Blog Posts

Highly Defined – The World of High Definition

Posted in Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on April 30th, 2007

And how did you spend YOUR NFL Draft weekend?

This seems to be a week where things just aren’t happening news wise (granted, the $299 HD-DVD player remark was clarified to be a little vaguer this week, but that’s about it), but there’s some fun things on the disc release front, most of it for Blu-Ray fans. Sony pimps out The Patriot, Wild Things and Flatliners on 7/3. Lion’s Gate puts Season Two of Weeds out on 7/24, and Waiting comes out one week prior. Warner will be rel…
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Brain Blasters

Posted in Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on April 27th, 2007

Complaining about remakes is a lazy, fish-in-the-barrel sport. Any scribe can and has done it, especially, one suspects, when ideas are otherwise running low. But remakes are on my mind thanks to a recent encounter with a particularly bad one, so screw it, I’m ruminating.

Received wisdom posits that remakes are inherently a bad thing, on a par with sequels (but even more morally suspect, depending on the quality of the original film), and a sign of creative stagnation in the film industry. This is true as f…
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Dare to Play the Game

Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on April 25th, 2007

Panzer Dragoon Orta on 360, Pinball Live style and a GTA Lawsuit dropped – Welcome to the column that is compatible on Colecovision’s and Apple IIc’s but not the Odyssey known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. In addition to redheads, I realized this week I have a thing for Eastern European accents. My mom was born in Poland but to be truthful, her accent is rather Americanized. My grandmother (bless her soul, may she rest in …
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Highly Defined – The World of High Definition

Posted in Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on April 23rd, 2007

Apologies to all last week for the postponement of last week’s column. As one who has a personal interest in the activities surrounding Virginia Tech, I had a lot more on my plate to digest. Anyway, onward and upward in the next generation news and opinion.

Several big things have happened over the course of the last couple of weeks, the first being Samsung’s announcement of their own hybrid player. Like the current LG player, it will play both formats, unlike the LG player, it will support HDi, which is go…
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Brain Blasters

Posted in Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on April 20th, 2007

The horror film’s energy seems to move in cyclical patterns from country to country. At different points of the genre’s history, the best work tends to cluster geographically. I admit that my evidence for this is rather anecdotal, but let’s look at the patterns.

France is where it all begins, with Georges Méliès creating the first horror movies in 1896. The genre is, admittedly, in very embryonic form at this stage, but in the early years of the 20th Century, this is where the action is. The American film i…
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Dare to Play the Game

Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on April 18th, 2007

More Space for your PS3, Putting your XBLA, & OutRun Til You Drop – Welcome to the column that promises to bring you 11,796 more bytes known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. I’m glad your back, whoever you are. My honest hope is that you are a 5’4 redheaded girl who likes to watch movies and play video games. I’m picky I know. And call me. Some weeks, I just think I float in space until friday and then I think I wake up for…
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Highly Defined – The World of High Definition

Posted in Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on April 16th, 2007

Sorry guys, in between starting a new job today and the news ongoing at Virginia Tech, I’m busy trying to find out what’s going on at a school I’m very familiar with. Back with more news and updates next week.

Brain Blasters

Posted in Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on April 13th, 2007

Before anything else, some housecleaning. In my piece on BluRay and HD-DVD some time ago, I quoted Video Watchdog as saying the BluRay machines would not be backwards compatible. This has turned out, of course, to be inaccurate. Video Watchdog printed its correction, and I now follow suit.

Right, then. So, after a disappointing opening at the box office, the first reports about how Grindhouse will appear on DVD have surfaced, and that’s all the excuse I need to talk about the film again…
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Dare to Play the Game

Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on April 11th, 2007

Confessions (of a WoW addict) part 2, Xbox Spring Dashboard update and Jam! – Welcome to the column that lays bricks like nobody’s business known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. I didn’t do much this weekend, you hardly knew a holiday was passing through. I was going to see Grindhouse but the super awesome girl that I wanted to go out with was called out to work at the last moment. I try, I try. But…
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Highly Defined – The World of High Definition

Posted in Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on April 9th, 2007

Happy Easter, with eggs, and bunnies, and Jesus, and all that.

OK, so your friendly neighborhood format neutral buyer decided to pick up a title he already had on HD-DVD just to do some comparisons, but also to cover my bases in the event that one format suddenly tanks. So when I got Superman Returns, aside from not having a lossless track, the picture seems a little bit on the blandish side. In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t seen the HD version in awhile, but seriously, I hope that there…
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Brain Blasters

Posted in Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on April 5th, 2007

So Grindhouse is upon us, and fans of exploitation cinema everywhere are no doubt bathing in the warm glow of nostalgia for bygone sleaze and spooky cinemas many of us were too young to enter, but that nevertheless were surrounded by an aura of forbidden fascination. Here in Winnipeg, I remember, in my formative years as a film fan, being simultaneously frightened and attracted by the ad campaigns for movies playing at the likes of the Downtown and the Eve. The era has passed, of course, never to return, but t…
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Dare to Play the Game

Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on April 4th, 2007

PSP Price Drop (Sales were over), Interviewing a WOW addict (his life is over), and Guitar Hero 2(my life is over) – Welcome to the little addiction that meetings won’t cure known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. Sorry for the late start this week, it is not intentional. I just feel kinda out of it. I’ve been dealing with my water heater this week; I finally got a new one but it was leaking gas in the control knob. The guy …
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Highly Defined – The World of High Definition

Posted in Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on April 2nd, 2007

And another week remains quiet on the western next-gen front.

Well, HD-DVD seems to be firing back when it comes to their lack of releases in the first quarter of the year. The problem seems to be though that not many releases are new, and the equipment price cuts that have been previously reported elsewhere were rehashed here. So on the impressive scale, it’s a light rock in the ocean. But still, it’s nice to see them doing SOMETHING. European buyers will be seeing a version of the Sony BDP coming out this…
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Brain Blasters

Posted in Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on March 30th, 2007

In theatres now (and no doubt hitting DVD before long) is the Korean film The Host. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a monster movie this good, and even longer since we’ve had one with this much depth.

Any text, of course, has its subtext, and this is as true of giant monster movies as any other work of art. But some films are much more a much richer subtext than others, partly because the filmmakers were quite deliberate in seeing their monsters in a metaphorical or symbolic light. Though the e…
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Dare to Play the Game

Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on March 28th, 2007

WOW the Rebuttal, Marvel at the Hulk, and a God of War mystery – Welcome to the column that has many mysteries, like the one of how it gets run every week known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. What do you get when you have a rusted out 11 year old water heater that leaks? You get a new freaking water heater. Grizzly Adams put it in on Tuesday. He did a fantastic job. I now have hot water and the leaks appear to be drying …
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Highly Defined – The World of High Definition

Posted in Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on March 26th, 2007

Breaking the Blu cherry and all still remains well. I hope you’ve enjoyed my first two Blu reviews for the site. Rest assured, everything is always a work in progress, and we’re coming along rather nicely, don’t you think?

The big news for the week has to be the announcement of The Matrix trilogy arriving to HD-DVD shelves on 5/22, with a BD release sometime down the road. The common assumption for the BD delay appears to be the lack of BD-J interactivity right now, which would also explain why Ba…
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Brain Blasters

Posted in Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on March 23rd, 2007

A tale of three films. One is original. One is its remake. One is a cash-in. And the latter is the one that became a classic.

In 1975, a big-budget SF effort by Norman Jewison hit the theatres with much publicity. This was Rollerball. In a future world with no wars, and everything is controlled by corporations, human aggression is channeled through the titular, extremely violent game. The game has been designed to be such that becoming good at it is impossible, and thus there are no heroes, and the f…
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Dare to Play the Game

Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on March 21st, 2007

Take Two for Sale?, Cooking Your Mama and An Extremely Long Name – Welcome to the column that brings you in the F & M in family but in reverse known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. I found me a new addiction to stray me (at least temporarily) from Rainbow Six Vegas, it is also the first PC game that I’ve played in years that wasn’t solitaire. It’s called Guild Wars. I picked up the first one for a me…
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Highly Defined – The World of High Definition

Posted in Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on March 19th, 2007

P>The first full week of being format neutral, and all appears to be well.

Well, that pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? I picked up Casino Royale, Layer Cake and Black Hawk Down, and all seems to be pretty good. All of them having PCM soundtracks doesn’t hurt either. I’ve also grabbed Motorstorm and Resistance Fall of Man recently, so the gaming and movie split is about 50-50 right now, on top of everything else I’ve been doing. The reasoning for those three titles, aside f…
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Brain Blasters

Posted in Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on March 16th, 2007

Gosh, I don’t know if today’s subject counts as cult movies. These are genre films, though. And they’re old.

Really old.

They’re the first.

Horror, fantasy and SF in film effectively owe their existence to one man: Georges Méliès. A stage magician, he attended one of the first shows the Lumière brothers put on with their cinematograph, and was intrigued by the device’s commercial possibilities. Come 1896, he was making his own movies. He built a movie a studio, and here I let Denis Giffo…
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Dare to Play the Game

Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on March 14th, 2007

Take Two takes a loss, Jungle Hunting and Turtle Soup 360 style – Welcome to the column that wishes it could celebrate Steak & BJ day with more than a steak known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. No, I’m not a First Sergeant in Rainbow Six…told you! I’m about three bars in though, not too bad I guess. However, I did complete the co-op terrorist hunts for a nice achievement. I am also only three missions away from the co-op st…
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Highly Defined – The World of High Definition

Posted in Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on March 13th, 2007

Happy March 13th (and a very special one at that)!

Well, your humble reviewer has gone through quiet a bit in the last several days. I’ll try to make it as brief as possible; work sucks ass. Let me count the ways; I came in at 1:30 in the morning once on a day I wasn’t working, I helped my boss repel some REALLY explicit propositions by one of his employees when we were in New York City on business, I get some medical attention to him when he has a stroke on ANOTHER trip to New York, and what do I get as re…
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Brain Blasters

Posted in Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on March 9th, 2007

There’s exploitation, and there’s exploitation. And then there’s nunsploitation. There are few forms more unabashedly interested in the full-on sleaze wallow, with the possible exception of the nunsploitation film’s close cousin, the Women In Prison (WIP) flick. As ever, this is less a survey (there’s an entire book on the subject out there), more some semi-random musings.

Sleazy as the form gets, its roots are relatively serious in nature (but then, the same is true of the WIP). One of the pioneering works…
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Dare to Play the Game

Posted in Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on March 7th, 2007

More 360 memory, Less Taunting in Lost Planet and sitting in Time Pilot – Welcome to the column that is listed as Elite but reads like a bad issue of Mad Magazine known as Dare to Play the Game.

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. Well, barely but I made it to Master Sergeant in Rainbow Six Vegas. I seriously doubt I will be a First Sergeant this week, maybe next. I’m probably going to concentrate on getting a few achievements now rather than worry abo…
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Highly Defined – The World of High Definition

Posted in Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on March 5th, 2007

When last I left you, the viewer, I was in the midst of frantically typing “Yo” so that I could be a participant of the chat with Warner Brothers Home Video, to ask about any coming next-gen titles from the studio. What we found out was fairly illuminating. The Warner hits L.A. Confidential, Poltergeist, Deliverance and the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet will all appear on HD-DVD and Blu-ray this year, with Heat and The Music Man to come out in 2008. They also reconfirmed …
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