Andy Wood

Today Bloody-Disgusting received word from a very reliable source that Ving Rhames has been cast in the film, specifically to link the film to Uni’s Dawn remake. In addition, Mira Sorvino (Mimic) will be joining him. The film will be shooting in or around Bulgaria or Romania this month. Steve Miner directs off a script by Jeffrey Redd|ick (Tamara).

The original follows a group of scientists and military personnel holed up in an underground bunker because the world above is overrun with zombies. The lumbering flesheaters eventually find a way in and wreak havoc on the scientists who’ve been experimenting on their undead brethren.

Update: A slight error in saying that Mira Sorvino would be starring when it’s actually Mena Suvari, who’ll be dueling zombie bastards in an undead wasteland. More recently, “BlackFilm” chimed in with the rest of the cast and it includes Michael Welch, Annalynne McCord, Stark Sands, and Nick Cannon. In this update, HALLOWEEN H20 director Steve Miner is on directorial duties from a script by Jeffrey Reddick and while the plot is yet to be revealed, it’s likely there’ll be some slight deviations from the original. In fact, there may even be those “fast” zombies that were prevalent in the recent Dawn of the Dead remake. It worked for those guys so why not? The most important thing here is that, in the film, Suvari wears that exact outfit she’s wearing to the right.

The Mozilla Corporation launched the first official beta of Firefox 2.0 early Wednesday, signaling that its major upgrade to the popular alternative browser is inching ever closer to release. New features in Firefox 2.0 include enhancements in security, tabbed browsing, performance, and extensions.

The spell checker is nice, quick and non-intrusive. The one thing that I have always regretted about upgrading firefox was that the extensions would not longer work, but there is a trick that you can to which will force them to work.

You could use a extension called Nightly Tester Tools to make the extensions compatible with firefox 2.0. Most authors of extensions define a range of firefox versions that their extension works with and 2.0 is obviously not included in many extensions.

Download nightly tester tools and install the extension. Restart firefox afterwards and click on tools then add-ons. Hit Make all compatible and restart firefox again. All extensions should be working fine with firefox 2.0 now. Some might not be working due to incompatibilities. If that is the case deactivate all extensions again and activate one by one to see which ones are causing troubles.

If everything worked out you are ready to use firefox 2.0 with all extension. All extensions that I´am using for instance are working fine with 2.0, for example Fasterfox, SiteAdvisor and Performancing.

The first offering from King’s twisted mind is “Battleground.” Brain Henson, son of Jim, and operator of the Henson puppet studios, is the first director in the chute. Henson chose the story of a hit man who kills a toy maker, and spends the rest of the episode defending himself from a military onslaught of possessed toys out for revenge. Henson handles the story extremely well, maintaining just the right mix of what the audience sees, and keeping certain elements in the shadows when needed. Of course the effects work by Henson’s company is fantastic and any fan of “possessed toys” genre movies will get a kick out of this episode.

“Battleground” is a good first episode to introduce Stephen King fans to this new series. It is an interesting and ambitious undertaking from TNT, which brought us the great TV adaptation of SALEM’S LOT last year. This series is a bit more controlled than MASTERS OF HORROR, therefore a little less graphic and bloody. This is something that you can actually watch with a bit more of a younger audience in the room. (Not with five-year olds mind you, but at least teenagers) Keep your eye on this series, some of the episodes, while not being particularly frightening, are exceptionally well done, and worth sitting in front of the TV for an hour or so to watch.

Just when I was thinking the new 3-D technology championed by George Lucas and James Cameron would save the movie theaters, I come across the subject of 3-D home entertainment. This isn’t something new. Sensio has been selling a 3-D processor for years and Universal Studio Home Entertainment has already put out a DVD of the animated short Santa Vs. the Snowman 3D using Sensio’s technology. But now Universal and Sensio have announced plans to release five classic (well, old) 3-D movies, which will finally be seen at home as they were meant to be seen. The titles are Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, It Came From Outer Space and Taza, Son of Cochise.

Though none of these movies are hugely attractive, at least not enough to get consumers more interested and aware of Sensio’s equipment, and though the entire set up required for their viewing is upwards of $35,000 (the processor is only a few thousand bucks, but special TVs, DVD players and/or projectors are also needed), the fact that quality 3-D home viewing exists makes the promotion of 3-D in cinemas a lot less momentous. Eventually I see the new 3-D movies being released in theaters and then released on 3-D DVDs, and the choice between the multiplex and the living room will be the same as it is today. via Cinematical

Star Trek devotees are fussy fanatics. Whether they’re debating the gloomy aesthetic of Deep Space Nine (best Trek ever!) or Voyager’s time-travel flapdoodles (stoo-peed?), no detail ducks dissection. Plotting a ship-combat game covering the entirety of Trek-dom–from the Archer era to Janeway– therefore sounds practically Sisyphean. Does Mad Doc’s own “mad doctor,” Ian Lane Davis, worry about nerfing Trekkie depth for breadth? “Not at all,” he counters. “Our story line carries the game very well. In fact, I think fans will really buy into the concept of a persistent fleet that spans the whole time line, because it lets you really experience the evolution of the ships and characters.”

Picture yourself as a fleet admiral controlling a task force in small- and large-scale 3D space combat. You pick ships, equipment, and captains, and add to or mod your fleet between missions. As battles occur, you can jump from ship to ship, manipulating each one’s mechanics in real time. “We want Legacy to be the ultimate computer representation of the real Trek experience,” explains Davis. “Sure, you’re clicking the Fire button, but it’s hardly a button masher–phasers take time to recharge, photons take time to reload, and the ships generally have a grace and mass that are appropriate to Trek.” To flesh out scenarios, Mad Doc’s adding strategic and tactical elements such as taking over planets, defending and attacking star bases, using nebulae to hide, and tackling simultaneous objectives with multiple ships.

Does Davis see parallels with Mad Doc’s last game, Empire Earth II? “Legacy really isn’t an RTS,” he responds. “The battles take waaaay more time than a skirmish between similar RTS unit counts. Each of these starships is designed to take a pounding, repair, escape, and dive back in. A four-ship-on-four-ship battle could be 20 to 30 minutes if you’re careful with your ships.” But don’t rule resource management entirely out, either; it just occurs between missions, based on command points earned in battle. “Ships are treated like characters in the game,” explains Davis. “Thus you’ve got the ‘base-building’ element. But the commissioning (and destruction) of a ship is a huge deal. In Star Trek, you wouldn’t whip up a star base or ship in the course of a halfhour battle.”

With all that fidelity, can Legacy be more than just a love letter to Trek fans? “We want to break new ground while paying serious attention to the core conceits of the franchise,” says Davis, “with the hope, of course, that breaking new ground and delivering an exceptional gameplay experience aren’t mutually exclusive.” We hope so, too. via 1UP