We’ve certainly seen the story before: high technology machines and robots evolve, rise up, and take over the world of men. Whether it’s Battlestar Galactica, the Terminator franchise, or a movie like I, Robot, people love being scared by the thought of man-made machines turning on us and killing us all. If this trend is kept up, the robot apocalypse could become a genre in itself like zombies, but that isn’t stopping DreamWorks, who are on the verge of acquiring the rights to an unpublished manuscript entitled Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson.

So what makes this project so attractive? What makes Robopocalypse different from the other movies that we’ve seen? Well, it’s realism. Wilson is an actual Ph.D. in robotics, and he has injected a massive level of realism into his tale of man vs. machine, which is what immediately grabbed DreamWorks’ attention. Over the past few years, there have been some terrifying videos of actual man-made robots that are so freaky-realistic, you almost expect them to evolve and slaughter mankind. [...]

This is Halloween, this Halloween!

Yes, the holiday of witches, goblins, and ghouls has arrived, and there’s a lot of great deals out there to take advantage of on this glorious day. Check out today’s offerings, including some low-priced movie rentals!

As I was compiling this list, the first “Lightning Deal” at Amazon went up, so I’m adding it quickly to the top of this post so you can see it before it runs out at 9am PST (or while supplies last before that): Zombie Bundle: Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead II on Blu-ray.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game – Slimer Edition

First up, the Gold Box deal of the day over at Amazon is Ghostbusters: The Video Game – Slimer Edition for Xbox 360 for only $44.98 (that’s 36% off the list price of $69.99). This deal is for today only while supplies last [...]

In an announcement that comes as no surprise at all, Lionhead Studios Creative Director Peter Molyneaux confirmed that Fable III will be compatible with the Microsoft motion sensor technology currently known only as Project Natal. It has been rumored that Natal will be ready to go some time in 2010, but it’s doubtful that this third chapter in the beloved Fable franchise will require the sure-to-be-pricey addition to your Xbox 360 system.

No details were included as to how the system would apply if you play Fable III using it, but it could be really good and it could be really bad. When Natal was shown off at this year’s past E3 Expo (Click to read about E3 & watch the Project Natal demos), the demonstrations blew minds (for the most part), with Lionhead and Molyneaux’s introduction of the boy Milo as the real jaw-dropping moment. Natal was also promoted as the future of gaming, where people will be able to play all of their games with no controllers at all, using only their body and movement. In these two things is where we find the possible pros and cons. [...]

The emergence of popular CCG’s like Magic: The Gathering and a plethora of MMOs have all but killed the player base for old school tabletop games, but that could change in the future.

A digital version of tabletop RPG Dungeons and Dragons that uses Microsoft Surface technology was recently developed by a group of students from the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, who uploaded a demo video of the project. [Scroll down to watch it.]

The students created the demo as part of the SurfaceScape project that is “taking traditional tabletop role-playing games to the next level, adding a new layer of immersive and intuitive gaming to the Microsoft Surface Table and assisting both GMs and players in enjoying exciting and engaging adventures,” according to their Web site [...]

The Gold Box deal of the day over at Amazon today is Friends – The Complete Series Collection DVD box set for only $114.99 (that’s 62% off the list price of $299.98).

This is a 40-disc DVD collection contains all 10 seasons of the popular NBC sitcom that aired from 1994 to 2004 and has remained on television thanks to major syndication runs. Friends showed a group of 20-something friends — Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler, and Ross — living in New York City going through all kinds of real-life ups and downs with relationships, jobs, money, and friendship, all to humorous effect.

The six major stars — the “friends” — were played by Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer, but the series had many major guest stars like Aniston’s then-husband Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, and Danny DeVito, along with a reoccurring role by Tom Selleck as Monica’s older boyfriend [...]

Fucking ecstatic does not begin to adequately describe how happy I am that the dark period of music socialization is over. And in case you aren’t sure the time frame I’m speaking of, it’s the period in which people had to really work in order to discover and share new music by listening to FM radio, buying overpriced albums at a retail store or my *least* favorite, speaking to a group of self important douchebag music snobs. None of those options were ideal for the sake of discovery, but they were even worse for the sake of sharing.

Technology has ushered in so many new (legal) ways to socialize about music, none of which involve an abundance of black t-shirts or $5 covers at the door.

Blip.fm

If you’ve ever had the urge to communicate solely through notes and lyrics, then blip.fm will become an addiction. It’s by far my favorite new way to socialize about music. Blip.fm is a service that allows you to listen to virtually any song by “blipping” it to your own personal stream — similar to Twitter. Also like Twitter, each song you blip is accompanied by an optional 150-character message. Users “listen” or “follow” other people’s blips, which are aggregated in real time to a custom feed that acts as a playlist. However, if you get tired of this playlist you can always navigate to someone else’s [...]

As you may have noticed, our video team on the scene (I just made that up — gold star for me), Doug E. Karate and Rob E. Danger did a fantastic job of finding interesting things and people at Dragon*Con ‘09 and showcasing them for all who didn’t attend to see.

This time around we have three pretty epic videos for you to enjoy — two interviews, and even an in-depth lesson in the Gothic culture. The first chat is with a woman talks about how she fell in love with The Green Lantern while watching the cartoons in Spanish growing up, and who even attended the convention dressed as a Lantern herself. Next up, you’ll meet a real, live inventor who brought along one of his creations. I can’t honestly tell you what it is or what it does, but it does throws a bunch of random phrases at you. The contraption is rather big and hangs around our new friend’s neck as he strolls. It actually kind of looks like an ’80s computer and a calculator had a romantic romp inside Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly machine, and then was teleported via the ship from Galaxy Quest, resulting in some form of inside-out electronic device. [...]

Summit Entertainment, the movie studio behind the Twilight film franchise, has sealed a cross-promotional deal with online virtual playground Habbo for the upcoming film Twilight Saga: New Moon.

Starting this November, as New Moon’s theatrical release approaches, Habbo will debut a New Moon-themed virtual space within its 31 virtual worlds around the globe, where users will be able to decorate their virtual rooms with items from the new movie.

According to the LA Times, some of the virtual items available for sale will be a water fountain, a clock tower, the Volturi Crest, and Jacob’s barn door [...]

The beta for Longbox Digital, the application that’s been heralded as the iTunes of digital comics, is scheduled to make its debut this month, according to LongBox CEO Rantz Hoseley.

Longbox is actually much more than just an iTunes program and will eventually feature integration with gaming consoles, electronic book readers and several mobile phone operating systems (iPhone/Android/Blackberry).

While multi-platform support won’t be available for quite a while, the desktop app’s official launch is tentatively set for Oct/Nov. (If you’ll recall, we acquired a beta key for the app at San Diego Comic-Con) [READ: SDCC 09 Video: Longbox Digital Comics App Demo]

Check out the short Q&A with Hoseley below for more launch details [...]

Hulu is currently running a Johnny Depp marathon featuring some of his starring films — Benny and Joon, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, and Cry Baby — along with episodes of 21 Jump St, his first break-out television series.

Visit the Hulu movies page to locate the films and to the 21 Jump St page to watch 13 episodes of Season 1 of the TV series.

Benny and Joon, which also stars Aidan Quinn and Mary Stuart Masterson, is embedded here below.

All of Depp’s films up on Hulu are worth a viewing, though my favorite of the bunch is definitely Benny and Joon. Released in 1993, Depp plays Sam, the love interest of Joon (Masterson), a schizophrenic young woman who lives with her older brother Benny (Quinn) who’s given up his life to care for her [...]

Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D. #1: Marvel Motion Comic
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Alex Maleev
Marvel Comics
Released: August 19, 2009
Price: $.99 (on iTunes)

Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev have been trying to get this Spider-Woman series off the ground for what seems like a decade, and they’ve finally managed to do it. However, Marvel has decided to make this series the first in their big push of Motion Comics, similar to what DC has done with Watchmen, and is currently doing with Superman: Red Son. I’m not sure who decided these motion comics are the next big thing, but somebody’s putting a lot of money behind it, so we’re going to keep getting them for a while. The interesting thing with this series is that we will see a print version of this story in a few months, but we’re getting the motion version of it first. The one thing this really has going for it is the price point of 99 cents on iTunes (available for the first two weeks, then the price jumps to $1.99). It’s much easier for me to make an impulse buy on this when the price is so low, and if they maintain that price, I could see picking this series up.

The story in this one follows Spider-Woman, or Jessica Drew to her friends, as she is recruited to become an agent of S.W.O.R.D. (as it says right there in the title). S.W.O.R.D. is in charge of protecting the Earth from alien invaders, and Spider-Woman is tasked with tracking down one of the Skrulls who recently attacked. She travels to the seedy Asian port of Madripoor where she ends up confronting him [...]

If you’re not familiar with the story, for a long while now, the plan to build a gigantic new movie and TV studio on the East Coast has been fast in motion. The goal was to have this huge facility similar to that of a the legendary Hollywood production studios that would allow the big time film and television producers out there a legitimate option to always shooting out West. It took quite a while to get things lined up, and changes had to be made in the state’s former tax and financial set-up to make it appealing enough, but all hurdles were cleared and the massive project was approved. The development is currently moving right along at its Plymouth, Massachusetts location, and the $500 Million Plymouth Rock Studios is heading straight for a Fall 2010 opening planned.

So what exactly will this brand new high-tech, completely “Green,” eco-friendly LEED studio complex offer to those who set up shop there for big projects? [...]

Peter Molyneaux, Creative Director for the Microsoft owned Lionhead studios, was in Germany recently and made the announcement of a little game called Fable III.

Anyone who loves the games knew that a third game would be coming eventually, but with four years between Fable and Fable II, this is pretty exciting news. And not only was the game announced, Molyneaux stated that it would be released for the holiday season of 2010. Yes, that’s right, Fable III will be out (barring any push-backs) one year from this Christmas!

While this announcement is thrilling to fans such as myself, details of the game are few. Then again, any details at all this early into development are a treat in and amongst themselves, so we shall take whatever we can get our greedy little gamer hands on.

Click on over to read a quote from Peter Molyneaux and to get a brief idea of what Fable III will be like. [...]

On Wednesday, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe was at GamersCom in Cologne, Germany to announce that they are releasing a digital reader that will work on the Sony PSP (or Playstation Portable, as it’s known to its acronym-deficient friends).

Not only will the PSP play games, music, and video, but users will also be able to use it to read access the digital library of Marvel comics. Starting in December, according to Marvel, PSP owners will be able purchase and download classic and digital first comics direct from Marvel, and then read them in a page by page or panel by panel style (however they prefer). This is a great new feature for PSP users and I’m curious to see exactly how the system works. I’ve had trouble reading comics on computers in the past, but I’m willing to give this a try [...]

Tomorrow, August 21, is Avatar Day, and on it, the much-anticipated trailer was to finally be release to all of us who were dying to see what everyone was raving about. In a lovely gesture, the studio has decided to unleash the trailer one day early, and you can check it out right this very moment!

With the release of this trailer comes good news and bad news. The good news, is that you can go and watch the trailer at Apple in the biggest and best HD player your computer can handle. The bad news, is that Apple is still one of the few who refuse to embrace the joys of the embed code, so you’ll have to go there to see it. Considering that even the above-mentioned biggest and best HD trailer will not do any justice to the footage people have seen in IMAX 3-D, it is suggested that you watch in the highest quality you can. [...]

As you all know, at Comic Con recently, James Cameron announced that August 21, 2009 would be Avatar Day. And on that day, a 15-minute preview of Cameron’s gigantic theme-park ride of a movie, Avatar, would be shown in its natural IMAX 3-D format all over the world. Later it was revealed that many other things would be happening that day as well, including the release of the regular and surely less-impressive 2-D trailer, a trailer for the video game, and even some toy figures. The only thing that was left, was to tell everyone how exactly we could get in on this 15-minute preview, and now we have that answer!

Basically, it’s going to be just like a good ol’ radio station giveaway. The LA Times is reporting that on Monday, August 17, people will go to the official Avatar movie website, and at 3:00PM EST (12:00PM PST), you click to get your free tickets. Obviously, this is first come, first served, though, so if you really want to check this thing out, get there early and be prepared to click like mad to claim your prize! [...]

On Saturday at the San Diego Comic-Con, fans of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy were shown footage of the show’s first spin-off, titled The Cleveland Show. The show follows Peter Griffin’s friend Cleveland Brown, as he and his son Cleveland Jr. move back to their home town. Once back, Cleveland rekindles his relationship with his high school sweetheart, who has two kids of her own.

The show will premiere on September 27th at 8:30pm EST. Judging from the footage shown, I’m still not sold on the series. I’m a pretty big fan of Family Guy, but I was surprised to see that they would be using Cleveland as a character on his own. The show had decent jokes at times, but on the whole it left me pretty cold. Who knows, maybe the good jokes were left out of the previews shown, and it could just be that the creators haven’t found the right tone for the show yet, but Fox had better hope viewers enjoy it more than I did, since they have already picked up the show for a second season, before even one episode has aired. So far, 22 episodes have already been made, and we’ll have to see if they all get shown on the air, or if they just have a lot of episodes to include on the eventual DVD [...]

Just this past weekend at San Diego Comic Con 2009, James Cameron made the mega-announcement that August 21, 2009 would be Avatar Day, and that fans would be able to head out to participating IMAX theaters to see 15 whole minutes of glorious 3-D footage from the upcoming movie (Read: SDCC 09: See 15 Minutes of James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ In 3D Imax For Free On August 21), which will be released on December 18, 2009. This gives movie-goers the chance to really see what the movie is all about and how it hopes to change the cinema experience as we presently know it.

Now comes details via a press release that there will indeed be a whole lot more to Avatar Day than just the 15-minute preview that was announced — in fact, a multitude of Avatar goodies are on the way on August 21!

For those of us who aren’t able to get our hands on tickets to the epic preview, the official trailer will in fact also be released on August 21. That’s right, every single one of us will be able to finally get a look at the movie, whether it’s in theaters on any type of screen, or even just online. Of course, it won’t look nearly as good on a little computer screen in 2-D, but it will give us a small idea of what to expect, in the very least. [...]

Row Three has been doing what we’ve all been doing: scouring the ‘net and hoping to find some kind of a trailer for the mysterious and gigantic James Cameron’s Avatar. Unlike us, though, they’ve found something pretty intriguing that looks like it could just be a teaser trailer for the movie.

It doesn’t show anything but multiple shots of nature and our planet and then pollution shots. We then see the words “We Destroyed Our World — A New World Is Waiting For Us,” followed by the Avatar title logo and what looks like an official 20th Century Fox final frame with the official Avatar website address.

The trailer comes from a YouTube channel that goes by the name Pandorapedia; and while it could be just fan-made, it looks new and actually pretty legit. Their image is a 20th Century Fox image and their only subscriptions are Fox Movies and Official Avatar. [...]

It’s been four years now since Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong remake hit theaters. Now comes word that a brand new Kong movie is officially in development through Spirit Pictures. The movie will be based on the book Kong: King of Skull Island which was written by Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland and published in 2005 when Jackson was making his movie.

There’s one thing about this project that is raising some confusion. The initial report by Variety states that the movie is a prequel, telling the story of Skull Island and how Kong came to be king of the island, as well as a deeper look at some of the other creatures we’ve seen residing there. From the book’s outline, it sounds more like a sequel story (taking place in 1957, twenty-five years after the first story) that includes Jack Driscoll, Carl Denham, and Denham’s son, Vincent; with an included backstory that explains the island, Kong, and things like how they built the giant wall and why they built the door big enough for Kong to fit through it. [...]