rush Hour," "Red Dragon") is negotiating to direct.
The original 1984 action comedy shot Murphy to international stardom, was the second biggest earner of the year (behind only "Ghostbusters"), scored a best screenplay Oscar nomination, and was producer Jerry Bruckheimer's biggest hit until the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" film two decades later.
The third film was released in 1994 and grossed just $44 million domestic. Terribly reviewed and labelled a very generic action-comedy, even Murphy called the second sequel "atrocious" and has said he wants to be more actively involved in any fourth venture.
A writer will be hired shortly to pen the script, whilst Bruckheimer will not be actively involved in this sequel. Shooting begins next year for a Summer 2010 release.
Steven Paul's banner Crystal Sky Pictures has inked a $200 million theatrical slate financing deal with Don Starr's Grosvenor Park.
Deal covers five features, including upcoming vidgame adaptation "Castlevania," a co-production with Universal's Rogue Pictures. Project, based on the Konami vidgame, is written by Paul Anderson ("Resident Evil") and directed by Sylvain White ("Stomp the Yard").
Crystal Sky has expanded its slate of branded entertainment titles, and coin from the deal will help it further expand its development capabilities.
Other titles in the Grosvenor Park-funded slate include an adaptation of Richard Branson's memoir "Losing My Virginity," a bigscreen adaptation of vidgame "Pac-Man" and a sequel to John Woo's actioner "Hard Boiled"; company also controls the rights to Brad Thor's bestselling novels.
Deal was negotiated by Crystal Sky's Scott Karol and Grosvenor Park's Deirdre Owens.
"This financing is helping us in our expansion plans to greenlight films more quickly," Paul told Daily Variety. "We're now one of the few companies to have a big budget with which to develop our slate."
Crystal Sky previously produced "Bratz," based on the toy franchise, with Lionsgate, and "Ghost Rider" with Columbia Pictures.
The company is also producing "Ghost in the Shell" with DreamWorks and "Robosapien: Rebooted," both in association with Avi Arad's Arad Prods.
Crystal Sky is also producing Giuseppe Tornatore's English-language debut "The Lady," a $30 million biopic of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
Grosvenor Park recently provided complete financing for Ed Zwick's "Defiance," starring Daniel Craig. Paramount Vantage will release the pic domestically in the fall.
Crystal Sky's international sales will be handled by worldwide sales prexy Daniel Diamond, with Benedict Carver overseeing production.
News: There Can Be Only Two: Higlander Remake Coming
Posted: Dr. Zoidberg @ Wed May 21, 2008 9:41 pm
Summit sets 'Highlander' remake
Film unit aims to restart franchise
Summit Entertainment will produce a remake of fantasy thriller "Highlander" with the aim of kick-starting the franchise.
Summit's signed the "Iron Man" writing team of Art Marcum and Matt Holloway to script, with plans to expand on the original pic's premise of immortals battling each other for a mysterious prize. Company's aiming to go into production next year.
Patrick Wachsberger, Summit's co-chairman and president, said, "I have always dreamed of reinventing this franchise."
Summit production prexy Erik Feig told Daily Variety that the new pic will mix contemporary settings, action, mythology and medieval Scotland.
"We think the franchise will work on a global basis," he added.
Summit acquired the remake rights from Davis/Panzer Prods. It has tapped Peter Davis, one of the producers of the original film, to produce the new version.
The 1986 original was directed by Russell Mulcahy and starred Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, Clancy Brown and Roxanne Hart. It launched four sequels and three TV spinoffs.
In addition to "Iron Man," Marcum and Holloway also wrote "Convoy" for Par.
Summit has been ramping up operations for the past year from a sales operation into a full-fledged studio with development, financing, production and distribution. It's focused on projects budgeted in the middle range and plans to release 10-12 films annually. Recent pics include "Sex Drive" and Alexander Proyas' "Knowing," currently shooting with Nicolas Cage starring.
News: Jack Thompson in trouble for "fraudulent" practice
Posted: Dr. Zoidberg @ Wed May 21, 2008 8:10 pm
Karma: anti-games attorney recommended guilty for 27 misconduct charges
Here come the karma police! Infamous anti-videogame attorney Jack Thompson, who was once ordered to get a mental check, has been recommended guilty for 27 of 31 misconduct charges, by Florida judge Dava Tunis.
Among the charges against Thompson are dishonest or fraudulent practices, knowingly making false statements in court and making statements intended only to "embarrass or burden" other parties.
Thompson's campaign against Rockstar Games and GTA is well known, and most recently he called the fourth game, "the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio." He even sent a letter to Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick's MUM.
Tunis has recommended that the 27 charges be upheld by the Florida Supreme Court, who now holds Thompson's career in its hands. Here's what the judge had to say:
"After considering the arguments presented by the Florida Bar and the Respondent (Thompson), observing the Respondent's demeanor during the nine-day trial proceedings, and carefully reviewing the record consisting of four volumes of exhibits totaling 1700 pages and approximately 2400 pages of transcribed testimony, the Court finds that the facts, circumstances and evidence presented regarding the Respondent's conduct, supports a finding of guilt as to certain Florida Bar rules..."
here we go again Look, I'm so on the fence about posting this my ass cheeks are dotted with splinters. But hey, it's Shenmue, and there's precendent for this kind of business on the Wii, so who knows. Scandinavian games mag Gamereactor have heard that Sega plan to release Shenmue on the Wii. Not a new Shenmue, however, just Shenmue 1 & 2 bundled together, with added (no doubt waggle-intensive) minigames thrown in. Would it sell? Of course not. Would it get certain areas of the internet all giddy with excitement regardless? Of course it would.
“Shenmue is back! Sega has rereleased classics like Nights,Bass Fishing and House of the Dead lately. Now it’s said that Shenmue is next. But don’t think that it’s about a new game, instead, they’re bringing back the two original Shenmue games with extra Wiimote-minigames which will be released for the Wii.”
One of the best cult films of the past decade has to be Richard Kelly's brilliant debut 2001 feature "Donnie Darko". Despite doing poorly at the box-office, the film scored rave reviews and has quickly become a big hit on DVD.
Now unfortunately, an attempt it being made to cash in on the property with "S. Darko", a $10 million sequel of sorts that follows Donnie's baby sister according to Screen Daily.
Set seven years after the first film, little sister Samantha Darko and her best friend Corey are now eighteen and on a roadtrip to Los Angeles when they are plagued by bizarre visions.
Daviegh Chase will reprise her role as Donnie's younger sister, and will be joined by Justin Chatwin, Ed Westwick and Briana Evigan Chris Fisher ("Nightstalker," "Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders"), will direct.
Producers have spoken to Richard Kelly about the project but he is not involved in any official capacity at this stage - neither is any of the original cast such as Drew Barrymore, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Mary McCormack. Fox will handle distribution in the US and production begins filming on May 18th.
Take-Two has entered a partnership with Universal Studios to make a BioShock movie, and Gore Verbinski has been tapped to direct it.
"I was hanging out a lot with Ken Levine talking about gaming in general and I heard from Ken directly that they were thinking about making a movie," Verbinski told Variety.
"Of all the games out there, I think 'Bioshock' is the one that's the most engaging. I think the whole utopia-gone-wrong story that's cleverly unveiled to players is brimming with cinematic potential."
Verbinski stated that he sees BioShock on the scale of Blade Runner rather than Pirates of the Caribbean, so don't expect something like the overblown antics of Jack Sparrow to be featured in the movie.
Instead, he's focusing the Utopian visuals and the theme of free will. He also confirmed that he's in talks with Ken Levine and his top priority is not to damage the franchise with the adaptation.
The Hollywood man has increasingly expressed an interest in games development over the past few months. Speaking to the LA Times in March he called the games development model broken and that he was interested in developing emotional games.
In addition to directing BioShock, Verbinski intends to continue pursuing his own gaming projects on the side.
FPS sequel in development, id looking for team members
Id Software has announced today that production has begun on DOOM 4, and the developer is "expanding its internal team" to work on the next instalment of the spooky shooter.
"DOOM is part of the id Software DNA and demands the greatest talent and brightest minds in the industry to bring the next instalment of our flagship franchise to Earth," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO, id Software.
"It's critical for id Software to have the best creative minds in-house to develop games that meet the standards synonymous with our titles."
According to the official blurb, id is looking for "talented, ambitious and passionate individuals" to join the team working on the game. We're assuming development it isn't that far along then.
That's Rage and Doom 4 (plus Quake Zero and mobile games) in development at the tiny developer. Assuming it's using the Rage tech, we should expect it on PS3, 360 and PC simultaneously.
YANGON (AFP) — The Myanmar cyclone has killed more than 15,000 people, the secretive nation said Tuesday, amid fears thousands of others are also dead in one of Asia's worst natural disasters.
With the military junta under fire over its handling of the tragedy, foreign aid teams described scenes of horror -- rice fields littered with corpses, and desperate survivors without food or shelter four days after the storm struck.
Tropical cyclone Nargis wiped away entire villages in the Irrawaddy river delta when it struck overnight Friday, wreaking destruction on a country that is already one of the poorest on the planet.
Christian relief organisation World Vision, one of the few international agencies allowed to work inside Myanmar, said its teams had flown over the most affected regions and witnessed devastation on the ground below.
"They saw the dead bodies from the helicopters, so it's quite overwhelming," Kyi Minn, an adviser to World Vision's office in Myanmar's main city of Yangon, told AFP in Thailand by telephone.
"The impact of the disaster could be worse than the (2004) tsunami because it is compounded by the limited availability of resources on top of the transport constraints," he said.
Aid groups were rushing to bring food, clean water, clothing and shelter into the country, whose military rulers have long spurned most of the outside world -- and prevented many aid groups from operating in the isolated nation.
But Foreign Minister Nyan Win acknowledged on Monday night that his country, formerly known as Burma and ruled by the military for the last 46 years, needed urgent help from abroad.
"We will welcome help," he said. "Our people are in difficulty."
The death toll has been rising by multiples of 10 or even 30 at a time, as the true scope of the destruction from Nargis -- which barrelled into Myanmar with winds at 190 kilometres (120 miles) an hour -- becomes known.
The New Light of Myanmar newspaper, which like all media here is strictly controlled by the junta, said that in the latest count more than 15,000 people had been killed -- 10,000 in the town of Bogalay alone.
In Yangon, formerly the capital before the generals installed their seat of power in a remote enclave, most phone and electricity services were still out.
The United Nations said it believed hundreds of thousands of people had been left homeless in the Yangon region alone, and there was risk of disease spreading in the absence of proper shelter and drinking water.
Footage on state television showed boats washed away and houses caved in, massive trees uprooted and tossed into the streets like toys, and massive destruction across an area that is the country's primary rice-growing region.
US First Lady Laura Bush, one of the fiercest international critics of Myanmar's government, accused the ruling generals of not doing enough to warn their people before the cyclone hit.
"Although they were aware of the threat, Burma's state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path," she said at the White House.
"The response to the Tropical Cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta's failure to meet its people's basic needs."
Myanmar has long been a target of international criticism, not least because of its long detention of democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
State television said a constitutional referendum this weekend meant to be a step on the road to restoring democracy would go ahead everywhere except 47 townships hardest hit by the disaster.
In the meantime, governments across Asia and around the world were offering help to Myanmar -- including critics such as Australia and even the United States, which has repeatedly imposed tough sanctions on the junta.
"They are accepting and even requesting international assistance," said Richard Horsey, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Bangkok.
"Getting it out to the affected populations will be a major challenge, given that there is widespread flooding," he told AFP.
"The urgent need is for shelter and for water. Without clean drinking water, the risk of disease spreading is the most serious concern."
The UN's food agency said that the destruction also threatened rice exports which it was hoped would ease shortages in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh amid soaring global food prices.
News: Porn filmed in Japanese McDonald's? I'm rubbin' it!
Posted: Dr. Zoidberg @ Mon Apr 28, 2008 8:30 pm
McDonald's customers suspected something amiss when one guy pulled out his whopper. They knew for sure when he began partaking of fur burger. The upshot was four people trying to make an adult movie in a fast food outlet ended up getting arrested, says Friday (5/2).
Arrested in the case earlier this month for indecent exposure and obstruction of business were Kunikazu Ishii, 52, the director, Nahoko Shimada, 21, an actress and dental nurse, and actors Yuya Ochiai, 29, and Makoto Nishizumi.
Saitama Prefectural Police say the four spent about 30 minutes one afternoon in January this year filming an adult movie in the McDonald's Higashi Matsuyama Itoyokado outlet in Higashi Matsuyama, Saitama Prefecture. They were allegedly caught after another customer called the police and told cops what was supposedly going on.
"(Shimada) came into the restaurant holding hands with Ochiai. But Ochiai didn't look the type good enough to pick up a woman like her, so I thought something fishy was going on," a customer in the store at the time of the incident tells Friday. "It was even more suspicious because there was one young woman surrounded by all those much older guys."
The group apparently took up a corner counter not easily visible to serving staff and went about their purportedly pornographic proclivities.
Ochiai apparently spent the time with his hands up Shimada's skirt as he displayed his deft handiwork, Ishii did the filming and Nishizumi acted as a barrier and barked out orders to participants -- so the cops say, anyway.
When police did arrive on the scene, the group had allegedly been filming inside the restaurant for about half an hour. Each of the four suspects was led away individually and taken to a nearby cop station in a different patrol car.
Adult movie experts say the arrests are a sign of the times.
"Filming that way is basically like screaming out to the cops: 'Hey, come and arrest me,'" an industry insider tells Friday.
An adult movie production company associate adds his two bits.
"They probably did something that stupid because they wanted to cut production costs," the associate says.
"Putting the actress's wages aside, 10 years ago most cheap adult movies had a budget of about 1 million yen, but now that figure is more likely to be 500,000 yen or, in really bad cases, only around 300,000 yen. If you've only got 300,000 yen to work with, there'll be no room to book a studio or hotel room once you've rented the filming equipment and paid the guys' wages. So that's probably why they filmed in the fast food restaurant."
Most adult movie actresses are usually the highest paid workers on each flick. Though that was likely to have been the case with this movie, too, starlet Shimada was hardly likely to have been raking in big bucks (at least in cash terms).
"Women acting in these cheap adult flicks usually get paid around 70,000 yen per movie, but some may only get as little as 20,000 yen. Nearly all the women who act in these kinds of movies have a real job and do it as a sideline. There are nurses, stage actresses and members of the Self-Defense Forces," the associate tells Friday.
"Shimada's main job was a dental nurse. She only started appearing in a few adult movies from December last year, so she's basically a complete amateur. Now she's been arrested, her chosen part-time profession has ended up costing her quite a lot."
News: Uwe Boll Challenges Michael Bay to Death Match
Posted: Dr. Zoidberg @ Sun Apr 27, 2008 1:49 am
Hack video game movie director Uwe Boll has had enough of AWESOME Hollywood action director Michael Bay’s disrespect, and has challenged to the Transformers director to a 12-round boxing match to settle it all.
“Michael Bay responded to my note about him in a very insulting way for me. He said that he doesn’t care about me and this was very insulting because I care about him and I think that with the money he has for his movies, he sucks big time. I think it’s time to meet in the ring actually.
So it’s my message to Michael Bay, Michael, in between your pool parties in LA or your casting sessions with the strippers you should start training now. And I’m sure you look good, you look thin. I saw you at the Hollywood Film Festival, I think you’re a fit guy and you do like private karate bullshitAsia bullshit crap fighting stuff in LA where you think you’re super cool that you do that with your 500 bucks trainer everyday.
So let’s meet in the ring in September or October. Pay-per-view. Mandalay Bay. Las Vegas. Twelve rounds of boxing. Boll against Bay. And it’s also independent against the studio system and I think that this day in Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas we will clear it up who is not only the better director who is also able to fight more for that what he wants.”
News: Iron Man crossover in The Incredible Hulk confirmed
Posted: Dr. Zoidberg @ Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:52 pm
Holy Comic Book Crossover Batman!
Kelvin has just called in with the quick update from the New York Comic Con and he just told me that it's official. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) appears briefly in a bar scene with General Ross (William Hurt) in the upcoming THE INCREDIBLE HULK! In the new upcoming full trailer, which will be attached to IRON MAN, Tony Stark makes his appearance at the very end of the trailer!
In the scene Tony Stark walks in to the bar and says "It smells like stale beer in here," Ross replies "You always have such nice suits." Tony continues "I hear you have a little problem" Ross goes on to say "You should talk" and finally Tony tell Ross "You should listen."
Kell also told me that they showed the first time Ed Norton hulks out in the beginning of the movie and stomps the dog shit out of Emil Blonksy (Tim Roth) and his team in search of Bruce Banner. Kell told me that shit was off the meathook!
I remember the scene in question when we did the script review which you can look for in our script review archive. Banner is on the down low in Brazil trying to figure out a cure for his situation with a certain chemical only found in a flower in Brazil. General Ross pinpoints Banner's exact whereabouts and sends Blonksy and his team to apprehend Banner.
Stay tuned as Kel will see THE NEW DARK KNIGHT TRAILER which will be attached to SPEED RACER!
Until the next episode...
UPDATE: THE DARK KNIGHT TRAILER WAS SHOWN but DC Comics president Paul Levitz told the audience to please not blog or report the trailer scene for scene.
All we can say is that it will debut in two weeks and that fans will see how Harvey Dent gets his face messed up
Sigourney Weaver recently revealed that those old rumors were true - she had definitely considered making another "Alien" movie with director Ridley Scott.
"The last time [Ridley and I] saw each other we talked about it. The character is still interesting [and] I'd love to work with Ridley again" she told MTV News this week.
Unfortunately something has nixed those plans - "Fox has effectively killed it because of 'Alien vs. Predator.' What else can you do with the creature? You can take the situation, you can go back to where they came from. ...To play someone who ages a couple hundred years was fascinating. [But] let [Ripley] rest."
News: GTA Will Knock Me Out And Take My Gold Jesus Cross
Posted: Dr. Zoidberg @ Fri Apr 18, 2008 8:36 pm
Jonathan Lee Riches is a prisoner at a Williamsburg County federal corrections centre. Jonathan Lee Riches is also nuttier than a bag full of crushed nuts. The 31 year-old partly blames GTA for his stint in the slammer, and has filed a restraining order against Take-Two, Rockstar and, best of all, Grand Theft Auto itself. Why? He says "Defendants put me in prison. I face imminent danger from violent inmates who played Grand Theft Auto who will knock me out and take my gold Jesus cross". Brilliant. I say only "partly", however, because this is the same guy who last year filed suits against Barry Bonds, MLB commissioner Bud Selig and...Hank Aaron's bat, hoping to nab himself "42,000,000 million dollars in Swiss Francs". He also sued disgraced footballer Michael Vick for "63,000,000,000 billion dollars". So, so, so nutty.
DreamWorks has acquired rights to the Japanese manga "Ghost in the Shell" with plans to adapt the futuristic police thriller as a 3-D live-action feature.
Story follows the exploits of a member of a covert ops unit of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission that specializes in fighting technology-related crime.
Created by Masamune Shirow, "Ghost in the Shell" was first published in 1989. It went on to generate two additional manga editions, three anime film adaptations, an anime TV series and three videogames. The second anime film, "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence," was released in the U.S. by DreamWorks in 2004.
Avi Arad, Ari Arad and Steven Paul of Seaside Entertainment are attached to produce and brought the project to the studio. Jamie Moss has been tapped to pen the adaptation.
Universal and Sony were also chasing "Ghost in the Shell," but Steven Spielberg took personal interest in the property and made it happen at DreamWorks.
" 'Ghost in the Shell' is one of my favorite stories," Spielberg said. "It's a genre that has arrived, and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks."
DreamWorks prexy of production Adam Goodman said "Ghost in the Shell" is a property "that epitomizes 3-D live-action motion picture possibilities."
Avi Arad is at the forefront of comicbook-based material, having produced the three "Spider-Man" films, the three "X-Men" movies, the two "Fantastic Four" picss and the upcoming "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk."
Moss' writing credits include "Street Kings," which bowed Friday, and "Last Man Home," in development at Universal.
Battlestar Galactica creator Ronald D Moore has written a two-hour pilot for a new show set on the Earth's first starship.
A crew of a dozen are aboard Phaeton on a ten-year mission to a distant solar system in the pilot, called Virtuality. To ease the journey NASA has loaded the ship with virtual reality equipment. The crew can take on other identities and "travel" to other destinations - until a mysterious "bug" appears in the system.
Universal Media Studios is making the pilot for Fox, with Moore also serving as an executive producer. Production is expected to start in July.
UMS president Katherine Pope said: "It's very much about what's fantasy and what's reality - what we do to escape our lives and what actually institutes our lives, and are these things very different."
News: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg Going to 'The World's End'
Posted: Dr. Zoidberg @ Sat Apr 12, 2008 2:57 am
Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg Going to 'The World's End'
Filed under: Comedy, Independent, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Deals, Newsstand
It's only a working title, but it will do to wind us up for now. Edgar Wright gave a hint as to what will complete the three-flavored Cornetto Trilogy begun by Shaun of the Dead -- rather appropriately, it will be The World's End.
The Guardian caught Wright at a London press conference, where the director announced a two-film deal with Working Title Films -- World's End with Pegg, and a separate action thriller currently titled Baby Driver.
Wright wouldn't give up much on what genre it would be, but admitted it might be a doomsday sci-fi piece. "It's kind of going in that direction." Sci-fi does seem to be an appropriate choice for the mint chocolate chip Cornetto that is supposed to appear. (The Cornetto theme is a tribute to Krzysztof Kieslowski and his Three Colors series, and a different flavor has appeared in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.
And about that Cornetto ice cream -- it seems they have yet to properly reward Wright and Pegg for the free advertising. "We're still waiting for the box of Cornettos to be sent to us," said Wright. (Can anyone out there confirm if it really is a good hangover cure?)
There's no word on when we can expect The World's End to start filming, let alone be released. Wright has a pretty busy schedule with Ant Man and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Although if a SAG strike delays the latter, maybe we'll get something definite by fall.
Simon Pegg, who takes over the role of Scotty in J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek movie, told SCI FI Wire that he's completed his role but is signed on for two more films if the first one hits.
"We did it. My work is done," Pegg said in an interview. "It was very cool."
Pegg declined to say much about the film, but acknowledged that he was awed to portray chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, the role originated by James Doohan in the original Star Trek TV series and subsequent films.
"It was definitely intimidating just to be there and see it all," the British actor (Shaun of the Dead) said. "Of course, I'm such a fan."
Heroes will return to NBC on Sept. 15 with an expanded third-season opener, but network executives confirmed that the proposed prequel spinoff, Heroes: Origins, is officially dead.
"We consciously chose to rest [Heroes] this spring so that [creator] Tim Kring and his team could get ahead of the creative and build up to a massive event--a three-hour Heroes night," Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios, said during the network's upfront presentation to advertisers in New York on April 2. "On Monday, Sept. 15, we'll kick off with a Heroes clip show to try to bring back the audience and [then air] a massive two-hour Heroes film."
Silverman also explained why the heavily hyped, much-anticipated Heroes: Origins was scrapped. The show was originally conceived to help eliminate Heroes repeats, and directors and writers--including feature-film vets Kevin Smith, Eli Roth and Michael Dougherty--were already lined up before NBC dropped the idea.
"We were taxing our creative team to do too much around that," Silverman said. "We wanted 35 Heroes [episodes] and 12 Heroes: Origins, each of which was supposed to be a mini-movie and backdoor pilot. We reached far and challenged our people, and we decided it was better to focus on keeping the Heroes mothership as strong as possible."
KASHIWA, Japan - Japanese scientists and origami masters hope to launch a paper airplane from space and learn from its trip back to Earth.
It's no joke. A prototype passed a durability test in a wind tunnel this month, Japan's space agency adopted it Wednesday for feasibility studies, and a well-known astronaut is interested in participating.
A successful flight from space by an origami plane could have far-reaching implications for the design of re-entry vehicles or space probes for upper atmospheric exploration, said project leader Shinji Suzuki, a professor at Tokyo University's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Suzuki said he was skeptical a decade ago when he first discussed with experts the idea of sending into space a craft made in the tradition of Japan's ancient art of paper folding.
"It sounded like a simply impossible, crazy idea," Suzuki said. "I gave it some more thought, and came to think it may not be ridiculous after all, and could very well survive if it comes down extremely slowly."
In a test outside Tokyo in early February, a prototype about 2.8 inches long and 2 inches wide survived Mach 7 speeds and broiling temperatures up to 446 degrees Fahrenheit in a hypersonic wind tunnel — conditions meant to approximate what the plane would face entering Earth's atmosphere.
Having survived the 12-second test with no major damage or burns, the tiny plane theoretically could get back to Earth because re-entry from outer space involves passing through several layers that last only a few seconds each, said Osamu Imamura, a scientist who works with Suzuki.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, accepted it Wednesday for three years of feasibility studies and promised up to $300,000 in funding per year.
At this point, the proposal faces just one challenge, but it's a potentially crippling one: There is no way to track the paper craft or predict when or where they may land.
Critics say that makes the test pointless. Yasuyuki Miyazaki, an aerospace engineer at Nihon University who is not involved in the project, said the paper shuttles might not come back at all, depending on the angle at which they enter the atmosphere.
Suzuki said many things about science "have to be learned simply by trying them out."
Takuo Toda, the head of the Japan Origami Airplane Association, had nursed the idea of flying a shuttle-shaped paper plane since NASA in 1977 launched its first space shuttle Enterprise, a craft without an engine or heat shield that was used to perform test flights in the atmosphere.
He spent 18 months figuring out how to fold a perfect origami spacecraft from a plain sheet of paper — without cutting, stitching or taping it — and tested hundreds of designs in the process.
Suzuki and Toda use origami paper made of sugar cane fibers that are resistant to heat, wind and water. They spray a special coating onto the paper and then fold it into shuttles about 8 inches long and 4 inches wide that weigh about 1.05 ounces. How many shuttles will be released has not been decided.
The pair theorize that with the coating, rounded edges, a rounded nose cone and almost no weight, their craft will face very little of the heat-generating friction that causes most damage to vehicles re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
Astronaut Koichi Wakata, who has expressed personal interest in the project, would throw several origami shuttles into the wake of the international space station, which travels at Mach 20 some 250 miles above Earth — if the JAXA feasibility studies pan out, Suzuki said.
Findings from the paper shuttles' flight could be used in developing new lightweight space probes that would study the upper atmosphere, Miyazaki said. The results also could help in designing a full-scale shuttle that
re-enters the atmosphere slowly to reduce fiction and heat, said Suzuki.
Suzuki and Toda plan to write a message of peace on the planes in several languages, along with a request for anyone spotting them to notify the team.
"Just imagine, children around the world would be anxiously waiting for the return of our origami shuttle, perhaps looking up into the sky from time to time," Suzuki said. "That would be great fun."
Gran Turismo fans still have around 12 months to wait for a full sequel to appear on PS3, according to SCEA.
"Also, to further clarify, GT5 is still about a year away. You should just decide now to buy it, enjoy it, go online and race against anyone and everyone, rank number one worldwide, get the girl (or guy) and become the most popular kid in town. The end.", Chris Hinojosa-Miranda, associate producer, SCEA, has said.
The last we heard on a release date for GT5 came from the mouth of the game's director Kaunori Yamauchi who said it could be pushed back as far as late 2008. Seems he needed to add a few months on top.