According to AAP (Australian Associated Press) and reported in the The Sydney Morning Herald and News.com.au, Baz Luhrmann’s (want to be) epic film “Australia” may suffer by the casting of Nicole Kidman.

The choice of actress has been savaged by British newspaper columnist Melanie Reid (The Times). She describes the casting of Kidman as a “big, big mistake.”

In the article, Reid goes on to say that Kidman is an immediate turn-off for female cinemagoers who feel she is “one of the most overrated actors” in the world and who has “been the kiss of death in practically every movie she has starred in”.

To quote Reid, “Kidman is exquisitely accomplished at being awful, she can’t act. Instead she drifts around films like a lost porcelain doll, looking frozen, brittle and vapid, staring at the camera with her oh-golly-look-how-I’m-looking-interesting blue eyes.”

Now, I love this article because I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I referred to Kidman as box office poison in the last podcast (episode 15 - Rumspringa). The woman hasn’t managed to really open a film in years and she is boring as batshit to watch. Now, I haven’t seen “Australia” yet, I will see it next week and I will review it on the next available podcast but my expectations are very low for this film.

News.com.au is reporting today that the new Google Voice Search app for the iPhone can’t handle the Australian Accent. The idea behind the app (short for application) is to allow hands free searching.

The app is a free download from the iTunes store but Australian customers might want to take note, the Australian accent is returning some bizarre search results.

According to the article in news.com.au, the number eight becomes a search for “ike”, seven turns into “Clinton”, and don’t even try searching for the number six.

Google admits the app works best with North American accents so I think we all need to get a dialect coach

This is not just a local phenomenon, Roger Ellinson from Kent said, ”I’ve got a traditional Kentish accent and the thing kept on spitting back ridiculous things, I asked it to find my nearest pizza take away and it came back with something about volcanoes.”

A News.com.au test found that the voice search tends to work best with multisyllabic words – it was able to understand “supercalafragilisticexpialadocious” in an Australian accent, yet still had trouble with simple words like fish, lunch, and news.

I will download this app and get a bunch of people to try it out for an official Geek Actually test run. I’ll report the results in the next podcast - episode 16.

Read the whole news.com.au story by clicking here.

Microsoft to ditch its subscription PC security service and offer free software to protect computers from viruses, spyware and other threats.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
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Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Equity Games Production and Halcyon Games have announced “Terminator Salvation – The Videogame,” an action-packed, third-person shooter, to be released in conjunction with the highly anticipated Warner Bros. Pictures and Sony Pictures film, which opens nationwide on May 22, 2009.
Source: comingsoon.net
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A new poster for 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios’ Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs has turned up online. Opening July 1, the 3-D installment features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Queen Latifah.
Source: comingsoon.net
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For those of you that are of my generation, you are all familiar with Astro Boy. Well, he is hitting the big screen in 2009. I feel better about this than I did Speed Racer because at least the creators of Astro Boy have gone the straight CG route instead of trying to make a “live action cartoon”. Speed Racer was awful, hopefully this will fair a little better.

You can watch the new teaser here http://www.moviefone.com/movie/astro-boy/30167/main

The new movie stars the voice talents of Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell, Donald Sutherland, Nathan Lane, Bill Nighy, Matt Lucas and Eugene Levy. It is directed by Colin Brady. The synopsis for the new movie is (taken from the moviefone website):

A thrilling tale of a true hero, ‘Astro Boy’ is an all-new, full-length feature film full of action, adventure, humor and heart. It will be brought to life on the big screen in breathtaking CGI animation on October 23, 2009.

Embarking on a journey across the planet to discover his powers, Astro Boy encounters a netherworld of robot gladiators and other comic characters, and learns the joys and emotions of being human. When he learns his friends and family are in danger, Astro Boy marshals all his awesome super powers and returns to Metro City, in a valiant effort to save everything he cares about and to embrace his place in the world.

Here we go again! Film production companies are suing Western Australian ISP (Internet Service Provider) iiNet over claims that iiNet is not stopping it’s customers from downloading illegal movies and TV shows.

Apparently iiNet has been under investigation for many months now and the production companies claim that they have been issuing many warnings to the ISP.

You can read the whole article by clicking here (news.com.au) or following the link below for another take on it.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald
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Hosts: David McVay, Mirren Lee, Jacob Oberman and a special guest appearance from Sarah Kalpokas

This week, Mirren’s back and Sarah makes an unexpected Skype call. David tried to see “Dying Breed” but was denied, again! Jacob and David review the documentary “Celebrity: Dominick Dunne”. Sarah pops in from Canada to tell us her opinions on the new Bond film “Quantum of Solace” and David reviews the new teen comedy “Sex Drive”.

A bunch of Tech stories and movie news including, Terrorists recruiting on Facebook, Yang steps down from Yahoo, Obama on YouTube, Robotech coming to screen near you and many more. We also look at some of the hype and mixed stories around Baz Luhrmann’s new film “Australia”.

Due to the conversational and candid approach we take to the show, the episode carries an explicit tag for infrequent bad language.

Listen to it here or download (or subscribe) it on iTunes or Podbean.com

NOTE: You must have the latest Adobe Flash Player installed for the streams to playback correctly. Go to www.adobe.com to get the latest Flash Player.

Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are in negotiations to write Marvel Studios’ First Avenger: Captain America , to be directed by Joe Johnston and produced by Marvel’s Kevin Feige.
Source: comingsoon.net
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Security researchers deem November 24 “black Monday” following predictions it will herald this year’s peak in malware.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
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