Steven Spielberg’s gaming vision emerges

Two video games developed with director Steven Spielberg are to be shown off at the E3 conference in Los Angeles.

The filmmaker has collaborated with Electronic Arts, the world’s largest games publisher, on three titles.

The first, codenamed LMNO, is a contemporary action adventure, said Neil Young, general manager of EA’s Los Angeles studio.

The second, with the codename PQRS, is a puzzle game designed for Nintendo’s Wii console.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Spielberg said the puzzle game “seemed like a great thing for the entire family to play together over Christmas; although you don’t need the excuse of a holiday to enjoy it.”

The game has been described as a mix of Saturday-morning cartoon and Jenga.

‘Chemical reaction’

Mr Young said: “Of course just playing with blocks does not a game make.

“Now imagine there are up to 50 different properties that can be associated with them. They can explode or form a chemical reaction.”

In LMNO, being designed for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the player partners with a female character who evolves over time depending on how she interacts with other characters in the game.

Newsweek described the title as “North by Northwest meets ET”.

Spielberg told Newsweek: “The challenge is, can the game have an emotional impact on players while they are actively manipulating the world?”

In a separate statement about his involvement with EA, he said: “I am truly enjoying the creative collaboration and we hope that gamers will be as excited as we are about what we can bring to the medium through our shared vision.”

No details about the third game Spielberg is working on were released.

Live Earth may set new stage for Web viewing

The Live Earth event on Saturday is set to reach millions more people than previous global productions with its reach boosted by the fast-growing power of Web video-sharing and social networks.

Organizers estimate television broadcasts of the live concerts staged to raise awareness about climate change will be available to up to 2 billion people, though there is no estimate of how many people will actually watch the shows.

But that viewership may be trumped online where a generation hooked on social networks like MySpace.com and video site YouTube share ideas, photos and videos with their peers.

“Users can create their own program from all the show assets from around the world,” said Kevin Wall, Live Earth founder and CEO of Control Room which is producing the shows.

“They’re going to be able to share those experiences in a way that’s never ever been done in history.”

The global Live 8 concert to fight poverty in 2005 was the first major multi-venue event successfully streamed live with Time Warner’s AOL portal on the Web.

But Control Room, which produced Live 8, found it was the on-demand streams days after the event that had the most impact, especially after clips were passed around by e-mail.

Live 8 was streamed by users over 100 million times in six weeks. Live Earth is expected to be three times bigger.

“The viral nature of the streams at Live 8 really came off the back of that huge water-cooler moment with people asking their friends if they’d seen a particular clip,” said Wall.

Live Earth is working with Microsoft Web portal MSN on live online broadcasts. MSN will also be the only media platform to feature every minute of all the shows.

But in the age of Google’s YouTube, MSN and Control Room realize providing technology that helps friends share clips of their favorite Live Earth moments on other sites will be even more important than the live event.

“When you think about the control we’ve given the user, you could put together your own Live Earth show after the event,” said Joanne Bradford, chief media officer at MSN.

Organizers expect more than 80 percent of the viewership will be on-demand in the days following Saturday’s event.

The live music performances by stars like the Police and Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as 60 original short films, will be edited into short clips by Control Room for easy sharing.

For example, a user could add a video clip of Madonna performing her specially penned song “Hey You” to a blog or social-network page and add a feature allowing visitors to buy a download with proceeds going to an environmental cause.

That flexibility has become possible with the artists agreeing to give up their rights without charge for the cause.
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Though details are still being finalized, Wall expects Live Earth to have rights to show the clips for months afterward.

Media experts say over-restrictive limitations over broadcast rights on on-demand viewing are fast becoming a thing of the past, particularly for an event that is trying to make a difference by getting in front of many eyeballs as possible.

Paul Levinson, professor of communication and media studies at New York’s Fordham University, says video clips will show up eventually on YouTube or elsewhere outside of MSN, so it makes more sense to enable video sharing.

“The idea that any organization can keep something in popular culture to itself is 19th-century thinking,” he said.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Auditions

Lavender Brown and Tom Riddle were the two characters being cast for the next Harry Potter movie - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Directors were looking for actors aged between 15 and 18 years old.

The audition is now closed.

* Edit: Apologies for the mix up, this was an audition for the Half-Blood Prince and NOT the Deathly Hallows movie. As far as we know, casting has not yet begun for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we do not know any further information about this. Please do not contact us regarding auditions or any further information.

Fans make CBS reconsider axing ‘Jericho’ TV series

Fans trumpeting the cause of CBS’ canceled drama “Jericho” have caught the network’s ear. CBS, deluged with calls, messages and shipments of nuts signifying viewer displeasure, is reconsidering its decision, a source close to the production said Tuesday.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. A decision on whether to bring the show back, probably for a midseason run, is imminent, the source said.

“We are tired of the networks (not just CBS) tossing aside quality programming,” was the message carried by jericholives.com, one of several web sites protesting the cancellation. “Enough! We’re going to fight for this one.”

Clarke Ingram, a “Jericho” fan from Pittsburgh, Pa., and a spokesman for jericholives, said he was optimistic that CBS would find a way to revive the drama about a Kansas town isolated by a nuclear terrorist attack.

“People would paint this as teenagers in tinfoil hats” rallying behind the show, said Ingram, 50, an operations manager for two radio stations. “That’s not what this is. These are educated professionals.”

The show’s daring premise, its writing and acting make the case for its survival, he said.

Several factors could work in the show’s favor: It appeals to the young adult viewers sought by advertisers and was one of CBS’ most popular shows streamed online, indicating an audience beyond that measured by traditional ratings.

CBS may also be considering the dent a long hiatus put in the show’s viewership, the same scheduling misstep that hurt ABC’s “Lost” and NBC’s “Heroes.”

The network apparently has been impressed by the display of viewer passion, which included the delivery of 50,000 pounds of peanuts to its New York offices. In the season finale, a character replies “Nuts!” to a demand that the beleaguered town of Jericho surrender.

That’s the same response that a U.S. general in World War II made to a German demand for surrender at the Battle of the Bulge.

There’s already been one positive outcome: CBS is donating the protest peanuts to charities, including one that sends care packages to troops overseas.

Eye of the Tiger on Piano

Anyone a fan of the song “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor? This guy does a great version on the piano…