It’s time to reminisce on the summer of 2008! Did you have rad parties?! What about an extreme vacation?! Continue reading “Summer’s Dwindling Away”
Category: Real-Life
Is “The Dark Knight” Cursed? Five Reasons to Ponder
The latest Batman blockbuster, The Dark Knight, is on its way to beating Titanic as the top-grossing movie of all time. But at what cost? Over the course of the production and after its premiere, it seems as if the main cast of The Dark Knight has some sort of curse on them. No, not some voodoo, Magic: The Gathering sort of curse, let’s just say a streak of bad luck.
Continue reading “Is “The Dark Knight” Cursed? Five Reasons to Ponder”
The Olympics Brings in the Viewers
The Olympics are here, if you haven’t noticed! The results are coming in and the Opening Ceremony in Beijing was the MOST VIEWED EVER for a non-U.S. Summer Olympics. It had nearly 70 million total viewers, 14 million more than Athens (56 million).
NON-U.S. OPENING CEREMONY TOTAL AUDIENCE:
1) Beijing – 2008 – 69.9 million
T2) Athens – 2004 – 56.0 million
T2) Sydney – 2000 – 56.0 million
4) Seoul – 1988 – 51.2 million
5) Barcelona – 1992 – 50.2 million
“The Olympic Opening Ceremony captivated the American public in unprecedented numbers for a non-U.S. Olympics,” said Dick Ebersol, Chairman, NBC Universal Sports & Olympics. “It was a magical and memorable spectacle and a great way to start the Beijing Olympics.”
Of course you can catch all the coverage on NBCOlympics.com. Even this website has had a huge traffic spike: 70 million page views on Friday, 10 times more than the seven million page views on the opening day of the Athens Games.
2008 Olympics Video Coverage at NBC Olympics.com!
Spanish Cabbies Want GTA4 Banned Too!
After being banned from Thailand, Rockstar’s infamous Grand Theft Auto 4 may also see a boot from another country: Spain. According to GamePolitics, the Catalan Taxi Federation’s secretary general Josep Maria Goñi has asked the government to ban the game.
Goñi states that the move has been triggered by the Thailand murder case where a loser kid wanted to know “if it’s as easy to hijack a taxi as it is in the game” and did just that. Kid will soon face execution by a lethal injection.
And GTA isn’t the only one on Goñi’s hitlist. He wants a ban on all games with “a high level of violence or which “celebrate” drug trafficking or prostitution”. Well, that isn’t something new, because there must be about a million people or more on this planet who want a ban on those.
Regardless, it should be noted that Goñi didn’t say anything about movies. Apparently, movies with a high level of violence and which celebrate drug trafficking or prostitution must be perfectly fine. But video games? Think of the kids!
While we don’t know how the Spanish Government has responded to this, we’ll just hope that they won’t. There must be more important matters in Spain that banning video games, dammit!
No GTA in Thailand after game-related murder
It’s controversy-time for Rockstar again. Reuters reports that Thailand has halted sale of Grand Theft Auto 4 after a dumbass teenager admitted to killing a goddamn taxi driver after being inspired by the game. While we’re not sure as to how much of an impact this is going to have on the game’s sales, Rockstar is definitely going to take some moral beatings.
The 18 year old boy wanted to see if it’s as easy to hijack a taxi as it is in the game. To conduct this experiment, he tried it on a 54 year old taxi driver. When the driver resisted, the boy killed him with a knife. He was later caught “trying to steer a cab backwards out of a Bangkok street with the severely wounded driver in the back seat”. Holy shit.
And what’s worse? The boy will be executed by a lethal injection if proved guilty. Seriously. I’m not even sure what to say. The boy was an arse alright, but a lethal injection? Thailand’s law is not to be messed with.
While anti-video game fanatics will say otherwise, I still say that there’s nothing wrong with the game. If the kid is stupid enough to try and find out if it is “as easy to hijack a taxi in real life as it is in the game”, then he was definitely the village idiot here. Or maybe suicidal.
A lethal injection. Damn.
Keanu Reeves as Spike in Cowboy Bebop movie? Woah.
A live-action adaptation of the extraordinary anime series Cowboy Bebop is bad enough, but then it gets worse. Rumour has it that Keanu Reeves almost certainly has the role of lead protagonist Spike Spiegel. Now, Spike doesn’t really talk much, which is a good thing, but I still have every belief that Reeves will screw this up.
The movie is supposedly under development at Fox, but they haven’t announced anything officially yet. A source close to FirstShowing here says that the movie is still there, and will be headed for a 2010 release. No clear director yet, but Keanu has been attached to Spike Spiegel for some 8 months now. Disturbing.
I’m against a live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop, because it is best damn anime I’ve ever seen and one of my most favourite franchises. Now a CG movie or something, I can appreciate that. But why does Hollywood have to take it live action?
The awesome characters from the series will now be replaced by some crappy people like Keanu Reeves and what-not. I also doubt it the series will capture the original theme of the series, its mature Western feel, the importance of the soundtrack and its synchronization with the fight scenes. Instead, we’ll probably just be treated to some fancy special effects.
With the disaster that was Speed Racer, you must understand that it’s difficult to get your hopes up for this. I’m not saying that the anime was much better than what the Wachowkis made of it, but still.
