Joe here with the news following the holiday weekend.

The viewing public continues to stand behind Michael Bay and Transformers 2.  The sequel took first place at the box office for the second week in a row, earning $42.3 million (total sits at $294 million, putting it slightly behind The Dark Knight in the same time period).  Family-friend Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, released this weekend, almost knocked Transformers 2 off it's pedestal but fell just short, earning $41.7 million.  Public Enemies, which opened on the 1st, added an extra $25.3 million over the weekend ($40.1 million for five days).  The Proposal dropped from second place to fourth, earning $12.8 million; and The Hangover managed to remain in the top five for the fifth week in a row with $11.2 million (total take so far of $205 million).

Slashfilm brings word that you can now watch the first 8 minutes of Kathryn Bigelow's hyper-intense Iraq bomb disposal film The Hurt Locker.   Slashfilm also has a story up about John Woo's new WWII airplane epic, currently titled Flying Tiger Heroes, which is supposed to become the most expensive Chinese film yet produced.  They also have a trailer for a foreign film that represents a new and (I think) pretty cool take on the zombie genre: mobsters + cops vs zombies.

ShockTillYouDrop has the redband trailer for Jennifer's Body.  Why do we care?  R-rated trailer in a horror film staring Megan Fox.

For those of you who still have faith in a Deadpool film despite what was done to the character in Wolverine, check out this interview with Ryan Reynolds, where he talks about, among other things, the fact that Deadpool will break the fourth wall - just as he does in the comics (Deadpool is famous for being the only Marvel character to figure out he's a comic book character).

On to game news now...ArsTechnica has a good look at why the lack of LAN in Starcraft II bothers so many people.

Evil Avatar brings word that LucasArts has teamed up with Valve to bring (mostly classic) LucasArts games to Steam.  The more the merrier.

Gamersyde has a seventeen minute walkthrough/trailer thing for Brutal Legend, narrated by Tim Schaffer himself.  Spoiler alert, there.

And IGN AU has a pretty cool article about the five best things in Alan Wake so far.

Finally, in random "Other" news, the Guardian has a list of Michael Bay's top five most outrageous outbursts.  Because famous people act strange.

Joe here with a quick note:

Steve and I saw Public Enemies yesterday.  Call it our 4th of July celebration - we did our patriotic duty and contributed, in our own small way, to the economic recovery.  By spending $6.50 each on a matinee.  Anyhoo, have a look at my review here.  Steve's will undoubtedly be up shortly.

Oh, and go here.  Because it's perfect.

UPDATE FROM STEVE

Hey everyone,

As Joe promised, my review is now up.  Check it out here.  

Also, I've speant a good portion of this holiday weekend playing the betas for Aion, Section 8, and Crime Craft.  During the week I'll be writting about my experiences in each on my blog.  I'll let you know when I write those up. 

That's it, hope everyone had a great 4th!

Joe here with the latest and greatest film and video game news.

Let's go with movies first.  Well, TV shows.  Slashfilm reports that the George Lucas financed live action Star Wars TV show has started pre-production down under.  George Lucas has said in the past he's shooting for a minimum of 100 episodes, and describes it as "Deadwood meets The Sopranos in space."  Well then.  At least he's ambitious.  I hope he realizes those shows were actually written well with deep characterization...ahem.

Slashfilm's always interesting Page 2 report is also chock full of interesting tidbits, including this one: apparently Johnny Depp got so fed up with Michael Mann on the set of Public Enemies that he refused to talk to the famous director, forcing the producer to act as a go-between.  They also have the new poster for Bruce Willis' new sci fi thriller:

There's quite a bit more on there, so head on over when you get a chance.

In somewhat of a biggie in the movie news world - depending on your tastes and how optimistic you are about sequels/remakes - Ain't It Cool News has found out who the director of the Robert Rodriguez written and produced Predator sequel "Predators" will be.  It's a guy named Nimrod Antal.  Yes, Nimrod, and no, I didn't make that up and no, I hadn't heard of him before, either.

The director's cut of the Watchmen hits on Blu-Ray on July 21st.  AICN has a list of the new scenes - BEWARE, spoilers!  Though, if you've read the graphic novel then they aren't spoilery at all.

Bill Nighy, from such films as Underworld and Shaun of the Dead, has landed a role in the second to last Harry Potter film.  Who will he play?  He's not telling...

And Jessica Biel is reportedly in talks to appear in the Kenneth Branagh-directed Thor film (as in the Marvel Comics Thor).  No one knows who she'll be playing, either.

To bridge the oh-so-wide gap between movies and video games, here comes a genuine "shake your head in wonder" moment: Asteroids is getting made into a movie.  Not only that, but four studios went into a bidding war for the property.  Sigh.

In pure game news, Rock Paper Shotgun brings word that Tim Schafer's next crazy game won't be coming to the PC.  The article also has some tidbits on what we can expect from it.

IGN has a short but fairly interesting article up on how Internet-linked games are allowing game makers to gather enormous amounts of detail about player behavior, all in an effort to control our existence--er, I mean, make better games.  And they've put together a list of their initial favorite user-created Left 4 Dead levels, which I hope we will be seeing a ton more of in the coming months.

Joe here with the latest and greatest.

Not that there was any doubt, but Transformers 2 took the Box Office by storm this weekend, earning $201.2 million in its first 5 days of release (it came out last Wednesday) - this puts it at the second largest five day opening, only $2 million shy of The Dark Knight last year.  It also set a record for the highest five-day gross for IMAX.  The Proposal took a distant second with $18.5 million; The Hangover continued to hold on at third with $17.2 million (total gross of $183 million, making it the third highest grossing R-rated comedy ever).  Up took fourth place with $13 million and simultaneously passed Star Trek as the highest grossing film of 2009 so far.  My Sister's Keeper, which opened against Transformers 2, took fifth place with $12 million.

Speaking of Transformers 2, here's a piece that resonated with me.  Basically the author, an admitted fan boy, asks who's paying to go see Transformers 2 in such droves?  Critics hate it, and fanboys hate it.  Take my review, or Steve's review, as perfect examples.  We wanted to love this film.  We love giant robots and huge action scenes and beautiful women.  But not this movie.  The real test will be next weekend, to see how much it drops.  If it keeps making money hand over fist, and even goes on to challenge The Dark Knight in terms of total revenue...well, that'll be proof that there's something seriously wrong with...something.  I don't know what, but something.

All right.  Enough of that.  On to more interesting news.

The Michael Mann helmed, Johnny Depp and Christian Bale headlining John Dillinger epic Public Enemies comes out next weekend.  The initial word is good, even if the filmmakers were a bit hard on little old Columbus, Wisconsin.  Aint It Cool has a lengthy and interesting interview up with the Mann himself.  A good read.

TNMC has managed to get their hands on a rough draft of the Star Trek screenplay.  They delve into it and have a look at what got cut, and offer their opinions as to where they were good choices or bad.  Definite huge spoiler territory if you haven't seen Star Trek yet (and if you haven't, why haven't you?).  Hmm...Nero on Rura Penthe...

Slashfilm brings word that the not-remake of Oldboy that Steven Spielberg and Will Smith are putting together is going forward despite the lawsuit leveled against it.

Now, for game news...

Joystiq is hosting a new seven minute video of Starcraft 2 multiplayer madness.  In case you prefer to absorb your game information in writing rather than watching a video, IGN and Eurogamer both have hand's- on previews up for SCII's multiplayer.  And IncGamers brings word that SCII will not support LAN play without having every player connected to Battle.net - seems an obvious move to counter piracy to me.

That's the big news of the day so far.