Only one truly “big” release this week. Army of Two: The 40th Day is here to meet all your co-op terrorist killin’, fist-bumpin needs provided you didn’t get enough the first time around. Personally, it’s a little too much ma-CHEESE-mo for me, but shooter fans should take note.
I guess since it’s a slow week some could probably consider Vancouver 2010 – The Official Game of the Winter Olympics to be a noteworthy release too… anyone? Anyone? Nah, I didn’t think so.
The Fire Wire advises that this week you save your money, because next week is one to write home about… and it’s just the beginning of another barrage of digital escapist bliss. Jet Packs, Nikola Tesla, epic space operas, sunken cities, and ex-patriot revenge are cresting the horizon. Considering what’s coming, I think I’d cut off a toe for a Delorean and enough road to get up to 88mph.
Just in case you do have money burning a hole in your pocket, there are fourteen titles in all this week.
Monday (Jan. 11)
Chronos Twins DX (Wii)
Mary Kay Andrews: The Fixer Upper (PC)
Touch Solitaire (DS)
Tuesday (Jan. 12)
Army of Two: The 40th Day (PS3, PSP, 360)
Daniel X: The Ultimate Power (DS)
Sands of Destruction (DS)
Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces (Wii)
The Sims 2 Fun With Pets Collection (PC)
Twin Sector (PC)
Vancouver 2010 – The Official Video Game of the Olympic Winter Games (PS3, 360)
Walk It Out (Wii)
Windy X Windam (DS)
Wednesday (Jan. 13)
Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter (360)
Peter Parker is going back to high school when the next Spider-Man hits theaters in the summer of 2012.
Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced today they are moving forward with a film based on a script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.
The new chapter in the “Spider-Man” franchise produced by Columbia, Marvel Studios and Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin, will have a new cast and filmmaking team. Spider-Man 4 was to have been released in 2011, but had not yet gone into production.
“A decade ago we set out on this journey with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire and together we made three ‘Spider-Man’ films that set a new bar for the genre. When we began, no one ever imagined that we would make history at the box-office and now we have a rare opportunity to make history once again with this franchise. Peter Parker as an ordinary young adult grappling with extraordinary powers has always been the foundation that has made this character so timeless and compelling for generations of fans. We’re very excited about the creative possibilities that come from returning to Peter’s roots and we look forward to working once again with Marvel Studios, Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin on this new beginning,” said Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures.
“Working on the ‘Spider-Man’ movies was the experience of a lifetime for me. While we were looking forward to doing a fourth one together, the studio and Marvel have a unique opportunity to take the franchise in a new direction, and I know they will do a terrific job,” said Sam Raimi.
“We have had a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration and friendship with Sam and Tobey and they have given us their best for the better part of the last decade. This is a bittersweet moment for us because while it is hard to imagine Spider-Man in anyone else’s hands, I know that this was a day that was inevitable,” said Matt Tolmach, president of Columbia Pictures, who has served as the studio’s chief production executive since the beginning of the franchise. “Now everything begins anew, and that’s got us all tremendously excited about what comes next. Under the continuing supervision of Avi and Laura, we have a clear vision for the future of Spider-Man and can’t wait to share this exciting new direction with audiences in 2012.”
“‘Spider-Man’ will always be an important franchise for Sony Pictures and a fresh start like this is a responsibility that we all take very seriously,” said Michael Lynton, Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures. “We have always believed that story comes first and story guides the direction of these films and as we move onto the next chapter, we will stay true to that principle and will do so with the highest respect for the source material and the fans and moviegoers who deserve nothing but the best when it comes to bringing these stories and characters to life on the big screen.”
The studio will have more news about Spider-Man in 2012 in the coming weeks as it prepares for production of the film.
Lego has just released their own application for Apple’s iPhone, which allows users to turn their photos into Lego brick mosaics. The app is free through iTunes and at the click of a button transforms any image into Lego. The software uses the phone’s built-in camera and once snapped, the photo quickly builds brick by brick into a mosaic made from flat Lego bricks. The mosaics come in a variety of color combinations and can be saved or shared through the phone. You can download the app HERE.
Fox has given an early second-season renewal to breakout freshman dramedy Glee. The show also is launching a nationwide casting search to fill new roles for season two. The auditions will start in February and will be open to amateurs and professionals between the ages of 16-26.
“Anybody and everybody now has a chance to be on a show about talented underdogs,” co-creator/exec producer Ryan Murphy said. “No matter who you are — a Broadway talent or a struggling singing waiter with a dream in the Midwest — you now have an opportunity to make that dream come true by posting your talent video and showing us what you can do.”
He noted that all roles will be chosen from the video audition process, making “Glee” “the first interactive musical comedy on television.” The casting search will be chronicled in a multi-part special that will lead up to “Glee’s” second season premiere in the fall which will reveal the new cast members.
“We’ve loved ‘Glee’ ever since it was a pilot script, so it’s been an incredible thrill to watch the show take root and see audiences embrace these characters in such a huge way this season,” Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly said. “The show is a true and rare gem in television.”
“Glee,” from 20th TV, returns with original episodes Apr. 13.
The show revolves around the members of a high school glee club and their teacher, and stars Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch, Jayma Mays, Lea Michele and Cory Monteith. Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan co-created the series with Murphy, Falchuk and Dante Di Loreto serving as executive producers and Brennan as co-executive producer.
Fox confirmed rumors today that this will be Simon Cowell’s last season as a judge on “American Idol.” He will instead launch “The X Factor” in the U.S. as an executive producer and judge:
Fox announced today that The X Factor will launch in the U.S. in the fall of 2011. Simon Cowell, who created and launched The X Factor in the U.K. in 2004, will serve as both executive producer and judge on the U.S. version, which will be produced by Syco Television and FremantleMedia North America.
The X Factor is currently shown in 17 countries worldwide with a global audience of more than 500 million, and is the No. 1 TV entertainment format in Europe. Cowell will continue to serve as both executive producer and judge on the U.K. version. The X Factor format is owned by Syco, a global music, television and film production joint venture between Cowell and Sony Music Entertainment.
“I’m thrilled that we have put a date on the launch of the U.S. version of The X Factor, and delighted to be continuing to work with Fox,” said Cowell. “We have a fantastic relationship, a great team and are all very excited about this.”
It’s an interesting question: why, when you, your chair, and sometimes even your computer move throughout the day, does your desk stay put? Herman Miller found it curious as well, and developed the Envelop Desk ($TBA) as an answer. Able to work with any seat but best paired with the company’s Embody Chair, the Envelop’s suface moves towards and away from you with a smooth sliding motion, keeping your work area ergonomically friendly even when you’re reclining.
Today Marvel.com showed off their latest: an all-new armor for the metal Avenger, Iron Man.
This newest iteration of ‘ole Shellhead’s battle-dress features the familiar Red and Gold color scheme, but a streamlined look and redistribution of colors gives it a unique style.
According to Marvel’s piece, the look was co-designed by now longtime Invincible Iron Man writer Matt Fraction and the designer for the Iron Man and Thor movies, Ryan Meinerding. Fraction is quoted as saying, “”The inspiration for the new design came from thinking about a sleeker, leaner, tougher Iron Man. If technology is increasingly getting smaller and lighter it seems like the Iron Man should do the same: ergonomic and aerodynamic.”
Marvel does note it will still be Tony Stark in the new armor, and the debut will come in April’s Invincible Iron Man #25.
When James May of the BBC’s Top Gear announced this year that he planned to make a full-sized house exclusively with LEGO bricks, it grabbed the nation’s attention immediately. Adults were as excited as children, the prospect awakening nostalgia and a childlike glee about the sheer fun of the project.
May decided to embark upon this project as part of a series on the most popular and classic children’s toys as a statement on the lost art of genuine ‘play’ with toys that inspire creativity and active participation. Work on the site, in the Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking, Surrey (UK), began at the beginning of August last year and May had a staggering 2500-plus people asking to volunteer on the construction. Of these, 1200 worked with May to transform 3.2 million LEGO bricks into a two-story technicolor abode to rival any show home, with a sweeping view of the vineyard, spacious interior and no undesirable neighbors.
The walls of the house were composed of over 2000 large hollow ‘bricks’ made by the volunteers, each containing 272 smaller LEGO bricks; as Barnaby Gunning, the architect for the build, explains, “I felt that we should find a way to get many people to put together easily manageable components and this fitted with James May’s aim of rediscovering the joys of playing with toys. Our idea for the house was that the overall building should be made by combining thousands of smaller ‘houses’, some with windows, some as roof pyramids and many simply acting as hollow blocks.” Gunning and the design team spent hours working on making a stable life-sized structure out of LEGO bricks. Using construction blocks which are expressly designed so that they can be pulled apart by a 5-year-old, and with a rule of ‘no glue’, this was no mean feat. One of the structural engineers, Eva Wates, comments that the issue of scale alone raised major questions: how to make a human-sized, human-supporting structure out of something more conventionally used to house men two inches tall?
The house could therefore not have the features of a bricks-and-mortar dwelling. Making large windows was ‘incredibly difficult’ and Wates found that “there are some things that would be really difficult to do sensibly in LEGO bricks without cheating – like long cantilevers or balconies and having lots of openings in the walls. So we didn’t have things like that and instead focused on the good properties of LEGO bricks to make something that was attractive architecturally but still worked structurally.” Planning out a house made of LEGO bricks became a task to design a house specifically for LEGO bricks. Designs were revised or completely redone, the house grew out of experimentation and ingenuity. The team took all challenges in their stride and created a building that was not just built with but also celebrated its very unusual construction material.
As the house was built and developed its eventual structure, it was the job of Christina Fallah, interior designer, to work on the inside of the house and make it a palace fit for a floppy-haired British toy enthusiast. Drawing on artist Piet Mondrian’s work for its block color and clean lines, Fallah created an interior bursting with vibrant hues, with sleek and stud-free surfaces to make the LEGO bricks look ‘like glass’. To make sure that each piece of furniture stood out from the vividly striped walls, they were made in blocks of color, but with an impressive attention to detail: the tube of toothpaste has a striped gob of paste oozing out of it, and the LEGO newspaper even has a very risqué page 3 spread. Designers worked hard to make sure that the furniture was usable, using a hollow waffle-structure inside things like chairs to make them strong and eventually producing, at May’s insistence, an impressive working LEGO shower and flushable LEGO toilet.
The construction of the house took a lot longer than planned, lasting about a month, and was by no means easy; not only did the design and construction team have to battle with the properties of an unfamiliar medium, but also the scrutiny of an unconvinced insurance company, meaning that changes to the design were frequent and they were finally even forced to build a timber structure into the walls to satisfy insurers’ concerns about the safety of the building. Tim Foster, a volunteer on the build, describes the atmosphere at the site: “Some people got really attached to set bits and got upset if it needed to be changed or got broken. It took a good few weeks until everyone started thinking on the same terms and when we did the whole thing started to work really well.” Unfortunately but unsurprisingly the weather was another issue: “The site was really exposed, so we bore the brunt of any bad weather which usually killed the mood on site.” Nonetheless the project brought LEGO fans together in a team working for something with a purely aesthetic, entertaining and playful goal, which is perhaps why it inspired such dedicated effort. One fan even donated to the house a beautiful LEGO cat dubbed Fusker, who proudly inhabited the house as a version of James May’s own cat, up until he was heartlessly stolen by a member of the public when the house was opened.
Finished, the house was a magnificent LEGO mansion, full of creature comforts. Everyone who worked on it was delighted by the final structure; Gunning speaks of how, “the house, close up, could be seen as an absolutely vast city block made of LEGO bricks. The windows in particular gave the appearance of some immense city office tower. A stained glass window on the first floor made out of thousands of tiny 2×1 bricks – some see-through, some colored and some translucent – was stunningly beautiful.” Going against expectations that it would look simply like a blown-up version of a toy house, the building was a breathtaking, glossy and bright structure which excited as much pleasure in its functionality – the smooth LEGO door-hinges, for example – as in its looks.
It was a tragedy, then, when the vineyard announced that they would need the space on which it was built to harvest their grapes. Desperately trying to find a buyer and with over 7,500 people on the Facebook group urging for the house to be saved, May launched an online appeal to save the house after Legoland Windsor were unable to take the house as a permanent exhibit. Sadly no-one could save the house, and on September 22nd it was dismantled. The bricks are now with LEGOLAND Windsor as a ‘LEGO set for the nation’, with annual builds planned that will raise money for The National Autistic Society.
Lionsgate has revealed the new trailer for director Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass hitting theaters on April 16. Based on the best-selling comic by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., the action-adventure stars Nicolas Cage, Aaron Johnson, Lyndsy Fonseca, Mark Strong, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Chloe Moretz.
You’re always hearing about off-season, post-peak times to save money on purchases and food, but it always arrives too late. Lifehacker has compiled a timeline and lots of best-time-to-buy suggestions into one post to help you plan a more frugal 2010.
They scoured the net for advice from financial sites, gadget bloggers, and other sources on the best times to buy particular items, ranging from little goods you can stock up on (aluminum foil) to big-time purchases you can easily overpay for in the wrong season (boats). Read more HERE.
Lionsgate Home Entertainment has announced 4-disc DVD ($49.98) and 3-disc Blu-ray ($49.99) releases of Mad Men: Season 3 for the 23rd March. Extras will include commentaries on each episode with cast and crew, and featurettes (“Medgar Evers: An Unsung Hero”, “Clearing the Air: The History of Cigarette Advertising”, “We Shall Overcome: The March on Washington”, “Mad Men Illustrated”). The Blu-ray release will also include a “Flashback 1963″ feature which takes an interactive look at the events and themes that defined the year.
James Cameron’s Avatar became the second-highest grossing film worldwide of all time on Wednesday, its 20th day in theaters.
Domestically, the blockbuster added $6.91 million to push its total to $374.4 million. The film has climbed to the 12th spot on the all-time domestic list, surpassing Spider-Man 2 ($373.6 million).
Internationally, Avatar has earned $760.9 million.
The combined worldwide total stands at $1,135,383,229, which surpasses The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’s $1,119,110,941. The movie now only trails Cameron’s own #1 global blockbuster Titanic, which earned $1,842,879,955.
In brightest day, through blackest night, “Green Lantern” officially has the green light.
The DC Comics adaptation, which stars Ryan Reynolds as pilot-turned-superhero Hal Jordan, has received the official go ahead from Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment, according to the blog of visual effects supervisor Karen Goulekas.
“‘Green Lantern’ got the official green light today,” she reported yesterday. “And not a second too soon — only 10 weeks out from shooting!”
If you’ve been following Chumby Industries at all, you know the company was more interested in licensing out its Internet mini apps than making actual hardware devices. Yes, there’s the recent Chumby One, but it’s good to see that Sony’s now enlisted Chumby’s services to help power its upcoming Dash personal Internet viewer, which arrives this April for $199.99.
The Dash features a 7-inch color touch screen (measured diagonally) and access to more than 1,000 free Internet apps, including news, calendars, weather, sports, social networking and more via your existing home wireless connection. On top of that, you can tap into audio and video content from Sony’s Bravia Internet video platform, including YouTube, Pandora Internet radio, Epicurious, Crackle, Livestrong, Blip.tv.
According to Sony, other content includes a Navteq app for traffic updates on a customized route and a Cozi app for simple management and syncing of family calendars.
Quarantine The Past: The Best of Pavement comes out on March 9, 2010. This fully remastered 23-track compilation will be available on double LP, CD and digital album formats. The tracks span the entirety of Pavement’s career from 1989 to 1999, from the scratchy and mysterious sounds of their early vinyl-only releases to the rich, multilayered warmth of their final recordings. Although the compilation does not include any unreleased material, it definitely digs deeper than the hits. You can preorder (with 15% discount) direct from Matador HERE.
Social networking site Facebook has released version 3.1 of its official application for the iPhone and iPod touch. The updated application offers optional Push Notifications for friend requests, wall posts, comments, and more, the ability to sync Facebook friends with your Address Book, and a choice of Live Feed within the main News Feed filter options. Facebook 3.1 is available now as a free download from the App Store.
Big Fan, the critically acclaimed Patton Oswalt film will arrive on DVD ($22.49) next Tuesday. Paul Aufiero (Oswalt), a 35-year-old parking attendant who lives at home with his mother, is the self-described world’s biggest New York Giants fan. He spends his off hours calling local sports-radio stations where he rants in support of his beloved team. One night, Paul and his best friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan) spot Giants star linebacker Quantrell Bishop and follows his limo to a strip club. Paul decides to approach his hero but things don t go as planned. The chance encounter brings Paul s world crashing down around him as his family, the team, the media and the authorities engage in a tug of war over Paul, testing his allegiances and calling into question everything he believes in.
Former Onion scribe and Wrestler screenwriter Robert D. Siegel makes his feature directorial debut with this film, which he also scripted.
Advertising agency Cossette from Vancouver, Canada, created a “steamy” advertisement for McDonald’s. A steam machine was built inside the bus shelter and periodic bursts revealed a message ‘Your Free Coffee is Ready.’
Just when you thought you were all ready to plunk down your holiday gift cards toward a new iPhone, Google comes out of a left field with a scrappy alternative. Built by HTC, the Nexus One Phone ($529 unlocked; $179 with T-Mobile contract) sports a 3.7-inch OLED display, a fast 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, and a 5-megapixel camera with flash. On the software side, the much-rumored Google phone runs the powerful Android 2.1 OS, and adds stuff like a voice-enabled keyboard, dynamic noise suppression from Audience, Inc., Live Wallpapers, a 3D photo gallery, and a plethora built-in Google apps. (From Uncrate)
The A.V. Club spoke with McSweeney’s editor Dave Eggers to find out what his favorite things are about newspapers. Last month the quarterly literary magazine morphed into a Sunday-sized newspaper for one issue. The paper known as the Panorama sold out immediately in San Francisco but can be purchased HERE.
Consumers will be able to install their own two-source, two-zone multiroom-audio systems by screwing a combination wireless-speaker/LED light into existing recessed-light fixtures in the ceiling, Klipsch promises.
The system supports up to eight speakers for four rooms of synchronized stereo playback.
The system, called LightSpeaker, was developed by Kadence Designs and will be co-branded with both companies’ names.
The centerpiece is a light/speaker that screws into a standard-size Edison-type light-bulb socket in almost all round 5-inch R30 and 6-inch R40 recessed ceiling cans, the companies said. The single-piece housing incorporates 2.4GHz wireless receiver, 20-watt digital amp, 2.5-inch driver, active EQ circuitry, and LED light that delivers the light output of a 65-watt incandescent bulb. Switches on each fixture select the speaker for left- or right-channel playback and zone one or two operation.
Music is delivered wirelessly up to 50 feet from a tabletop transmitter that connects to one or two audio sources. The base’s controls consist of zone and source selection, volume, mute, light turn-on, and light dimming. Light dimming is controlled separately from audio volume. The functions are duplicated on a handheld RF remote.
At the end of January, Klipsch will offer the speakers on its web site in a $599 package consisting of two speakers, a transmitter, remote and other accessories. Additional LightSpeakers will cost $249 each. Broader distribution is planned in March. The light speakers will install in many pendant lights, and with an accessory bracket, it will install in most lamps.
Posted by Larry Fire 
