May 10

DVD2BLU – Why Don’t We Have This Service?

Let’s start by saying the Warner Bros. DVD-to-Blu-Ray upgrade service is expanding it’s list to 90 titles. You simply send your DVD to Warner Bros. with a small fee of $4.95 and they send you the Blu-Ray version, awesome!

Now the kicker, it is only available in the US! Why? Why can’t we in other countries (I’m here in Australia) have a similar, wonderful system. We movie fanatics have spent thousands of dollars building our collections and I applaud Warner Bros. for helping make the transition to a new system easier, they just don’t go far enough.

Here in Australia it would be even easier for Warner Bros. to implement a system like this as we have such a small population that the number of exchanges would be relatively small. They would be able to keep their loyal movie geeks happy and it wouldn’t even cost that much to so.

Okay, rant over. If you do live in the US and want to take advantage of the system, follow the link above.

May 10

Zynga May Leave Facebook to Form New Social Gaming Network

Zynga games, the social gaming company that makes Mafia Wars, Farmville, Cafe World, YoVille, Pirates and many other Flash based games on Facebook could be gearing up to create it’s own social gaming network, Zynga Live.

One could argue that Zynga and Facebook have a kind of symbiotic relationship, Zynga needed Facebook to get millions of regular people to play their games (leading to a social gaming explosion) and Facebook has needed Zynga to bring millions of people back to Facebook on an incredibly regular basis. All this may change in the coming months. Continue reading

May 09

Book Review: Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie

It is no secret that I loved the film ‘Kick-Ass’, we reviewed it very positively in episode 79 of the The Geek Actually Podcast. We also reviewed this wonderful book, ‘Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie’ by Mark Millar and published by Titan Press (ISBN 9781848564091) on that same show. I couldn’t just leave it there, this fine book needed an extra mention as it is a wonderful tie in to the movie.

On the most part, these kinds of books are kind of light weight, they are used as a promotional tool to sell more movie tickets, however with this book author Mark Millar (who is also the writer of the original comic that the film is based on) has put enough love and detail in to really satisfy the reader and film lover. He describes the journey from the comic panel to the motion picture screen in detail and has wonderful commentary from a lot of the key personnel of the film and comic, including Matthew Vaughn (the director), Jane Goldman (the screenwriter), John Romita Jr. (the illustrator of the comic) and Sammy Sheldon (the film’s costume designer) just to name a few. Continue reading

May 08

Space Paranoids Game Now Online!

The marketing for ‘Tron Legacy’ is starting to kick into high gear and the film is still months away. If you are at all familiar with the first ‘Tron’ film you will love this new free online game of ‘Space Paranoids’ at spaceparanoidsonline.com.

It is a really cool version of the game that is played in the original film and it actually gets quite hard as the levels progress. Click the image below to play (you may need to install the Unity plug in before you can play).

May 08

iPad gets Australian pricing a couple of days early!

Apple was suppose to release the iPad prices for Australia on the 10th of May, but for some reason (only known to Apple) the prices came out today. Okay so what are we looking at?

The prices are almost exactly what Josh, Shane and I predicted on Geek Actually Tech several weeks ago. Below I have laid out all the prices for both the wi-fi model and the 3G model.

For more details on the unit itself, shoot over to Apple. Okay on to the prices: Continue reading

May 08

New Trailer: Inception

On this week’s episode of The Geek Actually podcast (episode 83) we discussed the plot details of Christopher Nolan’s new film ‘Inception’. Well suddenly, as if on cue, a new trailer surfaces.

I am really looking forward to this film, Nolan hasn’t let me down yet. ‘Memento’, ‘Insomnia’, ‘Batman Begins’, ‘The Prestige’ and ‘The Dark Knight’, an impressive list of credits and I think this film is looking like a worthy candidate to add to this list of quality, thought provoking films.

The plot synopsis (source: /Film) as read on the episode is as follows: Continue reading