There are a bevy of new phones released throughout the year but Apple has been fairly consistent with their annual release of the iPhone. This year will see the coming of the iPhone 5 which, in addition to an updated OS, will see a few hardware revisions as well. No official announcements have been made by apple thus far but there are a few rumors floating around.

Apple Looses Their Phone... Again...
Cnet reported that an Apple employee lost a prototype of the iPhone 5 after leaving a tequila bar in San Francisco. A very similar incident occurred last year when the previous iPhone was set to be released. Coincidence? I think not, especially since Apple has taken great strains to improve their security since last year. Moreover, the newly misplaced iPhone was supposedly sold on Craigslist for not $2000, but $200. This sounds a little unlikely to say the least.

Sprint to Release New iPhone

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sprint is next in line to begin selling the iPhone and "people familiar with the matter" are expecting the device to release in mid-October. Bloomberg is reporting that Sprint's iPhone will also offer unlimited data unlike the AT&T and Verizon variants. Which is awesome.

iPhone 5 Redesign

Thisismynext.com says that its' sources claim that the new iPhone will look "more like the iPod touch than the iPhone 4." The home button is supposedly more elongated to allow for gestures similar to those found on the iPad. The screen is said to occupy much more space on the phone. Additionally, Verizon CFO Fran Shamoo states that the new iPhone will be a global device (meaning you can use it even when traveling overseas). 

iPhone 5 Facial Recognition

If you had told me at the start of 2011 that one of my favorite movies I’d see that year would be called “Hobo with a Shotgun”, I almost certainly would have agreed with you. Low budget, independent genre films are often maligned by critics and ignored by the public as a whole. But in film’s figurative cellar, or literal bargain bin, there are live, off beat masterpieces that put the CGI-heavy Hollywood Summer Blockbusters to shame.

Sure “The Toxic Avenger”, “Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky” and “Evil Dead II” may have lacked funding, big name stars and any semblance of good taste, but these films exist as modern day cult-classics for a reason: they are simply fun to watch. Their humor, over-the-top violence and, frankly, bizarre plots are a breath of fresh air after the seemingly endless amounts of horror remakes and sequels, flat romantic comedies and movies with talking dogs. Sometimes you just need mutant twins or a head-exploding psychic to break the mold.

In addition, the corniness and mediocre acting add a level of charm that is completely absent from the majority of features dumped into theaters each month. Take for example, the aptly named “Bad Taste”. Shot by some guy and his buddies over the course of  a few weekends with homemade props and latex masks, it tells the timeless story of mankind’s last stand against an intergalactic fast-food cartel set on serving humans for dinner. The movie hasn’t particularly aged and probably still looked like crap in 1987, but its ingenuity and creativity in the face of economic adversity make the film stand out. Plus it’s really stupid and funny.

It all boils down to a matter of preference. Sometimes you want “Citizen Kane”. Yet, other times you’d rather watch a zombie fight a tiger shark.

“Cyberbully," or “CyberBu//y” if you go by the cool Internety spelling on the poster, is set out to “delete digital drama” but just ended up flat-out confusing me. Due to its sheer ridiculousness, “Cyberbully” rises above its peers like the Hindenburg, then crashes just as spectacularly.  It is an honest-to-god dumpster fire of a movie.

The plot is fairly simple: Taylor, our protagonist, gets a laptop for her birthday and immediately registers a profile on Cliquesters, which is described by one character as a “more raw” facebook (I swear to God).  Basically, the site is identical to facebook in every way except for a few additional pointless graphics and everything typed in Courier New, the edgiest font. 

The action kicks off when Taylor’s younger brother hacks her account and posts “I’m a bad girl someone should spank me."  Honestly it seems pretty tame to me, seeing as  every account I’ve seen hacked ended up with statuses that read like a cross between a Dear Penthouse letter and  “American Psycho."   Apparently it’s enough for the sociopaths on Cliquesters who rapidly descend on Taylor’s page and call her a “smelly skank."  Things only get worse when one of Taylor’s friends registers an account pretending to be a boy who slept with her and got “the clap”, which is something I am absolutely positive no one under sixty actually says. 

Things finally come to a head with a shockingly bad suicide attempt and then the movie just kind of meanders for like thirty minutes before a vaguely happy ending. Therein lies the biggest problem: we really don’t care what happens to Taylor.  Throughout the film, she is shown to be thoroughly unlikeable.  She treats her genuinely caring mother like crap, neglects her friends (though they sort of suck too) and tells the abused gay student who tries to share his bullying experiences that because he actually is gay, the insults directed his way apply.  “Cyberbully” attempts to capitalize on the recent string of facebook abuse incidents but ends up being so sensationalist that a good point is ultimately lost,  and that is the biggest tragedy of all.

For those of you a little out of the loop with the gaming world, the first Resistance game, released in 2006, was a PS3 launch title made to compete with Xbox's Halo series. Resistance 3, released today, is a first-person-shooter that pits humans and aliens (Chimera) against one another and under the multiplayer preference, you are assigned to one race. There are only two game types within the beta, team death match and chain reaction (think capture the flag); however, you may find yourself partnered with... less than ideal teammates, in which case team death match will be your mode of choice.

Resistance 3 feels very much like a mix between Call of Duty and Killzone. There are “killstreaks” that can be used after three, six and nine successful kills (as opposed to Call of Duty's 3,5,7 model) and your opponents seem to take quite a few hits before going down -- a full magazine if you aren't getting headshots. This highlights a key strategy to the gunplay: location, location, location! If your opponents are decent and you get caught from behind, from the high ground or playing two against one? You're done.

Trying to "Rambo" your way through a team can definitely work if you play your cards right but certainly has its place within the overarching precedent of teamwork. Now, I'm not saying that the shotgun is overpowered, but... it ain't bad by any means. The guns each have different ranges and situations that display their usefulness. Obviously, you don't want to try to shoot a sniper with a machine gun while he is across the map. You need to close the distance and get in that ass. 

Although there were several patches to fix as well as glitches and stability issues, when the game gets going and everything is running smoothly, it's awesome. The increased health, different pace, and different “killstreaks” may take some getting used to but the multiplayer experience definitely stands with the best. 

For all the cool, useful things on YouTube, there exists 10 times as much stupid crap. Where else would you find a mash-up of anime and Creedence Clearwater Revival? Or a Creed tribute to some video game from when I was six? Or whatever the hell this is? But the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel insults to humanity itself are fan films. Basically, strip everything good and effective from some popular movie/game/TV program, add fat guys and shoot eight minutes with a camcorder, and you’ve got yourself a show. For example:

Man vs. Propeller

From the Film: “Titanic”

Where most people would have seen gently sliding down the broken half of the ship into the ocean as the best option, this man instead sees an opportunity to go base jumping. I’ve always wondered what was going through this guy’s head. Maybe he thought if he got in the water really fast it wouldn’t feel as cold (true). Maybe he was wasted and thought doing a 200-foot swan dive off the stern of sinking ship would look cool as hell (also true). Whatever his logic, things took a turn for the Greg Louganis real quick. Seriously though, if James Cameron hadn't intended this to be funny he wouldn’t have added a “donk” noise.