Russell Crowe as Jor-El

The first set photos have emerged showing Russell Crowe in full costume for Zac Snyder's upcoming Superman reboot "Man of Steel" via The Daily Mail. The 47-year-old actor plays Superman's biological father Jor-El from Krypton.

Fast & Furious: two sequels back-to-back, Jason Statham in talks?

Story by Simon Brew on
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/1078599/fast_furious_two_sequels_backtoback_jason_statham_in_talks.html

If you’re on the hunt for a morning dose of testosterone, then this news story should just about tick every box. It’s all about what’s happening next with the Fast & Furious movies.

We already knew that Fast Six, as it’s rumoured to be called, is set for release in 2013. That much is all-but-locked, with director Justin Lin returning for his fourth consecutive movie in the franchise. In fact, so committed is Lin to the Fast & Furious franchise, that he’s allowed to drop his plans to direct both Highlander, and the new Terminator sequel.

But might his workload be bigger than originally thought (and might that, as consequence, have led to him stepping away from the Terminator film)? Because word reaches us this morning that Lin might actually be juggling the shooting of two Fast & Furious sequels back to back.

Twitch Film is reporting that Universal is investigating shooting two new movies in the series in Europe next summer, the first of which presumably we’d still see in the summer of 2013.

When Lin dropped out of directing the new Terminator movie, he reportedly left the door open in case schedules could be sorted with so that the shoot didn’t clash with his Fast & Furious commitments. If the back-to-back plan goes ahead, then any chance of him helming the new Terminator presumably disappears forever.

However, we’re not done with Fast & Furious news yet. We haven’t talked about the mighty Jason Statham, who himself is heading off to the depths of Europe any minute to shoot The Expendables 2. After that? Well, The Statham is apparently a real possibility for the new Fast & Furious movies.

Again, according to Twitch, Universal “are entering into preliminary conversations with Jason Statham to explore the possibility of the action star joining one or both films.”

We think it’s fair to say that The Statham and Fast & Furious movies would cross over significantly, were we drawing a Venn diagram to demonstrate such a fact. We would very much like to see this happen.

Here’s the full story at Twitch Film. We're off to go and look manly for a bit, now.

Poster for Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Rage Videogame Review

Review by Charles Onyette on http://ps3.ign.com/articles/119/1197935p1.html

That Rage is a visual marvel should be no surprise. id Software has consistently set new industry standards since the days of Wolfenstein 3D. Rage, built using id Tech 5 engine, is one of the best looking games ever made, boasting an incredible blend of artistry, animation and smooth performance. The amount of detail built into Rage is staggering. It's easy to be overwhelmed with awe at the sight of rocky canyon walls that never seem to repeat and the meticulously designed and animated character models. Rage controls smoothly, consistently throws interesting challenges at you, and provides cool ways to upgrade and evolve your arsenal from beginning to end. Story and character, elements traditionally shoved to the side in id products, play a much more prominent role in Rage, but don't match up to the quality of the visuals and mechanics. Enjoying Rage is easy; caring about what happens is more of a challenge.

The story setup is simple: the world was nearly wiped out by an asteroid and you emerge from an underground vault. Blinking in the bright light of the sun, you take a few moments to admire the scenery and are then abruptly attacked. Id's wasteland is not a friendly place. Most of those you meet in Rage desperately want to kill or capture you, and gradually you begin to find out why. Despite the presence of upgrade systems, mini-games, side quests and car racing challenges, Rage is primarily a shooter.

It's a fairly traditional shooter, too, favoring smaller zones of combat instead of the open spaces seen in Far Cry 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Larger explorable areas exist in id Software's wasteland, but they're merely playgrounds for the vehicles. You can ride around in buggies and heavily armored cars, blast rockets at bandit vehicles and speed over jumps to smash floating beacons and earn extra rewards. It can be fun for a while, but by the time you get to Rage's second half, it starts to feel more like filler. The gunplay is always entertaining, as you adventure through corridors and interiors lined with hiding spots as mutants erupt from unseen spaces and bandits fire pistols and shotguns. Rage is not revolutionary shooter, but it's extremely well made.

The weapons in Rage feel powerful, and not just because they're loud. Hit a mutant in the leg and you'll see it snap back. Bandits under heavy fire will scramble behind cover with their hands over their heads. Charging mutants can be abruptly stopped with a well-aimed shotgun blast. Hit an armored enemy across the chest with assault rifle spray fire and he'll react to every impact. It may sound like minor detail, but the high degree of correlation between shot and effect has a huge impact on making each weapon exciting to use. There's a big difference between a shotgun blast that simply kills a mutant and a shotgun blast that knocks them into a backflip and blows apart their skull.

Combat encounters build in difficulty and throw a variety of increasingly difficult enemies in the mix, forcing you to be creative with your weapons. Eventually you'll acquire all the basic gun types, including a sniper rifle, rocket launcher and two assault rifles. Though only four can be active at a time, you carry everything in your inventory, so weapons are never left behind. The creative element comes into play once you gain access to all the different ammunition types and crafted items.

Like in BioShock, the combat areas in Rage are littered with glittering components. With the proper materials and associated schematic you can build new ammunition or items at any time. The products can be as simple as armor piercing ammunition or as complex as mind control bolts fired from your crossbow that turn enemies into walking bombs for you to move around. Later on you'll find advanced ammunition types become almost necessary to use. Deploying sentry turrets and spider-like attack robots is extremely helpful against enemies with thick armor plating and slavering groups of mutant. Though only a handful of the alternate attack options truly stand out – the razor-edged boomerang-like wingsticks, the mind control bolts and dynamite bolts to name a few – all are useful against Rage's intelligent enemies.

Even foes that run on a suicidal path toward at you armed with sticks and blades display a degree of self-preservation. They approach in zig-zag fashion and flip off walls and ceilings to make precise targeting no simple matter. Others fight from a distance, cowering behind bits of cover and popping out to take a few shots. They duck, dodge, switch positions and in general don't act like mannequins patiently waiting to receive a bullet through the skull. A few types even work together, ducking behind those with energy shields for additional cover. Rarer special types, like mutants that toss vision-smearing gunk, are especially aggressive, sprinting around and generally making life a lot more difficult. And as further evidence id Software knows how to pace a fight, just when you think you've exhausted a particular combat arena's challenge, a giant with a tentacle on its arm will burst onto the scene and send you scrambling for cover.

As the enemies become more fearsome and contribute to a sense of mounting conflict, the environments match pace with increasingly complex and elaborate designs, culminating in some incredible combat zones toward the end of the game. Seemingly every inch of this post-apocalyptic virtual space is touched with unique art and texturing, creating a pervasive sense that this world looks authentic and lived-in. From the grimy, rusted architecture of the town of Wellspring to the dazzling exterior of Subway Town, spiny with jutting rail lines and sewers, to even the most basic bandit hideouts and broken buildings, the exploration spaces in Rage's world feel detailed in the most exhaustive, obsessive way possible.

Though so much of the world wants to kill you, inside the main towns you'll find vendors to buy and sell items, dig up side quests and participate in racing circuits. It's easy to lose track of what they say as you're distracted by the high quality of their movements facial animations, accentuating the care that clearly went into each and every character model. In fact, their appearance and accent constitutes the majority of their personality, since beyond the spectacle of their animations, few characters in Rage are particularly interesting.

Rage leaves the horror elements of Doom and Quake for an often quirky, goofy tone. You'll encounter a few truly strange characters, like an obese kingpin that runs a murder-for-entertainment show called Mutant Bash TV and a hermit of a scientist holed up in a sleek metallic lair, but they're exceptions in what's otherwise a bland cast. Most characters tend to be more memorable for their accessories – the head tattoo of Subway Town's leader, the glittering glasses of the first NPC you meet, the belly shirt of the girl who teaches you how to use wingsticks – than anything they say or do. The group of NPCs that eventually turn out to be plot-essential allies wind up being the most dull, predictable personalities in the game, and no compelling villain ever really emerges.

Instead you fight pockets of bandits, crazed mutants and the relatively faceless Authority. They're fun to shoot at, but no significant contextual drama is ever established over the course of Rage's roughly 10 to twelve hour run. The story is propelled by a series of short-term goals that gradually reveal bits of the overall tale and it's difficult to get invested in a world populated by characters that, for all the lifelike animations, feel more like court jesters than endearing characters. In its final moments Rage falters significantly, failing to deliver any kind of satisfying conclusion or encounter. You fight a lot of things in Rage, but it never feels like you're fighting for any reason other than your personal entertainment.

Rage's driving sections accentuate its goofy personality, and further diminish the meager amount of tension built up through story setup and combat encounters. In vehicles you shoot rockets and flip around in armored cars like in a kart racer. The controls and mechanics are surprisingly good, with responsive handling that makes looping around tracks and arena battle modes quite a bit of fun. Against the computer the matches can be dull, but online against others it's easy to have a good time pelting enemy players with machine guns in a number of modes.

There's quite a bit to unlock in online play too, including mortars, cluster bombs, and pulse cannons to outfit on your vehicle. The available modes offer a good mix of gameplay styles involving capture points. All kinds of arcade-like silliness are included here like quad-damage pickups, speed boosters and ramps, lending a manic style to the action reminiscent of older arena shooters like Quake III. For a developer with a track record like id Software to only include the car combat modes as an option for online competitive play is a little odd, though it can still serve as a nice bonus once you're done with the single-player content.

Co-operative play is also possible in standalone missions separated from the main story mode. With another player you can mow down enemies in pursuit of a high score. You get bonuses for headshots and skilled play, and a multiplier climbs so long as you continue to get kills and avoid dying while point totals pop up all over the screen like you were playing a slot machine, increasing the sense of reward. Playing through these challenges can be a fun diversion, but don't expect it to turn into any kind of lasting obsession.

If you really want to squeeze everything you can out of Rage, there are a number of side quests and mini-games to take part in. Throughout your adventure you'll find cards to use in a Magic-esque battle game, you can gamble in a knife game that Bishop from Aliens would easily win, or take on a few driving delivery quests. Many of the game's side quests obtained from NPCs or job boards in town are fairly basic, several simply repopulating the combat zones you already cleared on the main quest with enemies. Though useful for their rewards, the side quests aren't especially exciting. Rage's economy at least works well, and if you choose to clear all the side quests or have a good gambling run, there's quite a bit to spend money on as you purchase basic armor upgrades, new schematics and materials to craft new items. It's not an especially complicated system, but Rage's non-essential content gives you an ample amount of things to do if you want a break from the main progression.

Closing Comments

Rage proves a lot of what we already knew about id Software. The studio knows how to make great shooters and deliver incredible visuals and animations. With some of the elements we’re not as familiar with in id games like an emphasis on story, Rage isn’t as strong. The great controls and useful weapon upgrades help make Rage’s shooting parts a lot of fun, but the storyline fails to create any real tension and the game’s characters, friendly and hostile, never do or say anything memorable. As a result, Rage starts to drag toward the second half after most of the mechanics and upgrades are introduced because the fictional world isn’t very interesting. Despite the lack of genuinely exciting context, all the content packed into Rage is still a blast to play, including the surprisingly entertaining car combat mode and co-operative challenges. Rage isn’t revolutionary, but is an expertly crafted, beautiful shooter.

Score 8.5

Security flaw in HTC Android smartphones

Story by Jacob Aron on
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/10/security-flaw-exposed-in-htc-a.html

Malicious apps can gain access to personal data stored on some Android smartphones made by Taiwanese firm HTC, say security researchers writing on the Android Police blog. Any app with permission to access the internet - which includes most ad-supported apps - can read off data including email addresses, location history and call logs. Affected models include the HTC EVO 3D, EVO 4G and Thunderbolt, say the researchers.

The data is gathered by an app called HtcLoggers. It was designed by HTC to log information for troubleshooting purposes, but it turns out that anyone can access the information without the need for a password or any other protection. "It's like leaving your keys under the mat and expecting nobody who finds them to unlock the door," say the researchers.

HTC has issued the following statement in response to the claimed vulnerability: "HTC takes our customers' security very seriously, and we are working to investigate this claim as quickly as possible. We will provide an update as soon as we're able to determine the accuracy of the claim and what steps, if any, need to be taken."

Until then, users who have "rooted" their phone (modifying the operating system to provide greater access to the device) can delete the HtcLoggers app, while those with unmodified phones should avoid downloading any suspicious apps that could be taking advantage of this security flaw.

Payday: The Heist

Payday: The Heist is a high-intensity squad-based first person shooter where players take on the role of a hardened career criminal pulling death-defying heists in the never-ending pursuit of the next "big score." Quick wit, an equally fast trigger finger and above all teamwork are the rules of engagement as players will embark on a spectacular crime spree of six heart stopping heists, including blasting their way through a downtown bank vault robbery, managing hostages in an armored car hijacking and even a midnight infiltration of a top-secret, high-security facility.

Additionally, Payday: The Heist challenges players with dynamic environments and adaptive enemy tactics — meaning no scenario will ever play out the same way twice. Teamwork is essential to ensure crew members provide cover under fire, guard key access points, break through various security measures and keep civilians in check. Survive wave after wave of the best that law enforcement can deploy as they shift strategies in response to player actions and gameplay style.

Taking after co-op experiences like Left 4 Dead, this is a game where real co-operation is a much needed asset. Cops will come in waves, surround you, flank you, gas you out, and do whatever it takes to stop you and your heist.

It's out October 4 on PSN and on PC.

Blu-Ray Review: Fast Five: Extended Edition

Review by William Bibbiani on
http://www.craveonline.com/film/reviews/175472-blu-ray-review-fast-five-extended-edition

Fast Five started Summer 2011 with a bang this year, shocking audiences everywhere by being actually rather good. The Fast and the Furious franchise had been steadily declining in quality since the first film in 2001, unless you count The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which was so tangentially related to the rest of the series they could have named it Season of the Witch. So it was a pleasant surprise that Fast Five bucked that trend by not only being better than the previous film – not that it would have been hard – but also by turning out to be at least as good as the first film, and arguably even better. Fast Five comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow, so let’s take this opportunity to review the Blu-Ray edition and take a closer look at the movie that defied expectations.

By the time Fast Five came out the Fast and the Furious franchise had become a thorough mess. What began as a fun knock-off of Point Break (but with cars!) segued into mindless nonsense with 2 Fast 2 Furious and the fourth film, Fast and Furious, in particular. The series had devolved into plotlines so trite and nonsensical that even remembering what happened in the fourth one would require hypnotherapy. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was a fun movie, but ignored the rest of the franchise entirely until basically the last shot, and exists primarily as a standalone Karate Kid-type adventure for the whole family. By Fast Five, the people behind the series wisely realized that basing more than a couple of movies on street racing was pushing their luck, until somebody apparently remembered that the first film was as much a heist movie as anything. The creative juices really started flowing when they reached a second conclusion: that the Fast and the Furious series now had a sprawling ensemble cast which could be mined for a refreshing group dynamic.

And so they made Fast Five, which reunited characters from each entry to date, even Tokyo Drift, and sent them to an exotic location to steal from a mutual antagonist, played by Desperado’s Joaquim de Almeida. Street racing appears only briefly, and half the time off-screen since by now the filmmakers know we’ve been there, done that and already given the t-shirt to Good Will. Fast Five follows the traditional heist mold pretty closely, with a group of disparate personalities with unique talents coming together to pull an already complicated job which just gets more difficult as time wears on. Where Fast Five breaks that mold is the lack of tension between the protagonists. Normally, these kinds of dream team heist movies feature at least one protagonist who betrays the group and/or aligns themselves with the bad guy. Since The Fast and the Furious movies have a hard on for the family dynamic, having any of the existing characters from the franchise turn on their friends would seem like a betrayal to the audience as well, so they cleverly added another antagonist, played by Dwayne Johnson.

Johnson’s character, Agent Hobbs, is like a 1980’s action movie version of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. In any other movie he’d be the hero, and from his own perspective he still is, creating a fun dynamic that allows him to join the team at least briefly in the final action sequence. But he’s mostly there to fight Vin Diesel, in what the special features on the Blu-Ray frequently equate to a tussle between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone in their prime. That’s a stretch, since Diesel and Johnson only have a handful of good action movies between them. (Diesel has Pitch Black and The Fast and the Furious, Johnson has… I dunno, The Rundown maybe?) This is more like Steven Seagal fighting Jean Claude Van Damme, or from a story perspective Spider-Man fighting Wolverine, since they’re both portrayed heroically enough that we know they’ll have to come to an understanding sooner or later. In fact, despite the ensemble cast the entire movie feels like a B-Movie that lucked out. When Tyrese Gibson and Paul Walker represent some of the biggest stars in your super team you don’t have a recipe for A-List success, but Fast Five succeeds anyway thanks to charming performances, a plot that twists without falling prey to silliness and memorable action sequences. It’s a blast.

Fast Five power slides onto Blu-Ray in an excellent audio/video presentation that utilizes all your speakers to their fullest and offers a pleasing amount of detail. More importantly, the Blu-Ray has been tricked out with a wide variety of special features. They’re a mixed bag, though. Justin Lin’s commentary is dry but somewhat informative, and fits nicely with the featurette On Set with Justin Lin, which provides an in-depth look at the pressures and frustrations involved in one of Fast Five’s less spectacular stunts. The spectacular stuff gets its fair share of coverage, however, particularly in Inside the Vault Chase, which impressively examines the real-life carnage and curious challenges posed by the film’s bizarre but pleasing climactic car chase. Less impressive is the self-congratulatory Tyrese TV, which plays like a comedy sketch without the comedy, as Tyrese Gibson bounces around the set trying – mostly unsuccessfully – to get the rest of the cast to mug with him on-camera.

The Blu-Ray of Fast Five comes with an “Extended Cut” which adds little of consequence to the film but doesn’t drag it down either. I suspect you’ll have a hard time even guessing what was added without the aid of the commentary track. Most importantly for a Blu-Ray release, Fast Five proves that it stands up to repeat viewings as an energetic action flick with that smartly reinvents its franchise and makes you actually want to see the next one. Good thing it’s already going into production.

CRAVEONLINE RATING (Film): 8.5/10

CRAVEONLINE RATING (Blu-Ray): 8.5/10