News

Megadeth will welcome back a long-estranged figure from their past at their upcoming, first-ever gig at Tokyo’s famed Budokan: Marty Friedman. The guitarist played on some of the band’s best-selling albums, including 1990’s Rust in Peace and 1992’s Countdown to Extinction. The Budokan concert, which will be livestreamed on Feb. 27 and available on demand for a couple of days after, marks the first time in more than two decades Friedman has shared a stage with the group.

“When Marty said, ‘Hey, I can play at this gig,’ I thought,...

James Hampton, a veteran character actor best known as bumbling bugler Hannibal Shirley Dobbs on ’60s sitcom F Troop, died Wednesday at his home in Fort Worth, Texas, from Parkinson’s disease complications. He was 84 and his death was confirmed by TV biographer Randy West.

A character actor whose amiable appearance made him the quintessential sidekick, Hampton had a long career in film and television before retiring to his native Texas.

Beyond F Troop, he is best remembered for many key film roles, including appearances as “Caretaker” the manager of the prison football team in the Burt Reynolds prison film, The Longest Yard.

He also had supporting roles in the 1979 thriller The China Syndrome, the 1981 superhero comedy Condorman, the 1985 comedy, and Teen Wolf,. playing Harold Howard, father to Michael J. Fox’s title character. Hampton reprised the part in the 1987 follow-up with Jason Bateman, Teen Wolf Too, and the animated series spinoff.

In the years leading up to the creation of one of the defining albums of thrash metal, Megadeth’s 1990 LP Rust in Peace, the band members were going through hell. Frontman Dave Mustaine and bassist David Ellefson had formed the group in 1983, after Mustaine’s ejection from Metallica, and even though they had already released three underground hit records, the band was far from stable. Drug abuse and in-fighting led to the departure of half its original lineup, and by the mid-Eighties, those same forces were about to expel those musicians’ replacements from the band.

Dave Mustaine will host a livestream of Megadeth’s 2017 appearance at Germany’s Wacken Open Air Festival Thursday on its website at 5 p.m. Est, with Mustaine telling stories and answering questions in a live chat as the gig plays.

The group’s set list at that show – witnessed by some 75,000 headbangers – placed a heavy emphasis on their recently released Dystopia album but also offered a career-spanning selection of hits and deep cuts. In addition to signature songs like “Peace Sells,” “Symphony of Destruction,” and “Hangar 18,” the band revisited...

Dave Mustaine will release a new book detailing the making of one of the group’s high water marks, their 1990 album, Rust in Peace. The volume, which Mustaine titled Building the Perfect Beast and co-wrote with Joel Selvin, is due out September 8th, according to its publisher, Hachette Books.

A synopsis for the book promises tales of “alcohol, drugs, sex, money, power, property, prestige, the lies the band was told by the industry-and the lies they told each other,” according to Loudwire. It chronicles how Mustaine put together a new Megadeth lineup for that album,...

Cynicism isn’t hard to come by in the horror genre; any Italian cannibal or home invasion flick will satiate your desire for an outlook on man’s worst transgressions. Conversely, it’s even harder to find a film with such a buoyant feel that is at odds with the terror on display. Well, folks, may I present to you The Boogens (1981), an endearing charmer of a subterranean monster movie. By the time it’s over, you may want to give it a big old hug.

Released by Jensen Farley Pictures in September (with Paramount buying up the TV rights) on a budget of $600,000 Us, The Boogens did nothing to impress critics. However, a certain Stephen King loved the hell out of it, and his praise would grace the advertising as it did with his accolades of The Evil Dead (1981). (A King blurb held a lot of truck in those days.

A special five day marathon of guitar shredding tunes has been announced today, as Guitar Hero Live‘s Shred-a-Thon event goes live on Ghtv. The brand new event is bringing some of the toughest songs in Guitar Hero history back to the stage for players to attempt to remaster over the next few days.

The Shred-a-Thon playlist is set to include the following tracks on repeat:

DragonForce – Through the Fire and Flames

Alter Bridge – Cry of Achilles

Megadeth – Hangar 18

Lamb of God – Ghost Walking

Trivium – Strife

Once the event is over, Through the Fire and Flames will be joining the game’s regular track-list so the return of the iconic tune will be a far more longstanding one than previously expected. Every song in the Shred-a-Thon is also Rival Challenge-enabled, which means players have the option of competing against matchmade gamers in a head-to-head battle during each song.

Guitar...

For the final week of September, we’ll be seeing a handful of indie genre titles coming our way to DVD and Blu-ray, as well as several cult classics, including the original Leprechaun films, finally making their high-def debut on Tuesday.

In terms of new indie movies to keep an eye out for, Grow-up Tony Phillips, the latest from up-and-coming Austin filmmaker Emily Hagins (My Sucky Teen Romance), is being released as well as American Muscle, The Paranormal Diaries, Grave Halloween and the pregnancy-themed horror flick Delivery: The Beast Within. For those of you horror fans looking for something a bit more ‘seasoned’, both Krull and Killer Fish are getting their Blu-ray treatment this week and should make for excellent additions to your home entertainment collection.

Spotlight Titles:

Grow-up Tony Phillips (Anderson Digital, DVD)

Who doesn’t love Halloween? All of Tony Phillips’ high school friends do, apparently. It’s...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: June 18, 2013

Price: DVD $19.95, Blu-ray $29.95

Studio: Olive Films

The eyes have it in Hangar 18.

Hangar 18 is a cult science fiction thriller starring Darren McGavin (A Christmas Story), Robert Vaughn (TV’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) and Pamela Bellwood (TV’s Dynasty).

The film opens as two astronauts (Gary Collins and James Hampton) are deploying a satellite from a space shuttle when it collides with an unidentified object. The object makes a crippled but safe landing in the remote southwestern desert where it is quickly carted off by government agencies to a secret Air Force base. Meanwhile, the two astronauts are back on earth and are anxious to know what happened, but no one is talking. When they begin to investigate, they learn that the government will stop at nothing to keep them from discovering the truth!

Directed by James L. Conway (The Boogens) who also co-wrote the story,...

Thanks to the 30-day exclusive deal that's been established with Microsoft, PS3 and PC gamers anxious to get a shot at Nuketown Zombies in "Call of Duty: Black Ops II" have been sorely out of luck. However, it looks like those with a Season Pass will finally gain access to the undead Dlc later this week.

That's right, the official Call of Duty Twitter account just recently let the news slip, posting the long-awaited tweet seen below to their feed late last week.

For those of you who haven't been keeping up, here's an official description of Nuketown Zombies from the Black Ops II website:

"Nuketown Zombies is set during the events of Moon, and after the end of the multiplayer level from the original Black Ops game. A group of radiation scientists are investigating the Nuketown remains and discover soldiers that have been revived by Element 115 from a nearby Nevada base.

It’s strange how the mind works; the odd connections it can sometimes make. I’ve been reading a few articles recently which have brought to mind the 2003 Errol Morris documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, an extended self-critical analysis by the Kennedy/Johnson Secretary of Defense often considered the architect of the policies which went oh-so-wrong in Vietnam. Four of his eleven lessons in particular lit up for me:

Empathize with your enemy, meaning see the world through their eyes; understand their values, goals, what is important to them, what they see as a threat and why;

There’s something beyond one’s self, which I take to mean to avoid judging other parties by your own values;

Get the data which seems self-explanatory;

And be prepared to re-examine your reasoning which is a diplomatic way of saying never take off...

While it may not be an exclusive, the Call of Duty: Black Ops map-packs would certainly make any self-respecting PS3 owner think so. Time and time again, Black Ops continues to turn a blind eye to Sony's next-generation console, instead favouring the lure of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and their collective online audience of 20+ million.

First it was First Strike - the original Dlc add-on for Black Ops - which débuted on the 2nd February, 2011, before making its way to the PS3 on the 3rd March. Similarly, Escalation joined its predecessor on Xbox Live on the 3rd May, with PS3 gamers having to wait until the 10th June before they could purchase it. And finally there is Annihilation, the most recent - and some say final Dlc release before MW3. While 360 owners have spent the last month tangling with three new types of zombie - the zombie monkey, the shrieker zombie and...

Call of Duty: Black Ops Annihilation, the third downloadable content pack for the blockbuster title Call of Duty: Black Ops, has arrived on Xbox Live first! Now available for download, the map pack will give players four new maps: Hangar 18, Drive-In, Silo and Hazard. Gamers will also receive an all-new Zombies experience, Shangri-La, an exotic and mysterious map filled with deadly traps, dark secrets and innovative gameplay that will challenge even the most daring Zombie hunters.

Besides the new Call of Duty Dlc, here’s the current release schedule for Xbox Live Marketplace content, including new Xbla releases, the latest movies via Zune and a special “Mutants and More!”-themed week of releases, up to to July 7th.

July 6th

Deadliest Warrior: Legends (345 Games) 800pts

Game Add-ons

July 5th – Mortal Kombat character “Kenshi” 400pts

Deal of the Week – Mutants and more!! – June 28 – July 4th

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...

Chicago – Clearly, Activision and Treyarch aren’t satisfied with dominating the shooter market for only part of the year; they want the entire calendar. How else to explain the most ambitious Dlc expansion plan in console shooter gaming history? “First Strike” wasn’t enough and neither was “Escalation.” Now comes “Annihilation,” another map pack with four new arenas in which to play and a new zombie adventure. Available exclusively for the Xbox for now, “Call of Duty: Black Ops” has expanded yet again and the pack features at least two maps you really must play.

Video Game Rating: 4.5/5.0

“Call of Duty: Black Ops — First Strike,” which was released in February, still contains my favorite expansion maps and if you’re only going to buy one, it’s the one. But you should save up for “Escalation” for the best zombie adventure (“Call of the Dead” with George A. Romero, Sarah Michelle Gellar,...

Excited for all of the Nazi zombie goodness that's dropping tomorrow via Dlc on Call of Duty: Black-Ops? Well, you will be once you check out this new trailer and screens brimming with undead mayhem!

From the Press Release

Call of Duty®: Black Ops, the best selling game ever on the Xbox 360, is ready to blow fans away with the worldwide release of its third content pack on June 28th: Call of Duty®: Black Ops Annihilation. Black Ops continues to draw millions of gamers online globally, logging billions of gameplay hours since its launch in November. Fueled by the breakthrough First Strike and Escalation content packs, the blockbuster title is also already the highest selling add-on content in Xbox Live history, according to Microsoft. In fact, more gamers play Call of Duty on Xbox Live than on any other platform. The newest offering, Annihilation, will launch first on...

Activision has released a new trailer for Black Ops' upcoming Dlc showing the new Zombies map, Shangri-La. The Annihilation map pack will run at 1200 Microsoft Points and get players access to four new multiplayer maps and one new Zombies scenario. Take the fight to "Hangar 18," located in the iconic military base Area 51, complete with experimental weapons labs, the Sr-71 test hangar, and a disturbingly mysterious autopsy room. Pull up and get cozy with "Drive-In," a close quarters slugfest through a 60's American drive-in theater, classic arcade, and old school snack shack. Battle through the construction of a massive secret Soviet missile site in the multilevel "Silo," and then take off to a coastal golf course fit for a dictator in "Hazard," set on the cliffs of Cuba where stocked...

Treyarch and Activision are continuing to build upon the digital game Call of Duty: Black Ops with the undead. In the latest expansion pack, titled Annihilation, zombie killers must delve into the dark jungles of Shangri-La. Here, you will find hordes of zombies clambering to pry your MP-5 from your cold dead fingers and groping for your grey tasty brain jellies. Grab your map and compass June 28th, when this release becomes available exclusively to the X-Box.

As well, have an early look at this expansion pack, which features the maps: "Hangar 18," "Drive-In," "Silo," and the aforementioned "Shangri-La," in this official trailer inside. The zombie apocalypse awaits you.

An overview of Call of Duty: Black Ops Annihilation:

“With Black Ops: Annhiliation fans will get four exciting and unique multiplayer settings with Hangar 18, Drive-In, Silo and Hazard. Players will also enjoy an all-new Zombies experience, Shangri-La, an exotic...

The amount of zombie content packed into Call of Duty: Black Ops is nothing short of astounding. It's like a game in and of itself. Sure it's just wave after wave of undead mayhem but damn it, it's a blast and there's even more on the way!

From the Press Release

- Call of Duty®: Black Ops, the best selling game ever on the Xbox 360, is ready to blow fans away withthe worldwide release of its third content pack on June 28th,: Call of Duty®: Black Ops Annihilation. Black Ops continues to draw millions of gamers online globally, logging billions of gameplay hours since its launch in November. Fueled by the breakthrough First Strike and Escalation content packs, the blockbuster title is also already the highest selling add-on content in Xbox Live history, according to Microsoft. In fact, more gamers play Call of Duty on Xbox Live than on any other platform.

Attention "Call of Duty: Black Ops" fans: Activision and Treyarch aren't done with last year's "Call of Duty" title just yet. As we reported yesterday, pictures of a GameStop poster allegedly showed promotional materials for a third map pack. This morning, Activision officially announced the next "Black Ops" downloadable-content, called "Annihilation."

Even better, the new maps are due to find their way to Xbox 360 on June 28. Only twelve short days until you'll have new locations to reign supreme over your buddies and zombies alike.

"With Annihilation, 'Black Ops' fans will get four exciting and unique multiplayer settings with Hangar 18, Drive-In, Silo and Hazard," Treyarch's Mark Lamia stated, via press release. "Players will also enjoy an all-new Zombies experience, Shangri-La, an exotic and mysterious map filled with deadly traps, dark secrets and innovative gameplay that will challenge even the most daring Zombie hunters."

So, now you know the...

Good God, Treyarch. You don't know how to quit! But we love you for it. A new map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops is on the way June 28. This one's called "Annihilation" and presents a new map for zombie-killing called Shangri-La, "an exotic and mysterious map filled with deadly traps, dark secrets and innovative gameplay that will challenge even the most daring Zombie hunters." If you just want to run around and kill people, you can look forward to doing that on the Hangar 18, Silo, Drive-In and Hazard. Get a glimpse at these maps in the video below. See you on the battlefield.

The mid-to-late 1970s saw a number of movie fads: disaster flicks (The Towering Inferno, Airport), killer animal flicks inspired by the success of Steven Spielberg's Jaws (like the mutant bear movie Prophecy, the killer bee movies, etc.) and pseudo-documentaries about real life monsters and unexplained phenomena like UFOs. Notable among the latter portion of this wave of cheapo productions were the films made by Sunn Classic Pictures.

As a little kid whose mind was influenced by a steady stream of watching monster movies on late night television, Aurora models and the latest issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland and Starlog, the possibility that real-life monsters like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and space aliens could exist was like being told that Santa Claus was legit (but creepier and spookier, I suppose.) Sunn found success with a couple of quasi-documentaries like The Mysterious Monsters (Hosted by Peter Graves! With appearances...

Editor's note:

The mission: review at least one movie a week that came out in 1981. The reason: because he can.

The man to do the mission: Thurston McQ.

Prepare yourself for a trip back through three decades in time, to an era when VHS was king, video stores were popping up everywhere and movies could be rented by young, impressionable minds. What were movies like back then? And 30 years on, do the movies that were released in 1981 hold up to our storytelling standards today or fall down hard?

Welcome to a year-long column that will revisit those cinematic classics and not-so-classics from an era where CG and PG-13 didn't mean a thing to anyone yet. Welcome to Retro Review 1981 - The Weekly Column. Thurston, you have the floor. -- Patrick

The nature of progress dictates that we abandon old technologies for new. The benefits are usually obvious, or we wouldn’t do it.

Last week there was so much internet hoopla revolving around a trailer attached to various prints of Iron Man 2. I was lucky enough to get to see the trailer at my showing of Iron Man 2 even in Memphis, Tn which is great because the bootleg that circulated around the internet on Friday didn’t do it justice. Earlier last week speculation was that the movie was related to the unknown but long speculated follow-up to the Jj Abrams produced, viral injected Cloverfield movie. Reports even went on to discuss what the trailer would be and sure enough they were completely inaccurate.

If you didn’t get a chance to see the trailer I will do my best to describe it below.

Trailer Description:

The Paramount logo shows up then cuts to a dark screen with some subtle cricket sounds chirping. Then you hear a train chugging on some tracks.

They say that everything old will eventually become new again. That's true for Slayer and Megadeth, two metal giants who first ascended to stardom in the heaviness-happy 1980s and who are headed out on tour together on a bill called the Carnage Tour (split up into two legs: Canadian Carnage and American Carnage). In addition to ear-shredding riffage from their most recent albums (Slayer's underrated 2009 slice of savagery World Painted Blood and Megadeth's epic 2009 release Endgame), the two powerhouses will also run through two of their classic albums top-to-bottom. Slayer will roll through their 1990 classic Seasons in the Abyss (a crossover hit that established band classics like "Dead Skin Mask" and the title track) while Megadeth will tackle 1990's Rust in Peace (guitarist Dave Mustaine's post-rehab album that featured the hit "Hangar 18").

It's not only the 20th anniversary of the release of those albums, but the Carnage tour...

This week is a little thin on content – unless you’re really into Valentine’s Day.

That said, there’s still plenty of great content to check out – especially the public demo for Sony’s upcoming action-drama Heavy Rain (which was previously only available to players following the “Four Days” alternate reality game). Don’t forget to check out our impressions of the demo – and keep an eye out for our review of the full game when it’s released on February 24th.

Also, if you have yet to pick up a theme for your PS3 make sure to check out the dynamic themes for Flower and WipeOut HD. You can preview them on the Psn Store before you buy – they’re both pretty impressive.

Here is the full list of release information:

Feb. 16th Retail Game Releases:

Aliens vs. Predator (PS3)

Bringing the legendary war between two of science-fiction...

NEW YORK -- Executives Lang Elliott and Raylan Jensen are relaunching the Sunn Classic Pictures imprint, the label behind such 1970s projects as The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams feature and the NBC series of the same name. Sunn was known primarily for its family-friendly fare. However, the label once also handled genre projects like the 1980 sci-fi film Hangar 18, starring Robert Vaughn. The Palm Springs-based Sunn has so far acquired Master of the Game by helmer Jeff Stolhand as the first of what Elliott said will be roughly 10 theatrical releases per year. Sunn will further continue to create projects for the small screen.