The Showcase Blog

Next Friday: More Pwnage! Plus, This Guy

Zach Feldberg — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:05:00 GMT

Check out our new one-part web series in its entirety:

Episode 2 of Pure Pwnage -- featuring an appearance from Hotz'd and Kenny vs. Spenny star Kenny Hotz -- premieres next Friday, March 19 at 10pm ET/PT.

If you missed this week's season premiere, watch it now in our video centre.

It's P-Day!

Zach Feldberg — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:04:00 GMT

Tonight at 10pm ET/PT, only on Showcase.

Plus: We've got two pairs of tickets to the Pure Pwnage screening event in Toronto on March 20th for the first two people to email us at webmaster@showcase.ca with a photo of the end credits of tonight's premiere episode. That's a savings of $20 which you can put entirely towards Skittles at the Bloor Cinema snack bar, and also we'll hold seats for you so you don't have to wait in line (which is the real prize, as you'll know if you've ever attended a Pure Pwnage screening in the past).

Canadian Music Week: Not Just In The Clubs Anymore...

Todd Brown — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:26:00 GMT

With Canadian Music Week taking over all the clubs in Toronto for the next few days the focus will be on the wave of live music in the city for the next little while, but CMW isn't just about the bands. Three years ago the massive festival and conference introduced a film program to the proceedings, a program put together by yours truly for the past two years. And so I take a break from the multiplex this week to plug my own work...

The proceedings are broken into two days this year with a pair of screenings held on Friday at the National Film Board Mediatheque (150 John St.) while Saturday features a slate of five titles at the Royal Cinema (608 College).

The Friday program at the NFB features a pair of classic rock musicals. Walter Hill's 1984 effort Streets of Fire kicks things off followed by Brian De Palma's 1974 glam rock epic Phantom of the Paradise. Hill's flick features Willem Dafoe, Rick Moranis and Michael Pare in a weirdly anachronistic tale - it's kind of near future apocalypse, kind of 1950's street gang - about street bikers who kidnap a rock singer whose ex-boyfriend is her only hope of rescue. Streets of Fire is one of those films that has gotten bigger over time, a film that didn't do much at the box office on release - though the soundtrack spawned a significant hit in I Can Dream About You, thanks in no small part to the soundtrack composed largely by frequent Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman. Members of Springsteen's E-Street Band are all over this thing, as is Ry Cooder, and Willem Dafoe gives one of his most charismatic performances ever. It's a rarely seen gem that comes highly recommended. De Palma's Phantom - a 70's rock spin on Phantom of the Opera - is another with a growing cult. This one actually screened in Toronto a little under a year ago but with Phantom bad guy and composer of all the music, Paul Williams, a guest of the conference this was an obvious pairing for a killer double bill.

And Saturday? On Saturday we get the new stuff.

Things kick off at 1pm with the North American premiere of Separado! a documentary co-directed by and featuring Gruff Rhys, the lead singer of the Super Furry Animals. It's an odd one, this film, partly a concert film with Rhys touring a solo record through South America and partly an exercise in family history with Rhys exploring a branch of his own family which emigrated from Wales to Argentina in the mid 1800s. This is a fascinating, little seen gem and hugely entertaining.

After that, at 3pm, comes Last Heaven 031011 a concert film capturing the final performance of Japanese blues punk act Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. In their day TMGE were one of the greatest bands walking the planet, a band that was absolutely massive in their native Japan with a loyal cult the world over. They broke up in 2003, their final concert a massive affair that was recorded and filmed for posterity but while the recording was released as a double CD the film has been sat on ever since. At least, it was sat on until late 2009 when the tragic death of guitar player Futoshi Abe sparked an excavation of the TMGE vaults and the film was finally released as a final tribute. This is the first ever screening of this film outside of Japan and a portrait of a truly great band in peak form. Though the songs are dominantly in JApanese we will have translated lyric sheets available for those who want to follow along in English.

Next? 5:15 brings Le Donk And Scor-Zay-Zee, the latest effort from UK director Shane Meadows. Meadows is a huge festival favorite around the world thanks to his more serious offerings like This Is England and Dead Man's Shoes but this is a much lighter affair, the film built around an almost entirely improvised performance from friend and frequent collaborator Paddy Considine - you know him from the latest Bourne film and Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz - as the titular Le Donk. A washed out roadie who refuses to release his dreams of grandeur, this is shot as a moc-doc with Donk trying to insert the rapper he is mentoring into a massive, outdoor show he is working for The Arctic Monkeys. North American premiere for this one.

Seven o'clock's film needs little explanation, When You're Strange being a documentary film about The Doors built entirely of archival footage of their performances, private lives and rehearsals. Johnny Depp serves as narrator to set the stage and explain the context of things but it is very much the band who are the stars here. This is the film's first ever appearance here in Canada.

And finally, we hand things over to John Lennon with Nowhere Boy. A bio-pic about the legendary singer's teenage years Nowhere Boy chronicles his life from the days before he first picked up a guitar until The Beatles' first trip to mainland Europe. Though McCartney features in a significant role - and Harrison lurks about, too - this is not a Beatles film per se, but a careful study of the life of a teenager growing into manhood and coming to terms with a genuinely tragic family history. Again, this is a Canadian premiere.

Want to check 'em out? Admission is free with a CMW wristband or $10 at the door.

A History of Competitive Gaming, Level IV: Wizards and Warriors

Joshua Ostroff — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:00:00 GMT

And so we approach the end of our little history lesson. For now. The nice thing about history is that it keeps being made. (No, I didn't read that in a fortune cookie... though come to think of it, I should totally pitch that to Wing's.)

Anyway, that last couple posts have focused on PC gaming, but while computers may be the bedrock of videogame competitions, whenever pro gaming bursts into the greater pop-culture consciousness, it tends to be on the backs of consoles. It's no surprise, really. More people game on them. A lot more. Ultimately, competitive computer-gaming is always going to be a niche "sport" because computer-gaming itself is a niche pursuit.

This has been true since Nintendo first sent computer-gaming into intensive care after killing arcades. Meanwhile, the rise of Sony's and Microsoft's machines have only widened the gap between computer gamers and their console cousins. But let's go back to the NES for a second, because it brought competitive gaming into mainstream North America with e-sports first (and only) Hollywood film, The Wizard.

Starring a pre-Wonder Years Fred Savage and a pre-Rilo Kiley Jenny Lewis, this ridiculous pieces of '80s pop-cultural ephemera was basically a feature-length advertisement for Super Mario Bros 3 (awesome!) and Nintendo's Power Glove (not awesome!). But by featuring a plot that revolved around a videogame tournament, it helped sell the idea of gaming as spectator sport to the millions of families whose kids suffered from Nintendo thumb.

Professional PC gaming rose and fell in popularity, but even at its height was still largely for hardcore heads while gaming consoles have become part of an ever-increasing number of adult households.

When PC-style first-person shooters were ported over -- to the PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and the online-capable Sega Dreamcast which came with a built-in modem -- the seeds of competitive console gaming were sewn. As each gen evolved into the next, LAN and then online multiplayer turned consoles into highly-competitive machines as millions upon millions of gamers honed their skills on PSN and Xbox Live. Local LAN parties became bigger tournaments and eventually national and international events thanks to organizations like Major League Gaming, which began in 2002.

PC gaming has always been on the cutting edge of competitions, but even as their leagues began to crumble, MLG became the first league to have its pro circuit televised with a on USA Network. MLG has succeeded by keeping its focus on popular console games -- the 2010 circuit, which begins April 16, features Halo 3, Tekken 6, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

MLG has also teamed up with EA Sports, first to stage last year's EA Sports Challenge Series live tournament and just this month the two companies announced a deal that would create "the definitive ranking system for sports gamers in North America.” Online tournaments will begin later this year. Meanwhile, the annual Evo fighting game tournament in Las Vegas this summer boasts: "One Weekend, Six Tournaments, 60,000 Matches."

It's unlikely that competitive gaming will ever reach South Korean levels of popularity here in North America, but though purists will always prefer PCs, it's the sheer popularity of ubiquitous consoles that give competitive gaming its best shot at reaching the next level.

--
Pure Pwnage premieres on Showcase this Friday, March 12th at 10pm ET/PT

BREAKING: Aborted Pure Pwnage Marketing Campaign

Zach Feldberg — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:00:00 GMT

Spotted on the 10th Floor boardroom chalkboard here at Showcase HQ:

What does it mean? Why the hamburger? What is "Pwange"?

We may never know.

But in case you haven't seen the actual Pure Pwnage: Teh TV Show posters on the street in your city, here's what you're missing:

Premieres this Friday at 10pm ET/PT.

Top 5: Sexy Monsters

Madeleine Chung — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:00:00 GMT

If gore, blood or excessive body hair is your kink, boy, are you living in erotic times. Considering the recent undead renaissance, you must be walking around with a stiffie each and every day. Well, here's some more alone-time fodder for you: the Showcase web series Woke Up Dead, a comedy series starring Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder as Drex, a recently zombified young man trying to find his way in the world, is only getting steamier. Last week, the highly telegenic Meital Dohan joined the cast as Aurora, one of Drex's comely, creepy love interests. So in tribute to her hot, cold bod, here's a list of sexy monsters you'd die to get with.

5. Edward and Jacob, Twilight: New Moon
While the unstoppable Twilight triptych has unquestionably done much for the overall rise of undead hotties, we just can't get wet for libido-teasing eternal teenagers who teach girls that sex is scary because he might tear you to shreds. Yes, we know we are in the minority with that opinion. That's OK -- we've always been outcasts.

4. Eric, True Blood
Similarly, what's with lily-livered Bill? He's unworthy of steamy Bon Temps. Spare us the southern gentleman routine and give us a meaningless romp in the hay with Jason Stackhouse or, better, the unrepentant schemer Eric. And throw in a vial of V while you're at it.

3. Michael and David, Lost Boys
Just saw this movie for the 115th time last Hallowe'en and wow. When it comes to teen pin-ups, I'll take Jason Patric over the Jonas Brothers any day. The man has got some heft to him, you know? Whether it was the all-bad Kiefer Sutherland as badass David or blue-eyed Patric as plump-lipped Michael, this classic '80s horror flick was chock full of vampire babes.

2. Megan Fox, Jennifer's Body
That Megan Fox is a hottie is yesterday's news. That airhead men should be disembowelled as punishment for assuming hotties are harmless is eternal.

1. Salma Hayek, From Dusk til Dawn
If you're groaning because this was possibly Tarantino's worst flick, you're missing the point. Without question, Salma Hayek has got one of the best racks in showbiz today. Watching her flaunt it as vampire princess Santanico Pandemonium almost saved this Tarantino flick, although not really.

Pure Pwnage: A First-Person Interview With FPS Doug

Zach Feldberg — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:03:00 GMT

Late last year, we caught up with Joel Gardiner -- AKA FPS Doug -- of Pure Pwnage fame while the series was still in production. The skilled marksman took a few minutes to answer some questions about his gaming tastes, the enduring popularity of "BOOM! Headshot," and why first-person shooters are still the best.

Pure Pwnage: Teh TV Show premieres this Friday, March 12 at 10pm ET/PT, only on Showcase.

SATURDAY MOVIE INTERVIEW: Will Smith in I AM LEGEND

Earl Dittman — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:03:00 GMT

I Am Legend comes to Showcase on Saturday, March 6 at 10pm ET/PT

Robert Neville (Will Smith) is a brilliant scientist, but even he could not contain the terrible virus that was unstoppable, incurable, and man-made that befell society. Somehow immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and maybe the world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But he is not alone. Mutant victims of the plague — The Infected — lurk in the shadows, watching Neville’s every move and waiting for him to make a fatal mistake. Perhaps mankind’s last, best hope, Neville is driven by only one remaining mission: to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus using his own immune blood. But he knows he is outnumbered… and quickly running out of time.

I Am Legend is a cautionary warning about our misuse of technology and a compelling, action-packed tale of undying hope and true heroism. Here, Will Smith discusses his experience with making the film.

What would you do in a real life disaster? Have you ever had to play the hero in the real world?
That is always a tough question. That is what is interesting about playing a character like this. You get to explore and wonder how you would react. For me, Ali was the greatest time of asking myself that question. When Ali didn’t step forward because they wouldn’t call him Muhammad Ali, and he knew he was going to jail, he knew what the situation was going to be, but still he couldn’t step forward. I just remember thinking, in that moment, ‘What would I do?’ I just don’t know if I would be enough man to give up everything I have right now, the way Ali did, for that principle. When I look at my Legend character, Robert Neville, I think, ‘What was there to live for? What was there to hope for? To wake up everyday and try to restore something that is good and gone?’ I like to believe that I would put my chest up and stand forward, just march on and continue to fight for the future of humanity. I would probably find a bridge and say 'I’m coming to join you, Elizabeth.' [laughs] It’s a tough question, and I guess the answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t think so. You want to be tested to know what you would do, but you really don’t want to be tested. That is sort of the space that I have lived in with quite a few of the roles I have played.

You have had a passion for I Am Legend ever since you were first going to do it with director Michael Bay. That was several directors ago. Why has the role of Dr. Robert Neville stayed with you for the past twelve or thirteen years?
Robert Neville has stayed with me for a long time. I think with movies I am really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious. There are things that we all dream, there are things that each one of us has thought, that connect to life, death, and sex. There are things that are beyond language. To me, this is one of those concepts. Times that you have been on the freeway many times and wished that everybody were dead. [laughs] There have been times where things have gone and you just wish you were by yourself. You don’t need any of these assholes. You just want to be by yourself. That coupled with, that separation from people, being ripped away from people, being separated, connected with the dark and unknown of the dark. It’s how we would fair against whatever is in that unknown is a really primal idea. I couldn’t always articulate it like that but I’ve loved this concept. It connects to ideas that a four year old can understand.

How did you mentally prepare for the isolation aspect of this film?
That aspect -- that was the terrifying part of even taking on this film. There’s probably 80 pages of just me and a dog. There’s good times I’ve had on camera before and people have enjoyed me in a movie theatre but that might be a little too much Will for anybody. I looked at it and worked with Akiva Goldsman, the writer of the script. We studied POWs, prisoners of war, and we found out a guy who had been in isolation, in a prison, and just really found the things and the people that could really create the texture of what that truly means, to be by yourself -- and the one thing that was across the board is schedule. And a guy Geronimo Degiga, he said that you would schedule things like cleaning your nails. And that you would have two hours that you would clean your nails, and that was the only way to maintain sanity, is that you had to have a regimen; you had to have a schedule; you had to do things that you trained your mind that had to be done this day during this time. That was the basis of how we tried to create the scheduling and then it’s the idea of the internal monologue where you have no stimulus -- no-one's talking to you; no-one's doing anything; you have no external stimulus -- you lose the stimulus response concept with your thoughts and feelings. A guy told us that you forget the names of simple things. He said he remembers sitting in his cell one time and for about four hours, he was trying to remember what these things are called [says waggling his fingers] and he couldn’t remember what they were called. And he said. ‘Oh damn! Fingers!’ And he said that’s what happens when you don’t have the stimulus and response -- your mind really loses basic simple concepts. So we really worked in that area with the internal monologue where you have to hold a conversation with yourself. It’s a weird thing on camera. That was way too much time for one question! That was a Tommy Lee Jones right there.

Are you a Bob Marley fan like your character. Dr. Neville?
I love, love, love Bob Marley. Its funny because the script was done and we’d already begun shooting, and I was looking for things for my character, and that Bob Marley Legend album actually is my favorite album so it just connected with me that concept of Bob Marley having the virologist sort of idea of trying to cure hate with music. And that idea just exploded in my mind about two weeks into production -- it just fit perfectly that idea of lighting up the darkness. It was one of those perfect opportunities when something had already lived inside of you fits perfectly with a character and a situation. That was my little treat.

Was it comforting for you to know that the author of I Am Legend, Richard Matheson, considered you perfect for the role of Robert Neville?
That’s extremely helpful. With The Pursuit of Happyness and also with Ali -- when you do something that is someone’s baby, essentially, it is so important that that person or people feel that you’ve done justice. And it was important to me that Mr. Matheson felt that I could do it and he was on board for it; and Ali was planning on doing it and, at the end of the day, that he felt like we had done a service to his vision. And, to me, when he signed off, it was all good.

The gray hair you sport in I Am Legend, was that a special effect or the real Will Smith?
That was a special effect. We had the worlds best gray hair people come in from from Europe. It’s not mine. I swear! [laughs] It is European Company that does it, they are, GHI, or Grey Hair International and they just do that, because solid (black) is normally the color. (laughs, and begins to unzip pants) I can prove it! I can prove it! [laughs]

What was the experience of shooting in New York City like when the production shut down several blocks and the city seemed empty?
Shooting in New York, especially something on this level, is difficult. I would say that percentage wise it’s the most amounts of middle fingers I’ve ever received in my career. I was like, ‘I’m used to people liking me, when I come to town, it’s fun, so I thought ‘Middle fingers?’ I was starting to think ‘f-you’ was my name. [laughs] We shut down six blocks of Fifth avenue on a Monday morning. That was probably poor logistics, which was poor planning. You realize that you have never actually seen an empty shot of New York. When we were doing it, it’s chilling to walk down the middle of Fifth Avenue. There is never an opportunity to walk down the middle of Fifth Avenue. At two o’clock in the morning on Sunday you can’t walk down the middle of Fifth Avenue. What happened is that it just created such a creepy energy. There are iconic buildings, there is a shot in the movie with the UN, there is Broadway, and it puts such an eerie, icky, kind of feeling on the movie when you see those shots. Logistically, it was a nightmare, but it absolutely created something that you can’t do with green screen, and you can’t do shooting another city instead of New York.

If you really were the last man on earth, what comfort items would you take with you?
A pistol! Because I’m out of here! Go to the nearest bridge! That was another thing with this film that I realized, that its such a primal, childlike idea: 'I just wish everybody was gone! I wish I was by myself!' No you don’t! As much as people get on your nerves on the freeway; as much as people irritate you through your daily life -- if you took everyone away, and you had it exactly the way that you wanted it, it would be the most miserable existence that you could experience. I walked down the middle of Fifth Avenue, we had cleared out for six blocks, and as cool as that is, its only cool because when we yell ‘Cut‘, there’s 10,000 people in the other side. Human connection and the groups that we form, and the being a part of something that moves and changes the world, its such a basic human simple idea -- its like there would be absolutely no pleasure for me at all in experiencing that amount of loneliness and solitude.

What about the loneliness of your character, Robert Neville, and the madness he begins to feel? Basically, you are acting for the first half of the movie by yourself.
It was such a wonderful exploration of myself. What happens is that you get in a situation where you don’t have people to create the stimulus for you to respond to. What happens is that you start creating the stimulus and the response. There is a connection with yourself, where your mind starts to drift to in those types of situations, that you learn about your self things you would never even imagination. In order to prepare for that we sat with former POWs and we sat with people who had been in solitary confinement. That was the framework for creating the idea. They said, ‘The first thing is a schedule. You will not survive in solitary if you don’t schedule everything.’ We talked to Geronimo Ji-Jaga, formerly Geronimo Pratt of the Black Panthers, and he was in solitary for over three months. He said that you plan things like cleaning your nails. You will take two hours, which you have to because it’s on the schedule, which you have to just clean your nails. He said that he spent about six weeks and he trained roaches to bring him food. I’m sitting there like, ‘Oh my God.’ The idea of where your mind goes to defend itself. Either he really did train the roaches, which is huge, or his mind needed that to survive. Either way, you put that on camera and it’s genius. For me, that was the thing, to be able to get into the mental space where whatever the truth was for Robert Neville didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered is what he saw and what he believed. How many people picked up on the mannequin shot at the end with the little turn of the head? You saw that? There are probably like six or seven of those in the movie. It was such a great exploration of what happens to the human mind that is trying to defend itself. For me, I’m a better actor for having had to create both sides of the scene, with no dialogue.

How attached did you get to Samantha, Neville's dog/partner in the film?
Oh, Abbey is the dog’s real name. When I was probably nine years old, I had a dog Trixie. It was a white golden retriever that got hit by a car. So now I refuse, I have had no animals. But I said, ‘Jada, you can have the dogs you want, the kids can have the dogs they want, but I’m not putting myself emotionally connected to a dog anymore.’ Then, they brought that damn Abbey on the set. You say a ‘smart’ dog. It got to the point with Abbey that she would be playing, playing, playing, and she would hear ‘Rolling!’ so she would run over to her mark and get ready. I was like ‘What in the hell?’ It’s like she would know when I wasn’t doing my lines right. If I would get lost in the scene she would just go silent you know? [laughs] It was the first time I had allowed myself to connect and be fond of a dog, since that experience, So I said to Abbey’s owner, ‘Please, Abbey has to live with me. Please.’ He was like, ‘Well, this is how I make my living, man.’ I was like,‘Tell me what you need. Tell me what you need. A house in the hills?’ But she was smart, just fun, and warm. I experienced the pain again, because he said ‘I’ll bring her over every weekend Will, but she has to work.’ It was painful. She is great. I used to watch Lassie and animals really can be smarter than other animals. She is way on another plain of connecting to what your energy is, what your feelings are, and protective. It’s beautiful.

Which one of your kids demanded more money, Jaden or Willow? Are they planning to make acting their career?
We say when we look at Jaden and Willow, that Jaden is Johnny Depp. He just wants to do good work, he doesn’t care what money he gets. He doesn’t care if people see it or don’t see it. He loves acting, he just wants to make good movies. Willow is Paris Hilton. [laughs] Willow wants to be on TV. [laughs] We are managing both of those in our household.

Is your oldest son, Trey, ready for his shot at the big screen?
Not at all. He has no interest in it at all. He could care less about acting and doing movies. Football is his thing. He loves football.

When the holidays come around, do your kids expected Lamborghinis under the Christmas tree? How do you keep them grounded, especially now that they are doing movies themselves?
It’s funny, it’s really simple. Jaden and Trey are very simple. Willow just wants clothes. She loves it, she’s dressed herself since she was about four years old. She is very specific about her style. She is very specific about how she wants to look, how she wants to present, the sizes and all that. Willow is like a...

Would you say she’s like a shop-a-holic?
It’s funny, she doesn’t like shopping. She doesn’t like going out and shopping. She wants you to think about her and she loves the idea that she gets things by surprise. Christmas really isn’t big for her. If she knows its coming it’s not as big of a deal. Jaden just wants his family around. Anything that causes the whole family to be together, that is what he wants.

Is there another country you would like to take your family to and possibly live in?
Not to live. To me, Los Angeles and Miami, I just can’t imagine topping those places for where I would love to live. I have a theory that cities and towns have, essentially, emotional patterns. There are cities that each and every one of us could live in, that match our emotional pattern, that we would just be better people if we lived in this place. I think that my emotional pattern is like the weather patterns of Los Angeles and Miami. It’ warm all the time, it rains a little bit, but when it does its fun because it cools it off. The traffic might get a little bad but it’s not like being in four inches of snow in traffic. Jada needs four seasons. She can’t function if it’s warm all the time, it’s light and fun all the time, and she needs the hibernation. She needs the time where nothing is moving, it’s quiet, you aren’t hearing cars and horns, because they are muffled by the wonderful snow. If I never, ever, see snow again for the rest of my life, that’s great.

How significant is that the last man alive is African American in I Am Legend?
First and last, baby. [laughs] It’s funny, it’s almost a metaphysical idea for me. I rarely think about that until someone brings it up. Then I say ‘Oh, wow. That never actually crossed my mind in that way.’ I kind of feel like, for me at least, the acknowledgement of those kinds of ideas put a weird boundary on my thoughts. I can’t allow myself to be a part of it because it sort of makes me think smaller, if that makes any sense. I said all that to say that I’ve never really thought about the significance of that with the film.

Do you think that there is racism inherent in the film industry? Is that why we don’t see more mainstream black movies?
It’s interesting. But, I don’t like the word racism, because there are so many connotations that go with it. Look, if you put ten black artists in a room and we sit down and come up with something, it will be about black people. It’s not racism with studios, because the majority of the creative people there are of a certain background, but it’s more our responsibility to be able to display and show how it could different, how to make a film like Set It Off, Bad Boys or The Secret Life of Bees attractive to a mass movie-going audience. We have to display how that will work. We can’t expect people to write or produce our stories unless we do it.

You dropped twenty pounds for I Am Legend. How much training did you have to do?
For me, what we determined from our research, is that eating becomes just something that you do just because you have to -- its like there’s no pleasure; there’s no real desire to eat; you just know that your brain’s not going to function if you don’t. For me, I have a much easier time losing weight than I do putting weight on. Ali was fifty times harder, trying to put weight on than it was for me drop weight for this. You run thirty miles a week -- you get up and run five miles six days a week, your body will look like whatever you want it to look like.

Did you keep it up?
There are wonderful elements of being in shape that keep a marriage going, so its important to me to stay in good shape and in good condition - you know, you marry a little firecracker, you’ve gotta stay in shape.

IN THEATRES: The Real Story of Alice Isn't the Film But the Fight

Todd Brown — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:00:00 GMT

'Tis the week for controversy on cinema screens this week. Of the three significant films hitting screens this week one (Brooklyn's Finest) will almost certainly appear and disappear without much of anyone noticing, but the other two find themselves at the center of very different controversies.

Now, I'm not all that interested in going into Ghost Writer and the whole Roman Polanski issue. There's just nothing left to say about that that hasn't already been said many times over. He's in custody now, the courts will sort it out and that's the end of that. Much more significant, though, and getting much less play is the storm swirling around Disney and their handling of Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland. Good film/bad film doesn't much factor in here as there are larger issues at play that could have serious implications for the industry as a whole.

Here's the thing. Don't let the box office take fool you, it was only a record year because of increased ticket prices. Actual number of admissions is down, a frightening percentage of the big blockbusters are failing, and Hollywood is flat out terrified. And rather than placing the blame on their own shitty scripts -- where most of the blame belongs -- the industry is largely blaming piracy, which certainly is a significant issue but not as big as they make it out to be.

This fear of piracy is the dominant driving force behind the move to 3D technology. Take a video camera into a theatre and try to record a 3D movie and all you get is a big, blurry mess. The only way to see a 3D film right now is in the theatre or, with improved TV technology coming down the line any day now, via official DVD and BluRay releases. The adoption of 3D isn't really about improving the viewer experience -- which is why Hollywood doesn't care about the mounting evidence scientifically linking 3D technology to headaches and eye strain -- but about keeping fourteen your old kids from taping films and putting them on the internet for other fourteen year old kids to download.

But 3D isn't the only way the industry is tackling the problem. For the past couple years the smaller indie labels have been experimenting with traditional movie release windows -- first by narrowing the gap between theatrical and DVD release, then by eliminating it altogether with day-and-date release patterns that see films released on screen and DVD simultaneously, and now by actually releasing films on VOD before putting them on screens. The thinking is that if you make legal, low cost streams available to people in small town America where they don't have a prayer of a theatrical release anyway and if you do it before pirate versions make their way online, people will pay (and pay pretty happily) for the legit version. It's a good concept and it's working, with the companies that led the way in this sort of thing -- IFC Films and Magnolia Pictures -- both now doing significantly more VOD business than theatrical and DVD combined.

It didn't take long for Hollywood to notice and, with Alice In Wonderland, Disney decided to try an experiment of their own and announced that they were shortening the normal 'Theater Only' guarantee to exhibitors from the customary sixteen weeks to twelve. Their hope is that by slashing four weeks off of the gap from screen to DVD they'll be able to get a jump on the pirates and make more legitimate sales. Twelve weeks is still loads of time for a movie to be in theaters so they figured they'd be fine.

Wrong.

Exhibitors threw a fit. What Disney forgot is that the powers behind Magnolia -- owned by Mark Cuban, who also owns the Dallas Mavericks -- also own their own theater chain, which allows them to do whatever they want with total impunity while IFC books only very limited runs in independent theaters happy to have any sort of business whatsoever. By contrast, Disney -- and every other major studio -- are completely dependent on major exhibition chains. And exhibitors, feeling the pinch both of piracy and legitimately purchased Blu-Ray and the rise of ultra high end home theaters that mimic or better all the best bits of the theatrical experience with none of the irritating parts at a significantly lower cost, do not welcome anything that will encourage audiences to wait to buy or rent a DVD or Blu-Ray for a fraction of the cost of taking a family to the theater. And their fear is that any reduction of the release window will do exactly that: The smaller the window is, the less incentive there is to rush out to see it on the big screen. Remember when it took a year or more for a movie to hit DVD? Theatres would like to go back to those days.

Here in North America the theatre chains squawked but buckled pretty easily. In the UK and across Europe however, it was a totally different story. The two biggest theater chains -- Odeon and Pathe -- pretty much told Disney to shove their release plans up their ass and refused to screen the film at all, a major problem when the big premiere was scheduled to be held at an Odeon theater, a ban Pathe extended to their entire chain across Europe.

This all resolved itself in the past couple days with all the major chains reversing their position after "extended talks" with Disney (read: Disney offered them a better percentage of the takings), a move certain to trigger release pattern changes across all of the major studios. This means faster DVD and Blu-Ray releases for you and I and, I would wager, further closing of the release window and more experimentation with alternate release mechanisms like VOD. For those who want their blockbusters and want them now, this is probably a good thing as it'll get them to you faster while also enabling the studios to actually make their money back and keep making more of the damn things. What this will mean ultimately for exhibitors is less clear but it could very well cancel out all the gains they had just made with the rise of 3D, which has undoubtedly drawn people back to the big screen for a unique experience. The losers, though, will almost certainly be the independent and international films and fans, those segments having already been driven out of the mainstream theaters almost entirely. VOD has been their domain so far, the films able to find an audience there partly because VOD has been treated as an afterthought by Hollywood so far.

This is going to change that and once the big studios decide they want to dominate something they're pretty ruthless in squeezing out everyone else...

Slow News Day: Follow Us On Facebook

Zach Feldberg — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:59:00 GMT

Faithful readers,

We tend not to make too much hay about whether or not you join our Facebook page -- though obviously we want you to -- but now seems as good a time as any to tell you that we're going to start using it more and more for exclusive content that you won't see anywhere else online.

By signing up, you'll get updates from the Showcase Blog, the Showcase Video Centre, and all of our movies and series, straight to your news feed, until you click 'Hide Showcase' in a fit of rage because you just realized that we don't show pornography anymore.

Fans of Pure Pwnage have a lot to look forward to this month -- the show premieres on March 12th and we've got lots of extra web content to go with it -- but coming this summer we'll start dishing on that other big premiere we've got planned for 2010, and we know you don't want to miss out on that...

Get on the bus!

March Means Pure Pwnage

Zach Feldberg — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:14:00 GMT

You've waited months. Whole seasons have passed. BioShock 2 came out. And now, finally, it's March 2010, which means but one thing (to fans of gaming, comedy, and the burgeoning genre of gaming-comedy): Pure Pwnage: Teh TV Show is right around the corner.

We trust you'll find that it was worth the wait.

As promised, showcase.ca will be your hub for exclusive Pwnage content, including streaming episodes, webisodes, interactive stuff, and blog posts. Keep up with us via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and, of course, the Showcase Blog.

And if you haven't already, watch this week's Pure Pwnage Production Blog! There's just one more left, and it premieres next Monday.

Coming This Week: Meital Dohan on Woke Up Dead

Zach Feldberg — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:34:00 GMT

Weeds star Meital Dohan makes her promised appearance on Woke Up Dead later this week -- so if you haven't been watching until now, why not start today? To quote a recent interview with Ms. Dohan, "The series is about zombies!"

Exactly -- just like we've been telling you. But then Meital shows up with her raw hot dog snack and suddenly you go streaming the show in droves... So predictable.

Meantime, you've got one day left to get in on our Name That Zombie contest, so enter now!

Kenny vs. Spenny: To Every Thing There Is A Season (And This One's Over)

Zach Feldberg — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:12:00 GMT

It's been quite a ride this season, Kenny vs. Spenny fans.

We teased you, we pleased you, we solicited your help, you gave us your help, we gave you a web-only episode, a viewer-suggested episode, a two-part episode, tasteful bonus clips, a guest-blog from Spenny, a really fun live chat, and a massive trainwreck of a live chat.

And all the while, you gave lots and lots of feedback. It turns out you're a passionate bunch. So thanks for (most of) that.

Relive the memories of Seasons 2-6 in our fully stocked video centre, and tune in to Showcase tonight (Friday) at 10pm ET/PT and 10:30pm ET/PT for some old favourites.

IN THEATRES: The Secret of Kells

Todd Brown — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:00:00 GMT

As is most often the case at this time of year, when studios are dumping all the sub-par stuff cluttering their shelves in the lead up to the Oscars, the limited release titles hitting screens this week dramatically outclass the wide releases. On the wide release side, The Crazies -- which is far from great but will play fine to the crowd it was made for -- will provide a bit of mindless entertainment while Kevin Smith continues his career destruction campaign with Cop Out (seriously, how many horrible films does this guy get to make before someone pulls the plug? Clerks was a looooong time ago -- but the gems are the little ones).

Prison drama A Prophet is absolutely stellar but for my personal pick on where to spend your money I go with Oscar-nominated animation The Secret of Kells. Got kids? They'll love it. Don't have kids? Doesn't matter, you'll love it, too. It's one of the most beautiful, imaginative debut films I've come across in years, one that immediately ranks director Tomm Moore with the very best in the game today. I originally reviewed this film over a year ago when it had its European debut and rather than do a half-assed job of reviewing it again, I'm simply going to republish my original review (which refers to the film under its original, full title) here:

If you're thinking to yourself that basing a children's film around the creation of a famously illustrated Bible is an odd thing to do, well, you're mostly right. It is kind of odd. And in lesser hands than director Tomm Moore and co-director Nora Twohey's, doing so very likely would have resulted in a barely watchable history lesson. But by focusing less on the book - which, conspicuously, is never referred to as being a Bible within the body of the film - and more on the child who would eventually complete the years of labor that went into its creation, Moore and Twohey have instead created a charming, gorgeously realized fable about the power of imagination and art to thrive even in the most hostile times.

Young Brendan is an orphan living within the Abbey of Kells, a middle ages Irish monastery populated by monks whose lives are meant to be dedicated to the preservation and duplication - by hand - of books containing the whole of human knowledge at the time. Preserving knowledge is an important task at the best of times and particularly so at this particular age, a time when Viking hordes were storming the shores of Ireland and laying waste to whatever they came across. But, more than mere copyists, the monks of the Abbey were artists, men known as Illuminators thanks to their unique ability to create elaborate calligraphies and illustrations within the text to carry the meaning even to those who could not read. Brendan's childhood was one surrounded by myth and story and art, a nearly ideal environment for a child with a curious mind and a bit of skill with a quill.

Unfortunately, Brendan's childhood was also spent surrounded by one enormous wall. The Abbot of Kells, you see, terrified of the oncoming Viking raiders, has diverted virtually all of the Abbey's resources away from the art that was supposedly their primary occupation and put them, insteaed, into fortifying the Abbey against future invasion. Though well meaning the Abbot verges on obsessive when it comes to the completion of his wall and young Brendan, alas, has never been allowed to set foot outside of its boundaries.

Life for Brendan changes dramatically with the arrival of Brother Aidan, a living legend among Illuminators, widely considered to be the very finest artist of his generation and the man currently in charge of work on the fabled Book of Iona - a book now roughly two hundred years in the making, a book supposedly so beautiful that it possesses nearly supernatural power. Iona sacked by raiders, Aidan has now brought his work with him to Kells and it takes mere moments for him to recognize a kindred spirit in Brendan and to take the boy under his wing. Lesson one? You will learn more from a day spent in the forest than from a lifetime behind walls and so Brendan is sent out into the woods - without the Abbot's knowledge or consent - to find the oak berries that Aidan needs to create his inks. It is a dangerous, wild place, but also a beautiful one - a place that Brendan navigates only with the help of a forest spirit he meets and befriends there ...

Immediately engaging and gorgeously realized, Brendan and the Secret of Kells avoids the limitations of a 'historical' movie, instead casting itself as a coming of age adventure, with its young hero forced to make his first steps on his own, making his own decisions about right and wrong and finding the strength in himself to face up to his fears and foes both magical and frighteningly real. It is a film about being bold enough to create and the fallacy of simply trying to preserve.

The debut feature from Irish animator Tomm Moore - the film also had significant backing from France and Belgium - immediately establishes Moore as an absolute master of his craft - a story teller and visual artist who absolutely deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as masters such as Michel Ocelot and Sylvain Chomet. His world is richly detailed and strikingly unique, folding traditionally Irish influences into a riot of color and detail that dazzle the eyes while the deceptively simple story goes to work on more subtle levels. His characters are just as richly detailed as his visuals, the messages simple and universal. This is no less than the arrival of a major new talent.

A History of Competitive Gaming, Level III: Rise and Fall of the E-lympics

Joshua Ostroff — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:00:00 GMT

First off, there's no such thing as the E-lympics. There are the World Cyber Games and Major League Gaming, but E-lympics is not a word. Or rather, it wasn't. I just called dibs.

Anyway, in our previous history lessons, we looked at the amateur arcade-era of gaming and the early PC days of Doom and Quake. That took us up to about the late-90s when niche competitive gaming began making inroads into mainstream culture. Kinda like raving. Except with less E and more RAM.

In 1997, Texas tech entrepreneur Angel Munoz coined the term "cyberathlete" -- thereby becoming the patron saint of every kid who forged a note to get out of gym class -- and launched the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), the first official pro-gamer organization which staged 60 international events, 600 qualifiers and doled out $3 million over its decade-long run. The CPL turned eSports into a full-on phenomenon, but despite wowing the mainstream media and winning a massive following in first half of the 2000s, by mid-decade it all began to fall apart.

The CPL split the community in 2002 when it ditched Quake in favour of Counter-Strike, caused another uproar when it moved on to Painkiller and again when they flirted with console gamers by staging a million-dollar Halo 3 tournament in 2007. With pro-gaming's popularity waning, the league began to lose sponsors, stopped paying winners and engaged in an internecine battle with the G7 gamer organization (who boycotted the 2007 Winter Tournament and recently launched a petition to try and get outstanding prize monies awarded).

When the CPL's 2006 World Tour collapsed, one of the founders started the splinter league World Series of Video Games, though it died itself in only its second season. The CPL shut its doors for good in 2008, with Munoz citing "fragmentation of the sport" (though he later sold the name to a group in Dubai who are slowly resurrecting the league).

Perhaps thinking that pro-gaming's problems were caused by a lack of corporate know-how, satellite provider Direct TV started its own televised Championship Gaming Series league. They played hardball by refusing to allow their salaried players into other competitions, which not only damaged their competitors but the entire community when the plug was pulled after year two, saying "the concept was ahead of its time and ... it became increasingly clear as this ambitious project evolved that profitability was too far in the future for us to sustain operations in the interim."

But if PC pro-gaming seemed to be dying in North America -- or at least being replaced by console competitions like Major League Gaming -- it was fragging just fine over in Asia. The Korean-run World Cyber Games, an international annual tournament which attracts an estimated million attendees, spent its first four years in South Korea but now changes host cities every year, moving between Asia, America and Europe.

It's no surprise WCG has been run so well since pro-gaming is a full-on spectator sport in Korea, where tens of thousands cram into Seoul stadiums and millions watch on two dedicated e-sports TV channels as gamers in various leagues go head-to-head, usually on real-time strategy title StarCraft.

In North America, only Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel became a real star, earning a half-million in CPL tournaments, becoming a spokesperson for the CGS, holding a Guinness World Record (for 672 frags in 60 minutes) and currently running several games-related businesses. But he's hardly Shaun White, much less Lim 'SlayerS_Boxer' Yo-Hwan, who claims a million-person fanclub and is probably the most popular gamer in history.

The celebrity of professional PC gamers in Korea must be frustrating for those slogging it out in North America. But given how they've been treated by corporate interests, maybe keeping their subculture underground and community-based is better for pro-gaming in the long run.

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In anticipation of the March 12 premiere of Pure Pwnage on Showcase, Joshua Ostroff's four-part series on the history of competitive gaming continues on March 9. Next time we'll take a look at how consoles are shaping competitive gaming's future.