The third installment in the massively popular film series based on Capcom's zombie horror/science fiction games, Resident Evil: Extinction brings the world to an end, not with a whimper but a bang, as Milla Jovovich's Alice pits her bio-organic superskills against armies of the undead in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas. Also on hand is a more grown-up version of the games' Claire Redfield (played by Heroes' Ali Larter), who leads a convoy of humans (among them Resident Evil vets Oded Fehr and Mike Epps, who reprise their roles as Carlos and LJ, as well as newcomers Ashanti and Spencer Locke) in search of sanctuary; meanwhile, sinister Umbrella Corporation scientist Dr. Sam Isaacs (Iain Glen) seeks a cure for the zombie virus outbreak via Alice's blood, which he taps via a lab full of clones. Subtlety has never been the Resident Evil series' strong suit, but it's hard to argue against Extinction's breakneck pace and impressive CG special effects; director Russell Mulcahy (the Highlander series) lends a lot of verve to the proceedings, and the script by producer Paul W.S. Anderson pulls in agreeable touches from The Road Warrior and Day of the Dead. A hit during the summer of 2007, Extinction should please series devotees and action-horror fans alike; the DVD includes commentary by Mulcahy, Anderson, and co-producer Jeremy Bolt, as well as several making-of featurettes, and a glimpse at the next entry in the Resident Evil franchise, the CG-only Degeneration. -- Paul Gaita
Entertainment
The entertainment industry has grown and evolved over the years with music and cinema taking a new form through the ages and so have the technologies that fuel it. Gone are the days of eight songs on a cassette and VCR players with merely two hours of entertainment recorded on a single video cassette. With the advent of computers came digital data storage and hence the birth of DVD/CDs.
Quiet a step back in matters of physical form as these new generation audio/video storage devices hold an uncanny resemblance to the records that preceded the cassette generation. DVDs and CDs today are an everyday household entertainment storage device which has come a long way since the first records and cassettes were distributed commercially.
Notable advantages of DVD/CDs have to begin with the amount of storage space available. These days its possible to burn multiple movies on a single DVD and as far as audio goes if its in a highly compressed format such as .mp3 a single CD can accommodate multiple music albums. These discs are easy to handle, light and portable with no moving devices unlike the tape generation however they are delicate and a scratch on the DVD/CD surface could cause a disruption in the information being read by the player.
DVD/CDs were initially invented to provide high quality audio/video data to a user with the ability to regulate its production however this soon fizzled away with daily household computers gaining the ability to burn data in such formats. The race to curb piracy through such means has not hit a roadblock and DVD/CDs keep evolving with newer encryption technologies in a bid to curb unchecked replication of data spawning newer technologies like Blu-ray discs which seems to be yet another milestone on an unending road of innovation.
