News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
With 3-D movies becoming all the rage, Slate takes a look at the difficulties inherent in converting an older 2-D movie into 3-D. Unfortunately the viewing experience is not as good as native 3-D, especially if they do a sloppy job. Also, since it costs more to film in 3-D than to convert from 2-D, we may see upcoming films doing the conversion anyway.
Link: http://www.slate.com/…
(via Neatorama)
Over at UserFriendly, artist J.D. “Illiad” Fraser lists five movie concepts that will terrorize your inner geek. My favorite is “Windows Me: The Rebirth.”
The Hunt For Gollum is a high-quality Lord of the Rings fan film describing the period when Aragorn tracks down Gollum. In the books, it’s only mentioned in passing, and this film imagines what the hunt could have been like.
The movie is a large download. For those readers who prefer to use BitTorrent, there are several good torrents available.
Here are 11 predictions in Back to the Future II that came true. Pretty good for a sequel!
Link: http://www.11points.com/…
(via mental_floss)
Netflix sees the future, and the future includes on-demand streaming video. Why use snail mail to get Netflix DVDs when you can download the movie right now? Makes sense to me, although I doubt the quality of the streaming video will be as good as that of DVD or Blu-ray.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Much like the DVD of The Matrix which I believe was the first major release to fully exploit the new medium, the Blu-ray version of The Dark Knight has a bunch of bells and whistles. Note that you’ll need a Profile 2.0 player to use BD-Live.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Next weekend’s release of The X-Files: I Want to Believe will not address the X-Files mythology. But should you want to know the full and unambiguous history of the mythology, I refer you to the linked site. After reading sections 0 through 4 of the primer, and based on my own experience watching the show, I finally got the big picture—which was originally presented in disjoint pieces over scores of episodes.
In response to last week’s theatrical release of The Incredible Hulk, the linked article lists 10 movie characters that could take on the Hulk and possibly win. Personally, I think Dr. Manhattan and Jean Gray should be tied for first place. (And if you’re wondering who the heck is Dr. Manhattan, don’t fret—the Watchmen movie hasn’t been released yet.)
Link: http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/…
(via digg)
The high-definition format war is officially over. Toshiba has thrown in the towel on its HD-DVD format, and the remaining holdout studios have announced their decision to switch to Blu-ray.
For the early adopters, here’s how to convert HD-DVD discs to Blu-ray,
Link: http://www.toshiba.co.jp/…
(via Engadget)
Over the past few weeks, HD-DVD has been losing more and more ground in the high-definition format war with Blu-ray. Several major retailers have announced their decision to discontinue stocking HD-DVD titles, and there are rumors that Toshiba is thinking about conceding defeat. Looks like Blu-ray is going to emerge as the winner.
According to this BBC article, we can expect to see more 3-D movies in the future. Apparently the technology has come quite a ways since Jaws 3-D. I’ve also heard rumors that George Lucas will be re-releasing the Star Wars movies in 3-D.
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…
Regular Chad’s News readers know that we’ve been covering the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray. LG Electronics has decided to make the point moot, by releasing a player that can handle both formats.
Link #1: http://us.lge.com/…
Link #2: http://us.lge.com/…
