You have to love Helen "Supergirl" Slater as a Capenters-loving scientist, and Martin Landau as an evil mad genius. You just have to. [IMDB]

If you've read Vertigo titles like Hellblazer or Lucifer in the past decade or so, you're already a fan of Carey's writing. In particular, his epic run on Lucifer kept the intrigues of Heaven and Hell constantly surprising, with a shifting set of loyalties and fascinating characters. Not to mention, Carey wrote one of my all-time favorite miniseries: My Faith In Frankie, the story of a girl and her personal god.

But for the past few years, he's been putting out a number of novels featuring Felix Castor, a London exorcist who sometimes helps the police untangle particularly baffling murders. He's put out five of them so far, and he seems to be doing a great job of ratcheting up the tension and weirdness. I've read a couple of them, Vicious Circle and Dead Men's Boots, and have found them addictive enough to drag me away from the other books I'm supposed to be reading.

Like Supernatural, they're dark and witty, and feature otherworldly monsters that want to run rampant on Earth. Their mixture of cleverness and heart reminded me of Eric Kripke and Sera Gamble at their cracklingest.

In the books, Felix Castor is an exorcist, someone who can see the ghosts that lurk around London and banish them by playing on his tin whistle. (And yes, the whistle thing does get a bit cheesy at times. But run with it.) There have always been ghosts, and people who could deal with them, but for some reason the 1990s saw a huge surge in the number of dead people refusing to go quietly. (The reasons for this change are a bit mysterious, but apparently relate to something called the Great Project in Hell.)

So now exorcism has become a valid career path, for those who have the talent — but besides ghosts, there are also zombies, loups-garous and demons roaming around causing trouble. Castor, the perpetually down at his luck ghost-hunter, also has to contend with a fringe group that argues that ghosts have human rights and shouldn't simply be exorcised, even if they're going all polter. There's even an ominously pending law that would ratify the legal status of the deceased.

Castor's pretty much your classic sad-sack P.I., as well — he's constantly getting out of his depth and tangling with opponents way beyond his weight class. His cases involve rogue exorcists whose powers are beyond his, or gangsters who've found a way to live forever by transplanting their souls into new bodies after death. There are occasional moments of genuine horror as well as traditional detective work, piecing together odd clues until something comes together.

He survives a lot of scrapes by his wits alone, or through pure luck, and his main superpower seems to be knowing when to tell a clever lie. His allies are rarely terribly reliable, including Gary Coldwood, the cop who often seems to hate his guts, Nicky, a zombie information broker, and Juliet, a former succubus who's just barely reformed thanks to the love of a good woman. His best friend Rafi is possessed by the demon Asmodeus (thanks to Felix's blundering), and his ex-girlfriend Pen won't forgive him for it.

I think the main thing that keeps me obsessively reading these books is Carey's dark, smoky narrative voice. It's very much in line with the Jim Butcher novels, Kadrey's Sandman Slim, and some other vaguely pulpy urban fantasy that's come out lately — I am trying not to overuse the phrase "noir fantasy" but there's definitely a smidgen of noir in the way that Castor's first-person narrator always seems world-weary and a bit of a bastard. But he's less of a bastard than most of the other people he meets, and he has a kind of struggling nobility to him. And there's definitely something a bit noirish about narration like this:

I was starting to get the picture now: it was a bleak and sad one, executed mainly in grays, but then I don't get to see many that are in bright primaries.

Or this, from later in the same book, after a spirit contact goes disastrously wrong:

I fished out my flask of I-can't-believe-it's-not-cognac and unscrewed the lid with shaking hands. The first sip was medicinal: I swilled it around my bitten tongue, trying not to wince, rolled down the window, and spat out the blood. The second sip was for my jangled nerves. So were the third and fourth.

The actual plots of the novels, judging from the two I've read, are insanely complicated and usually involve tons of different strands weaving together. I often found myself having to flip back 100 pages to try and remind myself exactly who a particular character was, when we hadn't seen him or her in a while. There are a lot of random characters, or entities, who show up and do something, then vanish for hundreds of pages only to resurface when the plot(s) needs them. The overall effect is one of whirling corruption and soul-deep chaos, and it's not at all a bad thing that Carey's spiritualist London feels fully populated.

The major supporting characters, though, are quite memorable and a big draw of these books is following Juliet, Pen, Rafi and the others through their evolution. Carey seems fairly determined to keep his status quo from becoming too quo, and all of the major characters seem to have actual arcs planned out, making the books worthwhile just to see how they turn out.

And there are plenty of hints, tossed here and there, about infernal politics. Something bigger seems to be coming down the pike, and every case Castor takes on, especially the ones which seem to be too hot to handle, increases the lingering sense that we're just seeing the tip of the supernatural iceberg. In any case, Castor's the type of fantasy hero we need more of — he's a good man in a bad world that's getting worse, and he defeats evil through a mixture of raw cunning and having friends in low places. Until Sam and Dean come back, it's definitely worth spending some time getting to know Felix Castor.

Boys need more attention. Really? Recently published research suggests that as girls are helped to achieve academic and social success, boys are getting left behind. The result: American boys are leaving school with lower literacy rates, lower grades, and higher dropout rates. They also have higher suicide, arrest and premature death rates. Hmm. Maybe this is all related to another study, which showed that spankings lower IQ scores?

Dinosaurs wiped out by algae. While many scientists believe an asteroid impact killed off the dinosaurs, Clemson University researchers announced on October 19th at the Geological Society of America that they believed toxins from algae were to blame for not just killing off the great beasts of 65 million years ago, but five other species. Their scientific peers aren't buying the theory, claiming the evidence just isn't there.

Fetuses have memories in the womb. As if we needed more fuel for the abortion debate, scientists co-authored a study published in Child Development that says fetuses just 30 weeks of age have short-term memory. This discovery was claimed after a series of "fetuses became habituated to a low sound that makes a vibration, and so weren't startled after repeated stimulation. Fetuses younger than 30 weeks never showed signs of habituation, while those older could remember the stimulation for longer and longer stints with age."

Who's the oldest of them all? While Ardi was pronounced the official oldest link to us humans, another fossil was found in the meantime that may change our evolutionary tree. Ida is a 47-million year old primate fossil (Ardi is 4.4 million years old) that has scientists debating whether or not her remains are proof of an even earlier precursor of humans.

Climategate. The University of East Anglia computer systems are hacked, leaking thousands of private (and pretty incriminating) emails and files from prominent climate scientists. The emails seem to show that climate scientists, such as Phil Jones, were purposely keeping research papers whose conclusions argued against the connection between global warming and human activity out of an important climate panel report. Oops!

Here are the most viewed trailers of the year, according to Yahoo:

10. Up

9. Avatar

8. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

7. Star Trek

6. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

4. Terminator Salvation

3. 2012

2. Transformers

1. New Moon

[Yahoo via Rope of Silicon]

The eagle eyed folks over at Slashfilm pointed out a major detail from the new Iron Man 2 trailer. It seems that for a split second in the new trailer Black Widow exposes a S.H.I.E.L.D. badge on her catsuit. The badge was previously removed from any official stills, as it would expose the secret of who she is and why she's working inside Stark's company. Here's the picture...

When we spoke with Scarlett Johansson back in the comic con the actresses played especially coy about her character's ties in the film.

What is your relationship to the other characters in the film?

Well I'll tell you that um, my character... there are two sides to my character. She's a bit of a shape shifter, I suppose. There's a side of the character that's kind of demure and covert - I wouldn't say that she's submissive, but she's blending in to the Stark Industries [team, as an assistant]. Then the other part of the character is a really aggressive, bad-ass character, that is sure of herself and is going to kick the shit out of you if you get in her way. So that's as about as much as I can tell you, and how that relates to the other characters.

I'm curious as to how your character balances out Whiplash and the other villains. A lot of people are saying two villains is too many, what does your character bring?

We don't know whether the character is villainous. She does have a dark past, and she is very seductive and distracting. We are not sure exactly where she's coming from, and what her intentions are, I'm not saying that will all be revealed. But there are a lot of characters in this movie, and a lot of new characters. And it is a balancing act. I think that between the huge explosive action, the romance, the battle of good versus evil - even within one's self - there's a nice balance between all of us. And I think fans will be excited to be taken down all these different journeys. They all really play into one another, and it doesn't feel like a lot of different films coming together. It feels like an ensemble. And you know, who can have too many villains?

In the comics your character works with Sam Jackson, do you have any scenes with Sam?

Um, I have worked with Sam Jackson.

She kept a tight lid on the plot details there, but this assumption seems to go along with comic books, and the "duality" issues that Scarjo is talking about above. Not a huge surprise, but a welcomed addition that keeps in canon with the comics.

Flickr user Nevada Tumbleweed has been posting dozens of pics from the 1953 nuclear cannon test, and they're as notable for the beautifully clunky 1950s hardware as for the actual devastation of the nuclear shell, detonated just 500 feet above the ground. And I feel really bad for the soldiers crouching in the trench nearby — I don't think that trench turned out to be all that helpful. More at the link. [Nevada Test Site - Operation Upshot-Knothole - 1953 on Flickr]

The cannon itself
That fireball
Soldier standing guard to make sure nobody wanders into the blast zone
More security
The weather service tracks the toxic clouds to see where they go
A pilot-less "drone" aircraft
Soldiers "duck and cover" in a trench
A WB29 aircraft being checked for radioactivity. Planes that had radioactive contamination were washed with a solution of "gunk," plus grease solvent and water, then returned to duty 24 hours later.
A B45 tornado.

From Fringe to FlashForward to V, with sidesteps into Dollhouse and Warehouse 13, the FBI were all over 2009's science fiction television (And yet, none of these activities make their list of top cases of 2009. I smell cover up). But why are so many of today's heroes working for The Man? And the same Man, at that?

Positive media portrayals are nothing new for the FBI; since its creation, the agency has actively participated in various projects, including 1935 radio show G Men and the wonderfully-titled This Is Your FBI. We remember Special Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, or Mulder and Scully from The X-Files, but this year's federal fetishism seems to have hit a new high. Part of it could be put down to a mix of comforting the audience while pretending to ramp up the excitement at the same time: They're risking their necks to make your life a safer place like the cops... But more extreme!

There's something to be said for the post-9/11 wish-fulfillment aspect of the new rash of FBI heroes; it plays directly to the idea that, even when the threat is literally unimaginable on a human scale, the people charged with protecting us will (in whatever small way) be able to recognize it first, and mobilize to stop it even if said threat is internal, which it so often seems to be. In fact, today's FBI dramas seem a particularly backhanded compliment, if they're meant to reassure; in most of the shows our new G Men and Women idols appear in, they're faced with an institution that's against them and, in some cases, implicit in the "bad stuff" that's going on around them. How many times, after all, has an FBI agent turned out to be an undercover bad guy (V, Fringe) or mentally unstable in some way (FlashForward, Fringe, Dollhouse because, let's face it, Ballard has problems) this year?

Besides the apparent ease of infiltrating the FBI, the new wave has also produced other 21st Century FBI cliches: Apparently, emotionally distant blonde women advance up the ranks easily, especially when paired with joking-yet-caring male partners. Department heads are often African American and gruff, yet ultimately caring. And new taskforces will be created at seeming random, but have to answer for budget overruns just before important breakthroughs happen. Are these really things that happen all the time in the real FBI? If so, I think someone in HR needs to find the moles immediately (Here's a clue: They're probably the ones from an alternate dimension).

Maybe the FBI-zing of science fiction is just a way of making everything into a procedural, making it easier for non-genre fans to get to grips with the new shows, turning everything into a CSI: Aliens or the like, and we're reading way too much into it. Perhaps it's a fad, and next year, every new show will have firemen. But for whatever reason, 2009 has been the year when only one kind of government employee could save the world, and we were happy to have them. Viva la FBI.

Ruins of Detroit [Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre Photography via Twitter]

United Artists Theater
Michigan Central Station
Farwell Building
Broderick Tower
Whitney Building
Bank Vault
Ballroom, Fort Wayne Hotel
East Methodist Church
Library
Fisher Body 21 Plant
Ballroom, Lee Plaza Hotel

Many don't realize that Alda has a geeky side. Known for his 11 year story arc on M*A*S*H, the actor has always been fascinated with science. He's been lucky enough to entertain that side of his life by serving on the board of the World Science Festival and hosting the now defunct Scientific American Frontiers for 12 years.

While he hasn't starred in any science-based films (yet), Alda did act the part of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in the play QED in 2001. Explaining his lack of science fiction on his resume, Alda tells io9, "Nothing's been offered to me that looked really interesting." Are you listening, Hollywood?

"I used to read science fiction a lot and I still like it if it's a model of how we really are, so we can see ourselves from another perspective," Alda continues. "The thing is that I read so much science, much more than I do fiction, because to me, science in itself is a great detective story that's happening in front of us. I don't get as involved with science fiction, except as it tries to help me understand who we are, because the greatest frontier in science is to understand humanity itself."

In a quest to learn more about that very subject, Alda and the folks at PBS take a look at what makes us human in a three-part series premiering on January 6th. The Human Spark, a three-part miniseries, sends Alda to three continents as he talks with archaeologists and scientists about our evolution and how we differ from Neandrathals, apes, and other animals.

"We often start off with these great divides," Alda explains. "We say, we're the only ones that cry. We're the only ones that laugh. We're the only ones that build skyscrapers. And little by little, as we've explored this, I've begun to see some of these lines blur and disappear in certain cases. What my interviews with scientists, being out in the field with these animals, and taking part in these experiments has done, is I've personally started to feel more connected to these other animals and see some of the roots of my behavior."

Alda went so far as to have his brain scanned at MIT's McGovern Institute, but it wasn't the first time he's done so. Turns out the producers at Scientific American Frontiers have made Alda get his head examined a few times already. While the brain scans in this instance were done to show what areas scientists think are uniquely human, technicians at MIT noted that they wouldn't have been able to guess Alda's age based on his brain scans — his noggin looks a few years younger! "I've carried that along with me for a while now," Alda laughs. "It cheers me up."

Alda's big question, which has yet to be answered involves our future as a species. "Scientists have told me that the average lifespan of a species is about two million years. We've only been here a fraction of that so far. Do we have a chance of having an average existence on earth? Can you picture us here a million years from now. What would we be like? What destruction will we be capable of? I hope we learn more about ourselves and that this series makes its own small contribution to that."

The Human Spark premieres on January 6th on PBS. Check local listings for times.

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a powerful CEO, Page as his assistant, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a khaki suited bad-ass and Ken Watanabe as the bad guy. The basic plot is being heavily guarded and all imdb has to say about the picture is that, "A CEO-type becomes involved in a blackmailing scandal." But from the trailer I think it's safe to say that this blackmailing is at least happening from inside someone's thoughts, because "your mind is the scene of the crime." Also, is Page screaming "Wake me up!" at one point?

Out in theaters July 16.

[via Apple]

The poster, which has been put up at the Tottenham Court Road bus shelter in London, includes some sort of built-in screen that shows images from a film shot by Frank Budgen. What you see is a distressed-looking girl sitting alone in the corner of a room. At the bottom of the poster is a green collection tin that, if you place money into, gets the virtual girl to look towards the person who just dropped the coins in and give a half-smile.

The ads promote Barnardo's children's charity. We wonder how much spare change the group is getting via this one bus stop and if, ironically, any downtrodden children have yet to try to pry that collection jar, or flat screen, straight off.

Barnardo's Interactive Poster [Creative Review]

These posters of well known scifi shows (and a few purely geeky shows) like The X-Files, True Blood, and MacGyver were envisioned by Austrian designer Exergian, and are sold as archival giclee prints via Blanka for £50.00 or $80.

By Exergian

By Exergian

By Exergian

By Exergian

By Exergian

By Exergian

By Exergian

By Exergian

By Exergian

By Exergian

Here's the trailer:

Monday

A surprisingly strong start to the week comes in the form of a couple of marathons. Discovery has a day of Mythbusters starting at 9am and finishing with a brand new episode, "Mini Myth Mayhem," at 9pm, while Syfy takes the Doctor Who route and runs with a Sarah Jane Adventures marathon from 10am through 3pm.

For those seeking more high-brow, independent movie thrills, IFC is showing 1995 Australian ecology alien movie Alien Visitor at 9:45pm. Here's the synopsis:

A beautiful alien is sent from the planet Epsilon to pass judgment on the shameful way in which humans have mishandled their planet. Set in a near future in which humanity has made great strides in cleaning up the Earth, it begins as a grandmother tells her granddaughters a story from the past. Her tale begins in the desert outback during the dark times when people were actively ruining their planet. The naked alien is placed upon the desert where she eventually meets a surveyor who quickly gives her some clothing. As the two travel across the land, the alien constantly admonishes him for his race's carelessness and greed. She informs him that other intelligent life forms consider humans hopeless failures. Using her ability to travel instantly to any of Earth's locales, she takes the bewildered surveyor on a whirlwind tour to prove her point.

(Also, pretty much entirely off-topic, but there's a two hour block of Community reruns on NBC at 8pm, for those who wonder where Chevy Chase is these days. It's not SF, but I recommend it nonetheless)

Tuesday

With the exception of ABC's Better Off Ted at 9:30pm - the first of two episodes this week - it's all about the movies today. You can go for camp horror thrills on AMC with Jack Nicholson werewolf movie Wolf (at midnight) and the two Ghostbusters movies at 11am and 1:30pm, respectively, or else some classic anime with Howl's Moving Castle on IFC at 6:50am. Set your TiVo.

Wednesday

Unless you're looking for the 11pm AMC showing of Aliens, it's pretty much up to ABC's Eastwick at 10am to keep the flame of television alive with new episode "Magic Snow and Creepy Gene":

When the women make a pact never to reveal what they did to Jamie, they realize they must go their separate ways — and abandon their powers. A guilty Joanna tries to help Penny find closure; sparks fly between Kat and her hot new neighbor, single dad Colin, who has come to Eastwick with his young son Gene and a dark secret. Just as Kat and Joanna are moving on, things get complicated for Roxie when Darryl returns to Eastwick with the truth about his mysterious past.

Thursday

As if knowing that you're very unlikely to be watching television today, there's a scarcity of great programming available... Although, we have to admit, we love the perverseness of Syfy's Twilight Zone marathon, which starts at 8:30 in the morning today and runs until Saturday morning.

Friday

See in 2010 with as much David Tennant as you can stand: At midnight, BBC America starts a rerun of the entire Russell T. Davies Doctor Who run, leading up to Saturday's "The End of Time, Part Two." Yes, the whole thing, over what's pretty much two days. It's kind of awesome.

If you're not a Doctor Who fan, though, there's always another Mythbusters marathon on the Discovery Channel (9am through 3am Saturday).

Also, there are new episodes of Batman: The Brave and The Bold (7:30pm) and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (9pm, and it's a double bill of "Grievous Intrigue" and "The Deserter") on Cartoon Network. And there's an all-new Better Off Ted on ABC at 8:30pm (along with a rerun of the first episode of the new season at 9:30).

And if even that isn't enough, then AMC would like your attention: They're showing Voyage to The Bottom Of The Sea at 9am, Alien Resurrection at 11:30am, and all three Matrix movies starting at 2pm. Of course, there's also 24 solid hours of Twilight Zone on Syfy, as well...

Saturday

BBC America keeps running Doctor Who through to 8:30pm's US premiere of "The End of Time, Part Two," which'll hopefully be better than the first part.

BBC America also has the US premiere of Demons, the short-lived UK Dracula-related supernatural series. Otherwise, the day belongs to Syfy's horror movie marathon: 9am Venom, 11am Shallow Ground, 1pm Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, 3pm, Timber Falls, 5pm Flu Bird Horror , 7pm Splinter, 9pm The Midnight Meat Train, 11:00pm See No Evil, 1am Sunday Death Tunnel, 3am The Shaft.

Sunday

Syfy has another movie marathon today, with a focus on monsters. It starts at 9am with Boa Vs. Python, before continuing with 11am's Manticore, 1pm's Beowulf, 3pm's Savage Planet, 5pm's The Bone Eater, 7pm's Swamp Devil, 9pm's Sea Beast, and ending with Eye of The Beast at 11pm... which just so happens to be the time that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen starts on AMC. It's almost like it was planned that way!

While there will always be coffee table books and classics people insist on owning in the pulp, many home libraries are sure to dwindle as we continue our move from a paper-based culture to a digital one.

So what happens to all those nooks within a house that are perfect for a bookcase or a stack of shelves? Will architecture and interior design change as we begin to no longer require holding space for our Margaret Atwood collection? Will social networking sites play the role of library, with synched Kindle and iTunes lists, so your friends can peruse your digital shelves?

Come to think of it, we don't remember seeing many movies set in the future that have books lying around on their sets. There's always the kook who insists on living like it's the 1800s when it's really 2200 (we're looking at you Ian Holm) but that freak's apartment is the only place you'll find a dusty library in the distant future.

Check out the gallery below to see how a few scifi movies solved the book problem.

In Minority Report, all that extra space gave way for many a holographic projector. How many beams of imagery do you see?

In the 1976 cult classic, Logan's Run, the lack of paper goods allowed for the opportunity to build the ultimate bachelor pad — rather than a reading nook, you now have room for a circuit transporter!

And well, Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element (set in 2263) proved that if you get rid of books you have much more room to hide your automatic weapons.

Both Total Recall (set in 2084) and Gattaca feature small, and we mean small, collections of books in their characters' homes. A hint to what's to come?

Book-free room in Gattaca.

If we truly do get rid of all bounded copies, we can all do as British stylist and interior designer, Abigail Ahern has done and keep the library aesthetic with a touch of wallpaper. Image via DesignSponge

We've featured Cédric Delsaux's mashups of Star Wars figures against urban settings in the past, but here he focuses particularly on Dubai. While many of Delsaux's photographs juxtapose Star Wars extraordinary visuals against a more gritty urban reality, the Dubai series is actually meant to show how utterly consonant Dubai's setting is with these science fiction elements. It invites us to ask whether the Dubai, for all its faults, is a truly modern city moving into the future, or a piece of urban planning fiction, every bit as contrived as the planets and space stations we see in the movies.

The Dark Lens — The Dubai Invasion [The Empty Quarter]

Anime News is announcing that the kick-ass director of Sky Crawlers, Ghost in the Shell and the hotly anticipated Assault Girls film, Mamoru Oshii, is taking on a live action retelling of this classic robot. Which means it will most likely be massively better than the Imagi CG film we've been waiting for, which sadly just looked creepy in this teaser trailer.

The director has already adapted the material once before, mounting a stage production just earlier this year. The show featured a 6-metre tall (i.e., one-third scale) stage robot that was reportedly capable of free standing movement.

The story's hero is little Shotaro Kaneda, whose scientist father dies after spending his life building the ultimate weapon, a giant robot. After his passing, the robot is then given to the son, who uses it exactly the way you or I would: to fight crime and other evil robots. Originally titled Tetsujin 28-gō, this manga was created by Mitsuteru Yokoyama in the 50s. Then it was adapted to an anime series, and later translated to the states as Gigantor.

Song parody writer the great Luke Ski is the musical brains behind Battlestar Rhapsody, which is set to appropriate clips here by YouTuber nnaylime.

[via /Film]

Superhero Hype has the latest news about Martin Campbell's, from Casino Royale, Green Lantern.

The entire thing will be shot by cinematographer Dion Beebe, who not only shot the amazing-looking Equilibrium, but won an Academy Award for Memoirs of a Geisha.

He'll be working with production designer Grant Major, who worked on The Ruins and King Kong and took home an Oscar for his work on Lord of The Rings. And costume designer Ngila Dickson, who also received an Academy Award for LOTR.

And finally Art Director François Audouy who helped bring the gorgeous scenes from Watchmen to life, is joining the crew. So it seems that Warner Brothers isn't screwing around with this picture, and is investing big money for big turn out. Gone are any campy expectations we had for this film, we're now expecting something much more epic.

Also, our insider sources tell us that production is readying in New Orleans, and should be expecting up to a thousand construction workers for sets and special effects at peak production. Rumors on the internet would lead us to believe that filming would then start in March, ending in either July of August 2010.

[Image Via Geek Tyrant]

Despite early concerns that Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel would topple James Cameron's crown this weekend based on advance ticket sales, the second week of release for Avatar bodes incredibly well for the long-term prospects for the movie; it brought in an estimated $75 million, a staggeringly low drop-off when compared with its opening $77 million.

More impressively, Avatar's success comes despite the second most-successful film of the weekend, Sherlock Holmes breaking the record for the most successful Christmas opening of all time (Its estimated $65.4 million easily beating previous holder Meet The Fockers' $46.2 million), and amid the most successful weekend domestic box office gross of all time; this weekend, American cinemas took an estimated $285 million, up from July last year, when the opening of The Dark Knight led American theaters to a $260 million best. With these kinds of numbers, it's no surprise that box office records for IMAX were broken this weekend thanks to Avatar (Earning $12.1 million globally), or that the movie is #1 in all but one of its 108 countries of release right now (India is the only hold-out, but even there, it's #2). If this keeps up, then we may have discovered a film that'll topple Titanic off the most successful movie of all time title after all...

Avatar 2:

The planet that Pandora orbits is called Polyphemus, and it's the primary for a system of moons, says James Cameron. "We have some story ideas for how to branch out into other moons of Polyphemus and the Alpha Centauri A solar system." [L.A. Times]

The Wolfman:

The movie's much-vaunted CG is used mostly in the transformation scenes, to bridge the actor's real face and the makeup of the wolf face — the film isn't supposed to be super CG-heavy, because it's a tribute to the old Lon Chaney films. [Shock Till You Drop]

The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus:

When Dr. Parnassus made his deal with the devil to hand over his daughter in exchange for immortality and perpetual youth, the daughter wasn't even born yet — now she's 16, and the devil has come to London to collect on the deal. But Tony (Heath Ledger et al.), who passes through Parnassus' mirror into a land of imagination where his soul faces moral challenges, has a sketchy past and hidden agenda of his own. [IGN]

Lost:

E! Online is continuing with their daily season six spoilers. Apparently, we'll meet a new big bad who makes Ben Linus look like an amateur, and here are some clues about him. He:

* Killed **h*.
* Killed ***o*.
* Is *** **o** *****e*.
* Wants to "g* ****."

People are interpreting this stuff to mean that "he" is the Smoke Monster and he "wants to go home." There is some disagreement over who "he" killed, though. (Don't forget, the Smoke Monster told Ben to obey Flocke.) Meanwhile, we'll see Desmond again early in the season, and it'll be in a surprising encounter with one of the Losties. [E! Online and E! Online]

And Sun, Jack and Locke were filming a scene on the beach where the Losties' camp was. But which Locke was this? [SpoilersLost]

Doctor Who:

We will find out "slightly" more about the Doctor's role in the Time War, says David Tennant, but "it won't be more explicit." And we'll see more familiar faces from the Doctor's past, including some surprises. [New Jersey Star-Ledger and MTV]

And fans are piecing together what we know to speculate a bit about how it all turns out. We know Donna survives, because we saw her filming a scene in her wedding dress. Wilf may be an exiled Time Lord, or something similar. Also, the mysterious woman speaking to Wilf could be Romana, or it could be a much older Rose Smith, who's lived a good long life with the "hand Doctor" in the alternate universe, and will now sacrifice herself heroically. [Sunny Tyler]

And here's a new trailer for part 2, different fromthe one which aired after Part 1. [Den Of Geek]

It sounds like we might get more introspective conversations between the Doctor and the Master in part 2, judging from this interview with Russell T. Davies:

I've always thought in a very strange way these two men love each other - not in a gay way, but they are similar and share a lot. There's more dialogue between them this time, more conversation. It's hard to bring them together for long in a scene because each of them will try to stop the other and they won't stand around talking too much. But I've worked hard this time. We learn more about their history, where they want to go. Both of them are heading for death, that's the important thing. The Doctor knows he's going to die, The Master is dying. He's been brought back to life but it hasn't worked, so both of them are trying to survive while heading to the Immortality Gate. Both in the same situation but at the same time enemies and total opposites.

Also, he hints once again that we shouldn't assume the Doctor regenerates in Saturday's episode. And it sounds like the Doctor references the events of "Waters Of Mars" one more time. [Digital Spy]

So the "Weeping Angels" from "Blink" are coming back in the new season. But how will they be portrayed? There may be a few hints in this new video about them, which the BBC just posted, narrated by Captain Jack Harkness. [via BlogtorWho]

Fringe:

Here are some promo pics from the unaired season one episode "Unearthed," which airs in January. [SpoilerTV]

And here are some pics from the next episode, "Edina City Limits". [SpoilerTV]

Chuck:

We've already seen Chuck play the guitar and fight kung-fu style, but we'll see him do other stuff, like drive vehicles. Anything a human body can do, Chuck can theoretically do now. [TV Talk Podcast]

Day Of The Triffids:

The characters in this new version don't kill the Triffids by pouring salt water on them, like in some earlier versions, says actor Dougray Scott. He plays the main character, who avoids blindness because his eyes were bandaged after an operation, and he hooks up with a radio journalist played by Joely Richardson. He adds:

The writer of our version has heavily updated the Wyndham concept, which was written at a time when people feared nuclear proliferation. There was that great fear of nuclear escape and his novel had a sort of cathartic response to that. Our production is doing a similar thing, only we've updated it to the genetic modification of plants created to replace oil in a world where oil has disappeared, which could be in the very near future.

[California Chronicle]

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

The Horde
We've been on pins and needles about The Horde since they debuted the behind the scenes news footage and gorgeous concept art. And now, we finally have a trailer that's longer than a few seconds. In the wake of so many zombie films, this is one that has stood out since the beginning. The story takes place in a run-down high-rise where police stand-off is going down. Both the cops and the crooks are marooned in this building by a swarm of zombies, and they'll have to work together. Take a look at the trailer: You have to admit the make-up is fantastic.

Adele Blanc-Sec
The Adele Blanc-Sec site is up and running and, thanks to Twitch, we now have the trailer! The film is based on the '70s books that take place in Paris just before WWI. The main character, Adele, is a novelist turned investigative journalist obsessed with the occult, which she apparently gets in this film in spades. Check out the dragons/dinosaurs that are unleashed on Paris, plus here's a few stills.

Portrait of a Zombie
If we're going to post another zombie film, we're at least going to make sure it's different. Like this little Irish film right here. We'll let the synopsis do the explaining:

Zombies roam the streets of Dublin. An American documentary crew come to Ireland to make a documentary about the Murphy Family, whose eldest son Billy has turned, but the family still choose to care for him, much to the chagrin of the neighbors and the local crime boss. The Documentary crew soon become enthralled in the proceedings as Billy's story unfolds.

Portrait of a Zombie - Teaser from Portrait of a Zombie on Vimeo.

Maneater
Quiet Earth made us aware of this little monster gem. And by gem we mean, terrible original Syfy-esque feature (Not that there's anything wrong with that). Dean Cain has to go up against the Wendigo that "eats people" and, apparently, light because this trailer is dark. But what will Dean do when he realizes that the monster he's tracking may be, dum dum dum....himself?

A former FBI profiler, now a sheriff of a small town and a single parent of a high school aged daughter, begins to profile a series of unexplained murders only to learn that the monster he's profiling may be himself.

If you're sick of your family already, there's an interesting collection of old sci-fi shows available on YouTube to help distract you and tide you over until all your favorite shows come back to television. Amongst them, the original 1980s version of The Day Of The Triffids, the television spin-off of Highlander and our favorite, the cartoon version of The Big Guy and Rusty The Boy Robot, AKA "The last good thing Frank Miller ever did."

There's also the BBC's live remake of The Quatermass Experiment from a few years ago, original Outer Limits episodes and three episodes of Gatchaman for the anime fans amongst you.

It's an odd list of hidden gems, but that doesn't stop us from making plans to overload on them before 2010. Go see the full list for yourself here

Grandma's fruitcake may have been lethal in its own special way, but it paled in comparison to the horrors of the "Battle of the Centuries" to come:

Death swifter than light, silent and stealthy as the shadow of a thought, will ride on the wings of radio to destroy nations in the space of a single breath. . . Imagine a fleet of battle planes circling, maneuvering, attacking or holding fire at the direction of minds hundreds, even thousands of miles away! Imagine the human eye endowed with a power of vision capable of spanning these thousands of miles to witness the lightning-like seep of this squadron . . . leaving in its wake a burnt and blackened desert, devoid of all life!

Among the weapons of the future predicted were:

Jets of water charged with electricity to kill all animal life with which they come in contact.

Wireless telephony, wireless sight, wireless heat, wireless power and wireless writing. . . .

Wireless fire to devastate enemy territory. . . .

Radio "eyes" and "ears" for the ferreting out of secret war plans through thousands of miles of space. . . .

Electrically controlled rockets operated on wires for wrecking planes. . . .

The possible perfection of mental telepathy to the point where it may be used over great distances to verify wireless speech. . .

These were not the "prophecy of a romantic fictionist," noted the Times, but the "sober conclusions" of Professor Archibald Montgomery Low, today considered a pioneer of radio-guidance systems.

Researchers at Imperial College London are working to create an alcohol-like drug that would let imbibers experience a pleasant state of inebriation without worrying about becoming drunk, hungover, or physically addicted to the substance. Led by controversial neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt, the team is looking at benzodiazepines — such as the main ingredient in Valium — to achieve the desired effect. Nutt envisions a world where drinking is safer, with fewer of the accidents and incidents currently related to alcohol.

The advantages of benzodiazepines, according to Nutt, is that they don't affect the brain's addiction centers in the way alcohol does and that they can be easily purged from the body with an antidote. Effectively, if Nutt's research pans out, he claims that drinkers would be able to "switch off" the effects of the faux alcohol by ingesting a pill.

Nutt and his fellow researchers are currently trying to find the benzodiazepine that most closely mimics the effects of alcohol. However, he is concerned that — even if he is successful — European governments will refuse to permit the sale of benzodiazeprine "alcohol," since benzos don't enjoy the same privileged history that alcohol does.

Alcohol substitute that avoids drunkenness and hangovers in development [Telegraph via reddit]

Get The Nostalgia While The Nostalgia Getting's Good
The failure of Jennifer's Body at the box office punctured the myth of Megan Fox, but in doing so left Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen's epic success even more inexplicable. You mean that everyone who went to see that genuinely wanted to see giant robots fighting for the right to appear in a story that made sense instead of Megan Fox's ass? Really? (To be fair, maybe it was John Tuturro's ass they couldn't resist.) Of course not; they wanted to relive memories of their childhood/the first Transformers movie/the Go-Bots by proxy. Same reason that Star Trek was such a hit, and the dismal Terminator Salvation made money at all. The problem with this for movie studios is that there's only a limited number of things to be nostalgic about, and they're burning through them quickly (Next year's Tron Legacy and The A-Team show that we're already up to the mid-'80s); when there're already plans to reboot Battlestar Galactica as a movie franchise months after its conclusion as a (rebooted) television show and restarting the Fantastic Four movies from scratch just a few years after the failure of Rise Of The Silver Surfer, you can tell that there's nervousness. With good reason; the lawsuit over the rights to Superman show that nostalgia could get more expensive for filmmakers in years to come. Maybe one day, Disney's $4 Billion buyout of Marvel Entertainment's IP will look like a bargain.

Find A Voice With Something To Say, Then Let It Speak
2009 was a year of extremes when it came to the creation of movies and television that didn't (entirely) rely on IP graverobbing. On the one hand, it was the year when the phrase "production hiatus" became widely known as code for "The Powers That Be don't like what's being done and are about to 'fix' it" as the trains seemed to come off the usually-smoother-running TV production track more often, and more publicly, than usual (See: Dollhouse, FlashForward and V, which has had two such hiatuses, and "coincidentally" switched showrunners twice, as well). On the other, it was the year when smaller movies like District 9 and Moon garnered critical acclaim - and, in the case of D9, a pretty amazing box office haul - for being individual, unusual and something other than generic production line blockbusters. Avatar, too, is being hailed for being the singular vision of James Cameron and, maybe most importantly, that being a good thing. Maybe this was the year that started a renaissance in an appreciation for the auteur theory after all?

On Television, Burying The Lede Will Kill You
We've said this more than once recently, but the fact that Dollhouse's second season was promoted to critics with its lackluster first episode may have damaged the show's chances irreparably. You can't blame the promotions people, because it makes sense to sell something based on the product itself; the "blame" lies with those making the show, who thought that they had the time and space to ramp up the season slowly, reiterating the central concept of the series with episodes that (sadly) repeated the rhythm of the first season. As the creative teams behind V (Put on hiatus after its first four episodes, and before we'd even seen a complete lizard reveal and/or any rodent eating) and the upcoming Day One (Restructured from a full season to a four episode mini-series to test the waters for a regular show) can attest to, there's no time for a slow build on network television anymore. Both Fringe and FlashForward sped up their timetables to try and meet demand for near-instant gratification, and both are still dogged with rumors of cancellation. Remember, television people: Put your best foot forward immediately.

Goodbyes Should Always Be Brief
Yes, yes: We loved Russell T Davies' run on Doctor Who as much as anyone, but the year of special episodes seemed weighed down by a sense of its own self-importance that reached epic proportions during this weekend's "The End of Time, Part One" (On the plus side, Now we know that Barack Obama will save the world with his economic announcement or something. Not that that'll seem horribly dated, oh, anytime after February 2009). Battlestar Galactica, too, approached epic levels of pomp and pretension during its final days. It's not that we would rather have rushed either show offstage unfinished, but there's something to be said for brevity and not getting too wrapped up in your own ego. Lost, consider yourself on notice.

Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should
One word: Watchmen. Yes, we get it; we have the technology to make Doctor Manhattan look like he exists in a particularly shiny version of reality. But, months after all the hype, hoopla and multiple versions on DVD, it's still worth asking: Did Watchmen gain anything from the transition from comic to movie? Besides Zack Snyder's bank account, did anything? Sometimes it's okay to leave the original alone.

Oxman, a Ph.D. candidate in design computation at MIT, specializes in reactive architecture: surfaces, furnishings, and structures that change their own properties according to different stimuli. Her resin floors grow thicker where they need to support more weight; her composite walls rearrange their windows and stress lines based on local weather conditions. One of her best-known works, a chaise longue called Beast, can adjust its shape, flexibility, and softness to fit each person who sits in it.

The language that Oxman uses to discuss her work is provocative — she talks as much about the "behavior" of a piece as its appearance or function — and nearly everything she's done evokes biology in some way, whether it recalls the composition of human bone, the veinwork of a butterfly wing, or the helical polymer chains that comprise our DNA. She's remarked that "the biological world is displacing the machine as a general model of design."

It's an approach at once oddly specific and not particularly limiting, if the portfolio of Material Ecology, Oxman's design initiative, is anything to go by. Household items like carpal-tunnel therapy gloves — with zones of varying rigidity patterned after the spots of a cheetah — share space with designs for entire skylines.

About those skylines: some of Oxman's most ambitious work has to do with what buildings could look like in the twenty-first century. A proposal for "PeristalCity," an urban design plan based on a re-imagining of Manhattan's elevators, features slumped skyscrapers that look less like buildings than melted candles. "[T]he vast space… which the elevator shaft occupies is, temporally speaking, useless," the proposal reads. "Should the elevator, of all things, persist as the non-negotiable limit of our vertical habits?… What if circulation was to become the actual living and/or working space?"

Rather than having a conventional elevator traverse an inflexible vertical column to deliver people to stationary rooms, Oxman proposes "[a]n inhabitable pocket (living and working unit)… contained within a flexible element." These bubbles of space would travel throughout the larger body of the building by the same principles of expansion and contraction that move muscle tissue around.

A selection of Oxman's work is currently on display at Boston's Museum of Science. The full Material Ecology oeuvre can be found online, though much of the language seems like it would be opaque to anyone who hasn't taken several high-level design courses. Still, the projects are worth a look; it's not clear whether Oxman's materials and designs will become a thing of the mainstream, but it might be wise to get acquainted with them just in case.

Photo: Neri Oxman accepting the 2009 Earth Award for her design work.

The Independent reports that researchers from Cambridge University in the UK observed locusts climbing ladder-like structures to investigate whether or not they used vision to guide them. The fact that they did means that they're displaying a level of visual brain processing previously believed to be too great for insects, according to the study's Dr. Jeremy Niven:

The visual control of limb placement in the locusts suggests that this can be achieved by much smaller-brained insects. It's another example of insects performing a behavior we previously thought was restricted to relatively big-brained animals with sophisticated motor control, such as humans, monkeys or octopuses.

Next, Cambridge scientists plan on setting up a chess match between an octopus and a locust to decide which is more intelligent.

Look out! A great step for locust-kind [Independent.co.uk]

Tom Waltz told Comic Book Resources that, although it seems that Legion: Prophets may feature background characters and events to the Paul Bettany-starring movie out January 22nd, there's more going on that may seem at first apparent:

Our comic provides an exclusive expansion on some of the ideas and themes presented in the film and, perhaps, a hint at things to come should there be a movie sequel... Each of these people have been chosen as prophets to protect the only hope for humanity in the apocalypse - a special child, who is yet to be born (for more on that, you have to see the movie!). As the apocalypse strikes and angelic possession begins to plague the planet (again, see the movie!), all five of these seemingly ordinary folks quickly find out they have special gifts and powers that set them apart from other humans... as well as a unifying mission they've all been given hints to through strange (and sometimes horrific) visions. These are standalone issues, though the fourth issue does feature all five prophets. And did I mention these are not all of the prophets in 'Legion' lore? Hint, hint.

Does that mean more Legion comics, or just that Legion: Prophets leads directly into the movie? You can find out for yourself; the collection of Legion: Prophets is in stories now.

The Many Faces of "Legion" [Comic Book Resources]

Collider's Steve Weintraub spoke with Sherlock Holmes producer Dan Lin, who was also one of the producers on the on-hold Justice League: Mortal movie. When asked about the status of the movie, he said,

It's on-hold right now as DC sorts out its strategy but as you've talked to Alan Horn and Jeff Robinov it seems like they're building to Justice League instead of going with the team movie first and doing individual movies after that... They're unveiling their DC strategy in January so you'll hear more about that and they'll speak about that in the new year.

If true, this model has seemed to be working out for Marvel, and with good reason: It gives audiences a chance to get to know the individual characters so that they can anticipate the potential of a team-up, as opposed to spinning characters out of a team after the fact. It makes a lot of sense for the Justice League concept, in particular, considering that that has always been the team that's meant to be an all-star league for DC's superheroes. DC Entertainment are expected to make an announcement of their immediate plans next month; wonder if we'll find out about plans for Flash and Hawkman movies to accompany Green Lantern after all...

Producer Dan Lin on the Justice League Movie, Suicide Squad, and Stephen King's It [Collider]

As we've discussed before, there are really two Russell T. Davieses. There's the clever, twisted screenwriter who gave us Doctor Who episodes like "Midnight" and "Turn Left," and the Torchwood miniseries "Children Of Earth." And then there's the crazy bombastic throw-everything-at-the-wall-twice storyteller who gave us "Journey's End" and other idiotic extravaganzas.

Actually, I've generally liked RTD's Christmas specials, because they let him tell a larger-than-life story without getting too bogged down in mythos and nonsense. But this time around, bogged down is exactly what we were.

But first of all, the nice moments. I think that somewhere in the alimentary canal of this misshapen beast, there was a story about male friendship lurking around. The Doctor has two male friends in this story: Wilfred Mott, who's an "old soldier" and the grandfather of the Doctor's former companion Donna. And the Master, who used to be the Doctor's best friend and is now his arch frenemy. In the RTD era, the Doctor's main relationships have always been with women, except for Captain Jack, with whom he's had a sort of flirty-but-wary relationship. So it was nice to see the Doctor having more real conversations with other men, without anything overtly sexual to them.

The cafe scene between the Doctor and Wilf, in particular, was marvelous. I could have used another five minutes of those two just sitting and talking, and acting like real people. They're not quite equals — Wilf insists on calling the Doctor "sir," and the Doctor condescends to Wilf a fair bit — but the Doctor seems to be able to open up to Wilf in a way he can't to any of his younger companions. It's really great stuff.

And likewise, the Doctor and the Master get one great scene together, where the Doctor realizes the drumming in the Master's head is "real" because he can hear it too when their heads press together. But more than that, they get to talk for a moment about what they used to have when they were Time Lords together, and what they've lost.

Much of the rest of the story, though, is a bit of a muddle. The Doctor arrives in the far future, where the Ood are dreaming about events in the early 21st century that could rip a new arsehole in the the space/time continuum, and somehow every moment the Doctor hangs around in the far future, it's getting later in the early 21st century. So he runs and jumps back in time, only to arrive... too late. The Master has been resurrected, but it went wrong and now he eats disgustingly and chews with his mouth open. Not to mention all of the crazay roaring — see the video above.

But let's ask an expert. What did you think of John Simm's performance, Saul Tigh? Did you like it?

(A side note: what is it with Time Lords and gross mouth action all of a sudden? We have the Master's mastication on screen for far too long. And apparently the phrase "Timothy Dalton spittle" has been a trending topic on Twitter.)

So the resurrected Master is a total mess — but luckily, someone drops a handy "take over the world" technology into his lap, all tied up with a pretty bow. Because it is Christmas, after all. My favorite bit with Joshua Naismith was when he says "I'm not an idiot," a mere ten minutes after Timothy Dalton's "narrator" voice has called him an idiot. If the narrator says you're an idiot, then you're an idiot. Sorry. Anyway, somehow Naismith spotted a tiny blur on a security camera at a women's prison, and deduced that this means the Master is back from the dead, and he can fix their mysterious bit of alien tech. But first, he's in bondage, yay:

Oh, and I didn't even get into the weird bits about the "Books Of Saxon" and the formula and the anti-formula and the sassy cactus people and the idea that a bit of technology designed to heal an entire world would let you program it with just one genetic template. It's all a bit flimsy, and even less thought out than Davies' other giant brainsplats.

And what was with the Obama obsession? Are people in the U.K. really obsessed with our president? If Obama actually did give a speech about the economy on Christmas, I think about three people would watch it in the United States. Was this meant to be a sneaky message about how the awesome politicians you adore always turn out to be evil megalomaniacs, or something else? It was a bit jarring, in any case. Plus, since when are real-world politicians in charge in the Who universe? We saw the U.S. president die in "The Sound Of Drums" and it was some random guy. Plus, we've seen at least four fictional U.K. prime ministers, including Harold Saxon and the Slitheen acting P.M. But Obama is president now?

So yeah, mostly it was silly in a bad way, and seemed to have been padded out with lots of scenes of the Master chewing in our faces and grunting endlessly about how people eat too much at Christmas. I can't imagine how that would have gone over for people watching it right after their Christmas dinners. Is RTD trying to make us ill? Most of all — and this is the shocker — it was a bit boring. There was lots of talking, interspersed with lots of shouting, but RTD mostly seemed to be concerned with shoving all of his plot devices into place for part two, using brute force for the most part.

Oh, and before anyone else says it: Sure, Doctor Who is a children's show — in the same way Star Wars is a movie for kids. Like Star Wars (and, I'd argue, much of Star Trek), Doctor Who is designed to appeal to kids with smart, engaging storylines, while also pulling in adults and appealing to the adult viewers who grew up watching. If everyone over the age of 18 agrees never to criticize the Star Wars prequels again, I will happily stop expecting Doctor Who to contain a modicum of sense. Okay? Great.

Want a second opinion? Here's Doctor Who skeptic Charlie Stross:

I mean, WTF? We are deep in the grip of attention-deficit plotting here, veering wildly between disjointed lectures, Ancient Prophesies (always a bad sign), and bad dreams foreshadowing the return of respawning enemies. Our narrative viewpoint is all over the road, round the bend, and driving with one foot floored on the accelerator while guzzling a bottle of Bucky. I headcrashed painfully during the seamless chase (on foot) from a scrapyard to a shipyard (paging Continuity, Continuity to the white courtesy phone): but the coup de grace was the re-invention of The Master as a bizarre cross between Sauron, a Bond villain (of the more psychotic variety) and I. R. Baboon in the Disease Fiesta episode of I Am Weasel. (Which is not on YouTube, and the Cartoon Network ain't running repeats right now. Why is I Am Weasel not on YouTube? Bring me my Cow and my Chicken! Now!!)

Ahem. There is also the small matter of fifteen minutes of infodump in a forty-two minute slot, narrated by Timothy Dalton as, er, [SPOILER], and a spavined nag of a pantomime horse of a plot (that sagged in the middle) to consider. SPANK.

That said, I did find the episode's ending fairly hilarious, with everyone on Earth turning into the Master. John Simm is so much better when he's getting to be fun and triumphant, rather than grunting about pork chops.

And I'm not made of stone — of course I'm excited for the return of the Time Lords, despite Timothy Dalton using my TV screen as a spitoon. I'm wondering exactly how the Master destroying the human race brings the Time Lords back, though. I guess all of the future stuff that humanity is supposed to do no longer happens as a result, including the Mars base thing but also including all of humanity's wars against the Daleks. So maybe there's a domino thingy. Anyway, I'm intrigued and hoping for something a bit more awesome and less shouty.

Even though this first clip from next week's episode does fill me with a bit of dread:

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!

There is, we've been told, something both primal and noble about people punching each other while wearing padded gloves that goes beyond a human desire to see people bleed; how else can you explain aliens coming to Earth and making Superman box Muhammad Ali? It's that primal aspect that gives boxing its special place in science fiction - something that can be used, snobbily, to comment on the lowbrow nature of characters or surroundings (or, alternately, show that some characters have not abandoned themselves to the bloodless world of technology), but nonetheless, cynically inserted to get the audience excited. Of course, that doesn't explain Super Boxers, but I'm not sure anything explains Super Boxers.

When it comes to SF Boxing, however, it's really all about Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots:

God knows what made toy designers Marvin Glass and Associates think that a robot boxing game was a good idea back in 1964 - Aside from robots being on their mind in general, that is; earlier that decade, they'd already created "Mr. Machine" and "Robot Commando" for a different manufacturer - but we're glad they did. The toy has not only survived for forty-five years (including a short-lived stint as "Clash Of The Cosmic Robots"), it's felled chess greats and given Hugh Jackman something to do that isn't Wolverine-related. What more can you ask for?

Here's to you, then, boxing: Brutal, basic and occasionally bot-based. We'd still rather bring a gun than some gloves, but we can see that you serve a (somewhat awesome) purpose at times.

Each year, Jackson Publick, Doc Hammer, and the rest of the folks behind The Venture Bros. cover a holiday song in the voices of their animated alter egos. The Monarch, Dr. Girlfriend (now Mrs. Dr. The Monarch), and their henchmen are especially festive during the holiday season.

In 2006, supervillain and superscientist supergroup "Venture Aid" covered Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmastime?"

In 2007, the Monarchs took on The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York."

And last year, in a tragic move, Henchman 21 prerecorded himself and Henchman 24 singing "Wonderful Christmastime." Sadly, Henchman 24 didn't survive to see Christmas that year.

Check out Quick Stop Entertainment for other Venture Christmas carols, including a cover of David Bowie and Bing Crosby's "Peace On Earth"/"Little Drummer Boy" medley, the Monarch and his loyal henchmen taking on Dolly Parton's "Hard Christmas Candy," and this year's Christmas song — The Monarch covering "The Chipmunk Song" with the help of Henchman 21 and the Moppets.

Holiday Havoc: The Venture Bros. [Quick Stop Entertainment via Metafilter]