Nathan Fillion Plays Hermes in Percy Jackson Sequel

 

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Nathan Fillion is set to play the Greek God Hermes in the sequel to the 2010 Percy Jackson movie. I for one consider this a point in the film’s favour. Not only does the film franchise have 100% more Fillion in it, Hermes also happens to be the father of one of the book series’ main villains. That means that they might actually introduce Kronos like they were supposed to in the first movie. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Sea of Monsters is now filming in Vancouver.

Nathan Fillion Joins Percy Jackson Sequel « Reviews on the Run.

Vancouver Man Sues James Cameron over Avatar for $100 million

It must have been a slow news day if this made it to the front page of the Vancouver Sun. Vancouver restauranteur Emil Malak claims that James Cameron ripped off his script, called Terra Incognita to create his Billion-dollar blockbuster Avatar after Malak sent the script to Cameron in 2002.

It seems like one of these stories comes out every time there’s a major cultural blockbuster. It happened with the Matrix and it’s happened with Harry Potter. Usually we never hear about these cases being won, and we never hear about the plaintiffs going on to create anything culturally significant. No matter how this case ends up, can we all agree that real creators don’t engage in this kind of crap? If you’re really concerned with entertaining the world with your stories, you don’t want to deal with lawyers and court cases that could go on for decades, you want to get back to your laptop and make more stories.

Source: Vancouver Sun.

Zombie First Responder Course In Oregon


The Seattle PI blog has posted a gallery of the Zombie First Responder course that took place last weekend in Sandy, Oregon. Over 2 days, students learned the finer points of bow hunting, camouflage, and outdoor survival skills just in case civilization starts to die yet keeps on walking. Courses in zombie disposal were, of course, completely tongue and cheek, but if you’re going to spend time camping out in the cold spring rains, why not put a little twist on it? The course was hosted by an eco-education company called Tracker’s Earth. With all the media attention it’s getting, it probably won’t be the last Zombie hunt in the woods.

Source:seattlepi.com.

Zombinis by EastSide Games Terrorizes Google Plus

Vancouver Developer Eastside Games has released the social game Zombinis to the Google Plus Social network as part of a 30-day exclusive deal. This freemium game tells the story of Z Land, which has been thrown into chaos when a giant factory squished the King Zombie and his loyal army. Now it’s up to you to raise an army of Undead animals that will fight for a supremacy in a post-apocalyptic cartoon landscape. The art style eschews the usual cutesy trappings of social games for something more suited for animals whose body parts fly off when they fight. Players will find lots of creatures and attacks to explore within the game. The Facebook version will be coming soon and Eastside says they are also working on a stand alone version. You can try out the game on Google Plus here.

Source: InsidesocialGames.com.

Phil Harrison steps up for Peter Molyneux


Former Sony Game design Chief Phil Harrison has been hired as Chief of Microsoft Game Studios in Europe. This move comes in the wake of Peter Molyneux’s departure from the division to form 22-Cans, an indie start-up. Harrison has served as a partner at the venture capitalist firm London Venture Partners and as a board member at Atari. Most of the press release is a bunch of doublespeak calming investor fears over this management change-up, but Peter Molyneux leaving the Triple-A arena is a good move for him, and the game industry at large. Molyneux’s been criticized for making promises his games couldn’t possibly keep, and that may have been due to all the resources at his disposal at Microsoft. With the economic constraints of a start-up, we may yet begin to see some things come out reminiscent of his old days at Bullfrog.

Source:VentureBeat

Sakuracon Fashion Police?!

A very odd piece of advertising came through my google alerts the other day. Some dude or production company is looking for

…two female spokesmodels / on-camera talent that have no problem walking up to and interviewing people around the convention. Think of Joan Rivers at the Oscars, you ask people where they are from, what they are dressed as, etc. This would be a great gig for two friends that would like to attend the event, and make some money while having a great time!

Costume is not required but you will need to at least dress up for the affair. Preferably, I am hoping to have at least one person who can speak fluent Japanese. The finished production will be a series of shorts that will be aired on-line, and hopefully picked up by Japanese television.

I will pay for your admission to the event, plus food and drinks, plus $50 cash for each day we shoot. We will be working for no more than 4 hours each day, so this is a quick fun and easy way to be a part of this event!

My first thought is that even for $50 day, this guy needs to manage his expectations. No one speaking fluent Japanese is going to roll out of bed for less than union scale. Second of all, while Joan Rivers at the Oscars sounds like fun, you also might end up with Joan Rivers who rips celebrities a new one each week on Fashion Police (which I do watch on a regular basis). That kind of humour is gold when your talking about an ingenue chickie wearing a $20,000 dress she didn’t pay for, but not so much when you’re talking to a broke college student who spent 72 hours on her own palatial ball gown. And then there’s the issue that this is a craigslist ad. So what do you think, internet? Is this the beginnings of a cosplay documentary that the whole family will enjoy, or is it simply code for an escort service?
Source:Craigslist

Penny Arcade Official Lego Set

At Lego Cuusoo, someone has deemed it necessary to create a Penny Arcade Lego Set. As you can see, the proposed set comes with Tycho, Gabe, and Div, the drunken obsolete piece of technology. There also plans at the site for the infamous “Fruit Friend” robot who, among other things, enjoys touching people’s hair at night. If the project gets enough votes, soon you can get Gabe and Tycho, to uh, play video games on a tiny couch near you very soon.

Source: Lego Cuusoo

The Xbox Live Indie Abounds with Innovation

 

So after all the whinging and gnashing of teeth over the positioning of the Indie channel on Xbox live, this is what we can expect when searching for the most popular indie games on xbox today. Seriously? Mining games only? This is my reward for drilling down three levels of menus? Look, I get that XBLIG can fall prey to trends, just like any gaming ecosystem. Before these mining games we had a litany of FPS’s with Quake, a glut of RTS’s with Command and Conquer, and a torrent of Platformers with Mario. But wasn’t Minecraft and its attendant mods enough? We can only hope that Minecraft releases mod and multiplayer capability for its Xbox release and puts a stop to all this.

Source:Gaming.

David Hayter to Host Canadian video Game awards

Metal Gear Solid voice actor and X-men screenwriter David Hayter is scheduled to host the Canadian video game awards taking place Fan Expo Vancouver on April 21st and 22nd. With the voice of Solid Snake on board, maybe we’ll see more sketches like this one at the awards show. Perhaps the SW:TOR Jedi Knight will start back-sassing? At least it won’t be Billy Crystal trying to do a Sammy Davis Jr. impression.

Source: Reviews on the Run.

Seattle PI Liveblogs The Hunger Games Q & A


Tim Hall, a blogger over at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was on hand at the Hunger Games event at the University Mall in Seattle. Here’s his synopsis of the goings on.

  • The event planners and security let the rest of the kids on the outside get into the gated area. Awesome move by them. Those kids were so excited. I know because my ears hurt.
  • Talked to a woman who’s been in line since 9:00PM. Not 9:00AM. And yes, a grown woman. These Hunger Games fans are taking fandom to new heights.
  • When Jennifer, Josh, and Liam came walking out the Microsoft Store it got really loud. It felt like a Seahawks game.
  • I saw multiple kids crying, shaking, and crying some more. I wonder if I met Ken Griffey Jr. when I was 14 if I would’ve reacted like this.
  • Liam Hemsworth kept looking to my side of the stage causing the girl behind me to scream incredibly loud, regardless of how close she was to my ears.
  • The Q&A went well. The cast members answered questions from the crowd. I recorded the Q&A but all that came out was AHHHAAAAAAA and WILL YOU MARRY MEEEEEEEEEEEE! I think every cast member was asked to prom.
  • There was more crying and more screaming. These kids were losing it more and more every minute.
  • The cast members waved goodbye just like that it was over.

It sounds like the live event organizers once again underestimated the popularity of a young adult novel, and poor Tim had to go home with a tape recorder full of nothing but screaming. It still sounds like the fans had fun, and the opening night of the film will be nothing short of a gong show.

Seattlepi.com.