Another of our vehic­u­lar friends has turned up on the streets, this time it is the ever recog­nis­able Opti­mus Prime. These were taken on the 405 Free­way in Los Ange­les. The bots are on the move — per­haps they are being col­lected together for the begin­ning of a Trans­form­ers 2 shoot?

Pic­tures thanks to SHH:

Neca have today revealed their Dark Knight mer­chan­dise includ­ing alarm clocks, key chains and wall hang­ings. Visit their site for details on the new prod­ucts, or spend a few moments gaz­ing at this won­der­ous knocker:

Via SHH

For those of you that haven’t heard the news, a judge has ruled that Time Warner are no longer the sole pro­pri­etors of the Super­man fran­chise — with the heirs of co-creator Jerome Siegel hav­ing an enti­tle­ment to the share of the US copy­right. The copy­right cov­ers only a por­tion of the Super­man cre­ation — that being the fun­da­men­tal ele­ments — the cos­tume, Clark Kent, Lois Lane.

In short, this means that Time Warner may now be liable, pend­ing a court appeal, to pay out for Super­man Returns. This rul­ing may also lead the Shuster’s to fol­low suit (the other half of the Super­man cre­ation team) and claim another large por­tion of the copy­right. Ulti­mately it all puts the future of The Man of Steel into jeop­ardy, not to men­tion the already trou­bled Jus­tice League film.

NYTimes

Latino Review got the scoop on this lit­tle gem — all news is good news for the Halo Movie, which is cur­rently on hia­tus. This has been announced on April fool’s day — so be wary. Though they do boldly say “this is not an April fool’s”:

In an effort to get the ball rolling again, I just learned that big time G.I. JOE screen­writer STUART BEATTIE has writ­ten a spec screen­play called HALO: FALL OF REACH, and it’s based on the best sell­ing novel of the same name by Eric Nylund.

HALO: FALL OF REACH is a labor of love by Beat­tie in the hopes of finally get­ting the movie made.

The Premise of the script:

The script is, first and fore­most, a character-driven story about a sol­dier named John who was kid­napped or “con­scripted” by the UNSC when he was just six years old, and then bru­tally trained to become an élite Spar­tan war­rior known as Mas­ter Chief 117.

One cool advan­tage of this first script is that (like the shark in JAWS) you don’t even see the Covenant until halfway through the movie. And because all the crea­tures are CGI cre­ations, this cuts the bud­get down dra­mat­i­cally and makes a first Halo movie that much more viable. For Halo fans, it’s like the pre­quel that pro­vides all the answers to ques­tions they’ve thought about for years. For non Halo fans, it’s an excit­ing action movie that pro­vides a clear, con­cise intro­duc­tion to a world five hun­dred years in the future with relat­able char­ac­ters and a ter­ri­fy­ing alien menace.

Film School Rejects have posted some high­way pic­tures of Bar­ri­cade being trans­ported through Cul­ver City. They are Saleen Mus­tangs with the Decep­ti­con logo on the side pan­els. Note that mul­ti­ple cars are used for film­ing. Rumors sug­gest that Trans­form­ers 2 film­ing may be in prepa­ra­tion, though I’d hes­i­tate — we’ll prob­a­bly have to wait a lit­tle longer.

It looks like the Jow Forums have leaked some very reveal­ing shots of The Joker in The Dark Knight, albeit with some pho­to­shop effects thrown over the top. They include scenes from the hos­pi­tal and the parade — they are major spoil­ers as to cer­tain events in the movie.

As these were leaked we shall not be post­ing them here. Cer­tain sites do still have them though. How­ever I rec­om­mend stay­ing away from these, if you can — these are things you’d want to see in the movie and not beforehand.

Thanks Keith.

The Clown Travel Agency prize has been unveiled, it is a link to Acme Secu­rity Sys­tems, a page with the descrip­tion of “delos”:

www​.acmese​cu​ri​tysys​tems​.com/​d​e​los

The aim is to deac­ti­vate a par­tic­u­lar secu­rity sys­tem, and the pass­word is “Nee­dle”.

Enter­ing your tele­phone leads them to call you with an auto­mated mes­sage, on answer­ing you need to clearly state “Nee­dle” as the pass­word. Say­ing “Hello” fails the pass­word check. You’ll then be greeted by a fel­low (Gor­don) from Gotham Police Depart­ment stat­ing that your iden­tity has been cap­tured and that you “work for us now”. It is a very excit­ing and inter­est­ing phone call if you get it to go through.

Mean­ings to the num­bers in the Iden­tity Cap­tured image — they are charges:
156.05 Unau­tho­rized use of a com­puter.
156.10 Com­puter tres­pass.
156.27 Com­puter tam­per­ing in the first degree.
156.35 Crim­i­nal pos­ses­sion of com­puter related mate­r­ial.
(thanks gilga)

Down­load Audio Record­ing of the Phone Call

(thanks to BANEpark­our)

Tele­phone Transcript:

Woman: Hello, this is the Acme Secu­rity Sys­tems voice print iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, please say the pass­word clearly.

Caller: NEEDLE

Gor­don: This is Jim Gor­don, major crimes, Gotham Police Depart­ment. Not the voice you were expect­ing… huh? We have your name. We have your num­ber. We have your computer’s IP address. So what I’m say­ing is, we have you. Con­sider your­self the Gotham Police Department’s newest recruit. You see, this works one of two ways, either you’re going to jail for con­spir­acy in a crim­i­nal enter­prise, or, you’ll work for me. We’ll be in touch. Oh, have a great day!

All pack­ages have been uncov­ered! Now time to head over to Acme Secu­rity Sys­tems or con­tinue fol­low­ing our coverage

As expected, The Clown Travel Agency viral puz­zle has come online — this time they have gone inter­na­tional. By click­ing on the manilla enve­lope (donned with the text “Proud Mother” in the bot­tom right) a sheet of loca­tions is revealed — from Paris to Sao Paolo. At each of these loca­tions is a package.

The text reads:

“Ready to have a ball?
A spe­cial bag of fun awaits the first to claim it. But you bet­ter strike fast, there’s no time to spare”

The mes­sage hints at the sport of Ten Pin Bowl­ing, and this mes­sage from Alex at SHH con­firms that:

I con­tacted the Tavi­s­tock Hotel, but I was too late, how­ever they gave me some info on the pack­age. Some­one col­lected it and inside was a bowl­ing ball, and a nifty smart mobile phone. On the ball was a mobile phone num­ber etched on it. He rang the num­ber apa­prently and was told they now knew who he was and to await fur­ther instructions.

The folks over at SHH and Omelette have posted their pic­tures of the packages.

The note that came with it reads:

“Nice work, clown! Now call the num­ber on the ball imme­di­ately, from this phone and THIS PHONE ONLY. Don’t give this num­ber to any­one else, or I’ll know.

Hope­fully, your cohorts will be in the same league as you, because once all your points are racked up, I’ll give you all some­thing that will really bowl you over…”

A bowl­ing ball, a joker card, a phone, a mes­sage and a bag for the lot.