1. The Scanner's Alex Zalben says that Iron Man has what it takes to be the greatest superhero movie ever -- eat your heart out, Man of Steel.

2. Christine Fall interviews Jurassic Park paleontology adviser Jack Horner, who's a bit tired of informing grad students and SciFi geeks that it was just a movie.

3. The SciFi Scanner explores the voyages of the most Intrepid starship in the galaxy: The Enterprise, on the ABCs of SciFi. Warp factor cool.

4. AMC unveils its SciFi Power Ranking list, which scientifically proves that Hellboy II is bigger news this week than Iron Man. Take that, Marvel.

5. Carrie Fisher admits she went onto the set of Star Wars looking to have a fling with Harrison Ford. Honestly, can you blame her?

SciFi Dept. Video: Kevin Maher looks at Hollywood's Richard Matheson mania following the successful release of I am Legend, and wonders if Eddie Murphy in a Brett Ratner-remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man is enough to derail it. Blasphemy!

•Gremlins make their first appearance in 17 years thanks to a UK BT advertisement.

• The beautifully hypnotic repetition of "He's Dead, Jim".

• io9 lists four styles you'll wear in the future according to scifi. I'm glad I've lost all that weight: I'll look pretty svelte in that unisexual onesie.

• When the WB's new interactive website launches in August, you'll be able to catch live streaming shows like Buffy and Roswell.

• Remember: May 3rd is free comic day. Hit up your local comic book store for some swag. Start a rumpus if they deny you.

• Topless Robot clues us in to this most fantastic R2D2 projector. Help me, Obi Wan! You're my only hope.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 05.02.2008 - The Science in Iron Man; Tomorrow is Free Comic Day" »

Here's a killer idea: The crew of Battlestar Galactica finally reaches Earth, only to discover that it has been taken over by the evil computer program, Skynet, and is infested with killer robots. You can almost hear Adama looking at the camera and saying, "Here we go again!" as Starbuck and Lee jump into their Vipers, ready to aid John Connor with the human resistance.

Now, take that idea and translate it into a home-brew, fan comic book created by Jay Santos and Eric Gravel, complete with well-rendered black and white art, smart writing, and an online fan base. And the story should totally work, except I left out one key detail:

In the first issue, which has just been released via BitTorrent, nobody from Battlestar Galactica, or the Terminator series appears. We don't see any killer robots (well, one, kind of, in flashback), and certainly no BSG characters. In fact, the entire story is essentially, an alternate reality Diggnation podcast, featuring hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. Seriously. Ninety percent of the first issue is taken up with the "characters" of Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht bantering as they record their podcast, making reference to the plots of the first three Terminator movies, and then meeting up with the current hosts of Screen Savers, Kevin Pereira and Chi-Lan Lieu. From promo art, it looks like they'll be meeting up with Attack of the Show host Olivia Munn in future issues, as well other geek friendly podcast and TV hosts.

This is the equivalent of promising a feature length Star Trek vs. Star Wars movie, where Luke Skywalker and Jean-Luc Picard team-up to fight Vader, who has been taken over by the Borg, and then making the whole first 30 minutes about Ben & Jerry's.

Continue reading "Online Comic BSG vs. Skynet Illustrates Fan Fiction Gone Wrong" »

The official Star Wars website isn't usually known for its sense of humor towards the franchise. But they've been lightening up over there -- just take a look at this recently posted a collection of hilariously bizarre Japanese Star Wars posters.

Several of the more unusual finds come from advertising which places the Wars characters in bizarre context.

Continue reading "Japanese Schoolgirls Teach Vader How to Text" »

• Over at my other gig, we found just the most darling vinyl Alien  figurine ever.

• io9 has a great gallery of images and videos for my most inexplicably anticipated game of 2008, Dead Space.

• SF Signal finds Star Wars gone gospel. The horror. The horror.

• A definitive list of spoilers for one of the silliest and most enjoyable looking popcorn flicks coming out this year, Jason Statham's Death Race.

• A new Indiana Jones 4 trailer, dealing some more with that crystal skull jazz.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 05.01.08 - Star Wars Gone Gospel; Images from Dead Space" »

Filmaka has awarded its first annual feature film award to the short scifi thriller And I Refuse to Forget, in which a man's photographic memory and synaesthesic abilities are put to work for secret government schemes. (The competition's theme was "The Secret Adventures of....")

Maybe you haven't heard of Filmaka, but this is a pretty impressive victory considering the jury is composed of film talents such as directors Werner Herzog and Neil LaBute, and actors Bill Pullman and Colin Firth. And the prize is nothing to turn your nose up at either -- the winning filmmaker, 21-year-old, Nuru Rimington-Mkali, has won the chance to direct his first feature film and $5 million in funding.

The other day, a friend and I were watching Empire Strikes Back on his massive, HD television. The movie looks great, sounds great, and yet... There are certain elements even in the best Star Wars film (which Empire is), that are unavoidably bad. This led to a rather heated discussion about the quality level of the first film, which led to me posing the following question: Would you see a remake of Star Wars?

My friend, without even thinking about it, said, "absolutely not," but as for me, I'm not so sure.

Continue reading "Batman and Star Trek Have Been Rebooted. Should Star Wars Follow Suit?" »

OMG! Did you hear the latest gossip? Carrie Fisher totally confessed to sort of, maybe, possibly getting it on with Harrison Ford while filming Star Wars!

With the media onslaught for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull gearing up, Carrie Fisher jumped on the Ford bandwagon, so to speak, and spilled some 30-plus year-old secrets to a British TV show.

"[Fisher]  tells Justin Lee Collins in the new C4 show Bring Back . . . Star Wars: "I went on the film saying 'I'm going to have an affair', like it was a kiwi, an exotic fruit -- because I'd never had one!"
(Really? Not even on Shampoo? Come on, Beatty must've slept with everyone on that one. Not even the craft service lady was safe.)

Continue reading "Seeking Some of Indy's Spotlight, Carrie Fisher Recalls Her Fling With Harrison Ford " »

• The ultimate R2D2 Collection. For astromech fetishists only.

• Peter Mayhew, Chewbacca himself, seems to think we'll see three more Star Wars movies, though he seems to be talking Clone Wars animated features.

• John Picacio has posted his tribute to Michael Moorcock online.

• As a Berliner, this is my kind of movie: Cold Storage, a German sci-fi movie about Communist Germany's failed cyborg army.

• As if there was any doubt: Iron Man sequel is already on the drawing board.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 04.30.08 - A Tribute to Michael Moorcock; Favreau Working on Iron Man Sequels " »

Before there was an Internet, it was an idea out of science fiction. So it's only natural that things have come around the other way, and now, the Internet is all about scifi. At the forefront of this movement is the insanely detailed and hilarious blog, io9.

The blog started as a vague idea in the head of io9 editor-in-chief, Annalee Newitz, who, at the time, was blogging for Wired. "The folks at Gawker Media contacted me about 'doing something,'" said Newitz. "I actually had no idea what they had in mind, but after I talked to Nick Denton about what he was looking for in a scifi blog, I was really excited. He was looking for something cool and futuristic rather than dweeby fanboy stuff."

From the beginning, io9 was a hit, with popular posts ranging from "20 Science Fiction Books That Will Change Your Life," to a chart about bad physics in scifi movies. The site currently receives over 130,000 viewers a day, and the numbers are growing.

Continue reading "Site of the Week - io9" »

• Confirmed: Guillermo del Toro's two Hobbit movies will star Ian McKellen as Gandalf and Andy Serkis as Gollum.

• Natasha Henstridge will star in Impact, which is about a meteor hitting the moon so hard it disrupt's Earth's gravity. Can't wait to see what the Bad Astronomer does with this one.

• Geeks of Doom has some new information about Pixar's Wall-E.

• When science fiction and kung-fu collide!

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 04.29.08 - Gandalf and Gollum on Board for Hobbit; Universal Options Resurrection" »

• Uwe Boll, the most unrepentantly awful film director of our generation, threatens to punch the second most unrepentantly awful film director of our generation, Mr. Michael Bay, so hard that he sneezes out his skeleton.

• John DeNardo details his weekend at the Nebulas. Be sure to drop by to read the list of famous sci-fi luminaries with whom John mingled. I'll never be this 'in' with the sci-fi elite.

• The Telegraph's best 50 cult books list has a good chunk of sci-fi entries on the list.

• io9 gives a good run-down of the sci-fi adventure games of LucasArts. Purple Tentacle forever!

• Darth Vader: CEO.

• Back in my days as a philosophy major, we had an absolutely filthy joke about a Schrödinger Girl... Now there's a film of the same name, about a woman trying to confirm the existence of parallel universes.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 04.28.08 - Boll Challenges Bay; Star Wars Collecting in Poland" »