Hitfix spoke with star Seth Rogen after learning news of the movie's delayed release date. Not surprisingly, the actor is in full spin mode, or else genuinely happy that his odd ball, little known superhero flick will have to stand toe-to-toe with big-name productions and Oscar bait.

We're both relieved and psyched about the change. It gives more time for post [production], which would have been immensely rushed if we were to come out in the summer. It also affords us more time to promote the film, (now we can go to Comic-Con with more than a car!) and ultimately is a great vote of confidence from the studio. We got the same date that movies like 'I Am Legend' and 'Avatar' are getting, so we're thrilled to be there."

More time to make a decent movie is never a bad thing, and perhaps a bit more exposure is exactly what this film needs. But it still feels like the move from July 7, 2010 to December 17, 2010 was an effort to quietly dump it off into a cold pasture.

Best Futures of 2007

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon
This alternate history novel isn't exactly about the future: it explores what our present-day lives would be like if an obscure 1940s Congressional bill to turn Alaska into a Jewish state had been passed into law. The book takes place in a world where Israel as we know it doesn't exist, and Jewish Alaska is about to be re-absorbed into the United States, sort of Hong Kong-into-China style. Chabon's given us a terrific thought experiment, beautifully realized. The Yiddish Policemen's Union uses fantasy to invite you to reexamine your assumptions about everything, which is what the very best science fiction always does.

The European Union's Emissions Reduction Plan
At the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali, the E.U. once again reiterated its plan to reduce toxic emissions throughout Europe 25 to 40 percent by 2020 and 50 percent or more by 2050.

Angel: After the Fall comic book created by Joss Whedon
This comic book from IGN, in the tradition of the much-loved comic Buffy Season Eight, takes off just where the Buffy TV spinoff Angel ended when it went off air. People who watched the show will recall that it ended with the world ending. Demons from everywhere invade Los Angeles, the sky goes dark, etc. Sure it sounds dark and craptastic, but we can't help but want to go to future Los Angeles as ruled by demon gangs and unknown crawlies — especially with Angel still fighting Big Bads, Wesley back as a ghost slave, and Gunner doing the vigilante thing even though he's become a vampire too. This is a damn fine apocalypse tale.

"The Singularity," an essay by Catherine Valente
Author of the Orphan trilogy, Catherine Valente's smart critique of dumb stories about the singularity is probably one of the best pieces of writing about science fiction that we saw all year.

The Execution Channel, by Ken MacLeod
Scottish scifi author and political junkie Ken MacLeod delivers yet another brainy tale about futuristic political factions warring for justice. Set in the very near future — unlike most of his work, which is generally several singularities removed from us — The Execution Channel depicts a dark future ripped apart by government authorities drunk on their "war on terror." What makes this future good is that MacLeod delivers a realistic picture of what genuine and hopeful political resistance would look like, even in the darkest dystopia. His heroes fight the system, and they do it realistically, with politics and persuasion rather than guns and ammo. Well, OK, they use guns and ammo too.

A Gay Pill for Fruitflies
Scientists now have a drug that makes fruitflies exhibit homosexual behavior within mere hours after taking it. Not only does this fuel our fantasies, but it forces us to imagine a future where sexual orientation could be switched around so easily that it became a matter of fashion rather than politics. Also, we like the idea that the pill makes you gay, rather than straight. If this drug worked in humans, it would become the gay man's rufie at frat parties. Just slip it in your pal's drink, and three hours later you've got a hookup!

Chicago's "Bike 2015" Plan
It may never come to fruition, but Chicago's book-length plan (published online) to convert the windy city into a "bike friendly" region by 2015 is one of the only documents that could inspire me to write the words "fascinating city planning." There are hundreds of examples of easy ways the city can reduce its reliance on cars, and the plan is rich with examples from other cities that have done the same. This is futurism at its finest, because it not only predicts a different world but offers pragmatic steps for achieving it.
Battlestar Galactica: Razor
Nobody wants to live in a universe where the Cylon have destroyed most of the humans, but everybody wants to be on a space ship with all the heroic, intriguing characters Battlestar Galactica regularly delivers. What made the TV movie Razor particularly great is that it delved more deeply into the backgrounds of some of the most intriguing members of the Pegasus crew, including the lesbotic and psychotic Admiral Cain. Plus we got to meet the tough-as-nails Kendra Shaw, who made even the Cylon-punching Starbuck look kind of wussy.

Audacia Ray
Author of Naked on the Internet, and editor of $pread, the only indie magazine I know that's by and for sex workers, Audacia Ray is a top-notch sexual futurist. She's using the Web to change the way people think about sex work (no, it's not all bad) and may help to create the kind of world we see in Firefly, where prostitutes are revered as royalty rather than thrown in jail.

Proof that Homo Sapiens is Still Rapidly Evolving
A new study came out late in the year that proved homo sapiens is not only still evolving, but at a rather rapid clip. In other words, there's still a chance we can evolve into greenhouse-gas-breathing creatures before it's too late. Or, more realistically, it means humans have to face the fact that we're still changing and trying to stop it goes against nature.

The Good:

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• The Twilight Zone: Time travel has long been a staple of Twilight Zone stories, and numerous episodes have featured things like soldiers traveling through time to Custer's Last Stand, people revisiting their pasts, and trying to alter the future. One of the best shows was "A Stop in Willoughby," which featured an overworked businessman who would dream that his train was stopping at a utopian city in the 19th century called Willoughby.
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• Doctor Who: Following hard on the heels of The Twilight Zone was Doctor Who, a series about a time-traveling alien that first appeared in 1963. It's the longest running science fiction series in history, and its recent seasons have been hailed by fans and critics alike, even if the special effects are still a bit craptastic. In a great episode called "The Face of Evil," the Doctor (played by the excellent Tom Baker) revisits a planet he'd been to in the past, only to find that they now fear a giant stone effigy of his face. Meddling in the past sometimes leads to poor results.
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• Voyagers!: This time tripping series featured a traveler from the future, Phineas Bogg, teaming up with teenaged Jeffrey Jones and "fixing" history. They'd do stuff like make sure the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. They traveled around with a device called The Omni, which looked like a big pocket watch. It had two lights on top: the red one meant there was a problem with the timestream, and the green one meant all was well. Yes, it sounds cheesy, but it was great fun.
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• Quantum Leap: Yet another show about fixing mistakes in history, but this series made the episodes a bit more personal, as Dr. Sam Beckett could only travel through time within his own lifespan. With his holographic pal Al from the future, he had to figure out what was wrong and fix it so Sam could "leap" out into his next adventure. One of the more emotional moments had Sam leaping into Vietnam to try to stop his brother from dying.

• The Bad:
  

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  • Time Tunnel: This campy series from the 1960s featured a government project (called "Tic-Toc," ouch) which was basically a giant tunnel that could take people back through time. When an irritated Senator threatens to shut the project down because of ballooning costs, Dr. Tony Newman enters the tunnel and is shortly followed by Dr. Doug Phillips, who is trying to save him. They become "stuck in time" and somehow transported to the scenes of major events, like the Titanic sinking, Pearl Harbor being bombed, this show being canceled after one season.
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  • Back To The Future — The Animated Series: This cartoon version of Marty and Doc Brown could have been whimsical fun, but it only manages to capitalize on very early 90s cheese. You can check out the opening for the series, but be aware that you won't be able to travel back in time to unwatch it.
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  • Time Trax: this series features Dale Midkiff as a cop from the future who was sent back to capture over one hundred criminals who had escaped into the past. Armed with his sentient and holographic computer SELMA, which looked like an AT&T MasterCard, he'd zap the baddies with a shot from his car alarm alarm remote and send them back to the future. Okay, so it was really a futuristic device disguised as an alarm remote, but still. Ouch.
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  • Timecop: Yes, they made a TV show after the semi-cheesy Jean Claude Van Damme movie of the same name. In it, Jack Logan tracks down criminals who try to go back and alter time. If only they could go back and cancel this show before it began. Mercifully, only nine episodes were produced.
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  • Do Over: 34-year-old Joel Larsen accidentally gets zapped with a defibrillator, and wakes up in his 14-year-old body, back in the past. Armed with the knowledge of a thirty-something, he tries to change his life for the better, and promptly fades into television obscurity. 80s nostalgia just couldn't keep this one alive.

  • The Fringe:

    These are the shows that haven't quite proven themselves yet, but are very promising so far.

  • Life On Mars: This much-lauded BBC series features a cop who gets struck by a car in the present day, and suddenly wakes up in 1973. He's able to keep working as a policeman in the past, but it isn't made clear if he's imagining everything via a coma in the present, or if he's just a bit mentally deranged back in 1973. It's getting an American makeover, in the grand tradition of taking great BBC shows and turning them into sludge, so try and track down episodes of the original.
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  • Journeyman: This show is pretty much 'Quantum Leap Redux,' except the storylines and acting keep us coming back for more. San Francisco reporter Dan Vasser finds himself traveling through time and changing the destinies of people he meets along the way, which is somehow related to his time-tripping. We'll see if it can travel through time and avoid the writer's strike and the new show chopping block.