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The Wizard gets reunion screening from Ain't It Cool News
It's rare that the intersection of film and video game makes for any good news, but this just happens to be one of those odd occasions. The film buffs of Ain't It Cool News are going to be putting together a reunion screening for the greatest video-game-related-yet-not-video-game-based film of all time: The Wizard. In attendance will be big brother Fred Savage, director Todd Holland and the titular wizard, Luke Edwards. Conspicuously absent from the list: Jackey "Lucas" Vinson, who apparently hasn't acted in 15 years. You may remember Vinson from his love of the Power Glove and its plentiful badness.Tickets to the Dec. 7 show at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas go on sale on Nov. 5 on their website. If you're in the area and you don't go, well ... we're not sure we can be friends anymore.
Blu-ray and HD-DVD fight kicks up a notch amongst critics [Update]
With our PS3 Blu-ray library growing week by week, we try to stay abreast of the latest in fervent format war discussion. More recently, the ongoing battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray polarized opinions of two key industry critics. Last week, Harry Knowles over at Aint It Cool News, posted a write-up of his decision to "go HD DVD" with his purchase of the Toshiba HD-A2 player. In response, Bill Hunt, editor of The Digital Bits, interjected and laid down what we perceive to be one of the most well written responses on why HD DVD will not win the HD format war. Attacking all fronts, we most enjoyed the Digital Bits interpretation of the porn industry's influence on HD DVD (or lack there-of), and their critical stab at Toshiba and their price drop on HD DVD players, likening it as an act of desperation for a doomed format. Certainly a good read for our Blu-ray fans.[Update: After comparing the two, we felt compelled to change the "picks" to "kicks" in our post title, as suggested in our comments. Thanks, BlackBeltJones.]
Peter Jackson talks Halo with AICN
There's an interesting Halo movie interview with Peter Jackson on the love it or hate it movie site, Ain't It Cool News. The interview focuses both on Peter's choice of Neill Blomkamp as the director and the importance of the script. Speaking on Blomkamp's nomination, Jackson admits that hiring a "new" director wasn't the plan, but that Blomkamp was simply the best choice."It's not deliberate and certainly for HALO it wasn't deliberate. I don't think even for a show like HALO, which is a big budget production, I don't think there's any problem whatsoever with a so-called first time director directing it. At the end of the day, Neill (Blomkamp) is not a first time director. He's a first time feature film director, but he understands film and grammar as good as anybody. He's done some wonderful short films and commercials. His visual eye is fantastic and his storytelling is great. The fact that it's a feature film just means that he gets to shoot for longer than he did in the short film. There really isn't anything else that's different."Speaking of his personal involvement with the script (along with Lord of the Rings alumni Fran Walsh and Filippa Boyens), Jackson had some very encouraging words."The movie, as far as I'm concerned, as far as my involvement is concerned, is not going to go in front of the cameras until we have a really great script."God, let's hope so. The interview is full of good stuff, and anyone interested in Halo should definitely check it out.[Thanks, Doug Kriz]
AICN grills Halo Director
Ain't It Cool News took it upon themselves to interview Neill Blomkamp, the newly announced director of the Halo movie -- which we can only assume will be called Halo. First, the bad news. It turns out that Blomkamp might have to *gasp!* make some changes to Master Chief's armor (no nipples, please). The good news: this guy sounds like a legitimate fan of the game. "From a purely game playing perspective I am a massive fan of the games, but more importantly, I'm a massive fan of the world and universe of Halo, the science fiction world that the games take place inside of."So he's actually played, and enjoyed, the game? Far out. Hopeful news indeed. Then again, similar things were said about a certain other game film as well. Only time will tell.
