I don’t know what to say about this remake of a very good, very influential movie, other than to say you could see it coming with blinders on and it looks like utter crap.

Okay, okay. The movie itself doesn’t look bad, but that trailer. My god. I’m no rocket scientist but what is up with the Limp Bizkit score and the movie’s tagline: “Titans Will Clash”? The movie is called Clash of the Titans and the best the marketing department could come up with as a slogan/tagline is titans will clash. Jesus H. Christ someone should be fed to the guillotine.

Also? Is Sam Worthington the real deal or is he just the latest in a string of Hollywood male leads they are really trying to jam down my throat. It was hard to tell with the latest Terminator, but we’ll get a really good look with Avatar and now this. Still, if anyone has seen Somersault then you know the guy is capable of delivering a nuanced and subtle acting performance.

What’s better than one Slave Leia?  How about two catching some rays.  Kottke came across this photo of Carrie Fisher and her stunt double napping during the Tatooine shoot in Return of the Jedi. Enjoy!  But just know that I’m going to need a moment or two to catch my breath.  [via]

V has been the one show I was hoping would redeem this lackluster fall television season.  It is, afterall, based on a popular (cultish?) NBC science fiction show from the early 80s about lizard creations pretending to be humans with nefarious plans for our planet and population. 

It seems like an excellent premise to be reimagined with better effects and acting and more weighty themes to explore.  Why then, did I feel ho-hum about the show after last night’s premiere?

You can read plenty of recaps elsewhere, but suffice it to say there’s a lot going on.  The FX look up to snuff, the acting is all pretty darn good (how could it not be with Elizabeth Mitchell, Alan Tudyk, Morris Chestnut, Joel Gretsch, Scott Wolff, and Monica Baccarin) for a network television show and the themes are not disimilar from the recent Battlestar Galactica remake (religion, terrorism, identity, etc.). 

There were huge problems with the pilot episodes’s story arc: 1) the humans just accept the aliens with open arms, 2) the exposition/backstory is clumsily handled, 3) two of the main characters easily figure out that the lizard aliens are up to no good, 4) it’s too clean and polished.

Still, none of those complaints are what I’m having difficulty wrapping my brain around this morning.  I’ve never watched a show so anti-progressive as I did the one last night. 

And I’m not alone.  Both Time’s excellent James Poniewozik and Chicago Tribune reviewer Glenn Garvin made note of this: a telegenic messiah from a foreign and alien place comes to the United States with the promise of hope and change offers our citizens science, technology and — gasp! – universal health care. 

Make no mistake, the Obama parallel/allegory here is downright unnerving.  It’s so blatent I really thought some combination of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh were show runners. 

Chew on this basic plot:  charismatic, attractive newcomers win the adulation of America’s youth with the promise of hope & change; they manipulate the braindead media and promise universal healthcare, but a group of real Americans are saavy to their evil (fascist?) hidden identity/agenda and will work to prevent the destruction of humanity. 

It would have been refreshing, or still can be, if the lizard aliens turn out to be the saviors of the human race.  But alas, I don’t think that will be the case.  And yet, and yet, I’m still going to tune in because there’s enough decent story threads that the show has my interest.

Cory Doctorow has just released his latest novel “Makers”, “a book about people who hack hardware, business-models, and living arrangements to discover ways of staying alive and happy even when the economy is falling down the toilet.”

Here’s where to find print versions of the book for sale and an electronic version can be downloaded for free under a Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

I loved his previous novel, Little Brother, which was my first exposure to his fiction work.  Can’t wait to print off a copy of the PDF to read!

“The story is told through seven songs, each a brief glimpse into the world of our protagonist on his journey from bored night watchman to twisted, horrific cannibal. These glimpses are often poetic and obtuse, only obliquely fitting the narrative structure, so my recap / review is only one perspective on how to interpret these songs. No matter how you interpret them, though, they add up to a pretty chilling scifi horror narrative.”

I’m stupified as to how John Vanderslice and The Mountain Goats (John Darnielle) released a seven-song EP with a horror/sci-fi bent to it (the central thrust of the album concern organ harvesting colonies on the moon) and I just found out about it today.  Turns out it was a tour-only affair on vinyl and is no longer available, though with half an effort you can surely find it.

Oh my god, so adorbz!  “Greatest cartoon ever? Greatest cartoon ever. I’m not kidding, if this was on TV, I would watch it every day until I began to gibber insanely… at its cuteness, of course.”

See also: io9 took the time to put together an introductory primer to H.P. Lovecraft — the man responsible for the tentacled Cthulhu creation.  He is considered, perhaps, the master of sci-fi-horror literature.

This is a much better trailer, at least now I get the gist of the story and it’s not so much “oh look at me and my fancy CGI” which was all the last trailer wanted to do.  I might be sold with this one — even if Cameron did plagiarize his story from an old pulp novel.

Not really much to go on here, but Elizabeth Mitchell was great on Lost. This premieres next Tuesday, so you won’t have to wait long to watch the entire episode.  To be honest, not much has grabbed me this television season, so I’m hoping V becomes that show.

Anyone who stuck around with Dollhouse after the uneven first five or six episodes was rewarded with some classic Joss Whedon storytelling.  Luckily for those peeps, FOX was kind enough to bestow a second season on the show — something they don’t normally do for low-rated sci fi. 

Season two starts tonight and hopefully it’ll really find it’s sea legs.  Based on the adendum episode “Epitaph One” we know the show is eventually going in the direction of a fullblown apocalypse with zombie human wrecking havoc on the world. 

That’s where we are headed, but for now Alpha is still running wild, Echo is beginning to remember her life and hold on to her identity, Ballard is now working for the Dollhouse and given the way Joss Whedon tells stories it’s going to make for some juicy tv.

Big TV Week for SciFi Fans

This is shaping up to be a big week of television for fans of science fiction. Monday we started with the two hour premiere of Heroes, which returns for its fourth season. Last year’s storyline was far superior to the lame second season, so it will be interesting how the show develops, especially given its ratings plummet since the first season.  I know a lot of people have jumped off the Heroes train, but it’s still be enjoyable for me. 

Tuesday saw the season finale of the pretty good–if not quite great–original SyFy series, Warehouse 13. They’ve done a decent job of mixing the world-in-peril stuff with the comic relief stuff, and the cast is uniformly appealing.  Not unlike Fringe and Dollhouse, the show struggled to define itself in the early going but really hit a good stride in the second half of it’s run.  Given that it’s the highest rated SyFy show ever, we will see a second season and that’s pretty exciting.  Especially how the season wrapped up on a good cliffhanger.

Tonight at 8 on ABC is the series premiere of Flash Forward, about what happens after the entire world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds.  ABC has high hopes for the show and so far the previews have looked intriguing/promising. 

Following, on Fox, is actually the second episode of the second season of Fringe, a J.J. Abrams created series which is consistently intriguing and suspenseful and has one of the best characters on television. John Noble plays the goofably loveable (possibly insane) mad scientist, Walter Bishop. Again, an excellent cast throughout, in particular Anna Torv as a strong, yet vulnerable, FBI agent.  Now that the show is weaving a strong mythology into it’s weekly story arc, this one has become must watch tv for any lover of creepy sci fi.

For me, Friday is the cherry on the sundae. That is when we get the return of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. Admittedly, the first season was a little uneven. The appearance of Alan Tudyk toward the end definitely “kicked it up a notch.” BSG’s Tahmoh Penikett manages to play FBI agent Ballard as earnest and stoic without making him boring; and, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit I would probably watch Eliza Dushku reading the phone book.

Another Whedon Alumnus Finds a New Home

It looks as if Nathan Fillion has finally found a quality home after the ignominious loss (to us) of the brilliant Firefly. Since then–with the exception of Joss Whedon’s clever web vid. Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog, where Fillion did a great parody of the macho/heroic persona of Captain Mal–he hasn’t really had much to work with as an actor. Until this spring.

Castle was given a shortened (10 episode) first season, where it garnered decent ratings.

More importantly, it turned out to be good. Nathan plays Richard Castle, a wealthy and famous divorced novelist of murder mysteries, who manages to wangle his way into a squad of homicide detectives so he can observe the real cops in action. Stana Katic almost manages to out-Mariska Mariska Hargitay when it comes to playing the hard-assed and competent detective Beckett, who — just coincidentally, and often to her own frustration — happens to be heart-stoppingly beautiful. Of course, she finds the flirtatious Castle’s presence in the middle of her investigations to be a huge irritant; but, he’s a personal friend of the mayor’s, so what can she do?

Excellent cast of characters in support here, as well. Susan Sullivan is a kick as Castle’s mother, a one-time Broadway star. Molly Quinn is appealing as his pretty teenage daughter, who manages to be a good girl most of the time, while eschewing cuteness. Jon Huertas, Seamus Dever and Ruben Santiago Hudson are the other cops, who, to Beckett’s chagrin, all seem to enjoy having Castle around. I’m pretty confident that you’ll enjoy it, too.

Season premiere was last Monday, where it airs at 10 pm on ABC. You can also catch up with episodes on abc.com or Hulu.

Summer Glau — star of beloved canceled sci-fi series Firefly and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles — will join the cast of Dollhouse’s second season as “Bennett, a Dollhouse employee who shares a secret past with Eliza Dushku’s Echo.”

She’ll make her debut in Episode 5.

My excitement meter just went up a tick, given all the other sci-fy actors joining the cast: Jamie Bamber and Michael Hogan (Apollo and Saul Tigh from Battlestar Galactica), among a few others.

Io9 runs down the 2009 fall television listings for new and returning sci fi shows.  They’ve even provided launch dates and clips. 

Of the new shows, V and Fast Forward look the most promising; returning shows to look forward to include Dollhouse and Fringe. 

Ha! Red Leader sure does take his time dying.  (Thanx Scott)