Outkast’s long awaited movie and new album are less than a week away. Hip Hop’s most celebrated duo are releasing the new album to stores on August 22, but they’re currently playing the record in its entirety at myspace.com/outkast.

The movie, and its soundtrack album, are set in prohibition era south, where a speakeasy owner and his piano player (Big Boi and Andre 3000) have to overcome not only the illegality of alcohol for their club but also a gangster (Terrence Howard) who will take everything they’ve got. The setting makes Outkasts already weird and unique sound even more out there, putting the sounds of the day (jazz, swing, and blues) into modern hiphop and synth pop.

You can see the trailer at the official Idlewild movie page.

Click after the jump for the music videos for “Morris Brown” and “Idlewild Blues”
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First the bad news…

By way of Joe, we find out Civil War #4 and #5 have been delayed over a month from their original ship date. As if that wasn’t bad enough, all the tie-in books like Fantastic 4, Frontline, Punisher, and Spider-Man have been delayed too. Newsarama has the full run down.

I don’t think it would be unfair to be upset with Marvel for not only the delay but the last minute notification. I mean a lot of fans aren’t going to find out this has slipped until they walk into the shop tomorrow and find their pull box bare. Given the magnitude of the slip and the number of titles involved, I’d say Marvel knew this was going to happen and didn’t want to tell us. For shame.

On a comparitivly optimistic note, the revamp Justice Leage of America #1 has only been delayed until next week, August 23rd.

Writer/Mastermind Brad Meltzer has posted on his blog. That DC informed him of the slip but didn’t provide an explaination. Eager to not disappoint, Meltzer informs fans “One more week. They promised. If not, we revolt and I send out the scans online.”

JLA readers do get a bonus, the first chapter from Meltzer’s new novel “The Book of Fate“

For those of you just joining us, the Buried Treasures section is where I spotlight a game that, while it may not be as well known as the Mega Men, Final Fantasies, and Contras, it’s still a classic in it’s own right.  This week’s entry is the Parasite Eve series from Squaresoft years before they merged with Enix.  These two games strayed far away from the norm as you can get, eschewing the mideval/fantasy plots of other games and placing it within a Modern day setting with guns and a heavily laden sci-fi plot.  The first game was an RPG with Resident Evil-esque survival horror elements.  You play as Aya Brea, a New York police dectective attempting to prevent a catostrophic outbreak while discovering the secret within her own genetics.  The series deals with the origin and purpose of mitochondrial DNA (Yeah, I’m lost too, you’ll just have to play the game to understand).  The first game introduced a strange, but innovative targeting system which would allow players to target any part of thier enemy.  (This targeting system would later show up in another Square title, Vagrant Story.)  Also, you could upgrade your weapons, attaching any adjustments you could find on it.  When you beat the game the first time, the New Game+ opened up, allowing access to a secret area and the true ending.  The only bad part of this game was that there were no shops, so you had to rely upon whatever you found in chests or whatever was dropped by enemies after battle.

Parasite Eve 2 was a Resident Evil-esque survival horror game with RPG elements.  The combat was real time, and the weapon sphere and upgrade systems were unfortunantely gone.  Thankfully, by earning credits from defeating enemies, you could buy things at any one of the game’s shops.  The plot was designed so that players didn’t have to play through the first to understand the second game.  There were a number of hidden modes and weapons (including Squall’s gunblade) you could unlock in the game, and the plot was as science-heavy as in the first.

You should be able to find these games used at about any decent gaming store, so you might want to check them out especially if you’re a fan of Resident Evil. or are just tired of the same old RPG conventions.  Also of intrest is the movie and novel of the same name.

THE BOYS #1
written by Garth Ennis, art by Darick Robertson

This Wednesday Garth Ennis delivers unto us another dark, deviant look at superhero comics, and he’s dragged Darick Robertson into doing the art chores. They’ve done some work together on some little book called The Punisher. You might’ve heard of it.

Here, ‘The Boys’ refers specifically to our five main characters, who all share a deep, personal hate-on for superheroes. And while it’s not clear what exactly they’ll be doing to fight the heroes of their world, based on the preview available at DC’s site, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that they’re out for blood. Nothing like the comforting visual of hands without a body attached.

Ennis has a solid track record at delivering a fantastically dark take on superheroes, so if you’ve enjoyed any of his work before, this is definitely one not to miss.

Alan Moore, comic book legend responsible for a long list of classic comic work – most recently spotlighted for V For Vendetta – was actually wrangled into an interview by Wizard Entertainment. This is a strange decision by a creator normally viewed for giving mainstream American comics the cold shoulder, as Wizard is generally all about mainstream American comics. Regardless, the interview exists.

Moore speaks largely – but not solely – about his upcoming controversial work Lost Girls (art by Melinda Gebbie), which features “Alice in Wonderland’s Alice, Peter Pan’s Wendy and The Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy meeting as adults and sharing erotic experiences.” If that sounds strange and almost creepy, well, that’d be why it’s controversial. Planned release is allegedly for the 28th of this month, but as always, there’s no telling when it comes to the world of comics.

As an aside, early chapters of Lost Girls were initially published in the Taboo anthology magazine, which were reprinted in the mid 90’s as two separate volumes. The Lost Girls: Book One and Books Two listings on Amazon.com are available here and here, respectively.

Read the full (but brief) interview on WizardUniverse here.

Read Newsarama.com‘s two-part interview from May here and here.

The Lost Girls Collected listing on Amazon.com available here. (It includes a fairly detailed review/discussion in the Editorial Review section. Book not available for purchase yet.)

More detailed information available at the Wikipedia entry for Lost Girls.

In addtion to Baby Mario, we found out at E3 that Yoshi would also carry a Baby Princess Peach and a Baby Donkey Kong.
But in the lower and upper left corners of the final box art we see a Baby Bowser and a Baby Wario. The different babies promise to add new gameplay mechanics to the platformer, which iteself is a sequel to an underrated classic on the SNES.
Also of note, theres a Nintendo WiFi logo. 2 player online Co-op? Versus race? Mini Games? Nintendo hasn’t said anything yet.
Yoshi’s Island 2 will be released to the Nintendo DS on November 13 in the US.

Man, I haven’t seen this many babies in years.
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Why bother risking life and limb on file sharing networks? Archive.org has a great selection of public domain movies ready to download and watch on your computer and burn to a DVD, completely free of charge.
Its real simple. Some of these movies or programs are released to the net with only a Creative Commons protection, and thus are free to distribute or manipulate at your will.
Others are films so old, they’ve entered into the public domain and the copyright holders let their ownership slip.
Night of the Living Dead is the most popular by far. This is the George Romero zombie classic that spawned Dawn Of The Dead and countless imitations.
Granted, this is mostly black & white stuff here, but without protections, anyone can use or remake the footage without a fee. Don’t think I haven’t thought of it….

Today, Marvel announced the writer for the planned Avengers movie: Zak Penn. (By the way, interesting way of announcing an Avengers movie, Marvel. Nice promotional work, there.) To help sell the guy, his previous movie-writing chores for Marvel were listed: The Incredible Hulk, X-Men: The Last Stand, X2: X-Men United, and Elektra.

In his defence, that’s the upcoming Hulk movie, not the previous, Ang Lee-helmed one. The others, you might have seen. Except for Elektra.

Based on how he’s credited, the guy likely had limited input on the movies they listed, with the exception of The Incredible Hulk. And that movie’s not exactly done yet.  What is there to take away from this?  Are they just not taking the idea of an Avengers movie seriously? Is his upcoming work really that impressive to them? One of his upcoming movies is Spy Hunter – I don’t want to be too snarky without cause, but how high calibur are video game movies right now? You gotta admit, they’re not running under the best track record. While it’s by no means a death kiss, it’s not reassuring news.

Source: Comicscontinuum.com