In the age of countless movie product tie-ins, even the closest kept secret can be spilled from a T-shirt, toy prototype, or dangling cell phone charms. So you can blame the land of cell phone bling for this huge honking spoiler: A recently released advertisement for Japanese cell phone charms seems to confirm the ever-present rumor that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystall Skull is about aliens.
The advertisement features a decidedly extraterrestrial-looking crystal skull keychain. If this is an official tie-in, this pretty much confirms all the rumors that Indy visits Area 51 in the newest film and the Close Encounters of the Third Kind tie-in.
This might be the most unexpected source of a plot leak ever. Thanks, Japan!
What do you get when you spend entirely too much time playing with LEGOs? John Brownlee brought you one answer last week, when he displayed a stop-motion animation video of BoingBoing Gadget's Joel Johnson assembling a 5,622-piece LEGO model of the Millennium Falcon.
But that's not the best we can do, is it? Observe this shot-for-shot LEGO recreation of The Dark Knight trailer. All I can say is WOW:
Before the Russell T. Davies revamp of Doctor Who, the Doctor was an asexual hero, too busy fighting Daleks to strip out of his cricket outfit. Sure, there was the First Doctor's "grandaughter," Susan, to indicate that the Doctor wasn't some foppish dandy: He had sex at least once.
Davies hasn't entirely changed that, but he's made the Doctor's sexuality pretty ambiguous. The Ninth and Tenth Doctors both come across as closet pervs who "travel alone" only until a cute and emotionally vulnerable 19-year-old skirt with a Daddy complex comes along.
Now the rumor is that the fourth season will introduce yet another companion with a daddy complex to the mix: The Doctor's own daughter. This wouldn't be the mother of Susan, but 23-year-old Georgia Moffett, who is Fifth Doctor Peter Davison's own daughter. She's a popsicle baby, made in a test-tube from some of the Fifth Doctor's DNA.
Mathias Malzieu's La Mecanique Du Coeur is one of those classics that has never been properly appraised by Yank sci-fi lovers. The story, set in 1874, centers on a young man whose chest cavity is emptied of a bum ticker and replaced with a steampunk, cogwork heart -- which works just fine as long as its carrier remains cool, lethargic, and dispassionate. In short, it's a book in the "robot feels love, can't comprehend it, explodes" sub-genre.
And now it's coming to the screen. Luc Besson's production company has optioned the film, with the intention of turning it into a 3D animated film. That sounds a little odd: It really sounds like it should be made in stop-motion Nightmare Before Christmas or Corpse Bride style.
Still, it sounds interesting: Mathias Malzieu will be co-directing the film himself, along with Stephane Berla, who directed clips of the Dionysos album based on it. Let's hope this is the beginning of a French steampunk Renaissance in sci-fi film: City of Lost Children was an ignored rallying cry for what could have been an amazing genre in foreign film.
Star Wars action figures never looked much like the actual actors. Luke was barrel chested, with a face made of half-melted, amorphous putty. Princess Leia's action figure was, unlike Carrie Fisher herself, lusty. The only figures that looked like their on-screen counterparts were the aliens and the robots.
So if the Kenner line of Star Wars action figures didn't look like the actors who portrayed them, what celebrities did they resemble? Humor site Topless Robot examined each figure in minute detail, and came up with a hilarious list of superficial resemblances, including Princess Leia as Laura Bush, Luke Skywalker as the freakish Brian Thompson, and Johnny Cash as Dengar.
Richard Kelly's latest sci-fi film, The Box, is an unexpected delights, one of those fantastic, small sci-fi films that somehow escape notice.
I haven't seen Kelly's previous film, the post-apocalyptic Southland Tales, but The Box is based on one of my favorite Richard Matheson stories. Starring Cameron Diaz (ugh), James Marsden (okay) and Frank Langella (yes!), The Box is about a couple who receive the titular box, which grants wishes -- but takes human lives as fuel.
It's the Matheson connection that has me hooked. Sure, Hollywood's made some poor stabs at Matheson's genius lately, mainly through their adaptation of I Am Legend. But Matheson was also one of the formative visionaries behind The Twilight Zone and one of the greatest writers the genre has to offer. Even a bad adaptation is worth my interest.
When I was a boy, my father told me that the key to appreciating classical music was to make a story of it while I listened to it. Being of a dorky, pocket-protector disposition, it's no surprise that Beethoven, for me, was all about teleporters, go-go skirts, amorphous alien blobs, and Borg Cubes.
In the last few decades, sci-fi and classical music have been converging -- thanks to declining "traditional" symphony concert attendances. Pops orchestras have been springing up all over the place, endlessly performing the Star Wars theme for pleb audiences.
Now Star Trek is also going the pops route. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra is launching an event called Star Trek: The Music, co-hosted by John de Lancie (Q himself) and Robert Picardo (the doctor) and featuring Jerry Goldsmith's opening theme for Star Trek: Voyager, the Klingon battle theme, and the opening music from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
• IESB is hosting six new clips from the Anakin Skywalker meets Teleportation movie, Jumper.
• Speaking of Jumper, Stephen Gould talks about why the movie is good for fans of the book, despite the fact that his hardcore fan base of neckbeards are outraged by some of Hollywood's licenses.
• Free e-books for the cheap and quasi-literate Doctor Who fan.
Hollywood has a lot to learn about video game players. Whether they're depicted as idiots like in Stay Alive or as immature gore-hounds like in Gamer, the Xbox-inclined always get a bad rap.
Before the Russell T. Davies revamp of Doctor Who, the Doctor was an asexual hero, too busy fighting Daleks to strip out of his cricket outfit. Sure, there was the First Doctor's "grandaughter," Susan, to indicate that the Doctor wasn't some foppish dandy: He had sex at least once.
Mathias Malzieu's La Mecanique Du Coeur is one of those classics that has never been properly appraised by Yank sci-fi lovers. The story, set in 1874, centers on a young man whose chest cavity is emptied of a bum ticker and replaced with a steampunk, cogwork heart -- which works just fine as long as its carrier remains cool, lethargic, and dispassionate. In short, it's a book in the "robot feels love, can't comprehend it, explodes" sub-genre.
Star Wars action figures never looked much like the actual actors. Luke was barrel chested, with a face made of half-melted, amorphous putty. Princess Leia's action figure was, unlike Carrie Fisher herself, lusty. The only figures that looked like their on-screen counterparts were the aliens and the robots.
