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Hero Complex Film Festival – Richard Donner, Geoff Johns, Jon Favreau and Guest

Where do heroes like to meet up on their downtime? Well no place other than The LA Times Hero Complex Film Festival! Continue reading “Hero Complex Film Festival – Richard Donner, Geoff Johns, Jon Favreau and Guest”

Hero Complex Film Festival Day 1 – Warren Beatty talks Dick

Who doesn’t have a hero complex? That drive to help the man as he’s kicked to the ground, or perhaps to just do all that you can to make the world a better place. Well the LA Times as well as LACMA have decided to dedicate an entire festival to that exact thing called “The Hero Complex Film Festival” which spans across four days of epic films and even more epic discussions with the creators of these cinematic works of genius. While most of the films are based on comic book heroes or some intergalactic ones, the moral of the festival resonates strong as you listen to the masters talk about their works after they show on the silver screen. It was my pleasure to attend, and still continue to attend the festival, so without further adeu, day one and all it’s glory.

Day 1- Warren Beatty; Dick Tracy

Some big news came out of the Hero Complex Film Festival on their very first day. It seems the director, producer, actor and writer Warren Beatty is in the process of making a sequel to his smash hit Dick Tracy, which is based off the old comic strip/animated show.

But that’s not all we learned from Mr. Beatty, he also decided to share some long drawn out wisdom for all the potential filmmakers out there. A few great quotes include “Casting is writing.” “The best person to ask about actors is actors.” Take what you will potential Spielberg’s and Lucas’.

For those of you who have seen Dick Tracy, you are fully aware of the extreme visual styles that Beatty chose, he decided to let us know a bit about that as well, talking about the difficulties of getting the lighting just right to set the mood, and to use the makeup to his advantage.

While most of the discussion was the on the technical aspects of the film and what it was like working with the big cast he had, we couldn’t help but press further about the sequel but every questioned that dare dance along that line was immediately shut down.  “I won’t talk about it…I want to get it just right…talking about movies before their made ruins them.” Interesting that he’s so reserved about it.

Thanks Geoff Boucher for this great day, and I’ll be updating you more as I continue on down the path of the heroes before me. Expect even bigger news to follow during this exciting film festival!

 

Digital Manga Publishing brings Hideyuki Kikuchi’s Vampire Hunter D Manga to comiXology

DMP’s flagship manga title makes its debut on the iPad

PRESS RELEASE

Kansas City, MO /NY, NY 6/8/11 – Digital Manga Publishing announced today that they are partnering with comiXology, the leading distributor of digital comics, to digitally release their flagship manga title Vampire Hunter D vol. 1-3 to the comiXology storefront for the iOS, Android and Web.

Hideyuki Kikuchi’s Vampire Hunter D print edition manga was launched in 2007 by Digital Manga Publishing, adapting the well renowned series of prose novel series, which began in the 80’s. Kikuchi mixed elements of gothic horror, science fiction and romance with the classic Western to produce a wholly original, post-apocalyptic vision of the distant future, where humanity is ruled by vampires and tormented by a host of creatures including demons, werewolves and mutants, as well as half-human, half-vampire ‘dhampirs’ like the series’ namesake, D.

“Manga has been in the brick and mortar comic book shops for several decades and Digital Manga Publishing would like to carry on that tradition to the digital frontier,” said Fred Lui, VP-Production of Digital Manga. ”We are partnering with comiXology because of the ubiquitous platform that they have built and the amazing reading experience they are able to provide.” The Vampire Hunter D manga and novels have an international fan base, having sold more than 17 million copies around the world. The property has also been adapted into two anime movies, an audio drama, and a video game. The entry of the Vampire Hunter D manga into the digital edition arena will prove to be equally successful, especially with the reading experience when delivered through comiXology’s Comic App.

“The addition of Digital Manga’s Vampire Hunter D with it’s rich story telling is a great addition to our platform,’ said David Steinberger, CEO of comiXology. “The manga looks especially vibrant in our Guided View format on the iPad and we look forward to adding more of Digital Manga’s titles to our platform in the coming months.”

Through this partnership Digital Manga Publishing will be releasing more of their acclaimed titles through comiXology platform.

All volumes of Vampire Hunter D will be available on the comiXology platform for $9.99 each with 20 pages of the first volume can be read for free. You can find their dedicated web storefront at comics.comixology.com/dmp and all purchases are buy once, read anywhere.

Apple Introduces iCloud

Store your content in iCloud and automatically and wirelessly push it to all your devices.

PRESS RELEASE

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Apple® today introduced iCloud®, a breakthrough set of free new cloud services that work seamlessly with applications on your iPhone®, iPad®, iPod touch®, Mac® or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and automatically and wirelessly push it to all your devices. When anything changes on one of your devices, all of your devices are wirelessly updated almost instantly.

“Today it is a real hassle and very frustrating to keep all your information and content up-to-date across all your devices,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iCloud keeps your important information and content up to date across all your devices. All of this happens automatically and wirelessly, and because it’s integrated into our apps you don’t even need to think about it—it all just works.”

The free iCloud services include:

• The former MobileMe® services—Contacts, Calendar and Mail—all completely re-architected and rewritten to work seamlessly with iCloud. Users can share calendars with friends and family, and the ad-free push Mail account is hosted at me.com. Your inbox and mailboxes are kept up-to-date across all your iOS devices and computers.

• The App Store™ and iBookstore? now download purchased iOS apps and books to all your devices, not just the device they were purchased on. In addition, the App Store and iBookstore now let you see your purchase history, and simply tapping the iCloud icon will download any apps and books to any iOS device (up to 10 devices) at no additional cost.

• iCloud Backup automatically and securely backs up your iOS devices to iCloud daily over Wi-Fi when you charge your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Backed up content includes purchased music, apps and books, Camera Roll (photos and videos), device settings and app data. If you replace your iOS device, just enter your Apple ID and password during setup and iCloud restores your new device.

• iCloud Storage seamlessly stores all documents created using iCloud Storage APIs, and automatically pushes them to all your devices. When you change a document on any device, iCloud automatically pushes the changes to all your devices. Apple’s Pages®, Numbers® and Keynote® apps already take advantage of iCloud Storage. Users get up to 5GB of free storage for their mail, documents and backup—which is more amazing since the storage for music, apps and books purchased from Apple, and the storage required by Photo Stream doesn’t count towards this 5GB total. Users will be able to buy even more storage, with details announced when iCloud ships this fall.

• iCloud’s innovative Photo Stream service automatically uploads the photos you take or import on any of your devices and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices and computers. So you can use your iPhone to take a dozen photos of your friends during the afternoon baseball game, and they will be ready to share with the entire group on your iPad (or even Apple TV®) when you return home. Photo Stream is built into the photo apps on all iOS devices, iPhoto® on Macs, and saved to the Pictures folder on a PC. To save space, the last 1,000 photos are stored on each device so they can be viewed or moved to an album to save forever. Macs and PCs will store all photos from the Photo Stream, since they have more storage. iCloud will store each photo in the cloud for 30 days, which is plenty of time to connect your devices to iCloud and automatically download the latest photos from Photo Stream via Wi-Fi.

• iTunes® in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes music to all your iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all your devices. In addition, music not purchased from iTunes can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match, a service that replaces your music with a 256 kbps AAC DRM-free version if we can match it to the over 18 million songs in the iTunes Store®, it makes the matched music available in minutes (instead of weeks to upload your entire music library), and uploads only the small percentage of unmatched music. iTunes Match will be available this fall for a $24.99 annual fee. Apple today is releasing a free beta version of iTunes in the Cloud, without iTunes Match, for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users running iOS 4.3. iTunes in the Cloud will support all iPhones that iOS 5 supports this fall.

Apple is ready to ramp iCloud in its three data centers, including the third recently completed in Maiden, NC. Apple has invested over $500 million in its Maiden data center to support the expected customer demand for the free iCloud services.

Pricing & Availability
The iCloud beta and Cloud Storage APIs are available immediately to iOS and Mac Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iCloud will be available this fall concurrent with iOS 5. Users can sign up for iCloud for free on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5 or a Mac running Mac OS® X Lion with a valid Apple ID. iCloud includes 5GB of free cloud storage for Mail, Document Storage and Backup. Purchased music, apps, books and Photo Stream do not count against the storage limit. iTunes Match will be available for $24.99 per year (US only).

iTunes in the Cloud is available today in the US and requires iTunes 10.3 and iOS 4.3.3. Automatic download of apps and books is available today. Using iCloud with a PC requires Windows Vista or Windows 7; Outlook 2010 or 2007 is recommended for accessing contacts and calendars.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.