The Game Developers' Conference has started in San Francisco.and today, Sony had delivered its keynote for PS3. and it looks really good.
PS3 will have an online service called Playstation Home to combat Mii, Xbox Live and ... Second Life. PS Home is like Second Life, where you have this virtual world where you can create your own life-like avatar rendered in next-gen graphic. In the virtual world, you can have your own apartments and futuristic communities where you can do stuffs like hang out with other ppl, play bowling and arcade games, and other stuffs... and you get to own cool electronic devices too like HDTV (all Sony branded, of course). Best of all, all these ... are Free. Well, you have to pay $500-600 for your PS3 first, but still. You can say that Sony rips off everyone, but if Sony could rip them off and execute this successfully, then points to them.
... and Sony has also showed new Killzone PS3 footage. Remember the old, amazing too-good-to-be-rendered-on-PS3 Killzone footage from E3 in 2005 that turned out to be fake? Now, Sony has shown a real one. I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on it. But it was used to showcase the Playstation Edge - a new dev tool to help developers with the very-difficult-to-develop PS3?
... and Sony has also announced a new "cute" and creative game called LittleBigPlanet that got some positive buzz ... definitely an attempt to fight Nintendo on the software front.
All these are Sony's efforts to combat the recent negative buzz about PS3. I will give Sony kudos for this because I'm actually quite impressed. I definitely worry for my dear Nintendo.
BUT ... Sony has done this before, many times - making great, impressive announcements for future products, only not to deliver on its promises. This is particularly true for PS3. All these new features they just announced today will be released in earliest Fall this year. So we'll see if they can keep their promises or not. If they do, which is kinda unlikely, then Nintendo and Microsoft (and 2nd Life too?) better worry.
Gamespot Story on the Keynote.
==================================================================
On M Night Shyamalan:
Pei is definitely one blogger who knows his reader well =). Yesterday, he posted this article on M Night Shyamalan.
M Night isn't doing so well these days. Lady in The Water has just (deservedly) flopped. His off-screen egoistic reputation hasn't helped at all. But he's talented and I know he'll make his comeback especially when he's at his low point; and I'm here to talk about his new project, something that might signal his comeback.
Last month, M Night signed a deal with Paramount to make a live action adaptation of popular cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender. That sounds like a really bad idea to me. But that's not the comeback project I am gonna talk about. After the Avatar announcement, it was revealed that M Night has written an original script called The Green Effect. It was a apocalyptic thriller on Global Warming. Apparently, all studios passed on it and asked him to rewrite it before submitting it again to them.
... and then Latino Review got a copy of the script and posted a positive review (beware spoilers) of it.
... and then yesterday, Fox picked the project up and the title has changed to The Happening.
... and I couldn't be more excited.
I have read the positive review of the script and I must say I'm really excited. It has the kind of story that M Night could deliver. Now I'm going to discuss the story from the script review. So, if you don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.
=====SPOILER ALERT=====
The Green Effect is about an environmental crisis that suddenly threatens the existence of humankind. One day, people around the world in big cities started killing themselves one by one mysteriously. As people try to run away from whatever mysterious thing that causing this to happen, they discover that a mysterious toxin has been released from trees around the world and the toxin caused whoever breathes it to have an urge to kill themselves. Then, they also found out that this toxin only affects human, animals are immune to it. This then becomes a story on survival in a new world where apparently, if you don't take care of nature, nature will take care of you.
Wow, unlike that confusing muddled bedtime garbage Lady in the Water, this is actually a good, chilling, effective story worth telling. I also never expected M Night to be an environmental guy. and with the recent popularity of An Inconvenient Truth and Global Warming issues, the timing of this movie couldn't be better.
But I have to say that M Night could do better. Although he could write a good story, some elements are just so flat out wrong/unbelievable/funny (Exhibit 1: everything in Lady in the Water. Exhibit 2: alien defeated by water in Signs) that it harms the story. In The Green Effect story, that thing is ... toxin making people commit suicide. WTF is that? why can't the toxin just kill people directly? M Night probably wants to give himself an opportunity to do some gruesome death scenes. However, I think that harms the story more.
2ndly, another M Night weakness, cardboard white main characters. Since Signs (or even earlier), M Night has become weak on creating memorable characters and this seems to be no exception, from what I read in the script review. also, maybe it's what M Night has to do to be successful in hollywood, but why another white main character? he is Indian, and he probably should start making his main character another race for a change.
Lastly, nothing to do with the script, but M Night has done nothing but horror/thriller since The Sixth Sense. Although all his movies aren't simple horror movies, no one can deny that each one has horror elements in them and this one is no different. I wish that M Night would branch into another genre, like a romantic comedy maybe? lol.
=============
So overall, hopefully everything goes well and M Night doesn't let his ego gets the better of him, he will make his comeback and one damn good film. Suddenly, June 2008 seems so far away.
===============================================================
Yesterday, while browsing asian blogs, I found out that my favourite japanese singer Utada Hikaru has divorced her MV/Movie director Kazuaki Kiriya (director of Casshern). It was as sudden and surprising as the news of their marriage 4.5 years ago. Normally, I wouldn't care much about celebrity gossip. But this one makes me wonder if it's possible for 2 creatively talented people to have a long and meaningful marriage... look at Sofia Copolla and Spike Jonze.
... speaking of Utada Hikaru, if you ever eat at Pepper Lunch USA in Milpitas, you might think that the owner is Utada Hikaru fans. They play her songs everytime I eat ther, from the latest album, even. The food is good, but an audio variety would be better.
... and while browsing the asian blogs, I also learnt that HK music industry is experiencing some creative crisis with new songs plagiarising older, foreign songs and the blogger showed some examples to compare the similar situation with the music industry in US. I thought I have some examples too:
Michelle Branch's Everywhere VS Green Day's Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) (The Guitar Opening)
Jojo's A Little Too Late VS Katharine McPhee's Over It
Nickelback's Someday and How You Remind Me (this one is classic)
and this one from the blog I read that I agree with:
The Fray's Over My Head and How To Save A Life (same chorus!!!)
==========
I guess that's it for now, sorry for the longwinded entry
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment