Sony officially delays Playstation 3
News has just surfaced that Sony has indeed delayed the launch of Playstation 3 until November of this year. According to the Japanese newspaper “Nihon Keizai Shimbun” part of the delay is a result of the copy protection specs that have been finalized only very recently and require some additional attention on a multi-purpose platform such as the Playstation 3 as opposed to a straight forward set top player.
Undoubtedly many will now clamor that the BluRay format will severely suffer from this delay but we at DVD Review beg to differ for a few very simple reasons. The Playstation 3 is a gaming console and people buy these to play games primarily, not to watch movies. PS3’s ability to play back BluRay discs will be a nice addition but will not have an immediate impact on the early BluRay market. This early market is primarily driven by early adopters who will shudder at the thought of viewing their movies on a gaming console, especially given how poor PS2’s DVD playback is by comparison to even the cheapest set top players.
Ferrell's Lame Internet Death Hoax Fools No One
The reports of Will Ferrell's death are greatly exaggerated, misspelled and in serious need of fact checking.
On Tuesday, March 14th, a poorly written press release reported that the actor/comedian died the previous day in a freak paragliding accident -- when in actuality he was up in Canada filming his latest movie.
After hearing of the obvious hoax, Ferrell's publicist, Matt Labov, merely stated that the actor is "alive and well, and filming a movie in Montreal."
The false report stated that the fatal accident occurred in Torey Pines, Calif., after a gust of wind blew the actor and a paragliding companion into the trees before they hurtled to the ground. The release included numerous typos such as Ferrell was "the sonn [sic] of Hubert and Mary Ferrell" and had crashed "into the dense foilage [sic]." Other facts the anonymous prankster got wrong include the real name of Ferrell's parents (Kay and Lee), his alma mater (University of Southern California) and his age (38).
The online news service I-newswire.com removed the press release as soon as they learned of the error. The non-paying customer that generated the story could not be traced.
Ferrell was last seen in last summer's surprise hit comedy "Wedding Crashers," in which he played a character who mocked a lady whose boyfriend in a hang gliding accident, "Winter Passing," "The Producers," and in "Curious George" as the voice of the Man in the Yellow Hat who takes to the air with his monkey via a bunch of helium balloons.
He next stars in the NASCAR comedy "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" and "Stranger Than Fiction."
Ford: "Indy 4" Script Ready
Looks like Harrison Ford can finally take the fedora out of mothballs.
The Hollywood megastar told a German magazine on Wednesday that after rewrites too numerous to count, he and director Steven Spielberg are finally satisfied with the script for the forever-in-the-works fourth installment of the whip-wielding, tomb-raiding adventurer.
"Steven Spielberg and I now have a script in hand that we both like. I believe that we can start with the filming soon," Ford was quoted as saying in an interview with Fit for Fun, a German lifestyle and entertainment magazine.
The 63-year-old actor, who's been making the publicity rounds this month for Firewall--his first certifiable action thriller since 1997's Air Force One--demurred, however, on a start date.
That depends on the busy schedules of the Indiana Jones triumvirate of Ford, Spielberg and producer George Lucas. But Ford indicated he was ready to get back into the swing of things, adding that he needed "to do a little practicing with the whip" to avoid injuries.
Ford's reps did not comment further, and a Lucasfilm spokesperson said Wednesday that Lucas was not available to comment on the status of Indy 4. But appearing at last week's Empire Awards in London, his producing partner, Rick McCallum, said Lucas had made his final tweaks to the script by Jeff Nathanson (Rush Hour and Catch Me If You Can) and handed it off to his two pals for final tweaking.
"[George has] just finished the Indiana Jones script, and Steven's having that rewritten and a few things done," McCallum said, according to published reports.
Spielberg's publicist, Marvin Levy, confirmed as much to E! Online.
"[The script] certainly seems to be [in the can], but I don't think we're at that point where we have a firm start date," Levy said. "But this is certainly the closest where we've been in this whole development process."
Levy also denied an earlier report that Spielberg was considering taking a year off after doing War of the Worlds and Munich back to back. He said the two-time Oscar winner is working not only on getting Indy 4 off the ground, but also Lincoln, his upcoming biopic on Abraham Lincoln that will reunite him with his Schindler's List star, Liam Neeson.
"I think it's much more likely that he will do an Indy movie before he does Lincoln. The Lincoln script is not as far in the development stage and...frankly, Steven may not want to do another serious movie after doing a Munich," Levy said.
He noted it's possible Spielberg "would be starting something before 2007."
It's been a slow, tortuous march to production since the project was officially announced in January 2002. The trio brought in Oscar-nominated writer-director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) to take a crack at writing a story about the aging archaeologist, but Lucas vetoed the draft, putting Indy 4 on hold indefinitely until Nathanson found an angle that pleased the principals.
By the time Indy 4 does get rolling--this year or next--Ford will have turned 64 and will probably be 65 by the time Paramount releases the movie in theaters. The actor is next set to play Colonel Everton Conger, the man who tracked down Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, in Manhunt, which starts filming next month.