Well I only reported on this yesterday, but we’ve already got a trailer online for the movie!
Click here to kick shell in High Definition!

I have to say, this is a really, really encouraging look. Theres definitely a hint of the old turtles in there, but the animation and movements of the 4 of them scream “ninja” way more than “teenage” or “turtle”

The big question is: Can a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie satisfy old fans AND new ones?

The official site for the Animal Crossing movie is online. It’s got wallpapers, character information and all kinds of info that’s confusingly not in English.

Check out the trailer to get a look at what the movie will be like.

The movie centers around a girl named Ai who moves to a town populated by animals. Similar to the story of the popular Nintendo Gamecube and Nintendo DS games of the same name she will befriend the townspeople and get a part time job helping out to make ends meet. Game favourites Tom Nook, Kap’n and Tortimer will be featured along side a sample of the animals from the game. We’ll see Sally, an elephant, Bouquet, a cat, Alberto, an aligator and Saruo, a Monkey.

Set to be released on December 16th 2006 in Japan it’s far too early to tell if this will get a North American release.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will get another crack at the big screen next spring, when Warner Bros pictures releases a new 100% computer animated movie based on the foursome’s orignal comic outings.
Though Imagi Animation Studios is promising a gritty Hong Kong action movie, the film’s already headed for a PG rating and its unlikely 4Kids or WB will dish out the killer Ninja Turtles stories from the first volume of the Mirage comics. I mean if they wanna send the Turtles into space and chop off Shredder’s head, thats cool with me. I just don’t think its gonna happen.
Link: IMAGI INTERNATIONAL, which has no animation to speak of as an example. Kinda weird for an unknown studio, eh?

Oh yeah, Ubisoft has tied up rights for the video game, ending Mirage’s long standing deal with Konami. No details announced yet, but if past Ubisoft games are any indication: expect the game to have online support and find a way to use every single button the controller.

Direct from our unsubstantiated rumor department, EGM’s notorious “Quarterman” column directly implies that EA will not sit on the Batman video game rights and wait for a new movie to come out.
The word is they’re working to adapt Frank Miller’s classic “Dark Knight Returns” story, where a 55 year old Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to become Batman again, foiling plots by aging foes like Two Face and Joker, adopting a new Robin, and even confronting Superman.
Theres some precedent for this, as EA released “From Russia With Love” as a filler title before “Casino Royale” set to ressurect the James Bond franchise in movies. Similarly, Activision developed an “Ultimate Spider-Man” game last year to fill the gap between a Spider-Man 2 and 3 movie game adaption could be produced.
Here’s hoping EGM is on the money with this rumour and that the game can take the “Dark Knight” story to a new level.

With the convention starting tomorrow, tonight brings us Preview night at the San Diego Comic Con.

The past few days has brought us a wealth of news on what to expect at the convention. I will try to summarize some of the highlights that have been revealed thus far in this post.

Check back for updates. We will have one SDCC post a day, highlighting all the news, revelations and happenings of this pop culture mecca. These posts (including this one) will be updated throughout the day as we have new information to add.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

They’re getting the band back together, man.
Newsarama readers contributed 19 pages of questions to the new Justice League writer Brad Meltzer. He answered every single one.
Part One is online now, with more Q&A later in the week.
Justice League of America relaunches tomorrow with #0, with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman rebuilding the shattered team from scratch. Meltzer won’t reveal who will make the cut, but after his fascinating work on “Identity Crisis” in 2004, I can’t think of a better person to determine the future of the team.

During the early part of the PS2’s lifecycle, the original Timesplitters emerged as a FPS game which would quickly challenge the norms of the genre.  It was designed by Free Radical, a studio made up of programmers who had worked on Goldeneye and Perfect Dark for Nintendo 64, so there was already a lot going into it.  It featured some innovative weaponry, a plot spanning several time periods, numerous multiplayer modes, and most of all, a map maker.

A few years later, a sequel came out for all current generation systems.  The stages were bigger, there were even more crazy weapons and multiplayer modes, and the map maker’s functionality had been expanded to allow players to create story mode missions.  It was yet another class expierence,  but still something was missing: online play.

Last year, EA took control of the licence, and released TImesplitters Future perfect.  The series now has a cohesive plot, and the levels are much more multi-faceted.  You play as Cortez as he jumps through different time periods hoping to trace the origin of the timesplitters.  In each period he teams up with a different assistant character as he completes his objectives.  More importantly, the series was online for the first time, and players can create maps to upload and download to and from the internet (except the gamecube version).  This includes storymode missions as well.  In fact, I have a few uploaded to Xbox live under the gamertag “screwfacecapone”.  Even though this is a conclusion to the series, hopefully Free Radical can create more innovative FPS titles on the next generation systems.

Richard Linklater’s film adaptation of the story by Phillip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly is the semi-Autobiographical story of Dick’s own battles with substance abuse and his perceived course of the drug war.

Published in 1977, his bleak outlook gave us only 7 years until everything we say and do is monitored. Obviously, the current world climate nearly 30 years later is coming closer to that becoming a reality than ever.

Keanu Reeves plays the role of Robert Arctor, an undercover narcotics agent who has to ingest dangerous amounts of the drug he’s trying to get off the streets in order to maintain his cover. The drug “Substance D” causes brain damage and combining that with his already split identity causes Arctor to slowly lose grip on reality. Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder, and Rory Cochrane round out the cast as Reeve’s perpetually stoned friends.

Linklater took great care with the visual style of this movie, using a rotoscoping technique where actors are filmed and then had animation cells and computer effects painted over the original film. While the film rarely takes upon any action that one might associate with producing a feature in such a manner, the story calls for some events and visuals where the medium is pitch perfect.
With Total Recall, Blade Runner, and Minority Report already successful adaptations of Phillip K Dick stories, this one is much more subdued, a lot less action packed, more paranoid, and as a result, more faithful to the source material.

The score by the Golden Arm Trio with songs by Radiohead and Thom Yorke assists the ambiance of a “world getting progressively worse.”

Some may be turned off by the film’s lack of motion. Its also hurts that a so clearly science-fiction concept in its time resembles life today so closely. Had the film been made 10, 20 years ago in the same way, it would’ve seemed revolutionary and controversial. But its concepts are so accepted as fact or eventualities that it becomes too easy to pick apart the drama and characters.

But thats OK. Not every head trip movie has to be for every person who liked head trip movies. Certainly Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas was a failure in theatrical release, but a favorite on dvd years later. A Scanner Darkly may take a few years to reach its ultimate audience.

I can say, however, that I enjoyed it.

Trailer: A Scanner Darkly