Yes that is McLovin — Christopher Mintz-Plasse — as Red Mist. The film is directed by Matthew Vaughn and is based Mark Millar's comic which tells an incredibly bloody story of a bunch of costumed vigilante children. In theaters on 16 April 2010.

[via FirstShowing]

Want to see Dirk Benedict transform slowly into a King Cobra? Here's the crucial sequence. It all just proves that if it's 1973, you should not go to work for a professor named Dr. Stoner.

And here's the film's original trailer:

Don't say it... Hiss it!! And yes, the film really does end with snake guy versus mongoose. There can be only one!

So what is American Vampire?

The series follows, and is focused on, the concept of vampire geneology and vampire evolution. It reimagines vampires as these creatures that have evolved as the bloodlines hit different populations at different times, so there's different species of vampires, like there are different breeds of dogs. So there's this whole hidden history, this whole secret family tree. But the thing that it's about specifically is, there hasn't been a new breed of vampire in a couple of hundred years for reasons that are part of the fun mystery of the first couple of [story cycles]. There's only this one dominant species, and it's the one that's the classic, Euro-centric, nocturnal, stake through the heart... You know, the vampire that, when I conceived of the series, we were all a little sick of. The star of the series is the bloodline, this new breed of vampirism. The forward-moving part of the series, the part that's most exciting for us is, we have new characters with each cycle, with big parts played by favorite characters from the past, but we'll also be revealing parts of the secret history and how the world of vampires came to be the way it is. And also, the brewing tension between all the breeds of vampires that exist now.

So there's a big, behind the curtain, story that we're working on as well [as the individual story arcs].

So how did it get started? Did you pitch it to Vertigo?

I came up with it as a concept a few years ago, actually - I don't know how interesting this is, it's kind of a boring story, but I was in one of those model shops, like Warhammer shops, down in the West Village and I saw one of those figurines, and it was a zombie confederate soldier. I just started thinking about how, in so much vampire material at the time - and this was before Twilight, more around the Queen of the Damned time - vampires were always nocturnal and aristocratic and elegant and it just seemed so out of place, and out of touch with any straight-up American iconography that I could come up with, or my favorite genres, like westerns or 50s sci-fi and all that kind of stuff. I was like, how come we never see vampires in these kind of places?

I started to develop the idea back then, and I thought about doing it as a series of stories, I thought about doing it as a book, and at one point I was going to do it as a screenplay with a friend. But basically, I started doing some comic work on the side about a year ago, and I got the chance to pitch it to Vertigo last summer when an editor at Vertigo called Mark Doyle, who's since become one of my closest friends, read one of my stories in an anthology of literary writers coming up with new superheroes. He actually approached me at a reading for the book and asked if I was a serious comic fan, or just moonlighting for the purposes of the story. I told him I was, I'd always been, and I feel like he gave me a pop quiz; he was all, Well, what're you reading right now? And at the time, it was Final Crisis and Secret Invasion and everything like that. I think he was convinced, and he asked me if I wanted to pitch something. So I went there and I think he sort of expected me to pitch something more literary, but I was like, Hey, what about this vampire thing?
I'd been thinking about doing it as a comic for awhile, and thinking about approaching people who do more horror comics, like IDW or whatever, and then this came along and he really flipped over it. Once we got it on the table, it went pretty fast through development there. It was pretty much greenlit when they asked if there was anyone that I knew who from the writing world who might be interested in giving it a quote or a blurb. I knew Stephen King from before, so I asked him if he would be willing to do it. He read the pitch and decided that he really liked it and said, I'll do you one better. If you want, at some point, I'll write an issue for you. It's pretty funny; I called Vertigo on, I think it was a Friday afternoon, and left a message saying that Steve was interested - By the way, he makes you call him Steve, I don't want to sound like an asshole going "Steve, Steve" - I left a message on Friday afternoon pretty much when the office was already closed saying that he was serious about wanting to do an issue, and it was Monday morning, 9 in the morning, I get a call and everyone was there, and they're all "Did you say Stephen King was interested in doing an issue...?" [laughs]

Once he was involved we wanted to [work out how best for him to write an issue or two]. The characters were all developed, I had the seasons mapped out from the pitch. Steve wanted to write this character, who was planned for the second cycle, but Mark and I came up with the idea of doing it like an eight-page, or a teaser, at the end of each issue, to show a glimpse of Skinner, who's the first American vampire. He started writing it, and then he wrote me an email two weeks into it and asked if I'd mind if he went off the reservation a little bit. I was, like, go ahead, do whatever you want. He wound up writing five episodes of sixteen pages, doing so much better than I could've ever done. It really does raise the bar for the series, and he introduced so many big ideas about what the American West means to us, and all these questions about fact and fiction and legend versus history, and all this stuff that really enriches it. Not to mention, he just makes it really scary and vicious.

How did Rafael [Albuquerque, series artist] come aboard? His preview art is beautiful.

Oh my God. I promise you, this guy is incredible. He came in and did some sketches to see if he got the characters, based on the scripts, because the scripts were done, and he just nailed it immediately. It was, that's our guy. The funny thing is, some of the promo art, the sketches of Pearl...? That's from his audition, those're some of his first sketches. That was the first thing I saw from him, and I thought, that's my character. That's exactly her. She's a little bookish, independent, a little quirky. He's been such a creative force on the series, he brings so much to it.
Rafael, when he read the scripts, was like, Why don't I do the different cycles in different styles? So he would up doing Steve's cycle - which is the origin story of Skinner, who's the first of the new American vampire species, born of this random mutation - in these beautiful washes, so it has this painted, antique quality to it, as well as a creepiness. And for mine - which takes place in the 1920s and picks up on the second American vampire, the first person Skinner turns, who's this young girl and a struggling actress in the silent film industry - he did it in this precise inked, art deco style. I can't reiterate enough how amazing he has been on the book. He's enhanced it, he's been a total superhero himself on it.

It sounds like this a really big story.

I'm so excited for the places we're going to go. We're already mapped out through the first twelve issues. The next cycle is already page broken, after these first five issues, and after that, the next cycle is pretty much thought out. And after that, I know what decade it's taking place in. It's fun with all of the press it's getting, the fun of introducing [the concept]. There's something sexy about an American vampire, because "It's American!" [laughs]. It's an interesting time to be American. Part of the series is about investigating what's horrific about the American character, and what's heroic about it, and the difference of that in different periods. But we're really way ahead of the game in terms of giving ourselves time to do eight or nine drafts of the scripts, because, believe me, no-one is more aware of a potential vampire backlash or the pressure once Steve is not on the series. We believe in it a lot.

American Vampire seems to be more than just a title, it's a statement of the book's intent, the American versus European...

Well, it's a fun hook, and there's a kind of, I guess, patriotic thrill in introducing a vampire that's supposed to be American and is stronger and more vicious and so on, but the story isn't about cultural stereotypes. The idea is that the bloodline mutates randomly at various times, and some of the characteristics of the person are adapted into that vampire. So it's the characteristics of a person, of Skinner, rather than a nationality, because otherwise you get into the specifics of, what makes us African-American, what makes us... It's person-to-person. Every once in awhile the bloodline will jump, not with every new person it hits, but every once in awhile, the blood will make something new with someone.

We're trying to keep it geneological, but the vampiric qualities have an American characteristic, because it comes from the character of Skinner and he is a character that's iconographic to the [Old] West, where he's this vicious snakelike outlaw. He has this desert quality, but they're based on him, based on a broad cultural assessment on what makes us American.

But what we are starting to do is explore the idea of American identity through the different time periods. With the first issues, it's a little tough, just because of the format, sixteen pages of story for Steve and sixteen for me, so there's a tightness to it that works really well for the way they double as stories. But there's more breathing room, I think, for exploring the decades once we get past the first cycle.

Pearl seems as iconic in her own way as Skinner.

I can promise you that the way they come across on the page, they're not someone you've seen before. Skinner is not The Man With No Name, in the same way that Pearl is very much her own character while keeping that quality of the "20s Girl." She's someone who's more fish out of water, she's a lot more bookish and isn't caught up in the glamour. She loves acting for her own reasons, and a lot of it comes from her upbringing. We try to flesh the characters out so that they're more than just their iconographic selves, especially these two. Pearl and Skinner are two opposing forces early on the series. Skinner is anarchy and violence and fun, and has the opinion that what makes us American is what keeps the west wild, and that we should be wild, and the taming of the west he sees as a feminization, an imposition on the American character. You can imagine how that works itself out in different time periods, where there's prohibition, or the construction of Las Vegas.

Pearl, on the other hand, is ethical and struggling to be someone who carries the best qualities of what we would think as American. She has a more hopeful and optimistic belief.

Is this going to be a series where there's a lot of jumping around in time periods, as opposed to telling the story chronologically?

Yeah, each one is going to approach a different decade, at least at first. Each story will pick up in a different decade but the same bloodline in surprising ways, so there will be some chronological jumping.

Are you watching True Blood, reading or watching the Twilights?

I'm a huge fan of True Blood. Some things I've not caught up with... I read the first Twilight - my wife has actually read all of them - but my feeling is, each one of them brings something different to vampire lore. I've never seen vampires as teen heartthrobs the way that Twilight does it, or the reimagining of vampires as a sociological underclass and the Southern Gothic elements of True Blood make that really fresh. For us, we're trying to bring something new to the table too. American Vampire wasn't conceived as the tale end of a trend. It definitely, for me, predated both of those, so I'm hoping that - When each one of those came out, we were all, Oh, it's just part of the trend, but the better stuff comes out in the crashing of a wave and you're like, That's awesome! We're hoping that we have that kind of response.

We really have put a lot of sweat and blood into it about making it something different and high quality, so that if there were no other vampire things around, you're look at it in the same way. I was thinking about it, but other than Bram Stoker's Dracula, I haven't seen a vampire comic since the peak of 30 Days of Night. For us, it's great not to be on TV with Vampire Diaries or True Blood, and we're not a movie, so hopefully it'll stand apart as a good read.
American Vampire debuts in March from Vertigo.

Eco-Apocalypse

2012: It's pure global catastrophe in Roland Emmerich's film. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions — every possible natural disaster seems to conspire to wipe out all life on Earth.

Decipher by Stel Pavlou: The year 2012 sees an increase in solar flare activity as scientists see unusual energy signals coming from Antarctica. It soon becomes clear that the sun could be on the verge of triggering a deluge, and all the world's cities could go the way of Atlantis.

Death from the Skies

2012: Supernova: If you're looking for something beyond the usual asteroid strike, here's a different sort of celestial doomsday. A nearby star goes supernova, threatening the Earth's survival, prompting an international team of scientists to launch nuclear warheads to reduce the effect of the impact.

2012: Doomsday: On December 21, 2012, one day before the predicted apocalypse, it is revealed that a celestial object is about to collide with Earth. But this time, it's religion, not science that averts the ultimate disaster.

World War III

Blood of the Beast: Roughly half the population dies in the war of 2012, but the world's chemical weapons render nearly all the men on Earth sterile. The world is repopulated by clones, but 19 years after the first clones are harvested in 2012, the world goes to pot once again.

Zombie Plague

Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection: The dead start rising early in 2012, and soon the plague has spread across much of North America. And corporate greed has ensured that you can become a zombie even if you've never encountered the walking dead.

I Spit On Your Rave: The film doesn't get released until next year, but its zombie apocalypse starts at the 2012 London Olympics, when a virus is released. Humanity is quickly gobbled up, leaving the zombies to their own devices.

Alien Invasion

The X-Files: Alien colonization has always been a distinct probability in the X-Files universe, and in the episode "The Truth," the Cigarette Smoking Man reveals the date of invasion: December 22, 2012.

2012: The War of Souls by Whiley Strieber: Michael Bay is looking to adapt this tale of alien invasion. It turns out that the world's ancient monuments provide a gateway for alien invaders looking to conquer Earth and eat humanity's souls. And, if the invasion is not prevented in time, the gateways will open December 21, 2012.

RahXephon: The end of the Long Count Calendar marks another alien invasion, this one by the Mulians. The Mu declare war on humanity and enclose the city of Tokyo inside a spherical barrier.

Domain Trilogy by Steve Alten: Scientists may suggest that the dinosaurs were killed off by a meteorite, but the truth is that they fell prey to an ancient weapon buried beneath the Gulf of Mexico. And, if we don't learn the truth about those extraterrestrial exterminators by December 2012, we could be next.

Doctor Who "Dalek": Fortunately, the Doctor and Rose manage to stop Henry van Statten's captive Dalek before it can surface from his Statten's Utah bunker in 2012. Otherwise, the Dalek could have very well exterminated a good chunk of humanity.

A Glitch in the System

Wapsi Square: It's not that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012, it's just that the quantum clock that runs the world must be reset at precisely the time and date the Long Count Calendar runs out. Otherwise, time resets back to an earlier point in time, trapping us all in a time loop. But you won't notice it — after all, it's happened several times before.

Goats: After the untimely demise of God, the Mayan programming firm One Death was hired to keep the multiverse going. Unfortunately, a glitch in the system will cause the multiverse to crash on December 21, 2012, unless the prophesied Programmer can be located in time.

PW2: 2012 by MC Miller: Former professor Hamilton Ray begins to notice strange patterns and synchronicities in in the universe, and develops a theory about a Probability Wave, something that's about to bring about a radical change in the universe at the end of 2012.

The World Is Radically Transformed

The Invisibles by Grant Morrison: The world as we know it may come to an end on December 22, 2012, but it's hardly doomsday. Instead, humanity ascends to the Supercontext, the next level of existence, at the word of Jack Frost.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki: The priest Enrico Pucci acquires the stand Made in Heaven, which gives its user the power to rewrite the universe. And in 2012, Pucci attempted to remake the universe to suit his master Dio Brando. However, Pucci died before the universe could be completely rewritten, causing it to return to something close to its original form.

Shadowrun: Similarly, the world doesn't end in the Shadowrun universe, but as the Mayan calendar resets, the world undergoes a dramatic transformation. Magic returns to the Earth, allowing individuals, governments, and corporations to utilize a potent combination of cutting edge technologies and newly harnessed magic.

Additional reporting by Josh Snyder.

Last night we caught up with two lame subsubplots (Head Parkman and Rainbow Brite) as well as the greatest subsubplot that never was (Claire's Lesbian Quest).

So let's dispense with the whole Head Parkman/Head Sylar/Nobody Actually Gets Any Head deal. Reach back into your memories, and you'll recall that this whole narrative ordeal began when Parkman erased Sylar's identity from Sylar's body. He made Sylar Body think it was Nathan, but unfortunately the unintended consequence was that Parkman grew a Head Sylar who made him see things and tormented him with endless quips when Parkman was trying to have sex with his wife and stuff like that.

There was a whole long thing where Parkman thought he could banish Head Sylar by getting totally drunk, but then when he passed out Sylar took over completely. So now Parkman is actually Sylar with a Head Parkman. Which gets really confusing, especially when we keep seeing Sylar in the same suit that Parkman is wearing. In the scene above, you can see that Head Parkman is trying to put the bitchslap on Body Sylar, which I think might be the only moment in the entire show when Parkman has gotten even a tiny bit toppy. But then Body Sylar kills the dude who is trying to help them fix their car, and threatens to kill more if Parkman won't tell him how he got to be Head Sylar in the first place.

At some point during this whole mess, Body Sylar informs Head Parkman, "The world is my hostage." This is the kind of brilliant line that keeps all of us coming back week after week to laugh in this show's face.

Finally Head Parkman caves and tells Body Sylar everything while they're in the diner where Charlie used to work. But then Head Parkman manages to distract Body Sylar into writing "I have a gun and am going to kill everybody in here" on his napkin, then throwing it at the waitress before they leave the diner. Instantly, the cops arrive and shoot them after Parkman is all "Yeah I'm willing to die." OK let's think about this realistically, people. A guy is at your diner, and you see that he's written "I have a gun and will kill" AFTER HE LEAVES. So the guy is GONE. Do you call the cops, or just say "Wow what a weirdo." Also, if you do call the cops, do they really come out based on a napkin threat that some dude THREW AWAY?

Anyway, my point is that Body Parkman, Body Sylar, Head Parkman, AND Head Sylar have all been shot a whole bunch of times. Will they live????

I will leave it to you to puzzle out the answer to that one, because we need to think hard about Emma AKA Rainbow Brite and Peter. So our pal Emma's special wall-smashing rainbow music power has gone back to being just rainbowy. We learn snoringly that the reason why she left medical school is that her nephew drowned because she couldn't hear him while she was babysitting.

Meanwhile, Peter's glances across the room have inspired her to start doing emergency medical procedures on people and playing the piano all the time at work. Doesn't she have a job doing paperwork? Isn't the hospital sort of weirded out that their med school dropout administrator is sewing people up and opening up holes in their lungs or whatever? Apparently not - I guess the hospital is so short-staffed that they just figure it's better for admins to do medical procedures.

It's all OK, though, because Emma has now decided to go back to medical school. And you know, all she has to do is decide that and she's magically back in medical school! That's how med school works.

While Emma finesses her readmission to med school, Peter is using his healing power to save lives right and left. But healing powers drain his energy and give him headaches! So there's a PRICE TO PAY. If this show is going to keep reheating its old cliches, I'm just going to order the Tahitian pancakes. WTF are Tahitian pancakes anyway?

Which brings me to the one point of light in my otherwise dreary TV existence. Claire's lesbian subsubplot. Which ended in the lamest possible way this week. OK, I take that back. It could have been worse: Gretchen could have died, or Claire could have said, "I really love you but can't have sex so even though I want to be your lovemuncher I am going to pull a Twilight on your ass." Instead, we're supposed to believe that the formerly brave and intrepid Gretchen has decided to drop out of college and go home just because of one teeny attack from the invisible girl. Seriously? She's been total Scary Google Chick with Brave Lesbo Feelings up to now, but when the going gets weird she's weirded out? I call shenanigans.

Then we get even more character motivation shoehorned into this munged subsubplot when Samuel pays Claire a visit and reveals that HRG shot Becky the invisible girl's dad and that Becky is damaged as a result. She wants revenge on HRG, which is why she's killing Claire's friends, which sort of kind of makes sense if you do a brain squint. But of course he's playing a DEEP GAME, and in fact even though he pretends to be all concerned about Becky and eventually shoots her with a taser to stop her, he's actually manipulating Claire.

Also, he gives that same speech he's been giving every episode about how family accepts you for who you are and his family is the carnies and they need to stay hidden. Oh and also, just to fill in more plotholes (perhaps one of his dirt powers is the ability to fill plot holes?) it turns out that Danko killed Samuel's brother and one of the main reasons why the carnies need to move all over the place is that they are fleeing HRG. So, instant history between all our characters! Just add some disappearing lesbians, and you've got the lamest ending to the best subsubplot on Heroes this season.

Bay, Kurtzman and Orci's Batman
Pros: You'd get a new Batman movie every two years, even if Michael Bay would complain and tell people that he didn't want to make it but the studio offered him so much money he couldn't say no. Plus, with Bay attached, you know that they'd get to Catwoman as soon as humanly possible instead of this whole "I am a nihilist Joker" crap from The Dark Knight.
Cons: Kurtzman and Orci would probably take their Daddy issues (Fringe's Walter/Peter complicated relationship, Star Trek's Kirk trying to live up to his dead father's memory by self-destructing but then coming through as the hero he was destined to be, even Transformers' Optimus as Tough-But-Fair Robot Daddy to Shia's Sam Whitwicky) to pop culture's most parent-obsessed character, leading to the risk of a third act emotional breakthrough where Batman cries. There are enough Batman characters to make Revenge Of The Fallen seem understaffed, and the various personality tics of said Batman characters could lead to more unfunny schtick like the Twins and/or Jazz from the Transformers movies. Michael Bay possibly already sees himself as Bruce Wayne. Also, there's every possibility that the movie would make no sense whatsoever (See: Transformers, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen).

JJ Abrams' Terminator
Pros: Abrams' sense of kinetic, fun filmmaking is just what the franchise needs after Terminator Salvation - He's a sci-fi nerd who knows how to make successful popcorn movies full of tech that are really all about people; in other words, he's a younger James Cameron, before Cameron fell more in love with the tech involved in making movies. A Terminator-ized "Bad Robot" logo would be awesome. There'd probably be a Simon Pegg cameo.
Cons: Abrams' inability to not have a happy ending would mean that Skynet would be completely defeated by the time he was done, whether it was a movie or trilogy. The time travel core concept would allow him to reboot the series whenever he wanted, with Zachary Quinto as Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator. There'd probably be a Keri Russell cameo. Actually, fuck the cons. I really want to see Abrams do Terminator, the more I think about it.

Christopher Nolan's GI Joe
Pros: If anyone could give GI Joe some critical credibility, it's Christopher Nolan.
Cons: Nolan's attempt would probably be called A Real American Hero and would likely be three hours long, most of which would be spent filled with actors who should know better (Yes, Gary Oldman, we're looking at you) telling the audience how difficult it is to be a real American hero in a morally ambiguous world. There would be at least one subplot about abuse of military power to underscore the moral ambiguity until we move into the third act when the audience needs to get pumped and then Duke would abuse military power to stop the bad guy and then walk away in disgust in order to make a point that will be lost on the majority of an audience who were excited to see shit blow up finally. Cobra Commander would be so compelling that you'll start to wonder if he's wandered on set from a different, better, movie. Purists would complain about Snake Eyes' closing monologue about how difficult it is to be a ninja in the US military. No child would ever want to buy a GI Joe toy ever again.

Bryan Singer's Transformers
Pros: Singer's mix of geek cred and understanding of human drama/cheap angst is exactly what the Robots in Disguise need. His X-Men movies show that he can deal with large casts, and also keep the core of the original concepts and characters without getting weighed down by nostalgia. His Superman Returns shows that he, uh... knows Kevin Spacey, who could probably do a good Megatron voice? Okay, maybe not that last one.
Cons: Tom Cruise would end up playing Optimus Prime, and Ian McKellen would cameo as the Matrix of Leadership/Allspark/Creation Matrix/whatever the hell it's called these days. Singer would leave before the last film in the trilogy to go and make a Go-Bots movie about Leader-1 really being Jesus and stalking his ex-girlfriend.

McG's Dollhouse
Pros: Revamping Joss Whedon's television series into a stand-alone movie, McG would give interviews about really getting to the heart of the darkness at the center of the concept but then present a movie that's a series of comedic vignettes wherein Eliza Dushku, Lucy Liu and Ellen Page are sassy, independent girls who have to roleplay different personalities and lives while working undercover for D.O.L.L.house, a secret spy organization that pretends to brainwash people and rent them out to clients - with hilarious consequences!
Cons: Revamping Joss Whedon's television series into a stand-alone movie, McG would give interviews about really getting to the heart of the darkness at the center of the concept but then present a movie that's a series of comedic vignettes wherein Eliza Dushku, Lucy Liu and Ellen Page are sassy, independent girls who have to roleplay different personalities and lives while working undercover for D.O.L.L.house, a secret spy organization that pretends to brainwash people and rent them out to clients - with hilarious consequences!

Last year, the Vatican caused a stir when Father Joseph Funes gave an interview, featured prominently in the Vatican's official newspaper, in which he said that intelligent life may exist on other planets. Said Funes:

Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God's creative freedom.

So now Funes, and other Vatican leaders, are hosting a conference on the possibility that sentient life may exist elsewhere in the cosmos. Astronomy professor Chris Impey from the University of Arizona attended, and told a news conference:

Both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe. There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe.

Impey adds that we may find life (if not sentient life) on other planets within the next few years, thanks to the large number of exoplanets we've uncovered lately.

Pope/Alien image from Daily Telegraph. [Associated Press, thanks Frumious99!]

Pink Tentacle has an incredible gallery of album covers, movie posters and car art by Nagaoka, whose work we've admired for ages without knowing it was his. (If you're into late 1970s-early 1980s funk/R&B, several of these covers will strike a chord as well.)

Here are some of our favorites — the last image is the NSFW one. Check out the rest over at the link. [Pink Tentacle]

According to Empire Online, I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter Chad St. John are planning to take DC's war veteran into the future with the adaptation, in order to overcome studio nerves about a period setting and racist wartime attitudes. If true, this suggests that not only does Warner Bros. miss the point of the character altogether (Sgt. Rock is a series about a soldier in World War II! The time frame is the entire point!), but also that we have another potential comic-to-movie disaster on our hands. Then again, Lawrence has experience of both, having directed the Hellblazer adaptation Constantine, starring the not-so-British Keanu Reeves.

Is Sgt. Rock Finally Happening? [Empire Online]

Today's drone aircraft can stay in the air for 18 hours and be controlled from a base miles away.

Top image: Israeli-made drone plane that Israel has started supplying to Germany for surveillance missions in Afghanistan.

All photos by AP.

NASA's version of the Air Force's drone aircraft, for use in scientific studies — it'll sample greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

NASA's version of the Air Force's drone aircraft, for use in scientific studies — it'll sample greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

A target drone made by Abu Dhabi company ATS, on display at a Paris air show.

An MQ-9 Reaper drone plane, of the type most likely being used to scout for Somali pirates in the Seychelles right now.

The ominously named Predator B, which the U.S. is using to scout along the U.S./Canadian border, looking for drug and cigarette smuggling. So don't try and sneak any ciggies in from Vancouver, or you'll meet... Predator B!

Another picture of Predator B. It should really be a hip-hop star.

Grossman explained his disappointment in JK Rowling's choice of future for her boy hero to Newsarama.com:

I loved Harry Potter, but that epilogue was such an astounding failure of imagination on Rowling's part! And in a way, it throws the entirety of all seven novels into doubt retroactively.

I felt the problem she failed to solve was the question of, "here's a young man who can do magic, who has defeated the enemy of humanity when her was 18 – what's the rest of his life look like?" And the best she can imagine is that he marries his high school sweetheart and puts on a big gut and lives in the suburbs. What a disaster!

He went on to say,

There has to be some better fate for Harry Potter than what he gets. I think that's something of the message of [Grossman's new book] The Magicians – you're not going to go to Narnia, but there has to be something better than that bourgeois suburban mediocrity that seems like the only alternative.

Somewhere, a million Potter fans are sharpening their knives in preparation for revenge.

The MAGIC of Lev Grossman [Newsarama.com]

Architect Jakob Tigges developed the plan for the Berg, a 1,000 meter man-made mountain that would sit on the site of Tempelhof. Tigges believes that building the mountain would attract tourist skiers, and add green spaces and wildlife to the city. He doesn't outline what the ecological impact of building such a massive structure would be, but Inhabitat notes that the Berg has captured a lot of people's imaginations. Several German outlets have republished Tigges' mountainous plans.

The Berg [via Inhabitat]

V's mothership is directly inspired by the new wing to the Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Spanish artist Santiago Calatrava in 2001, executive producer Steve Pearlman told OnMilwaukee.com:

"One of the things we loved about the design is the "V" built into the architecture," Pearlman says.

Ian Thomas, production designer on the show's pilot — he was unable to stay with the show — showed photos of the museum to director Yves Simoneau and executive producers Pearlman and Scott Peters, "as concept art when we were in the design phase of the Mothership and we loved its scope and the simplicity."

Pearlman says the idea was tailored to the Mothership and tied "to other areas of the ship that we were also creating (i.e. The Grand Atrium and Anna's Executive Office)."

The sets are actually computer-generated, and the actors film in front of a greenscreen, as you can see here:

Want to see the museum that inspired the alien mothership? Here are some photos, from Associated Press:

V is back on ABC tonight at 8 PM.

Museum photos by AP/Morry Gash [On Milwaukee]

There is very little information about Clint Eastwood's next project, which he is currently filming right now. But The Guardian revealed this bit of information...

Hereafter is a supernatural thriller by Frost/Nixon and The Queen writer Peter Morgan that stars Matt Damon as a reluctant psychic. Production got under way in France yesterday, and will later shift to locations in London and then on to Hawaii.

The film tells three parallel stories that eventually intersect – about a French TV journalist, played by Cecile de France, who suffers a near-death experience during the Asian tsunami of 2004; a drug-addicted English single mother, played by Lyndsey Marshal, who loses one of her twin 10-year-old sons in a car accident; and Damon's character, who can talk to the dead but prefers not to. De France and Marshal contact Damon in a desperate quest for answers and consolation.

Peter Morgan has an amazing track record, so we may be in good hands — but still, it seems a bit callous to play off the visuals of the tsunami's destruction a scant five years later. But how long is long enough? Here's hoping the film is about one victim's personal experience, as opposed just a retelling of the terrible event, with a supernatural twist.

Also, according to Variety, this film is similar to The Sixth Sense.

[The Guardian via First Showing]

Yesterday, the website for the Rossum Corporation — the nefarious technology company that operates the Dollhouses — launched. On its face, it's a standard corporate website, touting the remarkable abilities of Rossum's technological advances. It also outlines the terms and conditions for becoming a Rossum client, and includes a response to Senator Daniel Perrin's allegations of illegal and unethical activities perpetrated by Rossum.

But the rabbit hole goes a bit deeper. One of the posters at Whedonesque called Rossum's corporate phone number and received a call back, ordering them to "Ditch the tech." The poster then found the Ditch the Tech website, which displays the video below:

The site also includes these anti-cell phone fliers:

Another Whedonesque reader noted the site's source code includes the following information:

Civilization will fall apart in the year 2019. The Rossum Corporation is responsible. It is already beginning at the L.A. Dollhouse right now. Don't let them wipe the future!

And it appears there will be more Dollhouse teasers forthcoming. Another reader found a link to the site Wipe the Future, which for now only includes the text, "Soon."

[Whedonesque]

Screen Daily is reporting that Eminem will be starring in an original movie, being described as a blend of Twilight Zone and Creepshow. And according to some reports, the movie's episodic stories will riff on Christine, Aliens, and The Lost Boys, with Eminem putting his own "spin" on them.

Shady Talez will be in 3D and is currently being produced by I, Robot producer John Davis and Dallas Jackson. The only other bit of news we can find is that the angry kid from Role Models, Bobb'e J Thompson is attached to the movie and that it will be inspiring a four-issue comic from Marvel.

Let's start with Electropolis, the new Dark Horse collection of Dean Motter's Retrofuture Deco Noir story (Preview here). Filled with robot detectives, femme fatales and the power of electricity, it's just one of many off-beat genre books appearing at comic book stores this week.

And if Electropolis' pulp fiction is your thing, then maybe the Batman/Doc Savage Special (Dark Knight Detective versus Man of Bronze!) will also float your boat, after all. Or maybe Sky Doll: Doll Factory, a collection of unseen material from the awesome European strip Sky Doll, will provide your reading material for the next few days.

But if you prefer your heroines a little less suggestible than Sky Doll, the first issue of Tank Girl: Skidmarks is probably more your speed. Unsurprisingly, we'd also point you in the direction of the debut of Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows, but we're biased.

Maybe you're looking for something you've already seen in major motion pictures? That's okay; not only is there a preview issue of the new series of Wall-E, but there's also Star Wars Purge: Seconds To Die, which follows a young Darth Vader killing off as many Jedi as possible, post Revenge of The Sith. And that's not all! There's also a paperback collection of DC/Wildstorm's recent The X-Files series.

For those who can't get enough of those superheroes, then I'd recommend the first issue of Warren Ellis' Supergod, his latest "What if superheroes were bastards?" series. Or, on the opposite end of the superhero spectrum, the Absolute Justice hardcover, collecting Alex Ross' expansive love letter to the Super Friends (No, really).

In between those two extremes, there's Dynamite's Project Superpowers: The Black Terror Vol. 1 collection, DC's Green Lantern: Agent Orange collection, which leads into the current Blackest Night storyline, Supergirl: Who Is Superwoman? (in which Sterling Gates and Jamil Igle manage to undo years of abuse and make Supergirl a likable, working character again - good job, people) and the Authority: The Lost Year Reader (reprinting Grant Morrison and Gene Ha's two completed issues of their abandoned run, ahead of Keith Giffen and other artists aiming to complete the story in their absence).

There's also Marvel's PunisherMax (Yes, one word. It's the new "mature readers" title for the character, and maybe Marvel thinks pushing words together is more adult?), Green Hulk/Red Hulk collection (Heroes' writer Jeph Loeb writes a couple of gamma-irradiated monsters in a couple of adventures), the first issue of Strange (Mark Waid's reboot of the former Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme). And also, there's all manner of X-Men books: the Dark Avengers/X-Men: Utopia collection, as well as collections of Wolverine: Tales of Weapon X, Wolverine Weapon X: Adamantium Men and Wolverine/Gambit. All your Wolverine needs should definitely be met this week, let's face it.

If there are any other needs looking unserviced, I'd recommend checking out the complete list of books shipping from Diamond Distributors this week, and then remembering that your local comic book store can be found here. If this week seems overly expensive, don't worry; there's an entire skip week at the end of the year to get some of that money back. Look at it as a loan. Or something.

The Picasso Museum in Barcelon has just launched "Secret Images," which explores Picasso's fascination with Japanese erotic art and how it influenced his paintings. The exhibit showcases 19 prints from Picasso's personal collection alongside 27 Picasso works they are believed to have inspired. One of the five rooms in the exhibit focuses on tentacles, and highlights the famed print by Edo period artist Hokusai Katsushika. Hokusai is perhaps best known for his print The Great Wave off Kanagawa, but he also delved into shunga, or erotic art. One of the most famous pieces of Japanese erotic art, Hokusai's Diving Girl with Octopus, was a particular inspiration of Picasso's and Picasso made his own version in 1903.

"Secret Images" runs through February 14th at the Picasso Museum.

Picasso's Japanese erotic inspiration on show in Barcelona [AFP via Japanator]

Here's the official synopsis for Piranha:

A tremor under the surface of Lake Victoria unleashes scores of prehistoric piranhas, an event which rallies the local sheriff (Elizabeth Shue) who will risk everything to save her townsfolk.

The cast is pretty impressive and includes Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd, Eli Roth, Elisabeth Shue, Dina Meyer and Paul Scheeer.

Piranha will be in theaters in 3D on April 16, 2010.

To see more pictures check out Dread Central.

Grier will join the long-lived superhero soap later this season for a multi-episode arc playing Amanda Waller, better known to readers of DC Comics' Suicide Squad and Checkmate as the uber-manipulative schemer behind various US Government agencies that use superhumans as cannon fodder on black-ops missions that just so happen to advance her own agenda. Does this mean that Clark is going to end up drafted into service, or will we see the return of various Kryptonite-powered former villains-of-the-week acting under shady orders?

Grier's first appearance in the show will be in the second half of the season's Justice Society two-parter, at the start of next year.

'Smallville' lands Pam Grier! [Entertainment Weekly]

Mania is reporting based on inside sources that McAdams has met with producers for Spider-Man 4 and is the "top contender" for the role of The Black Cat. Let's hope she's the number one pick — McAdams is not only gorgeous, but she sells her characters hard. And she'll have to walk a tightrope to play a slightly unstable, tortured cat burglar, especially since everyone will most likely compare this character to Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman in Batman Returns, even thought they're very different characters.

But also reportedly in the running for Black Cat is Romola Garai, who starred in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. Slashfilm pointed out that in The Observer she comments about "putting something on tape for a part in Spider-Man 4." And rumors are also running wild that she may also be playing The Black Cat.

Whoever gets cast in the part, we're cautiously optimistic about the Black Cat joining the films — Spider-Man needs a female character who isn't always getting kidnapped.

If you're not familiar with Kate Beaton and her hysterical (and often historical) comics, go go go to Hark! A Vagrant! or Beaton's LiveJournal for more comic goodness. She even has more Wonder Women for you to ogle.

Be a Hero [Kate Beaton's Livejournal]

Check out the video from behind the scenes of the Joe Dante choose-your-own-adventure Netflix film — yes, Netflix is making original movies now — featuring the Candyman, Tony Todd.

Doctor Who:

Why is "Waters Of Mars," airing Sunday, so scary? Says Russell T. Davies:

It's the intensity – it's trapped, claustrophobic, desperate – which really ups the stakes. Towards the end, the monsters aren't the scary things: it's the humans and the Doctor who really give me a chill.

[Daily Telegraph]

Shifting forward to 2010, here are some set pics showing Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, on set at the Temple Of Peace (first featured in "The End Of The World,") which is rumored to be the Silurian Senate in a new two-parter. A couple of these photos give glimpses of what might be a Silurian head poking through a window. What do you think? (For those who aren't steeped in the lore, Silurians were prehistoric lizard people who turned up in 1970's "Doctor Who And The Silurians," and then made a comeback in 1984's "Warriors Of The Deep.")

According to one poster who claims to have inside info at the Gallifrey Base forums, those really are Silurians, but they look like crap and don't have a third eye. And there's an "overweight senate Silurian" who will make us want to facepalm. (Note: Everything not supported by photos is purely a rumor at this point!)

This is believed to be the same two-parter that the earlier graveyard scenes were from, and some fans say there was a lizard woman with a Predator-style mask in the graveyard sequences. The pics also include Alan Raglan, who plays Mo Northover, the father of the little boy from the graveyard scenes. Also, there's a huge rig shining a light from an upstairs window in one of these pics. Photos by Alun_Vega on Flickr [Gallifrey Base]

Lost:

Here's a casting call for a scientist we'll be meeting in episode 6x08:

[SEAMUS] Any ethnicity, 30s-40s. A scientist with some physicality to him. Not afraid to take charge and give orders. Looking for someone interesting. CO-STAR, POSSIBLE RECUR

[SpoilersLost]

In episode 6x07, there's a big scene where Sun, Ben, Frank, Ilana and Miles are on the beach, and they're surprised to see Jack, Hurley and Richard suddenly appear out of the jungle. This could be the big reunion of the 1970s and 2007 timelines — except then why would Miles already be there? And why is Richard arriving with Jack and Hurley? In any case, everyone embraces, and Claire is there, looking tough with straight black hair. [The Transmission via SpoilersLost]

V:

Sleazy anchorman Chad Decker won't be meeting up with Elizabeth Mitchell's FBI agent character, Erica, any time soon, says actor Scott Wolf. [USA Today]

Morena Baccarin says Anna doesn't have a huge un-masking moment in the first four episodes, but there may be some effects added to her face to give a glimpse of the lizard beneath. She meets Tyler, Erica's son, setting up a plotline in which Erica may have to challenge Anna to save her son. In the next few episodes:

We get to see more about how the Vs live. There are more hints at how they do certain things and there's some really great plot twists. [There are] characters' worlds that collide that you wouldn't expect.

[TV Guide]

Here's what happens in the last episode of 2009, "It's Only The Beginning":

Erica works with newly-formed allies to uncover a biological threat they suspect the Visitors have been plotting. Aboard the Mothership, Anna meets with a special guest while managing the investigation into the murder of a V. And Chad does a segment on the V Healing Centers, demonstrating their amazing medical abilities, but then finds himself conflicted by some of his findings

[SpoilerTV]

Dollhouse:

An interview with Eliza Dushku, where she talks about getting shot, green goo, G.I. Jane, and duking it out with Summer Glau. Most of the spoilery stuff is towards the end. [SpoilerTV]

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus:

Here's a new U.S. poster for Terry Gilliam's next film — click on the link to see the whole thing. [Slashfilm]

Fringe:

Here are some promo pics for episode seven, "Of Human Action." [Fringe Television]

Supernatural:

A new clip from Thursday's episode, in which Chuck the Prophet gets manipulated. (You'd think his prophetic powers would prevent this sort of thing.)

And here are the first four episode titles of 2010, all of which have a definite movie theme going on: "Sam, Interrupted," "Being Sam Winchester," "Back to the Future II," and "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid". [SpoilerTV]

2012:

A fairly damning review at Hollywood Reporter includes a few spoilers. This movie steals sequences from "Earthquake," "The Poseidon Adventure," "Volcano," and even "Titanic." And it follows a dozen characters through various scrapes. There's a corrupt presidential aide (Oliver Platt) who has to choose who gets to go on the nuclear version of Noah's Ark and survive the devastation. You'll know who's going to die in this movie — it's anyone who's committed any sort of "extramarital transgression." [THR]

The Prisoner:

James Caviezel and Jamie Campbell Bower are interviewed about their roles in this remake of the classic series.

True Blood:

Looks like we'll be meeting Bill's ex, judging from this casting call:

[CAROLINE COMPTON] 20's. Seen in 1866, a lovely, very strong, brave, well-bred and well-spoken Southern woman, Caroline pulls a shotgun on the intruder into her house—clearly prepared to use it—till she realizes it's her husband Bill (Stephen Moyer), whom she was sure had died in the War sptv050769. THIS IS A GREAT SCENE...ACTRESS SHOULD RESEMBLE THE ACTRESS IN THE ATTACHED PHOTO

And here's the photo in question. [SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

The season's 13th and 14th episodes, respectively, will be called "Hubris" and "Conspiracy." [KryptonSite]

And here's a clip from Friday's episode, "Idol".

Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder.

In Roger Corman's GAS-S-S-S, Or It Became Necessary To Destroy The World In Order To Save It, the military releases a gas that kills everyone over the age of 25. The result? A bongo-bruising hippie dance party, and a movie you really need to be on hash to appreciate. What do you do when all the old farts are dead? Have a crazy rave party, with freaky shapes, at a drive-in theater... featuring Country Joe And The Fish!

Nooooo! Make it stop!

I love how in apocalyptic movies, the roads are always clogged with derelict cars. It never fails:

Pretty much every television show has done a Flowers For Algernon episode at some point, featuring miraculous technology that boosts your intelligence — and highlights the problems that go along with it. According to Wikipedia, this short story and novel have already been adapted eight times, into movies, stage musicals, plays, radio plays and more.

Movie news site Pajiba reports that Smith is set to play Charlie, the mentally disabled man who undergoes an experimental surgery that boosts his intelligence to genius level. (Algernon is the lab mouse who undergoes the procedure first.) Unfortunately, becoming a mega-genius doesn't do much for Charlie's relationships with everyone else. According to Pajiba's anonymous sources, Smith's frequent collaborator Gabriele Muccino (who directed Seven Pounds and Pursuit of Happyness) may be directing this one as well. Just as long as it doesn't end with Smith climbing into a bath with a jellyfish:

In any case, this is definitely an unsubstantiated rumor from a random website. So, you know, take it with several bucket fulls of salt, and a few jellyfish. [Pajiba]

Aircraft designer KA Kalinin designed the K-7, a massive and extremely expensive prototype plane that briefly carried passengers during 1933. However, the plane crashed in November 1933, causing the project to be scrapped before more prototypes could be built. These images imagine a battle-ready version of a plane similar to Kalinin's K-7, with enough firepower to take down another non-existent vehicle: the Nazi flying saucer.

Russian Flying Fortresses [English Russia via Metafilter]

Heckerling is responsible for the brilliant Clueless and Fast Times At Ridgemont High along with the cleverly written but never fully-formed film The Loser (Yes, yes Loser was bad, but it had potential). Anyways, if done right, maybe - just maybe! - vampires could save us from the horrible drought of intelligent romantic comedies we're all currently suffering through. At least, we hope it will, but we're setting our sites low. Very low. Here's the movie's synopsis, according to Screen Daily :

The film will be a modern-day tale of two young female vampires living the good life in New York until love enters the picture and each has to make a choice that will jeopardise their immortality.

But on the plus side, the lovely Krysten Ritter will be playing one of the lead vampires, and we've loved her since Gilmore Girls. What say you?

[Picture via Dark Pozidia ]

In the new issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine will detail their findings in penile tissue regeneration. Using twelve New Zealand White rabbits with damaged penises, the team engineered replacement tissues using each rabbit's own erectile tissues. They then injected these replacement cells into scaffold made from rabbit penises that had been stripped of their cells; the scaffold act as support for the developing cells. The scaffolds were then implanted in the rabbits, after which the organized tissues began to form.

Once the penises were fully formed, the rabbits were just as sexually active as rabbits with non-reconstructed genitals, mating with female rabbits within a moment of introduction. The team also found that the rabbits' sexual performance was fully functional, and several female rabbits became pregnant and produced healthy offspring as a result of the encounter.

Anthony Atala, director of Wake Forest University Baptist, believes that the same technique can be applied to human males who have erectile cells, but have damaged or deformed penises — as well as men looking to upgrade their current equipment. The procedure probably wouldn't require scaffolding from another penis, however. Researchers are currently looking into printable structures made from collagen and other materials.

Artificial Penis Tissue Proves Promising in Lab Tests [LiveScience]

V's success last week must feel confusing for the alphabet network; on the one hand, it was the second-highest rated series premiere of the season, and the most-watched 8pm premiere for ABC since Lost, but on the other, they'd already put the show on production hiatus and retooled things behind the scenes in a way that not only means they're unlikely to be able to bring the show back before the announced March 2010 return - thereby potentially losing whatever momentum the show will have at the end of this four episode mini-season - but also means that they've replaced many of the folk responsible for the show's success in the first place (Then again, who knows how many people liked what they saw last week and will return tomorrow?). Ever eager to help television networks out of a jam, we've come up with some possible ways to keep the V-mentum going while viewers wait for more Visitors:

Re-Edit Other, Little-Seen, Shows To Tie In With V
Got any police procedurals lying around? Just add an extra scene at the end where the perp turns out to get a cut on his hand and WTF HE'S A LIZARD MAN. Then you can cut to Elizabeth Mitchell getting a phone call and saying "Another one? Oh my God, they're everywhere." Cue dramatic music and cut to black. Pretend that it's an effort to show just how widespread the alien invasion actually is.

Re-Edit Episodes Of The Original V
Start each episode with Morena Baccarin talking to some minion Visitor and saying "You know, this reminds me of that time we invaded an Earth in a parallel dimension, and I had that long hair and 1980s evil bitch mask" before cutting to the original episode. Then, at the end, cap each episode off with Baccarin laughing and saying "Now, that was a sticky situation!"

Run Trailers For Lost Promising That It'll End With The Visitors Arriving On Earth
It's not like we have any better idea how Lost is going to end, let's face it. And, let's face it; like you can't already imagine the serious voiceover going "It started with a planecrash... But once they've solved the riddle of the island... They'll have to face the visitors." And then use Party of Five footage of Matthew Fox and Scott Wolf and pretend it's a flashback. Alternately...

Run Trailers Reminding People That They Could Just Watch Lost Instead
Again, cue the serious voiceover: "Waiting to find out what happens in V? Why? Lost is back on and it's much, much better. We promise that we'll throw Alan Tudyk in if it'll make a difference. Come on! It's the last season!"

Just Rename FlashForward
Am I the only person who thinks that FlashForward and V are long-lost brother shows? Both of them have worldwide events that shock humanity that are linked to terrorism and some believe prove the existence of God, both have FBI agents as central characters working to uncover the truth about said events, and both feature attractive people from as many different demographics as possible drawn into the web of slowly uncovering storylines. Considering that FlashForward's ratings are slipping, why not just edit in a new subplot that explains that the FlashForwards are really the result of Visitor experiments, show Dominic Monaghan peeling off his face to show that he's a lizard, and just call the show V from December onwards? Would anyone really care that much?

Interviewed by Terry Bisson, Robinson explains:

Anyone can do a dystopia these days just by making a collage of newspaper headlines, but utopias are hard, and important, because we need to imagine what it might be like if we did things well enough to say to our kids, we did our best, this is about as good as it was when it was handed to us, take care of it and do better. Some kind of narrative vision of what we're trying for as a civilization.

It's a slim tradition since [Sir Thomas] More invented the word, but a very interesting one, and at certain points important: the Bellamy clubs after Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward had a big impact on the Progressive movement in American politics, and H.G. Wells's stubborn persistence in writing utopias over about fifty years (not his big sellers) conveyed the vision that got turned into the postwar order of social security and some kind of government-by-meritocracy.

So utopias have had effects in the real world. More recently I think Ecotopia by [Ernest] Callenbach had a big impact on how the hippie generation tried to live in the years after, building families and communities.

There are a lot of problems in writing utopias, but they can be opportunities. The usual objection-that they must be boring-are often political attacks, or ignorant repeating of a line, or another way of saying "No expository lumps please, it has to be about me." The political attacks are interesting to parse. "Utopia would be boring because there would be no conflicts, history would stop, there would be no great art, no drama, no magnificence." This is always said by white people with a full belly. My feeling is that if they were hungry and sick and living in a cardboard shack they would be more willing to give utopia a try.

And if we did achieve a just and sustainable world civilization, I'm confident there would still be enough drama, as I tried to show in Pacific Edge. There would still be love lost, there would still be death. That would be enough. The horribleness of unnecessary tragedy may be lessened and the people who like that kind of thing would have to deal with a reduction in their supply of drama.

So, the writing of utopia comes down to figuring out ways of talking about just these issues in an interesting way; how tenuous it would be, how fragile, how much a tightrope walk and a work in progress. That along with the usual science fiction problem of handling exposition. It could be done, and I wish it were being done more often.

[Shareable via Resilience Science]

Talking to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, Abrams said,

The mood on set and in the writer's room is as good as the ratings are bad, which is to say, wonderful. Luckily, Fox has been insanely supportive, for which we are deeply grateful... [G]iven that we're on one of the hardest [nights] on television, we're just focusing on making the best show we possibly can. What else can we do?

Here's an idea of how Fox can be more supportive: Move the show to another night, already; the Thursday gambit is clearly not working.

J.J. Abrams on 'bad' ratings, good vibes, and the show's future [Entertainment Weekly]

Here's the book's caption for the above image and our other images of that concept art:

The parallel reality of conceptual design - visions of the exotic bazaar a wandering Kirk might have stumbled upon in the film. In its final design, the desert planet becomes a threatening world of snow and ice.

So instead of seeing Kirk chased through the snow by the Cloverfield monster's cousin, we could have seen him encountering a slew of weird alien traders and smugglers on a desert world? I guess Abrams' film was already enough like Star Wars without this sequence.

Star Trek: The Art Of The Film, on sale next week, is Titan Books' latest coffee-table art book tying in with a major science fiction movie, and it's one of the best so far. You get insights into stuff you might not have thought about, like the many different head tattoos the film's scurvy-addled Romulan dogs sported in the film — there's a two-page spread showing all the different tattoos, just in case you and all your friends want to get done up as Nero's crew for a convention. It turns out that the U.S.S. Kelvin was originally designed to look like a Soviet submarine (there are some early renderings) and Nero's ship, the Narada, was supposed to be like a hundred scary knives. The Cloverfield monster in the film was origianlly hairier and more like Aggedor from Doctor Who.

We've already seen some gorgeous concept art from the film, but there's still some great stuff in the book I hadn't seen before — including some early paintings of Vulcan, and a huge section on the reimagining of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Images from Star Trek: The Art of the Film. Out November 17th from Titan Books.

People often lump Tierney together with George Will, as global-warming doubters at major newspapers who use somewhat specious arguments to downplay the scientific consensus that we're slow-cooking our planet. But Tierney's position as the Times' science columnist gives him more authority than Will's as a random TV pundit. But also, the thing I find fascinating about Tierney is that even as he goes to great lengths to paint the evidence about global warming as mere hype, he's also eager to buy into the hype whenever there's a claim that new technology will deliver us to a beautiful future, without having to make any hard choices. It's hard not to believe the two things are related.

Reading Tierney's columns and blog posts on global warming, a few things become clear. He's a global warming skeptic, rather than an out-and-out denier. (In one blog post, he says he believes there's "some risk" that global warming will be a danger.) But he's given tons of exposure and legitimacy to outright deniers, including some groups with ties to the oil industry. And he's done a lot to paint the scientific consensus on global warming as pure hype and conformism.

In Tierney's world, the reason the majority of scientists agree that global warming is a worsening crisis is dick-measuring. In a column on Obama's science advisor, John Holdren, Tierney spends most of the column quoting Roger Pielke, a climate researcher who's been one of the most vocal critics of the idea that the polar ice caps are melting. According to Pielke, scientists present conclusions about global warming as definitive not because the data supports them, but just to boost their own "authority in the political debate" and tarnish their opponents.

And Tierney implies that scientists sign on with the global-warming orthodoxy because that's where the money is. (One blog post is provocatively titled, "Global Warming Payola?".) And the idea that we're cooking the planet is sold to the public by taking advantage of natural disasters and tragic images of sad polar bears:

Two studies by NASA and university scientists last year concluded that much of the recent melting of Arctic sea ice was related to a cyclical change in ocean currents and winds, but those studies got relatively little attention - and were certainly no match for the images of struggling polar bears so popular with availability entrepreneurs.

Recently, Tierney has also been pounding on the common conservative meme that the same scientists who now warn about global warming were warning, in the 1970s, that we faced a new human-made ice age. Since they were so wrong back then, and have changed their tune so drastically, the implication is, why should we believe them now? (The meme is massively overplayed, but even if it were true, so what? Smart people adjust their views when they receive new information. And when the data becomes overwhelming, only idiots and tools stay agnostic.)

You should definitely read Andrew Leonard's takedown (at Salon.com) of one of Tierney's columns, in which he basically claims that the more energy we use, the faster we'll solve any environmental problems — because we'll all get richer, and rich people demand clean air. (Shorter version: CO2 is odorless and colorless, so relying on wealthy people's distaste for smog won't do much good.)

I'm not just picking on Tierney because he's the science columnist at one of our biggest newspapers — I'm fascinated with him because while he paints global-warming concerns as pure hype, he's also one of the biggest boosters of the hype around the Singularity, as simplified by Ray Kurzweil and others. Reading Tierney's writing makes me wonder if the two things (skepticism on pressing, real problems, and wide-eyed enthusiasm for fictional, easy solutions) go hand in hand.

In fact, Tierney has explicitly pushed the idea of a technological Singularity, happening by 2030, as the alternative to neo-Malthusian warnings that overpopulation will result in starvation and environmental disasters. In one blog post, "Malthus Vs. The Singularity," Tierney cites a paper by Robin Hanson in the IEEE Spectrum saying that the Singularity could speed up our economic growth so much, our economy would double within a month. (Or even a week.) Says Tierney, this provides an alternative to that downer Malthusian view:

Now, you could argue that his projections of artificial intelligence are as speculative and unprecedented as the Malthusian visions of resource depletion. But I'd bet on him over the Malthusians. Unlike Malthus, we can look around and see that we already have the energy and technology to feed a larger population than exists on Earth today. And we can look at Ray Kurzweil's graphs showing exponential growth in computing power for more than a century, with no apparent end in sight.

Here's a smaller version of the Ray Kurzweil graph he's talking about:

Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, was a frequent touchstone in Tierney's column and blog posts in the summer of 2008, although not so much since then. And the idea that you can extrapolate from existing trends in computing power into the next century is a cornerstone of Kurzweil's prediction that machines smarter than humans are coming in the next few decades. (Actually, the graph maps "calculations per second per $1,000," which seems a tad arbitrary — and how do you measure how many human brains $1,000 will buy you?)

Tierney eagerly seizes on Kurzweil's predictions that rapidly accelerating technological advances will solve all of our problems — he's devoted a column and at least one blog post to Kurzweil's Law Of Accelerating Returns, which says that progress has been speeding up since the beginning of life on Earth. (There are more charts, which show the timeline between multi-cellular organisms and the development of mammals, versus between the Industrial Revolution and the development of the personal computer. Guess which took longer?) According to Kurzweil, the time between Paradigm Shifts has been halving with each decade, and soon our paradigms will be shifting constantly.

Among other things, that means we'll have unlimited clean energy soon, life expectancy will start shooting up every year "faster than you're aging," and all of our problems will be solved. In another blog post, Tierney addresses his commenters who doubt Kurzweil's Law. (Don't they realize it's a Law?):

In response to my Findings column about [Kurzweil] and a post about his graphs, some readers were skeptical. Francis and others insisted it's naive to assume exponential progress can go on - that, just as bacteria proliferating in a petri dish will eventually exhaust the resources, we too will hit a limit.

I think these skeptics are missing the lessons of history, but before explaining why I like Mr. Kurzweil's theory more than theirs, let me grant them a couple of points. First, there is no guarantee that exponential increases in computer power will continue, or that the exponential growth in computer science will be matched in other fields. One of the most common mistakes of technoprophets is to assume that the the technology du jour will shape the future. When radio was invented, futurists envisioned locomotives powered by radio waves; when atomic power was discovered, there were predictions of nuclear-powered car in every garage.

Also, futurists tend to underestimate the social and political obstacles to progress, so they're often too optimistic about how soon people's lives will be transformed. Just because new tools exist doesn't mean they'll be used widely. Donald Norman, a technology expert profiled in my Findings column in December, says the chief problems to overcome in introducing new technologies involve people, not machines.

That said, after watching the impact of computers on so many fields, I share Mr. Kurzweil's belief that these tools are especially transformative and that change is just going to accelerate. Yes, there are physical limits to what can done with computer chips. But for a century now, each time computer engineers ran into previous physical limits - with the original electro-mechanical machines, with vacuum tubes, with transistors - they jumped to a new technology, and they're already working on successors to today's chips. It may seem naive to expect continuing leaps forward, but I think it's naive to ignore the trend of the past century - or the past 10,000 years.

The Cassandras have been warning of limits and resource depletion and population crashes for thousands of years, but as Julian Simon explained, we've kept exceeding limits and finding new resources and extending our life expectancy. The new problems lead to new solutions that leave us better off in the long run. Today's Cassandras are focused on climate change, which could bring real problems, but to think these problems are insurmountable seems to me as short-sighted as the prophecies of the 1960s ("overpopulation" leading to worldwide famines) and 1970s (the exhaustion of energy supplies).

If anything, climate change seems much more manageable than previous "crises" because the chief consequences are so far in the future. We have decades to figure out ways to deal with it: to find carbon-free sources of energy, to develop techniques for removing carbon from the atmosphere or geoengineering the climate, or simply to adapt. These are all formidable challenges, but our tools for dealing with them are going to be improving exponentially, as Mr. Kurzweil argues.

So once again, you see the connection — even as Tierney says that we have decades to figure out what to do about climate change, he's also tremendously excited about a Singularity in which all our troubles will melt away and magic robots will carry us into the cyber-heaven on their shoulders. Rather than viewing the Singularity as a huge disruption, one which we can't possibly understand in advance, as many science fiction writers have done, Tierney buys into the hype that the Singularity will give us unlimited rice pudding.

You'll notice the mention of "geoengineering" in that last paragraph — it's another one of Tierney's favorite pie-in-the-sky themes. If it really does turn out that CO2 in the atmosphere is causing some problems, there's a potential fix that doesn't involve making any sacrifices:

Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective; removing vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere.

Today this approach goes by the slightly less grandiose name of climate engineering, and it is looking more practical. Several recent reviews of these ideas conclude that cooling the planet would be technically feasible and economically affordable.

Possible ideas include lofting aerosol particles into the ionosphere to reflect shortwave radiation back into space, spraying seawater mist into low-lying clouds, to brighten them and reflect sunlight away from the Earth, and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Scientists have pooh-poohed the idea of geoengineering because — wait for it! — they don't want to lose the prestige and money they've gotten from warning about carbon emissions. But there are real reasons to think that geo-engineering without reduction in carbon emissions would be worse than doing nothing — and that's if it even succeeds. Futurist Jamais Cascio, author of Hacking The Earth, writes in the Wall Street Journal recently:

To be clear, geoengineering won't solve global warming. It's not a "techno-fix." It would be enormously risky and almost certainly lead to troubling unforeseen consequences. And without a doubt, the deployment of geoengineering would lead to international tension. Who decides what the ideal temperature would be? Russia? India? The U.S.? Who's to blame if Country A's geoengineering efforts cause a drought in Country B?

Also let's be clear about one other thing: We will still have to radically reduce carbon emissions, and do so quickly. We will still have to eliminate the use of fossil fuels, and adopt substantially more sustainable agricultural methods. We will still have to deal with the effects of ecosystems damaged by carbon overload...

[Geoengineering] would simply hold temperatures down temporarily, doing nothing about the causes of climate change, let alone ocean acidification and other symptoms of a carbon overdose. We can't let ourselves slip back into business-as-usual complacency, because we'd simply be setting ourselves up for a far greater disaster down the road.

Cascio explains further here:

I'm an optimistic person — but my optimism comes from a faith that we, as human beings, will figure out a way to change what we're doing before it's too late. I don't believe there are magical "get out of eco-hell free" cards lying around, or that the Singularity is going to solve all of our problems. The Singularity has given us some fantastic science-fiction novels by people like Vernor Vinge, Rudy Rucker and Charles Stross — but it's not going to come true, any more than the novels 1984 or 2001 were accurate descriptions of those years in real life. But even if computers did become smarter than humans in 100 years' time — for some values of "smarter" — I'm not sure that would save us from the results of our own fecklessness. For one thing, who's to say those super-smart computers would care whether the Earth was habitable for humans?

You can certainly look at our history, as a species, and see an unbroken line of progress. But you can also see many eras where we've driven ourselves into a technological hole (the Dark Ages come to mind) or engineered ourselves into mass starvation (China's Great Leap Forward was a purely human-made catastrophe.) There's certainly no guarantee that we get to have an unbroken upward progression going on for ever and ever.

We'll get a beautiful future — but only if we work for it. The idea that a wonderful, shining future will be handed to us, or that the awful dilemmas we're facing as a species will just go away, feels worse than foolish. It feels like sabotaging the future, for the sake of a bit more comfort and a false sense of security today.

If Tierney only used his bully pulpit at the Times to raise doubts about global warming, he'd just be one of many obstacles to saving our planet. But the fact that he's simultaneously guzzling the Kool Aid on things like Ray Kurzweil's Panglossian Law of Perfect Awesomeness and the mad-science easy fix for global warming makes him something much worse. His cheery outlook is actually helping to ruin our future.

A BBC scuba diving crew grabbed a video of the smalleye, which is the largest and one of the rarest of the 70 species of stingray. The smalleye, which can grow to be more than two meters wide, was first discovered in 1908 and has been found alive only off the coast of Tofo, a small town in Southeastern Mozambique.

You can see the video at the BBC's website, and the footage will also be part of the BBC Two documentary Andrea: Queen of the Mantas this Wednesday.

First film of a 'giant' stingray [BBC]

According to the UM researchers, this discovery may make sense of previously unexplained earthquakes, such as 2008's Sichuan quake, that registered 7.9 on the Richter scale; the theory is that earthquakes farther from fault lines may be aftershocks of much earlier movements along the fault line, with the further the distance meaning the later the quake:

The study, reported in the journal Nature, found that aftershocks near to tectonic boundaries continue for only a few years but further away they can occur over a timescale of decades and centuries. Recent earthquakes in Canada's Saint Lawrence valley, for instance, may be the aftershocks of an earthquake that occurred in 1663.

Similarly, a magnitude 7 earthquake that occurred near a town called New Madrid in Mississippi in 1811 is still causing aftershocks that can be felt in the American mid-west because these shocks are the result of movements that are 100 times slower than the movements that occur near to a tectonic fault line.

Scientists hope to use this discovery to work out where future earthquakes may occur. Evil scientists hope to use this discovery to annex California and create a base of operations from which they can destroy Superman once and for all.

Scientists unearth evidence of centuries-old aftershocks [Independent.co.uk