By Geoff Manaugh. This winter, while out in Los Angeles on a trip for Venue, I had the enormous pleasure of stopping by special effects house Spectral Motion — responsible for the effects in Hellboy, X-Men: First Class, and Pacific Rim, among others. I visited with Nicola Twilley to interview Mike Elizalde, CEO of

When you write about other worlds and strange discoveries, you need a quick wit. And an ear for clever dialogue, that keeps the story buzzing along. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that many of science fiction and fantasy's greatest creators started out in comedy, including sitcoms.

One of the great joys of science fiction is encountering alien races, with their weird customs and vastly different biologies. A really great alien race can make you question everything you know about humanity — but sometimes, alien races don't entirely make sense.

Every year, it's easy to come up with a long list of the year's worst science fiction and fantasy movies. Reels and reels of garbage arrive in cinemas with shocking regularity. But it's a good year when you can think of half a dozen great genre films off the top of your head. By that standard, 2011 was a good year.

io9 recently caught up with actor Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), who plays the pratfall-prone Inspector Thomson in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin. Frost filled us on the motion-capture process, potential upcoming projects with longtime collaborator Simon Pegg, and what it's like to play a…

Attack the Block is a strong contender for one of our favorite movies of the year, and we wish more people had seen it. Will a U.S. remake help, or just ruin what was great about the original? We can't tell for sure — but director Joe Cornish told IFC News an Americanized remake is being discussed. Also being talked…

The British movie Attack the Block is so good, it puts almost all other movies to shame. It's a fantastic action flick. It's a brilliant character study. It's an uproarious comedy. Oh yeah... and it's a well-done science fiction story.

It's hard to define the brilliant British alien-chase movie Attack The Block in one line, but we've been calling it The Wire with aliens for some time now. And it turns out the film's star agrees with us.

With Comic-Con a mere two days away (and preview night tomorrow), San Diego has already begun to take form with promotions throughout the city. Check out the beginnings of the Comic-Con takeover with these pictures.

Finally, an Attack The Block trailer that demonstrates exactly how brutally hilarious Joe Cornish's alien action flick is. After watching this red-band spot, I think we all know now who would win in a fight between the block kids and J.J. Abrams' Super 8 teen movie crew.