When Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons” achieved the largest digital 3-D opening in history, people witnessed what could become the future of cinema. Joshua Greer, the President and Co-founder of Real D had this to say during a recent interview with IGN,

“…what’s really happening now with the filmmakers that are being turned on to 3-D is we’re seeing a new creative renaissance. And at the end of the day it’s about the story, but even more importantly how you tell the story, and what’s happening with these filmmakers is the way they’re thinking about 3-D now, as opposed to being just a gimmick, but actually as a storytelling device, is really, frankly, going to reinvigorate the experience of cinema again. So 3-D in and of itself, if we do our job right, in the next 10 years it’ll be as ubiquitous as colour or sound. It’s not like anyone goes out now looking for a black and white television. It’s just a natural part of the world.”

The technology is quite interesting, and seems to be well within the reach of any major multiplex. I’m not sure how much I like the idea of having a box full of special, ‘Real D’ glasses from every movie I’ve seen, but if they have come this far in the last 10 years, who knows what the future holds. If Real D can engineer a version of this tech that does not require migraine inducing specs, Viva la Revolution!

I’m still of the mindset that this new medium is going to need a mainstream blockbuster in order to thrive and become a viable format. Attn: Peter Jackson, I believe a re-release of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy is in order.

Additional “Real D” enhanced movies:
Lions 3D – Spring 2007
U23D – Fall 2007
Sea Monsters – October 2007
Beowulf – November 2007

For the full feature, click here.

Real D Homepage

E3, the once great video game Exposition, has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. What was once a never-ending cacophony of lights, sound and swag is now an invitation only press event. While we can still expect industry-shaping keynotes from the big three hardware developers, the show floor is barely recognizable. Industry giants, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, THQ and others have been relegated to a 20’X20′ space.

Quite a contrast to previous E3s where developers battled each other for total show supremacy. After last year’s expo, which was completely dominated by Nintendo and the newly revealed Wii, Sony and Microsoft decided that paying millions or dollars for little or, worse yet, negative press coverage just wasn’t worth the effort. They basically took their ball and went home. The other big companies followed suit and now we have, what I’ve dubbed, Neo-E3, or the E3 Media & Business Summit.

Moved from May to July, and Los Angeles to Santa Monica, the newly redesigned expo is meant to create a smaller, more intimate environment for developers and publishers to talk shop. Neo-E3 is also designed to make it easier for independent developers to roll out their wares to potential publishers, (even though next to no indie devs are on the roster).

Hopefully we can expect more direct feed footage and one on one interviews with the movers and shakers of the industry. The E3 Media & Business Summit will take place from July 11-13th.

What are your thoughts on the redesigned E3 expo?

The Superman: Doomsday DVD arrives this fall, on September 18th, but the website for the movie has just launched! Alright, I admit, that’s not really news in itself, but what IS news is that there’s a pretty telling, very interesting behind-the-scenes trailer that runs as soon as you enter. You can visit the site here and see the trailer in full. If you want a quick look at some some screencaps and analysis of what was said, then read on after the jump.
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Courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, the world gets its first look at the ketchup-and-mustard flavored suit Robert Downey Jr. will be wearing in Jon Favreau’s Iron Man. The suit was designed by Oscar-winning special effects man Stan Winston, who has quite an impressive resume to his name, spanning from Edward Scissorhands to Predator to Galaxy Quest to Terminator 2 … and the list goes on and on.

Favreau had made a cryptic comment on myspace yesterday, saying, “Check out this weeks EW. You might want to check their website as well.” And clearly, this is the payoff. I only wish they had a bigger image to share than the one showing on the left.

As for the suit itself, it definitely looks, for lack of a better word, right. I can’t say I’m surprised; they did such a glorious job on the grey suit that I expected them to knock this one out of the park as well. As cool (and comics-accurate) as the suit might look though, it turns out (not too surprisingly) that it’s a bit of a chore to wear. “Robert was very bullish on wearing the suit whenever possible,” said Favreau. “Now I don’t know if he’s such a fan of that idea.” Oh, you crazy Hollywood people, not wanting to walk around in giant, heavy, sweaty mech-suits.

In a bold display that proves you can’t control information, social news network Digg.com has been over run with the code to decrypt HD-DVD, the high definition video format.

The code went up on digg mere hours ago, and the site was served a cease & desist order. Digg CEO Jay Adelson let it be known Digg would comply with the order to avoid the lawsuit. This level of censorship of course drove the millions of nerds who basically run Digg without much actual control or supervision all day completely crazy and the code began appearing in virtually every story submitted and gained millions of hits. In case you didn’t know, on Digg, users submit links which are then approved by other users when they “digg” them. A few hours ago, over 50,000 digs had been counted toward various HD DVD code submissions.

Now Digg Founder Kevin Rose has bowed to his users. Digg will go down fighting.

Gutsy move, sure, but the only option Digg had unless they wanted to monitor all stories and have them go through an editorial process. I hope it works out for the best.
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Looks like Uwe Boll didn’t learn from his last screw ups regarding the BloodRayne movie franchise. A new movie, titles “BloodRayne 2: Deliverence” began production in January of 2007 with a grand budget of $10 million, and is set to release straight to DVD as of later this month.

This movie is supposed to take place in the wild west with vampire cowboys and Billy the Kid being their ringleader. Actress Kristanna Loken has thankfully not reprised her role from the first movie, and instead actress Natassia Malthe has taken her place as the bombshell dhampire huntress. Actor Zack Ward will be playing the role as Billy the Kid, which somewhat depresses me as I believe him to be better than something going straight-to-video, but that’s just me. Kinda hard to feel any kind of positive for the sequel of a movie that was considered one of the worst game-based films in existance.

Trailers can be seen both at the official website and at Bloody Disgusting.

There have been many consoles that people would consider “god systems”, that pack convinience and multitasking into one console. Well, another one has recently hit the market, in the form of a console that plays *both* 8-bit NES and 16-bit SNES games! Whodathunkit?!

The FC Twin Video Game System was released on November of 2006 by the manufacturer known as “Yobo”, but only has recently become any kind of known in the gaming world. This system has separate circuitry and separate slots to play both Nintendo and Super Nintendo cartridges, which can be switched between the two types with a double throw power switch to toggle back and forth. It also utilizes two SNES compatible controllers, which can also map to NES controller inputs. (B maps to Y, A maps to B).

Sounds like the perfect grab for anyone whose current retro systems are failing, and don’t want to shell out for the two separate systems, right? Well, there are a few drawbacks. one being that the system can’t handle the NES zapper lightgun for games like Duck Hunt. Another downside is that a few certain games made for either system will not play for the FC Twin, such as Castlevania: Dracula’s Curse – one of the reasons I actually bought the system in the first place…. *mumble*. See wikipedia’s entry for a list of the games for both NES and SNES that cannot play on the Twin. Also, some sounds for the NES may not sound exactly like their originals, but SNES sounds seem to work fine. And don’t even think about trying to use Super Famicom games.

Despite the downsides, the FC Twin system itself is a neat toy for any gaming enthusiast, and comes at the eye-catching price of around $40-$50, which would make it generally less than buying clean copies of both original systems that it emulates. So if you’re looking for a good backup system for either of your original Nintendo consoles, like I did, then picking up the FC Twin might be a decent investment.

Botcon.com has posted the fourth figure in the Botcon 2007 exclusive box set of five. Bugbite is a straight repaint of Classics Bumblebee. He is another Decepticon and supposedly the leader of the pack. Bugbite is actually not a new character. Similar to Sunstorm, the Bugbite character originates from an E-Hobby Exclusive repaint of the Generation 1 book-format reissues. In the reissue set, six minibots were included with Bumblebee featuring a retooled, cartoon accurate face (see post banner). This set’s E-Hobby exclusive counterpart featured repainted versions of the six minibots with new names and some new alliegances. It is also worth mentioning that the names given to the repaints were all former Go-Bot names with similar alt modes (Pathfinder, Smallfoot, Bug Bite, Treads, Bad Boy, and Road Ranger).

 

Bug Bite photos from Botcon.com
Bug Bite E-Hobby Exclusive face picture from tfu.info.