Chad’s News

In the first week or so after making 75 of its movies available on iTunes, Disney sold an impressive 125,000 copies. Total revenue was $1 million.

http://playlistmag.com/…

If you haven’t seen it before, the “How It Should Have Ended” web site has short, animated videos of how various movies should have ended. There are quite a few that I don’t particularly like (e.g., ‘Saving Private Ryan‘), but the ‘Lord of the Rings‘ and ‘Star Wars‘ clips are hysterical (and ‘Superman‘ isn’t too bad either).

http://www.howitshouldhaveended.com/…

This really comes as no surprise to me. The DVD-R vs. DVD+R format war was resolved by simply making the players compatible with both formats, and now Ricoh has managed to do the same with HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Expect to see a lot more dual-format players.

http://arstechnica.com/…

If you blinked, you may have missed it, but the first Blu-ray movies were released last week, with the first Blu-ray player released a few days later. Initial impressions of the Samsung player were underwhelming, as was the review of one of the few available movies. Expect players to get better and cheaper, and ditto with the movies. We’re in the midst of a format war between Toshiba’s HD-DVD and Sony’s Blu-ray, but as far as I can tell, the general level of apathy over this subject is pretty high.

I really enjoyed the Fight Club movie, once a roommate convinced me to watch it. (The previews did the movie an injustice.) Now we’re seeing life imitate art with the advent of real-life fight clubs. The linked article details one such club in Silicon Valley where tech workers compose the group. As weird as it may sound, this makes a lot of sense to me, and the concept holds a certain attraction.

http://www.usatoday.com/…
(via slashdot)

As of this time last year, Colorado had exactly one theater with digital projection. It must be a 2K or less projector, because I was able to see pixellation in Attack of the Clones (I was sitting in the first row of the stadium seating section). Here’s hoping digital projection comes into widespread use.

http://www.businessweek.com/…

The trailer for the upcoming X-Men movie, X-Men: The Last Stand, is available online. Jean Gray is back as the Phoenix, and both Angel and the Beast make their first appearances. Looks like it’ll be another good one. The official release date is May 26th.

http://www.apple.com/…

After all the salvos in the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle, it appears Toshiba (HD-DVD) will launch an actual product this month, while Sony’s (Blu-Ray) initial offering will be in May. The number and variety of available titles are extremely limited, however, and I don’t see this as much of a victory for either camp—although HD-DVD does appear to be ahead on the hardware front.

http://www.nytimes.com/…

Oops…

http://www.scifi.com/

Do you feel like you’re getting behind in your collection of Star Trek movies/series, or maybe you haven’t even started? Well fear not—now is your chance to have it all. The Ultimate Star Trek Collection consists of a whopping 212 DVD discs, and it costs a mere $2500 (shipping is free). It comprises all 5 of the Star Trek series as well as the special editions of all 10 movies. According to the reviewer, the only things it doesn’t include are the animated series, Trekkies, and Trekkies 2.

http://www.amazon.com/…

No, no, no… Some things were not meant to be!

http://www.scifi.com/…

Here’s a link to the original article, and there’s even an entry at countingdown.com.

This may actually be worth paying money to see, if they do it right:

http://www.playbill.com/…