Universal picks up film rights to boring old game

Yes, Universal wants to make the classic Atari game "Asteroids" into a movie. This is a game with a simple premise: Shoot little lines from a triangle and destroy incoming "asteroids". No offense to fans, and nothing against retro gaming, but this wasn't exactly the best game to come out of the golden era of video games. If games like Yars Revenge and Donkey Kong were some of the bigger hits of the era, this was a surprise game that was fun enough to play once or twice, but then you got bored with it's simplicity and moved on to a better game. Apparently Universal likes this concept of something that gets old really fast, as their recent films would tend to suggest.

The thought here is that a popular retro game with no story whatsoever gives breathing room to the people producing it -- namely, TRANSFORMERS producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura -- so they can come up with a highly original story and escape ridicule from fans for "not sticking to the formula". All I can say is that if the ship is not triangle shaped and working from a fixed point in space, I will be VERY disappointed.

This is something people joke about, along with making a movie out of Pac-man and games like it. Surprise! The fantasy we used to joke about to poke fun at Hollywood's inability to create anything original is now becoming a REALITY!

You have a head.

You have a desk.

You know what to do.

Facebook: The Movie!

No, really. I can't make this up. I'm not that original.

However, apparently the "amazing" story behind Facebook is just original and riveting enough that it should be a movie! Wait, the news gets even better.

You know that guy who directed such brilliant films as Fight Club, Seven, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? You probably know where this is going, then. Yes, David Fincher is in talks to direct FACEBOOK: THE MOVIE, which has actually been dubbed with the new title of "The Social Network". Now, I'm not going to just bash this movie from the start. For all we know, it could end up being good. With Fincher behind the reigns, anything is possible. All I know is, the premise of the story of how Facebook became just another social networking website among a slew of already popular and famous sites just like it does not sound like a good movie to me. The war between Microsoft and Apple, that was interesting. This? A couple college kids stumble into wealth and I'm suppose to pay money to see a story about it? that's like telling me that a bunch of banks and corporations made a stupid mistake and they want me to pay for it.....oh, wait...

I guess it could be good, but there's nothing even remotely exciting to wet my appetite about it just yet. A Director makes a movie what it is, but I'm not sure even Fincher can pull a stupid concept like this out of the trash and make a diamond out of it.

Dragonball Evolution....part 2!

American audiences loved Dragonball Evolution (a live action take on a beloved anime/cartoon series from the 80's) so much that it made around $9 million during it's time in box offices around the country! By comparison, Battlefield Earth earned over $11 million in its opening weekend. Evolution never even reached that mark during it's entire stretch in theaters. This is how much American Audiences LOVED Dragonball Evolution.

Guess what! They're making another one!

One rather excellent article suggests that perhaps it's the fact that the film earned over $45 million outside of the US that has lead them to decide to make a sequel to this steaming pile. I guess we shouldn't be surprised since the film no doubt cost a fraction of it's total earnings to create. At least it's not American audiences behind the gun this time. $9 million domestic for Evolution is a sign to me that we are getting a lot more intelligent about the films we watch. At least there's something positive to take away from all of this.

Unfortunately, that doesn't make this throbbing headache disappear. Lets pray for a straight to DVD release and hope they won't even attempt to sell the second disaster to American audiences.