Cinematical

Netflix began a contest in 2006 for coders to win $1,000,000 if they could improve Netflix's Cinematch algorithm by at least 10%, and because coders like a good challenge (and people like money), folks have been steadily tinkering with their 1's and 0's ever since. (You can read more about the contest and its rules here.) Three years later, two teams came together with the winning code, which was confirmed Friday. Netflix's VP of corporate communications Steve Swasey told Wired, "This has been terribly exciting. It's like watching the Belmont Stakes, the Preakness and the Indy 500 all at once -- for geeks."

There are still a few hurdles for the team to jump through; the Netflix contest site states, "your qualifying submissions must have the largest accuracy improvement verified by the Contest judges, you must share your method with (and non-exclusively license it to) Netflix, and you must describe to the world how you did it and why it works."

As Wired points out, Netflix isn't the only company to dip its toes into "so-called Prize economics," which is when these companies offer prize incentives to outsiders to basically do work for free with an outside chance of winning big bucks. But doesn't this say to companies that it's okay to try and get lots and lots of hours from (some) highly skilled professionals for free? It would have cost Netflix far more than $1M to get consultants and coders on the job, especially for full-time gigs with all the benefits and trimmings. I'm not a code geek, but if I were, I'd probably be interested in this sort of challenge as well. On the other hand, perhaps I'd rather have a full-time job at Netflix writing code all day along with, you know, insurance.

What does Willem Dafoe's junk, a talking fox, and a dead child all have in common? Well, they're going to star in a video game adaptation of Lars von Trier's Antichrist courtesy of Morten Iversen, a developer with some serious credentials in the world of game geekery. Formerly of Io Interactive, Iversen now works at von Trier's Zentropa production company.

Russ Frushtick over at MTV Multiplayer tracked down Iversen to ask him what the hell is up with this project, so to speak, and here's what he had to say.

"Von Trier has been extremely fond of video games for ages, and has been an avid player of 'Alone in the Dark,'" explained Iverson. "He's been circulating the idea internally... that making games would be a good idea." He describes it as "a nightmarish version of 'Myst.'"

("Alone in the Dark"? Really? Come on, Lars!)

More on HorrorSquad!

File this under "Things that have brought the world this much closer to the apocalypse." Introducing the Rocky III joke USB drive, with Sylvester's goods as the USB connector. You can also pick up a fake drive that looks like Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) or Clubber Lang (Mr. T). They do sit ups when you insert them into your USB drive. These obviously high-quality doodads will set you back ¥ 2,850.00 each (or about $30), or you can buy all three for ¥ 5,150.00. And the worst part? You can't even store anything on them; they're just pieces of plastic that do sit-ups when you plug them in to your USB drive. If you feel a burning desire to buy one, here's the link, but don't say we didn't warn you. Take a peek at all three in the gallery below.



(via Gizmodo)

We could argue for days if androids really dream of electric sheep or what those damn origami unicorns mean, but one thing we can know for sure is that copyright laws are more confusing than Mormon underwear. An excellent example of this is a new project from Ridley Scott's RSA Films' called Purefold.

Free Scott, a part of Ridley Scott Associates Films, is hooking up with indie studio Ag8 to develop Purefold, a web series that will grapple with the themes in Blade Runner without actually referencing that world in any direct fashion. The web shorts, will could eventually become a TV series, will evoke the grand themes of the sci-fi classic -- compassion, humanity, identity, a dystopian future -- without using anything from the book it was based on ... due to copyright issues.

Folks far and wide are eagerly awaiting the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are, which, if you live under a rock, is being directed by Spike Jonze. (He also wrote the adaptation with Dave Eggers, so here's hoping Jonze could keep the twee to a minimum.) The photos and trailer are so fantastic, I could cry. What's the rumpus, you say?

Last year Kotaku reported a rumor that Brash Entertainment would be developing a video game based on the film. Brash aimed to make great video games based on movie licenses, but instead ended up making games like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Interestingly enough, one of the cofounders of Brash, Thomas Tull, is also the head of Legendary Pictures, one of the production companies behind Wild Things. However, Tull quit and Brash folded. Variety reported, "Tull is believed to have been disappointed with the quality of Brash's games, as well as the company's strategic direction." This left many titles in the lurch, including Wild Things.

So, what now? Sounds like Amaze Entertainment will be taking over, as per the bio of Michael Waite, Studio Head / Executive Producer, which some blogger stumbled upon.

"Michael's contributions include Electronic Arts' best-selling Need for Speed and Harry Potter series, and other top tier franchises including titles such as Call of Duty: Roads to Victory, Shrek the Third, Lord of the Rings: Tactics, Lemony Snicket's: A Series of Unfortunate Events, as well as two titles due out later this year: Where The Wild Things Are on all console platforms and Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings for PSP."

But! Amaze is still looking for a publisher for Wild Things. With Warner Bros. talking big about its interest in technology, will they be the ones to snap it up? And more importantly, will it be any good?!

If you're feeling bored at your desk and you don't feel like playing good games while toggling between work documents and your desktop, might we suggest a few Paul Blart time-wasters? (And by suggest, I mean, go straight to PopCap Games and get Peggle or Plants vs. Zombies.)

You have two choices for Blart-tastic web-based fun, and one downloadable game as well. In "Mall Cop The Game," you ride your Segway around the mall looking for criminals, alarms, and special goodies that increase your time or give you extra points. And in Paul Blart: Mall Cop Slalom, you're just zooming away on your little Segway trying to avoid a skateboarding punk, potted plants, and benches. Paul Blart: Mall Cop - Mall Maze is actually the best of the bunch, relatively speaking, as it's a sort of Pac-Man game where you avoid criminals and collect candy and badges.

So where are the Observe and Report games? It could be totally old school, with Ronnie as Pac-Man trying to collect his pills and avoiding Detective Harrison and Brandi as Ms. Pac-Man collecting lipsticks and margaritas. The Yuen brothers could be like Super Mario Brothers. Or Hey, 2K Games! Call me!

Just days after reports surfaced that Warner Bros. is bidding on Midway Games, which filed for Chapter 11 in February, and also took over the rights to EA's Lord of the Rings video game franchise*, Variety is reporting that the studio is getting ready to jump into the iPhone game.

Sony, Paramount, and Warner Bros. have all been vying for attention from mobile gamers with releases like a Star Trek comic book app, an Angels and Demons video game app, and more. However, according to Warner Digital Distribution director of worldwide marketing Stephanie Bohn, WB is planning to release about 40 iPhone applications by the end of the year. WB just released a Terminator comic app tied to the opening of Terminator: Salvation and has more in the works for upcoming releases, as well as ideas for "animated episodic video apps and other apps built around Warner brands."

As a recent survey by marketing research team NPD showed, more people are playing video games than going to the movies, and one distinct reason the numbers are rising isn't just the price of movie tickets. The numbers of casual video game players is increasing exponentially, partially due to the popularity, ease, and increasing quality of games available on iPhones and other handhelds. If movie studios get involved directly with video game developers, will the video game tie-ins improve? And as Bohn points out, "It doesn't cost a lot to launch an app... Relative to a TV show or a film, it's nothing." So, could this new strategy also mean good news for studios' sagging bottom lines (and for iPhone gaming addicts)?

* Gamers are already suspicious of the newest Lord of the Rings game, Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest, because it's being billed as family-friendly. EA's license for the franchise expired and reverted back to New Line, thus Warner Bros.

The predictably and sadly stinky Righteous Kill, starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro as cranky old cops trying to solve a possible serial killer case and make old rights wrong etc. etc ad infinitum, has a video game. No, I didn't know it either! Probably because it was put out by Merscom and Starz Media and is a downloadable PC game that can be yours for just $6.99 via Big Fish Games. And now there's a sequel called Righteous Kill: Revenge of the Poet Killer, which can also be yours for $6.99.

Both games have the barest connections to the actual movie. Here's the description of the first game:

"Step into the shoes of Erica Dean as she investigates crime scenes in New York City. It`s a man hunt for a vigilante on a killing spree through 16 locations containing over a thousand hidden objects. With the help of Sergeant Vasquez, Erica will use clues she collects in a number of detective-themed mini games. Inspired by the motion picture film, Righteous Kill features clips from the movie and 15 animated levels."

In an interesting video game/movie tie-in, GameStop has a promo running until June 30, 2009 ("or until all e-Movie Cash tickets have been distributed, whichever comes first," natch) called "Love the Movie - Live the Game," and it's definitely a mixed bag.

Basically, if you buy one of the following games, you can get a $10 voucher for select movies at participating theaters that's only good until July 31, 2009. That's a lot of ifs, especially if you check out the games they're offering, which are not all tied in to current releases. And some of them will make real gaming geeks bleed from the eyes. Take a look.

So, who out there is already sick of hearing about Twitter? I know there are a few people in my life that can't help but roll their eyes when they even hear the word, but I'll totally admit it to being full fledged addict. The number of smart-phone users and people on social networks like Twitter are reaching all-time highs, and in a piece for Variety, Susan Lambert looked at some of the ways in which movie studios are looking to cash in. But the bad news is that nobody is quite sure about whether or not this new style of advertising is a success. Now that four out of the six majors already have Twitter accounts, and poster launches and ARG games are popping up daily, it would seem that everyone loves a new toy -- whether it works or not.

If you think back to a year ago, the studios were all about creating viral campaigns (Blame J.J. Abrams if you must) and fans could spend hours pouring over HTML code to find a hidden message that located a secret 'hatch' or a photo of a mutated whale. But the original ARG-style viral campaigns have already faded away, and while there are still a few of them out there, they haven't exactly been a success (case in point: how many of you out there signed up for Emmerich's IHC lottery? That's what I thought). I think the biggest deterrent for fans was that if you wanted to play along, it was going to be an awful lot of work. But with the automation of services like Twitter or a dedicated movie app on your smart-phone, it's a one time deal. If you don't have time to take down Skynet by engaging in a complicated treasure hunt, why not just sign up as part of the Human Resistance and John Connor will do the work for you?

After the jump find out if Twitter is really that different from any other advertising medium...

I actually think this is sort of clever, in a "we can afford to do this" kind of way (which is more than I can say for The Da Vinci Code, am I right?!). Apparently, when the production of Angels & Demons had been refused permission to shoot key scenes in the Vatican, special effects director Ryan Cook had a team of people blend in with tourists and take about 250,000 pictures and shoot hours of video to use as reference back in Los Angeles.

Said Cook in an interview with an Italian movie magazine (then excerpted by The Scotsman, and further excerpted here): "The ban really put us in a lot of trouble because we could not use the precision instruments which are used to take photographs and make reconstructions in the computer."

On a mild tangent, I have to ask whether or not our readers are getting excited for the film itself. Of all the anticipation for summer blockbusters, and especially out of the May offerings, this seems to be the quietest title of the bunch (though twice-baked, half-volume controversy and the lack of a Cannes bow will do that to a film). I've only been assured that this book was better than its predecessor (I know, this one's a prequel), so did anyone here like Da Vinci? And whether you did or didn't care for that film, are any of you specifically psyched for round two?

[via MCN]

Henry Selick, the magic man behind painstaking puppetry in movies like Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas, is thinking way out of the 3D box. As the featured keynote speaker at this year's National Association of Broadcasters event in Las Vegas, Selick discussed "how digital technology has helped to revitalize the handcrafted approach of stop-motion animation." This was clearly apparent from Coraline, which even in its limited theatrical run made $74.8M, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com.

Selick also discussed the limits of 3D filmmaking; besides the cost and the time involved, 3D films have a limited time on the big screen because there just aren't as many theaters able to project 3D films. Now that the industry is hyping 3D, there are more films competing for those precious few theaters equipped with the technology. (Whether or not anyone really needed to see the Jonas Brothers's purity rings up close in three glorious dimensions is another story altogether.) Pixar's Up is even premiering at Cannes.

Meanwhile, DreamWorks's Jeffrey Katzenberg has been talking up 3D tech for years, and at a mini-preview of Monsters vs. Aliens I attended, even discussed the possibility of people eventually buying their own hip, stylish 3D glasses. Personally, I think 3D can make even the shoddiest movie ten times cooler -- I mean, what other reason is there to see the remake of My Bloody Valentine other than to duck a very realistic pick-axe aiming for your eye?

If you were watching the box office over the weekend, you might have noticed that the success of Monsters vs. Aliens has everyone talking about 3D again. Everywhere you look, critics are weighing in on whether 3D really is the wave of the future, or another last gasp of a fad that will fall by the wayside soon enough. Well, I don't know about that, but one thing is for sure; I think we all better get used to wearing those goofy goggles, because another director is looking to get into the 3D game. During a reception at the British Film Institute for director Ridley Scott, he spoke about his upcoming sci-fi actioner, The Forever War, and he told reporters that after getting a glimpse of James Cameron's Avatar, "...I've got to go 3D. It's going to be phenomenal."

The film is based on the 1974 science fiction novel by Joe Haldeman and was announced last October. But, Scott has had his hands full with his Robin Hood update, the story of Gucci, and the inexplicable decision to bring Monopoly to the big screen. Forever War looks to be a little more in line with Scott's usual fare; sci-fi, and politically charged action flicks, and is described as, "Both an action-laden and contemplative story of an interstellar war between humanity and the enigmatic Tauran species, it deals with themes like the inhumanity of both war and its attendant bureaucracy". The book was considered to be a response to the authors own military service during the Vietnam War, even using a 'time-travel glitch' that would return soldiers centuries later as a parallel to the US military experience when soldiers returned home.

Since the release of Beowulf, I have been hoping that a filmmaker would finally get a strong enough story on screen that would complement the technology which has become jaw-dropping. I'll keep my fingers crossed that between Cameron and Scott, the two will make 3D something more than the standard for kids films; or even worse, just another gimmick.

Offering custom, burn-to-order DVDs seems like such a no-brainer that it's a wonder no one has come up with it before -- but Warner Bros has done it first, and that's what counts. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio is opening its archives and offering film fans the chance to order old films that have never been released on DVD before.

The Warner Archive currently offers 150 films from Warner Bros, RKO, and MGM. They're all $19.95, and they'll be adding 20 titles a month, hoping to have 300 films and television shows available by the end of the year. It's not quite as good as offering them up for instant watch, but it's a brilliant way to reintroduce some lost films to the public. It's also rather eco-friendly ... there won't be hundreds of unwanted copies of Wichita being dumped in a garbage bin if it's made to order.

There's some pretty cool stuff to pick from already ... my fingers are itching at all the Clark Gable and Cary Grant selections, wondering if The Abdication is as good as it sounds, and laughing at the truly hideous poster art so many of them have.

Warners hasn't forgotten about new technology either -- they'll also be launching an iTunes podcast called The Golden Age of Hollywood that will feature archival footage. I hate to sound cheesy, but this is the kind of preservation the Internet was meant for. It's nice to see a studio taking advantage of it.

Internet history was made on March 18, 2009. Lionsgate became the first studio to debut original content on Twitter, which means anyone who signs onto the social media network after this point is officially five minutes late. (Hooray! I made it under the wire.)

What was this content? Why, a Crank 2: High Voltage poster! It's very yellow and Jason Statham-y, for those missing his squint from the popping vein poster. I've put both in the gallery below. Maybe we'll get some shirtless pictures to pad it out in the next few weeks. (Hey, a girl can dream.)

But more important than the poster is where it appeared, and what this might mean for all of us. Many are applauding this new frontier of communication, while others say this is the beginning of the end -- the Re-Tweeting of posters, stills, and trailers could put us all out of work. For other media geeks, the Crank 2 poster means that Twitter is no longer cool, and is now just another tool of the corporate machine.

All I know is that Lionsgate is really lucky TwitPic was working, and didn't replace Statham with a Jason who uploaded his photo at the exact same time they did. That happened to me the other day, and boy was it embarrassing.