Iomega, a global leader in data protection and security, today (6 August) announced the new Iomega(R) ScreenPlay(TM) TV Link, making it convenient and affordable to access multimedia content on any high-definition television or home theater system. Complete with full-function remote control, the new ScreenPlay TV Link features an easy-to-use USB port for attaching compatible storage devices and enjoying high quality movies, music and photos from the best seat in the house.

Smaller than a deck of playing cards, the new Iomega ScreenPlay TV Link is based on the same display technology as Iomega’s ScreenPlay HD Multimedia drive, introduced in April 2008, and offers the same audio and video quality with upscaling to high definition. While the ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive features a fully-integrated 500GB hard drive solution, this latest addition to the ScreenPlay product family gives users the flexibility to connect their own USB external storage devices to the ScreenPlay TV Link and play back the media content on an attached TV. The result is an affordable, easy-to-use multi-media solution that can utilize different storage devices when friends, family or co-workers drop by with a media file to share. Compatible USB devices with the new ScreenPlay TV Link include flash drives, hard drives, and Iomega’s REV drives.

“The ScreenPlay TV Link is an ultra-portable device that gives everyone a seamless way to share family photos, play music, and enjoy videos,” said Loren Bryner, global product manager, Iomega Corporation. “The ScreenPlay TV Link turns any TV or home theater into party central for computer-based media content. There’s no easier way to enjoy photos, music, or downloadable movies.”

The portable ScreenPlay TV Link includes a remote control for easy navigation as well as a full complement of advanced video outputs for displaying high-resolution digital photos and video.

“We’ve created a product that’s fun, functional and so affordable that it should be a ‘must have’ for anyone enjoying digital content today,” said Bryner. “Using the ScreenPlay TV link to bridge the computer world of digital media files with the home theater world of high definition television is a natural evolution of the family room and a great new option in home entertainment.”

Iomega ScreenPlay TV Link Technical Description

The ScreenPlay TV Link plays stored media content from USB storage media such as flash drives, hard drives (NTFS or FAT32), and Iomega REV drives.

Video connection options include HDMI, component and composite video, and a SCART adapter for use in international markets. Audio connection options include composite RCA and coaxial S/PDIF. Using the HDMI or component outputs, the user can choose video settings from 480p/720p/1080i (720p and 1080i are achieved through upscaling). Supported media formats include MP3, AC3 (Dolby(R) Digital Encoding), WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB), MPEG-4 (AVI/DiVX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x/XViD) and JPEG.

The ScreenPlay TV Link measures just 3.26″x3.07″x0.78″ and weighs less than 4 ounces, giving this multimedia powerhouse roughly the same dimensions as a drink coaster.

System Requirements

The Iomega (R) ScreenPlay(TM) TV Link is compatible with standard televisions and with high-definition televisions (720p and 1080i playback is achieved through upscaling).

Availability

The Iomega (R) ScreenPlay(TM) TV Link is now available in the Americas for $99.95. (Price is U.S. suggested retail.) The Iomega ScreenPlay TV Link will be available in Europe later this month for 79 euro.

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• Emptiness is sublime - There are no connections

A complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the “Doomsday Clock” – which charts the USA’s tension with the Soviet Union – is permanently set at five minutes to midnight.

When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes.

As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion – a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers – Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity…but who is watching the watchmen?

The film based on the graphic novel is being directed by Zack Snyder (300) and produced by Lawrence Gordon (Die Hard), Lloyd Levin (United 93) and Deborah Snyder (300), with Herbert W. Gains serving as executive producer.

Playing the film’s core group of “masks,” the masked adventurers at the center of the story, are Malin Akerman (upcoming The Heartbreak Kid) as Laurie Juspeczyk, aka Silk Spectre; Billy Crudup (The Good Shepherd) as Jon Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan; Matthew Goode (Match Point) as Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias; Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children) as Walter Kovacs, aka Rorschach; Jeffrey Dean Morgan (TV’s Grey’s Anatomy) as Edward Blake, aka the Comedian; and Patrick Wilson (Little Children) as Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl.

Watchmen was originally published by DC comics as a 12-comic book series between 1986 and 1987, before subsequently being collected into a trade paperback. It is the only graphic novel to win the prestigious Hugo Award or to be named among Time magazine’s “100 Best English Language Novels from 1923 to the Present.”

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• July 30, 2008 — The Dark Knight and Beyond - What’s Next For Bruce Wayne and Christopher Nolan?
• July 29, 2008 — “The Dark Knight” Soars to the Top of the UK Box Office
• July 22, 2008 — Batman Between - The Dark Knight Returns to Chicago
• July 19, 2008 — ‘Dark Knight’ sets box office record with $66.4M
• July 16, 2008 — Glu’s Launch of The Dark Knight™ on Mobile Phones Worldwide

To help foreign reporters overcome the Chinese government’s media censorship and shed light on closely shielded rights violations, the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) released today a detailed guide to detention facilities located within miles of Olympic venues and known for their severe abuse of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience.

The 22 page guide, entitled “Torture Outside the Olympic Village: A Guide to China’s Labor Camps,” is available online at http://www.humanrightstorch.org/news/guide-to-olympic-village-labor-camps/ or PDF at: http://xiuxian.no-/ ip.info/rescue/upload_images/CIPFG_Labour_Camp_Guide_EMAIL.pdf (Due to the length of this URL, please copy and paste into your web browser)

“Many of us have heard stories about China’s gulags, but when you discover how close some of these hellholes are to Olympic venues, it’s sickening,” says Clive Ansley, China Monitor for Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada and North American President of CIPFG.

The guide details seven detention facilities, in or near Beijing, Qingdao, Shanghai, Tianjin, Qinhuangdao, and Shenyang, and includes:

– Map: A map showing the location of the facility, the location of the closest Olympic venue, and English-language directions to the camp from the nearest airport and train station.

– Description of facility: A photo, general description of the facility, details of its prisoner population, overall conditions, and the name, address and phone number (if available).

– Products and show tours: Products known to have been manufactured at the site and details of prior show tours to the facility, when relevant.

– Individual cases: Brief individual case summaries of current and former prisoners of conscience, the abuse they have suffered in custody, and whether they are available for interview.

“We hope this guide will draw international attention to the innocent individuals held at these locations,” says Ansley. “It should particularly aid journalists in investigating the plight of adherents of the Falun Gong, who make up a huge percentage of labor camp detainees and have suffered a brutal campaign of persecution for nine years.”

Note on censorship: Contrary to promises of “complete freedom” for foreign media, the Chinese authorities have blocked access to Falun Gong-related websites from the Olympic Media Center in a deal struck with the International Olympic Committee. To circumvent such censorship, CIPFG suggests the following measures:

– Request that colleagues outside China e-mail or fax a copy of the guide to you inside China.

– Use circumvention tools available at http://www.internetfreedom.org/ to access the guide despite the censorship.

– Once you have obtained a copy, please re-post it on other websites, blogs, etc. By creating multiple copies on the web, the Chinese government’s blocking of the original becomes obsolete.

The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) was established to unite international human rights organizations, legal experts, medical institutions, NGOs and government representatives around the world to participate in and independent investigation of the Chinese communist regime’s imprisonment, torture, killing, and organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. Since August 2007, it has also sponsored the Human Rights Torch Relay, a global grassroots campaign to raise awareness of, and stop, the Chinese communist regime’s human rights crimes against all victimized groups prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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• Emptiness is sublime - There are no connections

Connate Entries

• July 30, 2008 — The Joker - The Dark Knight
• July 30, 2008 — Alfred Pennyworth - The Dark Knight
• July 30, 2008 — The Dark Knight and Beyond - What’s Next For Bruce Wayne and Christopher Nolan?
• July 29, 2008 — “The Dark Knight” Soars to the Top of the UK Box Office
• July 22, 2008 — Batman Between - The Dark Knight Returns to Chicago

Connate Entries

• July 30, 2008 — The Joker - The Dark Knight
• July 30, 2008 — Alfred Pennyworth - The Dark Knight
• July 30, 2008 — The Dark Knight and Beyond - What’s Next For Bruce Wayne and Christopher Nolan?
• July 29, 2008 — “The Dark Knight” Soars to the Top of the UK Box Office
• July 22, 2008 — Batman Between - The Dark Knight Returns to Chicago

Connate Entries

• July 30, 2008 — The Joker - The Dark Knight
• July 30, 2008 — The Joker - The Dark Knight
• July 30, 2008 — The Dark Knight and Beyond - What’s Next For Bruce Wayne and Christopher Nolan?
• July 29, 2008 — “The Dark Knight” Soars to the Top of the UK Box Office
• July 22, 2008 — Batman Between - The Dark Knight Returns to Chicago

As a explosive, dark, roller coaster of a movie it has succeeded probably to the level that Chris Nolan intended. But how to top it? What is next for Syncopy Productions and the team?

Syncopy are already known to have two major projects in the pipeline with Number Six and the Exec.

Number Six is a cinema based retake on the the popular TV show from the 1960 - The Prisoner which starred Patrick McGoohan. David and Janet Peoples (Twelve Monkeys) will be writing and it’s expected that Universal will be looking for the feature to go into production now that both The Prestige and The Dark Knight are out of the way. Expect to see Nolan’s trademark story telling skills on full show in Number Six when it hits the screens and since the original TV series was a convoluted, complicated and sometimes confusing affair Nolan is perfectly placed to bring some action and clarity to the production.

The Exec is a different kettle of fish. Based on Doug Miers futuristic comic it is the story of big business where Corporate Warfare is taken seriously and literally. Handshakes and AK 47 go together to make a manager’s tool kit to die for. This project has been in the pipeline for a while (it was rumoured that it would be made straight after The Prestige but we guess The Dark Knight got in the way of Jonathan Nolan’s adaptation or the comic).

So two films in the pipe. One a big cult TV series spin off and another comic book adaptation. Nolan’s skill at taking the seeds of other’s stories and bringing them to glorious fruition is well known but we hope that there will be an original story coming up soon. Something we haven’t read or seen before and with the impact of The Following and Memento. Not that we don’t like what we are seeing at the moment of course - it’s all great.

And speaking of great….. what about the next Batman film?

Batman Begins and The Dark Knight have taken our hero through his evolution and initial trials so what’s next for Bruce Wayne?

Those who have read Batman: Year One, Killing Joke, Long Halloween and Dark Knight Returns will know how close the Nolans and Goyer have kept to the world that Batman inhabits. A world that has the darkness of an Alan Moore storyline coupled with the gritty roughness of Frank Miller all depicted through the lens of Bill Sienkiewicz.

Nolan likes Gotham, he like the complex society, the police with their divisions, the mobs and gangs, the subway and the elevated railway, the ferry and the rivalry with Pettsburgh and of course, the duality of Bruce Wayne and The Batman.

One thing is for sure, we are not going to get a whiz bang action fest with no depth or subtlety (Batman and Robin anyone?). We are also not going to be going darker and deeper - it would be a joy to see Nolan’s take on Arkham Asylum - Grant Morrison’s take on Gotham and way the way it screws up everyone.

At this stage we think:

The Riddler

Two Face back once again

Dick Grayson

No Joker - just imagine - if there was a posthumous Oscar for Ledger, which actor would then want to step into the role (sit down Mr Day-Lewis)

Christopher Nolan will direct the third but no more.

(The feeling in the offices here is that Nolan will want the franchise to earn a billion under his helming. This would put him in the Billion Dollar Club - alongside Spielberg, Lucas, Silver, Jackson and Cameron amongst others. Not that he’d like to be in such an exclusive club, just because he’d like to prove that he can do it and the knock on effect will be that he can pretty much write his own cheque and make the films of his choice from now onwards.)

Take a look at Dark Victory if you can find it, along with Arkham Asylum, Killing Joke, The Jokers Five Way Revenge (look for reprints) and The Dark Knight Returns. They all bear a good looking at to get personal inspiration on waht we hope will be the topper for the trilogy and set the standard that says Superhero movies do not mean cash cow, it means depth and storytelling.

Connate Entries

• July 29, 2008 — “The Dark Knight” Soars to the Top of the UK Box Office
• July 22, 2008 — Batman Between - The Dark Knight Returns to Chicago
• July 19, 2008 — ‘Dark Knight’ sets box office record with $66.4M
• July 16, 2008 — Glu’s Launch of The Dark Knight™ on Mobile Phones Worldwide
• July 15, 2008 — HBO - Dark Knight First Look

Smashing box office records in the US, Christopher Nolan’s second Batman film, The Dark Knight triumphed at the UK box office with an opening of GBP11,191,824.

The box office hit entered the record books in the UK with The Dark Knight IMAX release taking a breathtaking GBP307,332 from 5 IMAX cinemas.

The follow-up to “Batman Begins,” reunites Nolan with many of his renowned production team and actors including Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Heath Ledger’s extraordinary performance has gained critical acclaim across the globe.

Josh Berger, President and Managing Director of Warner Bros UK commented:

“We knew The Dark Knight was a fantastic film, and it is wonderful that both the critics and the cinema-going public here in the UK feel the same way. This weekend’s clear number one opening which received critical and commercial box office success is testament to the outstanding filmmaking and cast of this stunning film, much of which was shot here in Britain. We look forward to a long and successful run this summer.”

Connate Entries

• July 30, 2008 — The Dark Knight and Beyond - What’s Next For Bruce Wayne and Christopher Nolan?
• July 22, 2008 — Batman Between - The Dark Knight Returns to Chicago
• July 19, 2008 — ‘Dark Knight’ sets box office record with $66.4M
• July 16, 2008 — Glu’s Launch of The Dark Knight™ on Mobile Phones Worldwide
• July 15, 2008 — HBO - Dark Knight First Look

Check out Ed Strong’s track Free DPM at the end of the post

UPDATE - UPDATE

- Andrew Gillman, 25, from St John’s Hill, Battersea: 2 years custodial sentence.
- Ziggy Grudzinskas, 25, from Ulundi Road, Blackheath: 18 months custodial sentence.
- Slav Zinoviev, 25, from St John’s Hill, Battersea: 18 months custodial sentence.
- Paul Andrew Stewart, 26, from Manor Lane, Lewisham: 18 months custodial sentence.
- Matthew Pease, 24, from Manor Lane, Lewisham: 15 months custodial sentence

From Indymedia

As members of graffiti crew DPM start a prison sentence, pictures of their work are to be exhibited in a New York art gallery. So are they vandals or frustrated artists? KATE MEAD reports.

EIGHT men were sentenced on Friday (11) in what was one of the biggest prosecutions for graffiti the UK has ever seen.
All admitted conspiracy to cause criminal damage as part of a graffiti crew called DPM that tagged and painted trains and stations costing rail networks an estimated £1 million.
Detective Sergeant Michael Field, who led the inquiry described it as a “major crime on a vast scale”.
“Graffiti is an attack on the community and the environment,” he said. “It is anti-social and destructive and it’s a crime we take very seriously.”
Indeed, the courts took it just as seriously, with the two year investigation culminating in sentencing five members of the group to a total of eight years in prison.
On the day that the court opened its case against DPM, London’s Tate Modern was installing massive pieces of street art on the outside of their South Bank gallery to celebrate artists who made their names by ‘decorating’ streets and buildings in much the same kind of illegal activity.
Hundreds of thousands of visitors have already filed past the installations, admiring work by Blu, an Italian graffiti artist who uses buildings as “sheets of paper”, JR who illegally painted his initials around the streets of Paris and Brazilian Nunca who started tagging at the age of 12.
One member of the Tate’s audience was Ziggy Grudzinskas, a 25-year-old art student and member of DPM who alongside his friends admitted the conspiracy charge between 2004 and 2006.
“I stood there completely baffled for about an hour outside of the Tate to tell you the truth,” he said before he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment at Southwark Crown Court.
“I quite like it but it really confused me a lot. I know that half, if not all of the graffiti that is on the Tate Modern building is done by people who do illegal graffiti or have done illegal graffiti and have made their name doing that.
“It is like they’re saying ‘yeah we’re on the edge of the law yet we’re being shown by one of the biggest galleries in London.’ And it’s sponsored by Nissan!”
According to Andrew Gillman, the 25-year-old so-called ‘main mover’ of DPM who was jailed for two years, the exhibition just highlights the mixed messages surrounding graffiti.
He said: “If you can make money from illegal graff or a gallery does it off your back, then it’s okay.
“It’s in advertising and fashion as well. There is graffiti on trainers, hoodies, hats, t-shirts, everything you can think of. People want to wear illegal graffiti that is on the trains and the street.
“How come you can wear it and buy it, use it in advertising, marketing, music and every album cover and as soon as you do it you’re f***ed, so where’s the message? If they don’t want people to be involved, don’t popularise it.”
Graffiti is so popular in fact that not only has it made its way onto the catwalk but it is now been propelled from the street into (or onto) galleries.
The Tate’s Street Art exhibition is the first major display of its kind and since its launch last month has been accompanied by street tours, workshops and even talks with professional street artists like Rough and Blek Le Rat.
One, on August 15, entitled Graffiti – Utopia or a bit boring? will see critics Ossian War and Ben Lewis debating whether graffiti is “glorified vandalism or a legitimate cultural movement”.
Curator of the Street Art exhibition, Cedar Lewinsohn said: “I hope that we are there to challenge what people think about street art.”
Despite the widening debate on the value of urban art, courts are still cracking down on the artists, branding them malicious vandals.
Just weeks before DPM was sentenced, Gary ‘Daze’ Shields was given leave to appeal after being sentenced to 28 months behind bars.
On his interim release, he told the Glasgow Evening Times: “I totally understand what I did was vandalism, but I like the artistic side of it.”
Lewinsohn said: “There may be some mixed messages in society. I think the main thing is that it’s a real culture difference. In some countries it is legal and street art is more accepted. Brazil for instance is more relaxed about it. But in parts of Australia, they are like the UK and people really hate graffiti and tags on vans and trains. But in Melbourne, van drivers compete with each other as to whose is more decorated.”
Lewinsohn’s book, Street Art – The Graffiti Revolution, that accompanies his exhibition, charts the history of urban art from New York subway graffiti in the 1980s to today’s mainstream artists like Banksy, whose work is now auctioned for thousands of pounds.
Lewisohn said: “Every artist in the Street Art exhibition has made that leap into galleries, but it’s not a big leap. Although their art is available to see in the street, they also do a lot of studio practise beforehand, that is one of the main differences between street art and graffiti. Most of the artists have a studio and have gone to art school and have had their work in an exhibition.”
DPM, it seems have already made that leap despite their conviction.
An exhibition is to be launched a week after their sentence on July 19 in Soho, New York hosted by artist Elura Emerald and Hip Hop promotional company End Of The Weak.
Called DPM – Exhibit A the exhibition in the loft space in 440 Broadway in Grand Street will display large photographs of their work plus copies of their charge sheets questioning whether the young men are criminals or, in fact, artists.
Emerald said: “The exhibition in NYC is to give the recognition to the artists that I believe they deserve and to accentuate the fact that they are not at all criminals, and do not at all deserve to be put in jail for their creative force.
“I want to give them a platform to exhibit their art on a “legal” basis, and to spread the message that artists who paint on the street are merely expressing themselves through an artistic channel, it is not hurting anyone.
“I do not believe the creators of art should be punished, but appreciated and celebrated.”
End of the Weak’s Padraic Mccroudi, who last summer hosted an event in association with the Tate Modern called the Art of Freestyle, said: “Jailing artists for criminal damage, although it may seem to be a deterrent, does in fact only serve to gain kudos and notoriety for the artist.
“This in turn means that the criminal justice system in this case is fundamentally flawed and counter productive.
“It’s important that the criminal justice system, the courts, the judges, the police and the greater community understand this and that if they ever really want address graffiti as an issue then we all need to explore avenues together, avenues other than jail time.”
Many local authorities are already exploring these avenues funding street art workshops to connect with young people.
In fact, Greenwich council and Tower Hamlets commissioned DPM’s Grudzinskas and Jack Binnie, who was handed a 12 month suspended sentence, to lead summer workshops as Street Art Tutors for young and vulnerable people.
According to the references each council sent to the court to support Binney and Grudzinskas, their work with young people was “positive” and “inspirational”.
A source at Greenwich council said: “They showed the young people who aren’t able to do reading or writing that they can use artistic ways to express themselves.
“Their skills are obviously needed, it doesn’t make sense to send him down, we should use it.”
Matthew Pease, 24, and Paul Stewart, 26, also of DPM who were sentenced to 18 months and 15 months respectively, took part in a five-day workshop in the Czech Republic to work with disadvantaged youths as part of an event organised by music and art organisation Community Music (CM).
Pease said: “For the first day we got them sketching to see what they could do and tried to teach them a few different things about how to go about building up a piece.
“Gradually, through the week, we were getting them painting. By the end of the week, every single person in the class had a quite sizeable piece and a finished product.”
One member of DPM in particular made the headlines when he was hired by the BBC to tag the set of the country’s best loved soap while he was on bail.
Gillman, who worked full-time at his family-run funeral service, was commissioned to tag Tanya Branning’s ‘Booty’ nail salon in EastEnders and other parts of Albert Square.
He said: “They knew I was a writer. I said to them, the tags I am putting up, are the tags I see in London so it’s realistic. And they said ‘great, realistic tags, just what we want.’
“And they said ‘maybe you could come up with three tags for EastEnders, you know, three writers that are just around the square, you could put up East 13 crew, one could be Rocky!’ They were getting really into it.”
But DPM have vowed never to pick up a spray can again since their conviction but their friendship will clearly remain.
“It was more about friendship than graffiti,” Gillman said. “We knew what we were doing was wrong but when you are painting a piece, all your worries just fall away.
“Trains were like a moving canvass, it goes underground it goes over bridges. And if you’re standing there amongst the crowd and you see everyone looking at it, it gives you a huge feeling of gratification.
“We tried to create something that was artistic, made people look, something that’s thought provoking, makes commuters look up from their paper.
“But I don’t think I could call myself an artist, I’m a vandal, I’ve admitted that.”
DPM’s “brains of the group”, Slav Zinoviev, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison had a different opinion.
The 25-year-old, who recently graduated with a Masters in Information Technology, said: “People are not really educated on the whole graffiti thing. But now that Banksy has come around, people see it as one of the purest art forms, which it essentially is. And so to that extent I would say that I was an artist.
“To train writers, tags are actually much more valuable to the graffiti community than a Banksy painting is.
“We were all brought together by some sort of passion and this is one of the things that has created stronger bonds between us, and perhaps given us richer memories than the average person possesses.”
Sentencing, Judge Christopher Hardy said he had to acknowledge that some of the graffiti written by DPM showed “considerable talent”.
He added: “It seems to be on the way to being recognised as a valued form of art.
“But in this case, it has been sprayed all over property without their permission, that’s simply vandalism.”
Gillman, 25, of St John’s Hill, Battersea was jailed for two years; Zinoviev, of the same address, Grudzinskas, 25, and Stewart of Manor Lane, Lewisham received 18 months in jail; Pease of Manor Lane, Lewisham was jailed for 15 months.
As they were led to the cells, members of a packed public gallery shouted, ‘We love you boys, stay strong’ and applauded them until they were out of sight.
Other members of DPM, Matthew Tanti, 23, of Holmsbury Court, Upper Tooting Road, SW11 and Jack Binnie, 26, of Adelaide Avenue, Ladywell, were each sentenced to 12 months suspended for 12 months.
Alex McClelland, 24, of Croxted Road, West Dulwich was sentenced to nine months suspended for 12 months.
Outside court, Ziggy’s father Professor Gedis Grudzinskas said: “Ziggy has been sent to prison for 18 months having pleaded guilty to a crime not involving violence, terrorism, knives or drugs but vandalising public property.
“British Transport Police declined to arrest him and others when they knew they were breaking the law, presumably to develop their case for this show trial costing the tax payer thousands and thousands of pounds unnecessarily.
“Now they have sent him to jail instead of getting him to do community service for example to clean and help restore the trains and stations.
“This is not justice is it?”

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“The Dark Knight Project” chronicles the adventures of Gotham Midtown students Heather Nolan and Mikey Bale, played by Allyssa O’Donnell and David Sanchez. Intent on being the first people in Gotham City to capture actual video of the Dark Knight in action for a school project, they set out with their video camera to interview people on the streets, witness the evacuation of a city block by police in the middle of a bomb scare, and ultimately encounter Batman in the middle of a back alley break-in where he saves both high schoolers from a menacing group of thugs working for the Joker.

“I always wanted to shoot a Batman story since he is one of my favorite characters, and since I doubt Warner Brothers will ever ask me to direct one for them, I decided to use the resources I have available and do one myself” muses Chicago filmmaker Jerry Vasilatos, who wrote the story and also produced and directed it.

“Everytime I am downtown, I am reminded of the fact that we live in virtual Gotham City” Vasilatos continues. “Shooting an HD movie and emulating the same universe that Christopher Nolan created for “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” allowed us to brand our short film with a certain authenticity and production value that we hope will have people thinking our story really could have taken place between the feature films.”

Assembling a talented group of filmmakers and cast from Chicago’s creative community, Vasilatos teamed up with co-producer Zoe Triantafillou and director of photography J. Trevi Albin to produce the fan film on a shoestring budget, relying on the downtown locations and authentic costuming to bring the short story to life.

“This is a complete labor of love” Vasilatos says. “We’re not selling it, we’re not making any money off it… I just wanted the opportunity to shoot a short Batman story with high production values and share it with other fans in tribute to the character as well as director Christopher Nolan, who I think has finally nailed the type of “Batman” movie fans have always wanted to see on the big screen.”

Vasilatos’ crew shot 5 days in using several downtown locations, leading to a climactic alley fight between Batman (being played by Chicago actor Chris Nendick), and the Joker’s thugs filmed behind the Fine Arts building off Van Buren.

Vasilatos also created a Myspace page for his two fictional characters Heather and Mikey, where they have been blogging about their efforts to capture video of Batman to visitors. Their Myspace page is at: http://www.myspace.com/darkknightproject. The actual short film was released online July 14th, 2008 at: http://www.darkknightproject.com - 4 days before “The Dark Knight” hit theaters. The website has already had over 2500 viewer in its first week.

Vasilatos, who returned to the Chicago production scene last spring, spent 10 years in Los Angeles working as a producer, director and editor with clients including Universal Home Video, The Reelz Channel and Fox Atomic. His previous producing and directing efforts include the nationally syndicated entertainment news show “Made in Hollywood”, and the Chicago Christmas movie “Solstice” which was originally broadcast on Lifetime Television and is now enjoying a second life on Amazon.com under it’s new title “The Night Before Christmas”. He also recently served as an editor on four episodes of the popular History Channel series “Gangland” during it’s first and second season.

To view “The Dark Knight Project” or to contact the filmmakers, please visit: The Dark Knight Project (http://www.darkknightproject.com).

Connate Entries

• July 30, 2008 — The Dark Knight and Beyond - What’s Next For Bruce Wayne and Christopher Nolan?
• July 29, 2008 — “The Dark Knight” Soars to the Top of the UK Box Office
• July 19, 2008 — ‘Dark Knight’ sets box office record with $66.4M
• July 16, 2008 — Glu’s Launch of The Dark Knight™ on Mobile Phones Worldwide
• July 15, 2008 — HBO - Dark Knight First Look