The upcoming Halo movie got itself a new director recently, but lost a script. My hit-sensing senses are still wavering. There’s no reason why a Halo film shouldn’t rock to high heaven but people screw things up all the time. Let’s look at the history of the project.

Way back in June last year, Microsoft sent out scripts to studios, carried by men in Master Chief outfits. Classy, huh? Many folk were not keen on the script, but Universal picked it up anyway. It’s unclear whether there were giant spiders in it but you can probably find the script online. I mean, I could have, but I found a bunch of links already. What do you want from me? The Wikipedia page on all this is way more informative than this post. Why do I even bother?

Ahem. Sorry. Sometimes it just gets to me, y’know?

Anyhow, things got way way way cooler when it was announched that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh would be producing. I’ve gone on record against their insatiable addiction to slow motion and unhealthy Warg obsession. But hey, a bit of slow mo would suit Halo to the ground. Also, Weta will be doing the effects. Say “From the Makers of The Lord of the Rings,” push the adventure aspects and some cool shots from Weta and you’ve got a hit.

But then they go and change the script, in the sense that they drop the old one and get someone to write a new one. This could be an improvement, but I get nervous when scripts get switched and sorted on big films. Before you know it you’ve got seven people writing it and touch-ups from Joss Whedon and Tom Stoppard. Where’s your artistic vision then? Hmmmm?

And today the director was announced. His name is Neill Blomkamp and he hasn’t actually made a motion picture before, BUT amongst other things he made a short sci-fi film called Alive in Joburg, which you can download here (77mb). It’s pretty cute and has quite a Halo-ish sensibility about how it treats its aliens. He also made that cool Citroen commercial with the dancing transforming car. So this is probably good news too. For one thing, he’s not Uwe Boll.

The way I see it, this film has the chance to be the best sci-fi action film in the history of everything. No pressure.

Oh, and Denzel might be the Chief.

Oooooh. Ooooh er. Oh my.

Boy, am I glad I didn’t stay up for that. Boring! Where’s the iMiniProBookMacChat? WHERE? What have you done with it? And don’t even get me started on the ONE TRUE VIDEO IPOD. I still believe, and it says in the Book of iPod that those who believe shall receive an OTVI on the day of reckoning.

I should probably start making sense — Apple had its WWDC last night. Rumours abounded as they always do but aside from introducing the chunkiest Mac ever not a lot happened. I was hoping for some new Finder goodness in their new OS, Leopard, but nothing. They’re probably just holding back, the teases. There’s still half a year until it comes out. Whether it beats Vista remains to be seen.

What I loved was Time Machine, the new backup application. Specify specific folders for backing up, and then you can browse them like this:

Just drag to and fro and travel back and forwards in time. Awesome. Just be sure you don’t cross your own time stream. Jobs was unclear as to the specifics but it seems that if you meet yourself browsing your backup from the future then it have catastrophic implications for the fabric of space-time, or at the very least cause a kernel panic. Disappointingly, you can’t change your computer’s history — unless you were meant to, in which case, for god’s sake, don’t not change it.

Having attempted to switch to iChat the other day, the awesome improvements to that app were a little more exciting than they otherwise would have been. Screen sharing, presentations, tabs, all the IM networks…

Huh. That makes all the work I just did connecting Gtalk to ICQ, MSN and AIM seem a bit useless. But you kids at home can do it, and talk to all your contacts even in the little gmail sidebar. All you need to do is to give your password to any one of hundreds of obscure jabber servers. It’s unclear as yet whether iChat can voice chat to PC users using Gtalk but I’m hopeful.

If you want more detail on Steve Jobs’ keynote, then go to the people you know you can trust.