Any excuse...

What a way to end 2011.  Happy 2012 everyone

Recently, word has been spread around that Warner Brothers has renewed the domain name for Gremlins3.com along with a bunch of other rumored sequels like Green Lantern 2 and The Hangover 3. Now, this doesn’t mean for sure that the film will be put into production but the rumor of the development of a third film has been floating around since 1999. Last year, original series director, Joe Dante, commented that he would not return for a 3rd installment after his fallout with the studio but believes that they will do something with the property sometime soon.
I’m constantly asked ‘why the hold up on Gremlins 3? And that’s because those films were such products of the technology at the time. The movie was more limited and created by technology. They were puppets. The story-lines, then, were based around what we could do with the Gremlins. Now, of course, anything is possible but it becomes a little more difficult to hone it on what your storyline would be. First of all, I won’…

Steven Spielberg's new film "War Horse" is almost deliberately old-fashioned, pitting noble beast against the horrors of war, with sweeping, emotional set pieces ? and dividing critics as Hollywood's awards season looms.
The movie, which got a Golden Globe nomination this month ahead of its Christmas Day release in the United States, is even made on good old celluloid in a snub to the digital revolution.
"I think that movies like that don't get made much any more, you know the kind of epic sweeping historical drama that were used to be made quite a bit 30, 40 years ago," producer Kathleen Kennedy told AFP.
"It's what makes the movie a little old-fashioned but at the same time modern," she added.
The movie tells the story of Joey, a horse raised in a bucolic English countryside who is torn away from his home ? and stable lad Albert ? and sent to France to the battlefields of World War I.
To a soundtrack heavy on violins, the …

Head over to http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF8924087058A8F0C&feature=plcp where there is a whole playlist for all the music from Monkey Island.  Well worth a look.  Heres a sample of what's on offer.  Don't forget to join The Bearded Trio on Twitter and Facebook to keep up  to date daily on all the latest on Spielberg, John Williams, George Lucas and much much more.

Today’s flavor of Twitter rumor was reported by GameInformer and involves the possibility of developer Spark Unlimited working on Star Wars: Battlefront 3. However, while gamers have been pining for a new Star Wars: Battlefront ever since the last one was released in 2005, the force of credibility isn’t strong with this one.
Any reason for suspecting something is twofold. First, a listing appeared in the job section of Spark Unlimited’s website stating, “We are in production on an unannounced high-profile, popular game sequel for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC release.” And then there’s the fact that when asked on Twitter about a possible Star Wars: Battlefront 3 title, according to Gameinformer, Spark is referring those inquiries to Lucas Arts as opposed to denying them.
Of course, if a Battlefront 3 title was ever to enter prodcution, someone new would have to be developing it, as the series’ original developer, Pandemic Studios, closed its doors in 2009. That said, Spark Unlim…

The Electric Playground visit ILM...

Films in order of appearance:
1975 Jaws
1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark
1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
1984 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
1982 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
2002 Minority Report
2005 Munich
2002 Catch Me if You Can
1993 Jurassic Park
2005 War of the Worlds
2011 The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn
1986 The Color Purple
1997 Amistad
1987 Empire of the Sun
1993 Schindler's List
1997 The Lost World Jurassic Park
1998 Saving Private Ryan
2001 A.I. Artificial Intelligence
1991 Hook
1979 1941
2005 War of the worlds (again)



To rent a whole host of Spielberg classics visit our friends at LOVEFiLM, LOVEFiLM have a huge library on dvd, blu-ray and also available online. Sign up today at http://www.lovefilm.com/ for a 2 week free trial

Jaws (1975) as Amity Point Lifestation Worker (voice)
The Blues Brothers (1980) as Cook County Assessor's Office Clerk
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) as Tourist at Airport
Gremlins (1984) as Man in Electric Wheelchair
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) as Popcorn-Eating Man
Men in Black (1997) as Alien on TV Monitors
Vanilla Sky (2001) as Guest at Party
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) as Himself
Paul (2011) as Himself (voice)

Over a million gamers worldwide celebrated the holidays in front of their PCs with lightsabers, Sith lords and Jedi knights as BioWare™, a Label of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA), continued to see an unprecedented amount of player engagement for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. Over this past weekend, players continued to flood the servers of the fastest-growing subscription MMO in history, immersing themselves in the game for over 5.5 million hours. Star Wars: The Old Republic is also proving to be a critical smash hit, with an average review score of 88*, making it the highest rated MMO of 2011, while also winning over 105 industry awards, including "Best Multiplayer Game of 2011" from MSNBC. Enthusiasm for The Old Republic has also gone viral, as over 1.6 million fans have viewed the Jedi vs. Sith Freeze Mob in Times Square on launch day, making it one of the most viewed videos on YouTube…

BioWare says it understands its debut MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic will "live or die" on its post-release content - and it has "aggressive plans". Speaking to CVG ahead of next week's official launch, senior writer Alex Freed acknowledge the developer needs to be "continuously refreshing" the game and addressing player concers. "I can't talk about specifics for post-release content. I can say yes, there are many people working on that content - MMOs live or die based on adding new content, refining old systems, adding new ones - all of that," he said.
"BioWare understands that - we're not doing a single-player game where we put it out in the market and then just be happy that it's out there.
"We need to be continuously refreshing the game and inviting in people who may think that they've seen it all and addressing player concerns. We've got aggressive plans but at the moment I can't reveal…

Settle back on Christmas day.  let that turkey digest, pour yourself a nice afternoon drink and watch a traditional family movie.  Why not make it a Star Wars movie so here to make your Christmas day complete is a forgotten gem...

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE BEARDED TRIO. 

On the forest moon of Endor, the Towani family nearly completed repairs of their ship and prepare to leave. Ewok village is attacked by a group of sanyassan marauders led by Terak and datohomirian witch Charal. Most of Towanis were killed. Cindel and rest of the villige were taken by sanyassan slavers. She and Wicket escaped to meet hermit Noa and his speedy creature Teek. Our team must infiltrate marauders castle to free captured ewoks and retake power cell from Towani's starship...

 PART 1



PART 2



PART 3

Thought I would share with you some of the great geeky pressies I received from my wonderful wife this year.

The Empire Strikes Back featured Frank Oz as the voice of Yoda, better known for his work on The Muppet Show as Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggie. After the film was released, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels and Peter Mayhew appeared on The Muppet Show in their respective roles, along with a remote controlled R2-D2. They were looking for Dirk Nader (Who? No one may ever know - unless you watch this programme!!)

 PART 1


PART 2

Vader playing golf







Chewie did it again...

The Force, it seems, was with Electronic Arts Inc. this week when the company launched its most ambitious game ever, Star Wars: The Old Republic.
The Redwood City, Calif., game publisher said Friday that more than 1 million players have bought the game and jumped online to play since its release to a small group of customers Dec. 13 and to the wider public last Tuesday. Each player spent an average of five hours a day playing the game, according to EA.
So many players piled into the online game that the company's computers at times became overloaded, with people complaining about long waits to be able to play. The game's Twitter feed has been a stream of apologies to players who had technical problems or delays.
But people still logged 28 million hours in total playing time in the last 10 days, exploring the far, far away galaxy and creating avatars, including Sith lords and Jedi knights. (Sith lords, in case you're curious, are slightly more popular among pl…

Steven Spielberg is keen to post-convert his classic dinosaur movie 'Jurassic Park' into a 3-D romp.

Steven Spielberg wants to convert 'Jurassic Park' into 3-D.

The acclaimed director admits he is a huge fan of the technique in movies - following on from the work of his friend James Cameron on 'Avatar', which became the biggest film of all time after its release - and he would love to turn his dinosaur classic into a 3-D venture.

He told MTV News: "I've always said 'Jurassic Park', the first one, would be really good post-converted in 3-D.

"I think James Cameron has done the greatest 3-D in history with 'Avatar'. I figure James is going to teach all of us a lesson.

"If we follow his precepts, more films will be post-converted, but the only movie I'm interested in post-converting is the first 'Jurassic'."

Steven - who is currently promoting 'War Horse' with Tom Hiddleston - has previously worked on 3-D …

Its not the X Factor winner but hey its Star Wars X Factor (I would rather watch this any day)

STEVEN Spielberg won’t make another E.T or Jaws movie.
The movie mogul says his past classics will stay in his back catalogue and he is resisting calls him to add to the wave of 3-D re-releases.
“I’m so busy looking ahead to all the movies I’m about to make, I can’t even imagine looking back and wanting to go back to something that happened a long time ago. I have no movies I’d like to re-do,” says the Oscar winning director.
“The only movie that I would ever even consider retrofitting is the first Jurassic Park, which I think would look pretty spectacular in 3-D.”

See Spielberg directing on the Jurassic Park set. http://www.thebeardedtrio.com/2011/12/spielberg-directing-on-set-of-jurassic.html

After years of development and hype, Star Wars: The Old Republic has launched worldwide. While Star Wars and BioWare seem like a natural fit after their work on Knights of the Old Republic, the truth is that the developer considered several other ideas for an MMO.

Director James Ohlen told PC Gamer that while the negotiations were underway between BioWare and Lucas Arts over the Star Wars license, the development team was batting around a few other MMO concepts.

"We had backup plans," said Ohlen. "In all the design team was like three of us at that point, in total. So we were looking at doing a Lord of the Rings MMO, a Silmarillion MMO, a kind of a Gunslinger-esque Dark Tower MMO, a Game of Thrones MMO."

Ohlen added that every setting had different strengths. Star Wars won out because of, again, the KOTOR connection.

"We had an in-built fanbase with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic," Ohlen said. "In fact, when you ask our fans 'what …

A self-professed sci-fi fan who once worked for James Cameron has filed a lawsuit against the Avatar director, claiming he ripped off his idea for the decade-in-the-making 3-D blockbuster.
The complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court Thursday and obtained by E! News, accuses Cameron and his company Lightstorm Entertainment of developing Eric Ryder's treatment for a sci-fi tale he wrote in 1999 called K.R.Z. 2068, for which he also created 3-D visual representations and imagery as well as character and scene development, and provided screenplay development assistance.
And wouldn't you know it, the ex-employee alleges his story shares quite a remarkable number of story elements with the King of the World's magnum opus.

Per the suit, Ryder envisioned a movie "about a corporation's colonization and plundering of a distant moon's lush and wondrous natural setting, the corporation's spy sent to crush an insurrection on the distant moon among …

Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox have partnered with Variety, the Children’s Charity to create a pin badge featuring fan favorites C-3PO and R2-D2 to raise funds for Variety’s Gold Heart Campaign that supports children and young people who are disabled and disadvantaged. The collector’s item will be available for £2 at selected cinemas and retailers including H Samuel, Odeon Cinemas and Forbidden Planet across the U.K from February 2012.

The campaign coincides with the all-new 3D release of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace in cinemas in February 2012.

Since 1991, the Gold Heart Appeal has been Variety’s signature badge campaign in the UK and worldwide. In recent years Variety has worked with a major film company, including Paramount, DreamWorks, and Warner Bros. to design a badge based on a universally recognised film, character or celebrity that is sold primarily in selected cinemas, venues and retailers across the U.K. The Gold Heart campaign has raised over 20 milli…

With its scattering of stone and thatched cottages set around a green, and  with a pub and church at its heart, Iddesleigh seems the archetypal English village. But although it is picturesque, it is often overlooked by the holidaymakers heading to the nearby craggy tors of Dartmoor and the sandy beaches of North Devon.
Apart from the handful of names proudly displayed on its war memorial, Iddesleigh seems untouched by the passing of time. But the memorial gives a clue to this small village’s importance. This is where author Michael Morpurgo painstakingly collated the experiences that would go to make up his novel War Horse.
The book has since become an award-winning play and it has now been transformed into a Hollywood blockbuster by director Steven Spielberg. Released in the US last week to critical acclaim, the film arrives here early in the New Year.
Hero: Jeremy Irvine as Albert and his horse Joey in a scene from the Walt Disney film War Horse But who were the people f…

Today I picked up my collector's edition of The Old Republic and I thought I would share with you what exactly is in the box.