Eragon Trailer Now Available for Viewing

Part Elfstones of Shannara, part Harry Potter, and part childhood dreams of flying, the Eragon trailer is now available for viewing. After seeing Jeremy Irons in Dungeons and Dragons, I began to fear that any fantasy film in which he starred would be doomed to failure. But if the trailer is any clue, then all that is required for a good fantasy film is a good story. Oh, wait...I already knew that. Eragon the book was very entertaining and the movie looks equally good.

You can view the trailer here.

Upset That Robert Downey Jr. Was Cast as Iron Man?

Well, I've got news for you. Soon you too will be able to be Iron Man, and not in some meaningless film either. That's right, Engineers in Japan are designing a working powersuit for those in the Nursing profession. Sure, the suit makes you look more like Exo-Skeleton Man (from the Champions Role Playing Game) than Iron Man, but it's a start.

Thanks to Chris Roberson of Monkeybrain Books for the tip.

Brave new old world…

Hello Cinerati citizens! It’s been awhile since I have posted a guest article, but with the permission of Christian and company, Uncle Loophole would to say a few things. I think Cinerati is the best place for this discussion, as television and entertainment on the internet is an occasional topic. As most visitors to The Shelf are aware, we work hard to bring to you a weekly media roundup. We wade through the morass of media releases for the week and give you our highlights and picks, whether it’s music, DVD releases, books, games, or television. These are our picks for the week and, of course, they sometimes reflect our interests and taste. We do a lot of legwork for this weekly “public service” (see- I just made myself seem all…civic minded and stuff!), and it does take some time. I’m going to let you in on some behind the scenes “footage”, if you will (maybe, one day, soon to be available on The Shelf DVD as a featurette) , and let you see what goes into it: a lot of reading and research. That’s mostly it. Yes, we get to preview and screen a few DVDs, but most of the films we’ve seen before so we do rely on lots of industry information, research, and tips from our operatives in the field. These aren’t reviews; these are our picks that we recommend that our readers give a try.

I bring this up because a fairly recent discovery has aided and abetted in our endeavors as of late: AOL. Yes, that AOL. Well, specifically AOL Music. You see, every week on AOL Music, you can preview selected new CD releases (in their entirety) for a week. The next week, new releases are available for a listen. We’re able to really review several new CD’s for our Media Roundup a day before they drop in stores. I can listen to several of them during normal earth work hours, and then recommend my choices and review them for you. I usually provide a link so that you can see them for yourself. I know that perhaps most of you are saying to yourself; “Gee, Uncle Loophole, we know this already. We’ve been listening to Ludacris all week!” I understand that may be the case, but let’s consider the bigger picture for a moment. Ludacris, huh? Hmmm..

The end result is this: If I am not able to figure out if a CD is worth buying, I can preview it. I also get to sample music from artists I’m not familiar with or even listen to genres I’m not used to buying. I get comments and email from readers who have mentioned they have gone out to purchase a CD or DVD that we have recommended. Some of them have even stated they have listened to the CD on AOL Music for free that week. Did you catch that? They went out and purchased a CD after they were able to listen to it for free for a whole week. It’s rather elementary, really, and I think that it is just the latest in what we are seeing on the internet in this age of digital media.

Not too long ago this form of free digital entertainment was strictly verboten. Now things are a little different. It has become a smart business model. Companies show upward spikes in sales when the preview model is applied. It’s not revolutionary; it’s just now really being applied to digital entertainment. In fact, this is really old hat… with a new sheen. AOL music has recently revamped their music site and is now offering song downloads for a price, and subscription-based internet radio stations (think XM). Think of the CD listening party as a service that draws in potential customers, not just to purchase on AOL Music, but really anywhere. AOL is not the only one; Apple and Amazon are on the same path. And it’s not just about offering free previews and services. They know that while entertainment is ageless, the way to access it is not. With new forms of electronic gadgetry available every year, the masses are able to access many forms of entertainment at work, at home, in the car, on the plane, or subway. Don’t get me started on storage. Heck, with the right gadgets, even when you are at summer camp in the wilderness you don’t have to be uncivilized. Thank goodness for that. Finally, being the nerd at summer camp has advantages!

As Christian has discussed before, television has been in on the act as well. CBS, NBC, and ABC are all putting episodes and web-only shows online mostly for free. I enjoy CBS’s Innertube, although I think they need to work out the kinks and make it even more user-friendly. It’s nice to be able to watch some of the current week’s episodes after they have aired. What’s the attraction with that? This past Tuesday night I missed the latest episode of NCIS. I love NCIS and The Unit. Tuesday nights is one of the few nights that I sit down and watch television. Sometimes, other, more important things come up. No worries. The next day, during a well deserved lunch break, I sat down to eat, and through the courtesy of CBS and Innertube, I watched the NCIS episode I missed the night before. Again, this isn’t revolutionary. The show was free to begin with, and reruns happen all the time. I could have watched it for free, oh… sometime next year. But through the Networks making shows available on the web, I was able to catch up before the next episode. This is increasingly important to producers, as serial shows are increasing in popularity. Shows like Lost, or even newer shows like Kidnapped or Smith, rely on viewers keeping up with the ongoing storyline.



With Ipod, Apple and Disney are providing even more ways to get digital entertainment in television and movies wherever you may be. Microsoft is not one to be left out when money is to be made. They recently announced their own media player, Zune (above) set for launch in November. Zune has some exciting changes with more focus on wireless capabilities and being software and content driven. Being able to share files with other Zune owners with WiFi technology will be cool. Heck, even Sony is getting television downloads to your PSP. With the disappointing performance of UMDs, this is a way to affirm Sony’s vision of the PSP as an all-in-one portable entertainment device.

With digital forms of entertainment growing larger in number, and the ways of accessing it increasing everyday, providers are pushing themselves further beyond conventional business models. They need to get our ear, catch our eye and make us aware of what they have to offer. Again, this isn't necessarily new. It's a familiar business approach, but applied in a new way. Will organizations like the MPAA and RIAA get what's happening or will they continue to be increasingly archaic and fight home entertainment and every new way to access it? Who knows? In the meantime, we can increasingly find ways to get content that doesn’t involve going to the music store, big box retailer, or Movie Theater. At the same time, providers are also finding ways to utilize technology to reach semi-luddites like myself, who still like to go to the music store or DVD section of the local big box retailer to browse. In simple terms, just because one of my favorite pastimes is going to the local bookstore and actually reading a physical book, that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate being able to read an excerpt or find out what I can online, before I buy. What social implications this may have as far a societal interaction and the like, I can’t pretend to fully know. I suspect that some of what the soothsayers have been saying may be true and some of it- not so much. Humans still have the need for contact and each other. It’s just that sometimes it’s nice to be able to get the latest album from our favorite artist without having to drive and fight crowds.

Don’t forget to visit us over at The Shelf. See you there!


This commentary is the responsibility of J.C. Loophole and not the editors at Cinerati, who generally have more sense than Mr. Loophole possesses. Their willingness to allow him to post here can be interpreted as a case of charity, and in the long run, folly. Along with Wolf Flywheel, J.C. Loophole is the proprietor of The Shelf; a daily excursion into an eclectic mix of cinema, pop culture, history, politics, nostalgia, and recently, Halloween candy. Hey, we didn’t say it made sense; we just said it was fun.

Doing Our Part for the Neglected Ninja

As you all know, Talk Like a Pirate Day happened earlier this week. I personally think that pirate holidays, particularly ones with "talking," are discriminatory against ninjas. The parallel holiday would, after all, have to be "be quiet like a ninja day" and who wants to be silent for a whole day?

How fun is that?

So to combat anti-ninjatism, I offer you Ask A Ninja. A good a place as any to start, is with the ninja view of podcasting, which according to the ninja is more exciting than watching wood be wood.

After watching the videos, I am sure you will agree that every ninja has Strong Bad as a role model.

Spreading the Grudge: Interactive Marketing

Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures is taking an interactive approach to marketing their upcoming film The Grudge 2. In the film, as in the first Grudge, ghosts from an eerie house in Tokyo seek to spread terror to anyone who has visited the house, or who knows anyone who has. In the film's universe, the terror of the Grudge should come into contact with all of us, like a disease. Ghost House Pictures has decided to simulate the film's "haunting" and incorporate it into their marketing.

You can now receive surprise phone calls from Kayako or Toshio, the creepy spirits who bring death and madness to those they haunt, by registering at the official website. Better yet, you can sign your friends up and freak them out. You can also view non-platform specific mini-films to your computer or mobile phone. Raimi and crew call these, non-platform specific blipverts (that's a Max Headroom reference if you were wondering) "anysodes" because they can catch up to you anywhere.

I enjoyed the first US version of the Grudge, though one scene was very reminiscent of the old SNL "Land Shark" skit and made me laugh out loud.

Sword and Skull -- A Boardgame Review in Honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day in honor of which ABC's Wife Swap featured the Baur family last night (John Baur is a co-founder of Talk Like a Pirate Day). It is only fitting that on such an auspicious day we here at Cinerati should do a review of material related to pirates and piracy. One could easily do a positive review of Pirates for the PC/Xbox, but if you don't own the game you are no true pirate fan! It is a must have.

No...we here at Cinerati want to guide you into places you may not have looked before to be entertained, while at the same time not being so obscure as to be overly arcane and alienate the novice gamer. With that in mind, we would like to present the following review of the Sword and Skull boardgame published by Hasbro under their Avalon Hill label.



Sword and Skull is a simple "Track Game" for two to five players with an entertaining premise:

The nefarious Pirate King has stolen Her Majesty's Ship, the Sea Hammer, pride of the Royal Navy. Furious, the Queen has offered a great reward to the person who can retrieve it. As one of the advisors to the Queen, you have chosen an officer of the Royal Navy to pursue the Pirate King. Of course, it might take a thief to catch a thief, so you've also conscripted a vicioius pirate from the Queen's dungeons.

Now they are preparing to enter the dreaded Lair of the Pirate King. Will one of them be the first to recover the Sea Hammer? Or will one of your rivals receive the Queen's reward instead?

Each player in the game is in control of two "Avatars," one Pirate and one Loyal Captain, who must find a way to bring the Sea Hammer back to the Queen. There are two ways to achieve this goal. The player can either raise enough gold to bribe the Pirate King to return the ship, or the player can defeat the Pirate King in combat forcing him to return the ship. The goals may be simple, but the accomplishing of them is not for it is good to be the Pirate King. Player's start out with little money and even less skill at arms. So each player must work their way around the track encountering various fortunes/dangers until they have sufficient lucre or puissance to attain the goal.

The "track" element of the game requires the players to move around the track in a clockwise fashion and encounter the "space." This element of the game is like a combination of Monopoly and Games Workshop's famous questing game Talisman. Sword and Skull at the same time lacks the complexity of either the games it borrows from, and adds innovation to each. It is an interesting paradox, but one that is true. As the players work around the board (pictured below), they encounter various "space" types. The two most common are "settlements" and "caves."



At settlement squares the player can recruit crew to assist in the defeat of the Pirate king. These crew members are an absolute necessity and come in three types. "Money grinders," which are similar to property in Monopoly, provide the player with gold each time another player lands on a settlement matching the color of the money grinder and everytime the player passes the fort (think Go in Monopoly. What separates money grinders from property is that only the color of space matters and not the specific name of the individual square. Some settlements have three or four squares and if you have a money grinder for the settlement you are paid by the player landing their. Naturally, multiple players may have grinders at the same settlements. The second type of character is the "buffer" who adds combat skill to either your Navy Captain or your Pirate Captain (this is distinguished by a symbol on the card). Finally, there are crew who are both money grinders and buffers. Recruiting the right crew can lead to rapid victory, but it can also irritate other players.

At caves players encounter various "monsters." These range from the simple Crocodile to Pirate Skeletons. This type of encounter is nothing surprising to your average "quest game" fan, but they have added an innovation. The difficulty of defeating each challange is based on the size of your crew, your total crew. So if your Pirate Captain has to battle a Siren and you have 6 crew members you will have a tough challenge. This is especially true if all 6 of your crew are money grinders or Navy Captain buffers. So it helps to have a balanced crew. Defeating challenges gets you items and gold, items usually help you in combat and gold helps the bribe victory.

The games that I have played were fast and furious. The rules were clear enough that any inter-player bickering was due to cards which allow one player to "steal" items from another player (note: while this adds variety to games it can add "meanness"). The end game was close and all players had a chance to win during the last stages of the game. The game is simple and combines elements from board game classics. Of the two possible victory outcomes, the most rewarding seems to be combatting the Pirate King. This is true even though the more innovative of the two is to win by bribery. At the beginning of the game everyone knows how tough the Pirate King is, but no one knows how much it will take to bribe him until the end of the game.

Click on Photo of Game Box for PDF copy of the rules from the Hasbro site.

LYT Does Sketch Comedy