With the Oscars fast approaching, word has been leaking about what viewers can’t expect from the ceremony. One story that came out this week was the Sacha Baron Cohen, better known as Bruno/Borat/Ali G, would be a presenter. This meant we could expect some weird and wonderful to happen, as Mr. Cohen is known for going off-script and ratcheting up the embarrassment level for his victim.

Further details emerged that Sacha Cohen would be dressed as a female Na’Vi from the movie Avatar, his words interpreted by co-presenter Ben Stiller. At some point, it was to be revealed that Sacha’s Na’Vi character is pregnant with James Cameron’s love child. It’s at the mention of James Cameron, a man notorious for not having a sense of humor about himself, that this bit has completely fallen apart, according to New York Magazine.

Mechanic, now both a producer of motion pictures and of this year’s Oscar telecast, was head of Twentieth Century Fox when Cameron’s Titanic famously went massively over budget and over schedule, so he’s well acquainted with Cameron’s sense of humor — or lack of it. “Let’s just say that Cameron isn’t known to be, shall we say, ‘self-deprecating,’” explained one insider familiar with the decision to cut the sketch.

Academy spokesperson Toni Thompson would only confirm that Baron Cohen was no longer presenting, but Baron Cohen’s spokesman, Matt Labov, tells Vulture that “I hate to use the term, because it’s so ubiquitous, but there were ‘creative differences.’ Nothing acrimonious, but both sides felt that since they couldn’t agree, [Cohen] might as well remain in London.” (Calls to Mechanic’s office were not returned at deadline.)

So in case you’re ranking celebrity senses of humor at home, you can now safely put Cameron below Eminem.

If you happen to own a PS3 or Xbox 360 and are looking for great media-streaming software, then TVersity is a worthy option. It’s fast, stable and free, my three favorite words when it comes to media-streaming. While it doesn’t support as many formats as Java PS3 Media Server, it does benefit from having a simple design, making it more accessible for your average consumer.

TVersity has just been updated to a new beta version and with it comes some pretty cool new features.

Download Version 1.8:

Pro edition

• Completely new off-screen browser, based on Google Chromium: runs out of process for increased stability and solves all the known issues with premium content (it used to occasionally fail to start on some systems).
• Premium content site are now defined in an external file (osb.xml), advanced users can easily add their sites.
• List of supported websites can now be updated without requiring a new release, so expect many new sites to be added and pushed to you from now on. (Advanced users should send us their additions since from time to time we overwrite your osb.xml automatically).
• New premium content sites:
  • CNN
  • Food Network
  • HGTV
  • Snag Films
  • YouTube Movies and Full Episodes

All Versions

• Update and expand YouTube support to include subscriptions, favorites and playlists by user (in addition to user video uploads which were previously supported). Also support adding YouTube content by search queries (replaces the “by tag” category which YouTube has obsoleted).
• Various minor bug fixes.

There is some NSFW language in this film:

Let’s see if I have this right: Kevin Smith is too fat to fly…and he lacks the talent to make a good movie. That doesn’t leave him with many options, given the current unemployment rate. The reviews for Kevin Smith’s latest cinematic turd are in and would you believe Jersey Girl, considered to be the worst Smith film, is considerably better than Cop-Out, at least according to Rotten Tomatoes?

Jersey Girl manages to rate an underwhelming 41%, but Cop-Out, starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, explores the depths of hell by generating a whopping 17%.

Here are some choice words:

*A pointless homage to the cheesy buddy-cop action comedies of the 1980s, employing all the familiar tropes but failing to do anything with them.

*It’s like Beverly Hills Cop meets Die Hard, except we liked those movies.

*Smith needs to stop putting his creative energy into funny tweets and go back to writing scripts with heart and humor and memorable characters.

*This pitiful excuse for entertainment is utterly bereft of wit, intelligence or craft on any level. The only thing left to screw up would have been to leave the lens cap on the camera. Wait, that would have been an improvement.

*Cop Out is unspeakably terrible, a laugh-free comedy that mistakenly thinks it’s the height of hilarity while the audience, in return, sit stone-faced for the better part of two hours.

Please retire and go make YouTube videos or something.

Source

You can’t even say “Comic-Con” without preceding it with “San Diego”.  The San Diego Comic-Con has been a yearly phrase ever since 1970, when it first began operations. But, with time comes change, and with success comes competition and this is what San Diego is facing now as several cities are making a big push to host future Comic-Cons.

Anaheim, Las Vegas and Los Angeles are the big three, licking their chops at the fact Comic Con’s San Diego contract expires in 2012.

Hotels near San Diego’s convention center have offered Comic-Con 300,000 square feet of free meeting space and have proposed doubling the number of dedicated convention guest rooms to 14,000 in an attempt to lock in the convention through 2015.

By then, convention center officials hope to have completed a planned expansion that would leave the event with ample space.

“San Diego and Comic-Con go hand in hand like Batman and Robin,” San Diego Convention Center Corp. spokesman Steven Johnson said. “We want to make sure that dynamic duo stays together.”

Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer acknowledged that the event has been straining against the limits of its current home and that it is considering whether the San Diego proposal would assuage those concerns.

“We love San Diego. The majority of the people who put the show on live here,” said Glanzer, who did not know when a venue would be chosen. “But we have to make a decision that’s based on what really is best for the event.”

Source

I’m always on the hunt for the ultimate media encoder, something that will allow me to convert various movie formats for use on my Xbox 360, PS3 or iPhone. One of the better options is MediaCoder, as it supports just about everything you can think of. Better yet, it’s fast and stable, two key features I like in my media encoders. Oh, and it’s free!

MediaCoder received a nice little update this morning that fixes several issues, including:

[fix] MEncoder loading issue in some occasions
[fix] raw video encoding not usable bug
[fix] OGG not muxed in MKV issue
[fix] H.264 not muxed in F4V issue
[fix] Xvid in AVI fourcc issue
[fix] MKVMerge not working in x64 edition
[update] x264 r1442

Here are some of the key specs of MediaCoder:

Typical applications:
- Improving compression / reducing file size
- Converting from lossless/high-bitrate audio to low-bitrate audio to play with portable DAP
- Converting to device (mobile phone, PDA, MP4 player, PSP, VCD/DVD player)
- Extracting audio tracks from video clips
- Ripping CD/VCD/DVD

Supported source formats:
- Audio: MP3, OGG/Vorbis, AAC, MusePack, WMA, RealAudio, FLAC, WavPack, APE/APL, WAV
- Video: AVI (Xvid/DivX/H.264), MPEG1/2/4, QuickTime (mov), WMV/ASF, RealMedia (rmvb), MP4, Matroska (mkv)
CUE Sheets, CD, VCD, DVD

Supported target audio formats:
- Lossy: MP3, OGG/Vorbis, AAC, AAC+/Parametric Stereo, MusePack, WMA
- Lossless: FLAC, WavPack, Monkey’s Audio (APE), WMA Lossless, WAV

Supported target video formats:
- H.264, Xvid, DivX 4/5, MPEG1/2/4, H.263 etc.

Supported target container formats:
- AVI, MPEG, Matroska, MP4, PMP (PSP Media Player Format)

Download MediaCoder