It has been seven long years since The Rentals have made even the slightest noise.

Now they’re coming back.

Matt Sharp left Weezer after Pinkerton to focus entirely on his project The Rentals. The first release Return Of The Rentals was a modest success, with the hit single “Friends Of P” and while the follow up Seven More Minutes didn’t make much of a splash, I was certainly a fan.

The Rentals.com has updated that the band WILL be playing 2 shows in California and 2 shows in Japan this July, with a world tour to follow. Pitchfork also spoke to Matt while preparing the tour, and he announced that while the lineup has changed since SMM, Rachel Haden (formerly of that dog.) would be back in the fold. You can also check out their myspace page to get more music.
Apparently the credit for the return goes to a new remix of the Tegan and Sara song “Walking With A Ghost.”  Matt Sharp became such a fan of T&S that he recruited former Rentals member and current SNL cast Maya Rudolph to cover “Not Tonight.”

The Rentals are recording new material now and a new album should be due in 2007.

Press Release after the jump

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Last night’s “Smallville” had the first Superman Returns television commerical. For those who missed it, Aint-It-Cool has multiple formats you can stream online.

The footage itself contains mostly footage from the prior teasers released to theaters and the internet some time ago. There is one new shot that comes so quick you might miss it. To avoid spoiling anyone, I’ve provided a screengrab after the jump.

Also of note is the announcement that Superman Returns will debut on June 30th in IMAX 3D.  Why, there just happens to be an IMAX down the road from me…
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Yahoo has an interesting article on how a number of this summer’s coming movies are having toy lines made. The article focuses on the DaVinci Code and how it relates to last summer’s Star Wars toy ‘success’. I say success in quotes because Hasbro just reported a large loss and blamed it solely on sluggish sales of Star Wars toys. The article also makes note of how awful things went when the toy line came out for the Phanton Menace when it turned out that it was not well received by audiences. They also mention how poorly Last Action Hero translated to a toy line and a number of the other movies coming out that will get the toy aisle treatment including Superman Returns, Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest, and Pixar’s Cars.

It was interesting to note how X3 was seemingly absent from the entire article.

From an unknown source, TFW2005 got their hands on sketches of Optimus Prime and Hot Rod from the forthcoming Transformers Classics line.

If these highly detailed drawings look insanely good to you, theres a reason. Thats Don Figueroa’s signature.

EDIT: Well it turns out that Hot Rod is just a concept, and not the classics model.  Don posted a message to TFW2005 declaring all future leaks off limits, and they’ve taken down Hot Rod in accordance with that.  I’m personally on the fence one whether to remove the image from this site as well, but adding this disclaimer that it is just a sketch…

Our friend Sparkstalker has been suspicious of the PS3 box since it was revealed a year ago, pointing out the lack of fans, and the power supply being housed in box. I’ll let his words take over:

Looking at this image again. I’ve got to wonder how “final” this really is. It still has a 120V input. Which means all power conversion would still have to happen inside the unit. Which would double the amount of heat that the PS3 will have to dissipate. And while they’ve increased the size and added vents, to me, it still doesn’t look like enough to dissipate the heat that will be generated by the system and power supply. We’ve seen the issues with the 360, and that’s with “loud fans” and a “monsterous” power brick…

It just doesn’t add up.

Also thanks to him for pointing out how many of those inputs disappeared in the last 12 months.

Incidentally, Sony pitchman Phil Harrison (who’s mere image frightens me, to be honest) is saying they’d been developing the tilt control since 1994. Nice try.  We all know where you ripped the Dual Shake off of.
File under “in case you missed this…”

DDR hits the TV screen and the Mobile phone.

Nokia NGage still kicking, despite all efforts to ignore it.

Frankie at Bungie deflects fanboy reactions to the Halo 3 trailer.

Superman Returns… please don’t let it be teh suck.

Close up look at Will Wright’s Spore.

Super Mario Galaxy Boss Battle.

And surprisingly, Hideo Kojima would like to ditch Metal Gear Solid 4 production to work on Wii. I mean, it doesn’t surprise me he wants to develop for Wii, just surprises me he’d consider ditching the PS3 only real killer-app to do it.
And now the doors to the biggest video game show of the year officially closed, its time to declare a winner. Tell us what looked best, what looked worst, what confused you, what was most unexpected, etc. Register and post your thoughts to our forums.

He-man.org has announced that NECA and the Four Horsemen unveiled the next character in line for the 14″ line of statues. Trapjaw. Just like the other statues, he will be produced in a limited supply and incredible detail. Prices and availability are expected to be announced by the San Diego Comic Con where the prototype will be on display.

E3 Rolls on like an unstoppable tank. Many of the big announcements are made, so today and tomorrow will focus primarily on 3rd parties showing off all the games they’ve been whipping their development teams to get demo ready for the last month and a half. So today is the chance for the press to play the games, try to get a few more questions answered, and meet Adam West.

An amazing thing has happened to Mario. While Galaxy grabbed the glory in the press conference and initial reports, fans are rallying around Super Paper Mario on GameCube. It looks to be as much a classic throwback as New SMB on the DS. One fan I heard even called it the Yoshi’s Island of the Cube: A game on a near defunct system that pushes the limits technically and creatively. Luckily, Cube games will still play on the Wii, so I have no doubt if this turns into a great game it will find its audience.

Since its quiter clear we all love Wii now, WiiGamer has nabbed some screens of the Virtual Console. You get box art and a screen that maps out your controller before getting into your classic game. If you still don’t believe, then theres lots of people who do. The line to play Wii is 3+ Hours. Thats longer than any line as Six Flags, folks.
Most impressive thing I’ve seen today is Sonic for PS3 and 360. I thought the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure 7 years ago looked
pretty spiffy, but its amazing what a little more horsepower can do. I’m willing to forgive the less pleasurable elements of the last few Sonic games if this one can deliver.

In somewhat disheartening news, Nintendo may be finally laying down the Game Boy. N-boss Iwata says the DS is such a success they’re in no position to develop another portable to succeed the GBA.

Peter Moore rather succinctly summed up my opinion of the PS3 price: “Tell me why you would buy a $600 PS3. People are going to buy two (machines.) They’re going to buy an Xbox and they’re going to buy a Wii… for the price of one PS3.” Kaz Hirai insists gamers are getting a deal, and that fans will stay loyal to the PlayStation. For your sake I hope that works out, Kaz. People ain’t flocking to the PSP.

Optimus Prime also showed up at E3. Why? Heh, no idea. Haven’t heard word one about Activision’s Transformer game.

Scouring the internets, I had a hard time finding anything else that was actually “news.” Its all just impressions and previews now, which is fine and good by them, but I see no reason to link 3rd party conjecture when I can’t offer my own.

The first real day of E3 come to a close with less E3 news than the days that weren’t technically part of E3. Weird.

Here’s are some of the fun things discovered today:

A new Duck Hunt?!

A sequel I honestly never thought I’d see is playable at E3. The Wii will have a new gun peripheral and what is surely gaming history’s most played gun game appears to be having another go at it. Is this going to be a full on Wii game or is this just a demo so that they can showcase the gun at E3? I’m not going to speculate an answer to that! IGN gives us an impression of the game as well as a look at the new “light gun” shell for the Wii controller. It’s unknown how exactly the “light gun” will work or even whether or not it will use light (if it does not it will probably not be refered to as a light gun much longer…”. Since the original Nintendo Zapper is incompatible on some modern televisions (such as my LCD projection TV) this may finally give us unfortunate souls who tragically only have access to high end televisions the oppurtunity to shoot some ducks again.

New Super Smash Bros. Brawl characters announced

New characters for the Wii Super Smash Bros. game have been reported by Kotaku. New characters include Solid Snake, Nintendogs, Metaknight, Pit, Zero Suit Samus and Wario. I don’t even know who two of those are! I certainly hope players can move their Wii-mote in a belly rubbing motion to incapacitate their Nintendog opponents… though apparently we will be using the classic GameCube controllers on this one.

Earthworm Jim Returns!

From the soil did crawl an interesting announcement from Atari today. We’ll be seeing another Earthworm Jim game, this time on the PSP. Check out IGN for more on this.

An innovative X-Box game?

A game more attypical for it’s system than Kameo will be released on the X-Box! You guess it! It’s a… piniata game… WHAT? Yeah so I guess you just whack a piniata with a bat, right? No. It’s a piniata farm simulation game. Wasn’t that a skit on the short lived John Leguizamo vehicle “House of Buggin“? Well I’m pretty sure it was but still this game is coming. Check out this article at Kotaku for more info and a sweet looking screenshot.