I loved Alien. Loved Aliens. Love Predator. But Paul WS Anderson’s mash-up movie was really boring.

Thankfully first time directors Greg and Colin Strause are taking the best they can do with both franchises and turn it into a real gore fest. I’m not sure this trailer isn’t merely spoiling all the best parts, but it at least shows they’re trying and not turning in a weak PG13 non-event like the last one. This is what happens when you let visual effects artists control the movie. One of the female leads even looks like Ellen Ripley, which makes me mad when I think about Sigourney Weaver in that DirecTV commercial.

Cory Doctorow is an authority on copyright law and a huge oppoenent to DRM. Among many many other things, he is also an author and a comic book fan. Newsarama put up a interview with him a while back and I thought it was important to link to it. He has some very intelligent things to say and offers up his own solution. I highly recommend giving this a read. Here are a few juicy excerpts:

I don’t think that downloadable comics substitute for printed comics. I think that downloadable comics entice people to but printed comics. The key calculation you have to make when you talk about digital distribution versus physical distribution is how much it entices and how much it substitutes.

But there’s a much larger audience of people who are, not price sensitive, but are time sensitive, or have other aesthetic or design considerations that come into play when they think about what kind of media they’re going to consume. For example, people who love seeing movies in a big cinema, or people who love holding books, or people who take their comics home in a Mylar bag with a board behind it, and then buy a second copy so they don’t get fingerprints on the first one. For those people, the question becomes does having a free online edition that they can sample, and, more importantly to me, be moved about on the internet in a social way from friend to friend on recommendation – does that create more sales than are lost by allowing a few cheapskates to get their copies for free?

Comic book stores, when they hook you, have a Wednesday audience. There are so many people who will come to a comic book store every Wednesday and, while they’re only in there to buy a three dollar comic, many times they walk out of there holding a twenty dollar graphic novel with a much higher margin than that three dollar comic. That’s an amazing position to be in, and it’s something that almost any other kind of retailer would give anything for. But the problem is the audience for comic book stores is not growing. The growth in the industry seems to be coming from trade editions sold in traditional retail outlets. People who will go into bookstores are still not a huge mainstream audience.

Go here to read the whole article and see Cory’s proposed solution.

On August 10th, Lego celebrated its 75th anniversary.

Parties were due to take place around the world Friday for Danish toy firm Lego as its 5,000 global employees prepared to celebrate the company’s 75th birthday. Master carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen started the company on August 10, 1932 in his studio in the town of Billund in Jutland. The headquarters of the global toy giant are still located in Billund. Christiansen created the word “Lego” in 1934 from the Danish words “leg godt” (play well).

Source: EarthTimes.org [via MAKE]

Paramount Pictures is officially announcing Stephen Sommers as the director of the long anticipated G.I. Joe movie. Variety has the story.

The studio is hiring a writer immediately, and has set a February production start for a summer 2009 release.

The accelerated production schedule began right after Sommers pitched his version of the film to Par chairman-CEO Brad Grey and production prexy Brad Weston on Wednesday evening. He was hired in the room.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura will produce with Hasbro chief operating officer Brian Goldner. Sommers and his Sommers Co. partner Bob Ducsay will also be involved as producers.

IESB has a lead on that writer: Stuart Beattie. He wrote scripts for Collateral and Pirates Of The Carribean.

Well its official now, and if they’re not using any of the existing scripts that have leaked online or been reported on before, we should be fine. Because those scripts suck. I’ve got one here where Cobra Commander is Duke’s childhood buddy and was turned evil by Destro. Yeah.

IESB has been breaking all the news on this proposed JLA movie. They’ve received word that the way a JLA movie can come to pass and not interfere with any other movie series is an all motion capture computer generated imagery animated movie. Yes, they’ll cast actors, track their movements, and assign those to CG characters.
While Ryan Reynolds and Brandon Routh have made no secret they want to be on board as The Flash and Superman, respectively, Batman star Christian Bale says he hasn’t been approached, and adds: “It’d be better if it doesn’t tread on the toes of what we’re doing, though I feel that it would be better if it comes out after Batman 3”
Couldn’t agree more, but a CG movie would certainly elevate awareness of Wonder Woman, The Flash and any other hero they might want to turn into a bigger movie. And even if its very well animated and photo-real as promised, people are more likely accept it has nothing to do with current Superman or Batman movies, and re-casting would be perfectly acceptable.
Casting begins next week, we could be hearing some definite announcements very soon.

A while back when I featured Silent Hill 4 in this column, I expressed my desire to see an actual FPS Silent Hill game. The fear factor, the atmosphere, and the fact that anything you run into can kill you would make it a unique experience more than any other survival horror or FPS game. Sega’s Condemned, one of the first games announced for the Xbox 360 and one of the system’s best launch titles, is a great example of what such a game would look like. Not only that, it’s a fine game on its own merits as well.
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Read on for the show notes.

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I know on the boards theres somes New Pornographers fans, so I’ll take the risk that anyone just reading the news site here likes them too. Here’s the performance of “My Rights Versus Yours” from Letterman last night.
The new album Challengers was just released to stores and download services today.
I’ve still yet to soak in the new record, but if its like the last 3, I’ll be playing it a lot.