Reader Anthony Le sent in his entry for the costume contest and I just had to share it with you guys. It’s an amazing replica of the Iron Man XD suit made of plastic and rivets. Anthony even goes to his local Children’s Hospital in it to cheer up the kids. Anthony is a truly geek who inspires awe.

I based the build from this picture from comic-con. The Costume is 100% home made, the build took approximately 2 weeks and 5 days. I’m a very busy person as well! Over 700+ rivets and rivet washer used. All items on the costume are 100% made from scratch. I’ve lso taken this costume to the children’s hospital to give them a sense of joy to know that a hero has come to wishes them a happy Halloween.

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The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Collection is the best Blu-ray release of the year. So says the High-Def Disc Awards, which were handed out yesterday.

The $130 retail set (but available for much less on Amazon), which includes all three Godfather films, won Best of Show and Best Catalog Title.

As far as theatrical releases go (which excludes collections and the like), Iron Man won Blu-ray title of the year.

Transformers won for best audio.

Meanwhile, we continue to debate whether or not Blu-ray will ever move beyond the videophile segment.

Sure, Halloween is over but that doesn’t mean you can’t spend your lonely weekend constucting an Iron Man helmet. Instructiable should give you enough info but this might not be for fiberglass or Bondo virgins. Still, you have to start somewhere and if you’re good ‘nough, you too could be rocking an Iron Man helmet just like the winner above.

Having problems accessing the BD-Live content of Iron Man? Turns out you’re not alone, and Paramount thinks it knows what’s going on: the movie is just too gosh darn popular!

The movie, which was released on Blu-ray last Tuesday, is so popular, Paramount says, that the record number of people trying to access the BD-Live content have overloaded the servers. And when the servers are under so much strain is when you see the connectivity issues.

That being said, Paramount says the issues should be gone by now, as it has shored up the relevant servers.

Also, is the movie any good? I don’t want to waste precious BitTorrent ratio on a cruddy movie.

In conjunction with the release of Iron Man in Blu-Ray Casio has announced the EQW-500DBE-1AVER, a Waveceptor watch with alarm, world time, two stop watches, and an automatic backlit face. It uses a dual-region radio to automatically sync with atomic clocks around the world.

Interestingly, this red, white, and blue confection is being touted as a Iron Man watch in the UK, which doesn’t quite make sense. Presumably the Iron Man suit has a built-in HUD with the time. Why would Iron Man strap on a watch? It reminds me of this guy who used to sit in computer class in front of a Windows 98 machine and ask “Hey, does anyone know the time?”

Anyway, the watch should make its way over here for about $500. I like Casio Waveceptors but this one’s complicated face might be a bit jarring for a certain subset of horology buffs.

So when you are configuring your next Dell Inspiron, Studio, or XPS system, there is going to be a $20 option to have Dell preload Iron Man on your machine. Yup. Great movie but a little strange business model. Word is that Dell is trying to get more and more studios signed on to expand the selection past this one movie. If Dell is to have their way, you should be able to purchase a slew of movies to fill up your brand new machine and there might even be an online movie store. No word on the DRM specifics besides that a owner will be able burn one copy, but something tells us you’re not going to be able to share this file at your LAN party.

Conveniently timed for the DVD/BluRay release of Iron Man that just so happens to be going down in 3 days, 37 oh-so-awesome pieces of concept art and set stills have wound up online.

Besides being some outright impressive work, the concept art is a shining example of how well even the most complex of artistic visions can be translated to the big screen. Check out shot three for example – it’s like they just took a frame straight out of the finished film.

There are also a handful of behind-the-scenes set shots at the tail end of the gallery. Gah, now I want to go watch the movie again.

[Via Yahoo]

This is a gadget blog not a movie blog!

Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to share with my fellow comic book geeks the unboxing of the Blu-ray “Iron Man” Ultimate Edition. I have yet to pop it in and give it a whirl, but I figured an unboxing would suffice for now. Check out the gallery after the jump and the list of goodies you can expect from the 2-disc set.
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Amazon isn’t revealing what’s so special about the collector’s edition of the greatest comic book movie ever made, but the pre-order is up for $27.95. No word on when it will ship. I hope it’s by summer’s end.

I triple-dog-dare you to wear this out to a nice bar one night. I guarantee it’ll get you ladies. Hey, it worked for Tony Stark. It helps if you grow a goatee too, like this joker. Hey, he looks like a nice guy, I’m not going to mock him, but really this is some seriously nerdy stuff here. It ain’t easy, either — you have to wire up your own LEDs and mold the plastic as well. But it’s all worth it to live the dream.

Here’s the reactor, here’s the mask, and here’s the whole freakin helmet.

A U.S. Army contractor has developed an Iron Man-like suit that can amplify human strength by up to 20 times. (You’d almost be able to lift Biggs, then!) The suit, developed by Salt Late City-based robotics house Sarcos, is expected to go into trials next year. If all the bugs are worked out—the battery currently only lasts about 30 minutes per charge—the Army says it may one day actually be used in the battlefield. In the meantime, it’ll be limited to auxiliary roles like lifting cargo.

So yeah, pretty awesome, and exactly the type of thing I want to see my tax dollars going toward.

Despite Marvel’s attempt to shut down our Iron Man screening in SF last week, I have nothing but good things to say about them. Well, Marvel Studios to be exact. If you haven’t seen Iron Man yet than something is seriously wrong with you or you have way too many commitments. It was hands-down the best comic book-based movie I have ever seen and I LOVE Batman. Batman Begins was fantastic, but it doesn’t hold a torch to what Marvel Studios was able to do with Iron Man. My faith in comic book related movies has been fully restored. I do have high hopes for the next Batman movie, though.
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There was much speculation — especially on the part of this blogger — that the release of GTA IV the same week as Iron Man might hurt the films revenue, the idea being that nerds would be hunkered down with their Xboxes trying to finish the game, or that many had spent their monthly fun budget on the $60 game, with nothing left for Tony Stark.

That’s not the case. In fact, both the game and the film did boffo, with GTA IV bringing in close to $500 million, and Iron Man grossing $100 million its opening weekend.

Either nerds smartened up and saved for both, or they decided they needed a break from Roman, always bugging them on the phone. Both the game and film are absolutely excellent, and both worth the money, and that, I think, is the reason they both succeeded.

Do you know what I did this last weekend? Besides attending the awesome CrunchGear reader meet-up in New York, my co-bloggers Peter and Devin and I attended a screening of Iron Man, and it was awesome. For reals, the movie is just great.

Marvel is setting up a Marvel Universe on film. It was rumored that Samuel L. Jackson would make an appearance as Nick Fury in Iron Man, as he does in the new Hulk feature a few weeks out. He didn’t, and we were disappointed as we left the theater. Then I got a text message from Devin last night, saying “Nick Fury is after the credits!” He is!

Hit the jump to see the video, and to see what Marvel has in store for us for the next couple of years.

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We talked back in March about how all of you nerds spending your time on GTA IV could mean a lull in sales for the opening weekend of Iron Man. Besides spending your weekly allowance on a $60 DVD, you’ll also likely be holed up without food or water, to engrossed in virtual drunk driving to go out and see a movie.

This weekend we’ll find out. Iron Man opens on Friday nationwide, and by that time most people will be four days deep in GTA IV. The film and the game have the same basic target audience, but will they be able to split their time this weekend?

Of course, if you’re in San Francisco you can go watch it today courtesy of us at the Crunch Network, no matter what Marvel says.

Hands-on Mobile has released Iron Man: The C&D. Only instead of Tony Stark you play a slightly overweight lawyer who represents Marvel Comics. You always wanted to write real fiction but your mother told you she wasn’t going to pay for any bum so you went to law school and were hoping for a job in politics when you got the Marvel account and you were OK for a time, kind of rationalizing your life choice by comparing yourself with your struggling friends from college who are living in Scranton or wherever now and you’ve got a nice apartment and a parade of brittle women who you take out for frigid conversation and expensive meals. Then you fight against the evil Doktor Arrington and his army of Kommenters and fail.

Since this is the mobile version, everything you do will be seen by thousands of people and cause a great uproar in the blogosphere, causing many geeks to sour on the thought of seeing another bloated Summer blockbuster.

It appears Marvel is none to happy about us giving our readers in SF a crack at Iron Man before opening day since TC just received a C&D from Marvel. MA used to be a lawyer so hopefully he can get all of this sorted out.