Borat : Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan opened on Friday. Well it opened somewhere. It’s weekend gross from $26.4 million USD and could easily have been $10 more if it opened in Regina. The movie itself has been generating great reviews, and creating a lot of hype. Not a lot of movies get as much promotion as this movie had received, and then to not come to anywhere in Saskatchewan??, doesn’t make a lot of sense. I hope they will be rectifying this problem soon, or else people might just lose more interest in a show that looks so promising. A quote from one article states, “Despite much advance praise for “Borat,” distributor Fox scaled back its Friday opening to about 800 theaters because it is concerned that the movie wasn’t registering high enough in audience-awareness tracking.”
News is already out on the follow up to Borat, with a movie called Bruno. Universal won the rights to the movie for $42.5 million. This is a lot considering they don’t even know if Borat will be able to generate that much money.  This upcoming movie is starring a character called Bruno, and from what has been written, he will be interviewing people in the fashion industry and homophobes. That should be entertaining!
Rock Star Supernova have announced that former Black Crowes bassist Johnny Colt will be a temporary replacement for Jason Newstead. Jason Newstead was injured a couple weeks back when a bass head fell off his amp and injured his shoulder/arm. Tommy Lee and Gilby Clark seem to be happy with the selection, and they are familiar with Colt. Tommy even said that “he is the type of player that can plug in and immediately make his presence felt.” He will have a couple months to get some practice in before their first tour gig in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve. The replacement is only temporary as Jason Newstead expects to be back in action in under 9 months.
Rock Star Supernova’s first album will be in stores November 21. The band had already recorded the material before the injury so the bass in the songs will be brought care of Jason Newstead.
When you Google worst band in the world, it brings up results for the band “Creed”. Funny. I’m just glad that nothing I listen to is up there! I feel sorry for all those Creed fans though, sucks to have your musical taste.
The new zune.net site has a pretty sweet xp theme. It is very reminiscent of the black royale theme. It is primarily black, with orange accents like an orange start button. I installed it and will probably stick with it for a bit.
Major Nelson, writer on MajorNelson.com, was on SIRIUS Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) on October 31, 2006. Major Nelson is well known to many Xbox fans as a creative source of all Xbox Live information. He works for Microsoft as the Xbox Live Director of Programming and he is the voice of Microsoft to gamers. He presents information in a blog style which creatively makes everything come as more personal to gamers. He runs the blog on his own time so you will see his opinion on different things and it isn’t the official word from Microsoft. Thus the information he gives is normally honest and insightful.
Fittingly, he was on a video game show, called “Level Up” on MAXIM channel 108. The show is on every Tuesday at 2pm ET and it should provide new users to video games with information but more hardcore gamers could be rather bored by it all.  In the future they hope to have live call in questions which should add a lot of depth to the program. As well, on each show they have special guests to keep everyone entertained.
With the upcoming Zune launch in the USA on November 14, 2006 with an MSRP of $249.99, I am left wondering when is the Canadian release? Even though I doubt I will be buying one, I would really like to take a closer look at it. In case you haven’t heard about it, the Zune is an MP3 player from Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT). It features a 30gb hard drive, a 3 inch screen, and supports all forms of media playback such as audio, video, images, and fm radio. The device will be able to stream to the Xbox 360. Another interesting feature is the ability to transfer songs to your friends so they can listen, although it appears as though they will be limited to three days before they expire. The tranfering is done wirelessly as the device has builtin 802.11b/g wireless. Pretty cool specs overall, and something I wouldn’t mind having. So with no news on a Canadian release, we are all left in the dark. My guess is they are waiting to get a Canadian Zune Marketplace setup so it could be right before Christmas like December 11th, or probably not until late January, early February. I’m making the guess of December 11th since that is a Monday and it would give them two business weeks of pre-Christmas sales. They better announce something soon though, because people might make their purchase decisions for the all important Christmas rush.
According to the people at NBC, the iTunes Store and the success that The Office has experienced from it are responsible for keeping the show alive. I have never paid for a tv show before via iTunes, but this is one show I would consider. The Office is such a great show and I am so thankful that they didn’t cancel it after the first season. I remember back then the television ratings weren’t that great but it had pretty decent numbers on iTunes. I just watch the show on tv and make sure to record it, so I have no need to pay for it. Hopefully sales continue strong and they make a fourth season.
Now, with the launch of the PlayStation 3 and Wii just a few weeks away, Xbox 360 gamers are checking over a major update to Xbox Live, released October 31. The new update adds video playback which is a very nice addition. As well, it adds 1080p, so you can take that away from being a PS3 only advantage. They sped up the time it takes for the Xbox Live Arcade screen, no more waiting around. They revamped the marketplace, adding pictures. Also when viewing media it shows a possible field for an expiration date. I wonder if they are going to start releasing movie/tv show rentals? Either way, updates like this are always good for a console, especially when competition is right around the corner. For a complete list of updates, you can check out the official list Novermber 2006 Update List.