Alright, so we know what you’re thinking: Another cookie-cutter Iraq war movie. Explosions, guns, tension, half-baked and loosely interwoven love story, helicopters crashing, Matt Damon. But, hold the phone! We are quite happy (and pleasantly surprised!) to report that director Paul Greengrass’ latest offering, Green Zone, (inspired by Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s novel Imperial Life in the Emerald City) only has but half of these thriller-action clichés. And, much more substance beneath its Hollywood veneer. continue…

Brett Gaylor from Open Source Cinema in cooperation with the National Film Board of Canada has written and produced this new documentary film which asks a question: Which side of the ideas are you on? Beta screenings have already taken place which have generated some pretty good buzz around this one. It’s an open source documentary all about copyright, culture and, of course, remixing. It’s been worked on for six years so far and you can still take part.

[Open Source Cinema]
[National Film Board]

If you couldn’t tell by the weather that it was autumn you can tell by the avalanche of new blockbuster games. Today marks the North American release of Fallout 3 – a highly anticipated game having already won numerous awards before it was even complete. We first got hands on this game at X08 in Toronto earlier this year and were excited by what we saw even in that early and limited demo build.

The original Fallout by Black Isle Studios won a lot of awards too and is still recognized amongst the best games. This sequel has seen the franchise switch developers to Bethesda Softworks – the same developers of the much celebrated Elder Scrolls series. With a pedigree like that this post-apocalyptic RPG certainly has a lot of expectations to live up to. continue…

Pecay over at BibliOdessy has collected a few examples of satirical maps from the first World War. They function as political cartoons diagramming both geographic conditions and sentiment regarding various regions. You don’t see many such maps produced anymore but their charm is undeniable as they anthropomorphise various countries giving them personality and character, illustrating how they all interact.

Anthony DiMaggio has written a piece found in a place outside of the typical video game media outlets. Its easy to pass this by because there are no sensationalist headlines, pretty screenshots, or action packed videos. It really doesn’t look like a place where you’d expect a discussion pertaining to video games at all. Thats good though. Anthony basically is talking about how playing GTA is like watching the news. For better or for worse. He even points out inconsistencies in the majority of media discussion around GTA4. Good job Anthony. We’re quite happy with this writeup and encourage you to look at the relationship the media has with the video games industry. Its a highly under discussed and under developed issue often only raised in a nonproductive manner.