Hello, and welcome to Entertainium.org’s coverage of E3 2010! We are starting soon, so please stay tuned for a live blog from Microsoft’s E3 2010 Press Conference!

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10: 32: Treyarch head Mark Lamia comes out to the stage to show off Call of Duty: Black Ops demo.

10: 34: Running around in the jungles of Laos, a firefight commences. The smoke effects from a grenade explosion look particularly impressive.

10:37: Getting into a helicopter. It isn’t clear if you are flying the helicopter or if it is on rails. Nevertheless, blowing up stuff along the river is looking very nice.

10:38: The fighting starts up again, the water and smoke effects are really fantastic, it looks like a serious improvement over previous Call of Duty games.

10:39: Don Mattrick come to the stage. He announces a Microsoft-Activision deal, all Call of Duty map packs and add-ons will be exclusively released on the Xbox 360. Then he says that this is only a timed release (PS3 will get the content eventually)

10:42: Hideo Kojima takes the stage, he says that Metal Gear Rising footage will be shown off for the first time. He then introduces his protégé, Shigenobu Matsuyama, the next leader of the franchise.

10:44:The trailer starts for the new game, showing off Raiden and a really powerful sword. The big idea is “cutting”, using the sword, doesn’t look like a stealth game, but perhaps a hack-and-slash.

10:48: Cliff Blezinski takes the stage, he is going to show off Gears of War 3. He calls up some other people from Epic Games who are going to be playing 4-player co-op with Cliff

10:49: Players can hand each other weapons. Good thing they can do this because here come mutant locust! They have long tentacles and are really bringing the pain

10:51: The fighting is showing off some of the new lighting effects. The light coming through the tree canopy above is nice.

10:54: Peter Molyneux, the creative director of Lionhead Studios,  comes out to the stage and reintroduces the Xbox 360 exclusive, Fable 3.  He announces that Fable 3 will be coming out on October 26.

10:55: The trailer for Fable 3 makes it seem as though the five decade gap between Fable 2 and Fable 3 meant some major technological improvements.

10:56: Phil Spencer returns to the stage, announces the new Crytek game, Codename Kingdoms, which appears to be a gladiator game—it doesn’t showoff much, just an announcement trailer.

10:58: Bungie creative director, Marcus Lehto come to the stage and talks about the success of the Halo Reach beta. He proceeds to show off the first look at the campaign and announces that Halo Reach will be shipping this September.

11:01: The battle against the Covenant starts again and this time there are Lady Spartans thrown into battle alongside the men.  The game looks much grittier, has a Gears of War look to it.

11:03: The Spartans are getting into a rocketship and are launching into space.  This spaceship is not just part of the cinematic, players get to fly it and engage in space combat.  The demo ends with the release date of September 9

11:05: Now we are onto the explanation of Project Natal…err…Kinect. Ron Forbes, an engineer on the Kinect team, is showing off screen navigation using motion controls. Kinect recognizes the person playing and allows them to navigate the menus using their hands. There is also voice controls, allowing the user to say “Zune” to start the Zune app. The interface looks very similar to the Wii’s home screen, but you don’t have a controller with this one!

11:08: Showing off a movie, the user can say “Xbox Pause” or “Xbox Play” to start and stop the video hands free. They also mention that there will be 15 games at launch.

11:10: Xbox Live is coming to Windows 7 phones…no one is clapping. They are busy typing on their iPhones or Android devices apparently.

11:11: Video Kinect is announced, another engineer from the team takes the stage, Laura. She says that you can talk to friends over Xbox Live and MSN messenger. She begins talking to her twin sister—wait, twins?!

11:13: You can watch movies and other things with the person you are chatting with, seems to be a facelift of some of the old Xbox features. The demo is really showing off more voice controls and more interconnectivity with Microsoft services.

11:15: ESPN 3 is coming to Xbox Live.  This service will allow users to watch certain live broadcasts of ESPN programming and “over 3,500 live events” exclusively over Xbox Live.

11:17: Trey Wingo and Josh Elliot, two Sportscenter anchors, take the stage to show off the new ESPN feature on Xbox 360. They show off some interactive features using voice controls—you can vote for which team you want to win, watch replays, and do other basic control functions using Kinect.  “Kinect will make taunting even easier”

11:21: The ESPN feature will be available for no additional cost to Xbox Live users.

11:22: Kudo Tsunoda, the creative director for Kinect, takes the stage to explain some more about Kinect.  He says that there are going to be 6 new games going to be shown off today for Kinect, obviously, all exclusives to Xbox 360.

11: 24: A young girl comes out to play with Skittles…the TIGER?! This seems dangerous. She uses the voice controls to tell the tiger to do tricks and uses the “touch” controls to pet Skittles.  There is a jump rope and you can make the tiger jump over it. It goes into Matrix style slow motion.

11:26: Tsunoda says that “Kinectimals” will feature 40 different animals with 30 unique activities. He introduces Shin from Rare Studios who is playing Kinect Sports.  You can play soccer and run the hurdles.  Here comes a video showing off the sports available: Soccer, Bowling, Track and Field, Ping-Pong, Boxing, and Volleyball.

11:30: Here is “Joyride” the new kart racing game that will “completely reinvent the kart racing genre”. The woman demoing the game is able to do tricks midair, but it doesn’t look like there is combat elements a la Mario Kart.

11:32: “Kinect Adventures!” is shown off, you are on rails, and you have to dodge obstacles and collect items. Its like a theme park ride, it even has the random photo part of the ride.

11:34: They are showing off another part of “Adventures!”, two women doing some type of rafting. One woman screams, “Look at the water!” and another follows with “We can go anywhere!”. The press conferences are completely overacted.

11:36: The photos taken from Kinect games can be uploaded to Facebook and other social networking sites. I don’t think I will do this—I don’t need to have photos of me being a nerd to confirm my nerdiness.

11:37: Tsunodo says that there are many developers making titles for the Kinect launch. Ubisoft is coming out with a Kinect game,  “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved”. Apparently, all these games are only this one.

11:38: Felicia, from Ubisoft, is playing the game. She says that “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved” will redefine living room fitness. The game is able to detect the person’s height, muscles size, and other measurements.

11:40: Trainer to the celebrities, Michael George, comes out on the stage saying that he collaborated on the project with Ubisoft. He says that there is yoga, personal training, and other fitness activities in the game. This is totally feeling like a Nintendo press conference!

11:44: Here come the other game introductions, this time one from Harmonix, called “Dance Central”. BBD’s Poison begins to play and the woman on stage dances, extraordinarily well.

11:45: Alex Rigopolus takes the stage, officially announcing the game. He says that dancing shouldn’t be done with controllers or mats because it doesn’t capture the essence of dance. He says that the game will include music from across genres and highlights, Lady Gaga, No Doubt, and Beastie Boys. There will also be downloadable content.

11:47: Rigopolus says that Harmonix work with choreographers to get unique dance routines—600 moves and 90 different routines. Kasson Crooker, a nerdy engineer comes out and tells us that he couldn’t dance before “Dance Central”, I believe him. He begins to dance to No Doubt’s “Hella Good”, this game won’t teach you to dance, but it will allow you to move to music.

11:50: Phil Spencer comes back out on the stage and annunces that Kinect will launch on November 4 in North America with 15 launch titles. It will also be compatible with all 40 million Xboxes that have been sold.

11:51: LucasArts is making a Kinect game, a Star Wars game, which was already shown off last night at Microsoft’s other event.  Gameplay is being shown, but no one is actually playing.

11:52: Bill Giese and Dan Greenwalt from Turn 10 Studios come to the stage and show off Kinect features in the Forza franchise. Players can walk around the car and look at the various parts, even get into the vehicle and play around with the various instruments.  It is the “future of racing” and is coming in 2011.

11:56: Don Mattrick is back on the stage. He shows off the new Xbox 360—built in Wifi, 250 GB harddrive. He says it is “sleeker, smaller, and more quiet [sic]”, it is shipping to retailers today. He finishes up by saying that everyone in attendance is getting a free console on the way out.

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Thanks for joining us! Check back all week for more live blogs and information from E3 2010!

Science fiction has always been one of my favorite genres in the cinema industry. From Ridley Scott scaring moviegoers with his creation of Alien to James Cameron’s Terminator 2 getting audiences to think about contemporary technology advancements: the genre has proven to showcase imaginative worlds and intelligent themes. As of late, the Sci-Fi genre has taken a turn towards action-focused movies with genre classics such as The Matrix or Terminator being deformed and dumbed down to be nothing more than disappointing franchises that could’ve achieved more than forgettable filler-flicks. This reoccurring trend has left me cynical about the genre’s future. However, every now and then a new concept is brought to the silver screen bearing promise and ambition to restore order back into a world that’s been degraded to car chases and body counts.

My latest hopes were poured into District 9: A unique film that joins the talents of unknown (but promising) South African director Neil Blomkamp with well-known epic film connoisseur, Peter Jackson. District 9 tells a story of an alien race that has crash landed on Earth after an important direction module falls from their Mothership. The aliens leave their Mothership hovering over the populated South African City Johannesburg as the occupants descend from their ship in search of parts to restore their ride back home. The film follows the events of the conflict as planet Earth tries to cope with their new neighbors as well as simultaneously attempting to gain information on their advanced weaponry. Despite the promising concept: District 9 only proves to disappoint my expectations as the film constantly prefers to use the sword over the pen. That being said, there’s still some stimulating aspects of District 9, but they never rise above the rest of the crowd.

Wilkus holds up a badge, surely they'll cooperate respectfully

Instead of focusing on what District 9 could’ve been, let’s focus on what is in the film and how that fairs in comparison to its competitors. The narrative storytelling is a hybrid between fake-documentary style of shooting, mixed with the more traditional Hollywood execution. The film flip-flops between fictional interviews with made-up sociologists and news reporters and the standard “camera follows character’s actions” method. At first the jump between both styles is a little disorientating but as the plot continues it begins to favor the later, more straightforward method, making it easier to follow the events of the story.

Whenever people aren’t being interviewed on screen you’re likely to see one of two characters. The first and most prominent is Wikus van der Merwe, an appointed official whose job is to control the Alien occupation situation. The second is Christopher, one of the Alien “prawns” who’s attempting to restore energy back to his personal ship so he can repair the damages done to the Mothership. The two characters’ paths quickly cross over one another, and they soon figure out that they’ll have to work together to achieve a mututally beneficial goal. The problem is District 9 makes the false-assumption that audiences would care more about Wikus, as opposed to the more intriguing and unknown Christopher the alien. The majority of the film is dedicated to Wikus’ story, but you’ll find yourself wondering “When are we going to see Christopher’s side?”

I found the film's level of "awesome" directly correlated with this guy's screen time

However the characters prove to be less than unimportant around halfway through the film. Without spoiling anything, Wikus learns how to use the Alien weaponry, and then the story spirals into a variety of excuses to have firefights and explosions. From the halfway point till the end of the movie, there’s a constant barrage of bullets flying through the air and bodies imploding from extraterrestrial hazardous effects. To be fair to the focus of the film, the action scenes are remarkably well done. The advanced alien technology left the writers to think of a lot of creative ways to blow up the human body. You’ll see a plethora of crazy deaths that will keep you saying “Oh Snap!” even if it’s the tenth time you’ve seen the same execution.

To complement these high energy action sequences, the special effects of District 9 look fantastic. The Alien prawns look lifelike and realistic, and every weapon, mech, and ship looks like its a part of the world. The overall design of every fictional element in the movie is extremely well done; there’s an obvious level of detail that was intended and the efforts of the filmmakers and special effect crew have created one of the most impressive CGI effects in cinema.

Behold: The Mothership

The only inherit problem with District 9 is the expectations it may have set up. The first half sets up a lot of questions that you’ll assume will be answered in the second, but they never are. We never learn anything more about the Aliens than what we knew at the start, how they act, if they have social classes, how they reproduce, or even their basic anatomy. It might be a little bizarre to demand answers to all of these questions, but it’s more bizarre to leave every single question posed unanswered.

These complaints are specific to the type of person you are. So as long as you go into District 9 expecting a popcorn flick with stellar effects and impressive explosions, you’ll enjoy every second of the build up to the climax. It saddens me that District 9 wasn’t able to exalt the genre back into greatness (or at least create an interesting fictional alien race), but that’s a poor reason to look back on a film unfavorably. It might not be the latest and greatest creation in the Sci-Fi genre, but that doesn’t make it crap either.