Tonight Spike TV premiered Blade: The Series in a 2 hour “limited commercial interruption” event following UFC 937 or someting.

The premier holds much promise for this series which follows the style of the world of Blade as we see it in the movie so well that it almost seemed as if they were reusing some of the sets. The action is certainly there and is helped by effects, while understandeably not of a the calibre of a high budget Hollywood movie, are great for a tv series.

The story appears solid though it remains to be seen if it can keep us interested for weeks to come. Blade’s backstory is the same as the one we already know with some minor changes. It’s unclear where this movie takes place with respect to the movies though I get the impression it starts off around the same point as the first movie did and will evolved differently. The premier story, which is setting the scene for the TV series, centers around the character of Krista, played by smokin’ hot newcommer Jill Wagner, who in tracking down the death of her brother gets caught up in the world of Vampires.

Most of the cast including the star, rapper Sticky Fingaz, is composed of relatively unknown actors with the obscure exception of screen legend Randy Quaid as Professor Melvin Caylo. The cast delivers a solid performance and shows that you don’t need big names to get a good story across.

A preview for next week’s episode as well as things to come in the future of the series were shown. The only other star I reckognised from the bunch was The Big Hit star Bokeem Woodbine. It’s looking like the rest of the season will offer the same fun action packed story and amazing visual style we’ve gotten a taste of. I’d certainly recommend checking this series out if you have a chance.

The premier episode will be rerunning this Saturday, July 1st, at 4pm. The show’s regular timeslot is Wednesday night at 10pm.

I’d have to say that “Blade: The Series” is surely the best comic based motion picture to be released on June 28th 2006.

Today we saw the first Blu-Ray discs hit store shelves. On a trip to Best Buy I saw a number of them for sale at prices that weren’t totally unreasonable. The boxes looked cool which is pretty much all anyone would be able to tell you right now. Poked around looking for the players… which were nowhere to be found. I don’t think there are any in Canada. Why are we selling unplayable discs again?

Sony and Pioneer, the major supporters of Blu-Ray technology, have decided to postpone releasing their players. Sony’s Blu-Ray player is currently slated to be sold on October 25th 2006 according to their BDP-S1 product page. I wouldn’t be surprised if that date was pushed back again by the way things are going for them. Pioneer has also delayed the release of their BDP-HD1 player until September according to this article though no date could be uncovered on Pioneer’s website by this reporter. Having the 2 major supporters delay their own players within weeks of the pending release is not the best way to support a format consumers are already apprehensive to get on board with.

Samsung’s BD-P1000 is now available and retails for a shocking 1000$ US. With Pioneer’s player currently slated to sell for an astronomical price of 1500$ US and coming out only a month before the already expensive 600$ PlayStation 3 not to mention 2 months after Samsung’s 1000$ player the logic in this move is not obvious. Sony’s player will be selling at 1000$ and will be released, assuming all products follow their current release schedule, at the same time as the 600$ Blu-Ray compatible PlayStation 3. Why would anyone with an ounce of sense invest in their bare bones player? If we are to believe that this player will be in any way superior to a game system by the same company wouldn’t that just give people another reason not to invest in what is already considered by most to be a far too expensive game system?

I guess these guys just won’t be happy unless Blu-Ray really does go the way of Beta as everyone seems to be worried about.

After all this is said and done HD-DVD players have been available for over 2 months now and are selling at half the price of the competition at a mere 500$. This can be considered cheap only in the same way that the X-Box 360 is considered cheap when it’s price is compared to the price of the PlayStation 3. Of course people aren’t buying either player. I know I for one would get on board with this kind of technology if there were only one available but I just can’t afford to take a risk at such a price point and I think most HDTV owners share this sentiment. I’m fearfull that with everyone waiting there will be no clear winner in the format wars and that both will die leaving us with sub par 480p DVDs. It already happened with laser disc and there wasn’t even any competition for them.

Is there something these guys aren’t telling us? Is this all an elaborate ploy to avoid selling players at a loss while making fat cash off disc sales? Don’t they realise this makes everyone uncertain about the future of this technology? That when they can’t even put 100% behind their product no right minded consumer is going to be able to?

Maybe they’re just not trying anymore or maybe Sony’s trying to make sure the PS3 isn’t their worst mistake of 2006. That will be a tough one to top.

Demona just linked me to a picture of the back of Bumblebee on the set of Transformers: The Movie. I have added it after the jump so as not to spoil it, but I must say this is pretty neat. I really wasn’t excited about this movie at all until I glimpsed this picture.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

Sony Pictures has a press release stating that Apple Trailers will be hosting the first Teaser Trailer to Spider-man 3 at 2:30 PM EST today. It seems as though it has already been leaked onto YouTube, but I couldn’t find the exact one because of so many fan-made trailers. I can’t seem to find a link to this mysterious press release at the moment either, but when I do, I’ll update this post.

I also came across some more pictures from the set here.

See the trailer now here.

Somebody call Robert Stack.

While Lost is on summer hiatus, fans have no way of getting answers to the mysteries that populate the island and its inhabitants’ pasts. So why not mull over all the unanswered questions?

Lost Mysteries compiles 161 strange events, questionable actions, and bizarre appearances. I thought I’d been pretty attentive to minor background things, but to see that the same car has appeared over and over in flashbacks with car accidents, I see we have a long way to go with settling this. Theres mysteries we don’t even know to solve!

Good news for French Canadian Anime fans! We could be seeing the return of some of our favourite old school Anime shows.

Le journal de Montréal has this article discussing plans for 2 new Canadian TV stations “Teletoon Retro” to debut in English in Spring 2007 and “Télétoon Rétro”, the French equivalent, in French in Fall 2007.

The channel will be featuring animation dating from 10 years back and older. It’s mentioned that they are attempting to secure the rights to old classic Anime such as Albator and Goldorak.

Albator is the French dub of Leiji Matsumoto’s Captain Harlock (or Herlock as the Japanese insist on calling him). It came in 2 series. Albator 78 is a 42 episode series translated from the 1978 series “Space Pirate Captain Harlock”. “Albator 84” is a 22 episode series translated from “Endless Orbit SSX” from 1983. The numbers denote the year of their French dub rather than their Japanese release.

Goldorak is the French version of Grandizer (Grendizer to the Japanese) and aired starting in 1975.

Both shows were wildly popular among French Canadians in the late 70s and early 80s.

It needs to be mentioned that Teletoon in both it’s English and French incarnations is notorious for horrible programming due mainly to the fact that they’re incapable of affording to pay for anything the least bit desireable. They generally get the scraps that better channels like Comedy and YTV don’t want. Whether or not this goes through really depends on the financial feasability of securing the rights to these shows.

Anime News Network mentioned this story on Friday but claimed the rights to the series had already been optained. This confusion was probably just lost in translation.

Thanks to Powet antagonist Dave aka Soundowaivu for finding this article.

Game Trailers has posted a video in their Top 10 series detailing Top 10 Video Game Weapons, and its hard to argue with the results.
Although, I’m disappointed how many FPS games there are on the list. Doom’s chainsaw defines the game, and Half Life 2’s Gravity Gun innovates beyond anything else on the list, but did we really need anything from Turok on there? Still, covering Metroid’s Ice beam and Mario Kart’s red shell makes the list a pretty well balanced one, if not for the oddball #10.

If you need a brush up on Superman before he Returns, enjoy Superman the Movie in 30 Seconds. With Bunnies. Voices are even provided by Returns writer Michael Dougherty and director Bryan Singer.
Angery Alien productions has many, many more shorts like this on their website.