Links For 4-10-2010

Entertainment

Hollywood filmmakers abuse lowly production staff. Does this sound the slightest bit surprising?

Showtime picks up SHAMELESS to series. I can't imagine a remake being anywhere near as good as the original. And even the original lost steam after the first few seasons, as more and more of the original cast have left. How many original cast members are there now? Two?

Actor Nicolas Cage loses L.A. mansion to lender. Wow. You know times are bad when movie stars are losing their houses.

Michael Madsen spills on Tarantino's latest 'Vega Brothers' idea. I like most of Tarantino's films, but a movie about two sets of twins who are all brothers but didn't know about each other just sounds bad.

SCOTT PILGRIM creators brace for a fan backlash. I don't think it's possible to make a movie of this particular title that's 100% faithful to the source material. At least, not live action and in just one movie.

An Oscar-winning producer is remaking THE TOXIC AVENGER. O-kay...but why? Seriously, the only question that springs to mind is "why"?

Video Games

GEARS OF WAR 3 coming next April. Oh, and GEARS OF WAR 3 details surface. (Hint: mech!)

Activision counter-suing ex-CALL OF DUTY developers. Oh, here we go...

Activision: Infinity Ward founders "self-serving schemers". Activision are really dumb for even commenting on this. They've already got enough public ill will over firing these guys, now they want to attack their repuations as well?

Ex-Infinity Ward heads fire back at Activision suit.

MODERN WARFARE 2 was “an immense disappointment”, says CRYSIS 2 writer. I can't say I disagree. It definitely didn't live up to the first MODERN WARFARE. Then again, a lot of games I was looking forward to in the late part of last year and early part of this year (like BIOSHOCK 2 and HEAVY RAIN) didn't live up to expectations.

MODERN WARFARE 3 in development. Good luck with that without the original creators. Hell, even they couldn't come up with a good sequel!

Ex-Infinity Ward leaders to discuss their "creative future" soon. I imagine it'll be something at EA. And it'll probably be awesome.

Ubisoft drew inspiration from UNCHARTED, MAX PAYNE for CONVICTION. It seems to me like they just wanted to use the SPLINTER CELL name to make a balls out action game. I'm still looking forward to the game, but it does seem like the developers constantly keep throwing the older games in the series under the bus in interviews.

IGN's SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION review. The review is positive, but this worries me: "The only reason to hesitate and pick this up is if you only care about the single-player story and want nothing to do with anything else CONVICTION has to offer. If that's the case, then there's not a lot of game to be had." Uh, all I do care about is the single-player story. I'm really sick of developers giving the short stick to single-player and focusing on online multiplayer. Oh well, I got it on the cheap via two coupon codes on Amazon, so at least I'm only shelling out $37 instead of $52.

Konami announces the next SILENT HILL. I gave up after the fourth one, which I never finished. (That's THE ROOM, right?) From what I've heard the series kinda went downhill after that. Anyway, this one will be for the PS3 and 360, so if word of mouth is good, maybe I'll check it out.

Ubisoft 'always on' DRM is here to stay. No surprise. And it's also no surprise, that it's not any real deterrent and people will find a way around it.

BBC announces DOCTOR WHO: THE ADVENTURE GAMES for PC, Mac. Kinda like extra episodes that you get to play instead of watch.

Tech

Verizon CEO: “We Will Find Pirates, Throttle Them, and Charge Extra”. This sounds to me to be less about "piracy", but more about charging users more for usage (i.e. metered bandwidth). It's all about charging more and giving less, and not having to spend anything that the customers pay for on upgrades to their network.