movies
December 11th, 2009 at 10:30pm
Under Xbox 360
We can’t be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we’ll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix’s Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week.
With the holidays in mind, we’re going to be giving away … wait for it … MOVIES with each
Joystiq Box Office post on Friday from today through January 1! Simply leave a comment below telling us what you’ll be watching on your Xbox, PS3, PC, PSP, DS, OMG or whatever, and we’ll pick two winners at random each week to receive a nifty prize. This week we’ll be giving away one copy of Disney/Pixar’s amazing
Up and one copy of the romantic comedy
The Ugly Truth. Now before you cringe in terror over a Katherine Heigl / Gerard Butler romcom, consider this: It’ll make your movie collection look sensitive. Both movies come with an additional digital copy that you can stick on your computer, your PSP, your iPod, what have you. Read the complete rules at the end of this post, and good luck!
Recommendation of the Week:
The Mel Brooks Collection (Blu-ray, $139.99 suggested retail)
I can’t recommend this set highly enough. First of all, it includes nine Mel Brooks films:
Twelve Chairs, To Be Or Not To Be, Silent Movie, History of the World: Part 1, High Anxiety, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs and
Robin Hood: Men in Tights, many of which are making their Blu-ray debut. Second, it includes a ton of extra features: just the
Young Frankenstein disc alone is loaded with tons of fun stuff, including a “Blücher Button” for instant horse whinnying sounds. Third, it’s packaged in a long case containing an artbook about all about Mel Brooks and his movies called “All About Mel Brooks.” Fourth, it’s Mel Brooks, and you need a few laughs in high definition. Amazon has this right now for
$92.99, whittling it down to almost ten bucks a movie. You won’t be sorry.
Read on for the rest of the recommendations, and as usual, we’ll see you at the popcorn sta — well, actually, we won’t see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you’ll be watching, or what you’ve seen recently that bowled you over.
Continue reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, December 7 – December 11, plus Joyswag!
JBO: Joystiq Box Office, December 7 – December 11, plus Joyswag! originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, December 7 – December 11, plus Joyswag!
Tags: Blu-ray, contest, film, jbo, joystiq-box-office, joyswag, movies, netflix, psn, Zune-Video-Marketplace
By Mister-X
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, December 7 – December 11, plus Joyswag!
December 4th, 2009 at 10:00pm
Under PSP
We can’t be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we’ll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix’s Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week.
Recommendation of the Week:
Star Trek: The Original Series (Blu-ray, all three seasons, prices vary)
All three seasons of
Star Trek: The Original Series will be available as of December 15, which is when Season Three comes out. Besides the awesome bloopers and flubs, it also has the entire unaired original
Trek pilot in the set. Bizarrely, this was the original opening monologue: “Enterprise log, Captain James Kirk commanding. We are leaving that vast cloud of stars and planets which we call our galaxy. Behind us, Earth, Mars, Venus, even our sun are specks of dust. A question: What is out there in the black void beyond? Until now, our mission has been that of space law regulation, contact with Earth colonies and investigation of alien life. But now, a new task. A probe out into where no man has gone before.” Seems like a good thing they changed it. “A probe out into” is a bit much.
Trek has never, ever looked or sounded (there’s a new 7.1 mix!) better, and you can pick this up in a
box set, or get the individual seasons. Beam us up.
Read on for the rest of the recommendations, and as usual, we’ll see you at the popcorn sta — well, actually, we won’t see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you’ll be watching, or what you’ve seen recently that bowled you over.
Continue reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, November 30 – December 4
JBO: Joystiq Box Office, November 30 – December 4 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, November 30 – December 4
Tags: Blu-ray, dvd, films, jbo, joystiq-box-office, movies, netflix
By Mister-X
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, November 30 – December 4
December 2nd, 2009 at 06:00pm
Under Xbox 360
Here’s a dreary, uncomfortably true comment about the state of movie-licensed games: When we saw the average that James Cameron’s Avatar currently sports on Metacritic, our first thought was, “Wow, a 65, not bad!” Here’s how it was sized up by a few outlets:
- VideoGamer (70/100): “James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game is easily one of the best movie licensed games I’ve ever played, but at the same time it’s not good enough to stand alone as a must-own title. While the presentation is great and the combat generally enjoyable, the missions leave a lot to be desired – and there’s little of the sense of wonder that the movie promises.”
- IGN (68/100): “There’s nothing disastrous here, and the RDA shooter side of things performs well enough to be occasionally enjoyable. The quest design, including both the main and side tasks, is about as generic as they come. Go here, collect this, plant these bombs, or kill this and then return to me.”
- Game Informer (65/100): “These shortcomings are a shame considering the game’s interesting gameplay twists. Avatar features a solid RPG element that unlocks new armor and upgraded weapons at a steady pace. Players also unlock new skills (i.e. buffs) that help spice up combat a little, but can’t overcome the gameplay imbalances.”
- GameSpot (55/100): “It’s not a bad game, and portions of it are competent, if not quite remarkable. But Avatar wears thin quickly, and the story is too fragile to compensate for the deficiencies.
Metareview: James Cameron’s Avatar originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading Metareview: James Cameron’s Avatar
Tags: avatar, james-camerons-avatar, metareview, movies
By Mister-X
Continue Reading Metareview: James Cameron’s Avatar
November 13th, 2009 at 09:35pm
Under PSP
We can’t be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we’ll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix’s Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week.
Recommendation of the Week:
The Office: Series One (Netflix Watch Instantly)
While everyone was quick to sneer at the American version of
The Office on NBC and say “Oh, it’s not as good as the original,” that new show has gone a long way towards proving itself. However, they’re right … it’s still not as good as the original. Now the entire British run of
The Office is available on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it yet, dive in here with the entire first series, then move on to Series Two and the Specials. Ricky Gervais hasn’t struck box office gold yet in America (his movies
Ghost Town and
The Invention of Lying have fallen a bit flat), but
The Office is more than good enough to make up for it.
Read on for the rest of the recommendations, and as usual, we’ll see you at the popcorn sta — well, actually, we won’t see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you’ll be watching, or what you’ve seen recently that bowled you over.
Continue reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, November 9 – November 13
JBO: Joystiq Box Office, November 9 – November 13 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, November 9 – November 13
Tags: Blu-ray, dvd, films, jbo, joystiq-box-office, movies, netflix
By Mister-X
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, November 9 – November 13
October 30th, 2009 at 10:00pm
Under Xbox 360
We can’t be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we’ll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix’s Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week.
Halloween looms right around the corner! In preparation for a spook-tacular weekend full of fun and frights, we present you with an all-horror edition of Joystiq Box Office. Although in all honesty, nothing tops Trick ‘r Treat
from a couple of weeks ago. You owe it to Halloween to check that out. Of course, being the geeks that we are, we’d also like to remind you that Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
is now out on Blu-ray, DVD, PSN, and the Xbox Marketplace. It’s not their best work, but hey … it’s more Battlestar Galactica
!
Recommendation of the Week:
Monsturd (Netflix Watch Instantly)
Yes, this is seriously a movie. A fugitive on the run accidentally falls into a sewage tunnel, which is also where a chemical company has been dumping their toxic waste. As a result, he becomes Monsturd: half-man, half-poop. I kid you not. There have been poop monsters in movies before, like the transformed Chet in
Weird Science and the Golgathan from Kevin Smith’s
Dogma, but nothing compares to Monsturd. It’s actually not a bad send-up of the classic 50s frightfilms, and the tagline for the movie is “Don’t get caught with your pants down!” How can you go wrong?
A lot of you have been asking about the pricing on certain Xbox releases. For instance Red Cliff is 800
($10) to rent in standard definition, as opposed to the normal rental price of 320 ($4) for SD. The reason for this is that it has not yet been released in theaters, and is exclusive to the Xbox 360, Amazon, and certain VOD outlets. The film actually opens on November 18, so the added price is for the benefit of seeing it early.
As usual, we’ll see you at the popcorn sta — well, actually, we won’t see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you’ll be watching, or what you’ve seen recently that bowled you over.
Continue reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 26 – October 30, Horror Edition!
JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 26 – October 30, Horror Edition! originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 26 – October 30, Horror Edition!
Tags: Blu-ray, dvd, films, jbo, joystiq-box-office, movies, netflix, psn, xbox-live-marketplace
By Mister-X
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 26 – October 30, Horror Edition!
October 29th, 2009 at 07:00am
Under Xbox 360
VideoGamer.com is reporting that a supplement in this week’s issue of
MCV is advertising two new Xbox 360 Elite bundles. Both bundles are themed around recent movie releases, specifically
Star Trek and
Transformers 2. The
Star Trek bundle comes with an extra controller, a copy of J.J. Abrams’
Star Trek stored on a USB drive — shaped like the Star Fleet logo — as well as 800
with which to buy “
Star Trek PDLC.” Let’s just hope you don’t
have to waste those points on
Star Trek D-A-C. A
Transformers 2 bundle is in the works as well, featuring an extra controller, a copy of the movie on a Bumblebee-shaped USB drive and the
Transformers 2 game.
Release date, pricing, and the size of the included hard drive (120GB or “Super Elite” 250GB) are not specified in the ad. However, as MCV is a UK magazine, it’s possible these are only destined for that region. We’d be hard-pressed to tell potential buyers which one bundle is the better but, but we will say that only one of them goes where no one has gone before. And the other one is Transformers.
New movie-themed Elite bundles for the UK originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading New movie-themed Elite bundles for the UK
Tags: bundle, bundles, elite, movie-themed, movies, star-trek, transformers, transformers-2, uk
By Mister-X
Continue Reading New movie-themed Elite bundles for the UK
October 23rd, 2009 at 09:30pm
Under PSP
We can’t be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we’ll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix’s Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week.
Recommendation of the Week:
Red Cliff (VOD, Amazon, and
Xbox 360: 800
($10) SD to rent)
John Woo is back! And thankfully this isn’t the John Woo who directed
Paycheck or
Windtalkers. This is more like the
Hard Boiled,
Hard Target John Woo … just on a massive scale. It’s an epic film based on actual historic events and battles that took place in China around 208 AD. Chinese audiences were treated to a four hour long version that was split into two parts, and it has become the highest grossing film in Chinese history. American audience are getting a version that’s been heavily edited down to 2.5 hours, but it is still well worth watching. Three epic battles, stealth, trickery, and martial arts action. Plus it reunited John Woo with actor Tony Leung who co-starred in
Hard Boiled with Chow Yun-Fat. Don’t balk at the running time, because it is worth every minute. Check out an exclusive clip of the movie
over at Cinematical.
A lot of you have been asking about the pricing on certain Xbox releases. For instance Red Cliff is 800 ($10) to rent in standard definition, as opposed to the normal rental price of 320 ($4) for SD. The reason for this is that it has not yet been released in theaters, and is exclusive to the Xbox 360, Amazon, and certain VOD outlets. The film actually opens on November 18, so the added price is for the benefit of seeing it early.
As usual, we’ll see you at the popcorn st — well, actually, we won’t see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you’ll be watching, or what you’ve seen recently that bowled you over.
Continue reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 19 – October 23
JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 19 – October 23 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 19 – October 23
Tags: Blu-ray, dvd, films, jbo, joystiq-box-office, movies, netflix
By Mister-X
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 19 – October 23
October 16th, 2009 at 11:30pm
Under PSP
We can’t be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we’ll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix’s Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week.
Recommendation of the Week:
Black Dynamite (In actual theaters — get out of the house and treat yourself!)
Remember Michael Jai White? The dude played
Spawn in the forgettable movie, and was seen without makeup or a mask as Gambol in
The Dark Knight. However, you’ve never seen him as a jive-talkin’, nunchuck-swingin’, butt kickin’, fro-wearin’ guy who gets results. From the website: “When ‘The Man’ murders his brother, pumps heroin into local orphanages, and floods the ghetto with adulterated malt liquor, Black Dynamite is the one hero willing to fight all the way from the blood-soaked city streets to the hallowed halls of the Honky House.” You owe it to yourself to see an amazing return to blaxploitation.
As usual, we’ll see you at the popcorn st — well, actually, we won’t see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you’ll be watching, or what you’ve seen recently that bowled you over.
Continue reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 12 – October 16
JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 12 – October 16 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 12 – October 16
Tags: Blu-ray, dvd, films, jbo, joystiq-box-office, movies, netflix
By Mister-X
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 12 – October 16
October 9th, 2009 at 10:30pm
Under Xbox 360
We can’t be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we’ll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix’s Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week.
Recommendation of the Week:
Anvil: The Story of Anvil (DVD: $24.98 MSRP, cheaper at most retailers)
Just for the record, I’m not a fan of heavy metal. It’s just never been my thing. But this documentary about a band you’ve never heard of just came out on DVD, and it’s one of the most moving, amazing movies I’ve seen in a long time. You’ll laugh, cry, play some air drums or guitar, and ultimately be won over. Steve “Lips” Kudlow channels more emotion in this movie than most actors ever do in their lives, and you’ll understand why he’s kept this failed band going for 30 years. By day he works at a depressing school catering job, and in his spare time he and longtime childhood friend (and drummer) Robb Reiner rock as heavy metal band Anvil. The film chronicles their history, a failed European tour, and what life is like for the flipside of Metallica or Slayer. Highly recommended.
As usual, we’ll see you at the popcorn st — well, actually, we won’t see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you’ll be watching, or what you’ve seen recently that bowled you over.
Continue reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 5 – October 9
JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 5 – October 9 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 5 – October 9
Tags: Blu-ray, dvd, films, jbo, joystiq-box-office, movies, netflix, VOD
By Mister-X
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, October 5 – October 9
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:40pm
Under Xbox 360
We can’t be gaming all the time, despite our best efforts, and from time to time we’ll actually take advantage of the movie-playing abilities on our gaming systems. JBO features our top picks for XBL, PSN, Netflix’s Watch Instantly and Blu-ray each week.
Recommendation of the Week:
Jim Henson Double Feature: Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal (PlayStation 3 – Blu-ray disc, $27.95 MSRP per movie, cheaper at most retailers)
Both of these classic Jim Henson movies have been released on DVD before, but this is their first time to Blu-ray, and the first time they’ve looked so good. Whether it’s a magical world full of Skeksis, Gelflings and ultra-powerful crystals, or a magical world full of David Bowie, Bogs of Eternal Stenches and Jennifer Connelly (hubba hubba), the imagination that Jim Henson put into his movies was amazing, especially in a day and age before CGI. One interesting note is that when the Jim Henson Company sold the Muppets to Disney, they retained the rights to
Labyrinth and
The Dark Crystal, amongst other properties. They’ve been working on another
Dark Crystal film, and I sure hope it comes to theaters one day.
As usual, we’ll see you at the popcorn st — well, actually, we won’t see you at all. But you catch our drift. Plus, be sure to tell us what you’ll be watching, or what you’ve seen recently that bowled you over.
Continue reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, September 28 – October 2
JBO: Joystiq Box Office, September 28 – October 2 originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, September 28 – October 2
Tags: Blu-ray, dvd, films, jbo, joystiq-box-office, movies, netflix, psn, xbox-live-marketplace
By Mister-X
Continue Reading JBO: Joystiq Box Office, September 28 – October 2
