Geek Actually Episode 53 After Show – Video Game Adaptations
September 30, 2009
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David McVay is joined by Josh Philpott, Dave Kozicki and our very special guests Charlie and Brad from The Movie Fan House Podcast.
Recorded live on Ustream. In this entertaining and often hilarious after show we discuss Hollywood’s obsession with video game adaptations. This discussion was sparked off by a simple question, “If, on the most part, video game adaptations are roasted by critics and, on the most part, don’t make money, why does Hollywood insist on making more and more video game movies?”
We also share our opinions on our top five favourite video game movies and our bottom five worst video game movies. Thanks go out to Charlie and Brad for joining us via Skype, they are always welcome here at Geek Actually.
Charlie and Brad can be heard weekly on The Movie Fan House Podcast at moviefanhouse.com or on iTunes.
A reminder, this is not a proper episode of the Geek Actually podcast, this is a pretty unstructured conversation that took place after the recording of the proper show. Join us in the chat room during the recording sessions on Saturday mornings and get your voice heard. If the after shows are popular we will continue recording them. Let us know if you enjoy (or not) the after show in the comments below.
As always this episode carries an explicit tag due to bad language.
Listen or download it here or subscribe to it on iTunes
Geek Actually is brought to you by listeners, just like you. Thanks for your contributions. If you wish to make a contribution, go to the “Support Us” link above.
Just a reminder, if you have any comments about the episodes please leave them in the comments field below or email us using the contact link above. If you are an iTunes user, please leave a review as we are trying to get on the featured list and every review helps. Your comments (good or bad) help us improve the show. You can contact us here.
The Geek Actually Podcast is recorded live on Ustream every Saturday Morning 11am Australian Eastern Standard Time (UTC+10). If you still just want to listen to the audio podcast, it will go out as normal on Sunday. Want to catch up with the video but missed the show on Saturday? Go to geekactually.com/live, the repeat runs all week (NB: The after show is not repeated on ustream).
NEW – The Book of Eli Trailer
September 29, 2009
We posted a teaser up for this film a few weeks ago and now a full trailer, cool. I really am looking forward to this film, I am a big fan of The Hughes Brothers and post apocalyptic stuff, this is gonna be fun. Watch the trailer below and let us know what you think in the forum or the comments below.
The New Nightmare on Elm Street Teaser
September 29, 2009
As anyone knows by now, I am not real big on remaking films that are not that old, however as soon as I heard that Jackie Earle Haley was cast as Freddy Kruger I got a little excited about this project.
I know that it is one of the Michael Bay produced remakes which I am not a huge fan of and I know that the original films are classics in horror, but I have to say, I like the look of this one. I am impressed that they haven’t tried to re-invent the wheel here and there are a lot of familiar shots (Nancy in the bath for example).
Anyway, watch the teaser below and let us know what your thoughts are in the forum or in the comments below.
A Nightmare on Elm Street in HD
A Nightmare on Elm Street is directed by Samuel Bayer and stars Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner, Thomas Dekker, Kellan Lutz, Katie Cassidy and Connie Britton. The film will be released in the US on April 30th 2010.
The Movie Fan House Comes to Geek Actually
September 27, 2009
I want to thank Charlie and Brad from The Movie Fan House Podcast for joining us on the latest after show. This was the most fun I’ve had in a long time, with the Fan House guys and Josh and our special guest, journalist, Dave Kozicki.
We expected to do a quick half hour after show about video game to movie adaptations and it turned into a two hour laugh-fest. I think all of us geeks just needed to vent about our dismay, and at times, anger over the treatment of video games in cinema. It was a wonderfully cathartic release for all of us.
You can listen to this after show on Wednesday here or on iTunes (subscribe and you won’t miss it).
Movie Fan House is a movie podcast by fans for fans and you can find the Movie Fan House podcast here or on iTunes.
Geek Actually Episode 53 – Come to the Dark Side, We have Dental
September 27, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
David McVay is joined by Josh Philpott and Special Guest Dave Kozicki (Freelance journalist, Official Playstation, Australian Xbox, Ultimate Nintendo and Penthouse magazines)
The Geek Actually Podcast is recorded live on Ustream with chat interaction.
Game News This Week: The Xbox 360 802.11N wireless adaptor a reality, Nintendo drops the price on the Wii and Dave Kozicki and Josh review two new games; ‘Wet’ and ‘Halo 3 ODST’. ‘Wet’ is not met with a favourable review, ‘Halo3 ODST’ is fun, especially in multiplayer.
In “Great Internet Tech War of 2009″ News: Google crawls in under Microsoft’s skin by creating a Chrome patch for Internet Explorer, basically replacing Microsoft’s rendering engine with Chrome’s. Microsoft is understandably annoyed.
Tech News This Week: Microsoft opens a Windows cafe in Paris, Microsoft is turning the T-Mobile Sidekick into Pink, the group buying The Pirate Bay may be broke and Lily Allen fights piracy with plagiarism!
Entertainment News This Week: Ghost Rider 2 is on the way, Fox plans to reboot ‘Fantastic Four’ ‘Daredevil’ and ‘Silver Surfer’, Columbia picks up ‘Masters of the Universe’ and decides to start from scratch, ‘The Social Network’ gets a cast, ‘Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut’ confirmed, ‘Barbie: The Movie’ coming soon, Werner Herzog wants to start a film school and David Cronenberg wants to remake his own remake ‘The Fly’!
Our Feature Reviews: David gives a quick review of ‘(500) Days of Summer’ and highly recommends it. Then David, Josh and Dave review the new Jonathan Mostow film ‘Surrogates’ starring Bruce Willis. ‘Surrogates’ is not an overwhelming success with anyone. David thought it was average with moments, Josh hated it and Dave thought it was the best movie ever made, no wait….sorry he thought it was pretty average too.
As always this episode carries an explicit tag due to bad language.
Listen or download it here or subscribe to it on iTunes
Geek Actually is brought to you by listeners, just like you. Thanks for your contributions. If you wish to make a contribution, go to the “Support Us” link above.
Just a reminder, if you have any comments about the episodes please leave them in the comments field below or email us using the contact link above. If you are an iTunes user, please leave a review as we are trying to get on the featured list and every review helps. Your comments (good or bad) help us improve the show. You can contact us here.
The Geek Actually Podcast is recorded live on Ustream every Saturday Morning 11am Australian Eastern Standard Time (UTC+10). If you still just want to listen to the audio podcast, it will go out as normal on Sunday. Want to catch up with the video but missed the show on Saturday? Go to geekactually.com/live, the repeat runs all week.
Geek Actually Episode 52 – Zombie Nazis
September 19, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
David McVay is joined by Josh Philpott and Sarah Kalpokas
The Geek Actually Podcast is recorded live on Ustream with chat interaction.
Before we head into our major sections David gives a listener requested mini-review of the film ‘Seven Pounds’. David is not a fan.
Game News This Week: Left 4 Dead 2 banned in Australia, Apple might be gearing up to release a console (again?) and is the Xbox 360 getting an 802.11N adaptor?
In “Great Internet Tech War of 2009″ News: Google and Microsoft go toe to toe with ‘visual search’ and the Skype creators are suing eBay for a patent infringement.
Tech News This Week: The Australian Federal Government has issued orders for Telstra to breakup or they will break them up and did the Australian Federal Government over inflate the price tag on the National Broadband Network?
Entertainment News This Week: ‘Green Hornet’ gets a new villain with Christoph Waltz, The A-Team movie gets more cast members, Peter Berg directing ‘Battleship’ while Shawn Levy directs ‘Real Steel’ (remember the fighting robots game?), Silent Hill 2 is in the works, The Beatles top the charts…again, the ‘Harvey’ remake might have it’s star and we farewell Patrick Swayze, Henry Gibson and Larry Gelbart.
Our Feature Reviews: For our feature reviews this week David and Josh give a mini review of the Swedish Nazi Zombie movie ‘Dead Snow’ (fun and well worth watching for gore fans) and all three review Pixar’s latest ‘Up’ in 3D. Josh, David and Katrina all liked ‘Up’ and recommend it although Katrina did have some issues with the film.
As always this episode carries an explicit tag due to small amounts of bad language.
Listen or download it here or subscribe to it on iTunes
Geek Actually is brought to you by listeners, just like you. Thanks for your contributions. If you wish to make a contribution, go to the “Support Us” link above.
Just a reminder, if you have any comments about the episodes please leave them in the comments field below or email us using the contact link above. If you are an iTunes user, please leave a review as we are trying to get on the featured list and every review helps. Your comments (good or bad) help us improve the show. You can contact us here.
The Geek Actually Podcast is recorded live on Ustream every Saturday Morning 11am Australian Eastern Standard Time (UTC+10). If you still just want to listen to the audio podcast, it will go out as normal on Sunday. Want to catch up with the video but missed the show on Saturday? Go to geekactually.com/live, the repeat runs all week.
Holy Crap, Left 4 Dead 2 Banned in Australia!
September 17, 2009
My sister (and occasional co-host) Sarah will be shattered at the news that Valve’s new game ‘Left 4 Dead 2′ has been refused classification (RC) in Australia. This means, for all intents and purposes, the game is banned in Australia.
I was alerted to this from an email from one of my listeners (Brad over at MovieFanHouse) and immediately went to work to confirm this. The best article I found (there are many) was on gamespot.com.au. I am reposting some of their article here. To read the full article click the link:
Left 4 Dead 2 was slated for a mid-November local release, but events today have put a giant question mark over the launch after news came that the Australian Classification Board had put its legislative foot down. The Classification Board is the government body responsible for rating all video games content authorised for sales in the country. According to the Classification Board website, Valve’s upcoming first-person shooter has been refused classification for failure to adhere to the current maximum MA 15+ ratings guideline–film can reach a maximum R18+ rating. The announcement means the title is now illegal to sell, rent, or promote within Australia.
They went on to say:
Left 4 Dead 2 marks the fourth game banned in Australia this year, joining Risen, Sexy Poker, and Necrovision–the latter two of which were approved for sale after being resubmitted with changes. The original Left 4 Dead game was given the maximum MA 15+ rating when it went on sale in Australia in November last year.
They then had this update:
GameSpot AU has received the official ruling from the Classification Board. The refusal largely focuses on the Board’s interpretation of the game’s violence finding that “The game contains realistic, frenetic and unrelenting violence which is inflicted upon “the Infected” who are living humans infected with a rabies-like virus that causes them to act violently” The ruling goes on to say that “However, it is the use of the “melee” weapons such as the crowbar, axe, chainsaw and Samurai sword which inflict the most damage. These close in attacks cause copious amounts of blood spray and splatter, decapitations and limb dismemberment as well as locational damage where contact is made to the enemy which may reveal skeletal bits and gore.”
Go to gamespot.com.au to read the whole article. This all leads to the major question that we raise all the time here at Geek Actually, why don’t we have an R15+ rating on games here in Australia. I have talked about this often on the show and even wrote a long blog on this awhile ago. You can read that post here.
What are your thoughts on this? Comment below or come over to the forum to discuss. Click here for the forum thread.
Spielberg Wants Downey Jr for Harvey
September 16, 2009
We have had much discussion on the podcast about Steven Spielberg’s ‘Harvey’ remake and who he should cast. We even set up a poll and discussion thread about it in our forum (go here to see that thread). We mainly talked about who could play the Elwood P. Dowd character so immortalised by James Stewart. Names like Jim Carrey, Bill Murray and Hugh Laurie were all thrown around, but now Spielberg has said that he wants Robert Downey, Jnr. According to a Variety (click here to see the original article) article about his upcoming ‘Lincoln’ project, they dropped this:
“Spielberg is presently focusing on his “reimagining” of ”Harvey,” with Robert Downey Jr. possibly playing the man who sees an invisible rabbit.”
I hadn’t even considered Downey Jr. I like this, I can see this as possible. Robert Downey Jr. is quite possibly one of my favourite actors working today and he would bring a sharp sense of humour and charm to ‘Harvey’.
What are your thoughts? Shoot over to the forum (here) and tell us what you think or comment below.
Geek Actually Episode 51 – Don’t Eat the Microphone Sarah
September 12, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
David McVay is joined by Josh Philpott and Sarah Kalpokas
The Geek Actually Podcast is recorded live on Ustream with chat interaction.
Game News This Week: Josh tells about a new Final Fantasy and we all discuss the iPhone/iPod Touch as a gaming platform. Is Apple inflating it’s stats a little?
In “Great Internet Tech War of 2009″ News: It would seem that there is no point going on, it would seem that Google has risen to god like status (literally) so how can any other company compete? Church of Google, anyone?
Tech News This Week: The Australian Federal Government’s Internet filter and it’s National Broadband Network are both scrutinized, The YouTube wants to go Pay-Per-View and Steve Jobs takes the stage at the September Apple event!
Entertainment News This Week: ‘Green Hornet’ runs into another problem, Ellen DeGeneres joins American Idol, ‘Masters of the Universe’ dumped by Warner Bros., Edgar Wright sets the record straight about ‘Ant Man’, Sharlto Copley (‘District 9′) in talks for ‘The A-Team’ movie and DC sets up a new production wing to go head to head with Marvel Productions.
Our Feature Review: For our feature reviews this week David, Josh and Sarah review Judd Apatow’s new film, ‘Funny People’ and were pleasantly surprised at how much they all liked it. Then they all review the Swedish vampire film ‘Let the Right One In’ and all loved this astounding little independent drama/horror/coming of age film. Both films highly recommended for very different reasons.
As always this episode carries an explicit tag due to small amounts of bad language.
Listen or download it here or subscribe to it on iTunes
Geek Actually is brought to you by listeners, just like you. Thanks for your contributions. If you wish to make a contribution, go to the “Support Us” link above.
Just a reminder, if you have any comments about the episodes please leave them in the comments field below or email us using the contact link above. If you are an iTunes user, please leave a review as we are trying to get on the featured list and every review helps. Your comments (good or bad) help us improve the show. You can contact us here.
The Geek Actually Podcast is recorded live on Ustream every Saturday Morning 11am Australian Eastern Standard Time (UTC+10). If you still just want to listen to the audio podcast, it will go out as normal on Sunday. Want to catch up with the video but missed the show on Saturday? Go to geekactually.com/live, the repeat runs all week.
Why I Love Widescreen
September 8, 2009
When I worked at a video library many years ago (the days of VHS), I would have to try to explain, on many occasions, to customers that they were actually losing a lot of the film when they rented movies. I was always pushing for that cinema experience. VHS (or DVD today even) is a way of catching up with missed movies or to see movies again or a way of catching up with movies that went straight to video, it was not a replacement for the cinema.
On VHS they started to release certain titles in widescreen (or letterboxed) format and I always pushed my customers to try these editions over the standard fullscreen (or pan & scanned) versions, usually the customer took the standard version because they believed that they were losing parts of the movie under the black bars. Luckily, DVD and 16:9 TVs have done a lot to educate people to the joys of movies in their original formats. However, distributors still insist on releasing some DVDs in both standard and widescreen formats, and worst of all, there are a couple of small distributors who still insist on releasing only panned & scanned DVDs!! They actually use it in their marketing, they say something like ‘get the whole picture’ or some such garbage.
I won’t buy a DVD if it is in Panned and Scanned format, period. I am a self confessed aspect ratio nazi!
So, why do I bring this up? /Film just found this wonderful little video from a few years ago that explains why you should watch widescreen over panned and scanned. I had a little demo that tried to explain it in the video library, but this is a gem and if I had this back then, I think I could have converted everyone. Enjoy the video and if you buy panned and scanned (fullscreen) DVDs, hopefully this will convert you.
