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Laughing In The Face Of Endless Horror, UHF-Style [Found Footage]

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:00:00 PDT

In the 1980s, you couldn't show a monster movie on a local UHF station without a cheesy programming block called "Creature Feature." Bonus points if you had a monster-joking host like Dr. Paul Bearer, seen here introducing a Godzilla film.

This copy of Godzilla versus the Cosmic Monster, taped off television probably 25 years ago, turned up on one of those popular video-sharing site thingies. The Godzilla film is pretty terrific in itself, especially with some truly hideous dubbing. But the intro and outro from Dr. Paul Bearer are sources of endless fascination. He's like an old Vaudeville comic doing a monster schtick, cackling as much from nervousness as to keep up the "ghoul" act. I wonder what Dr. Paul Bearer is doing now? Here's his outro:

Schizophrenic Brains Make More Complicated Music Than Sane Ones [Mad Science]

Megan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:30:00 PDT

A new computer program lets your brain turn fMRI machines into musical instruments by assigning notes to active regions of your cortex. The results may cause people to drive themselves crazy just to stay on the cutting edge of electronica.

Philosopher Dan Lloyd uses functional MRIs — which track changes in brain activity by lighting up in different colors and intensities as the brain processes information — to create music, by assigning each area of the brain a note and each level of intensity a volume. A computer does the rest, analyzing the movements of the functional MRIs and creating musical pieces that correspond to the changes.

In the course of his work, Lloyd discovered that scans of patients with dementia and schizophrenia make audibly different music than those of people with normal brains: people with dementia have more erratic rhythms and less bright notes, while people with schizophrenia have more complex patterns in the music created by their brains.

Besides making their way onto the iPods of Lloyd's students, scientists think the application could allow them to better distinguish abnormalities in brain scans. According to New Scientist:

His colleague Didier Grandjean at the University of Geneva in Switzerland says that brain music might help identify temporal patterns in particular. "Melodies are a much better way to build complex mental representations over time than anything the eye can do," he says.

Of course, that's only if one takes the time to pay attention to the music that's being made, as opposed to how we think it ought to sound.

Eavesdropping On The Music Of The Brain [New Scientist]

Related: D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune) [YouTube]

[Image via the Centre for Educational Neuroscience]

Judges "Didn't Know They Were Science Fiction Fans" Until They Gave A Prize To SF Book [Awards]

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:30:00 PDT

Congratulations to Chris Beckett, whose story collection The Turing Test has won the prestigious Edge Hill Prize, plus £5,000 and a specially commissioned painting by artist Pete Clarke. The win is especially notable since Beckett's book came out on a small press, which has since gone out of business, and he was up against books from Faber, Cape and other bigger publishers. Said one of the judges, James Walton:

I suspect Chris Beckett winning the Edge Hill Prize will be seen as a surprise in the world of books. In fact, though, it was also a bit of surprise to the judges, none of whom knew they were science fiction fans beforehand. Yet, once the judging process started, it soon became clear that The Turing Test was the book that we'd all been impressed by, and enjoyed, the most-and one by one we admitted it.

The Edge Hill Prize is Britain's only literary award for a short-story collection by a single author. [The Bookseller, thanks John Jarrold]

Ninjas Fight, Christopher Eccleston Snarks And Cobra Commander Snarls In Japanese G.I. Joe Trailer [G.I. Joe]

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:00:00 PDT

A new Japanese trailer for G.I. Joe showcases more flashy CG cityscapes and weird action sequences, plus our best look at Joseph Gordon Levitt as Cobra Commander/The Doctor. But mostly it proves Christopher Eccleston will steal this movie.

[Cinematical]

The Shattered World Of 2050 Glows With Unearthly Beauty [Future Disasters]

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:30:00 PDT

The sands of a renewed desert claim the remains of Las Vegas in 2050. It's not a still from Resident Evil 3, it's one of the terrifying future visions from The Age Of Stupid, a new environmental docudrama. Gallery below.

British movie The Age Of Stupid, which opens worldwide in September, takes place in 2050, when environmental catastrophes have overtaken the Earth. One of the poor benighted residents of that future dystopia watches footage of people from 2008 arguing about the environment, and wonders how we could have been such idiots. Here's some more gorgeous future disaster art, including a factory farming complex that could be an evil laboratory from a space-horror film:

[Age Of Stupid via Civilianism]

Scientists Use The AIDS Virus To Cure Cancer [Future Cures]

Megan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:17:00 PDT

HIV has been one of the worst killers of the past few decades worldwide — but now it may yield a cure for cancer. Scientists in Korea have been using the virus to cure lung cancer (in mice, at least.)

South Korean scientist Myung-Haing Cho modified a lentivirus, a genus in the Retroviridae family which includes most mammal immunodeficiency viruses, to deliver to lung-cancer tumors a gene, which inhibits cancer cells from reproducing in mice's lungs. Their method of choice? A nasal spray.

They had various cancer-ridden mice sniff the modified lentivirus twice a week for a month, and they found that the modified virus completely halted the progression of the lung cancer without harm to the non-cancerous tissue. In some cases, existing cancer cells even died off without further therapy.

Scientists consider modified lentiviruses ideal for cancer therapy (in addition to other gene therapies) because it affects even non-replicating cells (like neurons) and can create long term changes, positive changes in genes.

Of course, anybody who's seen I Am Legend knows that the "genetically engineered virus that fights cancer" thing can only end one way.

Science Fiction? Aerosol Delivery Of An Engineered Virus Halts Lung Cancer Progression In Mice [Pittsburgh Examiner]

[Image via Encyclopedia of Life]

Helix Nebula Produces Cosmic Fireworks Display [Space Porn]

Stephen Goldmeier — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:01:53 PDT

The United States' independence day is over for the year, but a new image of one of Earth's cosmic neighbors reveals an explosive spectacle. One of the closest nebulae to us displays dramatic firework-like knots when viewed in the infrared.

The knots look like explosive fireworks, but they are actually pockets of matter left over from an exploding star. The comet-like tails are a result of streaming particles and electromagnetic energy.

The scale is also a bit larger than the average firework: the explosion that caused these knots took place over tens of thousands of years, and the knots are each billions of miles across.

The infrared radiation from the hydrogen in these knots makes them clearly visible to the Subaru Telescope. It's an infrared camera with a large field of view. Astronomers from Japan and the U.K. are working together to see what these knots teach them about what happens to dying stars. They are publishing results in the Astrophysical Journal in August.

Fireworks Display In The Helix Nebula [via ScienceDaily]

Can You Come Up With A Science Fiction Book Cover Worse Than These? [Book Covers]

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:12:56 PDT

Orbit Books is trying to create the worst science fiction book cover of all time — but they're up against stiff competition. Details, and a gallery of some of our fave bad covers, are below.

Orbit is seeking suggestions for a title and blurbs, to come up with the worst book cover of all time, and I bet we can help:

Over the next few weeks we'll be asking for your help coming up with the most ridiculously bad high-concept SFF book cover in the universe – think Wyvern II: The Wyverning, or Martian Under the Doormat. (We know you can do better) Once we've settled on the titles we'll work out the reading line, the blurbs, and cover elements. And then, with your help, our fearless Orbit US Creative Director Lauren is going to design a cover for it that will present it in all its mad glory.

I have great faith in the ability of the internet to spawn some truly awful science fiction book ideas. But just in case someone is lacking for inspiration, here are some truly hideous covers to make your eye-sockets bleed:

59 Stills From Harry Potter Show Ominous Skies And Growing Pains [Harry Potter]

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:24:26 PDT

Dark clouds gather over Hogwarts, in a new image from Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince. Other stills show teenage lonesomeness and growing pains. It seems like yesterday these young wizards were sneaking polyjuice potion in the bathroom.

There are so many things to comment on in this gallery. What about Luna Lovegood's mascot attire, which absolutely must spawn a thousand cosplays. I don't seem to remember any quidditch mascots, but I totally approve of this little get up. Also I've got to call attention to the lonesome "boys riding on trains" photo, where Harry and Ron are lounging around looking like some miserable ad for Abercrombie Jr... ah, teenagers.

No doubt this film will be, at the least, beautiful when it's released July 15th.

Cosmic Strings May Be Headed Towards Us Already [Cosmic Strings]

Graeme McMillan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:14:44 PDT

Why haven't scientists been able to provide proof of the "Cosmic Strings" that they claim surround the universe? A new theory suggests that it's because the strings have broken and gotten lost in time... possibly making them easier to find.

The potential existence of Cosmic Strings - lines of pure mass-energy with as much mass as the sun, but as wide as a proton at most - has been described as the result of matter "cooling" into galaxies following the Big Bang, potentially giving us an insight into how the universe was formed. The theory came from physicist Thomas Kibble in 1976, but remained somewhat unproven ever since.

New Scientist reports that evidence of the hypothetical "topological defects" in space-time may have proven to be so difficult to find because the strings were too unstable to exist in the form that scientists expected:

As the strings broke... analysis shows that their split ends would have been capped off by more monopoles, eventually leading to a universe filled with fragmented strings with beads at their ends. In an infant universe, these high-tension strings would have been whipping around, accelerating the massive beads to relativistic speeds. These would have generated tight beams of gravitational waves, which could still be travelling through space-time.

The theory comes from a team led by Ben Shlaer of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, who explained:

It's possible that if you wait long enough, one of those highly focused bursts would hit the Earth, and that would cause one of our gravitational wave detectors to chirp.

So apparently we're going from looking for hypothetical cosmic strings to waiting for theoretical strands traveling through space-time to come and hit the Earth...? I'm not convinced that that's the greatest idea of how to prove the existence of something that I've ever heard, I have to admit.

Cosmic 'whips' may have left their mark [New Scientist]

15 Science Fiction Movie Sequels That Don't Utterly Suck [Sequels]

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:47:05 PDT

Transformers 2 suffered from a terrible case of sequel-itis, raising our fears that upcoming Star Trek and Iron Man sequels will contract this deadly ailment. But it doesn't have to be that way: Here are 15 sequels that didn't suck.

The original cast and director returned for this second outing, and it brings forward the themes of mutants in a society that hates and fears them. This time around, the rogue Col. William Stryker is plotting to use the mutants' own technology and superpowers to track them all down and destroy them. The early scenes of Magneto in a plastic prison are striking and well-realized, and the attack on Xavier's school drives home how vulnerable our mutant heroes are in a world that hates them. The first X-Men movie was a bit rushed and formulaic with the need to introduce so many mutant heroes, but this one feels a bit more cohesive.

Back To The Future Part 2

Easily my favorite of the BTTF movies, this one actually takes us to the real future, instead of just 1985. Biff, the hapless bully, beats Marty at his own time-hacking game, creating an alternate timeline where Biff rules. I'm a sucker for any storyline where the hero has to cross his own timeline and run around the same series of events a second time, without upsetting all the applecarts he set in motion the first time around. Sure, it's goofy, but so was the first one.

Superman II

A confession: I haven't yet seen the "director's cut" that came out on DVD a couple years ago, because the idea of giving this movie the same ending as the first one seemed just patently silly. Famously, director Richard Donner had a falling out with the studio over this film, and the studio brought in someone else to finish this movie, and recut the final product. But I still really like the original cut, for its awesome mega-villains from Superman's own home planet, including General Zod. Of all the sequels to feature the hero giving up his powers to live a normal life, this is the most interesting, since Superman probably couldn't be with Lois otherwise. And I love the random yahoo in a bar beating the crap out of Clark. The only major flaw is the memory-erasing kiss at the end, which is total drek.

Robocop 2

This is another questionable one — but this film has a special place in my heart. Frank Miller's first foray into making movies, back when he was still an edgy maniac, picks up the satirical themes of the first movie and goes nuts with them. (Sure, the studio messed with Frank's script, but the result is still pleasingly freaktastic.) Detroit is being privatized, the police force is maneuvered into being on strike, and Robocop is out there on his own. We venture deeper into the dark heart of Robocop, as Alex Murphy tries and fails to recapture his original life with his family — and meanwhile, every attempt to create a new Robocop only leads to suicides (and murder-suicides) as the replacements can't face the horror of what they've become. Until OCP tries creating a totally amoral, power-crazed version.

Spider-Man 2

After reading the original Michael Chabon script for this movie, I marginally prefer that version — the whole "Peter Parker stops being Spider-Man" subplot in this movie is handled really weirdly and confusingly. (He suddenly needs glasses? Why?) But either version of the story is still a worthwhile continuation of the first film. Alfred Molina is a sympathetic but deranged Doc Octopus, and the sequence where Spidey stops a runaway train — and then the passengers don't rat out his identity — is a classic for a reason.

Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

The first Peter Cushing Dalek movie was a total flying-saucer wreck, with blond hippie aliens in blue eye-shadow and non-deadly Daleks. But this sequel, also based on an episode from the Doctor Who television series, is a total classic. It has much more energy, from beginning to end, and the Daleks are awesomely bloodthirsty. The supporting cast includes Bernard Cribbins and Philip Madoc, and the TV episode's slightly bloated plotline benefits a lot from being compressed down to a movie length.

Blade II

Guillermo del Toro stepped in and directed this sequel, instantly elevating it to a gothic horror masterpiece along the way. Blade, the "daywalker," is more enigmatic and cooler, and his relationship with Whistler takes a weird turn when he has to cure Whistler of vampirism. But mostly, this movie is memorable for its genetic engineering project, where the vampires are trying to breed a new race of super-vampires. Vampires + weird science = win.

The Chronicles Of Riddick

Thanks to Pansy for suggesting this one — it really should be on the list. Riddick, the merciless killer from Pitch Black, gets a whole backstory and and a heroic destiny, but mostly he kicks a whole lot more ass than in the first movie.

Dawn Of The Dead

Following on from the undead flesh-eating plague set up in Night Of The Living Dead, George Romero's second zombie film shows in more detail the effects of a widespread epidemic of reanimated cannibals. Containing one of the most famous shopping mall sequences in movie history, it's no accident that this is the Romero classic that Zack Snyder chose to remake. Thanks to Dr.Wadd for suggesting this one — although I think I can't quite get with Escape From L.A.

Mad Max: The Road Warrior

Many people probably didn't even know this was a sequel when it came out. The first Mad Max movie didn't make nearly as big an impact (in the United States, anyway) as this incredible follow-up, with its long scenes of caravan carnage. (It didn't help that when the original Max came out, Mel Gibson was dubbed with a horrendous American accent.) The original Max is a total classic, but movies like Doomsday are still biting the feeling of anarchy and vehicular mayhem that this sequel brings. Fans are still doing Road Warrior reconstructions on the public roads.

Aliens

James Cameron steps in and shows how to do a sequel to someone else's creation. Ripley goes back to the moon where she encountered the alien eggs, accompanied by a platoon of colonial marines. Every character in this film is an awesome archetype, from Burke the corporate weenie to Vasquez the tough marine chick. The supporting cast of this film is more memorable than the main characters of a lot of other films. (Even Newt, the cute kid, is tolerable.) From the moment they return to LV-426, the tension is palpable, and the action sequences only reinforce the feeling of a squad under siege in cramped quarters. By the time Ripley takes care of the alien queen using that power suit at the end, you're jumping up and cheering for her.

Terminator 2

Cameron already proved he had what it took to make a killer sequel when he returned to the film that put him on the map. In some ways, this is just a remake of the original, only with Arnie's Terminator in the role of protector instead of pursuer. But just like Cameron increased Ripley's bad-assery in Aliens, he does the same for Sarah Connor here, including her awesome mental institution escape. Having a reprogrammed Terminator — and actually getting to open up its head and change it from read-only to read-write — opens up all sorts of fascinating questions about the nature of artificial consciousness that the first movie barely touched on. All the cool ideas in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles get their start here.

The Dark Knight

I almost left this one off because of the constant debate over whether it really counts as science fiction... but still. This really is a primer in how to do a decent sequel. Batman Begins shows us the making of Batman, and the sequel comes close to showing us the breaking of him. Instead of another sequel where the hero randomly decides to walk away from being a hero in order to get married or have a "normal" life, this film shows us Bruce Wayne choosing to remain Batman in the face of almost unimaginable chaos that's laid at his door. Okay, he does almost reveal his identity at one point, but in the end, this film is a great continuation of the first movie because it shows just what it takes for Bruce to stay Batman. Thanks to all the commenters who insisted it should be in here.

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

RoboCop 2 director Irvin Kerschner also directed another sequel, which might be slightly more famous. There's so much to love about this film, including our first meetings with Yoda and Lando Calrissian, and the way Darth Vader goes through Admirals like popcorn. But really, the reason why it's the best film in the series is because of the way it builds up to the revelation that Luke Skywalker's dad went bad — and there's an excellent chance that Luke will go the same way. The sequence in the cave, where Luke confronts his own inner darkness, is more powerful than everything Hayden Christensen ever committed to film.

Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

And then, of course, there's the film that all other sequels are compared to. It doesn't hurt that the first movie in the series consists of three hours of watching a train pull out of a station, while people talk about grain futures. But still, this movie makes the original Trek characters as vivid as they've ever been, from Spock and McCoy both giving birthday presents to Kirk all the way up to the end. Almost every line of dialog in this movie has been in someone's sig file at some point, and this film does for space battles what Road Warrior does for car chases. And then there's Ricardo Montalban's magnetic turn as the obsessed, arrogant space maniac, Khan.

The Video Mural Road To Hell Is Paved In Pop Culture Clips [Marco Brambilla]

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:51:45 PDT

Dancing Hitlers, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and Britney Spears are the thin line that separate Heaven and Hell us in Marco Brambilla's video mural. This moving video installation, appearing in NYC's Standard Hotel, is an unforgettable vista.

Artist Brambilla's work "Civilization" is on display in the elevators of the Standard Hotel, and it moves up and down based on the direction of the elevator. I lost count of all the clips from pop culture touchstones, mixed in with the stock footage. I dare you to name them all. If this is the future of hotel art, I'd like Brambilla to get a lot more money to go nuts throughout the rest of the city. Also, sorry I didn't mentioned this earlier, Marco directed Demolition Man, which makes him doubly crazy awesome.

To see it in it's full high res glory (and you really should) check out Motionographer's Marco Brambilla page. Thanks for the tip Nerdletter.

The Best Way To Break Into Science Fiction Writing Is Online Publishing [Publishing]

Ed Grabianowski — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:00:00 PDT

The only way forward for new writers is digital publishing, says game and novel writer Michael Stackpole. If you want to write for a living, learn to love this post-paper age.

Stackpole gave a seminar titled, "Writing in the post-paper era," at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH a week ago. His feelings on the subject were made clear immediately when he pointed out that he was the first author to make short stories available through the iPhone App Store. Stackpole is convinced that both established and fledgling authors need to embrace new content delivery methods or fade into irrelevance. In fact, he offered evidence that digital publishing will not only be necessary for authors, but that it will work in their favor.

From Stackpole's perspective as an established author (more than three dozen published novels, eight of them Star Wars novels), digital publishing offers more control and direct, reliable payments. Selling stories directly though his website generates a payment before the buyer has even finished downloading the story, and the profit margin on even a short story is far higher than on a paper novel. By comparison, the lag time on payments for sales of a hard copy novel is six to nine months, and even then he pretty much has to take the publisher's word for it that the accounting is accurate.

A lot of writers are worried about online piracy, but Stackpole dismissed those concerns. "People downloading my stories from the big torrent sites were never going to buy them anyway. It's no money out of my pocket." He even admitted to downloading some of his own books from bittorrent sites if he didn't already have a digital copy, saying it was far easier than scanning it in himself.

Writers still trying to break into the publishing world have an unprecedented chance to start their own websites, build an audience and create a market for their work without relying on major publishers at all, said Stackpole. Posting short fiction or even a serialized novel on a website won't cause problems if a writer tries to sign a publishing deal at a later date because mainstream publishers don't see digital publishing as a serious threat.

Rather than simply changing the method of delivering stories to readers, Stackpole believes digital formats will change the nature of the stories themselves. At the very least, authors should tailor their work to these new mediums. He cited what he referred to as "the commuter market," people who read two chapters per day on their half hour train ride to work. It's an ideal market for fiction broken into 2,500 word chapters, and could presage a resurgence of serial fiction. "It's kind of like a return to the Penny Dreadfuls," he said. "But the readers today are more sophisticated, so we as writers need to put more work into it."

It was interesting to hear the formulaic way Stackpole approaches writing. He described how the method of writing old pulp stories could easily be adapted for modern audiences by eliminating certain ubiquitous but unecessary subplots and adding a bit of character development. A serial detective story should be, "70 percent case, 30 percent soap opera," with a little more soap in a later story to satisfy readers interested in a character's developing personal life.

Even amidst all this embracing of change, Stackpole reassured his audience that digital formats were not sounding the death knell for paper books. "Cars did not kill off horses. Digital publishing will not kill off books. It _will_ change the way they are written and retailed."

If nothing else, it's nice to hear an optimistic note among all the doom and gloom about genre fiction these days.

The Horror And Glory Of Blood: The Last Vampire's Ancient Blood-Suckers [Concept Art]

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:30:00 PDT

Blood: The Last Vampire, opening Friday, won't be just teen vampires kicking butt in schoolgirl uniforms. New concept art from artist Alex Tuis shows more vampire elegance... as well as some grotesque creature designs. Check out a couple more, below.

Rotten Tomatoes has an exclusive gallery of Tuis' concept art from Blood: The Last Vampire, as well as other recent movies like Dragonball Evolution. Blood: The Last Vampire is hitting select U.S. cities this Friday, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cambridge, Mass., Honolulu, Chicago, Las Vegas, Dallas, Houston Seattle and Washington, D.C. A complete list is here.

More of Tuis' amazing concept art can be found at both links, below.

[Alex Tuis and Rotten Tomatoes]

Watch Megan Fox's Topless Demonic Rampage, In Jennifer's Body Trailer [Jennifer's Body]

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:17:09 PDT

Jennifer's Body, Diablo Cody's blood-stained high school story about what happens when the pretty popular girl (Megan Fox) starts eating all the boys has released its red-band (maybe nsfw) trailer. If a half-naked demon Fox doesn't sell tickets, nothing will.

UPDATE: Here's the trailer from Shock Til You Drop.

I'm normally not a fan of Cody and after watching Megan Fox allow a tiny robot to hump her leg, I'd given up all hope for both of them. Jennifer's Body looks like, dare I say it, a return to actually funny horror. Granted, I'm going to need to see a few more comedy scenes, but the vibe is there...

Jennifer's Body will be released into theaters on September 18th.

Reynolds Will Give You The Fourth-Wall-Breaking Deadpool You Deserve [Deadpool]

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:30:00 PDT

Proving that he actually understands the charm of his character, Ryan Reynolds confirmed that Deadpool will break the fourth wall in his solo outing. "Oh yeah, he's got to. I want to see him break the Great Wall." [Empire Magazine]

Eureka And Warehouse 13, Plus Another Meteor TV Movie [What To Watch]

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:00:00 PDT

Finally, some interesting new television! Syfy is premiering the new series Warehouse 13 (think of it as a G-rated X-Files) and Eureka is back for a new season. Also Jason Alexander and Christopher Lloyd team up for NBC's Meteor movie.

Monday:

Spectacular Spider-Man -
At the turn of the New Year, Spidey has to take the fight to the Planner's lair, revealing the Planner's true identity in the process. But not before teen aged superhero has to navigate the murky waters of love, when Gwen is kidnapped.

Spectacular Spider-Man Promo:

Movies:

It's end-of-the-world day over at the Syfy Channel. First there's Meltdown: Days of Destruction, where the Earth moves threateningly close to the Sun. After that, Asteroid threatens the world with, what else? Asteroids, in the two-part movie starring Annabella Sciorra. All of this airs on SciFi Channel, beginning at 9:30 AM.

Tuesday:

Warehouse 13 -
Two sexy Secret Service agents are put in charge of America's storage spot for weird crap. Even though the warehouse is stocked to the brim with time traveling and shape shifting whosits and what-nots, there's still plenty of unclaimed weird objects for this good looking duo to track down, in Warehouse 13. What will they fid next? My guess is, a big steaming pile of romantic tension. It's like a sugared-up X-Files, but with steampunky gadgets. The two-hour premiere airs on the newly christened SyFy Channel, at 9 PM.

Warehouse 13 Promo:

Better Off Ted - repeat on ABC at 9 PM.

Movies:

Nic Cage's rip-off of Indiana Jones, National Treasure, is on the SyFy Channel at 6 PM.

Adam Sandler is a pawn in the ultimate procrastinator's backlash that is Click, when his living Jiminy Cricket, Christopher Walken, hands over a real-life remote control, on FX at 8 PM.

Wednesday:

Time Team America -
The series premiere chronicles various archeological digs open with a trip to North Carolina's Roanoke Island, the first settlement in North America, which disappeared suddenly. Years later, the only remaining clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a fencepost. The dig is on PBS at 8 PM.

Time Team Preview:

Monsters Inside Me -
The show that makes you scared to go anywhere, or do anything, returns with a new episode. Scientists rush to stave off what could become the worst parasitic outbreak in history, which may or may not already be eating away your intestines. Quick, stop drinking water — germs are EVERYWHERE, on Animal Planet at 9 PM.

Monsters Inside Me Promo:

MonsterQuest -
Adventurers hunt down the wily Sasquatch, on this new episode on the History Channel at 9 PM.

Movies:

Treasure Planet, an animated scifi update of Treasure Island featuring the voice of our favorite wrecked-faced Cobra Commander, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is on Disney XD at 5 PM.

Thursday:

Naked Science -
Scientists try to prove their hypothesis that about 500 years ago a large meteor caused a tsunami, severely changing Australia's coastline. The theories fly on National Geographic Channel at 10 PM.

Also, we'll probably get another clip from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when Daniel Radcliffe is on Letterman, on CBS at 11:30 PM.

Movies:

Contact, the movie that refuses be constricted by things like common sense, blasts Jodie Foster off to alien worlds... or does it? Join the confused alien-stalker and her long-haired boyfriend, Matthew McConaughey, on the look out for aliens and space-bound millionaires, in Contact on TNT at 10 PM.

Friday:

Eureka -
Sheriff-no-more Jack Carter and his sharp wit return for the second half of season three as he applies for a job with the Department of Homeland Security. Meanwhile, the new sheriff in town seems to have a very robotic personality. Carter has to deal with becoming Allison's pal, as our friends who became lovers who became friends deal with Allison's baby on the way. Season 3 and a half premieres tonight on SyFy, at 9 PM.

Saturday:

Kings -
Treasonous David is on trial, and Silas hands the reins over to his son Jack. Will the pretty prince show mercy to the doe-eyed country boy? Side note, this is actually the second to last week for Kings — next week there will be a two hour farewell. And I will weep big fat tears as this beautiful show sputters out its dying breath.

Kings You Tube Good Bye:

Primeval -
You'd think these accidents the Primeval people would figure out a way to close these space-time anomalies — but no, another week another problem causes chaos on Earth. Meanwhile, Abby's brother decides to find out what she does for a living, and accidentally passes through an anomaly. Whoops. Now the team has to chase him down too, on BBC America at 9 PM.

Movies:

An all-day Harry Potter marathon is in order, before the new movie is released July 15. Harry and the Sorcerer's Stone kicks off the first three movies as they play in order on ABC Family at 12:30 PM.

Sunday:

True Blood -
Will we find out what Daphne truly is? Probably not. At least not before Sookie endangers the lives of everyone on the show one more time, just for kicks! As everyone's favorite grown-up vamp show becomes more of an ensemble effort, Sookie, Bill and Jessica travel to Dallas. And Tara hopefully gets her head screwed on straight, and Jason continues his vampire purification process. Let's go to Dallas, on HBO at 9 PM.

True Blood Promo:

Movies:

Meteor -
A curious cast of prime time favorites from long ago gathers together, to stop a giant asteroid from careening to Earth. It's like the recent TV movie Impact, only with slightly more interesting actors. Jason Alexander and Christopher Lloyd put their minds together, to stop the meteor Kassandra. Part one of the miniseries airs tonight on NBC at 9 PM.

Additional reporting by Caitlin Petrakovitz.

American Flagg's Retrofuture Still Ahead Of Its Time [Book Review]

Graeme McMillan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:30:00 PDT

Howard Chaykin's classic American Flagg has come back into print, showcasing a comic that still seems ahead of its time 20 years later - and making us wish that Paul Verhoven had made this into a movie way back when.

For those familiar with some of Chaykin's other work, there are definitely echoes to be found in Flagg - the corny puns, the stocking-and-heels combo fetish, the square-jawed hero out of his depth but somehow still irresistible to all women and able to save the day (despite his complaints) when the situation demands it. But there's enough elsewhere to distract from the Chaykin Formula and turn you into a believer.

In concept, Flagg is very much a product of its times - You can see echoes of the media-led futures of Blade Runner and Max Headroom in here, as well as a Cold War paranoia/parody that wouldn't be imagined today - but the execution is amazing and, at times (specifically in the first storyline, "Hard Times"), almost faultless.

The set-up for the series is that, in the not-so-far future, the US Government and various corporations have fled Earth for Mars, leaving a power vacuum cemented by the fall of the Soviet Union and only partially filled by "The Plex," a new body made up of US officials, corporate heads and former Russian scientists who run things in America from afar. The police force of this new America are called Plexus Rangers (Told you about the puns), and one such Ranger is Rueben Flagg, a former television star replaced by his own CGI stunt double and drafted into service on Chicago's mean streets.

Of course, none of that really explains what the series is actually about, which is a heady mix of political and social satire (Not for nothing is one character called Medea Blitz), old-school action adventure and Chaykin living out his sexual fantasies through his lead character. The intentionally-absurd quality to the stories manages to work, surprisingly - everything happens with a kind of hyper-reality, amped-up and unbelievable but enjoyably so - that leaves the reader breathless by continually pummeling them more and more information to take in.

Helping out considerably with that pummeling is the look of the book. It's not just the artwork, although this is Chaykin at his best and most daring, before he fell into the (admittedly pretty) rut that he's in now of tight close-ups and familiar layouts - His linework, as ever, is crisp and attractive, a distinctive collection of influences from fine art, design and comics blended together to come up with something that seems timeless even now - but the look of the book. As much as Chaykin, Flagg's aesthetic is defined by the stunning lettering of Ken Bruzenak, which goes so far beyond speech balloons and thought bubbles and sound effects that it becomes one of the most memorable things about the book, a visual hook that explains the chaos of the future in a way that seems as much musical as anything else.

The two collections dip in quality towards the end - Chaykin's writing becomes emptier, and other artists take over on the last couple of chapters - but it never becomes dull or a chore to read; when American Flagg is at its best, it's a classic piece of science fiction satire that stands up there with Robocop and Brazil, but even at its worst, it's an enjoyable piece of eye-catching comics that offers a future at once recognizable and distant.

American Flagg is available now and published in the UK by Titan Books and in the US by Dynamite Entertainment.

Practice Your Alien Target Shooting In The District 9 Online Game [District 9]

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:00:00 PDT

What better way to teach alien intolerance than with a computer game where you can shoot down members of the opposite species? A new District 9 game pins you against either aliens or humans, guns blazing.

The District 9 computer game has you running around squashing an alien uprising as a human, or gathering fuel cells as an alien bug creature who's stuck on this planet. As an alien, you're warned you'll either be arrested or shot if caught, but those MNU officers always shoot first and ask questions later. I wonder if there'll be an actual fuel gathering alien resistance in the film? We know from the trailer that the illegal aliens are out of fuel. Are the Earthlings holding out on them?

Here are a few screen grabs from the new District 9 game, where tolerance is best learned at the business end of a rifle.

New Torchwood Is Still Torchwood [Torchwood]

Graeme McMillan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:30:00 PDT

Torchwood: Children of Earth, premiering tonight in the UK, may be a new format for a darker Torchwood, but it's still the series we've come to love, according to one of the show's producers.

SFX Magazine talked to producer Peter Bennett about what's different - and what's the same - about the third season of the British sex-and-aliens drama:

We actually take this series on a darker journey, if anything. But Children Of Earth is still the same show. Jack is still as cheeky and irreverent and sexy. Telling one big story meant that the story had more scale and reach than we ever had in series two, but no, nothing's changed... When we set out we did initially think it would be nice to go down the kind of Bourne Identity route, make it very thriller-like. But after our first couple of tone meetings it was evident that actually that wasn't the way that Russell saw it. Although between Euros [Lyn, the director] and I we did try and put a certain amount of our stamp on it, at the end of the day, as Russell said, it's still gotta be Torchwood. It's still got to be fun-packed; yes, it can be thrilling, but it's still got to have the real Torchwood feel.

Does that mean that at least one of the episodes will be a distinct let-down and kind of embarrassing to watch for everyone involved? It wouldn't be Torchwood without that happening.

Children of Earth launches tonight in the UK on BBC One, and July 20th in the US on BBC America.

Torchwood producer talks Children Of Earth [SFX Magazine]

New Potter Video Reveals Ron's Love-Drunk Snogs And Harry's Descent Into Darkness [Harry Potter]

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:00:00 PDT

HBO's Harry Potter special gives a detailed look into the new year at Hogwarts. It's loaded up with new kissing scenes, plus more from Bellatrix Lestrange, Professor Horace Slughorn and a look at bringing down London's Millenium Bridge.

Aw Ronald all love-struck is too cute, and it's always good to see Helena Bonham Carter getting back to what she does best: acting insane.

I have to admit, I'm banking on this Potter to be the best of the series. It's one of the better books, plus from these clips alone, I'm already certain it will be 1,000 times better than the last movie. Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince will be out July 15.

Does Watchmen's Leak Matter? [Watchmen]

Graeme McMillan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:30:00 PDT

With weeks to go before Watchmen: The Director's Cut hits DVD and Blu-Ray (as well as a few cinema screens), it's leaked onto torrent sites across the internet. But unlike the similar Wolverine leak earlier this year, does anyone care?

The movie leaked late Friday and early Saturday this weekend, brightening some Independence Days for Watchmen-obsessed fans but barely unnoticed by the world at large - BleedingCool.com aside, especially compared to the shitstorm caused by the X-Men Origins: Wolverine leak in March. So why the lack of outrage?

One possibility is that, extra footage aside, everyone who wants to have seen Watchmen has seen it already; unlike Wolverine, it's a relatively known - and unsuccessful - quantity by now. Yes, it's a new version of the movie, but still: while the extended Director's Cut may be grounded in rumors of being more satisfactory to disappointed fans of the book, it's also much more of a niche product than not only Wolverine but the original Watchmen release; it's being aimed at those who have already seen and enjoyed the movie in theaters, and those people are more likely to want to see the HD version and extras on disc, as opposed to a torrented bootleg.

It's also much less of a story than the Wolverine leak; Wolverine's leaked print was unfinished and the source of much (faux) intrigue - Where had it come from? Was it an attempt to sabotage the movie's box office? What did it tell us about the movie? Can you see where the reshoots may have been inserted, or why it needed them in the first place? and so on - whereas this is... well, a leaked DVD re-edit, at heart. There are multiple breaks in security where it could've come from, and much less possibility that internal strife will be revealed by what you can see. Not only that, of course, but it's worth noting that Wolverine was a first... this is just "another" leak, by comparison.

(Let's not forget that Fox made the Wolverine leak into an even bigger story with their reactions, whether it was hastily telling everyone that the finished version contained extra footage or hastily condemning anyone who downloaded it. This leak, by comparison, has been met with silence from Warner Bros. so far.)

Alternatively, it's possible that not that many people knew about it, as it broke over the holiday weekend. It'll be interesting to see if it gains more infamy and popularity over the course of the next few days.

What's Does A Race Car Tell Us About Iron Man 2? And What's Lost's Next Weird Plot Device? [Morning Spoilers]

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:00:00 PDT

Spoilers illuminate your entertainment future! Today, there's a photo of a super-car from the Iron Man 2 set, plus some District 9/Zombieland action scenes described. Plus Caprica, Lost, Fringe, Eureka, Warehouse 13, True Blood, Smallville and Heroes mega-spoilers.

Iron Man 2:

The sequel features a special Stark Industries race car which competes in the Grand Prix de Monaco Historique, a venerable race in Monte Carlo. Everyone's assuming that Tony Stark takes part in this race, but since it's sort of a 1970s looking car, I'm wondering if it's his dad Howard Stark? More pics at the link. [Road And Track via Comic Book Resources]

District 9:

Someone got an advance look at the new trailer for this August release. Among other things, it includes a couple of human bureaucrats tagging along on a raid of the aliens' homes in District 9. One of the bureaucrats puts on a bulletproof vest, and the other one says "I thought I was getting a vest." Don't worry about it, replies the first, you won't need it. Later the vestless guy in a suit picks up a mysterious alien canister and it sprays him with something. Then we see him strapped to a table and thrashing as military people try to hold him down. Later, he's being med-evaced on a chopper, strapped upright to a table, with electrode pads all over his chest. And a close-up of his clenched fist shows something metal attached to his wrist, and he may be in the middle of some kind of transformation. And finally, he's in some kind of decontamination bag looking sickly.

There's also more footage of soldiers and aliens during the raid, as a voiceover says "Nobody knew what this place was." And we see some kind of robot powersuit, similar to Iron Man or Ripley's loader in Aliens. The power suit makes a fantastic leap, and looks menacing. A soldier fires a rocket at the alien mothership, and the robot suit jumps up and deflects it. Voiceovers say things like "Get the freak," "It's gonna be quick," "It's gonna be clean," "It's going to be quiet." And the last shot is the alien mothership, with helicopters approaching it, as a voiceover says "There's a lot of secrets in District 9."

Zombieland:

This movie was partly shot at the Valdosta's Wild Adventures theme park, and at one point Woody Harrelson uses the "Rattler" ride to destroy some zombies. The theme-park scenes take place at night. [Valdosta Daily Times]

Caprica:

Yes, this BSG spinoff is finally working on its second episode, airing next year. According to a casting call, the episode entitled "Rebirth" will introduce us to Buster Sarno, a TV host similar to Letterman or Leno, but with a bit of Jon Stewart's political edge, added to a retro Dick Cavett sensibility. We'll see him monologuing on the day's events, on his show "Backtalk with Buster Sarno." [SpoilerTV]

Lost:

Producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof promise there's a master plan, with some "sweet payoffs." And they hint, once again, that a lot of dead and/or vanished characters will be making reappearances in the final season. "The final season will resemble the first," predicts Michael Emerson. And along those lines, Ian Somerhalder says he may reappear as Boone. "There's definitely an avenue they're going down to bring back a lot of us." Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the idea of "going down an avenue" sounds a bit more significant than just "Hurley seeing dead people." [TV Guide Magazine and TV Guide Magazine]

Fringe:

A new set pic. What do you think Pacey is handing to Lance? More pics at the link. [SpoilerTV]

Warehouse 13:

In the pilot episode, the college kid who beats up his girlfriend does so while chanting in Italian, a sure sign that evil is afoot. But the boyfriend turns out not to be evil — the main suspects are a evasive professor, and an "eerie rich lady." The show serves up a weird mix, with a mysterious death followed by a joke followed by an unnerving encounter followed by clever dialogue followed by a hallucination. At the end of the episode, demons are running wild and madness is in the air, and Pete Lattimer turns the whole thing into a goofy joke. [Salon]

Eddie McClintock explains the underpinnings of his character, Pete Lattimer:

Pete's father died when he was young. He's taken on a lot of guilt for that. It's caused him to be very driven, but at the same time it's caused him to be very reckless and self-destructive. He had some problems with drinking in college, but he's sober now and we touch on that a little bit, which I think is great. For a dramedy, to have the guy be a recovering alcoholic, it just gives the character so much depth.

The people around him Artie and Pete have a kind of father-son relationship, and Artie sees and understands Myka's flaws and strong points and whatnot. So he's a great sounding board for both characters. In one episode he says to me, 'You need to be in charge. You're more grounded. Don't let Myka know that I told you.' Then he goes to Myka and says the same thing, because he wants to get the best out of both characters.

[The Reading Eagle]

The mystical artifacts you see in the show include Lewis Carroll's mirror, which allows Myka to kick up her heels a bit. In one episode, "Breakdown," the characters end up trapped in the warehouse. At some point, we explore the Dark Vault in the warehouse, where the most dangerous stuff is kept. And the Gooery, which pumps the purple goo needed to keep objects in line. Plus there's the "bronze sector," where some of the world's most dangerous people have been preserved. But we won't be seeing Hitler's mind-controlling microphone any time soon. [Sci Fi Wire]

Smallville:

In the season opener, "Savior," Emil Hamilton reappears and has a scene with Chloe. Lois is back from wherever she disappered to in "Doomsday." And Clark takes a new approach to fighting crime in Metropolis. [Kryptonsite]

Eureka:

The computerized house S.A.R.A.H. tries to kill Andy, the new android replacement sheriff, then she apologizes: "I let my artificial emotions get the best of me." After Andy experiences a setback, Jack invites him to a party. But Andy says in a folksy manner, "I think I need to spend a little time in my box, you know, sortin' things out." [Salon]

The July 17 episode is called "Your Face Or Mine," and the next two episodes are "Insane In The P-Brane" and "It's Not Easy Being Green." [SpoilerTV]

Sheriff Andy's storyline wraps up in one episode, but he'll probably come back at some point. And the season finale deals with everything from fire to water to human evolution. And as we've mentioned, Jack will have a new love interest, Tess Fontaine, distracting him from Allison. Tess and Allison are old friends, but things get tense between them. The season three "big bad" isn't a person, it's a thing, and it relates to the history of the town. The threat means we'll be seeing some characters we haven't seen in a while, including Lexi Carter and Billy Campbell. Plus a couple of mystery characters. [Sci Fi Wire]

Heroes:

Don't expect Claire to try out for the college cheerleading squad: Hayden Panettiere says she's through wearing a cheerleader uniform. [TV Guide Magazine]

Human Target:

As you've probably heard, this TV series' version of Christopher Chance doesn't transform himself into other people — he's just very good at blending in and protecting his targets. And the pilot has a pretty simple storyline — it includes one outrageous "MacGyver moment" and the best fight scene ever. [Sci Fi Scoop]

True Blood:

It turns out Tara's new beau Eggs is too good to be true — he's got an old, old secret. When Tara finds out, she probably won't be that shocked, says Rutina Wesley. "With everything else going on in Louisiana, she'll probably be like, 'I like you, whatever...'" [TV Guide Magazine]

Maryann isn't a villain, says Michelle Forbes:

She is a woman who is all about appetite. She's not human. She has a definite myopic quest that she is on. And she is going to have one hell of a time achieving that quest. Maryann is definitely a character that's about perspective in the sense that she sees her goal as beautiful and blissful and of the divine and pure, so she doesn't consider what she is doing as being bad at all. It's quite a beautiful thing, and she's graciously allowing everyone to come with her.

[Boston Herald]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

The Following Preview Has Been Rated D... For Disaster [This Is A Disaster]

Garrison Dean: R.O.A.C.H. — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:30:45 PDT

Well it's a holiday weekend and in an effort to work less on this week's column I probably ended up doing more work... whatever. I hope you enjoy the end result.

MOON:
I don't really understand why people feel the need to compare a small budgeted film about one man's personal struggle with isolation on a space station with a massive action film about giant robots fighting each other simply because they are both sort of in the same genre. But then again I also don't see how a film featuring a fairly big movie star, an academy award winning actor, and directed by the son of one of the biggest rock stars of all time can be considered "independent" just because they slowly release it only in theaters where the seats are at least 30 years old. In any case, the folks marketing "Moon" have caught on to the counter programing buzz and are rolling with it as you can see from this new ad.

IT'S A DISASTER!!!:
Every so often I feel a film is just being marketed poorly. This is often laziness and misdirection on their part. Occasionally it is arrogance when they think there is more to their film than is actually there. So, in my own arrogance, I try to help them along. Last year I felt "Hulk" needed some help. Today my mission is one that blends swimmingly with my own love of Disaster. Please enjoy this special holiday treat that I made just for you. Click on the youtube for a bigger version.

UPDATED: Visit this link to see it in true HD with film scratches and all its "vintage" glory.

This is Garrison Dean, thanking Dr. Emilio Lizardo for the inspiration for this video.

Dog Versus Zombie Sex Slave In New Deadgirl Clip Plus A Human Centipede [Cult Movie Worship]

Meredith Woerner — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:00:20 PDT

Can't get enough of the pretty dead girl in the basement? Well here's a new clip to calm your cravings, you sick, sick puppy. Also, The Horde's Frenchie zombies have a trailer and Human Centipede freaks us out.

The Horde
I'm getting very excited for the zombies cops and robbers flick The Horde by Benjamin Rocher and Yannick Dahan. All of the set reports and stills we've seen so far have been lovely, and I'm hoping it's as pretty as it appears to be. The basic premise is a high rise stake-out/shoot-out between a gang of cops and a bushel of robbers has been interrupted by a herd of zombies. Will foe become friend to help escape the tower of doom? Who knows, but please let there be at least one French Mime zombie, please. Here's the latest teaser trailer:

Planet Of The Vampire Women
A cute little graphic poster and a few sexy stills have been released from this campy film, still in production. The vampire ladies themselves are band space pirates who:

pull off the ultimate heist only to crash into an unknown world. Finding themselves trapped on a storm-shrouded planet overrun with monsters, the intergalactic outlaws unknowingly awaken an unspeakable horror that causes the dead to walk...with an insatiable lust for blood!

For more stills check out Monster Island.

Humpty Dumpty
Remember a few weeks back when we talked all about alien rape and the film Humpty Dumpty? Well, new concept art was released of the backwater abode of Brakk Brothers Swamp House. We can only guess that this is the classy habitat of the villains that brutally assaulted a crashed down UFO, thus ending in the unholy human/alien half breed the movie is calling Humpty Dumpty.

Human Centipede

Ok now this is something so disturbing I'm not even 100% sure it does or should exist. The comedy Human Centipede is screening at London's Fright Fest (which is worth a look on it's own) and it's all about a mad scientist hell bent on making a real life human centipede by conjoining bodies butt to face, no seriously:

Outside the more outré work of Takashi Miike and David Cronenberg, you won't have seen anything quite like Dutch avant-garde artist Tom Six' totally bizarre off-the-wall oddity. Internationally respected Siamese twin surgeon Dr. Josef Heiter has a demented vision for mankind's future existence. He wants to remove human beings' kneecaps so they have to exist on all fours and then surgically graft them mouth-to-anus to form a centipede chain. When two stranded female Americans arrive at his luxury home-cum-hospital looking for help, his long-gestating plan swiftly moves into chilling action with a shocking force. Kidnapping a third Japanese male tourist he begins the tissue matches, teeth removal and buttock moulding to create his triplet creature… The First Sequence in Six's intended trilogy features truly unforgettable imagery, clinically dazzling direction and a so-far-round-the-bend mad doctor performance from German superstar Dieter Laser you'll scream. Behold the grotesque New Flesh. If you dare!

So, you can see where I had my doubts about the mere existence of this flick, and yet in these tiny pictures (I can't make them any bigger I'm sorry) you see a group of people with bandages on their knees, attached face to backside. Make of it what you will readers, it terrifies me.

Deadgirl

And finally, last week we showed you the new trailer for the deeply disturbing story about a group of teenaged boys and their love for a naked zombie girl tied up in their basement. In this new, highly NSFW clip, watch as one boy lovingly rubs dark lipstick all over his undead girls lips, because who wants to spend their days raping a zombie if she looks all tired?

Deadgirl is getting a small little release on July 24th, at these particular theaters:

Landmark Sunshine Cinema - NY
Screening July 24th & 25th @ midnight

Nuart Theater - LA
Screening July 24th @ midnight

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - AUSTIN
Screening July 24th & 25th @ midnight

Landmark Tivoli - ST. LOUIS
Screening July 24th & 25th @ midnight

Music Box Theater - CHICAGO
Screening July 24th & 25th @ midnight

Grand Illusion - SEATTLE
Screening July 24th & 25th @ midnight

Inwood Theater - DALLAS
Screening July 24th & 25th @ midnight

River Oaks Theater - HOUSTON
Screening July 24th & 25th @ midnight

Fantasia Film Festival - MONTREAL
Screening July 24th @ midnight

Newly Discovered Black Hole Is Uniquely Average [Black Holes]

Alasdair Wilkins — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 14:00:00 PDT

Astronomers have discovered a black hole unlike any other previously discovered. Neither big enough to be a supermassive black hole, nor small enough to be the remnants of a collapsed star, its "average" size is a cosmic mystery.

The black hole, designated HLX-1, was discovered by a team of astronomers led by the University of Leicester's Sean Farrell. They found the black hole while searching for white dwarfs and neutron stars. HLX-1 is located just outside a galaxy some 290 million light-years away.

Previously, all black holes have fallen into one of two categories. The more commonly observed kind of black hole, the stellar-mass black hole, is the ultimate result of a massive star dying. The other kind, the supermassive black hole, can be anywhere from tens of thousands to a billion times larger than their smaller counterparts. Such black holes are generally thought to be found only at the center of galaxies.

The size of black holes can be determined using the Eddington limit. Named for the astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington, who devised the first version of this particular metric, the Eddington limit is the point at which the amount of material entering the black hole equals the amount of x-ray radiations it expels. This implies a direct relationship between the amount of radiation emitted and the black hole's gravitational force, which in turn can be used to determine the size of the black hole.

Farrell's team has measured the emitted radiation of HLX-1 to be ten times that of a normal stellar-mass black hole. That suggests its mass roughly 500 times bigger than our sun. Stellar-mass black holes are only about thirty times heavier than our sun. This places HLX-1 in an unprecedented intermediate stage between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes, and none of the currently theorized mechanisms for the formation of black holes can explain its existence.

There are two leading hypotheses to explain how HLX-1 came to be, and either would greatly expand and complicate our understanding of the cosmos. The preferred theory holds that HLX-1 is the result of multiple black holes being pulled together and then fusing to create one relatively large black hole. This would require HLX-1 to be located in what was once a densely packed globular cluster. Such clusters are generally extremely distant from their galaxy's center, which is where HLX-1 currently is.

Although that's strong circumstantial evidence to favor the above theory, I must admit I find the second possible explanation much more intriguing. It actually is possible that HLX-1 is the result of just one star collapsing, as long as the star in question was much, much bigger than any seen today. There is some thought that the most ancient stars were indeed considerably bigger than their modern counterparts, and so it is possible that HLX-1 is a remnant of the oldest generation of stars. Either way, HLX-1 has given astronomers yet another object to look for while scanning the skies, as it is the first of the newly dubbed intermediate-mass black holes.

[ScienceNOW]

Smallville To Go "Eight More Seasons"? Really? [Smallville]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:00:32 PDT

Will Smallville really last past its ninth season? Some are pointing to a comment from the show's Green Arrow, Justin Hartley, as proof that Clark Kent may be crusading for years to come, but we're not convinced.

SciFi Wire reports Hartley talking on the subject of how long the show may continue recently:

"Look, they're so busy right now, they don't know if they're doing one more season or eight more seasons or two more seasons... They have no idea. So we'll see.

Quite how that clearly-intentionally ridiculous "eight more seasons" seemed to be taken more literally than it should've been by some, we're not sure, but it seems more like Hartley was saying "anything's possible," than "this show will never end."

Then again, he blew our mind when he revealed how old Green Arrow is supposed to be in the show ("I'd say I'm playing what, 14 or 15 right now, about, roughly"), so who knows?

So now it's possible Smallville's upcoming ninth season may not be its last? [SciFi Wire]

Five Lessons To Have Learned From 2009 Already [2009 To Date]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:00:27 PDT

With the middle of the year having fallen earlier this week (July 2nd for the curious), it's time to take stock, look back and wonder: What has 2009 taught us so far?

Here are five pieces of wisdom that we've gleaned from the last six months (and handful of days):

President Obama Is The Greatest Hero Of All
As his many comic book appearances have demonstrated, there's no end to our current president's ability to save the world from any genre of threat. Amazing Spider-Man has him fighting supervillains, Youngblood shows him carrying massive laserguns to shoot renegade soldiers taking over the White House, Drafted gives us an alien-invasion-battlin' Barack and Barack The Barbarian brings everything back down to sword and sorcery basics. He's like a modern-day Arnold Schwarzenegger - and enough to make us wonder just how the comic industry would've dealt with John McCain winning the election instead.

Threats To Humanity Are Getting Weaker
Last year, it was the Large Hadron Collider and the possibility that it would rip existence apart when someone flipped the switch, and this year, it was... Swine Flu. It can't just be me, can it? I mean, Swine Flu... Doesn't that seem like a step down from the technological "Our Quest For Knowledge May Destroy Us All" conceptual genius that threatened us last year? Even calling it "the H1N1 Influenza Virus" still sounds kind of shit. Okay, so there's no chance of "hardon" spoonerisms, but still: Pandemics? Haven't we done that already? I'm holding out hope that sewer monsters will brighten the remaining months of the year, however.

The BBC Should Stop Making Us Feel Old
Yes, we know that it's just one of those aimless homilies that you know that you're getting old when the policemen and doctors start looking younger, but selecting a twelve year old to be the new Doctor Who really doesn't make us feel very good about ourselves nonetheless. I know that we started with the oldest of the Doctors and have progressively gotten younger since then - well, roughly - but between David Tennant and Matt Smith, I'm convinced that we'll have our first pre-teen Timelord by 2015. And then, the next one will be a little baby, just like in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Joss Whedon Can Defy The Laws Of Nature
If nothing else, the renewal of Dollhouse proves that he can defy the laws of television. I wouldn't put money on him being unable to fly if he really wanted to.

Fuck Dystopia
Terminator Salvation and Watchmen - two downbeat movies offering popcorn versions of pessimistic views of humanity ("Ultimately, man's greed and laziness will lead us to become disconnected from our fellow man and controlled by the machines and mechanisms that we created to ease our daily existences - but doesn't this slow-motion action sequence look hot?") - both failed to meet expectation at the box office, while Star Trek's hopeful, colorful version of a future that may be too lens-flarey to be cuddly but is nonetheless positive surpassed expectations. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles also died a slow death on television. The obvious conclusion? No-one wants to their entertainment to end with the lesson "We're all screwed." The Dark Knight's glossy hopelessness was so last year, people. We hadn't experienced so much of the economic downturn and/or the hopetrain of Obama back then. We were all so much more innocent and desperate to be mistreated by our movies. (Along the same lines - Size Matters: Terminator, featuring human-sized robots, fails to become a hit. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, featuring giant robots, breaks box office records. I think you can see what I'm saying here. See also: Robot On Robot Action Is More Acceptable Than Robot On Batman Action and Megan Fox Is Hotter Than Moon Bloodgood. Sorry, But There It Is.)

Bolstered with this new knowledge, we look forward to what the rest of the year can teach us - presuming, of course, that the sewer monsters don't decide to team up with Joss Whedon and end the world before then. Pray for us.

Your Spike/Angel Slash Just Became Canon (Kinda) [Buffy Slash]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:00:09 PDT

Convinced that the idea of Buffy's vamp beaus, Spike and Angel, getting it on was forever condemned to your slash fic folder? Joss Whedon's new online Buffy comic proves you wrong... Well, kind of.

The three page short "Almost Darkest" - written by Whedon and illustrated by Jo Chen, the artist behind the amazing covers to the current Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Eight comic - may just end up as a seemingly random dream indulging fans' and Whedon's fantasies (Buffy marrying Warren? Really?), but at least it features this sequence:

The strip is available on publisher Dark Horse's website, as part of their Dark Horse Presents online anthology series.

Always Darkest [Dark Horse]

The Truth About The Moon Landing [Quote Of The Day]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:00:07 PDT

Buzz Aldrin has a few words for those wondering what it was like to be one of the first men on the moon. Unfortunately, they might not be the exact words that you were hoping for.

Talking to the Guardian newspaper on the 40th anniversary of the historic mission, Aldrin said,

People want to know what it felt like... They want us in a few words to generate the enthusiasm that the world had as they contemplated what we were about to do. Well, what it felt like is something that we trained for. We were trying to treat it as calmly as we could and perform to the best of our ability. We tried to repress feelings of exuberance, of disappointment, and be proud and responsible people accomplishing the task that was given to us. That sounds kind of boring. Except that what we did was kind of earth-shaking.

The man who fell to earth [Guardian.co.uk]

Why Bayhem Will Never Be In 3-D [Michael Bay]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:00:46 PDT

Everyone expects James Cameron's Avatar to launch a new generation of 3-D movies, but Transformers director Michael Bay isn't interested. He also responds to Megan Fox's complaints about his movies not focusing enough on acting. Let the Baytrigue Commence!

Talking to the Wall Street Journal, Bay repeated that he's not looking to jump into the next Transformers movie right away despite Dreamworks' announced release date:

I just want to take some time off. It's been almost three years that I've devoted myself entirely to this world of robots. At some point, enough is enough-and I literally carried this movie on my back. I only finished it in the last week [before release... but] I don't know who [would] want to take on my shoes with this franchise. We might just take a year down.

One thing you shouldn't expect from a Bay-directed Transformers 3 will be 3-D, apparently:

I prefer the flat screen. I'm not jumping to do 3-D at all-it's a pain in the neck to shoot it and I actually like the flat image. I've heard that some people can't even see 3-D and, moreover, that a major side effect of watching it is feeling exhausted. Can you imagine how you'd feel watching one of my movies in 3-D?

And, judging from the tone of his comments about Transformers star Megan Fox, maybe we shouldn't expect her in the third movie, either:

She says some very ridiculous things because she's 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do. You roll your eyes when you see statements like that and think, "Okay Megan, you can do whatever you want. I got it." But I 100% disagree with her. Nick Cage wasn't a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck before I put him in "Armageddon." Shia LaBeouf wasn't a big movie star before he did "Transformers"-and then he exploded. Not to mention Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, from "Bad Boys." Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in "Transformers."

He made you and he can break you, Megan. Not that he's outright saying that last part, or anything. Well, only kinda sorta.

Master of Machines [Wall Street Journal]

Only 14 Months Until Evil Takes Up Residence Again [Resident Evil]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:00:37 PDT

Start your countdown: the fourth Resident Evil movie (complete with multiple Millas) will arrive in little over a year from now.

Shock Till You Drop has received confirmation that the next movie in the one-time trilogy will be released on September 17, 2010. Called Resident Evil: Afterlife, Paul WS Anderson's fourth movie will - as we revealed last year - feature an army of Milla Jovovich's Alices taking on the Umbrella Corporation. September 2010 seems too far away already.

Confirmed Exclusive: Resident Evil 4 Arriving in Late 2010 [Shock Till You Drop]

New Wonder Woman Comic To Confront Her Bondage Past [Wonder Woman]

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:00:07 PDT

Looking for a comic to return Wonder Woman to her bondage roots, and then redefine her feminist credentials? Final Crisis and Batman and Robin writer Grant Morrison claims to be working on that very book, just for you.

During his LA appearance with Clive Barker earlier this week, Morrison admitted that Wonder Woman had disappeared from Final Crisis midway through the series, although he had a good reason why:

[The ideas] went into a different project with Wonder Woman... The basics of Wonder Woman come from William Moulton Marston, a psychologist who created the lie detector, of all things. His idea was that a utopia would be achieved if men were placed in subjugation to women. So, Wonder Woman is a character where you imagine this very strange mélange of girl power, bondage, and a slightly disturbed sexuality. There is this bondage element; these extremely weird dark elements of Wonder Woman haven't been adequately dealt with. Wonder Woman remains a really bizarre, untouchable character. She should represent women in the same way Superman represents men.

The project - all detail of which, including release date, format, artist and (most importantly) whether or not DC have greenlit it - has a simple mission statement, according to the author:

To make it work, to give [Wonder Woman] a sexuality that isn't exploitive, because that's too easy; but also to give her a [narrative] power.

Well, it's definitely better than her calling men "sperm bank," I guess.

Grant Morrison & Clive Barker Meltdown Hollywood [Comic Book Resources]

Giant Manta Rays Are The Cylon Raiders Of The Deep [Mega Fauna]

Annalee Newitz — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:00:00 PDT

BoingBoing points out the similarities between cylon ships and these giant manta rays featured in the latest National Geographic magazine. These 2,000-pound creatures are on a krill feeding frenzy. More pictures via NatGeo, thanks to Marilyn Terrell!

Your Smile Will Be Monitored To Evaluate Quality Of Service [Social Control]

Annalee Newitz — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:00:00 PDT

More than 500 employees of Keihin Electric Express Railway in Japan will be subject to "smile checks" every morning. Software will evaluate the quality of their grins, and alert them if they aren't looking happy enough.

The smile-evaluating software takes a picture of Keihin employees every morning and assigns smile values to various parts of the face. It then adds those values and delivers a smile scan score. According to an article today in the Mainichi Daily News:

The device analyzes the facial characteristics of a person, including eye movements, lip curves and wrinkles, and rates a smile on a scale between 0 and 100 percent using a camera and computer.

For those with low scores, advice like "You still look too serious," or "Lift up your mouth corners," will be displayed on the screen.

Some 530 employees of the Tokyo-based railway company will check their smiles with Smile Scan before starting work each day. They will print out and carry around an image of their best smile in an attempt to remember it.

This just sounds like a workplace shooting incident waiting to happen. If I had to pretend to have the perfect smile on every morning - and got criticized if I "looked too serious" - I would definitely go Joker after a while.

via Mainichi Daily News (thanks, Klebert!)

What If July 4th Was Just Another Day? [Alternate History]

Alasdair Wilkins — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:00:00 PDT

As the United States celebrates its Independence Day, it's worth considering just how easily it could have never happened at all. Here now is a rundown of alternate history stories and essays where the American Revolution turned out very differently.

Compared to the Civil War or World War II, the American Revolution has, for whatever reason, been largely neglected by alternate history writers. While books like Bring the Jubilee and The Man in the High Castle stand as iconic works that imagine Confederate and Nazi victories respectively, there is no such defining work detailing the particulars of the British maintaining control of their wayward colonies. Still, there are a number of more obscure short stories and essays (plus a couple of novels) that do consider just such a scenario, and they generally take one of the four following forms...

1. Different historical circumstances prevented the American Revolution completely.

Technically speaking, I could include in this category almost any alternate history where the divergence occurs long before July 4, 1776. For instance, a story about the Roman Empire surviving into the present day would undoubtedly mean European contact with and subsequent colonization of the Americas would have happened far, far differently. Instead, let's just focus on stories that explicitly explain how changing history would avert the Revolution.

J.C.D. Clark's essay "British America: What if there had been no American Revolution?" argues that increased representation for the colonists, much like the Scottish and Irish parliaments prior to the Act of Union in 1707, might well have given the Americans a satisfactory level of self-government and made rebellion unnecessary. The short story "Cops and Robbers" by S.M. Stirling is set in modern times, but it uses as its setup a world where Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder led Britain to a far more decisive victory in the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years War). This then allowed the British to maintain control over their colonies for a considerably longer period.

Writing just over a hundred years ago, Joseph Edgar Chamberlain imagined a plethora of alternate scenarios in his book The Ifs of History. He imagined a French colonization of Plymouth Bay that would have allowed the Dutch settlements of New Holland to survive, preventing the colonial unity that made the success of the Revolution possible. He wondered what might have happened if Columbus had not slightly altered course while crossing the Atlantic in 1492, which would have led to landfall on what is now Florida, likely shifting Spanish colonial interest towards North America.

He also looked at the possibility of Elizabeth I marrying and giving birth to an heir, which he believed would have prevented the rise of Puritanism and thus likely averted the Revolution. Not all of the changes he described would have appeared quite so momentous at the time, as he considered the tale of a colonial mother deciding in 1746 whether or not to enlist her son in the British navy. The mother was Mary Washington, the son was George Washington, and if the decision had been "yes" then the rest would have been a very different history than what we know.

2. Diplomacy prevailed.

This category focuses on situations where the colonies were on the brink of war, but ultimately were pacified thanks to brilliant diplomacy. Caleb Carr's essay "William Pitt the Elder and the Avoidance of the American Revolution" argues Pitt could have prevented the American Revolution if he had refused his ennoblement as the Earl of Chatham in 1766, which would have allowed him to stay in the House of Commons. Carr feels Pitt stood the best chance of preventing the various oppressive acts and exorbitant taxes that so angered the colonists, and in doing so might have prevented the rebellion.

In a similar vein, Roger Thompson imagined in his essay what might have happened "If I had been…the Earl of Shelburne in 1762-5." The crux of Thompson's argument holds that, if the Earl of Shelburne had been in charge of the peace negotiations following the Seven Years' War, he might have allowed France to regain control of Canada, which would have in turn removed the need for much of the taxation of the colonies.

One of the few full-fledged novels to tackle the subject, The Two Georges was cowritten by alternate history grandmaster Harry Turtledove and, for some awesome reason, Jaws actor Richard Dreyfuss. The titular Georges are, naturally enough, King George III and George Washington, who managed to negotiate a peaceful redress to American grievances that allowed the colonies to remain part of the British Empire. The theft two centuries later of a painting recording their legendary meeting sets the book's plot in motion, which takes the detective protagonist from New Liverpool (or, as we would call it, Los Angeles) on a winding tour throughout the North American Union all the way to their version of Washington D.C., the colonial capital Victoria.

3. The British won the war.

This really should be the easiest kind of alternate American Revolution story to write, considering just how unlikely the colonial victory arguably was. Beyond the superior military might of the British Empire, there was also the fact that not all Americans supported the cause of independence (although a majority of them did), and even then not all of the patriots were properly trained to fight. But beyond these general advantages the British had, there were several specific instances where the British could have triumphed and, in the process, likely ended the rebellion.

A major turning point recognized by multiple alternate history authors is the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. The month-long series of skirmishes, bookended by two bloody battles, saw the decisive defeat of British General John Burgoyne's army. Burgoyne had previously boasted that his troops would be able to split the colonies in half and effectively end the revolt. He was defeated largely due to the tactical brilliance and bold action of a brilliant young general by the name of Benedict Arnold. In H. Beam Piper's "He Walked Around the Horses", Burgoyne's victory at Saratoga is credited at the effective end of the American Revolution. A similar result is seen in Robert Sobel's For Want of a Nail…; If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga, which takes the form of an alternate history textbook detailing the duel histories of the Confederation of North America and the United States of Mexico.

Speaking of Benedict Arnold, Robert Cowley looked at how Arnold might have acted differently slightly later in his notorious career, as he detailed in his essay "Benedict Arnold Wins the Revolutionary War for Britain." Paul Park's "The Blood of Peter Francisco" takes place in the early 20th century in a world where the British routed the Continental Army at Yorktown in 1781, which in our history was the battle that signaled the inevitability of American victory.

Thomas Fleming is even more ambitious in his piece "Unlikely Victory: Thirteen Ways the Americans Could have Lost the Revolution", which examines the entire chain of events that made American success possible and then pulls out thirteen of the weakest links. This includes how the Patriots expertly turned the Boston Massacre into a rallying cry for anti-British sentiment, how a fortunate fog covered the American retreat from the Battle of Long Island and prevented their capture at the hands of the British, and how George Washington's charisma was all that stopped the disgruntled Continental Army from marching on Congress to demand their pay, all of which Fleming considers the results if these had played out differently.

Perhaps the most interesting sub-sub-sub-genre in this category concerns the ultimate fate of George Washington. In 1974, Robert Wallace Russell wrote and staged the play Washington Shall Hang: A Drama of Lost Revolution, which imagines the general being put on trial for treason. Roland J. Green's vignette "Exile's Greeting" looks at the HMS Bellerophon as it prepares to transport an important political prisoner to the infamous island of St. Helena, which in our history was the final home of the defeated Napoleon Bonaparte. I suppose my inclusion of that story in this particular paragraph pretty much gives away the big twist as to which mysterious general is being exiled to St. Helena.

4. Something utterly crazy happened.

Let's be honest here. (And, by "honest", I of course mean "borderline jingoistic in a tongue-in-cheek manner.") The American Revolution was a historical inevitability and no amount of expert political maneuvering by Pitt the Elder or brilliant strategizing by General Burgoyne could have prevented or defeated it. So how, exactly, could you plausibly write a story where the Revolution turned out differently? With magic and dragons, that's how!

Orson Scott Card preferred the former option in his Tales of Alvin Maker series, in which almost everybody has a "knack", or ability to do at least one thing absolutely perfectly, and a few people have particularly powerful knacks, including the title character. The existence of such powers has greatly altered the course of human history, and what would have been the United States is divided into a colonial New England controlled by the heirs of Oliver Cromwell's English Republic, a monarchy on the east coast ruled by the exiled House of Stuart, and a much smaller independent America where Native Americans play a far greater role.

Mike Resnick upped the ante considerably in terms of awesomeness when he titled his alternate history book Dragon America: Revolution. The book is set in a world where the ecology of the Americas is greatly different from that of the Old World, as it is dominated by, well, dragons. For some reason, the Revolution is close to failure in this universe, which forces George Washington to send Daniel Boone westward in search of the legendary dragons that could be their last hope for victory against the British.

I'll admit I'm probably cheating a little bit by including this book, as the American Revolution does ultimately succeed thanks to the dragons, but I have one very simple rule in life - I will never pass up an opportunity to talk about team-ups between George Washington and dragons to defeat the British. I can't think of anything that better encapsulates the American way.

Celebrate July 4th With Robobama [Political Science (fiction)]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:00:30 PDT

To those who fear that President Barack Obama may be a robot sent here from the future to plunge us into a horrific machine-led dystopia/save John Connor (Delete as applicable), Disney has a message for you: You're right. Well, almost.

Admittedly, they're talking about the new animatronic Obama that provides the news hook for their revamped Hall of Presidents attraction in Florida's Walt Disney World. His selling point? Apparently, that you can't tell the difference between this Obama and the real one, even down to muscle dominance:

Imagineers traveled to the Washington, D.C., to record Obama's voice for the show. They also worked with White House staffers to make sure his wardrobe, hair and mannerisms were portrayed as accurately as possible. "He's very tailored and very well-dressed all the time so that's what we were trying to achieve, and I think we did," said Janice Jones, a costumer at Walt Disney World.

Disney sculptor Valerie Edwards created the Obama figure's likeness. "Well, it's a great pressure of course to completely do an accurate job of somebody that's in the media so often," Edwards said. She used an array of pictures and video of the president to capture even the slightest facial expression. "I can watch the different speeches and I can watch his cadence as he speaks, I can watch his muscles as they move, I can see how his face changes as he speaks to see if there's any dominance in muscle," Edwards said.

Disney call Robot Obama "the most dynamic figure Disney has ever created," which makes me convinced that - midway through his speech - he's going to suddenly leap into action and punch Robot Lincoln in the jaw or something.

The revamped Hall of Presidents opens today.

Disney adds robotic Obama to attraction [CNN]

Watch 7 Clips From Paul Giamatti's Soul-Rattling New Movie [Cold Souls]

Charlie Jane Anders — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:00:27 PDT

Cold Souls, the new film about a bizarre soul-extraction process, is mostly a chance for the movie's lead to stretch his comedy muscles in an existential wasteland, judging from seven new clips. Good thing it's Paul Giamatti, then. Spoilers ahead.

In the above clip, Dr. Flintstein explains to Giamatti, who's playing an actor named Paul Giamatti, that we have no clue what the soul is or what it does — but we can remove it, with a patented new technology. I love the part where he offers Giamatti the soul-visualizing goggles. (Incidentally, I think half of this movie's problem of appearing to be a Charlie Kaufman knock-off would have gone away if writer/director Sophie Barthes had named Giamatti's character something else.)

And then in this second clip, Giamatti's apparently had his soul removed, and now they're testing to see how much of it remains, using a "soul stimulator."

Giamatti has a fight with his wife, over his insensitive behavior and celery-munching. I'm just guessing this scene happens after his soul has been taken out.

So Giamatti goes back to Dr. Flintstein and (I'm guessing) finds out his soul has been misplaced. But he can rent a different soul, including one imported from Russia.

So when Giamatti finally comes clean and tells his wife about having his soul removed, he's borrowing the soul of a Russian poet.

Giamatti finally tracks down Nina, who tells him where his missing soul has actually gone.

And unfortunately the Russian gangster's wife who's "borrowing" Giamatti's soul doesn't want to give it back, leading to a debate about soul adultery. The wife thinks she's actually being inhabited by the soul of Al Pacino, and she needs it to act in a Russian soap opera.

This sort of movie is always a bit contrived, taking a ridiculous concept and seeing how far the film-maker can run with it. But it does create an opportunity to ask some of the same questions Dollhouse has been asking about what makes us who we are, only from a different angle — instead of the memories and skills being swapped out, it's the much more nebulous "soul" — and it looks like Barthes and Giamatti take full advantage of this thematic richness. Honestly, a lot probably depends on how much we believe in Giamatti's reasons for wanting to give up his soul in the first place. It seems like such a patently bad idea to begin with, let's hope his initial decision is set up well.

We'll all find out soon enough. Cold Souls hits theaters (in New York and L.A., anyway) on August 7. [Sci Fi Cool]

20 Great American Superheroes To Share Your Holiday With [Holiday Heroes]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:00:36 PDT

It's Independence Day here in the United States, and what better way to celebrate it than to remember the fictional men and women who drape themselves in red, white and blue and try to personify what makes the country great?

For almost as long as there have been superheroes, there have been superheroes who were intended to be patriotic figures representing American values by offering up inspirational speeches, standing up for the little guy and socking Hitler in the jaw whenever possible. Considering the popularity of the medium during the Second World War, it's easy to see why Real American Heroes became so prevalent, even if they've failed to find so easy a purpose ever since (Although trying to do so has produced such great stories - and such sly commentary as Captain America's 1970s villains, the Committee to Regain America's Principles... or CRAP, for short). But this isn't a day to think about troubled times... so let's salute the brave, bold and... others... of America's Fictional Finest.

The Classics
Captain America
Still the best of all of America's superheroes - or, at least, the only one who's really weathered the years and stayed in print the longest. Sure, there was that whole period he disappeared after the War, but that's because he was frozen in a block of ice. Who would've wanted to have read that month after month?

Uncle Sam
Who could be more patriotic than Captain America? Well, how about Uncle Sam himself? Oh, alright; this character, created by The Spirit's Will Eisner, wasn't the Uncle Sam, but instead the resurrected spirit of a Revolutionary War-era soldier who mystically returns in America's various hours of need, but still. Look at that beard and wonder just who could argue?

The Shield
Created more than a year before Captain America, Archie Comics' super soldier patriot may not have the name recognition of Marvel's counterpart, but DC Comics is doubtlessly hoping that J. Michael Straczynski's upcoming revival of the superpowered military man will change all of that.

The Fighting Yank
A character so wonderfully named, he's been revived not once but twice in recent years, and by no less than Alan Moore (in a 2001 issue of his America's Best Comics series Tom Strong) and Alex Ross (in his ongoing Project Superpowers series). But who could resist the lure of a man haunted by the ghost of his War of Independence-era ancestor who fights for his country's honor?

Liberty Belle
What are the odds that a woman could have a spiritual connection with the Liberty Bell so strong that it gives her superpowers and the ability to fight Nazis? if you're a comic book character from the 1940s, apparently they'd be good enough for that character's daughter to take on the same costumed identity and fight crime with the Justice Society today.

The Forgotten Heroes
Mr. America/Americommando
Reason #1 to love this 1941 superhero: His secret identity is a Texan oilman out for revenge against the Nazis. Reason #2: His sidekick's name was "Fatman." Reason #3: His Nazi-fighting technique? Dying his hair black and whipping his enemies until they surrender. Why is this character not getting multiple movies and fan worship as we speak?

Miss America
Sadly unrelated to the above, Miss America gained her powers from a dream where the Statue of Liberty came to life and gave them to her, and thankfully kept up that level of weirdness all the way through her career, whether it was faking her own aging process in order to live a quiet life or making a new body for herself from space debris and renaming herself Miss Cosmos. There's something admirable about that kind of ingenuity, wouldn't you agree?

USAgent
A much more recent patriotic hero than most, John Walker hails from the 1980s and an unsuccessful stint as a replacement for Captain America that accidentally led to his parents' death. His success as a character is perhaps best defined by the fact that he - an American-themed hero with a very American name - was transplanted to Canada by Marvel in a desperate attempt to make him a success. It failed.

American Eagle
Marvel Comics' 1981 attempt at inclusiveness resulted in this Native American hero, Jason Strongbow, whose generic origin story (Gained powers in accident caused by supervillain, seeking revenge for a dead brother) and lazy stereotypical costume didn't hint at the potential that's slowly being unlocked by more recent creators in series like Thunderbolts and War Machine.

Star-Spangled Kid
DC Comics keep trying with this name, even if the characters keep getting popular enough to outgrow it; the first SSK became Infinity Inc.'s Skyman in the 1980s, and the second became the Justice Society of America's Stargirl. Luckily, we now apparently have a third in the Teen Titans franchise, even if she does happen to be martian. Does an alien really count as star-spangled?

The Crazy Ones
The Comedian
Sure, there may be nothing particularly American about his name - or even his outfit, most of the time - but there's no doubting that Alan Moore's Watchmen character served his country - or more accurately, his country's government - better than most superheroes. Not enough to stop himself getting thrown out a window, sure, but them's the breaks.

Nuke
Frank Miller's intentionally-failed attempt to repeat the Captain America experiment may have seemed slightly out of place in the classic "Born Again" Daredevil storyline, but there's no denying that his drug-fueled, crazed Vietnam-flashback rantings made him a memorable indictment of mindless patriotism in Reagan's America.

Superpatriot
An old-school superhero captured, made into a cyborg and going insane and murderous in the process? Erik Larsen's quasi-parody may have a history that's as ridiculous as it is eventful - and that's before you've gotten to the kids he didn't remember having and his half-martian grandchild - but we're choosing to look at him as a man who's just made a few mistakes, is all.

Major Victory
Leader of conservative supergroup the Force of July - Get it? - this DC Comics character was everything some would want in a true American hero: Charismatic, attractive, arrogant and racist as all get out. Never given to complex characterization, the character's descent into political parody continued when he joined a new corporate superteam called the Captains of Industry - Get it? - before, thankfully, dying.

Captain America
Yeah, I know; Steve Rogers isn't crazy, right? But his retconned 1950s replacement most definitely was. After all, how else would you describe a man whose take on American values was deemed acceptable by Nazi supervillain the Red Skull on more than one occasion? Yes, he may think he was a patriot - and, thanks to cosmetic surgery, he even looks exactly identical to the original Cap - but this guy is not the kind of hero you want in your corner.

WTF?
Yank & Doodle
Yes, it's a crime-fighting duo called Yank and Doodle. Even during their heyday of the 1940s, there's no way that kids didn't find these two America-loving teenagers more than a little dumb. Surprisingly, they've just been revived in Dynamite's Project Superpowers series... Here's hoping that new names are forthcoming.

Yankee Poodle
Well, what else would you call the world's most patriotic crime-fighting dog? Part of DC Comics' Zoo Crew, Poodle isn't even the most America-centric of the team... That'd be American Eagle. Who, you guessed it, is an actual Eagle. Stunningly, thanks to Final Crisis, these characters are officially part of DC's main continuity these days.

American Maid
Armed with a boomerang tiara and her quick wits, The Tick's occasional partner in crimefighting stands out as being probably the most capable of all the characters in the comic/show - Dressed like Lady Liberty and working for the US government more often than not, evil will never get away with it as long as she's around.

The First American and US Angel
Alan Moore's turn of the millennium take on the idea of patriotic comic characters was this unusual duo - An overweight, incompetent superhero (The latest in a long line of First Americans) and the former stripper who dreams of taking his place. Social satire, or serious commentary on the impotence of American masculinity in the face of an increasingly revelatory society obsessed with surface glamor above all? You be the judge. But it's not the latter.

US 1
If a trucker who can pick up CB transmissions thanks to the metal plate in his head, and then gets kidnapped by aliens before opening an intergalactic diner in space doesn't sound like the very personification of the American Dream to you, then there's only one explanation: You're not an American in the first place. But even that doesn't stop us from wishing you a happy Independence Day... even if it was independence from you that's being celebrated in the first place.

There Is No Happily Ever After In Fallen Princesses [Fairy Tale Endings]

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:00:02 PDT

Dina Goldstein's photo series Fallen Princesses revisits the origins of classic fairy tale heroines and finds things not exactly as we remember them from childhood tales. Click through for more.

Goldstein explains:

As a young girl, growing up abroad, I was not exposed to Fairy tales. These new discoveries lead to my fascination with the origins of Fairy tales. I explored the original brothers Grimm's stories and found that they have very dark and sometimes gruesome aspects, many of which were changed by Disney. I began to imagine Disney's perfect Princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues.

These images appeared in JPG Magazine, and Goldstein plans to add more before the entire series goes on exhibit in October.

Fallen Princesses [JPG Magazine]