Empire Names Ghostbusters 189th Greatest Movie of All-Time

Now 189 may not sound all that great, but just think of how many movies are made. Empire magazine has taken votes, notes, and polls from 10,000 readers as well as 50 critics and came up with their 500 Greatest Movies of All-Time. Besides coming in at #189, Ghostbusters was selected as one of the few 100 movies to adorn the cover, seen above. There were multiple covers and the Ghostbusters cover has already sold out. You can read the Ghostbusters review here. The Top 10 were as follows...

1. The Godfather (1972)
   
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
   
3. Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
   
4. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
   
5. Jaws (1975)
   
6. Goodfellas (1990)
7. Apocalypse Now (1979)
8. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
9. Pulp Fiction (1994)
10. Fight Club (1999)

Huh. I have only seen two (#2, #3) of those movies in their entirety. I probably should rent some of the others.

The Clone Wars Wave 4 Carded Images

Rebel Scum has just posted some pictures of the figures in wave 4 of The Clone Wars collection. Wave 4 isn't expected to hit stores until December or January. Wave 4 consist of 5 figures: Clone Trooper (212th Attack Battalion), Padme Amidala, Clone Trooper (Space Gear), Magna Guard, and R3-S6 ("Goldie"). Expect to see the characters they are based on starting this Friday at 9pm on Cartoon Network.

Master Replicas to Officially Announce Ghostbusters Line of Items October 31st

I have been sneaking around the Master Replicas forum to see if I can learn anything new about rumored Ghostbusters prop replicas. I returned today and noticed 2 new pages of posts. The moderator has been dropping some hints since July. It has recently been confirmed that the Ghostbusters line will have its own web page. Reading the 14 pages of posts leads me to believe that MR will be making: the trap, PKE meter, and yes, a proton pack (please note that none of this is confirmed, just speculation). But that's not all. There is a possibility of scaled items such as busts, gear, and the famous Ecto. They are being real hush-hush about specifics. In a recent post by the moderator, he says that the line will be officially announced on October 31st. Nice timing. Hopefully some juicier tidbits will make their way out before then. I don't want to wait another month!

For those of you who know nothing about MR, check out the Star Wars items I own by them. Truly great stuff.

I'm an Apple Fan Boy and I Need a Life

The endless Microsoft vs Apple debate rages all the time. I don't really know why. Who cares if you are a PC or a Mac? What difference does it make? It proves nothing! Based on the people I talk to and the web sites I visit, it seems that the Apple/Mac community is the worst. They defend Steve Jobs and Apple even when they do something wrong. When Apple does something wrong they turn it around and bash Microsoft with generic insults that have been around since the mid-90's.

The battle has heated up in recent years with new marketing ploys. Apple came out with their PC vs Mac, poking fun at PC users and the Vista operating system. Microsoft has finally responded with the "And I'm a PC" advertisement. They have a website where you can create your own "And I'm a PC" slogan, for personal use of your business, for instance. The Apple fan boys just can't help themselves. Here are a few that I came across in under 5 minutes:





Oh my. Apple fan boys, get over it. I have a preference towards PCs but I am always open to using whatever is available. I used Mac's at Penn State in the computer labs and for THON. I have an iPhone so I don't hate Apple. Give it a rest. Or are you still pissed about these statistics?

From Softpedia

The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia Volume Covers

The second Star Wars Encyclopedia is due out on December 9, 2008. It is over 1,200 pages and is 3 separate volumes. Here are the covers for each volume, from StarWars.com:



Pretty sweet. The 3 volumes will be stored in a slipcase. You can preorder the Encyclopedia, signed by all 6 authors, at StarWarsShop.com ($109). It is also listed on Amazon (no autographs, $78.75). Though I doubt you can get the deal I did.

Bill Murray Enthusiastic about Ghostbusters III

This is great! Bill Murray, Peter Venkman from the first two Ghostbusters, was at Fantastic Fest recently and had the question on the possibility of a Ghostbusters III being made posed to him. Here is a summary of his response from Quint at Ain't It Cool News:

He [Murray] paused for a few seconds then said that he thinks enough time has passed and that "the wounds from GHOSTBUSTERS 2 are healed" and that he would definitely be into doing another GHOSTBUSTERS movie, stating that the first 40 minutes of the original film is some of the best stuff he's been associated with and the whole shoot was an amazing amount of fun.

He also went on to say that his enthusiasm for Ghostbusters was heightened after recording the voice of Peter Venkman for the video game over the summer. In fact, he said he found himself walking down the street singing the Ghostbusters theme song and then thought people walking around him were going to start yelling at him to "get over yourself, Bill," so he stopped... But the enthusiasm was there.

Sweetness! One of the big holdups on the third movie in the past has been the resistance of Murray. He seems to be in!

Here is a video of the interview.

The Force (Unleashed) Completed

Well I got the game Monday/Tuesday midnight and completed it as of 10pm Thursday. In all, it took me approximately 7-8 hours of gameplay to beat it on its easiest setting. What did I think of it? Well IGN has the accumulated rating of 7.3, or "decent", after averaging the reader average (8.6) and press average (6.6). The 7.3 sounds about right. I would probably say 78/100, or 7.8. The game is fun and it isn't too hard to please me. The planet and creature graphics are top-notch. The only image problem I had was the human characters looked a bit force and not nearly as polished as other games human characters, such as Halo and the sports games.

The story is decent too, however I do not like the "evil" ending. I want give away any spoilers so you can keep reding. The "good" ending is much more realistic and appropriate canon-wise. The Force action are pretty slick and you'll have to play the game a few times to master them all. My favorite is the simple force push and force lightning. The animations for scripted battle outcomes are decent, but I would have liked your actions during theme to be a little more difficult. At most you have to push 4 buttons over a few seconds that flash on the screen. Making this more difficult would have made the game a little better.

Some of the most bothersome aspects of the game were the difficulty of some mundane events. I couldn't figure out how to cross a bridge at one point. I also found it very troub,ing to take down the Star Destroyer. Then finally aligning the rings on the Death Star was more difficult than it should be. Maybe I just didn't pay attention to the on screen instructions but I had to result to Google search results to figure out what I was doing wrong. In the end all of those problems were easily correctable but I felt the instructions and directions on screen could have been better.

The reason this game fails to bring in the high rankings is because of the hype it got. The game has been in the works for 3+ years and has been delayed numerous times. LucasArts has been shoving the aspects of the game down everyones throat for 18 months and it just didn't deliver. It's a fun game and I'll play it through again on harder settings. But minus multiplayer, after defeating it multiple times, it will lose its luster. Its great to wield the force like this for the first time but it lacked repeated playability. If this game just came out without many previews or hype, it may be rated higher. But for a team to be working this long and this to be the final product is a little disappointing. It's too short. The parts that should be hard are too easy and some things that should be easy are too hard.

It's a definite rental and would be a great buy at $30. At retail price their just isn't enough substance for me to recommend it for everyone.