Christ­mas is almost upon us and the shops tend to be so damn crowded that you can’t even walk in with­out bump­ing into a few per­sons. Did I men­tion that I hate crowded places? Any­way, it’s the same wher­ever you go. I for one can’t even buy books online – mighty Ama­zon just isn’t able to deliver within a rea­son­able time-frame. The books don’t mat­ter, I wouldn’t dare buy­ing Christ­mas presents on Ama­zon only a few days before the great day.

Unfor­tu­nately, I still need to buy a cou­ple presents. In other words: I have to wage a full-blown war. Yes, that’s right. I will have to bat­tle other last-minute shop­pers like me to get the stuff I need. I just hope I don’t have to engage too many foes lest they over­whelm me and take what’s right­fully mine. Now I will go and med­i­tate to get into the right state of mind for the bat­tle that is ahead because I believe Sun-Tzu was right when he said that “vic­to­ri­ous war­riors win first and then go to war, while defeated war­riors go to war first and then seek to win”. Wish me luck!

Dia­blo 3 – is it next-gen? Next-gen! You under­stand? That should’ve been the word of the year, instead of w00t. What is this next-gen every­body is talk­ing about? Where is it? What does it do for me? There is this blog where the mys­te­ri­ous Surfer Girl has already made some remark­ably accu­rate pre­dic­tions over the time. In the post I’m refer­ring to she also indi­cates that Clover­field may not be as awe­some as some of us would like it to be. What a surprise.

Any­way, I want to focus on the Dia­blo III related stuff – start­ing with the offi­cial Bliz­zard site: Just take a look at the job open­ings and you’ll surely notice that Bliz­zard is look­ing for new staff mem­bers. The offer­ings include two artists for a “Top Secret Next-Gen MMO”. Let’s go back a lit­tle fur­ther and we will stum­ble over a video inter­view con­ducted with Blizzard’s COO where it was revealed that Dia­blo 3 “is def­i­nitely a very impor­tant fran­chise” to [Bliz­zard]. Of course, there has been rumors of a pos­si­ble third install­ment of the suc­cess­ful Dia­blo fran­chise as soon as Dia­blo II has been released. And then there’s the busi­ness of a pos­si­ble Dia­blo movie which could be inter­est­ing for Blizzard.

Now, let’s get back to the issue of the Next-Gen MMO. Nobody knows for sure this is about the next install­ment of Dia­blo. If it is, what will it look like? Can you even imag­ine Dia­blo with a style heav­ily rem­i­nis­cent of World of War­craft? And it even will be next-gen, what­ever mean­ing will be attached to this term. I con­fess, I am really anx­ious to see that come to be. Surfer Girl’s short infor­ma­tion on Dia­blo III states that the game will be announced “some­time next spring and is still on track for release before decade’s end”. I’d really like to see that. And I cer­tainly do wish that the devel­op­ers won’t just cre­ate a “bet­ter World of War­craft” in the dis­guise of Diablo.

There are two movies that need to be addressed at this point. Let’s start with Hell­boy. As you should already know, there will be a sequel. Hell­boy II: The Golden Army is cur­rently set to be released on July 11th, 2008. You want some more infor­ma­tion because you totally dig Liz Sher­man? Head over to the offi­cial site and check out the news. You may find some inter­est­ing stuff to toy with.

Next, I got a movie for you that seems pretty inter­est­ing to me. At least in regard to the fact that the plot doesn’t seem too far-fetched. Untrace­able looks quite promis­ing and I really hope the film can deliver. Thanks to Dave, the self-proclaimed movie buff , here’s the trailer for you.

You should be able to watch it in Hi-Def over at Apple’s quite soon. The movie should be released on Jan­u­ary 25th, 2008.