Ridley Scott Options Brave New World

In my busyness yesterday I was unable to post the Judge’s final decision in the Harry Potter Lexicon lawsuit. Sadly, he chose to side with Potter scribe saying that ” … the lexicon copies a sufficient quantity of the Harry Potter series to support a finding of substantial similarity between the Lexicon and Rowling’s novels.”

As you probably know, Steven Jan Vander Ark maintained a website called the Harry Potter Lexicon for years. It was an encyclopedia of sorts detailing events in the Harry Potter universe. Rowling herself admit that the site was her “second home” and she often made use of it while penning the final books of the series. Vander Ark was treated well by all involved with Potter until he attempted to put… Continue reading J.K. Rowling Wins Lexicon Lawsuit

REM guitarist Peter Buck’s well-known, black Rickenbacker 360 guitar was stolen from the stage after a gig at Finnair Stadium in Helsinki, Finland. He has made use of the guitar since the group’s Chronic Town album, which released in 1982. The band implores anyone with information to contact them by either emailing fanclub@remtour.com or phone (001) 707 3536689. They promise a handsome reward for anything that leads to them recovering the instrument.

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Director-producer Barry Sonnenfield is currently developing a Incredibles-esque, live-action sitcom about a working class superhero family entitled The Nelsons. According to Sonnenfield, “It is a metaphor of what it is like to be a supermom and overworked dad in modern times.” The show will air on ABC.

Hopefully this project contains a bit of Sonnenfield’s typical whimsy. I can see this being quite good if done right.

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, the hotly anticipated follow-up to last year’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, will be released in the good ol’ U.S. of A. on September 15. Anyone following the game will know that it was supposed to have been out already, however, a mistake at the manufacturing plant forced a delay. What was the mistake, you ask? Let’s just say it’s difficult to play a game without a CD key to enter when asked during the install process.

Several copies had already shipped to North America but were recalled once the error was uncovered. Not all of them, though. Last week I noticed several copies of the game on the shelf of two different Wal-Mart stores. What can I say? We’re quite slow in Kentucky.

PS… Continue reading S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky Out September 15

The Church of Scientology recently sent 4,000 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube in hopes of removing all content created by their critics from the site. They justify this act by claiming each video violates their copyrights. Despite their efforts, most of the videos in question have been reinstated to the site. All one simply needs to do if they feel a DMCA takedown was done without merit is file a counterclaim with the site.

Even though their material was restored, covert groups such as Anonymous and ShadowVsScientology are enraged at YouTube over pulling the videos. SVS had this to say:

“YouTube, you need to REVIEW YOUR POLICY on copyright claims, the current system is far to [sic] susceptible to ABUSE,” wrote ShadowVsScientology. “All you have to… Continue reading Scientology Using DMCA to Battle Critics

Deadline Hollywood Daily reports that both director Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire have been enticed to return for Spider-Man 4. This has yet to be confirmed but seems pretty legit. According to the post on the site, no deal has been made with Kirsten Dunst; however, the character of Mary Jane “will be in the movie”.

The studio is considering shooting both parts 4 and 5 at the same time a’la Lord of the Rings. This would allow them to maintain the same actors without monopolizing their schedule too much.

Lots more details available at the source link.

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Dean Takahashi, author of Opening the Xbox and The Xbox 360 Uncloaked, has written a highly interesting piece for VentureBeat.com detailing the Xbox 360 red ring fiasco. Here’s an excerpt:

“Microsoft knew it had flawed machines, but it did not delay its launch because it believed the quality problems would subside over time. With each new machine, the company figured it would ride the “learning curve,” or continuously improve its production. Even though Microsoft’s leaders knew their quality wasn’t top notch, they did not ensure that resources were in place to handle returns and quickly debug bad consoles. There were plenty of warning signs, but the company chose to ignore them. The different parts of the business weren’t aligned.”

My console recently red ringed, sadly. I must say,… Continue reading Dean Takashashi on the History of the Xbox 360 Red Ring

Indie staples the Mountain Goats have teamed with Kaki King to record a video game based tune, “Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle”. This tribute to Super Mario Bros.’ Toad may be streamed and downloaded via the snobs at Pitchfork. The song will appear on the Goats’ Black Pear Tree EP, which will soon be available for purchase.

Nice to see respectable indie artists showing their nerd roots.

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Will Smith has signed on to star as the Egyptian Pharaoh Taharqa in The Last Pharoh. Plays this part, according to Variety, has always been a dream of Smiths. The script was penned by none other than Mr. Randall Wallace (Braveheart) which should draw much interest to the project.

I wonder if Smith will keep his usual, boisterous summer movie persona on this. Not for sure if the real Taharqa had any sweet catch phrases. If you can think of any, tell us in the comments.

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Gamasutra’s Chris Remo had a chance to check out EA’s Crysis Warhead-branded PCs. These machines are said to be able to run the upcoming game with great framerates on the highest settings. Anyone that tried to run the last installment of Crysis will know that it takes an awfully powerful computer to do something like that. Here are the basic specs for the computer extracted from Remo’s post:

- CPU: Intel Core Duo e7300 (@2.66GHz)
- Video card: Nvidia 9800GT
- RAM: 2GB

The machine, dubbed the “Warhead PC”, will be sold by UltraPC for a surprisingly reasonable $699. It will be officially announced next week.

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