This article might include some rather old news to all hardcore Tolkien fans out there. This will be especially true if you’ve been following the numerous blogs and websites out there that dedicate themselves to writing about the latest rumours and news regarding the upcoming film adaption of J.R.R Tolkiens epic masterpiece “The Hobbit”. I read an article about this on one of the “Paparazzi” websites in my country (the kind on which you can spend 32 weeks reading about how fat Britney has become).

Ian McKellen played the legendary Gandalf character in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. If at this point you have no idea what I’m talking about, you need to slap yourself in the face and pray to Tolkien for forgiveness. Since the release of the movies, I can’t see how anyone could have passed this trilogy by.

In any case, this is basically an update for those of you who were completely disconnected with the pre-production of the film “The Hobbit”. So here it all is in a nutshell (am I using that right? Well… when in Rome!). “The Hobbit” is a prequel to the “Lord of the Rings” saga and tells the epic tale of Bilbos journey for treasure. Expect a wizard and enough dwarves to pass around (that also sounds kind of wrong).

“The Hobbit” is going to be split into 2 films, the first being released in 2010, the second in 2011. There have been rumours that the first film would be “The Hobbit”, but the second an untold story, not directly adapted from a Tolkien novel. This rumour was shot down on April 24th by Yahoo News, saying that the new films are based on the book ONLY.

Peter Jackson will NOT be directing this time around due to timetable conflicts (he is directing Tintin for Steven Spielberg). He will however be executive producer along with Fran Walsh. Confirmed director is Guillermo del Toro (Pans Labyrinth, Blade 2). The project will once again be shot in New Zealand and WingNut and WETA (Workshop and Digital) will make a return as well.

McKellen has NOT been confirmed for the role of Gandalf, but has said that he loves playing this role and that “it is not a job you say NO to”. Peter Jackson has also noted that he could never imagine anyone else playing this role.

Well thats pretty much it. I guess I got a bit excited, so I did a bit of research. Hope you’re looking forward to these films as much as I am.

more at RLSLOG.net

It’s been a while since our last post about Game Scene Charts (November 2007), but this chart is still compiled at the end of every single month and I thought some of you might be interested in the latest version released last week. This latest issue comes in a nice new GFX engine so you won’t have to read through endless NFOs anymore but can actually see all statistics in a stylish fullscreen browser (thus slightly bigger size).

The data from March 2008 didn’t really bring anything new as it was a pretty slow month for new games: first place is still occupied by RELOADED with 9 new releases in March, followed by German group POSTMORTEM (also 9 rlses) and SKIDROW on the third place (11 low-budget unprotected games). The overall chart from last 19 months hasn’t changed much either, the first three places are held by RELOADED, SilentGate and Unleashed. More details and complete stats available after download (1.9 MB). Have fun reading through these charts!

more at RLSLOG.net

A famous BitTorrent tracker Demonoid is back online after months of downtime. The former administrator of the site, Deimos, had to shutdown the project in Canada. There were numerous attempts in relaunching Demonoid under different hostings all over the world, but it always failed after few days. It’s just a few moments since a new administrator took over the site after Deimos stepped down from his function due to personal reasons and relaunched it.

A quick look into WHOIS discovers that Demonoid is now hosted by American server hosting company Softlayer - I could probably imagine a better country for hosting a torrent website or tracker because of legal climax regarding peer to peer websites in the USA, but it seems to work fine now. And as we know the importance of reliable trackers in the BitTorrent community, I’d like to wish Demonoid team on behalf of our whole staff a very long uptime and a good luck in eventual legal battles.

more at RLSLOG.net

I felt like sharing this article with you guys as Prison Break is one of my favorite TV shows of all time, and the third season was pretty damn good even though the writer’s strike caused the season to end abruptly. Its technically unofficial, I know, but the executive producer dropped word on the fact that its picked up so I’d say it will most likely start airing in the fall

[UPDATE–March 25] Fox made it official today: Prison Break is coming back for a fourth season. The network also confirmed that production will move from Dallas to Los Angeles. Original story follows.

For a show that was once primed to be a short-lived miniseries, Prison Break sure is exceeding its life expectancy. The Fox drama wrapped up its third season earlier this year, and fans of the show have been eagerly awaiting word on a fourth-season pickup.

Fans will still have to wait for official word on a fourth-season pickup, but for those who only need unofficial word, news over the weekend was great. On his MySpace blog, Prison Break executive producer Nick Santora dished this bit of info: Season four has been picked up.

Santora also confirmed the Prison Break crew’s move from the Dallas, Texas area to its new digs in Los Angeles. Though Santora notes his new office on the Fox lot is “about half the size with just a tiny window,” he’s stoked about the opportunity to be back in business with the people he likes.

Details on season four’s storyline have not yet been released. Last season saw the characters incarcerated in a Panamanian prison.

Source: TV.com

more at RLSLOG.net

I’m pretty sure all of you have seen a HDR image, although you might not realise it at that time. HDR images are created by taking multiple shots exposed for the highlights, mid-tones and shadows seperately and then merged into a single image. This process results in incredibly vivid images. It’s nice to view those images in some image gallery, but it’s even better to have such a wonderful picture as your wallpaper - and that’s where a simple website called HDRWalls.com comes into the place.

HDRwalls.com features more than 600 desktop backgrounds in widescreen and standard format for use with all operating systems. The nice thing about those wallpapers is they come in almost every image resolution and even a special format for your iPod, BlackBerry or PSP. All you need to do is to browse the gallery, pick your favourite image and select the correct size for your computer.

All images are splitted into 5 different categories - landscapes and cityscapes are two most popular. You can sort all the pictures by date added, user rating, number of downloads and few other options. And of course, the whole site is completely free.

This is a paid review

more at RLSLOG.net

Do you use Google as your homepage? Are you bored of this simple white design? HomePagle is a simple application just for you then, and this paid review will give you more details about this project.

HomePagle is basically a directory of images, which can be used to replace the white background of your default homepage. All the wallpapers and images are sorted in various categories and subcategories: the most popular ones will be for sure Female celebrities with hundreds of nice pictures for every famous actress, singer or model, including divas like Eva Mendes, Elisha Cuthbert, Heidi Klum and others. There are many more categories as Cars, Nature, Fun, Movies etc. The other option is to upload your own image or wallpaper, so you can personalize your homepage.

After selecting or uploading the best image, you just need to save the generated link as your default homepage. You will be presented with a Google search input field with the image of your choice on the background (so this website is focused mostly on users who already use Google as their homepage). The creators of HomePagle will receive a revenue share from the ads displayed in the search results. There are many other websites offering similar personalized homepage, but having a cute girl or a decent car on the background may be just right for some of you…

more at RLSLOG.net

Another month, another R5 release date list for you! Thanks to our secret reader who noticed us about those movies! You can expect these movies in R5 quality during March 2008:

- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street(2007) - March 5, imdb, dvdscr

- Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006) - March 5, imdb

- Mad Money (2008) - March 6, imdb

- Boarding Gate (2007) - March 6, imdb

- L’Invité (2007) - March 13, imdb

- The Eye (2008) - March 13, imdb, telesync

- The Hottie and the Nottie (2008) - March 20, imdb

- Three Can Play That Game (2008) - March 27, imdb

- Jumper (2008) - March (1-31), imdb, telesync

- Portal (2008) - March (1-31), imdb

more at RLSLOG.net

I receive many mails every single day. Most of them are tips from RLSLOG readers about interesting releases or pieces of news. Some of them are not so nice mails from antipiracy organizations. And from time to time, I receive a mail from a scene group regarding certain issue. This one was different - the author of it doesn’t belong to the scene yet, but has intentions to do basically the same thing as sceners do: release movies which noone else released. Here’s an excerpt from the email.

(…) A new group (but not a scene group… yet, anyway) whose goal
is to popularize Japanese cinema.

As a new group with no scene access or contacts, we are having a
very hard time figuring out an anonymous but still efficient and
high speed way to distribute releases.

Tor or other forms of anonymization will greatly slow down
torrents, and we really don’t want to do something that will expose
our IP or even our general location.

We were hoping that if we’d email you guys, you may be able to
suggest something that will ease distribution, or maybe even
provide a helping hand until we have the resources to efficiently
distribute on our own.  (…)

I politely replied as I do with almost every mail and suggested certain ways or methods which could be used to ditribute the content without exposing the IP addresses of seeders / creators. However, I’m pretty sure you will have many other ideas and insights into this problem so I would be happy if you could express your opinion in comments below. It might help other individuals who would like to follow this group in a similar manner.

more at RLSLOG.net

The Arctic Monkeys and Take That were the big winners at the Brit Awards. The Sheffield band won the coveted Best British Group award. They also walked away with the Best British Album award for Favourite Worst Nightmare. Take That won Best British Live Act and Best British Single for Shine, voted for by commercial radio listeners and The Sun Bizarre column readers. Gary Barlow described it as “unbelievable”. The biggest night in the music calendar begun with an energetic performance from Mika and the Gossip’s Beth Ditto. The pair opened the show with a medley of hits including his own songs Love Today and Grace Kelly. Rock’s ‘royal couple’ Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne hosted the Earls Court show from their own on-stage “residence”, described as part Addams Family mansion and part Beckingham Palace.

Other winners included Mark Ronson for Best British Male Solo Artist. He is thought to be the first non-singer to have won the award. Best International Male Solo Artist was Kanye West. Australian pop princess Kylie Minogue took the prize for Best International Female Solo Artist. Foo Fighters walked away with the title of Best International Group. They also scooped the Best International Album for Echoes Silence Patience Grace. Kate Nash picked up the award for Best British Female. Adele took the honour of the Critics’ Choice award, which was voted for by a team of experts made up of music critics and heads of music at major radio and TV stations. Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who played Henry VIII in The Tudors, presented the Best Breakthrough Act award to Mika. The singer said: “This is brilliant. Thank you very much.”

Source: AP 

more at RLSLOG.net

This gave me a good laugh. Who said torrents are only for geeks? I’m pretty sure we have many “senior” readers as well!

Found at blaugh.com 

more at RLSLOG.net

We obviously love our readers and the fellow sceners as well - world would be much darker without either of them and this site couldn’t really exist. Not all sceners share the love though and some open-minded fiends pred a wonderful music release with our name in the title - I couldn’t help but download it (and upload for you)! A 2 MB file was pred as a country mp3 release, which scared me a bit. Come on, we don’t deserve this, even entrants in our Birthday Competition submitted some fine chiptunes or electronic music! What’s more, the title says to read the NFO, but there wasn’t anything like this. Finally, the folder included one mp3 file (Brent Amaker and The Rodeo - Get The Hell Out), so it didn’t even fitted the release name. Therefore I pronounce it officially NUKED. And yeah, we got the message, but you could be little more creative in your tiny attempt to express your love of us…

UPDATE: so it looks the anonymous someone who released this actually put the NFO in the release, it was just my source which didn’t have it. Well, it’s nothing too interesting, just a list of our leet IRC vhosts and all other people in our IRC channel - including two other possibly heavily scene-connected guys. So the song wasn’t probably aimed at us after all…

more at RLSLOG.net

Posting R5 release dates slowly becomes a good habit here at Releaselog. The list for January contained many movies, which really appeared in R5 scene rip and Hitman would be probably the most popular of them. Here’s a new list for February (thx Primo): it doesn’t seem that good as previous months though. The main reason is that the major movie hits are already available in dvd screener or dvdrip, thanks to leaked award academy screeners and earlier release dates in USA. The most popular R5 release of this month will be probably Rambo, which should appear sometime around Feb 20. Anyway, check it out, may be you will find something nice to watch.

The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends (2007) - IMDB, Feb 06

Sa majesté Minor (2007) - IMDB, Feb 07
His Majesty Minor (International: English title)

Ensemble, c’est tout (2007) - IMDB, Feb 07
Hunting and Gathering (Europe: English title)

Contre-enquête (2007) - IMDB, Feb 07
Counter Investigation (International: English title)

Hard as Nails (2007) - IMDB, Feb 07

Halloween (2007) Extended Edition - IMDB, Feb 11

Love Lies Bleeding (2008) - IMDB, Feb 14

AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem (2007) - IMDB, Feb 14

Nightwatching (2007) - IMDB, Feb 14

Rambo (2008) - IMDB, Feb 21

Gabriel (2007) - IMDB, Feb 21

12 (2007) - IMDB, Feb 28
Russia’s Official Submission to the Best Foreign Language Film Category of the 80th Annual Academy Awards (2008);
Oscar nomination (2008) for “Best Foreign Language Film of the Year”

Astérix aux jeux olympiques (2008) - IMDB, Feb 28
Asterix at the Olympic Games (International: English title)

The Heartbreak Kid, Eastern Promises, Atonement, Elizabeth - The Golden Age, December Boys, Away From Her, Lust Сaution, Saw 4, Niñas Mal - Charm School (Mexico), Rush Hour 3 are already available on DVDRip.

more at RLSLOG.net