The app introduces you to the world of MNU, or Multi-National United, a military organisation that obviously operates in the film. By printing off a District 9 image and holding it up to your computers webcam, you can watch a 3D model of a MNU soldier rappell, take down an alien and shoot his gun; check out the alien spaceship and study the alien creatures from the movie. Moving the picture around moves the 3D model, and the closer you get to the camera the bigger the model.

And that’s about it…

I’m really liking the practical applications of augmented reality, and looking forward to checking out the District 9 film, but this whole exercise doesn’t actually offer anything compelling to market the film.

If you want to check it out for yourself (it might kill about 10 minutes of your day), click the link below.

[Multi-National United]

Likewise, I have no idea if this Bollywood mashup of The Matrix and Terminator 2 is part of the same film or something very different. Either way, once seen, you can never unsee it.

Total awesomeness, or tragic destruction of creativity? Discuss.

[Thanks Kevin!]

Perhaps more disappointing is the fact that the version on sale in Australia on July 30 isn’t actually the Director’s Cut of the film – we only get a 2-Disc special edition, which doesn’t look like it includes the “Maximum Movie Mode” we’ve seen before either.

Despite the fact that this sucks for Watchmen fans, I’d still class the film as a “must-have” Blu-ray purchase when it hits shelves in just under two weeks. And as an added bonus, it’s good to know that the complete motion comic Blu-ray will also hit shelves the same day.

There are so many, many reasons that My Bloody Valentine 3D doesn’t work in a home theatre environment. And this has nothing to do with the movie itself, but more the problems with the 3D technologies used.

For a start, the Blu-ray disc comes with a couple of pairs of 3D anaglyph cardboard glasses. This is probably the biggest let down – Instead of using the same technology as the cinema release with the polarised glasses, instead the entire film is a complete washout of pink. Nothing detracts from a film like losing all the colour from every scene. Not only that, but the 3D effect given by the anaglyph glasses is minor at best – a key scene where a pickaxe violently dislodges an eyeball has very little impact in terms of 3D

Second is the problem of distance. When I sat down with CEO of Dreamworks Jeffrey Katzenburg, one of the concerns he voiced was that for 3D to work properly, it needs to reach your peripheral vision. Even with 50 inches of plasma mounted on my wall, for the screen to hit my peripheral vision I’d need to be standing less than a metre away, which just doesn’t work.

Fortunately the Blu-ray disc also features a 2D version, letting you watch the film without the red/green glasses. Whether that in itself is enough to convince you to give it a go is another matter altogether, but ultimately, My Bloody Valentine 3D is proof that 3D is still a long way from being a part of your home cinema experience.

The truth about Transformers 2 is that it’s a BIG movie, in every sense of the word. Michael Bay likes making shit explode, and he has a field day with this film. The robots are huge, the explosions are massive, the gratuitous shots of Megan Fox’s body are frequent and the laughs are solid. Even the running time is big, running at 147 minutes. By the time you walk out of the cinema, you feel like you’re coming down from an insane Red Bull binge.

The film starts off relatively modestly with a scene from about 20,000 BC where cavemen and primitive Transformers battle it out to the tune of an Optimus Prime voiceover about how our two races have a history. Then it cuts to present day China, where the Autobots and the US military are rounding up and hunting down Decepticons. Cue massive explosions, robot-on-robot battles and other special effects eye-candy. This is where the film excels: the special effects do look magnificent – you believe every moment of the robots transforming and battling it out on the streets of Shanghai.

So far so good. We move from Shanghai to Shia LaBeouf and his move to college, and the plot starts moving forwards. There are some nice comedic moments, some Megan Fox skin, some Isabel Lucas skin and then BAM! Isabel Lucas is a Transformer! A hot, college student Transformer! Because Transformers can now transform metal into skin…

To be honest, while actually watching the film, I took this turn of events in my stride. But afterwards it stood out like a geeky tech journalist at a film premiere – a machine made of metal can’t transform into a human – that’s just stupid. At best, they’d be able to transform into a Terminator-like skeleton thing, not some hot young chick who tries to get into Shia LaBeouf’s pants before killing him or something. Fortunately, that sequence is over fairly quickly and the film moves on, but not before it leaves a salty flavour in the back of your throat that tastes like logic being overthrown by the allure of hot chicks and fire.

The film moves on with some more explosions, battles, Transformers, Megan Fox and explosions. I’m not going to spell it all out for you here. Instead we’re going to skip forward to near the end of the movie where Bay decides to throw in a (figurative) nuked fridge. Let’s put it simply: Shia LaBeouf dies, and is then visited by a bunch of Transformer angels who tell him it’s not his time to die and bring him back to life.

What. The. Fuck.

It was literally like Michael Bay was sitting behind me in the theatre with a cold bucket of water, waiting to pour it over me at that precise moment to completely rip me from any suspension of disbelief. Transformer Angels? What the hell were they thinking? Just like in the last Indiana Jones film when Lucas nuked the fridge and Shia LaBeouf became Tarzan, you end up so shocked by the absurdity of this moment – even in a film about transforming robots – that it almost completely ruins the entire film.

And that’s just the problem. Transformers 2 was never going to have the strongest plot. It was never going to have the best acting performances. It was never going to have you leaving the cinema thinking “well that was an intelligent film”. What it was going to do was give you enough action and robot porn, plus a few laughs along the way, to make you forget about the world for a couple of hours. And when a single scene in a two hour movie is so bad that you actually turn to the person next to you and ask them “What the fuck”, it’s going to taint the entire movie experience.

And that’s what that one scene did for me. On the whole I managed to ignore the gaping plot holes and cliches and enjoy the robot CGI and explosive action ride. There are a couple of things – like the Matrix of leadership and the Devastator – which reminded me of the original Transformers cartoon movie and my youth playing with the toys that I thoroughly enjoyed. But even after a couple of days trying to come to terms with it, I still find myself thinking about the absurdity of Transformer angels bringing Shia back to life. I can’t help but think it would have been much better for him to just stay dead…

[Transformers on Giz]

The first thing that struck me when watching the movie is just how good it looks for a 25 year old film. I’ve watched some older films on Blu-ray before and been disappointed with the video quality, but Ghostbusters looks fantastic. Especially when you compare it to some of the deleted scenes which run at a VHS-like 480p. Sure, the special effects are still 80s-bad, but that’s half the allure – remember what happened when Lucas went back and tinkered with Star Wars?

The special features are fairly typical of any film these days plus some trailers for the new game, although you can select a playlist of special features to pick and choose what you want to watch. There’s also BD-Live functionality, although it offers nothing more than access to Sony’s BD-Live page, which offers trailers and asks you to suggest BD-Live features.

But ultimately it’s the ability to watch one of the all-time classic films in HD that makes this really appealing. Slimer never looked so good.

The film hits shelves June 17.

This is Terminator. It’s not supposed to make a hell of a lot of sense. The paradoxes of time travel – which was one of the main issues in the first three films, is but a passing thought in this film. There’s no sending people (or robots) back in time to kill either Sarah or John Connor. There’s only war, and the hope of ending it, that drives this film.

Don’t get me wrong – there are a lot of things in the film that seem stupid, just like Matt pointed out. Like how the T800, instead of just killing John Connor in a one on one battle, decides to just keep trying to throw him against walls. Or the fact that the same robot can kill Marcus, a weird Terminator/human hybrid, just by punching him the heart. But that’s not the point. In T2, why is it that even though an entire truck full of liquid nitrogen crashes into a smelting factory, nobody calls the police or fire department? In T3, the TX fricken controls regular cars via some hacking remote control system, even though that’s not possible in any kind of reality. The point is that stupid, ridiculous leaps in logic are a part of the Terminator series.

Truth be told, the script could have been a lot tighter. Christian Bale grew on me as John Connor, despite his gravelly Batman voice in the early part of the film. Sam Worthington did a good job – I actually wanted to see him succeed and kick even more ass than he did, and I totally believed that he was a hybrid machine who thought he was human. The film’s ending was a bit cheesy, but so’s the idea that robots can be sent back through time.

Terminator Salvation isn’t going to win any Oscars. There’s no ‘Heath Ledger’ performance that stands out as a moment of complete brilliance. But the special effects are amazing, the plot works as well as it can and the action is pretty much non stop. If you spend too much time analysing the reality of a movie so set in an unreal world, then you’re never going to enjoy the film. Which is a shame, because it is enjoyable.

And contrary to what Mark said in his review, it shits all over T3.

Here’s a pic of the statue up close from Flickr user IBWK:

We’ve already seen how Dreamworks have made the concerted effort to release every animated film from Monsters vs Aliens in 3D. It’s interesting then to see that Pixar are developing a similar philosophy, starting with their upcoming release, Up.While there isn’t a lot of technical detail in the clips, getting a feeling for the various ways that they’re planning on stretching the 3D is an interesting look at the process of 3D filmmaking, although it is a little short. Hopefully the DVD will have some kind of special feature on the process, as well as an explanation as to why some people can’t handle 3D…

[Up Official Site]