Eep – sometimes, time zones bite you. The Fall of Reach is filming today at 6:30 PM England time. (They sent along a link showing what time that is in the rest of the world.) Bottom line – it’s less than four hours from when this news post is going up. If you’re interested in helping, check this forum post for details on how to get in. But do it soon!

Over at 2old2play, there’s another writeup of last weekend’s LAN activities – complete with pics and… scary descriptions. I dunno if I’m sad I missed it… or grateful. (Oh, yeah… and some questionable behavior – a site mod takes advantage of a site admin; WMP9 or QuickTime format (only about 350kb each). Hmm…) Thanks, doodi.

That Sarge – he’s so cool, even when he’s telling OLD jokes he sounds great. Check out today’s One One Se7en.

Hikaru writes that Halo Arena has posted an interview with Brian Towne, known online as Amaroq – the man behind mythica.org, a huge supplier of Halo-related bandwidth over the past few years. Check it out!

D-Man, DK, and trigger119 have teamed up to create their own Halo-based podcast; you can read about it in this post, but use this one for an updated (and working) download link.

Podtacular! Episode 4 has been posted – this one’s an hour and 15 minutes, so be sure you have a bit of free time for listening. They’re currently 30th in iTunes’ Top 100 Podcasts… pretty impressive! 26 mb, MP3 format.

CNN has an article on machinima, and its potential as a new medium for Hollywood – Red vs Blue gets prominent mention. It’s clear that many in Hollywood still don’t get it:

“Hollywood looks to all kinds of places for a fan base and given the enormous success of video games, that’s a natural place to look,” said Jon Richmond, managing director of media and entertainment at Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin. “But ‘Final Fantasy’ was a movie based on video game technology and that was a whopping failure.”

Excuse the banging noise – that’s the sound of my head hitting the desk, over and over. Thanks to Germain Couët for the heads-up.

Kelli ‘Pinkuh’ Washburn, one of our featured artists (you can find a link to her work in the short ‘Hot Pages’ menu to the right), whipped up a… somewhat risqué interpretation of Cortana yesterday – it’s nothing you haven’t seen on, say, Superbowl halftime shows, but it’s definitely no longer G-rated. You can find this on her page here (it’s currently the last image in the ‘Completed Works’ section), or at her DeviantART site. (The description there might explain where she was coming from on this one. Or then again… it might not.)

Se7en found a fun little Flash animation by TheWax at DeviantART – a fusion of the Master Chief and Sonic the Hedgehog. (The Voice of God seems to be going soft…)

Hehe – Andras Ostrom found a tidbit at IMDB.com, blaming Halo 2 (and Netflix, but this is a Halo site, so we’ll focus on that) for the downturn in moviegoing this summer. Darn that Bungie – keeping people at home! Update: Eep – Gregory Prill found the same info (but more fleshed out) in the Chicago Sun-Times. In fact – that’s where imdb got it.

A couple of weeks ago, a story circulated that the RIAA had shut down a site hosting fan-made videos because the music in them was unlicensed. It turned out that the cease-and-desist letter was forged… but in case anyone was really worried, you should check out Weezer’s site; in a news post from a few days ago, they point out imSuck’s Beverly Hills video (hosted here) – nice when the band whose music you’re paying tribute to actually notices! Thanks to Ducain for pointing out Phantom’s news post at High Impact Halo.

Remember that Microsoft survey we mentioned last week? In the latest Rumor Control article, Gamespot uses it as a jumping-off spot for wild speculation that Microsoft might be considering a ‘strategy-based simulation game’ centered on Halo. (Yeah, they say ‘it’s bogus’ – but who came up with in the first place? THEY DID.) Thanks, KP.

Okay, people do lots of things to get on the news page here… but the latest episode of Resolute is just… wrong. You should tell ÜberChief that.

The next chapter of the Halo CE Chronicles, Episode 15, Conflict, has been posted over at the HCEC website. The action heats up – an extraction goes bad, and the Spartan is left to fend for himself. As usual, it’s available in WMP9, QuickTime, and streaming Flash formats. Go watch!

Over at H2Wiki, there’s a nice article from LegendaryMark entitled ‘What makes a great Halo 2 Multiplayer Gamer?‘ As you might expect from the title, it looks at some of the things that make good gamers great – and points out why you might be stuck where you are, level-wise, until you rethink your gameplay strategies. Go read!

ST stopped by our forum to point out an article on his blog about the Map Pack. The beautiful thing about the internet is the variety of perspectives… I was reading through his reasons for liking (or not liking) the maps, and I couldn’t find a single one I fully agreed with. However, he did a great job of explaining WHY he holds the opinions he does – and it’s clear to me that we just have very, very, VERY different playstyles (and likes). Go check it out – and give him your own opinions!

Stuntmutt takes aim at the newest wearables in the Bungie Store in today’s One One Se7en.

Just six new entries in the Fan Fiction collection today – go see what’s there!

Chris Remo, of Shacknews, got a chance to play a new iteration of Stubbs The Zombie, Wideload’s Halo-engined undead romp, at QuakeCon this weekend. He’d been worried – he played it at GDC a few months ago, and had been disappointed. This time around, though, he had a lot of fun – go read why. Good to hear! Thanks to Rampancy.net for noticing this.

The 2old2play LAN party we mentioned last month went down this past weekend – and by all accounts, it was a blast. (I ran into Doodi on XBL last night, and there should be some fun footage coming from it in the not-too-distant future.) XerxDeej was one of the attendees… and you can check out HIS experience on his Tied the Leader blog.