The Academy Awards are still a few months away, but you can already scratch one movie off the list in an important category. Despite all the buzz, The Dark Knight will be not be eligible for a Best Original Score Oscar. Soundtrack composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard have been disqualified by the Academy because too many other names are credited as composers. The Academy rules state that at least 70 percent of the music must be attributable to whoever would be nominated for the award. No word on other Oscars for The Dark Knight, but at two and a half hours long, we can almost guarantee that it wont be winning for Best Short Film.

The tide is turning on a few of NBC’s new shows. Knight Rider, the new reboot of the classic David Hasselhoff series, has undergone major changes or ‘retooling’ after just a few episodes. Three of the main characters have been discarded, and Executive Producer Gary Scott Thompson said quote “we’re moving closer to the original.” Interesting. Also of note, one of NBC’s other news shows, My Own Worst Enemy starring Christian Slater, has been cancelled. No new episodes are scheduled to air.

Don’t expect to spend too much time finishing the latest Halo game. Halo 3: Recon, the stand-alone expansion pack for last year’s insanely popular first person shooter, will be just that, an expansion pack. Apparently the game will only be 3 to 5 hours long, and Bungie’s own Joe Staten has also said that quote “we do not view this as a $60 title.” Good news, quick and cheap is how we like it here at EP.

Madden football is sparking some legal controversy. A group of retired NFL players have won a lawsuit against the NFL Player’s Association, claiming that the Player’s Association deliberately sold their video game rights below market value. Madden publisher/developer Electronic Arts were not among the defendants, but their emails were used in evidence in the case. The emails also indicate the Player’s Association was trying to play hardball with Take Two, makers of All-Pro Football, by preventing them from using Hall of Famers. The jury awarded the retired players $28 million in damages.

One of the world’s biggest game designers has had a change of heart. RPG legend and Tabula Rasa designer Richard Garriott has announced that he is leaving NCSoft. Garriott recently fulfilled a lifelong dream by going into space, and according to an open letter, the experience quote “sparked some new interests that I would like to devote my time and resources to.” Garriott thanked the NCSoft design team and his fans, and there is no word yet on what those “new interests” are, or if they have anything to do with games at all.

The future could hold bright things for the new DSi. Nintendo have trademarked a few names that might give us a little hint as to where their latest handheld is going. Some of the more interesting ones include DSNews, DSMovie, DSPhone, DSMusic, DSMail, DSSchool and DSCreator. Could this be that electronic/lifestyle integration that Reggie talked about at Nintendo’s last E3 Press Conference? We’ll see, but given how popular the iPhone is, Nintendo’s got some catching up to do. The DSi is already out in Japan, and it’s coming out here sometime next year.

Fallout 3 is still banned in India, but it looks like our friends in Japan will finally be able to try it out. Bethesda has toned down their popular post-apocalyptic action RPG in order to get a release in the land of the rising sun. Reportedly, the material cut from the game is an early quest where the player decides weather or not to detonate a nuclear bomb in the town of Megaton. This sparked sensitivities in the country, but even with the changes, any Japanese person who gets the Fallout 3 Collector’s Edition will have the best making-of documentary ever made.

Looks like another of the gaming expos is opening their doors to the public. For the first time, The Montreal International Game Summit will be open to the public. On November 19th from 4 to 7pm, you’ll be able to go in and meet with game developers and check out the exhibition floor. We’ll be there too, so if you can’t make it to the summit, check out EP in the coming weeks for anything you missed.

Already gaining a few holiday pounds? Good news, the folks at EA want to get you in shape. A new fitness game called EA Sports Active, a customizable fitness program for the Wii, is currently in development by EA Canada in Vanouver. Similar to Nintendo’s Wii Fit, the game comes with a variety of exercises, and will also come with straps to hold the Nunchuk to different parts of your body. EA Sports Active will be out next spring.

Looks like you might be able to add another bastard to the group. The intentionally miss-spelt Inglourious Basterds, the new World War II project by Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino, has reportedly snagged film composer Ennio Morricone to do the score. Morricone’s earlier work on The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly was licensed for the Kill Bill Volume 2 soundtrack, and this will be just the second time Tarantino has had and original score created for one of his movies. Inglourious Basterds stars Brad Pitt, and is planned for release sometime late next year.

Famed director Ridley Scott has signed onto his next big project, and you’re going to be surprised when you find out what it is. The new project by the Alien and Body Of Lies director is called Monopoly, and no, it’s not a biopic about Bill Gates. This will be a big screen adaptation of the Parker Brothers board game, that’s right, a movie based on a board game. No word yet on plot, but Scott has said he wants the film to have a “futuristic sheen” similar to his cult hit Blade Runner. Hey, maybe Steven Spielberg can do a solitaire movie next.

Who is it? Dave? Dave’s not here! For the first time in 25 years, comedians Cheech and Chong are back together again on stage with their new Light Up America tour. The duo have also revealed that one of their gigs is going to be filmed and released as a concert movie, simply called The Cheech and Chong Concert Movie. Pretty far out man.

So, what’s with all the talk lately about Apple digging deeper into the game market? Apparently, Apple has filed their second patent for a Wiimote-like device that tracks the object’s movement in relevance to a TV screen or monitor. This comes after Apple’s own Marketing Executive Greg Joswiak said that the iPhone quote “really seems [to be] the future of gameplay.” That plus all the recent pro-gaming rhetoric at several Mac Keynote events, and the claims that the new MacBook Pro is the best consumer grade laptop, we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple gets into the game biz in a much bigger capacity.

One of the bigger Japanese publishers has got something cooking, cooking with gas power that is. Square Enix, the Japanese RPG masters behind the Final Fantasy series, have signed a publishing deal with western developer Gas Powered Games. BC native Chris Taylor founded the studio in 1998, and their first big game was Dungeon Siege. Gas Powered Games released their new sci-fi RTS Supreme Commander last year, and it looks like Square Enix will now be publishing the sequel, Supreme Commander 2, which is currently in development. This will be Square Enix’s first Western development deal, and this comes as a push for more Western distribution by the Japanese company after the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would be released on the 360 here in North America. It should be interesting to see where this exciting partnership goes.

Movie theaters are already getting ready for next summer’s big action blockbusters. Keep an eye out for some sweet new Watchmen posters showcasing the different characters in the film. While you’re at it, look for two new Star Trek posters that also show off the film’s characters, with Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock. Watchmen will be out next year assuming the lawsuit between Fox and Warner Bros doesn’t screw everything up, and Star Trek beams to Earth in May. You can also expect to see the original Star Trek films out on Blu-Ray in 2009 to coincide with the release of the film, and a new trailer attached to Quantum Of Solace, released this Friday. And while we’re on a big summer movie note, expect to see an extended version of Transformers hit Blu-Ray next year, to coincide with the release of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen in June.

There’s some good news for everybody planning to pick up The Dark Knight in HD. Warner Bros has announced plans to ship one million copies of Batman’s latest adventure on Blu-ray, making it the most copies of a film ever made on the format. The previous record holders are Casino Royale with an initial batch of 100,000, and Iron Man, which shipped half a million. The demand for The Dark Knight should be pretty big considering that it’s now the second highest grossing film ever made, if you adjust for inflation that is. And there’s more good news. It looks like the two Tim Burton films, Batman and Batman Returns, will see the light of blue this February. No word on special features yet, but lets hope they give us more than what was just on the special edition DVD’s that were released back in 2005.

It looks like everybody wants to take a bite from the Apple these days. The iPhone is now officially the most popular handset in the United States, surpassing the Motorola Razr with more than 32 million units sold since the device launched last year. This comes as bad news for Canadian company Research In Motion, the makers of the BlackBerry, as their stock fell 3.8 percent after the numbers were released.

The first review of the new Guns N’ Roses album have surfaced, and residents of Hell are in dire need of snow-shoes right now. Rolling Stone has given the infamous Chinese Democracy and thumbs up, with Senior Editor David Fricke giving the long-delayed album four out of five stars. Fricke went on to call the album a quote “great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record.” Chinese Democracy finally hits store shelves on the 21st, and is available exclusively at Best Buy locations in the US. Canadian residents can buy it wherever they want though, so take that America.

It looks like we now know who’ll be directing the Captain America movie. Joe Johnston has been confirmed for the big screen comic adaptation. Johnston’s previous credits include The Rocketeer and Jurassic Park III, and he’s currently working on the new Wolf Man movie that comes out next year. Captain America is scheduled to hit theaters sometime in May 2011.

Man, Heroes could use a hero of its own right about now. Our wise and handsome regular viewers already know that Tim Kring recently fired head writers Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb after poor fan and critical reaction to the third season. Now Ubisoft says it is no longer doing the planned Heroes video game after the rights recently expired. No word on whether any other developers are interested in picking them up.