Host Adam Ferrara has confirmed Top Gear USA will be back for a third season. The comedian-turned television personality broke the news during an event in New York City last night, according to Inside Line.

The show is slowly gaining momentum in the U.S., and this season saw its best ratings yet. One episode drew an impressive 2.1 million viewers. Of course, that’s a small figure compared to the legions who tune in or download the original “Top Gear,” but with the U.S. hosts getting more comfortable with each other every episode, we’ll hardly turn down more car-oriented programming.

Then again, Top Gear USA may be your only TG fix over the next few months. Jeremy Clarkson just confirmed the original show won’t be back until 2013. According to Ferrara, production on season three starts this weekend.

SOURCE via Inside Line

Jeremy Clarkson did an 11-minute interview with a South African radio station that has a name to match its geographic location. Clarkson discussed what it took to make the Top Gear segment that had them drivng around the Monaco GP circuit on a race weekend, the coming Ron Howard movie Rush about the 1976 F1 battle between Niki Lauda and James Hunt and Top Gear Festival 2012 “with an array of cars that has never been seen anywhere.”

But what has caught everyone’s attention – everyone except for the radio interviewer, that is – was Clarkson saying that the festival would be “about the only time” he, Hammond and May would work together in 2012 because “there’s no Top Gear this year.” There’s video of the interview below, the bombshell at about 8:10. Since it’s all a bit confusing, Mr. Clarkson himself has set the record straight via his personal Twitter account, confirming that Top Gear will return in January of 2013, though there will be a Christmas special some time before that.

The reason petrolheads will be missing out on their BBC fix? Simon Cowell, apparently. “Sunday nights will be full of fat people singing,” said Clarkson. “Top Gear is a medium size van. Cowell is a juggernaut. When he has finished his singing competition, our new series will start.”

Calm down, cinema-goers. It just takes time to “settle in” to the strange new ultra-realistic world of high frame-rates, according to Peter Jackson, who’s been responding to audience’s rather strong panning of 48fps rough cuts from his upcoming 3D epic, Hobbit. Viewers’ main beefs were the surprising appearance of the higher cadence footage, which almost looked like it was shot on video, as well as blemishes on actors and sets which were all-too-visible without the crutch of motion blur. But Jackson insists that the footage lacked special effects and color correction, and that the showing was perhaps too short to judge the frame-rate — which is why he also says there’ll be no 48 fps trailer. He even adds that he’s now “very aware of the strobing, the flicker and the artifacts” when he’s watching regular 24fps cinema — so the real struggle for audiences might not be adjusting to the new way, but going back to the old.

SOURCE via Hollywood Reporter

Everyone’s got their favorite superheroes, and their reasons for liking them. Ours drive cool cars. Comic-book-turned-big-screen do-gooders like Batman (and his mild-mannered alter-ego Bruce Wayne) and Iron Man (Tony Stark). That’s just one of the reasons we’re stoked for The Driver.

The animated series-in-the-making centers around a mysterious vigilante who chases down criminally reckless drivers on the streets of Los Angeles, and a shutterbug sidekick who follows him around as he puts the baddies to shame in Gorillaz-style animation. It’s shaping up to be as car-obsessed as the best of us, and after launching the first trailer back in April of 2010, the creators have now (the better part of two years later) released some additional footage. Follow the jump to see Nissan’s 350Z square off against its own GT-R.

The cannonball was supposed to blast through an array of water barrels and a cinderblock wall. Supposed to. Instead it hit the wall, a hill, a house, and Jasbir Gill’s Toyota Sienna. Now do you see why they tell you not to try this at home?

The accident occurred Tuesday afternoon at an Alameda County Police bomb range adjacent to Santa Rita Jail, about a half mile outside of Dublin. The gun had lifted slightly from its intended position just before it fired, putting the steel round over the water barrels, off the hillside, and 700 yards East.

There it bounced through the front door of a home, up the front stairs, through a bedroom—past a sleeping family—out the wall, over a six-lane road, and on through the van’s front passenger window.

Nobody was injured, though Gill was understandably peeved. “I’m angry and lucky to be alive. Anybody could have been hit by this,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle.

SOURCE via SFGate

The Top Gear crew has been spotted filming in China. James May and Jeremy Clarkson have caused a stir in Beijing as they take to the wheel in the newest vehicles available from Chinese automakers.

Judging from the photos that have surfaced so far, it looks like the intrepid duo spent some time in exquisite pieces of engineering like the JAC Binyue and the Greatwall Haval M2, while also taking a look at some of the country’s vehicles that infringe on the copyrights of pay tribute to cars manufactured around the globe. That meant taking a gander at hardware like the Smart ForTwo-inspired Shuanghuan Noble, the BMW X5-flavored Shuanghuan SCO and the Mini Cooper-themed Lifan 320.

The episode is likely to surface next season, and we’re betting it will feature plenty of insightful commentary from all three of the hosts. If this seems like the setup for yet another international incident, you’d be right. But isn’t that why we keep watching? Head over to Car News China for a look at the full gaggle of photos.

Jackson is currently hard at work shooting The Hobbit in 3D. But instead of using the bulky 3D rigs commonly associated with 3D movie films. Jackson is using RED EPIC cameras and mirrors to keep the cameras mobile.

Most “3D” films are crap. Sure Avatar looked good, but the story was lammmeee. Hollywood has gotten in the habit of ham-fisting 3D into even crappier films during post-production to squeeze a few extra bucks out of movie goers. Also lame. The Hobbit—an amazing story—has been developed as a 3D film from day one. Even the hand-drawn concept art is 3D. And thanks to the 48 RED EPIC cameras shooting 5K at 48FPS, the movie should look outstanding.

While the RED camera bodies are small, the lenses needed to shoot the film are large enough that creating the interocular distance that mimics the distance between human eyes was impossible if the cameras were placed side by side. To combat the issue, one of the cameras shoots from a horizontal position through a mirror, while the other shoots a reflected image off the same mirror in a vertical position. The result is a 3D camera rig that shoots amazing footage and is relatively portable. Check out the video above for Jackson’s tour of the production.

The Hobbit should be in theatres December 2012 and I should be in line for a ticket in November 2012.

SOURCE via CNET

We’ve already seen FarmVille invade our Facebook feeds and 7/11 branches around the country (for those in the States), and now it looks like there might be a FarmVille movie in the works. Speakng to IGN, two of the writers that worked on Toy Story dropped hints about a Zynga collaboration that they’re working towards.

During an interview regarding their work on upcoming video game Skylanders Spyro’s Adventures, Alec Sokolow and Joel Cohen, both writers on the original Toy Story movie, assured the site that they’re still working on movies and highlighted Zynga as one company they’re in talks with.

“So, yes, we will continue writing movies. We are also working on several new and very exciting opportunities,” they said. “We’re in conversations with Zynga to do something with one of their brands. Can’t really say too much on that front yet, but ‘Old MacDonald’ didn’t have a factory, if you get our drift.”

Well, when you put it like that, it’s hard not to get your drift, guys. IGN reports that FarmVille-developer Zynga refused to comment.

As much as we’re not fans of FarmVille here, the prospect of a FarmVille movie doesn’t seem so bad. We’re picturing an animated farm movie for kids, and it kind of makes sense to us. Would you go and watch a FarmVille movie? Ugh…

SOURCE via IGN

HTC’s CFO Winston Yung appears ready to make a deal with market rival and patent nemesis Apple. The Taiwanese company has had some rather harsh words for the Cupertino crew, and it hasn’t seemed any more conciliatory after getting slapped by the ITC. That may be starting to change, as Yung told Bloomberg, “we [Apple and HTC] have to sit down and figure it out.” He went on to say that the house that Sense built was open to discussions with Jobs and co. but did not venture to guess what a final agreement might look like. Of course, it’s worth pointing out that this is absolutely standard practice, and we’d expect nothing less.

SOURCE via Bloomberg

The attached video explains it all, so we’ll keep this simple. It seems Michael Bay directly cribbed scenes from his 2005 movie, The Island, for 2011′s Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which is gobbling up people’s disposable income this weekend, which sucks terribly to me. The 3D is totally not worth it.

Anyway, extreme credit goes to the YouTube user who recognized Bay’s clever use of CGI and called him out on it. This also proves that at least one human being actually saw The Island. Hit the jump to watch the side-by-side video comparison.