The FP

November 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As part of Gamercamp, Toronto’s Festival celebrating the artistry innovation & the power of play, Toronto Underground Cinema hosted 1UP Films After Dark.  The FP by the Brother’s Trost (Brandon – known for cinematography on Crank 2 as well as the forth coming Ghost Rider sequel  & Jason – last seen acting/directing Vs. which screened at Toronto After Dark Film Festival) was the main centre piece in the film component of the three day event.

There’s no denying video game movies have a reputation for being bad due to their button bashed breeding.   From a Dennis Hopper dinosaur in Super Mario Brothers to a Kylie Minogue Cammy cameo in Street Fighter the 90′s tried it’s darnedest to bash some real gold coins out of pixel bricks.  While these hands free conversions sit fondly in the memory blocks of my mind, when you dust them off for a modern day outing it’s easy to see where they went wrong – you need more than  ↓, ↘, → in your script to make things work.

The FP (the abbreviation Frazier Park – a mountain community in California)  takes inspiration from a rather different coin-op lurking in your local arcade.  In a similar brain wave to Disney adapting the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in to a motion picture, the Brother’s go for another unusual vessel for their movie.  Dance Dance Revolution the tune syncing feet stomper is rechristened Beat Beat Revelation and takes on a far darker use than the bubble gum pop song body rhythm generator.  Opening with rivals gangs taking to the machine to battle it out like a stripped down one on one version of Michael Jackson’s Bad music video.  Leaders from each district step up, Zangief-esque, L Dubba E with his gold grills, mohawk & mutton chops toe taps against BTRO, sporting a silver starred bandanna & best moon boots since Napoleon Dynamite.  When BTRO’s knees buckle & goes gamer over forever his brother JTRO vows never to place a foot back on the neon lit arrows.  A year later the JTRO is tracked down reducing trees to logs by family friend & game commentator KCDC.  He’s brought back to a changed town where the liquor store is now run by  jump suit wearing L Dubba E, with the booze tap in town under his control the residents have taken to hard drugs to pass the day.  JTRO sets about winning the girl & the champ title street cred back for his fallen brother.  Trained in a secret prohibition underground HQ there are some really hilarious montage sequences as he gets his game back to ultimate combo caliber.  The wardrobe is surprisingly important as the ludicrous concept and gang talk is visually punctuated with the most outlandish gems from a thrift store receiving hipster donations via Thunderdome.  Over the top and awesome this is how a video game conversion should be.

Two video game movies to look out for with a local connection in 2012 are Resident Evil: Retribution & Silent Hill: Revelation.

Which console title would you like to see hit the big screen or movie made playable?  While you take a moment to think about it check out what I witnessed on College street over the weekend.   Say hello or shoot me a Hadouken on Twitter – @emaninTdot

Filed Under: Blog, Film, Geek Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

DigifestTO Sunday Funday at Yonge Dundas Square

November 8, 2011 By 1 Comment

On Sunday, October 30th, Digifest Toronto took over Yonge Dundas Square for a Sunday Funday filled with bands, karaoke and food trucks.

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Filed Under: Arts & Culture, Events, Geek, YouTube Tagged With: , , , ,

Nokia Unfenced

July 19, 2011 By 3 Comments

Nokia Unfenced at the Rafter Six Ranch

A couple of weekends ago, WOMWorld/Nokia sent me and 9 other Canadian bloggers out to the Canadian Rockies for #NokiaUnfenced. The event was held in Canmore, Alberta at the Grande Rockies Resort and in Kananaskis Valley at the Rafter Six Ranch.

Armed with a Nokia N8, the Nokia X7 (which was announced especially for us) and a competitor’s phone, we were given several tasks over the weekend, while we dined, drove, climbed trees, and rode horses all with an amazing backdrop of beautiful greenery and mountains. It was the perfect setting to play with phones and try out their cameras, which was my main focus during the trip.

I immediately fell in love with the camera on the Nokia N8, which packed a Carl Zeiss Tessar 2.8/28 12MP AF lens. The picture quality was amazing, which wasn’t a surprised, cause I felt the same way about the Nokia N95 which I played with a couple of years back. I’ve always known Nokia to have amazing camera hardware on their phones. However, the big disappointment for me was the fact that the Nokia X7 didn’t have as slick of a camera as the N8, but it did have a sexy build (separate reviews forthcoming).

Though, I probably won’t be getting rid of my iPhone 4 anytime soon, it was exciting to see the innovations that were coming out of the Nokia camp. More importantly, although these two Nokia phones are on a Simbian OS, it is promising to see that Nokia has partnered with Microsoft and will be releasing a Windows 7 phone in the future, which could be a killer combo.

Below is a photo play by play of how the weekend went down. The second half of the photo gallery are all images taken with Nokia N8.

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Filed Under: Events, Gadgets, Geek Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

SXSW at NXNE

June 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday, I bumped into Tammy Lynn Gilmore who works with SXSW in Austin. I actually met Tammy a couple of years back, when they were doing a promotional tour here in Toronto, trying to get more of us geeks over to their Interactive Festival. If you love what they do here during the NXNE festival, you will be blown away by SXSW which has a strong history of music, film and interactive. Personally, I’ve been to SXSW four times now and it’s always been an amazing experience, so it’s great seeing Tammy here, so she could experience our quaint little festival.

SXSW happens annually every March (the next one being March 9-18, 2012) and Interactive has grown to be such a be part of the festival, every year they do a Panel Picker which is opening on Monday, June 20th and is open til July 15th. If you haven’t been to SXSW I suggest checking out their booth near registration.

Filed Under: Blog, Geek, NXNE

NXNE : Lucia Mancuso & Michael Dolan

June 16, 2011 By 1 Comment

Yesterday, Lucia Mancuso & Michael Dolan, held the full day workshop, Level Up Your Social Media as a precursor to NXNEi. I caught up with them afterwards and ask them what the most important thing was to keep in mind when putting together your online social presence. Mancuso said that the most important thing to do, is to actually have a strategy and a voice when you roll out your social media, it’s not about simply having the tools, but knowing what you want to do with those tools and setting out goals.

Sheldon Levine, community manager at Sysomos who attended their workshop also mentioned via twitter, “There’s something that will work for everyone, so don’t be afraid to try new things and then give them a chance.”

Lucia Mancuso & Michael Dolan work together at The Blog Studio. Mancuso is also the Social Media Manager for NXNEi and Dolan will also be moderating the “Internet Culture” panel at 3:30 today (Regency D/E). To top things off, The Blog Studio together with BNOTIONS are bringing MADPRO.PS to the the conference as the Official Game of NXNEi. (You can win an iPad 2)

Filed Under: Blog, Geek, NXNE

NXNE : Lets Get Social and Interactive

June 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

So we’ve given you some of our top picks in Film and Music for NXNE, but for the second year, the festival has expanded to include an Interactive Conference which started with four awesome day long workshops yesterday.

So you’ve picked up your badge and you are not quite sure which panels you should attend? Here is a run down of panels from each and every time slot, which I think are worth checking out over the next three days. The lists contains many panelists who are friends of mine, but trust me, they are all pretty hot topics.

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Filed Under: Blog, Geek, NXNE

Quick Review: LG Optimus 2X

May 24, 2011 By 2 Comments

Blossoms taken with the LG Optimus 2X

A couple of weeks ago, I had a chance to check out the LG Optimus 2X. It’s the world’s first smartphone with a duel-core processor, and it’s equip with 8 mega pixel camera. There’s a lot of bells and whistles on this baby, especially with gaming and HDMI mirroring to your TV, but what really caught my eye here was the built in camera.

The camera was super easy to use and comes with a whole lot of built in functionality and settings that mirror closely to a point and shoot type camera, giving you the ability to choose between scene modes, ISO speeds and white balance. It’s the first time I’ve really seen any of this in a mobile device and I was really pleased with the quick responsiveness of the camera. The photo above, was one of the test shots I took with the phone, I tried to take a similar shot with my iPhone 4, but it simply wasn’t as easy, especially trying to get everything in focus in such a close distance.

It’s devices like this, which are gonna slowly kill off the point and shoot market. Even with my iPhone 4, I rarely shoot with my point and shoot digital camera anymore, it’s just not convenient enough.

Filed Under: Blog, Gadgets, Geek

Another Week, Another Geek Lunch

April 7, 2008 By Leave a Comment


After Geek Lunch from photojunkie on Vimeo.

Last Monday, we had Geek Lunch at Olympos – Crow Bar Lunch (At Princess and Adelaide). This Monday (April 7th), it’s scheduled for Zoulpy’s (King & Princess). Noon.

Filed Under: Blog, Geek
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