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…]

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

Who would win in a fight between Batman and Wolverine? What if Wolverine didn’t have mutant powers? What if Batman was a magician instead of a detective?

Well, this post is about a stupid as I’ve ever written within the first line, but what I’m getting as is Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are starring in a movie by Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan called “The Prestige” and it looks pretty solid. They play a pair of magicians at the turn of the century who each seek to create tricks that dumbfound the other, which boils into a bitter rivalry.

The movie also stars David Bowie as famed scientist Nikola Tesla. Amazingly, I’m not making that up. Thats really David Bowie in a fake mustache playing Tesla. Michael Caine and Scarlette Johansson round out the cast.

The Prestige trailer is available online in the usualy small, medium, and large varieties as well as iPod and HD versions. Of course I’ll reccomend you just click the 720p or 1080p one and wait for it to load. This movie looks like fun, and its due out October 27th, just in time for Halloween.

Sony Pictures has released a new back-lit lenticular teaser movie poster for Spider-Man 3 to theaters. SuperHeroHype got their hands on an image of this poster and have posted it for our viewing pleasure.

Please drink responsibly and treat all women with respect.