Michael Giacchino, who is set to compose the score for J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek movie, says that he will retain at least the opening theme music from the original series, by Alexander Courage.
Virgin/Toshiba to Give Away Free HD DVD Players! One-hundred fifty lucky Star Trek fans will be walking away with a free Toshiba HD DVD player on Tuesday, November 20. There’s only one catch … this special giveaway is happening in New York City at the two different Virgin Megastores. But if you are lucky enough to live close by and are willing to stand in line to get a player, you could be walking away with an HD DVD player from Toshiba, valued at $299! Find out all the details HERE.
Rachet & Clank, a fox-like alien and his robot sidekick are on a mission to save the galaxy, and in the process may well save Sony’s PlayStation 3, which has been beat to a pulp by Wii. “Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction,” is a nicely crafted game that is being compared to Pixar animated films and touted as a must-have for Sony fans, according to a report from Reuters.
“We’re using lots of the same techniques that would be used in a Pixar film,” said Brian Allgeier, creative director on the “Ratchet” titles at developer Insomniac Games.
Sony is hoping to take advantage of the slight slip in sales of Wii over its competitors this past month and they are banking on the high-tech quality of Rachet and Clank to do it for them.
When the members of the WGA walk out on strike, probably on Monday, depending on how long it lasts, look for a major leap to online entertainment from those needing their sci-fi and other geeky fixes.
“There is an opportunity, if there is a protracted strike, to create channels of development on the Internet that are outside the big companies, and I wonder if the guilds are thinking about that,” said Marshall Herskovitz, the veteran TV creator behind “Quarterlife,” the television-style drama that will air exclusively online.
Next big net merger? Google Inc. is successfully wooing MySpace, the world’s largest online social network, to its system courting independent software developers, raising its challenge to fast-growing Facebook.
We have the name of television’s new Knight Rider. Justin Bruening (“All My Children”) is set as the new lead in NBC’s two-hour movie “Knight Rider,” a “Transformers”-inspired sequel to the 1980’s series about a man and his talking car, aka K.I.T.T.
Bruening plays the son of original Knight Rider Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff). No word yet if Hoff has been called on to make a cameo or if the 80-yr old William Daniels will come out of retirement to do the voice for the new wonder car.
The 2hr-pilot movie will move to a weekly series spot if the ratings for the tele-film are high enough.
Look for a big screen adaptation of The Flash saga. Director David Dobkin (“Fred Claus”) will jump the character off from the upcoming Justice League of America film (but not a spin-off) and provide the comic book hero a venue of his own. The script is being written by Craig Wright, the creator of ABC’s “Dirty Sexy Money.”
One area of entertainment that will feel the immediate effects of a writer’s strike will be late-night talk shows like David Letterman’s “Late Night,” “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno and the “Jimmy Kimmel Show.” They rely heavily on their large writing staff for monologues and other catchy-phrases based on who the nightly guests will be. While Letterman, Leno, O’Brien and others are also writers and members of the Guild, they are bound by their contracts with their networks to continue and could be forced to write all their own material instead of just being the overseers of the final product. Letterman commented earlier this week — “It might be fun … to tune in and see what I can come up with on my own.”
It’s more likely fans of the shows will get an array of “Best Of” highlights.
In our last brief — We have learned that James Marsden, who starred as Cyclops in the “X-Men” trilogy, is in final negotiations to star opposite Cameron Diaz in the horror thriller “The Box.”
“Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction” is one hell of a fun game, definitely in the mold of the classic games in the franchise. More than enough reason to pick up a PS3, IMHO.
Ratchet and Clank may be good but the better platformer is around the corner in the form of Super Mario Galaxy.
We’ll see. I’m looking forward to that game as well, but for me, it sounds like “Ratchet and Clank” without the arsenal. Then again, until recently, it had been years since I’d bothered with Nintendo, so I don’t have franchise history to drive my interest.
One thing I’m curious about is the inclusion of motion control. I was pleasantly surprised by the use of Sixaxis control in R&C. It hasn’t felt extraneous, like in some PS3 games. A lot of games for the Wii have done nothing special with the motion control (Zelda, Metroid, etc. were good, but not much else), but this is so high-profile and in-house that it should be the best example yet.