I unfortunately missed this, but earlier this month Entertainment Weekly reported Shamalamadingdong has begun casting for his live action movie adaptation of Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender:

• Aang will be played by Noah Ringer, an unknown Texan Karate wunderkind who was discovered during an open casting call.
• Katara will be played by Nicola Peltz (Deck The Halls)
• Sokka will be played by Jackson Rathbone (Twilight)
• Zuko will purportedly be played by singer Jesse McCartney

Toph will not be in the movie, which segues into some good news. Shaymalan plans to make three Avatar movies, one for each season of the original show, and as Toph isn't introduced until the second season, she won't be introduced until the second movie.

Special treat after the jump.

Check out my write-up if you missed it, but I honestly expect the 3D Astroboy to be quite good. If any anime can be translated from 2D to 3D, it's Astroboy.  Enjoy:

The New York Times reported on the 24th that an LA judge has ruled that “Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the ‘Watchmen’ motion picture". Merry Christmas, folks.

While I hold to my initial belief that Fox has no interest in tanking the movie, and I'm not alone, you know what really grinds my gears? Fox will likely make a shit ton of money off Watchmen when it was their fault we had to wait not a few years but two fucking decades before the movie got made. The company sat on its ass and waited for the moment to strike that would send the most amount of money flying their way. Warner, honestly, should have seen this coming. It's Rupert Murdoch after all. Anyone wondering whether or not Fox would stoop this low is either thick or retarded.

Two things will happen now. Either Fox and Warner will go to court in January, mere months before the movie's scheduled for release, or they'll reach a settlement out of court. The latter is a much more likely scenario as it's much cleaner and won't delay the movie's release, thus likely hurting its opening weekend.

While we're still asking "Who watches the Watchmen?" you can rest assured I'm watching the Watchmen legal battle. Updates will be posted as they come in.

Sometimes it takes a powerful rock ballad to knock you out of a funk.  Sometimes it takes a good run and a cold shower. Sometimes it takes banging five to six cocktail waitresses. Sometimes it takes ... little heroic puppet robots made out of potato sacks.  Either way, I'm back. Either way, I have splendid news.

Tim Burton kicks ass every once in a while. He has the misfortune to draw gaggles of fangirls and their ovine boyfriends, but otherwise his movies tend not to disappoint, particularly those that are completely removed from this world.  Particularly those that are ANIMATED. As I, as well as Burton, have completely given up on 2D animation within the States (not counting the Nickelodeon Avatar movie that's still coming out ... maybe) this usually means dimensions of the third kind.

9 is no exception. And 9 has convinced me in two short minutes it's going to rock my face.  Trailer after the jump.

Early last week, a new Ghostbusters video game trailer began skulking its way through the internet, leaving in its wake a trail of ectoplasm in the form of hoots and hollars. Surprisingly, and joyously, all the original cast members of Ghostbusters were found and contracted to lend their voices to the video game, even (be still my fragile heart) Annie Potts to re-voice her part as Janine the Secretary. I bet by now, she and Rick Moranis' Louis Tulley probably have a baby of their own complete with IQ over 150 and power level over nine thousand, although I've heard Moranis has refused to come out of retirement to voice his bit. The baby bit's been done anyway, so unless he or Oscar are 'junior ghostbusters' there isn't much hilarity to mine for.

From what we've seen from gameplay footage, it looks the the environments are completely destructible. It seems the directors watched the original Slimer scene at ... was that Tavern on the Green or maybe that was from a different scene? Either way, seems they wanted the players to be able to recreate that feeling - the messiness of being a ghostbuster. Destroyed chairs, chunks of drywall flying through the air... ending in your very own "two in the box" moment.

We would have been playing this game a lot sooner but it was postponed because Activision had its hands full with several other titles. Atari has begun picking up the slack, though, and is planning for a June 2009 release to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the franchise. A lot of time between now and June, Rick. Whadaya say?

Trailer and gameplay footage after the jump.

If you haven't heard of the grass roots effort to port Half Life 1 to the Steam Engine, you're going to be happy with what I have to tell you. If you've heard of the project, but hadn't seen anything new in yonks, and were fearing the worst, you're going to be happy with what I have to tell you.

Floating around the internet is a new trailer for the fan-made remake of the classic FPS Half Life 1. It's a little funny how this popped up shortly after Valve ran a sale on the original Half Life for $0.99, a sale to which I had to say "I'll buy that for a dollar". Shortly after a friend said to me that now we're all used to the Source engine, HL1 will feel like crap. Well, now, as if they were waiting for someone to merely speak the magic words, a trailer appears resurging interest in Black Mesa: Source.

Here's your trailer: