Street Fighter: Extreme Edition on Blu-Ray [Capcom]

It's known that, as far as games are concerned, Knight is working on an unannounced project for the 360, PS3 and PC, so we'd be surprised if Dante's Inferno (or whatever name it ends up settling with) wasn't it.

Universal hot for 'Inferno' [Variety]

It would be a crying shame not to deal with Marcus and Dom. I would not be interested in the movie if we weren't dealing with them. I want to see those guys. I want to see 'Emergence Day.' I want to see this stuff happen.

Morgan also promises that the Locust Horde will be turning up in full force for the movie, with bad guys like Corpsers and Beserkers making an appearance at some stage. All good news for Gears fans, but remember, Murphy's Law (of game movies) demands that this movie suck. It demands it. But hey, if that happens, at least it'll suck authentically.

'Gears Of War' Screenwriter Aims For 'Gritty And Real' Big-Screen Version Of Video Game [MTV]

It's ... really impressive to me that Max Payne came in number one this weekend...What I'm hearing is that the film is doing very well in many other European countries and Australia. This kind of opening brings us a lot closer to the reality of a sequel.

From haterade to champagne and talks of sequels in half a week? Amazing what the sight of buckets full of cash money will do to your thoughts on a shitty movie.

Miller Tones Down Max Payne Film Criticisms [Edge]

3D Realms "Bewildered" by Max Payne Flick [Edge]

World of Warcraft movie update [Moviehole, via 1UP]

When it comes to the big screen adventure, Arad said the plan is to mix things up a little bit. In the game, the action moves very quickly to the island, but the film will open things up a bit and add some depth before the island adventure.

So, more talking, more sexual tension, less gunplay. Avrad also stresses that Nathan Drake is not just another Indiana Jones clone, saying "Indiana Jones was always a good guy and he relentlessly did the right thing. Drake is a guy who's being hauled over to virtue throughout the game". The story should at least make for a half-decent popcorn flick, but wasn't the main appeal of the game the fact it already felt like a movie?

[The Man Behind Marvel Movie Magic Hopes To Do the Same For Gaming]

For Davis to take The Sims—the videogame equivalent of a soap opera or a telenovela—and turn it into yet another teen male high adventure story not only stereotypes videogames as being the province of boys alone, it also represents a missed opportunity to illustrate how this videogame in particular has illuminated the inner lives of girls, women and men alike.

Wait, there are men that play The Sims?

The Big Idea: Should a Game Whose Core Audience Is Teen Girls Become a Movie Aimed at Teen Boys? [Newsweek]

Oh, and anyone doubting the legitimacy of these pics might be interested in going here, and reading Microsoft's angry "please stop" letter.

Exclusive: 2nd Halo Fall Of Reach Concept Art! [Latino Review]

I grew up with the ‘Street Fighter’ games. I don’t see them as cheesy or funny, but as serious characters that deserve to be explored in their own right.

Which explains, we guess, why the movie's based on the exploits of Chun Li and not the exploits of a large Russian man who wrestles bears in his underwear.

Justin Marks - Bringing Bionic Commando to Comics [Newsarama, via MTV]

You’re always going to be worried that in that first meeting they’re going to be, like, ‘OK, it’s Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey on a desert island hunting for pirate treasure,’ but it’s not going to go that way

My expectation at this time, from everything that I’ve heard, is that it will very much honour the dramatic and thematic elements of the game… They certainly understand the material and are able to provide a stamp of their own.

Thank goodness for that. But, now you mention it, that wouldn't be the worst Uncharted movie...

BioShock movie won’t be “Kate Hudson hunting for pirate treasure,” says Levine [VG247]

Sure, I raise my voice, get in people's faces... But I ramp up the humour, too. He's like a version of my character in The Departed - sly and cynical but also very funny. That's the kind of thing people like to see me doing.

We also like seeing him dance around in his undies and/or singing Transformers songs, but hopefully they won't also be in the movie. They're not really canon.

Payne is Wahlberg's "favourite role so far" [Total Film, via Eurogamer]

Exclusive: Halo Fall Of Reach Concept Art! [Latino Review]

I got more responsibility now than I've ever had with the kids and everything else. I don't want to be spending 14 hours on the videogame and then eight hours on the set. It's not going to work out.

Before you get all huffy, I don't think you need to have played Max Payne to know how to prattle on in a low voice and dive sideways in slow motion. Mark Wahlberg can do that just fine already.

Mark Wahlberg: Why I'm Ready for Marriage [People]

Though I said Vampire Killer is gone from this script, Simon does wield what is described as a chain whip in two instances. However, it is nondescript and in one of the occasions is wielded as an off-hand weapon. So what is Simon armed with throughout the film? A fucking sword.

Oh dear. Nothing like setting off on the wrong foot with fans, is there?

Paul W. S. Anderson’s Castlevania [CC2K]

Capcom making Lost Planet movie [Variety]

I'm really fond of the Brainy Gamer, mostly because Michael Abbott's posts almost always live up to the title of the blog; this week, he tackled the question of 'genius' and auteurs, amongst a lot of MGS 4 talk (especially in reference to Citizen Kane). Abbott looks at the parallels between D.W. Griffith (director of Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, among a lot of others) and Kojima Hideo of Metal Gear fame. Leaving aside the question of whether Kojima 'is' a genius (at the very least, he is an auteur), Abbott draws parallels between the two, especially in terms of a 'blind spot':

His theater training may have impaired him in some ways, but Griffith always hired interesting, talented people. Lillian Gish almost single-handedly rescues several of Griffith's films from the ham-fisted performances of most of the other actors.

Similarly, Kojima's reliance on cutscenes can be tiresome, but he is a fine and gifted filmmaker. One can easily track his maturation from the original MGS. Unlike other so-called cinematic games like Mass Effect, the filmmaking in MGS4 is visually creative, high-caliber stuff. As with Lillian Gish, it's almost enough to make you forget the blind spots.

So how to account for it? Arrogance? Stubbornness? Or is it really just a blind spot? A certain inability to see the strangling grip of an old mode on a new one. An infatuation with the pretty girl who won't love you back. If the very thing that limits the artist is also the artist's primary mechanism for delivering content - as it is for both Griffith and Kojima - that blind spot is a very pernicious thing.

No one's perfect, of course — but Abbott's musings are thought provoking, especially considering the overabundance of film/game discussions.

The genius blind spot [The Brainy Gamer]

Max Payne Set Photos [/film]

Evil Avatar Radio Ep. Eleventy One - David Hayter [Evil Avatar]

However, the best reference is also the most subtle. In the first five minutes of the movie, after Jason wakes up from his dream, you can see a Dreamcast on the left hand corner of the screen underneath his TV.

I got in contact with Paul Sams of Blizzard, and he said, 'We will not sell the movie rights, not to you...especially not to you. Because it's such a big online game success, maybe a bad movie would destroy that ongoing income, what the company has with it."

...a few big games like "Bioshock" and "Assassin's Creed" are, I hear, on Hollywood's radar.

The audience is always behind Bourne. Bourne is always thinking two or three levels ahead. He's going to deliberately let himself get captured by holding his hands up, and when somebody gets close to him, he executes a quick reversal and kicks people out.

... So how do we do that with the player? For a long time, we wandered down these alleys, like, "Okay, we'll let the player do a mission plant. We'll sneak into the areas ahead of time, plant weapons, case the joint, and figure out where everything is." We just thought we'd end up with a watered-down version of Splinter Cell. It wouldn't be as good or as interesting as that game. So we decided to go up-tempo with the action.

How we tried to preserve the character's thoughtfulness and his improvisation is in the contextual interactions with the environment. What'll happen is when Bourne is fighting, he executes these takedown moves, and depending on what's in the environment, you get different outcomes. The controls are simple, but the outcomes are a surprising and complex.

The interview is a bit longish, but well worth a read through.

Designing Filmic Games: Paul O'Connor And The Bourne Conspiracy [Gamasutra]

On the Indiana Jones weekend - May 23 - we will go out and destroy Indiana Jones in the Box Office! We all know that Harrison Ford is older as my grandpa and his time is up - would Michael Moore say!

But wait. He's not done! It's not enough to heap shit on 20th century cinema's most acclaimed entertainers, he's got to go heap shit on a third:

Spielberg gets sloppy. We saw that with War of the Worlds (why the fuck the older brother survived?) and also in parts of Jaws, E.T., Munich etc.! My performance in Postal as 'Nazi Theme Park Owner' outperforms easily Ben Kingsley in Schindler's List!

Howard created a compelling character, decorated him with sex and violence, and threw him into the brambles of punishing adventure, all in order to tell us what he thought of our world. Games can do this, too. They have to do it to justify their cost. Conan the game puts the most technologically advanced form of leisure ever developed into the service of imaginary sword-fighting. Consider how far civilization had to advance to make this barbarism available to us. These are precisely the sort of issues Howard confronted. These conundrums are what Conan is about; they're what make Conan more interesting than any other pulp character. They're also what I'm paying for.

He's got a point, especially in regards to the fact that games could go deeper even with their 'B' material than they do currently. I love a good B-list flick and would cheerfully shell out for a gaming experience that parallels the fun of watching those films. I re-watched the epitome of B-list cinema in my personal collection (Le Pacte des loups) last night, and it's so deliciously bad yet wildly entertaining, how could you not have a good time? But there's more going on than just heaving cleavage, Louis Quinze excess, and anachronistic martial arts sequences, and that's one reason it's so enjoyable. Why can't our gaming B-list go a little deeper?

Conan's B-list Problem - And Ours [The Escapist]

Todays audience is a savvy, involved group so the film must be A plus plus in every area in order to capture the magic of the first film...The original Mortal Kombat game was born a child of many visual loves by the creators at midway so this latest version borrows heavily from that pioneering spirit and must be thought out and executed at the highest level in order for it succeed in today's market place.

When your game is backed by tens of millions of dollars, you can't use it as a testing ground for wild new mechanics and dynamics never tried before; however, when you're building a low-budget 2D platformer, even your successful experiments won't make an impact on the medium at large, the "big games" that get everyone talking. What we've got left is a huge gulf between popular, full-experience 3D action/adventure games that need to be financial blockbusters to survive, and marginalized casual/handheld/movie licensed games that don't register on the mass consciousness radar. We need our B films. We need that freedom to explore truly meaningful new avenues of interaction, quickly and nimbly, without the pressure of an eight-figure budget and multi-year dev schedule weighing down on the whole enterprise. Noir already scouted this territory for us.

It's a thought provoking piece on a subject that gets talked about a lot and well worth a read through.

Noir [Fullbright]

"In the future, I will focus on small films such as (the video game adaptation) 'Postal' or (the Vietnam war drama) 'Tunnel Rats,' " he said. "These are films that represent my true passion, and they can be done with small budgets."

Boll ejected from big-budget ring [The Hollywood Reporter]

7:15 p.m. Flick finally starts. Appear to be in a medieval castle. The bedroom. Naked Ray Liotta spoons naked Leelee Sobieski. Close-up of Ray. Looks like he just jetted first-class into Middle Ages. Straight from Goodfellas. That's some Witness Protection Program.

According to VH1's GameBreak, 8-Bit is the best movie about video games ever made.

This movie's about how games affect our culture, how the genre crosses the culture to influence music, art and the way we think. In "8-Bit," artists invade the online shooter "Counter-Strike" to add messages of peace on walls with paint ball guns - if they don't get shot first. In "8-Bit," people make compelling trance, club and even pop folk-ish music using old GameBoys. In "8-Bit," artist Mary Flanagans takes the software from "Unreal Tournament 2003" to make "domestic," a memoirist's world in which she tells a story about how her father was trapped in the family's house during a fire. It's amazing stuff all the way around.

I have never even heard of this movie, let alone seen it. Seattle has a bad track record for indie cinema, often getting skipped over on nationwide releases, so sometimes even our alternative papers won't know about this stuff. Looks like the release is very limited thus far. Eliza Gauger

8-Bit: the Best Game Movie Ever Made [VH1 GameBreak, via Digg]

Perhaps too long, actually... the answer is pretty simple. Most Hollywood producers simply don't understand gaming and don't have any great love for the properties they develop. Instead, they choose them based upon the fact that they are proven franchises with a history of making profit in another medium, yet never take much time to understand the qualities that made them such success in another medium.

However, one observation Monica brings to the table which we'd never really thought of before is that the rights to a game being bought up by a Hollywood studio might actually make it less likely to be made. Hollywood producers tend to buy up rights simply to horde them, preventing rival studios to develop them as films and consequently make profits on them. A nice bit of Heraclitus, that: games that have their film rights bought up tend not to be made, but a film can only be made on a game property if the rights are bought.

Would You Like A Franchise With That? (Games, Comics, and Movies From A Hollywood Perspective) [Games First]