This week, the show is a round table with Frostheim, Euripides and discussing the finer points of hit rating and cooldown timing, while I try to get in a last minute raid before vacation. I finish up just in time to help answer some reader email.

Apparently there was a bet as to whether or not I was successful in downing Anub in TotC (25).  At least one of them wasn’t familiar with the the Darkbrew effect.

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to huntingpartypodcast@gmail.com.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

Hi folks! This week, Darkbrew, Frostheim, and I have the distinct pleasure of interviewing Kripparrian, the hunter with the most DPS records. In case you’re wondering how that works, if you go to worldoflogs.com and look at hunter DPS or damage done benchmarks, it’s his name you’ll see there most often. Kripparian is a hunter in the Exodus guild, a major PvE guild with many world firsts under their belt.

If you want to know how he does it, you can (a) listen to this week’s podcast, (b) visit his youtube channel, (c) check out a post Euripides wrote on OutDPS trying to piece together how he manages his cooldowns, (d) check out a similar post by Frostheim about stacking cooldowns and procs, or (e) search fruitlessly for a similar post here at the Brew Hall (hint:  you won’t find one).

In addition to having beaten the PvE game, Kripparian has made (and spent!) hundreds of thousands of gold, has finished every arena season in which he’sparticipated in as a gladiator, and has 10620 achievement points.

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to huntingpartypodcast@gmail.com.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

Hi folks! This week, we interview the guy your raid leader points to when you don’t succeed in your efforts to get out of the fire: Quadilious. He’s a hunter, he’s a quadriplegic, and he raids hard modes. How much more badarse can one get?

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to huntingpartypodcast@gmail.com.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

Hi folks! This week, Darkbrew and Euripides have the pleasure of interviewing Scott Johnson, from The Instance and the myextralife.com comic. Scott has also just started a new podcast called The FilmSack- honestly, I don’t know how this guy finds time to sleep

This show, we talk to him about leading the largest guild in WOW (and probably any MMO), Alea Iacta Est, as well as ask him a bunch of silly questions in a tribute to the Quick Fire Questions segment on The Instance. These ones are all hunter related. Well, mostly.

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to outdps@gmail.com or thebrewhall@gmail.com, and mention “podcast” in the subject.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

This week, Darkbrew and Euripides talk about weekly raid quests, pet leveling speed, a new site for reporting ninjas to the public, and then answer a listener email about how to measure and report hunter DPS, for example when applying to a pug. Frostheim, from the Warcraft Hunters Union, then comes on and all heck breaks loose.

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to outdps@gmail.com or thebrewhall@gmail.com, and mention “podcast” in the subject.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

This week, Darkbrew has Fimlys from Twisted Nether and his Asleep At The WOW blog onto the show to talk about a variety of interesting things, not the least of which is Azeroth United! They are doing an awesome charity event. They also talk about hunters, I’ve been told

This is the 10th episode? Already?

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to outdps@gmail.com or thebrewhall@gmail.com, and mention “podcast” in the subject.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

This week, Euripides and I are pleased to have Frostheim, from Warcraft Hunters Union on the show! We talk about all the new PTR news that came out recently, and talk to Frost about many things, including his penchant for soloing the unsoloable!

As always, here is the iTunes store link, the Hunting Party Podcast feed, and the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the next show. Send an email to outdps@gmail.com or thebrewhall@gmail.com, and mention “podcast” in the subject.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts, and just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

Gere and Howard should have rented from Hertz instead.

(Weinstein) Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Jesse Eisenberg, James Brolin, Diane Kruger, Joy Bryant, Ljubomir Kerekes, Kristina Krepela. Directed by Richard Shepard.

There is a certain cache about being a war correspondent. The image of them is being adrenaline junkie thrill-seeking hard-drinking cynics have been perpetuated by the movies and to a large extent, by the media itself. However, what you don’t see on the other side of the camera is only half the story, and not the better half.

Simon Hunt (Gere) is a network reporter who in his life has moved from one war zone to the next, accompanied by his faithful cameraman Duck (Howard). When they reach Bosnia, the atrocities they have been inured to in other conflicts seem to hit home a little bit more, particularly for Simon. After a massacre in a small town perpetrated by a Serbian general nicknamed The Fox (Kerekes), Hunt has a full-on on-air meltdown, leading to his being fired and disgraced.

The intervening years are not kind to Hunt. He goes from one correspondence job to another, each at progressively smaller, less important agencies until he disappears off the radar completely. He exists mainly as a cautionary tale told in journalism schools. For Duck, however, his fortunes improve dramatically. He is promoted and works in a cushy network environment, the top of the food chain for network news cameramen. The deprivations of war are long behind him, almost as if they happened to a different man. He’s even got a sexy girlfriend (Bryant) waiting for him in Greece for a decadent, hedonistic vacation.

First, however he must return to Bosnia to celebrate the fifth year since the end of the civil war there. Network anchor Franklin Harris (Brolin) is doing a report from there to mark the occasion, and Duck is as always behind the camera. Along for the ride is rookie reporter Benjamin Strauss (Eisenberg) who is mainly there because his father is an executive vice-president at the network.

The last person Duck is literally expecting to see is Simon, but there he is. Furthermore, he has a major scoop, a game changer – one that will admit him back into the limelight. However, it is a difficult and dangerous story. The Fox remains at large, one of the war criminals not yet apprehended by the United Nations. Simon claims to know the location of the Fox and thinks he can get an interview. Duck is a bit uncertain but the prospect of the kind of story that would be a career highlight is too much to pass up. Strauss, eager to prove himself, tags along much to the disgust of Simon.

The danger lies in that the Fox is a national hero to the Serbs, and is well protected by maniacal bodyguards and fanatical villagers. The trio must get past U.N. bureaucrats, height-challenged black marketers, homicidal waiters and their own mutual mistrust – and once they find their target, what is Simon really after?

Loosely – verrrrrrrrrrrrry loosely – based on actual events (the reporters involved in the true life story are briefly viewed in a barroom scene), there is a feeling that this is a bit too Hollywood, a bit too cliché to be true. While the real reporters were print journalists (and included Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and Scott Anderson who penned the Esquire article that inspired the screenwriters), this is meant to be…well, I’m not sure. Partially it’s an indictment of the reluctance of the authorities in the Bosnian region to bring war criminals to justice, but also it seems to be a potshot at the media as well.

The problem here is that the media seems to be more a caricature of our existing preconceptions of who reports the news rather than actual characters. Having worked in the print journalism field and having known more than a few reporters in my time, I can safely say that not every reporter is a hard-drinking cynical Type-A personality as we’ve seen in movies like The Year of Living Dangerously. While the explanation for Simon’s meltdown does humanize him somewhat, you can be quite sure that no news reporter is going to put their cameraman into the line of fire as a joke.

That said, there are some nice performances here. Howard has become in a very short time one of the more reliable actors in Hollywood. Going back to Crash I can’t think of a single lackluster performance the man has given (although to be honest I haven’t seen The Fighter yet). Gere does his best with a severely flawed character, and Eisenberg does his best Michael Cera impression, as always.

Definitely, don’t look on this as an accurate representation of news reporting. About two-thirds of the way through the movie, the film takes a left turn when we find out what Simon’s real mission is and quite frankly, it doesn’t jive with the rest of the film. I think it would have worked a hell of a lot better if they had been seeking an interview with The Fox all along. However, they misfire with a truly awful ending that in an attempt to be satisfying ends up being the complete opposite.

There are some good things about the movie. It is beautifully shot and the subject matter would have been interesting if handled correctly. I can marginally recommend it based on that and the performances. However, be warned that this is a seriously flawed movie – and take it with a grain of salt, or better still a whole shaker of the stuff.

WHY RENT THIS: Howard performs nicely and the European locations are authentic and beautiful. The premise is at least interesting.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: A truly awful ending torpedoes the interesting premise, as does their cliché characterization of the entire television journalism field.

FAMILY VALUES: There are some fairly disturbing shots of war atrocities and a goodly amount of foul language.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The movie was mostly filmed in Croatia.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: 9

Sara Bachelder of Mexico Casting is a national casting company. They have a very extensive casting resume and have been involved in the following productions:

Fast and Furious – Columbia / Sony Pictures
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan – Columbia / Sony Pictures
Beverly Hills Chihuahua (South of the Boarder)
The Heartbreak Kid – Dreamworks / Paramount
The Hunting Party – The Weinstein Co.
Vantage Point – Columbia / Sony Pictures
Nacho Libre – Paramount
and many more…

This weekend, we’ll be recording our first live Hunting Party Podcast at 5:00 PM EST on Saturday the 12th of Sept. Here’s the ustream link!

Ustream is worse than useless. Never use them if you can avoid them. We’ll be broadcasting on Talkshoe!

It should be starting a few minutes after the wow.com post show. The episode will be released on iTunes and RSS early the next week, like usual, so our awesome producer can get his hands on it and fix up the sound post process.

Episode 5 of The Hunting Party was done without Darkbrew, who is on vacation (lucky blighter), but we got Brigwyn to fill in. We started with the interview, and then went over the news.

Today’s show notes contain a lot of links:

• Most importantly, the squirrel launcher.
• Brigwyn’s blog, podcast, and forums.
• The Hunting Party Podcast iTunes link. (leave us a review!)
• I’ve been getting questions about the song we use- the song is called “Turn You Out” from the “Deliverance” album, and the band is called “Bionic”.

As always, here is the Hunting Party Podcast feed, or here is the direct XML feed. If you email us comments or questions, we’ll read them on the show. Send an email to outdps@gmail.com, and mention “podcast comment” in the subject.

If you don’t do syndicated podcasts (iTunes, or whatever) but just want to download this week’s MP3 and play it on your player of choice, click here.

In this episode, we talk about the news: twin val’kry, faction champions, koralon, and then interview Pike from Aspect of the Hare!

As always, email comments to outdps@gmail.com or thebrewhall@gmail.com.

To subscribe to just the podcast feed, add this to your aggregator (direct link to XML), or check us out on iTunes!  You can also download the podcast by clicking here.

In this episode, we talk about the news: twin val’kry, faction champions, koralon, and then interview Pike from Aspect of the Hare!

A couple of updates: we won’t be doing a live show next weekend, probably the weekend after that. Also, since I recorded this, my guild got a first kill on Yogg.

As always, email comments to outdps@gmail.com or thebrewhall@gmail.com.

To subscribe to just the podcast feed, add this to your aggregator (direct link to XML), or check us out on iTunes! Lastly, you can download the MP3 without out any of that complicated iTunes or RSS nonsense by clicking here.

I hate macs. I’m trying to record the podcast on Mrs. DPS’s new macbook (because my desktop’s terrible integrated soundcard introduces buzz and has horribly low mic gain), however it doesn’t allow you to just plug and play a standard mic, you need a mixer or a mic that can do “line out”. Long story short, I got this week’s intrepid interviewee (Pike from Aspect of the Hare) out of bed at a disgustingly early hour on a Sunday just to discover that I fail at computer audio.

Why don’t I just record my interview the way I did the first two episodes? Well, I returned my license for the recording software I used in preparation for my move to recording on a mac. Typical me: jump first and look down while plummeting.

If I can manage it, I’ll get the hardware working by tomorrow evening so I can still post the first part of the interview on time on Tuesday, and I’ll release the interview with Pike as soon as we get another availability window.

Episode 2 of the podcast is here. This week we talk about Lock and Load, Marksman versus Suvival, Blizzcon, and what Blizzard might have in store for the next WoW expansion. Enjoy, and please send us your e-mails and feedback!

To subscribe to just the podcast feed, add this to your aggregator (direct link to XML), or check us out on iTunes! You can e-mail questions and comments to OutDps@gmail.com or to TheBrewhall@gmail.com.

You’ll note that the audio is not as fail as the first episode- I told you we’d get better! In actuality, an intrepid listener/reader who happens to be a sound engineer by day stepped up and offered to show us how it’s done. If you ever need a sound engineer, let me know and I’ll get you his contact- I’d suggest this guy any day!

On this episode, Darkbrew and I talk about all kinds of stuff, but there’s no interview. And no reader email! What gives guys? It’s not hard to remember: outdps@gmail.com or TheBrewhall@gmail.com

To subscribe to just the podcast feed, add this to your aggregator (direct link to XML), or check us out on iTunes! Here is the direct file link.

Euripides over at OutDPS was gracious enough to allow me to co-host the Hunting Party Podcast with him. The first episode is out for your listening pleasure.

In this episode, Euripides and I talk about patch 3.2, and Euripides interviews Zeherah from www.femaledwarf.com.

Email questions and comments to TheBrewHall@gmail.com, or OutDPS@gmail.com or post them in the comments here and we’ll go over them next time!

To subscribe to just the podcast feed, add this to your aggregator (direct link to XML).

Thanks for Listening!

Terribly sorry about the background noise and sound quality- I recorded the interview and the panel into the same track, and had to perform sound editing-fu to get the voice volume levels about the same, and at some point during the process (somewhere around “compression”), it took the sound of my 10 month old watching sesame street on the other side of the house and made it almost as loud as us. If you can bear with that, it’s worth it.

On this episode, Darkbrew and I talk about patch 3.2, and I interview Zeherah from www.femaledwarf.com (guide post to that site).

Email questions and comments to me, or post them in the comments here and we’ll go over them next time!

To subscribe to just the podcast feed, add this to your aggregator (direct link to XML). Here is the direct file link.