• Cartoonist Will Elder, a formative genius of MAD, has died at 87. Jeez, what a bummer... this guy was formative on my sense of humor.

• Josie and the Pussy Cats launch into outer space. NASA should probably avoid making the lift off procedure on their space ships trigger with the accidental throwing of a single lever.

• Arthur C. Clarke's last book will be The Last Theorem.

• Cinematical looks at the most famous scifi locations in the real world.

• The preview for tonight's episode of Battlestar Galactica looks surprisingly dramatic, given the plodding pace of the last six episodes.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 05.16.08 - Emile Hirsch Fires His Agent; the Most Famous SciFi Locations in the World" »

• The drunken Darth Vader who beat up two Church of Jedi parishioners has been given a suspended sentence.

• ComicMix lists the worst supervillain names in comics. My favorite is the Hypno-Hustler.

• Darth Mojo has a fantastic post about the anatomy of Cylons up. Detailed down the coccyx servos.

• Browncoats, support your candidates with this Reynolds / Washburne 2008 campaign tee.

• Jericho fans are now claiming the post-apocalyptic drama was canceled because of a conspiracy theory involving Nielsen ratings. Give it up, people.

• io9 lists seven reasons why scifi book series outstay their welcomes. I'm just not going to read a "cycle" of anything, let alone some dippy fan wankery.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 05.15.08 - Post-Apocalyptic Kid Movies; the Worst in Supervillain Names" »

• Eric Stotlz, some kind of wonderful himself, will be the first Cylon.

• io9 reminds us that aliens should always have poetic weaknesses.

• David Cronenberg to be remaking Timecrimes?

• Correction: Speed Racer didn't come in second on its opening weekend, it came in third. This groks: When I went to see it on Saturday, there were only two people in the theater, and one of them walked out halfway through.

• Wall-E's new sexpot girlfriend is based on an iPod.

• ABC is bringing the BBC's excellent time travel series Life on Mars to American screens... courtesy of a David E. Kelley remake.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 05.14.08 - Alec Baldwin Pitches an Outer Space Romp; Is Cronenberg Remaking Timecrimes?" »

Girls can be geeks too, and proud of it. They'll debate the relative merits of Captains Kirk vs. Picard. And they'll talk about everything from George Lucas to the chest hair of Lost's Jack Shephard. You'll find these topics -- and much, much more -- on Pink Raygun, a fan site started in February 2007 that celebrates women as both science fiction fans and auteurs. The brainchild of Lisa Faryand John Dallaire, Fary says she launched the site because she couldn't find a place where women were having fun with scifi and "just enjoying the sheer geekery of it." Too often, "a woman who's interested in things like science, space travel, etc. has always been seen as an aberration," notes Teresa Jusino, one of the site's 15 writers. "Little boys are introduced to and encouraged in their interest, while little girls have to find it for themselves."

Continue reading "Site of the Week - Pink Raygun" »

• Dark Roasted Blend has a fantastic gallery of Soviet-era science fiction images.

• The director of The Pirates of the Caribbean will direct Bioshock. It will suck.

• Go listen to some Arthur C. Clarke reading 2001.

• io9 sees Captain America's shield in a still from Iron Man that looks slathered with an inch of Vaseline.

• A lot of information on the plot structure of Star Trek XI.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 05.13.08 - Soviet-era SciFi; Star Trek XI Plot Details" »

• The Daily Mail has posted a surprisingly sympathetic tribute to William Shatner to help promote his latest autobiography.

• Roger Ebert speculates that scifi fanzines were the progenitors of blogs.

• Eric Stoltz is joining the cast to Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica prequel, Caprica.

• Speed Racer was simply destroyed this weekend at the box office. It deserved to be. It doesn't work on any level: As a racing film, the racing is too cartoonish to offer any excitement. As a living cartoon, it's better, but it just isn't a very funny or interesting one.

• Conclusive proof that Ronald Moore had no idea who the Final Five Cylons were as recently as the end of last season.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 05.12.08 - Eric Stoltz Joins Caprica; Frank Miller Sets His Sights on Buck Rogers" »

1. Science Fiction novelist and SciFi Scanner columnist John Scalzi pwns Salon.com's Andrew O'Hehir, who argued that Guillermo Del Toro was a bad choice to helm The Hobbit.

2. F is for Foundation in this week's ABC's of SciFi as John Brownlee deconstructs Asimov's magnum opus.

3. The Scanner reviews Speed Racer, and says that not even a goofy monkey can detract from the film's eye-popping, wall-to-wall, high speed action.

4. There is a God, and God is good. Marvel announces a sequel to Iron Man in 2010 and an Avengers movie in 2011.

5. Industry steps on the back of the Shire-folk this week as Iron Man topples The Hobbit in our highly scientific SciFi Power Ranking list.

SciFi Dept. Video: Kevin Maher is used to working alone, but for this mission -- track down the best scifi buddy cop movie ever -- he's going to have to take a partner. Cue dramatic music.

In 1945, Nazis left for the moon. In 2018, they are coming back. So goes the tagline for the only fan-made independent scifi film worth getting excited about, Iron Sky.

From the creators of Star Wreck, the most popular Finnish film of all time (and, according to its producers, the most popular Internet feature film of all time), Iron Sky posits an alternate history where Nazis established a Fourth Reich on the dark side of the Moon. In 2018, with their anti-gravity technology perfected, the Nazis send two young soldiers down to Earth as an advanced party to assassinate President Jenna Bush.

The script is by Johanna Sinisalo, Finland's best-known science fiction writer, and the whole project currently has a budget of $5 million. That's a pretty sizable figure when you consider the movie is being made independently, and when you look at the recently released, spectacular looking teaser trailer.

Continue reading "Not Just Another Space Nazi Movie, Iron Sky Lets Fans Help with the Filmmaking" »

• io9 looks at the largest mega-sentients in scifi.

• Zack Synder has posted the second video journal for Watchmen.

• Just a reminder that the Star Wars: Clone Wars two-minute trailer will be simultaneously aired tonight on the Cartoon Network, TNT, TBS, CNN and Boomerang.

• A chronological listing of all the Season Four Battlestar Galactica episodes.

• A gigaton of new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull pics have been released to scrutinize for scifi minutiae. Hard to believe that in only a couple weeks, we'll know for sure if it even has an alien in it.

• SF Signal hosts another Mind Meld, this time asking about famous scifi stories Hollywood should film.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 05.09.08 - The Secret Life of Stormtroopers; What SciFi Stories Hollywood Should Film" »

• Bertie Wooster as a early adopter post-humanist? Throw in an Asimovian Jeeves while you're at it.

• Shadow Unit: "It's a series "no one had ever seen. It would share DNA with 'Criminal Minds,' with 'The X-Files' and 'Millennium,' with 'Man from U.N.C.L.E.' and the old paramedic show 'Emergency" to name but a few.

• Some pretty heady spoilers for the ninth episode of Battlestar Galactica.

• Cyclops will apparently appear in the upcoming Wolverine movie.

• This bodes ill: Matthew McConaughey is top of the list to play Captain America.

• Was Mick Jagger in the running to play a droog in Clockwork Orange?

• Ten years later, Time Out looks at The Matrix.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 05.08.08 - Catch Shadow Unit Online; Cyclops Joins Wolverine" »