This seems to be a movie day – I guess you should settle in for some real watching. Next up is a movie that was announced at High Impact Halo a week ago; some folks loved it, some didn’t. ‘Rise of the Elites Episode 2’ was submitted to the MPRRS, and failed – by the slimmest of margins. Those reviewers have been failing EVERYTHING lately, though, so I’m inclined to cut the film a little slack… I grabbed a copy and watched. It’s quite long (nearly 20 minutes), and an awful lot of work has been put into it. Cinematography is quite good. The plot is a little weak, and a few parts are slow… but overall, it’s well done, and worth watching. (Although some reviewers didn’t like the fact that all voices were done by the same person, I have to say that the voices are understandable and clear, which forgives a LOT of sins.) WMP9 version is 45.2 mb, QuickTime version is 44.1 mb. Get out the popcorn!

AnubisUK sends word that The Squadron, Episode 11 has been posted on their website. Because of bandwidth issues, they’re looking for a new home – and for that reason aren’t interested in hosting QuickTime versions until after the move, it seems, so you can grab the QT from us (27.8 mb). (WMP9 is available from their site.) Humans are still on the run, though Durge is called on the carpet for how long it’s taking to exterminate them. Go watch; this series continues to evolve, and filmmaking qualities are quite good.

Yesterday, while I was stuffing myself past all rationality, Ducain sent me a link to this newspost at High Impact Halo – SneakyPete has recreated a classic Halo trick… with s7yle. 3 Warthogs, a Banshee, and the Master Chief on top of the lightbridge tower… in single player. To keep you from having to deal with Putfile or Picapic (and to offer QuickTime users an alternative), we’re hosting both the original hi-res WMP9 (20.2 mb) and a re-encoded QuickTime (19.9 mb). This one’s pretty nice!

Yesterday’s User Friendly webcomic was vaguely Halo-related – if you don’t read the strip, go back a few for this to make more sense. Thanks, SteelGaribaldi.

This submission (47K) blew me away – this plasma sword letter opener was made by Paul S., by hand. His words:

Made by hand from 2mm anodised aluminium, about 150mm long and partly polished for a two-tone look. The handle design was modified for two-finger use (held between finger & thumb) and the inner edges of the blades are sharpened to cut through envelopes, although not too sharp, as it apparently got used as a hairclip on occasion. I still have the template if anyone wants to make one for themselves.

(This was uploaded to us about a month ago – I sincerely apologize for the delay.) Paul – if you’re reading this, we’d LOVE to host the template.

Remember when I said that yesterday, I cleaned out the uploads folder after a two-month neglect period? I wanted to remind people what NOT to use that folder for. There were 267 items in there when I started downloading. There were the few dozen misc art pieces I posted yesterday, plus another dozen or so wallpapers (coming soon). There were half a dozen cool items (we’ll get to those)… and the rest was stuff that shouldn’t be uploaded here. There were DOZENS of movies, even though the uploads page says not to use it for movies (in big red letters). There were wallpapers totally unrelated to Halo. There was porn. There were files from our own servers, reuploaded (I’m guessing by people who were curious about how the upload process works). There was fan fiction. Amazing. Anyway, before I go get buried in the minutae of preparing for 18 bird-eating guests, I thought I’d toss a couple of things out there. We got this picture (80K), from William Bush – took him a week to make this for his son for Halloween (yes, it’s been sitting for a while). Pretty cool! More soon.

Another Halo tourney to be played out on a movie screen is happening in Ohio this Saturday – XKade will host a Halo 2 tourney at the Tiffin Mall in Tiffin, OH. $50 per person, prizes to be announced. More info is in the link.

Happy Thanksgiving! We may have some trouble here – we normally cook our turkey outside, on the grill, and it’s… um, rather white right now – but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, there’s a bit of Halo news. MLGPro.com has posted a primer for Halo50k4, their huge Atlanta tourney coming up this weekend, and there’s some good stuff in there. There’s an intro to the new bracket system… and a new feature – the MLG Betting Table. (It’s not real money, don’t worry.) Fun stuff! Thanks, 3Suns.

Once again, I’ve let an absurdly long period of time go by without cleaning out our uploads queue. There will likely be more content later today or later this week – but for now, we’ve got several dozen images for you in the Miscellaneous Art section. Paul Davies continues to astound me, but there are plenty of other amazing artists in this batch – go see what you can find!

A large percentage of the gaming news in the last couple of days has been about the Xbox360 (we’re staying relatively quiet on the general bits, because they’re not really Halo-related)… the part that IS Halo-related is the backwards-compatibility thing. Stuntmutt takes a look in today’s One One Se7en.

The MPRRS reviewers have been pretty harsh of late – so when they let a movie through, it’s probably worth watching. First one through in a while is ‘BoB Zero: Genesis’, the prequel to a popular French machinima series (you can find more of their work on the TGO Team website). Filmed in Halo (as opposed to Halo 2), it combines nice camera work, good humor, and decent audio. This version is in French, with English subtitles. Grab it in WMP9 format (49.3 mb) or QuickTime format (45.2 mb). Bon Appetit!

Very cool – Stubbs the Zombie has been released for Mac OSX! Thanks, spartan erik.

Just six new pieces in the Fan Fiction section this morning… you can easily catch up.

TheGhost has put together a collection of tutorial resource links for HaloCE – amazing organization. This can help you find exactly the tools you were looking for. Check it out! Update (16 April 2006): Ghost has moved this to a permanent home at Halomaps.

There’s a story over at IGN about cross-compatibility between the Xbox360 and the original Xbox when playing Halo 2. Their verdict: the 360 plays Halo 2 beautifully, but there might be some joining glitches when playing games involving both boxes. Read the whole article for details. (And remember, this is a single data point; others might have a completely different experience.)

Frankie wrote up his experiences at the Xbox360 Launch Event in the Mojave desert. Nice pics, funny stuff (I wish I could meet the guy who’s got his Cliffy B autograph), a little bit of Halo content to keep it all on-topic. Go read! (Yeah, he gets credit for the heads-up, too… good thing he got his butt kicked at Halo 2 at the event.)

Rooster Teeth have posted a new Red vs Blue video, ‘Zero O’Clock’, for sponsors. At the moment, only the WMP9 version is up – but I assume the QuickTime and DivX versions are coming soon. (I’m also assuming it’ll show up for everyone else in the not-too-distant future.) Griff does his best to get to the Zero Hour Xbox360 event… looks like when begging doesn’t work, you should try deceit. Thanks to Karl Almjeld for the heads-up.

Whoa – it’s less than 8 hours from tomorrow, UTC, on a weekday, and there’s no news on HBO? Call the fire department – HBO HQ must have burned down. (Actually, not really – but I have been kicked out of my place of work by a horde of carpet-laying gnomes, forcing me to alternative tasks. The plus side is, I’ll be able to work barefoot again as of tonight.) We got a note from XerxdeeJ, who has updated his Tied the Leader blog with a piece on holiday gadgets for geeks (nothing Halo-related in there, but some nice goodies nonetheless), and some Halo filler to guarantee the on-topicness. (No, that picture does not depict anything that you, as a geek, can buy for the holidays.)

Timed nicely to go with last night’s coverage on MTV, you’ll find an article at MLGPro.com about T-squared, and his gaming skills school. Check it out! Thanks, 3Suns.

While it’s relatively common for me to crack a smile when looking over One One Se7en submissions, it’s rare for me to laugh out loud. Today’s entry didn’t ruin the ratio. (I kid. It’s up there with some of the classics.)