Well, it won't be too long before you won't be able to go two internet steps without tripping over a top ten list, not to mention the Academy's. I might as well join the party. I've seen quite a bit this year and even though I've heard a lot of discussion this year about the difficulty of picking 10 prime movies which at first I passed off as elitists nonsense. But, since trying to compile my list I now understand the complexity of picking 10 movies. I'll try to cover ten of my favorites with and individual post for each. This installment is Treeless Mountain.

Treeless Mountain


Although this movie was released in the fall of 2008 in South Korea and in Canada, I've decided to include it in my 2009 list because it wasn't released to the majority of the world until 2009. The thing that hooked me on this movie was the trailer which, in a very small time frame seemed to cover the entire scope of the film, including all the highs and lows. The trailer also had a pretty cool song from Asobi Sesku which reminded me of the jingle of the holiday season or the optimism of youth wrapped in a popish wrapping paper. This was a different story than the actual movie which had no score except for the credits.
It was hard finding this movie. It wasn't available to rent near me and the netflix version was broken. I ended up renting it on itunes which wasn't all that bad of an experience except for the fact that it probably would've looked a lot better on DVD.

The movie which I knew very little about, until I stumbled across the trailer on itunes, turned out be a refreshing tale of two sisters who deal with their mother leaving to find their father whom is absent for whatever reason. The movie is fairly monochromatic in tone and visuals. Its biggest strength is the way that it plays out quiet moments. In fact, the whole movie is relatively quiet. There aren't any big voices, only small ones. Director Son Yon Kim rare ability to capture these small voices seems to stem from her own small voice. She only speaks Korean at a six or seven year old age range. Which she elaborates on in this interview.



The children in this movie are stunning. Their performances are so amazingly naturalistic. They are kids being kids not so much kids acting like kids. And their performances really leave an impression on the viewer. Sometimes I think of little Jin and Bin and wonder how they're doing.

Treeless Mountain might also be seen as a lesson about the virtues of rural living versus industrial society, though this point is never made explicit. The quiet tonal nature of this movie was particularly appealing to me. Everything else tends to lean towards hyper contrast whereas this movie stays simply sublime. This movie is easier on the eyes and a little harder on the heart. Thanks to So Yong Kim for sharing her semi autobiographical tale.

When you think Mickey Mouse, what comes to mind? More importantly, what makes Mickey cool?

These are questions that legendary game director Warren Spector presented in a recent London press conference for his upcoming Wii title Epic Mickey (working title).

The classic Mickey design, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit (Walt's lost character) and in-game "squash and stretch" animation all look to add up what could possible be a Disney buff's dream come true.

As an avid Disney geek an gamer, I personally cant help but be a tad disappointed that they decided against developing an "HD" version of this game for the PS3 or XBOX 360. I'd really like to experience playing Epic Mickey on a console that doesn't look like complete garbage on my HDTV.

Epic Mickey isnt coming out anytime soon, so maybe the rumored "Wii HD" will be out by the time the games ships. I'll keep my puffy, white-gloved fingers crossed.

Humble Pie
It’s hard not to like Tracy Orbison (Hubbel Palmer). A dopey Midwestern guy who excels as a food-stocking professional, Tracy politely and passively passes his days scribbling poems in a notebook during shift breaks and day-dreaming of making something more of himself. Although there is already a lot more of him than some think necessary. In a blinding moment of enlightenment, he enrolls in an acting class taught by a pompous Z-list has-been (played by a hilarious William Baldwin). Things don’t quite go according to plan, as a tragically comical chain of mishaps leads Tracy to take a more active role in his life by mentoring a young thug while fending off his obnoxious mother (Academy Award Nominee Kathleen Quinlan) and indifferent sister (Mary Lynn Rajskub, Julie & Julia, FOX’s “24”), all the while awkwardly attempting to conquer the elusive driver’s exam and trying to lose “about ten pounds.” A different kind of everyman, Tracy Orbison reminds us that the caution light flashes even while chasing our dreams.


Until The Light Takes Us: Dec 4
Until The Light Takes Us tells the story of black metal. Part music scene and part cultural uprising, black metal rose to worldwide notoriety in the mid-nineties when a rash of suicides, murders, and church burnings accompanied the explosive artistic growth and output of a music scene that would forever redefine what heavy metal is and what it stands for to other musicians, artists, and music fans world-wide. Directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell moved to Norway and lived the musicians for several years, building relationships that allowed them to create a surprisingly intimate portrait of this violent, but ultimately misunderstood, movement. The result is a poignant, moving story that’s as much about the idea that reality is composed of whatever the most people believe as it is about a music scene that blazed a path of murder and arson across the northern sky.


Collapse: Nov 6
Americans generally like to hear good news. They like to believe that a new President will right old wrongs, that clean energy will replace dirty oil, and that fresh thinking will set the economy straight. American pundits tend to restrain their pessimism and to hope for the best. But is anyone prepared for the worst? Michael Ruppert is a different kind of American. A former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, he predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter “From the Wilderness” at a time when most Wall Street and Washington analysts were still in denial. Smith has always had a feeling for outsiders in films like “American Movie” and “American Job.” In “Collapse,” Smith stylistically departs from his past films by interviewing Ruppert in a format that recalls the work of Errol Morris and Spalding Gray. Sitting in a room that looks like a bunker, Ruppert recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out the crises he sees ahead. He draws upon the same news reports and data available to any Internet user, but he applies a unique interpretation. He is especially passionate over the issue of “peak oil,” the concern raised by scientists since the 1970s that the world will eventually run out of fossil fuel. While other experts debate this issue in measured tones, Ruppert doesn’t hold back at sounding an alarm. He portrays a future that resembles apocalyptic science fiction. Listening to his rapid flow of opinions, the viewer is likely to question some of the rhetoric as paranoid or deluded; and to sway back and forth on what to make of the extremism. Smith lets viewers form their own judgments.

*As before, I'll be logging diaries after every session of game-play. Expect Spoilers.
This week I decided to have a go at Naughty Dog's sure-to-be classic Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I would have begun sooner but as with Drake's adventures there was a snag. My PS3 died. But I'm back at it and eager to get going.

Admittedly, I wasn't the biggest Uncharted: Drake's Fortune fan. I respected its merits, but the game wasn't for me. It was floaty, and rubbery, two qualities not often praised by American gamers, except Japanophiles. I like, dare I say at the risk of persecution, beefy games. I like games that feel solid. I know, this is all really ambiguous, but hopefully this new installment will be a departure from the first.
My expectations for this game were high, I expected it to improve on the high quality of production seen in the first one. A couple of specifics that I hoped for were better aiming, less repetitive or more realistic combat confrontations and better character animation.

Half tuck is at it again.

Right from the get go I was impressed, the game starts off on a high note, in which we are made well aware of how high every aspect of production is. I've Just started the third or fourth chapter and the game is still quasi-tutorial, but it still feels really organic which is a huge accomplishment.
The story thus far has been extremely compelling and though some of the initial plot points were fairly predictable, they were nonetheless enjoyable. I hope I'm wrong on a few of these. I'm fairly certain I am. I expect to have the rugged pulled from beneath me a few more times and I can't wait.
The thing I remembered about Uncharted as soon as I began playing was how amazing everything looks from afar, and how mediocre a lot of things look on closer inspection. For instance, at first glance Nate looks absolutely fantastic with his slick jeans and bed hair(which is probably the best looking thing in the game), but the more you follow him around you start to notice a few awkward animations, his hunch back and dog legs. I also noticed a little pop-in which I thought was strange since the game proves it has a massive draw distance. But these are minor gripes, because the story more than makes up for any graphical complaints I have. Oh yeah, the action this time around is way better! The stealth is super satisfying and the gun play, although a little floaty for me, feels good enough. Though I wish there were and auto aim option. And I must say that on the whole the graphics look fabulous.


Vivid and lush and notice simple polys.


I'm not quite sure about Chloe yet. So far she's playing both sides. I'm anxious to see what happens. At least she changes shirts.

I've just started this game so expect plenty more updates.

Spike Jonze makes quirky movies, and his new picture, Where The Wild Things Are, is no exception. Surprised? I wasn’t. And it just so happens that I like quirky.

But, be warned: this is not a typical children’s film. No fart jokes, slapstick, or hokeyness to be found. Not to say that it’s entirely unformulaic. It has a lot of your standard plot devices, but, dammit, they work. And they’re totally appropriate.

It’s a film that, I think, will be more appreciated by older audiences because of the movie’s overall somber tone and the themes it touches on. Themes like loneliness, sadness, despair, death, love, and the delicacy of a family. It’s pretty deep. Possibly too much for little children to take in now, but they can always watch the DVD when they get older. But, if you haven’t seen it, don’t worry. It is also very whimsical and funny in parts as well.

The “wild things” themselves look hilarious with there CG faces and big hairy muppet costumes.

My personal favorite is Alexander, the goat.

The voice actors are pretty fantastic as well, you got James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper, Catherine O’Hara (funny as always), and Lauren Ambrose.

Max Records, who plays the main character, “Max”, had the arduous task of carrying the entire movie, and he pulled it off. He was/is great. It’ll be interesting to see what movies he chooses to be apart of, if any, in the future. Hopefully nothing too crummy. I’m looking in your direction, DISNEY!

Aesthetically, the film is gorgeous. Every shot, every composition is a work of art. It’s worth the price of admission on the visuals alone.

The film was shot in Australia, not just on sound stages, and it makes me very jealous that I don’t live there now. There are a plethora of locations: suburbs, the ocean, mountains, forests, and deserts.

The music also does a good job of encompassing and reflecting all the different emotions we have being felt in the story by all the characters. You got your happy, “All is love”, and your sad, “Hideaway”.

It’s very seldom that we get something atypical to come out of Hollywood, which is why it’s always a delight when surreal movies like this one come along. And with such a wide release! Do yourself a favor and experience this film if you haven’t yet. I’ve seen it twice, and I enjoyed even more on the second viewing.

Give it a chance. Don’t you deserve to not settle for mediocrity at the movies sometimes?

There's a sense of urgency in Michael Moore's voice these days. I suppose there always was but it's much more apparent in his latest movie Capitalism: A Love Story. Yes, there's plenty of muckraking and hounding, but more than that there is pleading. Pleading directed towards the audience for initiative, mobilization, and action. Sound like a hardcore song? It might as well be, the film actually opens with a punky(er) version of Louie Louie with altered lyrics which really sets the tone.
I talked a bit with Shane about where to put this one in terms of Moore's repertoire, and we both concluded that it would indeed be somewhere near the top, but not quite the pinnacle. This movie is a different beast than the rest of his movies not because the beats are different, but because of the difference in subject matter. The villain in Capitalism is a nebulous one. And in some cases it might even be tempting to call us (American consumers) the villain, as President Carter did. Moore stops shy of pointing the finger at the popcorn eating crowd, but he does show that clip of Carter admonishing the proletariat, which is jarring to say the least. The point? We're used to placation. We love being distracted (insert irony here, I know.) even when our basic rights are being clipped.
The movie itself stands up well to his others. It's not quite as sappy as the sappiest of the bunch, and it's definitely not the funniest. Though I was able to view his most outrageous stunts as being justified performances in this movie. Remember the teaser trailer?
I still feel like they are borderline absurd and impractical, but I guess that's what makes them interesting performances. I did chuckle a few times always staying careful not to laugh at the wrong times.
If this review hasn't been too descriptive, it's because, I feel I lack the tools to accurately critique this movie. In terms of movie making, everything takes a backseat to the message, which is semi nebulous itself other than capitalism=bad or Moore's attempt to soften Americas' perception of Socialism. I can say that I enjoyed it, and that it hit close to home, as I imagine it will for most who see it. And I suspect that in the long run this director will earn the title of one of the greatest propagandists of the century.

If you were planning on seeing Michael Jackson's final performance in theaters, you might want to head down to the box office ASAP...

Tickets for the two-week only This Is It movie are selling fast, as posted on the official MJ facebook page.

Here's a clip from the film...

If you haven't heard about Paranormal Activity yet there's probably a reason. It's a small horror film from 2007 and it's recently received a very small release. It was written and directed by Oren Peli, an Israeli-born video game designer, who was formally untrained. The movie was made for only 11 grand which is pretty amazing the movie has grossed to date around 84,000 dollars. But it has a growing underground following and with the demand feature, which allows you to demand a screening for you city, you'll likely only be able to see it by doing its marketing for it. This is a pretty interesting business model from Paramount and I really hope it's successful.

As for the movie, I'm curious to see if it will be anything like the Blair Witch Project, which had a similar stylistic and marketing vibe.
***Spoiler***
The trailer gives quite a bit away. So don't watch it if you want to wait for it in theaters.

SSIV Rumors are all but confirmed. Destructoid recently pointed out that there was an odd website which looked very Street Fighteresque. The website has "the New Warrior" in its title I wonder what that could mean. We'll have more info soon, as it is to be expected that more details will come in around 4am.
Is that T. Hawk on the screen?
More to come...
Edit: Adam pointed me to these on the Neogaf forum.
More to still to come...




Here are he un-confirmed glorious details!

* The previously leaked characters are all said to be in the game. Dee Jay, T. Hawk, Dudley, Ibuki, Makoto, Adon, Cody and Guy. The new characters are rumored to be: o Hakan - An Arabic grappler obsessed with oil. o Juri - Evil Asian girl fighter working for Seth. * All characters will have two Ultras. They will both be available at one time, not selectable like with Third Strike's Super Arts. The commands to execute your Ultras do not overlap.
o It sounds like the characters from Third Strike are set up with their prior Super Arts. They had three in that game, so one will be their Super and the other two their Ultras.
o Gen has four Ultras because of his two fighting styles. One of these is said to be an Air Ultra.
o All characters still have one Super, except Sakura who apparently has a Shinkuu Hadoken (Super Fireball) as well.
* Some characters will have Air Ultras.
* The Bonus Stages will be returning.
* This will be an exclusive arcade release at least for a few months.
* An official announcement is said to be coming at the Tokyo Game Show and on the Japanese Street Fighter 4 blog soon.
* Expect the return of the many familiar Supers, and a few new ones like Metsu Shoryuken. You'll see the return of Chun-Li's Kikosho (Super Fireball), Gouken's Denjin, Sagat's Tiger Cannon (Super Fireball).
* Ibuki has a run command.
* Guile has his Sonic Hurricane move from Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
* Dudley has his Chain combos from Third Strike, plus one additional Chain combo.
* Cody is the only character with an Alpha Counter and he still has his knife. He supposedly needs his knife to perform one of his Ultras.
* Rufus can cancel-break the last hit of his Spectacle Romance, or the launch kick of Space Opera Symphony.
* Guy has his Chain combos.
* Makoto has her Tanden Renki Super from Third Strike.
* Zangief is said to have a 720 degree motion Air Ultra called the Siberian Blizzard.
* The game takes place one year after Street Fighter 4.
* Dudley was searching for his car in Third Strike, in this game he's searching for a rose.
* T. Hawk's storyline involves him protecting Juni or Juli.
* Dhalsim's new Ultra is called the Yoga Shangri'la.
* There's a new gameplay system called Tadan Saving, the phrase implies a multi-hitting or multiple-level Focus Attack.
* The console characters are all said to be added to the upcoming arcade release, with the possible exceptions of Seth and Gouken.

Afterschool: In theaters Oct. 2.
Robert is a young American student at an elite East Coast preparatory school who accidentally captures the death of two classmates on camera. Their lives become memorialized as part of an audio-visual document intended to speed up the campus-wide healing process. But instead, the video creates an atmosphere of paranoia and unease among students and teachers.


Visual Acoustics: In theaters Oct. 9.
Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, VISUAL ACOUSTICS celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the worlds greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. Shulman, who passed away this year, captured the work of nearly every major modern and progressive architect since the 1930s including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner, and Frank Gehry. His images epitomized the singular beauty of Southern Californias modernist movement and brought its iconic structures to the attention of the general public. This unique film is both a testament to the evolution of modern architecture and a joyful portrait of the magnetic, whip-smart gentleman who chronicled it with his unforgettable images.


La Nana: In theaters Oct. 16.
After 23 years working as housemaid in an upper class Santiago, Chile household, Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) is as much a part of the Valdez family as the wife, husband, and kids she lives with and looks after.

I'm interested to see what everyone thinks about all the self proclaimed HD Floating around out there. The title HD is basically worthless now. Consumer electronics as well as user based video sites have seemingly blurred, no pun intended, the distinction between what is actually High-Definition and what only pretends to be.

Years ago the standards for HD were set by the ATSC. They were 1280x720 and 1920x1080, 720p and 1080p respectively(this also includes 1080i). Everything that was to be considered HD had to be at least 1280x720 Simple enough, right? Not exactly. A few years a friend of mine purchased a TV that was purported to be HD 720p yet its resolution was only 1024x768, which is actually XGA.
See Graph below.


When we researched this we found that it was common for 42 inch 720p plasma televisions to be this resolution. Which really surprised me because I was aware of the ATSC standard. And yes, I'm aware that the image quality difference between 1280 and 1024 at that screen size is negligible, but it's the principle, 1024 fails to meet the standard.
This marked the beginning of an interesting trend. Since, I imagine, the average person is not aware of the vertical resolution specs, the horizontal pixel count is touted more often. Which leads manufacturers to cut corners, for some odd reason, by lowering the pixel count. It doesn't sense to me that lowering the pixel count a little bit would decrease production cost in any way. Or take for instance the Hitachi Ultravision, it boast a 1080 resolution but its actually resolution is closer to 720. It measures in at 1280x1080. Which means it's 720 with extra horizontal resolution. I imagine this was done simply to put that 1080 tag on the case. Little do prospective buyers know that it's actually 640 pixels short of 1080p.
But this is all water under the bridge now, because 1080p is quickly becoming the standard. My gripe is all the pseudo HD floating around the net. Especially YouTube and Vimeo, as well as many others. It's seems customary on these sites to have a button that turns the HD quality video on. However this button is a lie. Anyone who is familiar with HD content knows that when you watch a video on YouTube or Vimeo it's decidedly not HD. Why? Because every video site transcodes and compresses video, so even if you upload 1280x720 what you watch on the site will not be HD. To be clear, I'm not complaining about the video quality on these sites. For streaming video it's excellent. What I'm more concerned about is the mislabeling of HD content, because it could lead to lower standards for picture quality. If the public consciousness becomes conditioned to think that HD video is equal to what we watch on YouTube or stream on Netflix then the incentive to up the ante for HD pq on broadcasts and Bluray could possibly drop. that's it that's my gripe, now on to health care!

...At least in this test shot for the mythic Kevin Smith penned Tim Burton directedSuperman Returns. This looks so crazy that I'd actually be interested in watching it. It would be cool to see a totally bizarre take on such a famous property. Though, it wouldn't have received much love, I'm sure.

What's with the long hair, or, for that matter, the stoner look? And that plastic suit looks ridiculous, but still, I like it. Oh, what might've been. I guess we'll never know. Check out some of Burton's conceptual sketches.


And who else thinks Cage could play Burton in a Burton biopic?

Anyone worried about Team Ninja loosing their penchant for sleaze with the departure of Tomonobu Itagaki can lay their qualms to rest after watching this recent Japan-only TV spot for Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2.




This commercial is depressing on a number of levels. Is this really the most creative implementation of the Sixaxis motion controls that the pervs at Tecmo could come up with?

So much for games growing up.

A delectable treat:
I've seen Inglorious Basterds twice now. I knew it would be better the second time. This is because Quinton Tarantino makes layered movies that are incredibly rich and satisfying. He strikes me as the kind of man who devours cinema and I think he aims to present something so tasty that it requires a second helping.
As I sat in the theater (both times) I was very aware of the audience behind me and was paying attention to their participation. This movie is as much about what's on screen as it is who's watching it in a Michael Haneke kind of way. We've all seen representations of people sitting in theaters on film. There is also the iconic representation of wide eyed faces lit with flickering light and the warmth of the cinema. This is how this movie made me feel. I could have been Michael Pitt in the Dreamers, Austin O'brien in Last Action Hero, or Audrey Tautou in Amelie. All these fine actors played characters whose eyes devoured the movies they watched. This is an analogy that I'm sure is not lost on the director. There were several scenes in the film which revolved around our main antagonist devouring sumptuous foods (creme and milk). The shots in this movie seem to savor the performances of the actors. Slow push-ins emphatically draw tension even when the scene is happening outside the frame. The scene where Landa devours his strudel, just before we expect him to lay into Shosanna, is a perfect example of this. During the conversation immediately preceding that scene, Zoller introduces Landa to Shosanna in German. The conversation takes place outside the frame and all we see is Shosann's face. She, of course does not speak German, so she is silent but we understand her predicament by the expression on her face. I can attest, one viewing doesn't cut it. It cinema made for cinema lovers.

Christopher Waltz performance as Col. Hans Landa stole the show.

I was expecting a completely different crowd after seeing the trailer, which can be very misleading. I was expecting a bunch of raucous Nazi haters booing and hissing with the ferocity of Hitler himself. It wasn't like that at all. The crowd was calm and actually cringed at the brutality in the film. Which surprised me. I thought for sure that Tarintino's goal was to coax that blood-lust out of his audience only to reveal it as an obvious parallel to the Nazi audience watching the propagandistic hero film. I was expecting my audience to be cheering for brutality against the "evil" Nazis while the Nazi audience cheered for the downfall of American soldiers in their little movie. This would have been the perfect parallel for me to elaborate on for paragraphs, but alas, it didn't happen. The crowd was quit civil. Which makes me wonder if Tarintino, as well as myself, underestimated the movie's audience. Or maybe I had really docile crowds. Either way, this revelation didn't really detract from the movie. It only added another layer to the cake.
If the trailer was truthful about anything it was Tarintino's use of hyperbolic characters that were so "colorful" that they couldn't be seen as anything other than the most broadly painted stereotypes. Aldo Raine's Tennessee accent, the frenchman's dairy farm, Hitler's villianesque cape are all supreme examples of this. But that's what made this movie so lush. It's not a history lesson, it's a re-imagining of the past painted in colors so vivid that it couldn't possibly be boring.

We already know that the director is more than capable of making an awesome revenge flick or two, but is this what we would normally consider a revenge movie? It seems to me that this is the kind of propagandistic retelling of history we would be used to from the opposing side. But why? I guess I'm still a little confused about this one. Is it to blur the distinction between them and us? Evil and good? Was it that deep? I suspect Tarantino didn't want any one to cut that deep into his elaborately structured supremely sweet cake (obviousness aside). I suspect, and I'm guessing he'd say the same, he just wanted to make a kick ass movie. Which it is, and damned tasty too.

P.S. I hope that Shane will chime in in the comments section.

It's been a couple of months now, but funny man Jay Leno is back doing what he does best: Late night comedy. Well, not so late now, I guess. He's on at 10pm instead of his original 11:30pm slot, now taken over by Conan O'Brien.
So you can sit back for an hour, have a few chuckles hopefully, watch your local crappy news, and then prepare yourself for two more hours of late night comedy with Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon. Wow!
Really NBC? 3 hours of this stuff? Let's hope it goes well.
The show itself is basically the same stuff you saw Leno do on the Tonight Show, just a few bits rearranged, and with a new set. Jay hasn't changed, and his brand of not so over the top comedy hasn't changed either, and that's fine with me. I always liked him on the Tonight Show.
You want quirky, watch Conan.
A bit of a surprise, though, came when Jay got a little serious when talking with Kanye "the accoster" West about his VMA incident. I felt like I was watching a shrink talk with his patient.
But overall, solid show. It's very chuckle worthy. And what more could you ask for on free tv entertainment?

The people at Lucasarts responsible for the Hi-Def Monkey Island remake have been very busy.

Take a gander at their new game Lucidity for XBLA that is scheduled for release within a months time.

The Playstation 3 is billed as the most powerful gaming system ever created. Sure game developers could harness the power of the Cell to craft graphics that look marginally better than the competition, but if the Wii has taught us anything it's that people don't want amazingly slick 3D visuals anymore. That dream died in 2000 when Sega pulled the plug on the Dreamcast. The future of gaming is not about polygons, normal-mapping, and procedural animations. No. We're going back to basics.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the future of video games.



A localized version of 3D Dot Game Heroes for the Playstation 3 has yet to be announced but I'm sure that Atlus and Ignition are currently slogging it out in a bidding war to bring this title stateside.

Since I had nothing to do today, I decided to follow Apple's "It's only rock and Roll" event. First off, it was good seeing Steve Jobs back and in seemingly good health thanks to the liver of a mid 20s car accident victim. It seemed to me that the focus this year was price cutting. The entry price on an Ipod Touch is now 200 bucks. Roughly 30 dollars cheaper than yesterday. Out of all the Ipods the Nano got the biggest upgrade which included a camera and a speaker. The new OS was also released today which includes much more integration with Itunes and the ability to change application via a computer.
But the real shocker was the fact that Apple is so aggressively pursuing the video game market.

With graphs like these Jobs is certainly trying to make a statement about the other handhelds.

They showed of a couple of their games like an fps called Nova which looks a lot like Halo and a rhythm game called Riddim Ribbon.
They also showed off Assassin's Creed which looks more like a side-scroller than the open world we're used to with this game. Points off Apple, for going for the console audience, you have a unique device play to its strengths like the Nintendo does with the Wii.
So, Apple wants a piece of the pie? They already have the install base, now they just need the games. More to come.
Pics Via Engadget

You should know by now, if you follow my blog, how much I'm into movie posters. It's interesting to see artists represent a whole movie with a single image. Check out some of these really neat Polish movie posters at guardian. Some of them are down right terrifying. The Eyes Wide Shut poster hits the nail on the head if you ask me. It's eerie and unsettling.

Here's a picture of Viggo Mortensen looking gruff and sporting a thick neck beard. There's nothing special about that. What is special about this photo is that it's the new poster for the movie The Road, which releases on Oct.16. The movie, based on the Cormack McCarthy written post-apocalyptic tail, which you can see a trailer for here, has already recieved a few negative nods. But I'll try and stay optimistic about this one considering the source material is so highly revered.
The poster seems rather bland and familiar. The lead standing upright and angled diagonally across the page.


Fantastic Mr. Fox also has a new poster, which looks awesome.