Rahul Shirke

Bruce Campbell’s “My Name is Bruce” trailer is GROOVY

I cannot believe that a movie as awesome this has passed under my nose. Bruce Campbell, the second greatest action hero of all time (the first being Chris Norris, of course) is back to his monster-bashing antics in My Name is Bruce, which shall make its way to the theatres some time in 2008.

This time, Bruce plays as himself, rather than the awesome Ash. The film’s groovy plot goes like this: A bunch of Oregon small town residents decide that in order to defeat an ancient Chinese God of war, they must enlist the ultimate monster-killer, Bruce Campbell. Unfortunately, Bruce is a filmstar, not a monster-killer and their plans have been abruptly dashed.

But fear not, for Bruce shall kick ass again in his favourite genre: a comedy/action/horror hybrid. The trailer below doesn’t look so bad, but a strange feeling nagging me in the back of my mind tells me that this isn’t worth getting all hyped up about and may just end up being bad.

Harmonix, Activision brawl over Guitar Hero PS3 controllers

In what is a most amusing series of events, Harmonix and Activision are fighting like kindergarten kids over who’s responsible for not releasing a patch for Rock Band.

Harmonix, with some help from MTV, thought that releasing a patch for Rock Band, which would allow Guitar Hero III controller compatibility is a good idea. The idea did, after all, come after thunderous public request. However, it didn’t go down as well as they had expected. Harmonix’s patch was approved by Sony, but not by Activision, who supposedly objected to the patch.

This makes Harmonix and MTV heroes who want a free and liberal gaming area and where everything is good and compatible. Activision is suddenly a dark, evil EA-esque villain who wants the depraved gamers to buy Rock Band controllers. And because we need a fine background for a fight, we have Sony and their PlayStation 3.

Sony promptly replied that this is a matter out of their hands, and one that should be “amicably resolved” by Harmonix, MTV and Activision. Well, at least Sony has nothing to do with the whole fiasco. Then again, it’s the ill-fated, all-cursed PlayStation 3 that serves as a setting for this tale.

Activision struck back yesterday by saying that MTV/Viacom is unwilling to participate in a healthy ~~tussle~~ discussion about the issue. According to their press release, Activision were the good guys all along and Harmonix/MTV have been the ones who were not talking with Activision about their technology.

This fight is almost like the Silicon Knights/Epic brawl, except there’s no legal matters here and the subject is ridiculous. What’s bad is that the gamers are suffering in the long run. They are the ones who haven’t gotten the patch yet, while the big corporations talk about how they love gaming and want gaming to be accessible.

How will Harmonix/MTV respond? Is the PS3 really cursed? Isn’t watching this silly fight fun? Comment and conquer!

Google to launch knowledge-sharing service, “Knol”

Google, the internet giant that was originally a humble, but powerful search engine has now manifested into one of the most important corporations into the world. In its goal of encouraging spread of knowledge, Google now has an e-mail service, an online office suite, a social networking site, two of the world’s largest video sharing sites, the largest blog hosting site, and so on.

Now Google is turning to the knowledge-sharing section of Web 2.0 with its under-development service titled “Knol” (supposedly a “unit of knowledge”). This appears to be a weird cross of Facebook, Wikipedia and Instructables, and I can already foresee it going big.

Unlike Wikipedia, though – Knol will emphasize on authors, as opposed to topics. Everyone will have a cute profile, and will be rated by the community depending on how good their articles are. The goal of the project is, as you might have guessed, to encourage people to open up about a topic they know a lot about. While good in theory, this may not exactly be the best thing out there.

YouTube sounds good in theory – a video sharing site. Browse through now and you’ll see some of the worst and most banal videos the internet has ever known. Since Google has stated that they will in no way directly serve as moderator or editor to Knol, there’s perfect chance that Knol will be ruined by the millions of teenagers who think they know a lot about something.

The site will host anything from outlines of a topic to in-depth articles to how-tos and just about anything that educates the reader. Google also hints that authors will also be able to use Google AdSense to generate money from sharing knowledge. This reminds me that Knol may just end up to be a pseudo-blog site with people posting on how to manage girlfriends, instead of a long, emo poem on how their girlfriend dumped them. Best community website ever? I don’t think so.

Then again, since there is so much of an emphasis on authors, there’s perfect chance that a lot of real talent can be highlighted here. If you ignore the unwashed masses, you might just find a few geniuses worth listening to (try YouTube as a comparison).

What do you think of all this? Is Google really doing good with this, or are they just money-hungry executives masquerading as internet geeks, monolopolizing the Internet? Love Google’s idea? Think it should be different? Post it all into the comments!

Dungeon Siege movie poster strikes!

If you are a lucky inhabitant of this planet, you will have not heard of the movie named “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale”, which is being directed by the much-hated Uwe Boll. And you are not incorrect if you’ve guessed that this game is based off of the phenomenally banal Dungeon Siege, by Microsoft – a game so utterly boring, I don’t even know why I own a copy.

Movies Online got their hands on the movie’s equally unoriginal poster. Check the poster out below. This is one movie I’m seriously hoping will suck!

Call of Duty 5 heading to Pacific theatre?

As we have reported earlier, Activision has taken the dark corporate path of the EA, and will now most likely exploit two of the most succesful current franchises – Guitar Hero and Call of Duty, so that a new version of each game comes out every year. Check out the article above for more and the interesting rumour.

Call of Duty 5, is reportedly (but unofficially) under production at Treyarch, and some interesting rumours have invaded the Internet about it, saying that with no. 5, the CoD series shall return to its roots in World War 2. However, Kotaku has been tipped that not only will CoD 5 go back to World War 2, but it’ll actually give the Pacific theatre of the war a shot. Of course, we know nothing more than this, so we are left with speculation.

Since Call of Duty games have a tradition of letting you play the war from the perspective of various countries, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game took you to Pacific islands, to play as an American, and then Burma, China or other Asian countries, to play as a dapper Englishman. It would be interesting to play as an indigenous soldier fighting in the war, to see the war from his perspective (check the map I hijacked via Google above).

We are not sure if this game will turn out to be actually good, even though it’s taking a different angle at the War. The Medal of Honor series took a shot at this with Pacific Assault, which was somewhat lacklustre. Add the fact that Treyarch is developing this, whose CoD 3 is already considered the black sheep of the CoD line. Treyarch has a lot to prove, certainly!

Gerard Butler is Sabretooth in Wolverine? This is madness!

Rumours are flying all around the internets lately, but one that I found particularly interesting is this one. CHUD reports that a source they very highly trust is confirming that Gerard Butler will act in the upcoming Wolverine as Sabretooth. For those not in the know, Sabretooth is Wolverine’s greatest arch-nemesis and can roar magnificently. I don’t know about you guys, but I personally think that Butler is great at roaring (especially if the roar has the word ‘Sparta’ in it).

Karl Urban was supposed to be Sabretooth in the movie earlier, but has reportedly dropped out. The frantic production crew set up a meeting with a conversation that must have gone like:

“Okay, we need a Sabretooth. Karl’s out.”

“Arnold Schwarzenneger!”

“Uh no, Sabretooth can speak right.”

(thinking, aided with burgers)

“Gerard Butler! He was in 300, we’ll get more people to watch it just for that! Plus, he’s masculine and a gay idol!”

“Hell yeah! Tonight, we dine in hell!”

(silence for a few seconds)

“What?”