Archive for the ‘Entertainment Musics Movies TV’ Category
Band Queen sign new record deal
Posted on: November 11, 2010
Veteran rock band Queen have signed a new record deal, which will see remastered versions of all their albums being re-released next year.
The deal, which has been agreed with Universal, ends their 40 year partnership with EMI.
“We are very excited, after all this time, to be embarking on a new phase of our career,” said guitarist Brian May.
The late singer Freddie Mercury and the rest of the band had hits with We Will Rock You and Bohemian Rhapsody.
Mercury, who passed away in 1991, became known for his flamboyant stage persona.
Next year the band celebrates its 40th anniversary and the celebration will be marked with the re-release of their first five albums being available in March.
“We aim to apply fresh thinking and innovation to the marketing and promotion of this great body of work,” said Universal boss Max Hole.
The move is a further blow to EMI, which has lost other popular artists including The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Radiohead since the group was taken over by private equity firm Terra Firma in 2007.
Mega Man has sold over 28m units and has appeared in 124 different titles
|
From Sonic to Solid Snake, Mario to Mega Man, the Japanese love video games.
While it’s taken years for games to become mainstream in the West, videogames are now as much a part of Japanese popular culture as the Walkman and Anime.
Their influence can be felt all over popular Japanese culture but, as Western developers are enjoying unparalleled global success with huge open world games and first person shooters, is the Japanese gaming engine about to come off the tracks?
Speaking during the Tokyo Games Show, Keiji Inafune, head of global research and development and global head of production at Capcom, made some startling observations about the Japanese gaming industry:
“Everyone’s making awful games – Japan is at least five years behind,” he said.
“I don’t think that Japanese games can’t ever be popular overseas again. But they won’t be popular any more in their pure state. It’s like sushi. Everyone loves sushi in the West, but you can’t just serve sushi over there like it is in Japan.
“Japan is isolated in the gaming world. If something doesn’t change, we’re doomed.”
And he is not the only one who thinks this.
 |
 The Japanese don’t like shooting and war games very much. They prefer playing in fantasy worlds  Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Enterbrain
|
In 2002, it is estimated that Japan accounted for nearly 50% of the world’s gaming market. That has now fallen to around 10% and without Nintendo, with the success of the Wii console, the figure would be even lower – around 8%.
“I’ve been in the game industry for a while and have some worries and concerns that the Japanese game industry’s influence has become weaker and weaker in recent years,” says Kaz Takeshita, general manager of games company UTV Ignition.
“The video games industry was born in Japan and then exported overseas. When the business side of things rather than creativity is prioritised, when efficiency and profitability is prioritised, creativity and originality is undermined.”
Some of the most popular Japanese games are very different to titles played by Western gamers.
And while Japanese games traditionally enjoyed success in the West, the same is not true of Western games in Japan.
Fantasy worlds
Sci-fi first person shooter Halo Reach topped the video games charts across Europe and the US but in Japan only reached the number four spot in the sales charts.
Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Enterbrain – the company which publishes Japan’s most popular video games magazine Famitsu – thinks there are fundamental differences between Western and Japanese gamers.
“Halo’s theme is warfare,” he says.
Japan’s gaming industry no longer dominates the global market
|
“The Japanese don’t like shooting and war games very much. They prefer playing in fantasy worlds and battling with swords. I think there is very little interest in fighting with guns and this sort of combat game.”
“It’s only my guess but European and American game designers are probably more inspired by movies. In Japan, many creators are inspired by comics and animé. I think that’s the big difference.
“There’s another difference in graphics – European and Americans prefer realistic visuals whereas Japanese prefer more cartoon-like characters.”
So if the games and gamers are different, how do Japanese software designers create titles which compete on the world stage?
At the Tokyo Games Show, Inafune pushed for higher investment in games and said that it could be too late to start entering the US market – instead he is looking to “the next big market”, China.
Yet developers are still looking towards the West in their attempt to globalise.
In Tokyo’s Shibuya district, a team of developers with credits that include the Devil May Cry games and Okami has been assembled to work on their next project, yet this company – UTV Ignition – is actually UK-owned and bankrolled with Indian investment.
It has its eye firmly on creating games with a global appeal.
“From the start we focused on a multinational feeling and wanted the game to look like it doesn’t belong to a specific place,” says Sawaki Takeyasu, game director of UTV Ignition.
The Wii has seen a real reversal of fortunes for Nintendo in the West
|
“We’re satisfied with the result. The reason why this game looks very ‘Japanese’ to Western observers is because the Japanese make sophisticated games and it shows through.”
But with over 350m units of the most recent generation of hardware sold worldwide and a global video entertainment and media industry that is expected to grow to $1.7tn (£1tn) by 2014, it is a market that – despite the increased competition – many companies believe is worth fighting for.
“Game consoles are widespread and machines such as the PS3 will continue to grow,” says Hirokazu Hamamura.
“There are rumours of Wii-2 and games for the iPad and iPhone have started to become more popular too. Social games for mobile phones are extremely popular.
“The number of gamers has dramatically increased, but there’re more platforms hence more rivals for us.
“Japan’s games industry is at a turning point.”
James Cameron has taken a swipe at studios who add 3D to films in post-production, saying that 3D retro-fitting should only be used for classic movies like Jaws or ET.
The Avatar director said it had been a “mistake” to attempt to add 3D to the latest Harry Potter film, the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.
And he predicted that the practice of adding 3D to movies in post-production would end with the widespread take-up of 3D by TV broadcasters.
Speaking at the Blu-Con event in Beverly Hills, Cameron repeated his assertion that studios should not attempt to “shoehorn” 3D conversion – after the film has been shot – into the normal post-production time frame.
“I maintain you can’t do a good conversion of a two-hour movie with high quality in a few weeks like they tried to do with Clash of the Titans.
“I don’t mean to throw that movie under the bus because my buddy Sam [Worthington, star of Avatar] is in it, but I think everybody realised that this was a point at which people had gone too far.”
Cameron added: “You see another stumble with the most recent Harry Potter movie from the same studio making the same mistake – except really getting spanked for it now because they didn’t get the film done.
“They announced it in 3D – threw a bunch of money trying to convert it to 3D in post-production and it simply didn’t work. They just didn’t get it done.”
3D ET
Last month, Warner Bros said it could not complete the 3D conversion of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in time for its 19 November UK and US release date.
Warner Bros said it did not want to keep fans waiting for the film.
Cameron said: “My personal philosophy is that post conversion should be used for one thing and one thing only – which is to take library titles that are favourites that are proven, and convert them into 3D – whether it’s Jaws or ET or Indiana Jones, Close Encounters… or Titanic.
Avatar overtook Cameron’s own Titanic to become the highest-grossing film ever“Unless you have a time machine to go back and shoot it in 3D, you have no other choice. The best alternative is if you want to release a movie in 3D – make it in 3D.”
At the end of October, it was announced that the first sequel to blockbuster hit Avatar will be released in December 2014 with a second to follow 12 months later.
Avatar holds the record for the highest-grossing film ever, having earned some $2.77 billion (£1.76 billion) at the global box office. A “special edition” 2D Blu-ray version of Avatar is set for release in November, with a 3D Blu-ray release in the pipeline.
Cameron predicted that the days of 3D conversion in movies were numbered.
“The thing that’s going to be the coffin nail for conversion is when the broadcasters start broadcasting thousands, if not tens of thousands of hours a year in 3D.
“If you’ve got 5,000 cameras doing live sports feeding in over many different network delivery systems, it’s going to be pretty hard for Hollywood producers to claim that 3D is just too complicated to make a movie in 3D, when it’s being done every day by people a lot less talented and a lot less well-funded.”
The director also said that glasses-free 3D would be a reality within a decade.
“Once we get to auto-stereoscopic, that’s watching 3-D without glasses, it is going to be the way we watch all of our media. That’s probably eight to 10 years away.”
Tobin Bell plays Jigsaw in the Saw horror franchiseThe final instalment of the horror franchise Saw has topped the US box office in its debut weekend.
The last chapter in the series about the pyscho killer Jigsaw made $24.3m (£15.8m), according to studio estimates.
Saw VI, the last film in the series which was released last year, debuted with $10m (£6.2m) less.
The second, third, fourth and fifth Saw films all topped $30m over their opening weekends.
“Last year, a lot of people said, ‘Ok, that’s it. Put a fork in it, it’s done'”, said David Spitz, head of distribution for Lionsgate.
North American box office
- 1. Saw 3D – $24.2m
- 2. Paranormal Activity 2 – $16.5m
- 3. Red – $10.8m
- 4. Jackass 3D – $8.4m
- 5. Hereafter – $6.3m
“The following week, we were all disappointed and thought, what can we do to reinvigorate the franchise? So we shot the movie in 3D and said this is the final chapter.”
Another horror film, Paranormal Activity 2, slipped to second place, with $16.5m (£10.2m).
Its low-budget predecessor became a word of mouth phenomenon last year, eventually making more than $100m in North America.
Action movie, Red, starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and John Malkovich, took third place with takings of $10.8m (£6.7m).
Prank movie Jackass 3D, now in its third week on the chart, has now passed the $100m (£62.3m) mark.
“New Jersey hard-rockers of worldwide appeal release a new hits collection.”
Posted on: October 31, 2010
Tracks
- 1 Livin’ on a Prayer
- 2 You Give Love a Bad Name
- 3 It’s My Life
- 4 Have a Nice Day
- 5 Wanted Dead or Alive
- 6 Bad Medicine
- 7 We Weren’t Born to Follow
- 8 I’ll Be There for You
- 9 Born to Be My Baby
- 10 Bed of Roses
- 11 Who Says You Can’t Go Home
- 12 Lay Your Hands on Me
- 13 Always
- 14 In These Arms
- 15 What Do You Got
- 16 No Apologies
There’s no shame whatsoever in admitting to having some affection for Bon Jovi. If you’re of a certain age – and the spread’s wide, from teenagers to mums and dads in their 40s and 50s – then there’s every chance that significant moments of your life have occurred around this pop-rocking foursome riding high in the charts. Frankly, those who can’t sling their head back, punch the air and holler along to the chorus of Livin’ on a Prayer are likely unsalvageable from whatever depression they’ve slipped into.
As for the question of whether the group needs another best-of set, bear in mind that their last worldwide compilation of such a style, Crossroads, came out 16 years ago. That’s nearly a generation’s worth of new rock ‘n’ roll that’s up for inclusion here, then. But, perhaps wisely, the majority of these 16 tracks (an expanded double-disc version is available too, should you be worrying that Blaze of Glory has been erased from Bon Jovi history) are taken from the band’s mid-80s to early-90s globe-conquering albums. The fresher fare is yet to fully rub into the leather of rock’s already plenty stained jacket of time, but numbers like It’s My Life, from 2000’s Crush, and Have a Nice Day from the 2005 album of the same name, have clout enough to them to suggest that, eventually, they’ll be just as revered amongst the band’s fanbase as catalogue classics from New Jersey and Slippery When Wet.
Granted, one person’s classic is another’s cut that can’t be abided – but there’s a genuine universal appeal to a great many Bon Jovi tracks that puts them in the same league as U2. Sure, you’ll hate a few tracks when they’ve been playlisted into irrelevance; but time heals, and sure enough today Bon Jovi’s most brilliant firecrackers are enjoying new leases of life. No fewer than 12 of the tracks across these Greatest Hits discs will be available for players of the Rock Band series of video games to download. Frontman Jon Bon Jovi notes, in the accompanying promotional material, that these songs have stood the test of time, and for once the statement is more truth than flog-some-records hyperbole.
As with many greatest hits packages, a couple of new songs are tagged on the end – What Do You Got? is a by-the-book slowie worthy of a few lighters held aloft, and No Apologies is a rollicking barroom jam that’s high on energy if rather rattling of heart. They’re perfectly serviceable, but be fair – this is getting bought for the big-haired 80s hits, and nothing else. And that’s perfectly fine.
Yossi Fadhli World News and Entertainment 