Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on October 20th, 2006
Godzilla has been a household name in North America almost for as long as he has been in Japan. Over the course of the last few years, most of his recent films have been appearing here in all their unedited, widescreen, subtitled glory. But the film that started it all was never properly seen here theatrically until last year, and only now is available on DVD for the first time, but it was worth the wait.
When producers Harold Ross and Richard Kay picked up Gojira (1954) for American distribution, th...
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on October 18th, 2006
Vectors, PS3 Linux, and Knights not being squire - Welcome to the Sword that lost its edge a long time ago known as Dare to Play the Game.
Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. I'm your host that is a little happier this week. Why? I don't know. And no I didn't get any. Any games (foul foul minds) of course, I'm kinda in a dvd rut. I have a feeling by next and the next couple of weeks that will severely change though. There are at least 4-5 games that I am s...
Posted in: Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on October 16th, 2006
Happy belated Columbus and Thanksgiving Days!
Well, while early HD-DVD adopters were poring over the Batman Begins release, assuming one could be found somewhere in North America, the business of trying to win the hearts and minds of the next-generation home video buyer continued in earnest, with various types of news coming out over the last week.
As far as disc news goes, HBO, which was originally set to release The Sopranos 6th Season on 11/7, has now postponed the release indefin...
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on October 13th, 2006
Consider this a follow-up to last week’s column. In my musings about the Big Bug movies, I mentioned that Tarantula had only just become available for the first time as part of a Best Buy-exclusive box set of Universal SF flicks. I’ve managed to lay my hands on this set (again, you can track it down through Amazon if you’re not having any luck with Best Buy itself – for Canadian readers, I should mention that my attempts to track the disc down through the Best Buy website proved fruitless), and for fans of 50'...
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on October 11th, 2006
A Complete Tracklist, Catwoman in my Webb, and X-Men fever - Welcome to the mutant with its only power is a sharp tongue known as Dare to Play the Game.
Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. I’m your host that needs some TLC, ya know Tough Loving Coochi…oh I’m sorry, welcome back kids. Turn your head at the dirty old man who doesn’t get any. Be sure to send your 18-21 year old sisters to him directly @ 108 Pe…, okay really I need to stop. Anyhow, I assu...
Posted in: Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on October 9th, 2006
So how about this, Blu-Ray plans to region-code their discs. While it’s probably a formality that the HD-DVD camp does this sometime, it makes buying the Fox releases in Europe and Japan all the sweeter for the time being. This is while Warner revises forecast for BD and HD-DVD spending, saying that people won’t spend as much for the remainder of the year, mainly because of equipment delays (Sony, I’m looking at you on that one…).
If you’re lucky enough to live where the Target employees aren’t the brightes...
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on October 6th, 2006
Big Bug movies. How can one not love them? They have bugs. They’re big. What else do you need to know before you hand out the Oscars?
They heyday of the Big Bug flick was, of course, the 1950's, the era of the great SF boom in the cinema. The first, and best, of these films was Them! (1954). The title is deliberately coy about what the threat is, playing very consciously on Cold War paranoia (after all, who is responsible for everything going on in the world if not the mysterious “them”). Some initia...
Posted in: Dare to Play the Game, News and Opinions by Michael Durr on October 4th, 2006
Not Morgan, some great ToeJam & spinning the Rainbows - Welcome to the not trying to phone it in but I've got two cans and a string known as Dare to Play the Game.
Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. Well last week I was in Baton Rouge on a business trip. No excuse I know, I'll be better prepared next time. (Or I could always secretly send brain waves across the land so somebody could ghost write my column...yeah in complete HTML code, that's the ticket)...
Posted in: Highly Defined, News and Opinions by Archive Authors on October 2nd, 2006
I may have some more free time to do this now…
Maybe the studios shot their holiday wads when it came to big name releases last week, because the most notable news on the next-gen front was that not only will the PS3 maybe have a Blu-Ray demo disc to show off the magic of the format for those 31 or 32 of you that will be able to find and buy one when it comes out. To counter this, Microsoft will apparently include King Kong when folks buy their HD-DVD add-on when that comes out in November. Stay tun...
Posted in: Brain Blasters, News and Opinions by David Annandale on September 29th, 2006
Elizabeth Bathory (or, more properly, Erzsébet Báthory) is one of those historical figures just made for horror film. A Hungarian aristocrat, she, if the stories are to be believed, had some 650 young women killed, and would, it has been said, roar from her seat as she watched the torture. And did I mention she believed bathing in blood would keep her eternally young? Eventually, the authorities had at her, and though she was not executed, all the windows and doors of her castle were bricked up, imprisoning her in da...
