I haven’t read the Twilight series and I don’t intend to, but some of you might want to know that Little, Brown Books for Young Readers is releasing Stephanie Meyer’s novella The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner on June 5. The whole story is basically parts of the other books from the perspective of Bree, who I gather is a vampire baby.
2 interesting things about this release: you’ll be able to read it as an e-book from here between June 5 and July 7, and $1 of every book sold will go to Haiti relief through the American Red Cross. Given that the first printing will be a run of 1.5 million books, that’s a lot of money going to a good cause.
I obviously won’t be reading the book, but I sure hope the Read it and Weep guys do.
This video of kids performing Scarface in a school play has been getting a lot of attention, racking up almost 500,000 views in 2 days.
But was it really a school play? No. Mark Klasfeld has stepped forward and said that he directed the child actors in a rented theatre. Not sure who he is? You’ve probably seen his music videos for Jay-Z, Avril Lavigne and Lady Gaga.
Check out this fantastic version of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”. Endless Noise put together this tribute to the 60′s greats Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, The Supremes and The Ronettes.
Freeverse announced last week that it’s releasing a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the New York Times best-selling book that re-imagines Jane Austen’s classic novel following the young Elizabeth Darcy, her life, and her zombie battles in England during the Regency period. Freeverse has produced the official game for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a rollicking action title with the perfect blend of zombie slaying action and touching romance narrative.
I’m almost finished the book (review coming soon!) and am not totally sure it’ll translate well into a game, but I’d definitely like to check it out. Here’s hoping they’ll develop an Android version soon.
Watch this trailer for Tyler Perry’s new movie, Why Did I Get Married Too?
You know what this movie is. You’ve seen this movie. Some of you may have even written this movie. You watch that trailer and you know exactly what you are getting.
Right?
Now check out the first trailer that was released for the film:
What the hell, marketing?
This post was written by Neil, Tara’s husband and partner-in-crime. You can catch him blogging at www.williamneilscott.com and you can buy his book Wonderfull here.
At an Avatar-related junket today, someone asked James Cameron what he thinks of Glenn Beck. It turns out, we have fairly similar views:
“Glenn Beck is a fucking asshole. I’ve met him. He called me the anti-Christ, and not about ‘Avatar.’ He hadn’t even seen ‘Avatar’ yet. I don’t know if he has seen it.”
Cameron was apparently referring to Beck’s reaction to his 2007 documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” which casts doubt on the resurrection of Jesus Christ and makes the case that the ancient “Tomb of the Ten Ossuaries” belonged to Jesus’ family.
Cameron later backpedaled a bit and said “I think, you know what, he may or may not be an asshole, but he certainly is dangerous, and I’d love to have a dialogue with him.”
And when asked by THR what it is that makes Beck dangerous he says:
“He’s dangerous because his ideas are poisonous,” Cameron answered. “I couldn’t believe when he was on CNN. I thought, what happened to CNN? Who is this guy? Who is this madman? And then of course he wound up on Fox News, which is where he belongs, I guess.”
And all I can say to that is amen. Glenn Beck is an alarmist and a monster, not to mention a psycho. In fact, he’s the same psycho who said on his radio show last week “I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.” Right, because Jesus wasn’t ultimately preaching about social justice… You can listen to the full clip here:
Glenn Beck responded James Cameron’s words on his show with this smug and smarmy response:
The beginning of the clip is hilarious because he shows a list of the people who hate him. Oh Glenn, that list is far, far too short.
As tweeted by Roger Ebert and current host Michael Phillips, At the Movies is going off the air as of August.
It was never the same after Siskel died and it may not be fair to say it went off the rails after Ebert left, but it still feels true. I prefer to just keep up with Ebert on his site and his Twitter. His writing is sharp and incisive across both the delightfully bitchy reviews and the positive reviews that are a love letter to cinema.
In fact, if you’re as big a fan of Ebert as I am, you might want to consider paying the $5 to join The Ebert Club. You’ll get a weekly newsletter filled with interesting and extra content hand-picked and put together by the man himself. It’s well worth it.
It’s no big secret that Google and China have been on the outs since the search giant was hacked in December, with most believing the hack originated from the Chinese government.
Google responded to the attacks on their system with a new party line: no more censoring search results in China. Naturally that won’t work for the Chinese government, so today David Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer, unveiled their new plan for servicing China.
So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. [...]
Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced—it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.
It’s creative, it’s legal. I love it. They’re not perfect, and I’m still afraid Cory Doctorow’s Scroogled will one day become a reality, but today it feels like Google took a step back in the direction of not being evil.
This week I did something I’ve never done before. I went out, bought a game on its release date and played it every day for a few days until I finished. I get that this is both normal and good, but it takes a special kind of game to get me to do that, and we all know I loved Dragon Age: Origins enough that I couldn’t talk coherently about it (oh, the perils of writing immediately after finishing it).
So yes. On Tuesday I bought Dragon Age: Awakening, started playing and immediately regretted I hadn’t booked the next day off of work. As soon as you load the game you have a choice: create a new Grey Warden from scratch who hails from Orlais or load a saved game. Since I just finished my second playthrough last weekend with an arcane warrior, I decided to give her a try and see how it goes.
First off, it’s not quite as good as Dragon Age: Origins, but that’s okay. This is an expansion, not its own full-blown game, and as an expansion I think it succeeds. It takes the original story further, brings back a few familiar characters and even answers questions I didn’t know I had like how the blight got started in the first place. And at a solid 10 hours or so of gameplay, I never felt like I was being rushed through any particular experience.
I tried to avoid as many of the trailers and reviews as I could so almost everything was a surprise, including that some of the darkspawn were now intelligent. The new companions were mostly great, although Anders seemed to be a mage-version of Alistair. The Broodmother and her children were creepy and The Architect was something I never could have anticipated. Bioware did something very interesting and special when they created him.
Amaranthine is a beautiful extension of Ferelden, but there’s one thing about some of its regions that I can’t look away from–they look a hell of a lot like regions in Fable 2. I don’t know that they were going for that when they designed the levels and, let’s be honest, it’s not like they’re forging entirely new ground. I’m not knocking them for that because I love fantasy world based RPGs, but there are only so many ways you can create a creepy marsh.
Overall, this one is a winner, especially if you liked Dragon Age: Origins. The game came with an insert that had nothing but a dragon and a date. I hope that’s their way of “not announcing” Dragon Age 2 because I’ll be there. And that time, I’ll take the next day off.
Somehow, despite my love of ridiculous movies, I never saw Highlander until last night. And at first glance, it should have been a perfect fit with my bad movie tastes. A Scottish guy played by a French guy alongside an Egyptian/Spaniard played by a Scottish guy? Cheesy dialogue and a script with a bunch of plot holes? What could go wrong? I know I’ll probably get a lot of hate for this, but it just didn’t work.
Christopher Lambert plays Connor Macleod, an immortal. Or at least, he’s immortal until someone (and not necessarily another immortal) cuts his head off. The immortals are all trying to cut each other’s heads off so they can take on the power of the previously beheaded immortals and the last one standing will get the “prize”. I won’t spoil what the prize is in the off chance that the other three people on the planet who hasn’t seen the movie read this review but suffice it to say… it’s not as awesome as I would have hoped.
Connor’s path from 16th-century Scotland to present day doesn’t really need to be rehashed by me except to say that things get ridiculously awesome when Sean Connery shows up as Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez, Connor’s mentor. It’s also worth mentioning that Connor is chased through the ages by The Kurgan, another immortal who wants the prize. The Kurgan is played so well by Clancy Brown that I really hated him by the end.
It’s not all bad though and I think the main problem is that it’s one of those 80s movies that doesn’t hold up (see 48 Hours for another example). The concept was excellent except for that whole “immortal until sword touches neck” thing. The scenery was stunning, turning parts of the movie into a love letter to Scotland. And the soundtrack and score? Who couldn’t love Queen?
I doubt I’ll watch it again and I won’t bother with any of the other films but I’m glad I saw it. For now, check out the theme song. It’s probably the best part of the movie.
And while you’re at it, check out another song from the film because it’s beautiful.
2 interesting things about this release: you’ll be able to read it as an e-book from here between June 5 and July 7, and $1 of every book sold will go to Haiti relief through the American Red Cross. Given that the first printing will be a run of 1.5 million books, that’s a lot of money going to a good cause.
I tried to avoid as many of the trailers and reviews as I could so almost everything was a surprise, including that some of the darkspawn were now intelligent. The new companions were mostly great, although Anders seemed to be a mage-version of Alistair. The Broodmother and her children were creepy and The Architect was something I never could have anticipated. Bioware did something very interesting and special when they created him.
