The Gold Box spotlight deal of the day over at Amazon today is Superhero Blu-ray Collection for only $79.95 (that’s 62% off the list price of $208.75).

This 8-disc Blu-ray boxed set includes seven major (and relatively recent) superhero action films from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment: Spider-Man High Definition Trilogy (Spider-Man / Spider-Man 2 / Two-Disc Spider-Man 3), Ghost Rider (Extended Cut), Hellboy (Director’s Cut), Underworld (Unrated), and Underworld Evolution.

That’s a nice pick of movies right there. Now let’s do the math: $79.95 divided by 7 movies is about $11.42 each. The Spider-Man blu-ray trilogy is selling for $49.99 on its own and the other films are much more than $12 each, so this is a pretty sweet deal for Blu-ray, and for major blockbuster titles on Blu-ray at that.

Yesterday, CHUD received word from an inside source that Marcus Nispel has been officially signed as the director of the new Conan reboot. This report has now been officially confirmed by the trades, and Nispel will indeed be the man that replaces Brett Ratner, who stepped away from the project recently, as director. Marcus Nispel is best known as the man behind some of the big horror movie reboots of late, including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Friday the 13th.

After Ratner’s departure, the aforementioned CHUD was told of four possible directors that were up for the job: James McTeigue (V for Vendetta, Ninja Assassin), Christopher Gans (Silent Hill, Brotherhood of the Wolf), Neil Marshall (The Descent, Doomsday), and Nispel (Read: Three More Directors Thrown Into The ‘Conan” Mix).

At first, it seemed like McTeigue or Marshall were the best choices, though Nispel works here, too. While you may or may not be a big fan of his horror efforts, you can’t deny that they’re incredibly well-done visually. With this, you have to imagine that a solid, violent (assuming), stylized Conan adventure could be a real success. Much more so than it would have been in Ratner’s hands, this is for sure.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai
Genre: Beat ‘Em Up
Rating: ESRB M for Mature
Publisher: Ska Studios & Microsoft Game Studios
Release Date: 1st April 2009
Format: Xbox Live Arcade

When I first heard about this release from Xbox guru Major Nelson on Twitter, I thought it was an April Fool’s prank. However I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it wasn’t, and promptly checked out some of the available gameplay videos. These turned out to be surprisingly gruesome and frantic – and if you can describe a game with those words… I’m there.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai was conceived when game creator James Silva was himself a dishwasher, finding himself the butt of many a joke. After pointing out that Bruce Lee was a dishwasher, he began to conceive a game about one that slaughters an insurmountable array of highly trained agents… and that became what we have here today.

The Dishwasher is a 2D sideways-scrolling “hack n’ slash ’em up”, where you take control of the unnamed protagonist who was captured by cyborgs that had a view to assimilating him into their collective (yes… sorry, that was a Star Trek pun… it will be my last). Freed by “Chef” – his mentor – he is given Alien Blood that resurrects him from death, and imbues him with incredible powers.

And we of course like nothing better than to use these awesome new abilities to pulverise anything that moves into a bloody pink/red mist.

The first trailer for Martin Scorsese‘s new film Shutter Island has been released on Apple, and it looks intense. You can head over there for the HD version of the trailer.

The movie follows Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), two U.S. Marshals who come to a prison-like hospital for the criminally insane that is located on an island off the coast of Massachusetts. The marshals are called out to the hospital due to the disappearance of a woman who was being kept there for committing murder. The confusing thing about it all, is that the hospital is in a seemingly-inescapable Alcatraz-like location with eleven miles of cold, cold water between them and land. To make things even more chaotic — the presence of a 67th patient in a hospital inhabited by 66 causes the marshals to wonder what exactly is going on at Shutter Island.

This is one of the best trailers that I’ve seen in a while. It has a really creepy vibe to it and looks like it could be a third movie among The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. I also do not think that I would be out of line to claim that this trailer alone is scarier than most full-length horror movies that we see these days.

Click on over to the other side to check out this incredible trailer.

Atomic Robo and the Shadow From Beyond Time #2
Written by Brian Clevinger
Art by Scott Wegener
Colors by Ronda Pattison
Red 5 Comics
Release date: June 3, 2009

First off, how can you NOT love a comic called Atomic Robo and the Shadow Beyond Time? Everything you need to know about this comic is sitting right there in the title. It’s got robots, horror, and just the right about of humor. Of course, the book itself is pretty good too, which is a good thing because people generally buy a comic for more than just its title.

This is the third mini in the Atomic Robo series, and from the first two issues, I’m enjoying it even more than I did the first two. In this one, we follow Atomic Robo in 1920’s New York as he has to stop a Lovecraftian monster who has taken over the body of the actual H.P. Lovecraft. And that’s not even the craziest of the ideas in this issue. Brian Clevinger continues to make this a supremely fun comic. It’s filled with a lot of humor, but I wouldn’t really describe it as a humor book. It’s an adventure book, and Clevinger always keeps the action at the forefront. This issue in particular has a great balance between action and comedy, as Robo has a great conversation with Nikola Tesla while taking on the monster. The other nice thing about this series is that you never know what kind of story is going to be told. Each series has told a different kind of story, yet the central character keeps the whole thing together.