This news hits a little close to home. A global labor rights group has published a PDF declaring that Jet Fair, a manufacturing company in China, has been running a factory remarkably below standard work conditions. The group that has released the PDF is called the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights. Some of the accusations levied against the Jet Fair factory include, but are not limited to: excessively long work hours, rat-infested and bed bug-ridden dormitories, overly restrictive rules regarding behaviour, sub-standard food, safety violations and poor pay. This particular factory is the location where the new Transformers Prime figures are being assembled.

Hasbro is a company that works very hard to maintain its reputation as responsible corporate citizen and a globally conscience company. This report clearly aims to tarnish that reputation, true or not, and you can expect swift reaction from the company to right it’s course. The report definitely seems to finger Hasbro as the responsible party for this instead of blaming Jet Fair, which seems more than a little unfair.

The PDF laying aim at the Hasbro partner can be seen here: PDF

The first trailer for The Dark Knight Rises was released earlier today. The Dark Knight Rises is the final movie in director Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, and comes out Summer 2012.

Let us know what you think in the comments.
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Many have debated the origin of the term “Cool Story Bro”. While specific usage of those words seems to be restricted to the past 5 or so years, the first usage of the quote is often attributed to the 2001 movie Zoolander, as a character says “Cool story, Hansel”. Here we have Bill Murray’s character Frank Cross saying “Beautiful story. Tell Reader’s Digest, will ya?” to a man who’s objecting to the idea of stapling antlers to a mouse, played by Ralph Gervais.

Download an mp3 of Bill Murray saying “Beautiful story. Tell Reader’s Digest, will ya?” in Scrooged.

One might be tempted to attribute the quote to the film’s writers Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue, but a quick look over the script indicates that it may have been an ad lib, as the original quote is just “Go tell Reader’s Digest!”. An earlier version of the script doesn’t have that part of the exchange at all (see page 43). Of course we can’t discount the possibility of further script rewrites or improper transcription for the online copy.

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I was worried these clips would stop coming after the initial launch of the line this summer, but I’m delighted to say a new holiday themeed KREO stop motion clip has been released. Watch it above and let us know what you think of these adorable clips and the KREO construction brand in the comments.

Battleship is the Hasbro board game property based on blindly determining the location of and sinking your opponent’s fleet of ships. More recently, a variation of the game was released called Battleship: Galaxies, which appears to be based on this movie’s plot. I cannot decide if this looks like Transformers 4: Lost at Sea or a GI Joe/Transformers crossover. Let us know what you think in the comments!

There’s a Japanese live action Rurouni Kenshin film in the works. It’s set to be released on August 25th 2012. Rurouni Kenshin is a popular manga turned anime series about a samurai with a dark past who fights with a backwards sword and hangs around with women and children to be a nice non threatening guy. When Kenshin holds his sword backwards, you know he means business!

The trailer looks pretty good, and not totally crappy like other manga turned anime turned live action movies like Death Note which sucked more than most movies could ever dream of sucking. With a solid story as source material there’s no good reason for this movie to suck, but it still might, like Death Note, which sucked really bad. I didn’t see Shishio in the credits so that’s promising.

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OMGLOLWUT

Oh, Sacha Baron Cohen — you never cease to amaze in finding and shamelessly displaying the cringe-worthy absurdity of our everyday existence.

Just, please, no singing penises this time. Please.