I like it when people advertising a game go that extra step in their promo material, and the powerful short documentary “How far would you go?” is an interesting way Quantic Dream have come up with to help launch their new PlayStation 3 title Heavy Rain.

Directed by the acclaimed filmmaker Neil LaBute, the seven minute short was filmed in London, LA & Paris and asks leading luminaries, ‘How far would you go to save someone you love?’. Examining the role of emotional decision-making in storytelling, the documentary explores the central theme of Heavy Rain, giving the documentary its title. Respondents to the question include: Nic Roeg, Hanif Kureishi, Nicholas Hoult, Samuel L Jackson, Stephen Frears, Peter Bogdanovich, Jean Marc Barr, Chris Weitz & Ben Chaplin.

I was a massive fan of Quantic Dream’s previous game, Fahrenheit (also known as Indigo Prophecy), as it’s one of the first games to really live up to the fabled ‘interactive film’ moniker. Like Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain takes many of its cues from film-noir thrillers, and decisions taken within the title are emotionally charged with added importance. The smallest of actions can have drastic and unforeseen consequences. The gameplay focuses on story, emotional involvement, and the player’s decisions and interactions, rather than high-scores, combat and competition.

Heavy Rain’s writer & director David Cage states ‘In Heavy Rain you don’t watch the story, you play it with unprecedented responsibility over the fate of the game’s characters the whole DNA of the game has been created to provide an emotional experience unlike any other. It dares you to tackle subject matter and themes rarely touched upon in video games’.

Neil LaBute commented on the experience of creating the documentary, “It was fascinating to sit and listen to the intimate thoughts of so many people that I’ve admired-both professionally and personally-for years. Constantly surprising, each of ‘the witnesses’ were refreshingly candid as they discussed creative elements from their work and how deep the emotion of love runs through their own lives. I thought a simple approach– shot in a stark ‘interrogation’ style–would mimic both the style of the game Heavy Rain and would also be a very successful way of capturing a series of snapshots from the lives of these fascinating working artists from around the world.”

You can find more on Heavy Rain and “How far would you go?” at www.heavyrain.com.

Andrew Koenig

As many of you will have heard, after having been missing for 2 week, the body of Andrew Koenig, son of Walter Koenig (Pavel Chekov in Star Trek), was recently found in Stanley Park in Vancouver. Sadly, it appears that he took his own life having been suffering from depression.

When twitter first starting going into overdrive with tweets of his disappearance, the name Andrew Koenig sounded familiar, so I did a bit of googling, and realised where I’d first heard it. Sandy Collora’s brilliant 2003 fan film ‘Batman: Dead End‘, where Andrew put in a superb performance as Joker. As much as i loved Ledger and Nicholson’s versions of Joker in the movie versions, Andrew’s portrayal in Dead End is, by far, the truest to the actual comic books.

Batman: Dead End was made for $30,000, and shot in 4 days on 35mm as a director’s demonstration reel for Collora. He followed it up in 2004 with ‘World’s Finest‘, using most of the same cast and crew.

Batman: Dead End pre-dates Nolan’s ‘Batman Begins’ by 2 years, and at the time, the last thing we’d seen of Batman on screen was Clooney and O’Donnell haming it up in ‘Batman & Robin’. Collora was the first person to give us a gimse of the tone the movie franchise should have been taking.

Click the clip below to see Batman: Dead End in full.

Not sure which Ad agency is responsible for this quality viral for Supernatural on Living TV, but it is genius!

It was recently confirmed that The CW have renewed Supernatural for a 6th Season.

Currently working my way through season 3 on DVD, seeing as Living (for some bizarre reason) stopped their reruns after season 2 to air Season 5… Much as I’m happy they’re finally airing Season 5 for fans, it would be nice if they’d kept the up the nightly reruns too, so us people that came to Supernatural late can catch up!..

Apologies for the lack of postage over the last few days. Blog issues + mountains of work + man flu = not much posting! However, I have been sent this nice little time-lapse video of world famous street painter Edgar Muller achieving a new Guinness World Record, by creating the world’s biggest 3D pavement art outside Westfield London yesterday. He beat his own world record by covering an area of 330 square metres with a jaw-dropping wintry scene inspired by the family film Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, celebrating its launch on Blu-ray and DVD today.

The pavement art took six days to create and included the beloved Ice Age 3 characters Manny, Buck, Sid, Diego, Scrat and Scratte positioned over an icy crevasse. If you want to catch a look at the artwork it’ll remain at Westfield London for a further week.

Craig Glenday, Editor in Chief of Guinness World Records was on hand to verify the new world record, and commented: “Guinness World Records has been monitoring the fantastic work of Edgar Mueller for some time now, and we’re thrilled to be so closely involved with his latest record-breaking creation. Children – and adults – around the world are blown away by Edgar’s eye-popping landscapes, and he truly deserves a place in the record books taking the art of pavement of drawing to stratospheric new levels.”

Some days you stumble across something so geekily awesome it really has to be shared… Samuel L Jackson’s Exekiel 25:17 speech played out as a Google Wave… Geeky genius! Not only is it brilliantly executed (in every sense of the word), it also does a great job of showing off Google Wave’s features! Great job by the guys over at getwhirled.com.

(BTW, if anyone has a Google Wave access invite they’d like to send me i’d be most grateful!)

Star Wars: A New Hope is getting a remake! And before you all let out a Darth Vadian ‘NooOOOooooo!’, it’s not another ploy by Mr. Lucas to get us to buy the original trilogy again (…and again). He’s saving that for the 3D versions.

This is a remake by fans, who are basically sweding the whole of A New Hope. What’s interesting is how they’re doing it. Rather than just a couple of guys in stormtrooper masks, the coordinators of the Star Wars Uncut project have split the movie into 15 second chunks, and are allocating them to fans and aspiring film makers via their website. They are then taking all the 15 second chunks, and stitching them together into the final movie.

I really love this idea. It’s wonderfully geeky, creative, and involves Star Wars, what’s not to like! I’m just hoping they don’t attract the wrath of the LucasArts legal dept. If your interested in being a part of it, head over to starwarsuncut.com and claim a section for yourself! Trailer below.

Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.