It started like any other videogame trailer. It was dark, there was some lightning, and slowly the words "This fall, worlds will collide and the fate of the universe shall be decided" began appearing on the screen. While the words popped up, Sub-Zero stomped Batman's head into the ground.

There is a God.

Remember those doodles in the margins of your seventh grade social studies notebook? They're coming to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this fall as Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, a title merging Kombat's fighters with the superheroes of DC Comics. The unexpected announcement came at Midway Gamers' Day in Las Vegas, and the trailer kept rolling with scenes pulled from every little boy's imagination -- Sub-Zero kneeing Batman in the back, the duo brawling through a brick wall and fighting while they plummeted to earth, and a still shot of the bad asses staring each other down.



The title will introduce a "cataclysmic force" that brings the two universes together and forces them to square off in a tale written by Jimmy Palmiotti (co-founder of Marvel Knights) and Justin Gray (writer of Jonah Hex and Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Bludhaven), according to Midway. If players aren't up for the story, they can go at it in an arena mode, but if they are up for the yarn, gamers will pick a character from one of the universes and play through the adventure from one of two unique perspectives.

"Kombat forces friends to fight, worlds to collide, and unlikely alliances to be forged," Midway's press release reads. "In order to save all they know, the heroes and villains of Mortal Kombat must wage war against the combined might of the DC Universe."

While onstage, Ed Boon, creative director on the project, confirmed that Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Batman and Superman are in the game with more to follow. Boon also announced two new fighting mechanics in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Freefall Kombat will take advantage of the game's multi-tiered environments and have opponents brawl as they fall -- similar to the Bats/Sub-Zero teaser fight -- while Klose Kombat will pull the camera in tight on the two fighters so that bruises, torn clothing, jaws recoiling from fists and other gruesome details can be stressed.

Once we got Boon alone, we were able to get a little more out of him. Onstage, he mentioned that each character would have signature moves, and we decided to grill him it -- Can Batman die in this game? Can Superman pull off a fatality? Although he wouldn't get too specific, Boon said that he'd expect something closer to finishers than fatalities because of those out-of-character situations.

Looks like Bruce will live to see another sidekick.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is being developed at Midway Amusement Games in Chicago and is set for a fall release, but we're uber-nerds at IGN so look for updates as soon as we can get them.

Batman fans anxious to get a glimpse of the late Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker are snatching up tickets online more than three weeks before The Dark Knight's July 17 premiere.

Dozens of midnight screenings of director Christopher Nolan's second installment in the bat-franchise have sold out, causing theaters across the country to tack on 3 a.m. showings to meet fan demand, according to online ticket retailer Fandango.

"We are currently seeing a surge in advance ticket sales," said Ted Hong, vice president of marketing for Fandango, which first began selling tickets for Dark Knight last Friday. "It makes sense that there's a rush for tickets -- it looks action-packed and film fans are anxious to see Heath Ledger."

When Fandango polled members back in March to determine which summer blockbusters its customers were most interested in, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull took first place, with Dark Knight coming in second. However, the scramble for advance Dark Knight tickets is currently outpacing Indy 4's presale numbers.

Exhibitor Relations box office analyst Jeff Bock said he thinks the presale surge was to be expected.

"This movie comes in riding a wave of hype [Batman Begins] didn't," said Bock. He also attributes the rush to fans anxious to see Ledger portray Batman's warped nemesis in what could be the actor's last on-screen performance. Ledger died in January of an overdose of prescription drugs at age 28.

Joel Cohen, executive vice president at ticketing hub MovieTickets.com, said Dark Knight is doing remarkably well, even though advance sales for Nolan's previous bat-flick, Batman Begins, were practically nonexistent in 2005.

"It's tracking much stronger than Spider-Man 3 at the same time in the sales cycle," he said. Director Sam Raimi's second Spidey sequel went on last year to set the record for best opening weekend ever.

A massive viral-marketing campaign for Dark Knight, along with a glowing advance review by Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers, is adding fuel to bat-fire.

Exhibitor Relations' Bock predicts the Warner Bros. film could push well beyond $100 million in its opening weekend. In May, Marvel's superhero flick Iron Man garnered $102.1 million during its opening weekend, while Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull pulled in $100.1 million.

The question on the tip of every fanboy and girl's tongue is, will this film be able to outpace Spider-Man 3's record-shattering opening weekend of $151 million?

"That record would be really tough to break," said Bock. "But we're expecting really big things."

Ignition Entertainment, a UTV Enterprise and worldwide publisher and developer of videogames, in conjunction with SNK Playmore announced today that Metal Slug 7 for Nintendo DS™ will be released this fall.

Developed by SNK Playmore Corporation and published by Ignition Entertainment, Metal Slug 7 follows in the footsteps of its predecessors by continuing to deliver the high-energy and frantic, fast-paced 2-D shooting action that the franchise has always been widely renowned for.

Players will join Marco, Tarma, Eri, Fiolina, Clark and Ralph as they prepare to take on Modern’s Forces across 7 new missions that will bring them from Garbage Island to the Fortress of Ruins and beyond. Aside from featuring 7 brand new and fully detailed missions and six playable characters, Metal Slug 7 will also feature a host of new weapons, colossal new bosses, new Slugs to pilot and new gameplay modes for added replay value.

Source: http://gonintendo.com/?p=47770#more-47770

Kinda funny, very Trekkie.

Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart problems, died at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

Known for his edgy, provocative material, Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine about seven dirty words you could not say on television. A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of his "Filthy Words" routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

Recently it was announced that George Carlin will be awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced Tuesday that Carlin will be honored for his 50-year career as a Grammy-winning standup comedian, writer and actor. The center will salute Carlin at a tribute performance by former colleagues November 10th, which will be broadcast later on PBS.

Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen Schwarzman says Carlin makes people laugh but also makes them think.

Carlin released 22 solo albums and three best-selling books. He starred a variety of TV and movie roles and was famous for his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine.

Sources: Reuters & Alternative Press

BTW, this is in the Comedy section because Carlin was a comedian.

Directed by Peter Segal. Written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember. Based on the series by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. Starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, and James Caan. Rated PG-13.

As old Broadway shows are revived, new Broadway shows are spun from old movies so that new movies may be fashioned from ancient TV series. It's an iron law of the culture industry that turns out to be a pleasant surprise in the case of Get Smart, the late-'60s sitcom retooled as a vehicle for Steve Carell.

The most successful of the half-dozen spy shows that materialized in 1965 — a year after the Pop Art success of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. — the original Get Smart was distinguished less by its absurdist attitude (the show was conceived by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry) than by its catchphrases and casting. Standup comedian Don Adams drew on his nightclub William Powell impersonation to play Maxwell Smart, the dense, inept, officious Agent 86, teamed with über-'60s girl Barbara Feldon as the fabulously sexy, competent, and inexplicably adoring Agent 99.

Surprisingly resilient for a show based on a single joke, Get Smart ran for five seasons, inspired a 1980 Hollywood flop (The Nude Bomb), and, nine years later, a more successful made-for-TV movie. (In between, Adams provided something close to his Maxwell Smart persona for the animated series Inspector Gadget, as well as reviving Smart to shill for Kmart and White Castle.) Fox actually brought the series back to life in 1995, with Adams and Feldon and, as a chip off the block, Andy Dick. All residual pop irony was trumped in 2002, when the most celebrated of the show's ridiculous props, the shoe phone, appeared in an exhibit at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

As directed by Peter Segal from a script by the authors of the Matthew McConaughey-Sarah Jessica Parker romantic comedy Failure to Launch, Smart redux is less a parody of a genre that had already passed into self-parody many moons before the TV show was in reruns, and more an all-purpose (and often quite funny) goofball action comedy in which ridiculous banter alternates with slapstick car chases and mid-air stunts. Segal, who has shepherded our reigning cartoon floats — Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy — through their parades, directs with relative restraint. No gag is held too long, and many one-liners are tossed off with impressive savoir faire. (In a bow to Mel Brooks, one character introduces himself as Nudnik Shpilkes.)

Although slapstick, the movie has been made for the tele-literate — recycling many of the TV show's catchphrases, along with shards of its musical theme. Agent 86, however, gets softened. No less deadpan or baroquely bumbling than the Adams original, Carell's Smart is actually smarter. He's also more lovably neurotic — a know-it-all intelligence analyst obsessed with his weight who dreams of becoming a real spy, like the heroic hunk Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson). Thanks to a national catastrophe, he gets his promotion and becomes obnoxiously competitive once partnered with the dishy but acerbic 99, played by Anne Hathaway. In the movie's best stretch of physical comedy, Hathaway disguises herself as Barbara Feldon to attend a Russian oligarch's ball and winds up engaging Carell in a bout of cutthroat mambo one-upmanship. (Hathaway, whose lush looks tend to overshadow her abilities, is not only a talented actress but a graceful cut-up.)

First telecast less than two years after the Kennedy assassination and lingering on past the invasion of Cambodia, the original Get Smart was a priori anti-patriotic in making a mockery, week after week, of the CIA. (Mission Impossible, which made its debut in 1966, was the supportive antidote to such derision.) Although acknowledging the post-9/11 world, the movie Get Smart has no political subtext beyond a mild but persistent hostility toward the Bush administration. (On the eve of destruction, the president, played by James Caan, reads Goodnight Moon to a class of restless first-graders.)

Given that the whole notion of military intelligence has been pretty much discredited — or rendered postmodern in its lack of a fixed meaning — there's not much here to upset anyone. Still, it did seem that the number of triumphant fist bumps exchanged by the characters might strike the hysterics at Fox News as unduly terroristical. If so, the movie's sure sorry about that.

The Kate Moss drug situation is worsening. The rail thin supermodel has entered a 24 day rehab program, to get her act together. Worse still, she has lost her 3 main model contracts. They are the bread and butter of models. Each one can be concivably worth millions. It was primarily "Guess" that put Claudia SChiffer on the map(and Guess too, for that matter). One good contract can make a model. By the same token, you can't afford to lose one. Rumours are that Sienna Miller is poised to step in adn pick up the slack. It's great the way she's willing to help out like that. She's a real team player. I'm sure that poor Kate appreciates it too.

Kate's gotten a lot of flack, over being too thin, too young, too pretty, and too rich. The fact that things seemed to fall into her lap didn't help her image problems. She was 'picked out', and annointed as "The Next Big Thing" by the fashionistas. They were sick of the way the Supermodels were starting to flex their muscles. So they arbitraily decided to inaugerate the Age of the Waif.

The public never really took to the new 'pared down version', anymore than they liked the Japanese small car compared to the All American Supersized Gas Guzzler. Designers hoped they would be more economical. Evetually the opted for 'foreign imports' from the 3rd world. Latinas like Adriana Lima, would work, and be happy, just to live in NYC, and earn 6 figures. Having established a rep as easy to work with, the Latinas are now quickly starting to earn as much as the Supermodel predecessors. Lima made over $4 million last year.

So that leaves Kate Moss as the girl who never happened. Great things were predicted for her. The powers that be decided. You were supposed to be seeing her on magazines, TV, and possibly movies. Her handlers set out to creat a phenomenon. Too bad for Kate that it didn't work.

LOL