Photographer, poet, songbird,
Vulcan, TV salesman, Friend of Bigfoot. Leonard Nimoy is all of these things
and more. Working steadily as an actor, director and writer since the early
1950s, Nimoy has proven himself to be a true Hollywood renaissance man over the
years despite never truly being able to emerge from the shadow of Mr. Spock.
His ambivalent feelings over this matter are discussed at length in his memoirs
I Am Not Spock and I Am Spock, both of which should be required
reading for nerds everywhere (Zachary Quinto may want to check them out as
well). As you are doubtlessly aware, Mr. Nimoy recently emerged from a
self-imposed break from the entertainment industry to take high-profile roles
in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek and Fringe. In honor of Leonard Nimoy's
welcome return to the public eye, let us pay tribute to his greatest
achievements that didn't require the donning of rubber ears.
Remember that live-action Star Wars TV series that George Lucas mentioned once like three years ago and then never said anything else about? Well, it's possible that there's been some movement on it, Scifi Wire reports incredibly vaguely.
Our Australian sister site SCI FI TV reports a rumor that preproduction is gearing up for George Lucas' proposed live-action Star Wars series, which is to be shot Down Under.
The
site, citing anonymous sources, adds that the show is assembling
high-quality writers from the Aussie TV industry, including writers
from Love My Way and Secret Life of Us, who have been approached by Lucas' longtime producer Rick McCallum.
The as-yet-untitled series is supposedly set to debut in 2010,
though there has been no word of a distributor yet. The series will
reportedly be set between the eras of Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV--A New Hope and will not feature any major characters from the film series.
I don't know about this. One the plus side, Rick McCallum doesn't do anything but work as Salacious Crumb to George Lucas' Jabba, and I can't think of another reason for him to be in Australia; also, it's rumored that Lucasfilm has some big announcement at SDCC, although god only know what that is or how impressive it might actually be. On the less positive side, the last bit of movie news reported by an Australian news outlet from unnamed sources was that Christian Bale was going to play Dr. Strange, which is such bullshit I'm still kind of mad about it.
Saw this piracy warning during my marathon of The IT Crowd season 2 last night, and knew instantly I had to share it this morning. Not only to convince any remaining doubters of the goodness of The IT Crowd, but also because I'd hate to think about you knuckleknobs crapping in policemen's hats -- it's just wrong, people.
Quantum Mechanics is making a line of animated-style Battlestar Galactica maquettes; that's Starbuck up above, and you can head over to ToyNewsI to see a Cylon in the same style. They're $65 each, 6-inches tall and due out in September. Frankly, I'm not really stunned by them, except for the fact that the line is seriously called Little Frakkin' Toasters (for the Cylons) and Little Frakkin' Colonials (for the humans), and this actually made me laugh. it's like Precious Moments for the BSG set. I can only dream that they start doing actual scenes, like of Tigh poisoning his wife or Athema's husband having mistakenly rough sex with Boomer while a tied-up Boomer is forced to watch or a drunk Adama vomiting all over himself on the street. I would buy the living fuck out of those.
By which I mean the incredibly skilled golfer Tiger Woods sucks at the videogame bearing his name. See, Late Night host Jimmy Fallon -- who I'm still not a fan of his manner or delivery, although he's having some increasingly excellent segments on his show -- challenged Tiger to a round of Tiger Woods videogame golf. They actually played first on the screen in Times Square in a three-hole tournament, where Fallon crushed Tiger. Fallon shot for par on all three holes, and Tiger just sucked ass.
So Fallon and Tiger had a one-hole rematch last night on Late Night (yeah, it's a Hulu vid, sorry non-Amercians) and it's worth noting how fucking mad Tiger Woods is at losing earlier. Oh, he's smiling, but he's so obviously pissed at being beaten by Fallon earlier in the day and at the possibility of losing again that the smile is frozen with absolutely zero humor behind it. It's pretty fantastic. Furthermore, I'm almost positive Jimmy Fallon noticed this and let Tiger win. Like you would a small child so they didn't feel bad. Except it's a grown man whose at the top of his sport, has a supermodel wife, and has millions of dollars. Good on you, Fallon.
I'm not the world's biggest G4 fan. Basically, all I ever watched was Cinematech, because it was clips of videogames without their video jockeys talking over them trying to sound hip, and that was all I really wanted out of a videogame channel. But I always appreciated their E3 and SDCC coverage, because not all of us go get out to these cons, and it's nice to be able to see what's happening on TV instead of scouring the infonetment supertubeway all week. The fact that I'm actually going to SDCC this year doesn't change my opinion.
Now, G4 is taking the next step and just airing the Star Wars panel itself, so that more than the 3000 or so people who attend SDCC and can get in the panel room can see it. I approve mightily. I say SDCC (and E3, and a hand full of other cons and shows) are too big to just be for attendees. Hell, I think every panel should be televised. I should be able to hit up my Tivo and select to see whatever panel I want. There's no reason not to, frankly.
About the only qualm I hear is about G4 tainting the purity of the Star Wars panel with its G4-ness, which I guess means making Steve Sansweet wrestle a monkey while covered in Axe body spray while Olivia Munn, dressed as Oola, looks on. First of all, that would be awesome. Second of all, while that might be a worry for other panels, I doubt G4 is going to be bossing Lucasfilm around. It's Lucasfilm -- G4 will bend over and film the panel however Lucasfilm wants, and that's as it should be. Do you disagree? (Via SF Universe)
Stupid British newspapers. So many of them print shit that's utterly made up -- the Cher as Catwoman rumor, anyone? -- that it's impossible to tell when or who is telling the truth. On the other hand, they have slightly more credibility when it comes to things happening in England than, say, Hollywood, so take this "news" from UK's Mirror with a decent sized grain of salt -- All the Doctors of Doctor Who are getting together for a 15-minute special episode.
It will be 11th Doctor Matt Smith's first appearance, and all 10 Doctors will get together and... I don't know, make fun of the way the all dress, I guess. Those Doctors played by deceased actors (the first three, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee) will appear through old footage, assumably spliced in. Here's what an unnamed source tells the Mirror:
It's been a logistical nightmare getting all the actors together and
available for shooting on the same days. But the script has already
been started and it's classic Doctor Who - really witty and very sharp.
Viewers will see the Time Lords regenerating and emerging one by one
from the Tardis, each with their own quirky opening line. David Tennant
is the central character in the episode. He's trying to hunt down some
special time travel apparatus. What he's actually lost has not yet been
decided, but the idea is for all the other Doctors to club together to
help David find it.
As io9 points out, this isn't the first time the Doctors have palled around together -- but they did it in two Children in Need charity skits, which are apparently godawful and no one should watch ever. Anyways, I'm really curious if any of the elder Doctors will call out new Doctor Matt Smith for looking 16-years-old.
If you watched the last season of Heroes, either with TR's live-blog or alone, clutching a gin bottle to your chest and sobbing hysterically, you know that it sucked horrendous ass. No character made any sense, motivations changed randomly episode to episode, almost none of the plot mattered, and the crazy cat lady from The Simpsons showed up for one memorably mind-shatteringly awful episode. The only thing that got most of us through it is that Bryan Fuller -- who worked on Heroes' excellent first season and created the fantastic Pushing Daisies -- was coming back for season 4 (he only advised on the latter part of season 3, which is why it still sucked, although he did write one genuinely awesome episode).
Now, Fuller has left. Apparently it's not because of disagreements with Heroes creator Tim Kring, but because he wants to work on other shows that aren't fucking terrible, such as Heroes. AND WE. ARE ALL. FUCKED. (Via EW)
Time travel is a magic tonic for the writers of Star Trek. For some reason, episodes about time travel generally manage to be more creative and interesting than the average Star Trek episode, even in seasons that suffered from mediocre writing. Outside of "The Wrath of Khan," the two most arguably well-received Star Trek movies were The Voyage Home and First Contact, both of which focused on time travel. It's no wonder that the most recent Star Trek film threw in time travel as a crucial plot element. Success! In fact, Star Trek has gone back to that gravity well for more than 50 episodes and movies, and that's not even counting the fact that whole seasons of Enterprise were focused on time-traveling alien terrorists. The crew of Voyager used the plot device so much that the time cops had to stop by and give them a warning about it! (Maybe that was the writers wryly telling themselves that, as well.) Either way, Star Trek has produced so many good time travel stories that it's hard to narrow it down to a manageable list. These 14 movies and episodes, however, prove that no one does time travel quite as well as Star Trek.
And then they named it "a Star Wars skit by Donny and Marie Osmond, starring at least Anthony Daniels as C-3PO and probably Kenny Baker and Peter Mayhew, too, but also Redd fucking Foxx as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Kris fucking Kristofferson as Han Solo, and then they tell terrible jokes and make Sanford & Son references and sing the world's most ridiculous songs" AND THEN THE BABY BEATS YOU DEATH WITH A HAMMER
Now, we all know that despite how the mass media occasionally portrays women, girls have never, ever been nerds. They don't go to San Diego Comic Con, and they don't play videogames. Well, Ubisoft has made one of the first videogames targeted to women, based on the popular and very woman-y Grey's Anatomy TV series, and boy... it's a good thing women aren't nerds, because they'd probably be hideously insulted if they were.
First of all, don't think the above video is supposed to be funny -- it's not a skit, just some folks over at College Humor playing the game. They aren't important. Instead, pay close attention to the gameplay footage, which breaks down human interaction in to either one of two choices, both of which are hilariously absolute, and many of which include flirting, not flirting or just the level of flirting. The other aspect of "gameplay" involves the world's shittiest mini-game where the player moves the Wiimote to collect emotion balls so that their character can... have that emotion. Best of all, sometimes the emotion you need to collect is "anger," because sometimes someone needs a sass-talkin', girlfriend! Woo!
Jesus. Admittedly, I have a penis (it's true!) but I'm appalled on behalf of all you ladies. Shit, I have to imagine those Bratz games whoever-the-hell pumps out have more gameplay value and respect for womankind than this travesty. (Via Warming Glow)
