Starting with Thursday a collection of 5,000 video-based segments featuring film reviews by Roger Ebert, Richard Roeper and Gene Siskel and their guests will be available online.
The clips are in fact segments from the “Ebert & Roeper” and “Siskel & Ebert” shows, which feature commentary between film critics. They are to be searched by the movies’ titles, by the movies’ director or actors.
Roger Ebert will also host a live online chart on Thursday at 2 p.m. EDT on site, to help introduce the online archive.
“It is always fascinating to go back and see what was being said about a film before it opened. […] The disagreements, between me and Siskel and Roeper, will be fun to revisit, and even more exciting will be our sense of discovery when we find something like ‘Boyz N the Hood,’ ‘Fargo,’ ‘Hoop Dreams’ or ‘Monster.’” – said Ebert.
Movies ranging from current releases to classic titles will be covered by the reviews from the past 20 years.

Sure thing that only the true fans remember that Electronic Arts and famous director Steven Spielberg had agreed some time ago to join their efforts for developing three special games.
Anyway, although the company and Spielberg are still working at their important project, the developer Electronic Arts has recently unveiled some little clues about the games with the occasion of this year’s E3 Media and Business Summit, which has taken place in Santa Monica.
Neil Young, the general manager of Electronic Arts Los Angeles, hasn’t even revealed the names of the two games about which he has talked. He has only said that one will be an action puzzle game for Nintendo’s Wii video game console, and that it was inspired by the meeting between Steven Spielberg and the creator of “Mario”, developer Shigeru Miyamoto.
About the second game, whose code name of “LMNO” have been revealed, Young has said it is being developed for both Microsoft’ Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3. The game has been said to focus on the relation between the player and a non-playing character.
Although the release dates haven’t been clearly unveiled, the first game, code-named “PQRS”, has been said to open during Electronic Arts’ current fiscal year. “There’s a lot of software coming into the marketplace for the Wii, and we want to make sure that not only is it a great game but that it’s got the right commercial window that it can own.” – said Young.
This project hasn’t been Steven Spielberg’s first contact with the gaming industry, as he was involved in the creation of the successful game “Medal of Honor”.

Disney Online has recently announced that its massively multiplayer online game “Pirates of the Caribbean Online” will be delayed to fall, from its summer previously announced release. The reason for this delay would be the need for additional development time.
“Pirates of the Caribbean Online” is based on the popular amusement park ride and film franchise. It has been in beta testing for many months, but it seems that it needs more. The originally release date had been scheduled to be closer to the theatrical release of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”, but now this is not going to happen anymore.
“After a careful internal assessment of the state of game development as well as a review of external feedback, we have elected to spend additional development time. […] We will use this extra time to further enhance the game, respond to additional data we’ve collected during beta testing and incorporate more of the input we have gathered.” – has been the company’s statement.
“Pirates of the Caribbean Online” is designed as a computer game set in a virtual world and it is very important for Disney because it aims toward a non-traditional gaming audience. It is the company’s greatest effort till present to create a virtual world experience as an extension of a studio’s franchise.
Although the game is subscription-based, it has been said to also allow players to play it a third of way through without subscribing.

What could be more important than having Google as a business partner? Maybe, only having the right thing to sell. But Universal Pictures’ movie “The Bourne Ultimatum” is more than the right thing to sell, so the deal between Google and Universal Pictures will work just fine!
“The Ultimate Search for Bourne with Google” is a new online game that makes the object of the agreement between the studio and the powerful search engine. The game will use such Google tools as Maps, Search, Images and YouTube and it has been designed as a promotional vehicle for Universal Pictures’ upcoming action movie “The Bourne Ultimatum”.
This will be the third movie from the “Bourne” series. It will star Matt Damon and it is to open on the 3rd of August.
“The Ultimate Search for Bourne with Google” was inspired by all three “Bourne” movies and has been announced to launch on the 16th of July in seven countries. Playing the online game will mean assuming the identity of the former CIA operative, tracking Jason Bourne across three continents and solving clues that would eventually bring you closer to uncovering Bourne’s identity.
This will be Google’s second online game tied to a movie release, as the first one involved Sony Pictures’ “The Da Vinci Code”. The game was build through the collaboration of Universal Pictures and Big Spaceship, a web design and marketing firm.
The game will be promoted by Google through search results related to the movie and through its millions of users’ customized iGoogle home pages. The players that will win the sweeptakes grand prize of the game will win a 2008 Touareg 2, offered by Volksawagen, whose new car is featured in “The Bourne Ultimatum”. MasterCard, also integrated in the game, will award one lucky player with a $1,000 MasterCard gift card each of the 15 weekdays that the players will be provided with the game. Other prizes involve money, 10 iPhones, and four trips to the winners’ choice of the cities featured in the movie and so on.
The movie is to launch in the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

The producer Jerry Bruckheimer created some of the most important movie and TV franchises of all time. His successful Hollywood projects will now influence also the video games.
“Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” will be released in theaters starting with the 25th of May. But the movie will have also a game companion from Disney Interactive, and also Disney Online will launch “Pirates of the Caribbean Online”, a massively multiplayer game for teens and not only.
Bruckheimer is now reading another potential blockbuster movie trilogy with “Prince of Persia”, based on a best-selling video game created by Jordan Mechner.
Asked whether the video games will ever eclipse Hollywood, Bruckheimer said: “I’ll never say never about anything, but I think people lie to sit in a dark room and watch a movie and be engaged by a movie. They might have other add-ons where you can manipulate something on the screen. Anything’s possible. I don’t know what’s coming. I just know what’s here now and we try to do the best we can with what we have.”

“Lord of the Rings”: the books, the movies and now the game too! A Massachusetts company will create a computer game inspired by the very famous book series “Lord of the Rings”.
Turbine Inc. of Westwood, Massachusetts, is banking on “Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar” to become the ultimate big thing for online gamers.
Jeffrey Anderson, Turbine’s Chief Executive Officer said that the computer gamers not only know, but also love the famous books. Thanks to this brand new computer game they will walk around for the first time in the authentic recreation of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
Turbine Inc. is best known for “Dungeons and Dragons Online” and “Asheron’s Call”. The company thinks that this new game could surpass the 8-million subscribers of the “World of Warcraft” by Blizzard Entertainment Inc. The early trial run of “Lord of the Rings Online” attracted not less than 700,000 players.
For $50 for software and about $15 per month for subscribing, the players will be allowed to create their own characters and to take part in 1,600 possible adventures, taking place over the equivalent of more than 19,000 square miles of “Middle Earth” terrain.

The blogger Mario “Perez Hilton” Lavandeira got in trouble after he had posted a stolen picture of Jennifer Aniston topless. Perez Hilton was sued by the Universal Studios for what he had done, although the posting was “for the purpose of commentary and satire”, as this one stated.
Universal Studios accused the Los Angeles blogger of posting a stolen photo of the topless Jennifer Aniston. The shot was alleged by the studio to have been “misappropriated and illegally copied”.
The photo was supposed to be a copy of the stolen footage that was shot and then stolen during the production or post-production of the movie “The Break-up”. The respective shot did not appear in the final cut of the comedy. “The Break-up” grossed more than $118 million at the box office last summer.
The lawyers of Perez Hilton defended their client saying that the picture could also be viewed on other web sites. Hilton’s mistake seems to have been that he used the picture “for the purpose of commentary and satire”. However, Perez Hilton removed the picture from his site after he learned of Universal’s request.
This is not the first time when implied in such trials for Aniston, nor for Perez Hilton. Last September the movie star sued photographer Peter Brandt because of some topless photos that Brandt had taken of the actress in late 2005. As for Perez Hilton, he was sued by the celebrity photo agency X17Online because of his stealing copyrighted images that were agency’s possession. Then, Perez Hilton had been asked for $7.5 million in damages.

Technorati Tags: perez hilton, jennifer aniston topless, the break up

Microsoft official staff have stated today for BBC that Microsoft is reconsedering its presence on the Chinese market, and that a possible regresion of the company’s activities in China could emerge. The announce has been made by Fred Tipson, senior policy counsel for Microsoft, as a consequence of some pressions made by the Chinese authorities in order to shut some “reactive” blogs which are being hosted by MSN Web Space. Amnesty International informed Microsoft that the Chinese government seems to be using Microsoft’s logistics for controlling the ones who are expressing themselves against the Chinese communism. At the same conference from Athens, Cisco were accused of supplying the Chinese police with their products.

As I am not a supporter of Microsoft’s business methods, the statement has positivelly surprised me. I’m really fond of the fact that one of the biggest coorporations worldwide is thinking, at least declarativelly, about changing its direction regarding the Chinese market (which is an important market, as there are now 120 million people online in China, up from 80,000 in 1994). And another pleasing fact is that the blogs have become
”a cornerstone” of the freedome of speech from the countries under totalitary governments. Is Microsoft risking to lose some of its engagements with the Chinese government and implictly a big amount of money from the Chinese market? Yes, it does, but maybe the worldwide cooporations have become more and more aware that the affairs envolving China should be continued not only with this country’s economical changes, but also with the most important authorities’ mentality changes.

I’m not quite sure if this is a reaction at the recent incident from the Nepalese border, when the Chinese frontier guards were shooting plenty of Tibetans which were becalming in India. (The shots were broadcast by the a Romanian television and they aroused a quite important diplomatic scandal.)

I’m glad that Microsoft appreciates and supports the right of freedom of speech through blogging and that it does not wish to be at the Chinese government’s orders. That’s a daring start.

However, Google doesn’t say a word and continues censoring.

The whole story could be found here.

Edit 11/06/2006: Even though Fred Tipson’s declaration was not revoked by Microsoft, the software company annouced today that it has no plans to slow business in China. Money talks, people die…

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, China, blogging, freedom, censorship, Google, human rights