Author: Maurice Mitchell
Tron Legacy, the sequel to the 1982 film Tron, is being released in December and anyone born in the last 10 years probably has no idea why. Looking at it from 2010, the film looks cheesy, boring and ugly. So, to help put the film in context, I’ll give a brief overview of why Tron is one of the best science-fiction films ever made. The movie follows Kevin Flynn, a video game programmer played by Jeff Bridges, who is abducted to a surreal “world” inside computers where programs are people fighting in games. He joins “Tron”, a security program played…
Being rich means never having to say “I’m bald.” Last year James Cameron said, “[Avatar] makes ‘Titanic’ look like a picnic,” and it seems he was right. Avatar, which cost $430 million to finance, has already made over $1 billion in three weeks. Along with Sherlock Holmes, it led to a record breaking weekend and is nominated for four 2010 Golden Globe awards, including “Best Director” and “Best Motion Picture.” He still has a ways to go before eclipsing “Titanic’s” $1.8 billion, eight Golden Globe nominations and three Oscars, but it’s still an amazing achievement. Personally, I hope he wins so he can…
[Pic of the week by Springfield Punks via Gizmodo] It was kind of weird writing the date as 010110. In hex color code it’s, basically, black. In binary it’s 22, and the 22nd letter of the alphabet is V. Coincidentally, we talk about a black guy named Laurence Fishbourne and the TV show V. I tried to find some kind of news using the number 22, to round it out, but couldn’t come up with anything. Next year the date will be 01/01/11 (00010111 is 23 in binary) and I’ll bet people go all “woo-woo” about what it portends. Speaking of…
Avatar (2009) is a flawed, but gorgeous film with heart that revolutionizes cinema as we know it. When my wife and I went to see the movies last Friday we ordered our tickets online, dropped our son at the babysitter and raced to the local Harkins cinema. We were convinced we were going to be in the front row, because everyone knows you don’t go to a big movie less than an hour before show time. At T minus 45 minutes we nervously ventured into the theater…to find it virtually empty. Later, we found out the reason the place was…
While I hate to talk about movies that aren’t even filming, it’s interesting to watch the Thor (2011) movie come together. So, here’s what we have so far: Chris Hemsworth is the “Mighty Thor”, and I’m presuming is bulking up to 300 levels of machismo (“This is Asgaaaard!”). Rene Russo is signed on to play Frigga, step-mother of Thor and wife of Odin. Sir Anthony Hopkins is almost a given as the powerful Asgardian king Odin, although I think he’ll do a lot of hunching and whispering. Samuel Jackson has a cameo as Nick Fury, which makes sense since this…
The Internet is full of lists of sexy babes in science-fiction, but who has time to go through them all and find the best ones? Apparently we do. Since we’re not above the desire to generate traffic, we now present a list of the 21 best lists of women in science-fiction. We’ve tried to rate them based on content and, of course, picture quality. Some of these lists had ratings and some were just unordered lists. For the ones that didn’t use ratings, we just figured they saved the best for last. 21 – A Pakistan News’ “Sexiest Sci-Fi Women”…
[Pic of the Week from HotTopic] Yes, the pic above is real. As much as I hate Snuggies (make that Snuggies for dogs specifically) the above image borders on the psychopathic. I like how the model is trying desperately to make it look cool by sporting metro-sexual hair and an erring. Sorry man. You’re still wearing a Snuggie. This is what you get when you put Snuggies and Underoos in Jeff Goldblum’s teleporter. On to the news. It’s kind of a slow week really… With the upcoming remake of Clash of the Titans I’m getting nostalgic for stop-motion, which is…
His MoMA Don’t Dance and his Daddy Don’t Rock N’ Roll We’ve been a fan of Tim Burton since “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” and always enjoy his quirky view of the world. My personal guilty pleasure is to see all the bizarre, yet beautiful, sketches he does for his movies and see how closely he was able to capture them on-screen. I even liked “Planet of the Apes” for the ornate sketches he did on the costumes. So, it’s with joy that I found out about his new exhibit “Tim Burton” at the “Museum of Modern Art”. The show features over 700…
Pic of the Week from movie-moron.com Again, we present our opinions on this weeks’ top news. Bryan Singer, the director of the only good X-Men movies, has signed on to do “X-Men: First Class” and has ordered an entirely new script. The film, a prequel to the previous X-Men fims, will now focus on the relationship between Professor X (Charles Xavier) and Magneto (Erik Lehnsherr) and the development of the school for mutants. This film will now restore my faith in the franchise and finally remove the taste of bile that still lingers from seeing Hugh Jackman’s naked butt. [/Film] TOSS-UP: If you…
The first trailer for “Iron Man 2” is online and geeks everywhere are rejoicing. The Internet almost collapsed under the collective weight of all the announcements and reviews of the trailer last night declaring it “so kewl”. One rule about trailers I follow is that good movies have trailers that focus on the plot, while bad movies have trailers with lots of shiny, pointy things. “Watchmen” is probably the best example of this. This trailer is almost entirely plot driven with some dancing hotties thrown in to keep the menfolk interested. Here’s the official synopsis: “Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment present…
Last year, DC announced that they were merging the Milestone Dakotaverse into the world of Superman. This is sad. Milestone truly lived up to it’s name in comic book history as the first attempt – make that only attempt – to create a truly diversified comic book world made up of complex characters. In 1993, during the heyday of independent comic book companies, a group of African-American artists and writers set out to create a series that would redefine minorities in comic books. While it was published by DC, the comics were completely independent. I fondly remember reading the first…
Pic of the week This week’s geek news is “Spider-Man 4” heavy, which shows I’m more excited about Spider-Man than I’d like to admit. In unrelated news, Paul Ruebens is making a new “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” stage show which proves his career has ended where it first began. I’m not sure if it’s going to be as funny to see a 57-year-old guy prancing around in short pants. Sony CEO, Howard Stringer, says that the upcoming “Spider-Man 4” sequel will not be in 3D. I hope more studios fight against this trend since, most of the time, it’s nothing more than…
Why anyone would want a sequel to the horrible Will Smith homeless superhero film “Hancock” is beyond me, but the movie made $682 million dollars so someone must care. When news broke that they had solidified Will Smith and Charlize Theron’s involvement in the sequel, everyone was excited. But, now, it looks like the movie is stalled by scheduling issues and I couldn’t be happier. Peter Berg said, “There are so many people involved in that, from Will to his partner James Lassiter to Akiva [Goldsman] to Michael Mann, myself and to get us all in the same room just…
Men watching “Avatar” will be hopelessly frothing at the mouth for James Cameron’s CGI women. In an interview with Playboy magazine, Cameron said that men watching his new movie won’t be able to help themselves from being overcome with licentiousness. “They will have actual lust for a character that consists of pixels of ones and zeros. You’re never going to meet her, and if you did, she’s 10 feet tall and would snap your spine. The point is, 99.9 percent of people aren’t going to meet any of the movie actresses they fall in love with, so it doesn’t matter…
The international poster for the “Iron Man” movie – due May 7, 2010 – was released to Yahoo last week, and it looks awesome, but raises some questions. The idea of shortening the title to the sequel number is bizarre, but I guess they’re hoping the designs are recognizable enough to speak for itself. For those not familiar with the characters, in the Marvel comics Tony Stark’s African-American friend, Jim Rhodes, took on the role of Iron Man occasionally and became a super-hero called “War Machine”. The movie design of the “War machine” armor is darker, angrier and more functional…
Pic of the week: “My Little Slave Pony”The first person to die on the Marvel Comics Theme Park Spider-Man ride will probably get a slew of goofy titled obituaries like “Web-head Kills Local Rider” and “J.J Jameson Was Right: Spider-Man is a Menace”. Actually…those are pretty good, so I’m going to file those for a future post. After watching “The Greatest American Hero” on Hulu I had two thoughts: First, it’s time to remake this series. Concept: A slacker encounters what he thinks may bee aliens and discovers a red leather costume that gives him superpowers. Since his laptop with…
This blog post deals with the most exasperating part of the show “Smallville”: the cardinal rule of “No flights. No tights”. When the show first aired, the producers, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, felt their target audience wouldn’t be able to accept a hero in a cape and tights. They wanted a hero that young people could relate to, and watching a guy fly around wearing spandex seemed preposterous. More importantly, the rule showed me they recognized that this was not Superman, but they wanted to show how he would become the hero we know. But, nine seasons later, we…
In the past, when trying to watch the adventures of the time-traveling “Doctor Who”, the time difference in Britain and America has been annoying. At one point, BBC was a whole season ahead of “The-Channel-Formerly-Known-As-Sci-Fi”, which made it impossible to get news without a tsunami of spoilers like “Can you believe Doctor Who has a daughter?” The same is true of the final episodes of David Tennant as the tenth Doctor and Russell T. Davies’ as its executive producer and lead writer. According to rave reviews I am forced to evade from “the Guardian” and “The Telegraph” it’s stupendous. While “Doctor…
James Cameron hired a team to create an entire alien language and planetary biology for his movie “Avatar”. This will only be interesting to the type of people who listen DVD commentary, and will be meaningless on-screen. Thankfully, I am one of those people. The last thing we need is another Ang Lee “Hulk”. We dodged a bullet now that John Woo has come out and said he’s not interested in comic book movies. The guy who created a “wrist-mounted flamethrower” to replicate “Pyro’s” superpowers must have spent eight months burning himself to a crisp. I’d market my DIY Wolverine claws, but I only have ten…
An absolutely brilliant take on “The Portait of Dorian Gray” set against a backdrop of cloning. eidolon.net: The Extra by Greg Egan
“The latest report offers a revealing look at why ‘Spider-Man: Turn off The Dark’ will be so expensive—the elaborate staging alone requires at least 40 stage hands to operate the musical’s backstage rigging” – MTV Splashpage about the upcoming Spider-Man musical. This conjurers up images of forty sweaty guys hanging from cables desperately trying to prevent Spider-Man from doing a face plant into the front seats. Image courtesy of MerryWankster
There was a particulary strange batch of news this week, but for some reason Star Trek won out. Go figure. In the comments you can agree or disagree. The New Clash of the Titans trailer makes me want to run into the street bellowing “O Fortuna”, while swinging a light saber. But, what made the original a classic? It wasn’t a compelling story or Harry Hamlin with his shirt off, it was Ray Harryhausen’s amazing stop-motion creatures. Without those, the film will be about as worthless as a Bill Cosby mask at a Twilight convention. ODDSMAKERS: What are the odds that Liam…
There’s an online campaign by the “nothing-better-to-do” crowd for Warner Bros to release a DVD of Bryan Singer’s original two hour and forty-five minute edit of “Superman Returns”. So-called “director’s cuts” can be fun. For example, the 2006 Richard Donner director’s cut of Superman II is well worth the time since the original was seriously flawed. But, I don’t think a director’s cut of Superman Returns would make much difference. In the case of Donner, the studio re-edited the films without their involvement. But, Bryan Singer wasn’t pressured by the studios to make the cuts. In an interview in 2006…
Our love of fan-films ranges from the clunky to the brilliant, and Doctor Who: Alternate Empire is a fascinating entry into the field. The show is set up as a mash-up between Doctor Who and Star Wars. The Doctor finds himself fighting a group of aliens trying to conquer Taris IV from the Star Wars Universe. The writing is top-notch and the acting is very well-done, but, the editing is bizarre with characters sometimes talking and then pausing while the cut changes. The special effects are adequate, but not spectacular. Hopefully as the series continues we’ll see the Doctor wielding…
We can’t think of a scarier quote than the one below for the franchise. “Harry Potter is a bit of a role model for us, absolutely.” – Producer Lauren Shuler Donner said of the upcoming film “X-Men: First Class”
Those are the words that greeted us when we tried to log in to Geocities today. The now famous web hosting service that ushered in a whole world of websites, some good, most horrible, has shut down. Created by David Bohnett and John Rezner in late 1994, the service became unavailable on October 27, 2009. The site allowed millions of people to create web pages with no knowledge or interest in HTML or web design sense. Back when the BLINK command was essential, and you could download millions of different colored bars and buttons, using them all on one page. …
Tomorrow, the reboot of the classic 80’s mini-series “V” will begin on ABC (87pm central). We have a lot of fond memories of this show. One especially vivid one was the heated discussion of whether the alien baby would be human or alien (it as twins so they were both right). We have high hopes for the show. Having watched the clips and first nine minutes it seems suitably creepy and has an ominous tone. While original creator Kenneth Johnson may be hoping to make a low-budget movie some day, we’re hoping that he stays out of it and this succeeds…
How many times can we talk about Star Wars and Star Trek in the same week? Well. Every week, but still, it’s pretty cool. In the comments you can agree or disagree. The Firefly Serenity ship model, which costs $2,495, is way too expensive for the average geek. However, it would look great next to a hundred dollar lightsaber. The Planet Hulk story line of 2006, which chronicled the expulsion of hulk from Earth and his subsequent rise to power on the planet Sakaar, chronicles the most significant change to the character since the Grey Hulk. “Planet Hulk”, the next…
Babylon 5 was an amazing show and, while it’s long gone, this video (set to BNL – One Week) sums up everything we loved about the show with all it’s bizarre twists and turns. For all of you people who loved babylon 5, well this is the clip for you, the entire 5 years of babylon 5 done in song!thats right, 2:28 min long and approx 130 cuts this clip was a labor of love between John McCaffrey and lance jackson for a season that gave us much joy. so im putting this up here for everyone to enjoy! Song…
How much do you trust Roland Emmerich? The answer to that question will tell you whether you’ll like his up-coming adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. Originally a collection of short stories about an organization trying to rebuild after the collapse of the “Galactic Empire”. Roland says that the challenge will be to find a common thread to tell the story. “There’s not one character going through, so Bob Rodat came to me and … He said, ‘We have to consolidate the characters.’ And that’s what we did, and that’s what’s worked really, really well in the context. And I…
