The Star Trek franchise has impressive credentials. 12 movies, four TV series, one animated series, hundreds of books, comics and video games has created a massive fan base that stretches around the world, crossing social, national, and cultural barriers. Its impact is undeniable. Despite this, it was never a part of my life or growth as a nerd, with the exception of Wrath of Kahn. Wrath of Kahn is a great piece of cinema and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. Star Wars, classic Doctor Who, Jack Kirby, Philip K. Dick and many more besides were my personal gateway to sci-fi and general nerdery.

This made watching Star Trek Into Darkness a weird experience for me. A sequel to a movie I didn’t watch in a franchise I have no real investment in. I know enough background to get most of the jokes in Into Darkness, like the meaning of the redshirt, “I’m a doctor, not a-,” and a key reveal that is spoileriffic in the extreme. The fact I got those jokes is a testament to how important Star Trek is to modern pop culture. The crowd I watched it with cheered, laughed, and applauded throughout the movie, they enjoyed the hell out of it. I left the theatre a staunch unbeliever.Nowadays it seems that the world of modern movies is one of compromise. Trading plot for special effects, settling for an actor’s name rather than an actor’s skill. It seems that as filmmakers more intensively explore the technological advances of CGI and 3D, the more they fall away from the basic principles that make a film good. Sick of this eye candy, I was not impressed by Star Trek 2. It is one thing to have a good looking film, but it feels as though the aesthetics have taken precedence over other critical elements of the experience such as plot, acting, and character development. Spoilers below, read with caution.

I am going to avoid falling into a sin tally here, but I will provide some select examples to substantiate my claims. Why is it that they must get Khan back alive to save Kirk? Could they not just revive one of his crewmembers and use their blood? If his blood is still effective after it is removed from his body, why can they not kill Kahn and immediately take a sample? Normally such inconsistencies could be overlooked, but in the film it feels like awkward junkets of dialogue were inserted to try and cover them up, merely for the purpose of extending the action.

Microsoft has officially unveiled the mysterious project Durango. With the next gen so highly anticipated, and in many eyes critical to the survival of the industry, XBOX has finally provided the missing piece of the puzzle. Nintendo released the WiiU this year, offering the evolution of their philosophy with the original Wii. Sony, positioned as number 3, showed us over the course of the last generation the PS4 and its intended target: the gamer core in march at its own event. Falling in step Microsoft has completed the vision of the next generation with their new machine: Xbox One.

Nintendo attempts to climb the ladder with the WiiU; offering new control schemes and fully embracing the online and hd standards and Sony is focusing on the market that made the PS2 the greatest console of all time: the gamers. Microsoft is casting a much wider net. As far as the folks at Xbox are concerned, if you have a TV, you should have an Xbox.

Xbox One isn’t just a gaming machine. It is intended to be the front for the entirety of the television experience. Xbox One is in many ways built around the flexibility of Kinect, which now is included in the box. With the 360 we saw the gaming peripheral become a motion and voice controller for your 360’s dashboard. With varying levels of success, it further indoctrinated Kinect into the go-to methods of the average consumer. The Kinect was Microsoft’s testing ground for their future. The Xbox One is designed from the ground so that Mom or Dad never has to touch a controller. I’ve seen my parents fiddle around with gaming controllers trying to get a DVD to play and of course they can, but they don’t like it. They would much rather an experience tailored to the medium, and a gaming controller is first and foremost made for gaming. Now the controller has be eliminated. They just say “Xbox, watch TV” and they are watching TV. They didn’t have to move a muscle. This is what Xbox One is for.

Microsoft has at this point captured the general gamer market. Xbox 360 in many ways has become a standard, and Xbox live is still the powerhouse that it always was. Microsoft has a built in audience for the Xbox One. The Live user base has invested too much not to go forward. Your games won’t carry over (the only console that offers backwards compatibility next gen is WiiU) but all of your achievements and media will. They don’t need to convince the core; they want more than just a consumer that wants to buy and play games. Microsoft isn’t marketing this device to gamers or media consumers or the Apple TV crowd. Its marketing it to anyone with a television and an internet connection.

With the magic of Kinect being cursory at best (I’m part of the core of course, I dismiss it/don’t really care), what does Xbox One have that I would want? Live TV? I have cable; all I need to do to watch it is click the channel button on my remote. But what if I wanted to use the TV to internet search at the same time? Or have a guide generated for my non digital cable signal? Well Xbox One can do that and really its the hot new thing that Microsoft is bringing to the table.

Media giants are laughing at HDMI pass through (your cable feed will go through your xbox), “that isn’t the way to solve the smart TV issue”. The issue of course being that there is no standard and with all the “stupid TV’s” out there that still have 5 or 6 years left in them. They should be very wary of Xbox One. HDMI passthrough might not be the most high tech solution but for now it is the best. It offers something that the competitors can’t. Zero compromise. All the on demand and internet content of the competition: Google TV devices and Apple TV as well as integrated instant access to live TV. The only thing it doesn’t have, and its almost no surprise as everyone goes “cloud crazy”, is DVR functionality which also might compromise the digital store.

When Microsoft closed out the conference their stock took a dip. Speculators and hair brained journalists expected that Microsoft would fail in their competition with Apple and Apple TV. They won’t. Apple TV is a device that gives your TV access to iTunes for 99$. Xbox One will likely cost about 400$ and will give you access to everything that iTunes does and much much more. One is not necessarily better than another; they just aren’t in the same competition. Xbox 360 and Apple TV are closer and Microsoft has sold more Xboxes. Really if there is a reason for the stock to dip it is the rumored “used game lockouts” or damage done with Microsofts determination to avoid saying outright “Xbox One doesn’t need to be online always” because of course it doesn’t, but if its not then all the fancy front end for everything feature really will become like straight up running a TV signal through an Xbox. Microsoft very much wants you to have your Xbox One online all the time and just about every company on earth is trying to figure out how to monetize used games.

All bells and whistles aside this is what Xbox One brings to the table. Its the same thing we have seen from Microsoft with the 360 over the last 4 years integrated with live TV, and it was designed to be used that way from the ground up. Honestly I buy a gaming machine to be a gaming machine and the rumors and half truths that Xbox One features some sort of CD key feature for games has me worried, but when I think of all the cables and wires and bullshit that I go through on the daily to get my content to the TV or switch from A to B or D to C… I imagine that Xbox One is rather convenient and I can only imagine that as far as the super bowl crowd is concerned its the hottest thing next to the wings.

Stay tuned as we go in depth with the core of Xbox One: the games,gamers and why the bros don’t care if you can’t play used games or not.

This year at the 66th International Cannes Film Festival, the high caliber of films lined up for the Directors Fortnight (some in competition for the “Camera d’Or” award) is creating huge Festival buzz. The Cannes Film Festival commands international attention with its politics and its glamour but this year it is the Directors Fortnight of films that has captured movie enthusiasts’ attention. The high profile Cannes jury for ‘films in competition’ headed by legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg, includes Ang Lee, Christoph Waltz and Nicole Kidman. It commands massive media attention along with the presence of major stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard (The Immigrant), and Sofia Coppola (The Bling Ring). But it is the indie films everyone is excited about.

The Directors Fortnight, May 16-26th, includes 21 features and 9 short films and opened with Aris Folman’s “The Congress” based on Stanislaw Lem’s sci-fi novel “Solaris”. Top picks from the lineup include: Jim Mickle’s cannibal thriller “We Are What We Are” and Sebastian Silva’s psychological suspense “Magic Magic”, both Sundance winners. “The Selfish Giant” (adapted from Oscar Wilde’s tale), a first feature from Clio Barnard received wild applause from the audience on Day 3 of Cannes (for various reasons). Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson’s sci-fi thriller “Last Days on Mars,” with Liev Schreiber (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) off exploring Mars. Indian indie darling Anurag Kashyap returns for a second year with “Ugly”, a dark thriller set in Mumbai and based on the city’s underworld of child prostitution and trafficking. The film follows up on his 2 part epic “Gangs of Wasseypur” featured last year at Cannes.

Celebrating longevity in the world of cinema is returning filmmaker Alexandro Jodorowsky (“El Topo”) a legend in his own right and best known as the comic writer “Jodo”. Jodorowsky has a long and outstanding record as a multi-talented filmmaker.His latest film “La Danza de Realidad” (The Dance of Reality) premiering at Cannes, is a film based on his memoirs and follows his complicated, troubled youth. Jodorowsky’s “Dune”, directed by Frank Pavich, is a Camera d’Or competitor. The documentary follows Jodorowsky’s failed effort to produce a 10 hour adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel, scored by Pink Floyd. Isabelle Huppert (Amour, Dead Man Down) will back in the thriller “Tip Top” from French filmmaker Serge Bozon, a screen adaptation from one of the novels by the prolific Welshman, Bill James. This Cannes Festival will be memorable.

Christophe Chanel

Unlike Batman, Superman hasn’t had a solid movie for a long time. Batman has dominated comics, TV shows, books, movies and games, while Superman… hasn’t. He’s not cool. There have been bizarre attempts to make him cool, including pulling a comic which had him rescue a cat from a tree, but it hasn’t taken. So Warner Bros. turned to Zack Snyder (Watchmen, 300) and Chris Nolan (Memento, The Prestige, a few Batman movies) to drag Superman back into the limelight. Click here for the Genesis of The Man of Steel.

Regardless of whether or not Warner Bros. is trying to create their own Cinematic universe a la Avengers, Superman needs a good movie. 2013 is his 75th anniversary after all. And after the inept Superman Returns, he needs one fast. He’s got more luck on the small screen than the silver screen. Smallville ran for 10 seasons and Lois and Clark consistently pulled high ratings, despite the smaller budget and at times bizarre plots. Marvel’s Thor and Avengers demonstrated the kind of special effects needed to make Superman both believable and entertaining. So we know that people are interested in the story and we have the technology to make it look good. All we need now is the product.

Hopefully, Man of Steel can give us what we want. Personally, I want to believe a man can fly. Man of Steel opens in theatres June 14th 2013.

Donal O’Connor

Photo credits:
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http://comicbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/man-of-steel-metallo-or-steel.png

myETVmedia goes behind the scenes with Myles Sexton at the 2013 Fashion Art Toronto show.

Insurgency 2, an early look at this anticipated First Person Shooter for the PC.

Insurgency 2 is the latest in the modern First Person Shooter genre. Its weapons, visuals and setting don’t do much to set itself apart from the unending avalanche of shooter releases this year, but its old school PC feel and slow paced combat provide for a fresh experience. Insurgency 2 is part of the Steam early access program, meaning the alpha can be played right now for a measly 20 dollars. If you’re at all interested in Insurgency 2 check out our 2 part impressions video and look forward to more early access videos from myETVmedia.com.

Max Romano