Monthly Archives: March 2012

Street Fighter X Tekken: The Devil Within 8 Minute Film Hits The Web

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Street Fighter X Tekken has got so many people worked up into a storm it is incredible. The following Tekken short film, Street Fighter X Tekken: The Devil Within, is already being labeled as “epic.”. There is a whole load of action packed into this 8 minute movie and the costumes and hairstyles stay true to the videogame.  The film was released yesterday and over 114,000 people have viewed it on YouTube.

Thousand Pounds Action Company released the film to build interest in the Street Fighter X Tekken: Special Edition videogame for Xbox360 and Playstation 3. On release in the UK tomorrow.

Have a look below and judge for yourself – with so much action and so many moves packed into a mere 8 minute film it is clear that this production team has talent.

One question though still remains: Why oh why has a cinematic movie that remains as faithful to the game it comes from been so sorely lacking? Some times it really just needs fans who love the subject matter to make it happen.

Enjoy

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn_HaEf62h4&w=560&h=315]

 

Going Blonde For Spring?

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Kate Middleton may be a brunette but the allure of being blonde will never go away. Think Marilyn Monroe, Kate Winslet, Gwen Stefani , Debbie Harry and Madonna.

Before going blonde you should make sure you choose a shade that suits your skin tone. I once went platinum blonde. It really wasn’t a good look, I am too pale to carry it off.

If you have dark hair (mid-dark brown or black) you will need to strip you hair of its colour with a prelightner, and take your wardrobe and make up into consideration. Your hair has to suit your lifestyle.

Think of your eyebrows too, Madonna may have had black eyebrows and blonde hair in the 80’s but that wasn’t a good look then, and it isn’t now.

Also think of your roots, it you are low maintenance doing your roots a lot might be a bit much, so don’t go a very pale blonde.

The video below let’s you know everything you need to know about going blonde. It has advice on what kind of blonde to go for, how to protect your hair, and how long you should process your hair for the type of hair you have. All with no expensive hairdresser, but using Garnier Nutrisse Crème hair colour instead.

Lyndell Mansfield gives you her top tips in the video.

This post was sponsored by Garnier Nutrisse Crème hair colour.  

Brits Neglecting Health Due to Lack of Money.

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It seems the economical climate is really start to bite as Brits are cutting back on medical care.

New research by Sovereign Health Care has revealed that 63% of UK residents have delayed vital health care treatments to save money over the past 12 months, with women being the worst offenders (34%). Meanwhile more men (54%) than women (42%) said they will have to put back health related appointments this year in order to make their household budget stretch further.

The survey revealed that the economic climate has resulted in a growing number of people neglecting their health in order to try and save money. What’s perhaps even more worrying is that the vast majority of respondents (88%) say they would cancel or delay a health care appointment (such as dentist or opticians), rather than cut back on socialising and entertaining to make their money stretch further.

Although only 20% of those polled said they had been more ill over the last year, compared with previous years, 43% said they have been living with health care conditions such as a bad back, bunions and eye sight problems, as they can’t afford to get treatment – men are the worst culprits (22%). With these findings, it comes as no surprise to learn that 43% of women and 37% of men say it’s quite possible that they have forfeited their health over the past 12 months.

The survey findings also revealed that many people view certain complementary therapies as luxuries rather than necessities, including reflexology (91%), chiropody (73%) and physiotherapy (54%).

Russ Piper, Chief Executive of Sovereign Health Care says: “Delaying health care treatment is tempting when budgets are so tight, but neglecting your health is potentially more expensive and dangerous in the long run as you can increase both the severity of the problems you face and the cost of the treatment you need.”

He adds: “Treatments such as chiropody and physiotherapy can be costly, which is probably why people think of them as a luxury. However, they are beneficial for many people with health problems or injuries and they can be affordable with a health care cash plan as you can often claim back some of the costs.”

It’s not only physical health that is suffering due to the recession, but mental well-being is also being affected, with 81% of people saying they have grown increasingly more anxious about managing their household budget over the last 12 months – women were revealed as the most worried at 52%.

JOIN COSMOPOLITAN’S EDITOR, LOUISE COURT AS SHE DEBATES: ‘I AM A FEMINIST – CAN I VAJAZZLE?’

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JOIN COSMOPOLITAN’S EDITOR, LOUISE COURT AS SHE DEBATES:

‘I AM A FEMINIST – CAN I VAJAZZLE?’

WITH DAWN PORTER & KATE SMURTHWAITE AT SOUTHBANK CENTRE’S WOW – WOMEN OF THE WORLD FESTIVAL

Cosmopolitan, the magazine for smart, spirited young women has teamed up with Southbank Centre’s WOW – Women of the World Festival, to host a debate on the hot topic of modern-day feminism. The event is part of a series planned to support the magazine’s ‘F Word’ campaign.

WOW – Women of the World festival is Southbank Centre’s annual festival to recognise, celebrate and promote women and runs from Wednesday 7 March to Sunday 11 March across the Southbank Centre site. On Saturday 10th March, Louise Court, Cosmopolitan’s Editor, writer and broadcaster, Dawn Porter, comedian and feminist activist, Kate Smurthwaite and Dr Kristin Aune will battle out the following question – ‘I am a Feminist – Can I Vajazzle?’. The debate will be chaired by columnist and author, India Knight.

This debate is part of Cosmopolitan’s ‘F Word’ campaign, launched to celebrate its birthday issue, on sale 1st March. The campaign aims to shine light on the myths and outdated stereotypes surrounding feminism and starts deliberately with this controversial subject to explore the multiple aspects of women’s relationship with feminism in the 21st century.

Cosmopolitan believe there has never been a more important time to be a feminist, with the world we live in today still far from equal for men and women. The first thing the magazine wants to achieve in its bid for equality is equal pay for men and women doing the same jobs. The magazine is campaigning for the government to get tough now on equal pay, by making it mandatory for companies who employ 250 people or more to carry out a public, annual equal-pay audit. If you want to fight for your right for equal pay in the workplace, sign the Cosmopolitan Equal Pay petition now at www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/equalpay.

To book tickets to for the Cosmopolitan debate – ‘I am a Feminist – Can I Vajazzle?’:

Saturday 10th March, from 3pm – 4pm, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. Tickets cost £30 for a weekend pass (£15 concessions) and £12 for a day pass (£6 concessions), and are available from the Southbank Centre Ticket Office: 0844 847 9910 / www.southbankcentre.co.uk/wow

NB – Some events have a limited capacity and entry is on a first-come first-served basis.

SUNDANCE LONDON: FILM PROGRAMME UNVEILED FOR INAUGURAL EVENT

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London can never have enough film festivals, and the film legend that is Robert Redford has brought Sundance to our door. I am so excited.

14 Films Make Their UK Premieres, 26-29 April at The O2

London, 7 March 2012 — Sundance Institute and The O2 announced today the programme of 14 narrative and documentary feature films that will make their UK premieres at the inaugural Sundance London festival, taking place at The O2 from 26-29 April. These films premiered in January at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah – the premier independent film festival in the United States.

“I welcome the opportunity to see how people in the UK experience these films,” said Robert Redford, President and Founder of Sundance Institute. “While they are American productions they speak to universal experiences and global challenges.”

He went on to add, “Sundance London also is the perfect opportunity to continue our long-time commitment to growing a broader international community around new voices and new perspectives.”

John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, said, “Sundance London grew out of our desire to help American independent filmmakers expand their reach, and we are happy that these 14 filmmakers are joining us on this adventure. Their participation has helped us to not only create a programme for Sundance London that reflects the diversity of our film festival in Park City, but also that helps build an enduring legacy of American stories that speak to international audiences.”

Alex Hill, Chief Finance and Strategy Officer of AEG Europe, owners of host venue The O2, adds: “All at The O2 are very excited that the inaugural Sundance London film and music festival is nearly upon us. The 14 films which Sundance Institute is bringing to London reflect the strength, depth and breadth of American independent cinema that showcased earlier in the year at the Sundance Film Festival. They complement an exciting music component with performances from Tricky and Placebo, and our opening night event An Evening With Robert Redford and T Bone Burnett. In what is arguably the world’s most culturally diverse city, The O2 is proud to be hosting such a prestigious festival.”

In addition to film screenings, Sundance London will host live music performances and events each evening, including the previously announced Opening Night event An Evening With Robert Redford And T Bone Burnett, Placebo in concert and Tricky and Martina Topley-Bird performing Maxinquaye. Also on offer to Sundance London audiences will be unique opportunities to attend panels and hear guest speakers talk about the part they play in making films, documentaries and the role of music in modern cinema.

Forthcoming announcements include the festival’s short film programme, special events and additional music performers.

Programme information and ticket packages are available at www.sundance-london.com. Individual tickets will be on sale in early April.

Top 10 Street Fighter Facts

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Here at Frost, I am getting all excited about the latest bone crunching matchup release that is Street-fighter X Tekken.

In case you didn’t know anything about it – it pairs up the mighty and most loved characters from the Street-fighter arena and flings Tekken fighters into the mix for an all hands down, blood sweat and tears fisty cuffs. Think of Marvel Vs Capcom, but with finesse. Think of Tekken Tag Team but with more accessible moves, think of Father Christmas Vs the erm…Easter Bunny – yes, it sounds insane but it does work.

Street Fighter X Tekken hits the shops this Friday, and of course the review will be here in Frost Magazine. But for now to get you excited as I am here are some top facts about perhaps the biggest and well-known franchise of all time.

  1. If Ryu was a real person he would be 47 – yep, you heard that right, in the original Street Fighter game Ryu’s date of birth is clearly stated as July 21, 1964 which makes him 47 to date. So, not so much Hurricane Kick as Hurricane wheelchair. Not like I would ever tell him that to his face…obviously.
  1. Ken and Ryu are the only characters that have appeared in every single Street Fighter title. In the first StreetFighter, you could only play as Ryu by default in single player, and player two as Ken in multiplayer. The two are best friends (and rivals) from different sides of the world. Ken is an American-born fighter, and Ryu from Japan. According to the storyline, and the fantastic Manga Movie they trained at the same school of martial arts – the same school that can been seen on the first stage of the original Street fighter game. Their tournament led them to take on the final boss, Sagat. In the final battle between Sagat and Ryu, Ryu defeated Sagat with a mighty dragon punch, leaving him with his iconic chest scar.
  1. Evil Ryu was a fluke and came about by chance. I am going to feel like I am telling a child that Santa doesn’t actually leave presents but it’s true. You can believe the ‘published’ stories that Ryu succumbed to ‘the dark side’ but the reality was that in the arcade version of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo there was a ‘cheat’ to get a hidden character – Akuma. To do so required a series of button presses on the character selection screen which would land on Ryu at the last step. If you did it correctly Ryu’s face would be replaced with a blacked out image of Akuma, which would reap incredible kudo’s and benefits in the game for the player.  However if you did it wrongly you would still end up choosing Ryu but a somewhat tanned version which would reap humiliation because everyone would know what you had tried to do. This was originally meant to be an in-game joke but such was the feedback that Capcom in later additions gave the tanned version extra abilities which were similar to Akuma and thus a new character was born.
  1. There were two American Street Fighter movies made, the first, titled Street Fighter starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, and Australian pop singer Kylie Minogue as Cammy. The second adaptation released in 2009 was called Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li which stars Kristin Kruek as Chun-Li, Chris Klein as Charlie, Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog, and one of those dudes from the Black Eyed Peas (Taboo) as Vega. In essence all you need to know is that they are crap. Well, that’s not entirely true the first movie is crapity crap, crap and the second one is, well…average…o.k. no it is crap.
  1. Super Street Fighter 4 was the first game in the series to be released on console before hitting the arcade. The simple answer to why this happened is because the arcade industry is slowly dying. Blame it on the recession, or newly formed anti-social behaviour with this generation of couch-dwelling gamers. Don’t believe me? Well check out the once flourishing arcades known as Namco Wonder-Park or Fun Land Trocadero in central London. Once upon a time games developers would prize themselves on bringing out ever more elaborate gaming cabinets and gaming hardware. Once upon a time it would be the hardware in the arcade pushing the home markets. Now it is the opposite and you will find that these gaming arenas are slowly closing their doors, making it difficult for game companies to justify making a true arcade game over a console game.

Ever get that feeling when you see someone who looks exactly like you?

  1. Dee Jay, Super Street Fighter II’s Jamaican kick boxer, was originally designed to have pants that read “MANTIS” down the side of his leg. However, the words would not have looked right when his sprite was mirrored to face the opposite direction. To save time and resources the game designers changed the word to the vertically symmetric “MAXIMUM,” so it can be spelled correctly facing either direction. Think “MAXIMUM” is cheesy? Other options for his pants could have been “YUMMY”, “WAX MOUTH”, “OOOH YUMMY MUMMY” or “HI WHY AM I A MOM”.

Sheng Long...you know? Dragon Punch thingy? ...oooh just forget it!

  1. Quite a few things were lost in translation. Whenever Ryu won a match during the one of the early iterations of Street Fighter II, he would say, “You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.” Who or what the heck is Sheng Long? I hear you cry well, “Sheng Long” is actually the Chinese pronunciation of “Sho-Ryo”, as in “Sho-Ryu-Ken” (better known as the Dragon Punch). What Ryu was trying to say at the time was that his opponent needed to master his technique in order to defeat him. Due to one poor translator’s epic mistranslation, many gamers across the world believed that Ryu’s cryptic words hinted at a hidden character named Sheng Long. Taking full advantage of gamers’ gullibility, Electronic Gaming Monthly Magazine pulled off one of the greatest April Fool’s jokes of all time and claimed that Sheng Long is indeed a playable character. The long-rumoured master of Ryu and Ken can be unlocked by performing certain ridiculously difficult feats, causing players from across the world to pour in quarter after quarter into Street Fighter II machines in order to unlock him. So how did Capcom respond to the Sheng Long fiasco? They made him a real character of course for the release of 2009’s Street Fighter IV.
  1. Bruce Lee lives on – Street Fighter’s very own Fei Long has more than a striking resemblance to what many would call the god father of Martial Arts Bruce Lee but it is not the only game where his likeness appears. It seems as if any fighting game worth their salt pays homage to his memory and with damn good reason; the man, the myth and the movies are the reason many a man has jumped about, pulled a mean scowl, imitated his cool noises and even tried to do a bicycle kick. He has appeared in many many games but here are a few: Liu Kang (Mortal Kombat)  Jann Lee (Dead or Alive) Kim Dragon (World Heroes) and Marshall Law (Tekken). Now Fei Long versus Marshall Law would be the mother of all match ups but will they make it to the final rosta of characters?

Fireball is just a projection but still looks cool and is well handy....

  1. No such thing as a fireball – just a cheap trick. I used to think that it was a huge ball of energy moving out of Ryu’s hands whenever I managed to pull off his fireball move. That is until I saw the picture above. Look closely at the still image of the Hadoken Fireball. The centre of the flame of the fireball is an image of Ken and Ryu’s hands. Developers at Capcom must have been laughing.
  1. Street Fighter X Tekken is the first time that a Street Fighter game will actually become a crossover. Capcom does come out with a lot of crossovers, but this is the first time they’ve teamed up with Tekken. Announced at the “Street Fighter Mania! SSFIV and Beyond” panel at Comic-Con 2010, it is another benchmark in the Street Fighter history books.

 

Frost Mag is supporting Cosmopolitan magazine's F-Word campaign.

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COSMOPOLITAN Launches the ‘F-word’ campaign. Cosmopolitian is launching its campiagn on International Women’s Day, and Frost Magazine is supporting them.

This International Women’s Day (8th March) Cosmopolitan will be launching its ‘F Word’ campaign, a series of initiatives championing women – and men – to stand up and be counted and get what they deserve; equality in all aspects of their lives. The ‘F word’ has been created by Cosmopolitan to highlight the fact there has never been a more important time to be a feminist. The magazine has teamed up with some of the UK’s biggest stars who all support the campaign, including Annie Lennox, Jameela Jamil, Emma Bunton and Professor Green.

Miquita Oliver:

“I’ve gone up and down in weight and I’ve never been very glamorous so I’ve always used what I have which is my personality. It would mean so much to me if there were girls who watched me on the telly and thought ‘Oh actually I can just be a funny cool person.’ It’s important to push your personality rather than wearing ‘the right’ skinny jeans.”

Emma Willis:

“People think of it as a dirty word but being a feminist doesn’t mean you’re loud and lairy. You can still be feminine and be a feminist.”

According to the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equality between men and women, men are currently getting paid almost 15% more than females, rising to 55% in the banking sector. It has also revealed that this is likely to widen, due to public sector job cuts, which are historically female dominated.

Cosmopolitan, the magazine for smart spirited women, believes it is time to take action. It wants the government to get tough now on equal pay, by making it mandatory for companies who employ 250 people or more to carry out a public, annual equal-pay audit – this was due to become law under the last government, but was shelved in 2012 in favour of making these audits voluntary.

The magazine is calling all British women to fight for their right to an equal pay packet by signing the Cosmopolitan Equal Pay petition at www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/equalpay. Cosmo is hoping to gather 100,000 signatures and plans to present the petition to David Cameron later in the year.

Louise Court, Cosmopolitan, Editor, said: “When we heard that the pay gap looked likely to widen in 2012 we felt it was time to stand up and make a difference for women in the UK today. Many women don’t even realise that they could be doing exactly the same job as their male colleagues and not being paid the same wage – it’s time to highlight this unfairness and make positive changes!”

According to a poll of Cosmopolitan readers, 58% would not describe themselves as being a feminist. However, Cosmopolitan believes that there has never been a more important time to be a feminist with inequality between the sexes at an all time high. “It’s time to grab back the word ‘feminism’. It’s a perfectly good word. But we need to simplify it. It’s about equal rights; that’s all. It’s not about being enemies of men.” Says Annie Lennox of the Cosmopolitan F Word campaign.

Frost Magazine Writers Launch Arts and Social Group – The Bloomsbury Net

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Frost editor Catherine Balavage and writer Mary Tynan are launching The Bloomsbury Net on Friday, 16 March 2012, a monthly evening for people who work in, or appreciate, entertainment and the arts – writers and readers, actors and audiences, artists and viewers, filmmakers and watchers, musicians and listeners, to name but a few. Come and meet like-minded people in the convivial atmosphere of Truckles Wine Bar in the heart of Bloomsbury; make new friends; and progress your career.

The first event is on 16 March 2012 from 6.30 onwards. As this is our first month, the structure of the evening will be fairly fluid, but if you have something to promote please feel free to bring flyers. Join us downstairs at Truckles of Pied Bull Yard, Off Bury Place, Bloomsbury, London WC1A 2JR (close to the British Museum). Admission free. Frost readers particularly welcome!