GeekiN #109
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Another episode for this week. Keep reading for the show notes. This Wednesday’s GeekiN Extra will focus on Iron Man 2. Enjoy!
Discussion
Television
- The CW has picked up season 1 of Moonlight to be a companion piece to The Vampire Diaries this summer
- Lost finale expanded to 2 1/2 hours
- Smallville season finale could finally break the “no tights” rule
Movies
- X-Men First class being released June 2011. Matthew Vaughn to direct, Bryan Singer to produce, Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz writing from Josh Schwartz draft
- Super 8 – J.J. Abrams Cloverfield-esque super secret trailer hit the screens before Iron Man 2
- Men in Black 3 will be released May 25, 2012 in 3d – Will Smith signed on, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin in negotiations to play Old/Young Agent K
- Avi Arad producing a Pac-Man “project”…rumored to be a movie
- Rise of the Apes announced for June 24, 2011
- MI4 confirms director Brad Bird for Christmas 2011
Video Games
- LittleBigPlanet 2 announced for Winter. Create entire games, rather than just levels. Move support limited to “Bonus Levels” and building levels.
Other
- FCC has agreed to allow movie studios to broadcast directly to homes
Geek Jerk Reaction: Robin Hood, Just Wright, Letters to Juliet
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Tagged under: LittleBigPlanet, Lost, Men in Black 3, Mission Impossible 4, Moonlight, Pac-Man, Rise of the Apes, smallville, Super 8, X-Men: First Class
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Book of the Month
Y The Last Man Vol. 5In this final Deluxe Edition hardcover collecting Y #49-60, Yorick and Agent 355 prepare for their ultimate quest to reunite the last man with his lost love, while the person, people or thing behind the disaster that wiped out half of humanity is revealed. Then, Yorick Brown's long journey through an Earth populated only by women comes to its dramatic, unexpected conclusion.
David Greenwalt (writer, producer & director on Buffy & Angel) was a showrunner and executive producer on Moonlight, but had to leave the show due to health issues. Joel Silver (producer of The Matrix and Veronica Mars) promised that Greenwalt’s contributions would remain for the entire series.
Re: Robin Hood:
I have been saying that since I saw the cast list. Has anyone ever seen an amazing little 70’s film called Robin and Marian? Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn are actually YOUNGER (at the time) than Cate Blanchet and Russel Crowe and THE POINT of “Robin and Marian” is that they’re supposed to be old! (It’s about what happens to heroes when they age, and the fading of youth, etc) when I realized that I was livid. I’m the same way Scott, on my book shelf right now I have at least 10 non-fiction titles concerning Robin Hood, about 20 fiction re-tellings and I love every single one of them. (Hell, I’ve spent the last five years of my life working on my own Robin Hood version) It’s a story I never tire of being retold, one that I absolutely believe is versatile and I love seeing what different writers and thinkers have to say about it but this seems to miss the point.
IMHO, The OTHER NON Kevin Costner 1991 Robin Hood film (”Robin Hood”) with Uma Thurman is my favorite with the Erroyl Flynn version being a close second and the Sean Connery/Audrey Hepburn version just around the corner.
Moonlight wasn’t that bad, but I doubt it’s being aired in order to get a 2nd chance at a 2nd season. O’Loughlin is doing his movie thing (latest J-Lo movie). BTW, the blond was the “girl in the fireplace” in Doctor Who, though I never bought her American accent, she is so hot, I didn’t care, lol. And I liked her character okay.
Vampire Diaries — give it a second chance, it’s getting really good. I like it, and was skeptical, almost, also, gave up on it.
Three alternative Lost endings will be revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live that night, so watch people. Plus, Kimmel is funny.
Smallville has been strong this season IMHO (okay, not so humble :) ). I’m very excited about the finale and next season. I do hope next season is the final season though.
I kind of loved Cloverfield, and can’t wait for Super 8, especially since it will be shot on film (or not shaky cam) and directed by Abrams (Abrams fanboy here, pretty much, only haven’t seen Felicity).
Dammit, forgot to add that I’m also not interested in Robin Hood either. It’s the Heavy Metal soundtrack thing (and I like Metal), but also, I never thought of the age thing, but damn, you’re right Scott.
Plus, the movie was supposed to be called Nottingham and was supposed to take a fresh look at Robin from The Sheriff’s POV, too bad.
The ads for Robin Hood are giving me flashbacks to Kingdom of Heaven. The ads for that movie were very similar in that the rock music completely did not fit the kind of movie they were selling. Hopefully Robin Hood will be a good movie that happened to have bad trailers.
The other thing about Robin Hood that’s been bothering me is that it seems to be another in a recent spat of annoying “the REAL story behind the legend” movies that take old stories and strip them of their fun in an attempt to make them plausible. A la that horrendous King Arthur movie or Troy.
LittleBigPlanet is a lot of fun, but the mechanics are definitely frustrating at times. The jumping isn’t nearly as precise and snappy as pretty much any 2D Mario game. There are a ton of different user-created level that are completely awesome.
I heard that LBP2 will have more robust Move support added as DLC shortly after the game comes out. I think that the creation part of the game will benefit the most. I think LBP2 looks like a big improvement on the first game, but I probably won’t get it until can do so on the cheap.
Also, nobody’s copied LBP yet? What about Mod Nation Racers in a couple weeks? I am more excited for that game than LBP2 actually. I think the customization tools in that game look like a great balance of easy to jump into with a ton of depth if you want it. I didn’t get in on the beta (even though I had a code for it…just forgot til after beta was done), but they just released a demo of it on PSN, so I’ll have to try it out this week.
Oh I forgot to mention that I think Media Molecule is being very smart in making sure that the millions of user-created levels made in LBP will still work in LBP2 (and supposedly look a bit better too, especially with a new lighting system). If all of those levels were lost, I think they would have a much tougher time getting people on board with the sequel.
I am also excited by the prospect that it will be possible in LBP2 to make games with characters that aren’t Sackboy. Giving all these new tools to the people that made great levels in LBP is going to be the biggest attraction for LBP2. It’s the “what crazy things will they be able to make now” factor.
Personally, I enjoyed a lot of the user levels much more than the official levels, so anything that gives those people more to work with is exciting to me. By the time I get around to buying the new game well after its release, there should be a ton of cool downloadable levels that are vastly different than the base LBP platformer experience.
I’m very excited about the potential for LBP2. I love the idea of the first game as well, but the idea that you can do more than just create levels is really what I was hoping for all along. I’m always a fan of seeing what people can do when the right tools are available.
You can hardly count Modnation Racers as copying LBP. Why would you? Because you can create things? Track creation dates at least back to Excite Bike. Customizing your vehicle or character? Lots of games can do that.
I won’t deny the similarities. But I think that’s more related to the way it has been hyped and marketed than the fact that they “copied it”. Besides, Sony plays a big role in some of their closer developers’ games, so I’d say that there is a good reason that sort of stuff worked in as well as it did.
I did actually play the ModNation Racers beta. It sort of killed off a lot of the anticipation I had for the game, to be honest. I didn’t make any tracks, just played around with the main game for a while. The races were fun enough, but not quite to the Mario Kart/Blur level, IMO. The interface to the “hub” was a little confusing and wonky, however. I never could figure out what I was doing.
I think the game that came closest to “copying” LBP was actually Kodu for the Xbox 360. However, they were actually nothing alike. And I’m pretty sure that Kodu had been worked on for a long while before it actually came out. Still, the whole “Create your own games” thing was present there as well.
I’m not saying Modnation Racers is a copy in that is exactly the same as LBP. I’m saying that it is very similar in it’s presentation and how they go about creating things. You can customize your character, kart, and tracks to a very detailed degree. Sure, those things aren’t exactly new to racing games, but the way you go about doing these things feels a lot like LBP to me. Sony certainly thinks so since it is also under their “Play, Create, Share” label.
I just remember seeing MNR’s E3 reveal and thinking “That should be called LittleBigRacer.” The more details we’ve learned about the game since then have only strengthened that idea in my head. Perhaps I’ll feel differently when I actually get to play the game. Unfortunately for me, I found out tha tthe demo on PSN was for PSP, not PS3. So I’ll have to wait until release to try it out most likely.
I don’t think the whole streaming movies to tv will hurt the theaters all that much. Most people don’t go to the theater just to see the movie, they go to see the movie on the huge screen with the surrond sound and get the full effect of the movie. You just can’t get that watching on tv.
If anything I think this will simply make the studios even more money because now instead of people seeing it in the theater then buying the dvd. They will now watch it in the theater and if they liked it enough instead of waiting for the dvd they will stream it on their tv plus buy the dvd or blu-ray when it comes out.
I disagree. Televisions are rapidly catching up to theaters. In both quality and size, they are really making headways. Sure, 100′x100′ is a nice size. But you may not get the seat you want, you may be stuck beside a noisy neighbor.
The option to watch a movie from the comfort of your home is absolutely a competitor with theaters. If it were not, movies in theaters would have a lot more staying power than they do now.
If I gave 100 people the choice between buying a movie for $20, and going to the theater to watch it ($8-10 per person, plus over priced concessions), I think you would be surprised at the percentage of people that chose to buy the movie and stay home. Ask those same 100 people if they would rather stay home and find something else to do, or go to the theater and watch that movie, and the numbers would be more skewed toward going to the theater.
There are many reasons why they are direct competitors (Technology level, quality, privacy, cost, etc). But no matter the reason, they still do very much compete with each other.
Add a new choice to any situation, and it dilutes the percentages towards any given choice. No matter what you are talking about.
Still, I think that the “Pay Per View” option hasn’t really took off as much as the movie industry would have liked. If it goes that direction, I’m not sure how much damage potential it really has.
Anymore the theatrical release of a film is a buzz builder to sell the DVDs. Sure, they can make some cash at the box office, but DVD and television rights are where they make the majority of their money. This new thing is just an attempt to create a new revenue stream that will allow them to keep most of the profits without a middleman.
First, the difference between theatrical sales and DVD sales is about even. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 billion per year for both. However, a lot of those DVD sales numbers are skewed toward the lower end movies that you are a lot less likely to see in theaters. I would imagine that the numbers for the bigger movies are a lot more skewed toward ticket purchases.
However, I definitely have a problem with the second argument. You said this “will allow them to keep most of the profits without a middleman”. What middleman? Theaters? Because a theater makes almost every penny of it’s money from the concession stand. And in very few cases does it make much at all from the ticket prices. Again, this is a big vs small movie issue, but even for the smaller movies they make very little.
No doubt this will be better for the customer. But it could be dangerous to theaters, and as a result, hurt the movie companies. Theaters act as an advertising tool. I will always watch movie trailers at a theater, and will not under any circumstances pay attention to DVD/PPV trailers. I look at the posters at a theater. Can’t do that with the other mediums. Add to the fact that traditional movie rental stores are dying out, and I believe that if you kill off theaters, then you risk destroying one of your last “free” advertising tools for future movies. Netflix is awesome. But you almost always need to know what you are looking for to find it.
I guess I might not understand what exactly this “broadcast movies directly to the home at the same time as it’s in theaters” thing is going to work. I thought that the studios were trying to get movies into the home without having to go through other companies like cable or satellite (ie. the middlemen). The more I think about it though, I have no idea how this idea got in my head in the first place.
Anyway, right or wrong, I was referring to cable companies as the middlemen before, not theaters or distributors.
Anyway, I agree with you that this has the potential to be very dangerous for theaters. Personally, I love going to see movies in the theater, but I find that I am doing it less and less due to ticket prices and alternate means of entertainment (ie. I’d rather stay home and play video games a lot of the time).
Yeah, the articles I read definitely mentioned that they would be working with the cable/satellite companies to accomplish this.
Current Rumors: Heroes won’t be getting the half season originally thought to be coming:
http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2010/05/report-heroes-canceled-us-well-yeah.html
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/05/12/report-heroes-to-be-canceled/51184
However, rumors say that Chuck will get a 13 episode commitment with the option for a back 9:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/05/11/rumored-chuck-lives-on-with-13-episode-renewal/51147
I really, really hope that Chuck gets to continue. The show has been consistently good to great this year. It is certainly head and shoulders above Heroes. I couldn’t care less about that show at this point. I haven’t even seen any of the commercials for the show this season, let alone any episodes.
I’ve been trying to see what this Lost in theaters thing is but all I can find is a behind the scenes theater thing that will broadcast a q and a with Cuse and Lindelof…
Oh well, I’ll probably still be going to this bar I found which is very Lost friendly that’s hosting a party.
I don’t know if anyone else around here is in the NYC area but it’s called Professor Thom’s.
http://www.professorthoms.com/
It’s first come first serve no tickets. Apparently they’re having a scavenger hunt before hand.