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Trailer Park: Monsters

Monsters is picking up a lot of buzz recently for it's old-school shocks and clever premise - aliens arrived back on a NASA probe and have been mutating and growing for 6 years.

The movie is a firt-time directorial effort from effects man Gareth Edwards. It's not quite on the same clever-with-the-budget page as Panic Attack, 28 Days Later or Blair Witch, looking more like a low(er) budget version of Cloverfield or even the Dawn of the Dead remake, but certainly attention worhty.

Via Empire

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17th Aug 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

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May The $$$ Be With You

In possibly the first bit of exciting Star Wars news for 10 years, Darth Lucas has announced that the original trilogy will be released on Blu-ray in Fall 2011.

The unaltered original trilogy is now being referred to as the 'classic trilogy' by Lucas, in a not dissimilar way to how Coke back-pedalled out of their new recipe fiasco in the 80's. He has previously put them down as 'workprints' for the eventual grand-vision cartoony versions he released in the 90's and re-tweaked in the 00's.

Of course it was obvious that he would re-jig the films back to their 'classic' state at some point, so if the franchise hasn't been poisoned for you too much this may hopefully be the first time you can get the original films in any kind of decent format. Or more decent than the 90's Laserdisc box at least.

All this info is coming from the Star Wars Celebration V convention being held this weekend, which is providing all sorts of tidbits, articles, links and clips:

• Great article about producer Gary Kurtz vision for a darker Return of the Jedi
• Great Today Show footage from 1980 with Mark Hamill, plus Harrison Ford discussing how much he likes Empire.
• Revelation that Harrison Ford has only seen Empire once.

There was also a screening of one of several deleted scenes that will appear on the Blu-Ray as bonus material. The originally planned opening for ROTJ (below) shows Luke receiving bad vibes from Vadar, while building his own lightsaber and hiding it inside R2D2 - a trick that paid off later in the film. Back when kids couldn't watch the films whenever they wanted I was sure this was the opening to the film - probably as it was in the novelization of the film that I had as an 8-year-old geek. The same goes for Luke watching the space battle at the start of Star Wars through  his binoculars.

Nearly all via La Times or AICN

UPDATE: Woodward & Bernstein might suggest a second source on this. AICN is talking original, original trilogy. No one else is that specific. Lucas just talks about the 'highest picture and audio quality' and how the old versions needed a lot of re-mastering, but StarWars.com doesn't actually specify if Han shoots first.... Whatever. Pick 'em up in the 2012 HMV Biggest Summer Sale Ever.

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15th Aug 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Re-Branded

Lovely video up from creative agency Johnson Banks to document their re-branding of Virgin Atlantic;s fleet. Doesn't look like the cleanest place to work, but the results are certainly shiny.

Via Brand New

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11th Aug 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Hurley Burly

Weezer are out of their major-label contract and are now signed to Epitaph. Surely this means they have just been fulfilling their obligations to the label for the last 2+ albums and will now return to Pinketon-era awesomeness.

Their new album is already ready to drop on September 14th and it's called Hurley, not unlike the now-famous fat bloke off that TV show Lost. Uh oh, maybe this doesn't bode well, as the cover is that fat block from Lost, cropped from a photo of Jorge Garcia and Rivers Cuomo. Irony doesn't even abound.

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10th Aug 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Pixels

Great round up of pixel power for an attack on New York. 

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6th Aug 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

H.B.O.V.A.

Forget watching any HBO shows legally in the UK unless you've got satellite. Sky has snapped up all of HBO's current and past output, which will become exclusive to the pay-TV channel as current deals expire - for the next 5 years at least.

Scorsese's upcoming Boardwalk Empire looks like a future highlight for the channel, as well as the return of Curb and Bored to Death, but with ITV failing to renew their deal on Entourage and Treme failing to be picked up by anyone yet, Sky is going to be the place you have to go.

With Sky also rolling out their video-on-demand system this looks like a Monopoly-power-play move to add more value to their offering, as they push past the 10,000,000 subscriber mark.

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29th Jul 2010 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Superchunk

Arch indie slackers Superchunk are back in business after a near 10-year hiatus. Not that thye've been sitting around - Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan are the honchos of @Merge Records

"Majesty Shredding telescopes two decades into 41 indelible, action-packed minutes. It is the sound of youthful exuberance fine-tuned with grown-up confidence."

Sold. As long as they play Slack Motherfucker on tour.

Pre-order here. Majesty Shredding is out October 4th.

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28th Jul 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet