The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS) issued a press release and call for entries for this year’s Machinima Film Festival – submissions began to be accepted a week ago, with a final deadline of October 6. Get cracking! (This press release was originally posted on their website on July 11, but we just got a copy today. Sorry for the delay!)

In an effort to help the free-market economy keep the money flowing, Bungie has updated their Store with some new merchandise. A carabiner keychain, and four new shirts. Of particular note is a very old-school Marathon shirt, faithfully re-created by Shishka. Nice. Check it all out!

The ‘Video Games are Evil’ concept has blown up again in recent weeks, spurred primarily by the release of the Hot Coffee mod for Grand Theft Auto (google it if you don’t know what it is) – and the whole ‘Violence in Video Games’ controversy has been reopened because of it. I haven’t written much on the subject (though I’ve been toying with some blog posts, if life ever slows down enough to think coherently about them), but that hasn’t stopped people from sending in links. One came in this morning that I found to be a great read, and a summary of most of the arguments I’ve been making for a while now. (I’m not claiming ownership on these arguments – LOTS of rational people have been arguing these points – I’m just saying that this one sums up my views pretty well.) Steven Johnson (we mentioned him a couple of months ago) has written an opinion piece in today’s LA Times; it’s an open letter to Hillary Clinton, discussing the Senator’s recent call for a study on the effects of video games on our youth. He makes some solid points – and mentions Halo 2 a couple of times, which gets him on the front page here. Go read! (Thanks, Christopher Lyons.)

A couple of days ago, we mentioned that the Halogen website would be posting lots of new info over the next couple of weeks – the updates started today; there’s a new website online, Flash-based, and though it’s not finished yet, I guess they’ll be adding to it as time goes on. (It’s actually quite buggy if you’re not on a PC running IE – or at least that’s my experience. But hey – when one browser on one platform has 75% of the marketshare, why bother designing for anyone else?) Thanks to Logical2u, via email, and MatX, on our forum, for noticing.

Z, from Halo2Forum.com, dropped us a note about a couple of montages they’re hosting – Hellzfire’s First Montage is 56 mb, WMP9 format, and full of sticks and noscope snipes. Titan VIII’s 3rd Montage is 95.7 mb, WMP9 format, and of course has its share of sticks and snipes, but seems to focus on the Battle Rifle. There is plenty of room for comments in the above-linked threads.

jezek, of Haloz Productions, submitted a video called ‘Fire Coming out of a Monkey’s Head’, which tells the story of the Gorillaz song using the Halo engine. The MPRRS reviewers liked it (though a few thought it didn’t have enough action in it – I think we’re getting jaded) – it’s nicely laid out. Give it a watch! WMP9 format (26.3 mb) or QuickTime format (26.6 mb).

Wow. As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Bungie was up for 7 honors this year in G4TV’s G-Phoria awards – the ceremony took place last night (though it won’t be aired for another couple of weeks), and Bungie swept all 7 of those categories! Nice! Gamespot’s got an article with more details – thanks to altodarknight, who was beaten for the heads-up by Google News Alerts by only a couple of hours.

MLGPro.com will be ramping up the coverage, both written and via their Video on Demand service, for this weekend’s Halo Nationals 2 event in Philadelphia. You can read all the details on this page – but remember, Video on Demand is only available to Windows XP users. Thanks, 3Suns.

Wow, timing – we just got mail from Sid Garrand, of Nightmare Armor; there’s news of their work in 2 upcoming movies (2006 and 2007, he says… intriguing!), but also new shots of their armor [deleted] Update: I’m not sure I would have posted these pictures had I known that Nightmare Armor has been served with a Cease and Desist order from Microsoft, with various legal followup pending, for unauthorized use of Halo intellectual property. Not sure how this is going to play out – but it sure seems like there might be problems! Update 2: Nice. Now I’ve been threatened with legal action from Sid for putting up this post. The pics are gone – I guess this is the last time Nightmare Armor will be mentioned here. Folks, remember – we’re a fansite. We’re really not interested in getting in the middle of your legal troubles… if the news you send is is going to cause you (or us) headaches, do us both a favor and don’t send it.

Swing by Briar’s Armor for some new shots of chest plates – brown, blue, red. Lookin’ great!

Captain Spark dropped off another 29 dialogue snippets today – brings the total up to 1532 in our Dialogue Databank, 83% of which were first submitted by him. Wow! There are some pretty hilarious ones in here – they’re all Stacker, and they were all collected with the IWHBYD skull. You can also grab these as a unit from his (new) website.

Wow… this is one of the odder Halo-related sites I’ve run across. Jim Sinicropi pointed us to WannaPartyUp.com, a site devoted to collecting Halo 2 postgame lobby conversations from Xbox Live. They range from run-of-the-mill insultfests to really bizarre comments. Everything’s in mp3 format.

A new machinima series kicked off recently – so far, there are only ‘test’ vids for download, but they’re worth keeping an eye on. Go take a look at Pumahog.com for another Red vs Blue-inspired team!

Mintz wrote to point out that his Halo for PSP site has been updated again – newest content includes the Auto-Update article from B.net and the Str8 Rippin interview from MLGPro.com.

Sigourney Weaver’s lawyers called – they’re suing One One Se7en for defamation of title.

Silent_Pea posted a series of pics created with Jet Set Radio Future’s graffiti creator – it’s impressive what you can do in-game, with just an Xbox controller to draw with! (I added the local jpegs so that if somebody stumbles on this post in a year or two, and the larger photobucket pngs are gone, they can still see the work.)

TheGhost, amused by the fact that folks thought he was faking, created another small clip of his MC Ballerina – this one’s on Sidewinder, and has shadows turned on. Available in WMP9 (3.3 mb) or QuickTime (2.5 mb). Very graceful!

Overswarm has sent along another batch of articles for his No So Common Sense strategy guide; you’ll find pieces on Offensive and Defensive Strategy in the Articles and Extras section, as well as a new article on Movement Techniques in the Advanced Combat Techniques section. He’s also added several questions (and answers) to the FAQ. Go read!

Another MPRRS passer – Purebredbrute, of Halovids.com, submitted Episode 9 of the War series; the reviewers loved it. He wanted feedback, rather than hosting – so we’ll point you to his Videos page; you can start at the beginning, or you can jump in where most of us did. (The series to date eats up almost 250 mb… so if you decide to watch the whole thing, be gentle and do it over time.) Episodes are all in WMP9 format, and range in size from 13 to 60 mb (Episode 9 is 20 mb).