Painkiller Resurrection RELOADED

Are expectations lowering for Super 8?

Just as the coming attractions for Super 8 felt like they were ramping the American public up for something pretty big, all of the sudden Paramount has been downplaying their expectations for the film, as well as reports that tracking for the film is "soft."





Hollywood Reporter also ran a story about "what's at stake" with Abrams's career if Super 8 doesn't take off, it could affect other "nonfranchise" projects he has planned for the future.

Super 8 has reportedly cost $50 million dollars, which shouldn't be hard to recoup, but you also get the sense there may be a slight panic that the mystery behind the film isn't working to its advantage.

Abrams joked to Vanity Fair that, "After doing a series of films based on TV shows from the 60s that Leonard Nimoy starred in, I felt like it was important that I do something Leonard Nimoy had nothing to do with." (Yet in one scene, the show In Search Of is on in the background, which Nimoy hosted.)

The fact that Super 8 is not a remake, sequel or reboot could be making Paramount nervous. In a recent article in GQ, "The Day the Movies Died," Mark Harris reported with considerable disgust that Christopher Nolan's Inception, an original film that obviously did quite well, got made because Warner Brothers needed him back for the next Batman.

And it is indeed tough to get an original idea sold because it's harder to market something new from scratch, or so current Hollywood "logic" would have it. 

About five years ago I met with a well known producer who said if I had any good ideas for a remake, not any good ideas for an original movie of course, to let him know.

I also once wrote a story about a friend, Paul Fusco, who got a screenplay he'd written, Soldiers of the Dead, adapted into a graphic novel, because if it did well, it would be easier to sell the movie out of a previously successful comic, instead of trying to pitch an original idea from scratch.

If Super 8 doesn't take off, Abrams still have enough success under his belt that he should be able to survive the hit just fine, and if takes a little time for Super 8 to build, thankfully with today's social networks word of mouth will grow a lot faster, hence Paramount announcing a preview on the eve of Super 8's release via Twitter.

Scientific Linux 5.6 RC1

Troy Dawson has announced that the first release candidate for Scientific Linux 5.6 is out and ready for testing: "Scientific Linux 5.6 RC 1 is now available. We have pushed out the latest update to Scientific Linux (SL) 5.6. Changed since beta 3: SL 5.6 has a new graphical theme called 'Atom Shine'; sl-release and yum-conf were updated to point to 56 instead of 5rolling; R was updated to 2.13.0; on the distribution servers there is now a directory 56, for i386 and x86_64 there are links to 5rolling, this does not mean that 56 is released, it is only in release candidate, It is set up this way so that we can test. Known issues: the GDM login screen still has the old graphics instead of the new Atom Shine graphics, this will be fixed in the next release candidate. We expect SL 5.6 RC2 out in two weeks." The release announcement. Download: SL.56.060811.DVD.i386.disc1.iso (4,167MB, MD5), SL.56.060811.DVD.x86_64.disc1.iso (4,172MB, MD5).

FreeNAS 8.0.1 Beta 2

Josh Paetzel has announced the availability of the second beta release of FreeNAS 8.0.1: "Hot on the tail of the first BETA I am proud to announce 8.0.1-BETA2. This is the second of three planned betas in the 8.0.1 release cycle. Most of the changes from BETA1 are bug fixes. In particular several bugs have been fixed in the migrations from 8.0-RELEASE. The system was not relabeling ZFS volumes to use the new devicename-independent naming scheme correctly in BETA1. Also the database migration scripts in BETA1 do not migrate NFS shares properly. The upgrade/migration scripts have been improved. In previous versions failure of the database upgrade was easy to miss, and it could leave the system booting to single-user mode with error messages that had nothing to do with the root issue. This has been rectified. If a database migration does fail, the error message will be clear as to what happened." Here is the complete release announcement. Download (SHA256): FreeNAS-8.0.1-BETA2-i386.iso (102MB), FreeNAS-8.0.1-BETA2-amd64.iso (108MB).

Nintendo admits it faked Wii U game footage

You know, I haven't been impressed with Nintendo in, well, just about ages. I much preferred playing Golden Axe on the Sega Genesis than Mario on the NES.

True, that was many, many years ago - but some things never change.

For example, I have long suspected Nintendo excels in little else but marketing, as the corporation seems to have an uncanny knack of convincing people they absolutely must buy a subpar system and play mindless games until their eyes are red from sleep deprivation.

Admittedly, I probably do sound like an aging curmudgeon, but I always believed the color Lynx was miles ahead of the monochrome Game Boy.

But what did the mindless masses end up buying? Yeah, the Game Boy. Sure, the quality was lacking, but so friggin' what? Obviously, high-end graphics have never mattered to Nintendo.

So that's why I wasn't at all shocked to learn the bloated corporation had faked video game footage ostensibly rendered by its "next-gen" (*cough*) Wii U console this week at E3 in Los Angeles.

That's right, some of the clips were actually snatched from Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games, both of which, IMHO, probably boast superior graphics to whatever advanced "console" Nintendo is working on.

But Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime seemed rather nonplussed by the controversy, telling GameTrailers the presentation was perfectly legit, as the graphics on the Wii U would definitely be comparable to what was shown at the LA game show.

"We're talking a year away from when the system's going to launch. The system's going to be 1080p," Fils-Aime claimed.

"You're going to see games that take full advantage of a system that has the latest technology and can push out some incredible graphics."



Yeah, right. If I was an optimist, I would say Nintendo needs to internalize the following age-old slogan:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

But they won't, because they really don't have to. Unfortunately, modern consumers tend to fall for slick marketing campaigns, and never seem to learn that spin just can't quite make up for lack of quality.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

Watch the exclusive online trailer debut for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1, starring Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner, coming to theaters November 18, 2011!