Both Josh Pais and Sam Rockwell have memorable characters in the new Gentlemen Broncos, but before they were fantasy fans they both appeared in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which the film's director was more than happy to mention last night at a special screening of the film with the cast.

Jared Hess: I don't know if too many people know this but Josh Pais [who plays the camp counselor in GB] was in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, as the voice of Raphael. He was the only guy in the suit to also do the voice. That continues to blow my mind.

Josh Pais: Sam was in that too.

Sam Rockwell: I was Yes, it was really more of an overture.

Jared Hess: Were you a part of the Foot Clan?

Sam Rockwell: Yes I was in the street crew. I was with Shredder yes.

And when asked about the similarities between Krull beast and his own Cyclops, Jared Hess admitted they were inspired by the fantastic film.

Jared Hess: Total Krull man. Absolutely man. That's one of my favorite fantasy characters of all times the giant cyclops from Krull...

MTV's Splash Page blog noticed that Tim Pocock, who played the young Cyclops in this summer's retro X-Men movie had left the following update on Twitter:

currently shooting Australian TV series till February 2010...then X-men first class ;)
If true, this is the first hint that Fox's much-discussed semi-reboot to the franchise — Following X-Men Origins: Wolverine continuity, but flashing back to before the first X-Men movie — will be shooting as early as next year, but with no announcement concerning director or stars of the movie, it's possible that Pocock may just be being hopeful with his tweet. We'll wait and see whether Fox sneaks any news out before the end of the year.

Assault Girls
The first look at Mamoru Oshii's Assault Girls is out and filled with beautiful but deadly women hunting for prey in a washed-out world. And we mean seriously washed-out... The filter on this trailer is thick. Thanks to Nippon Cinema for alerting us to the trailer. Already I'm completely enraptured with the hunters, especially Lucifer and her little hat. I yearn for a future where film like this become the Sex And The City replacement go to banter talk: "Oh, you're such a Lucifer with your sass and spunk!" But all kidding aside, I cannot wait to see more of this film, based off his previous short of the same name.

Synopsis:

In the aftermath of global thermonuclear war, the Earth's surface has been turned into a desert battlefield. Three beautiful female hunters: Gray (Meisa Kuroki), Lucifer (Rinko Kikuchi), and Colonel (Hinako Saeki) traverse the barren landscape armed with powerful assault rifles to fight a group of deadly sand-dwelling monsters called "sunakujira" (sand whales). When the the epic battle eventually seems to be coming to an end, the sparkle of muzzle flash dies down and assault ship flies overhead. Suddenly, a gigantic super mutation called "Madara Sunakujira" attacks.

Cyclops
Set in the future world of New Madrid, the futuristic story wraps around two police brothers. One of the brothers is plagued by nightmares and can't come to grips with his position in life and as a member of New Madrid's police team. Then one of them makes a terrible mistake... and that's all I got, sorry. My guess? One dies, the other loses an eye and gets his dead brothers eye, and now his brother can talk to him through the dead eye. Well, that's what I would do anyways. Check out the trailer and tell me what you suspect.

Trailer:

The Dark Lurking
An Aussie creature feature The Dark Lurking has released its first rough clip. Thanks to 24 Frames per second for pointing this little gem out. Looks like a Down Under combination of viral outbreaks and The Thing, but with more pus.

Synopsis:

2017: Something has gone terribly wrong at outpost 30, a secret international research facility some five hundred meters beneath the snow blown arctic wilderness. All communications are gone, all means of escape destroyed and an extremely dangerous horde of ancient creatures is on the loose after a doorway to an unspeakable evil has been unleashed. Eight survivors, two former research patients, three SOCOM Troops, two research technicians and a cleaner barricade themselves inside a remote area of the facility with little food, almost no ammunition and little hope of rescue. Their one possible escape route is through thirteen levels of terror that will lead them to the surface. And one of them is not who they seem to be, the darkness

Trailer

Clip

Electronic Girl
Will we ever be rid of robots and their infernal feelings? New film called Electronic Girl takes place in the future where the human population is so low a robot work force is built, and of course eventually there's a need for sexy pouty robot women, as is so often the case. So a little she-bot is made, and then given feelings because why not make the future sex slave learn of its own shame or what not. The robot escapes but not before putting on a costume maid outfit and growing wings. Still the look to the film is interesting enough that I'll keep tabs on it.

Poor Cyclops - he never gets a break. While fans were howling for more Wolverine, Fox doesn't give Scott Summers an inch of coolness or fun. Hell, they even killed him off half an hour into the last picture. Sure Cyclops is a boy scout, but seeing him helpless and bloodied in the stills for the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine flick feels like a continuation of Fox's anti-Scott campaign. Who knows: maybe he'll pull out in the end and save the day (doubtful as he does suck). But right now it looks like he gets yelled at in school, his glasses get stolen, and then he's thrown in jail and beaten up.

In other news, you MUST give Hugh Jackman massive credit for going all out on this Spanish TV show El Hormiguero. Say what you will about the new Wolverine film, Jackman is giving the international press circuit his all and we're reaping the benefits. Like this amazing video:

[Video via Filmonic]

According to trade paper Production Weekly, 20th Century Fox is working on a movie called X-Men: First Class, and has registered the domain x-menfirstclass.com (which currently redirects back to Fox's own site). X-Men: First Class is currently the name of a flashback series of comics based on the original X-Men team, all of whom made it into the movie series in various guises (Cyclops and Jean Grey as part of the team from the start, with the Beast, Iceman and the Angel showing up in later episodes). Does this mean that Fox plans on rolling back the years to give us the movie version of the awkward school years of our favorite mutants? And, more importantly, does that mean that we finally know the "prequel of sorts" X-Men project that Gossip Girl's Josh Schwartz was talking about back in May?

Fox opening registration for First Class? [Superhero Hype]

Marvel Comics knows a good tease when it sees one, which might explain the latest, wordless image that they've released in support of a mystery project. All we know about this shadowy femme fatale is that she's somehow connected to the letter X and the number 2009, but if you come under the jump, you can see the whole picture, its earlier counterpart, and some baseless speculation as to what it could all mean.

The image - revealed at Marvel's "Mondo Marvel" panel at his weekend's Wizard World Chicago convention - is actually the second such teaser to be released by Marvel; the first, below, was released at the Wizard World Philadelphia convention earlier this year.

What do the images mean? Well, the letter X seems to suggest that it's got something to do with the X-Men... And, in fact, those bright red glasses make the character in the first image look not unlike X-Men leader Cyclops. But who is the second character with the green eyes?

Our bet is that it's Rogue (Look; her eyes are green); the seeming white strands at the front of her hair suggest that we're on the right track. But what's with the gun and the trenchcoat? And why is Cyclops also decked out in the coat and gun combo? And is that a cowboy hat he's wearing? Will we see Professor Xavier's children of the atom doing a little time-traveling at some point next year...?

Again With The 09 Marvel Teaser [Newsarama]

Written and drawn by Alexis Nolent (The Killer), Cyclopes is about mercenary forces who wear cyclops-like cameras on their helmets, broadcasting images to both their commanders and paying civilian audiences. The main character is a mercenary who's chosen to lead an elite squad, only to question whether he's fighting for freedom and justice, or commerce. Says Mangold:

It is an electrifying package you find in the best sci-fi: great action sequences combined with themes that are eminently foreseeable.

This piece, called Use Technology to Collect the Women!, shows a giant, multi-limbed cyclops-like robot piloted by scientists on a mission to collect naked women on some unknown planet. "I have to say I love the logic of Sci-Fi pulp," Wragg writes on his blog. Images by Nate Wragg Nate Wragg via NotCot

Spider-Man: The original bad luck hero, Peter Parker knows what it's like to be single and unloved. Admittedly, that's only because the devil came and magic-ed away his marriage to hot supermodel-turned-actress Mary Jane Watson, but it still counts, right? Even before that happened, though, he wasn't having much success at the whole relationship thing. His first love of his life, Gwen Stacy? Thrown off the George Washington Bridge by the Green Goblin just to piss Spider-Man off. Even nowadays, the newly-single swinger still can't catch a break - his new potential girlfriend, Carlie Cooper, is an NYPD forensic expert who's working on a case that has Spider-Man as murder suspect number one.

Cyclops: Pity poor Scott "Slim" Summers. Being the stoic leader of the X-Men doesn't make you exceptionally easy to date, if his experience is anything to go by. If it's not your first girlfriend sacrificing herself for the good of the universe on the surface of the moon, it's your first wife being revealed to be a clone of said girlfriend created by a bad guy to mess with your head and, oh, by the way, your girlfriend isn't actually dead after all - that was another clone, albeit a cosmic one - and your wife is actually a Goblin Queen who wants to kill your baby son as well as a clone. Even after he sorted that mess out (the clone wife was quickly dispatched, and he married the not-dead girlfriend instead), things didn't get any easier. Failing to make his marriage work, he had a psychic affair with the X-Men's resident evil bitch telepath before his wife died again, only for real this time. Sure, now he seems happy enough with his new girlfriend (that would be the evil bitch telepath), but you know that it's only a matter of time before she betrays him and/or his first girlfriend/second wife is revealed not to have died this time, either.

Note: That first girlfriend/second wife, Jean Grey? Apparently so hot that even Professor X was in love with her, as this panel from the original '60s X-Men run shows:

The Flash: Police Scientist and Fastest Man Alive Barry Allen lived a life of speedy misery. Not only was his first wife, Iris, killed by his arch-nemesis Professor Zoom — probably in some kind of rage over the lameness of his name — but when he was preparing to marry a second wife, Zoom attempted the same trick again. This time around, things didn't go to plan; in preventing his fiancee's murder, Allen accidentally killed Zoom. And his appearance as the Flash and lack of appearance as Barry Allen led his fiancee to think that she'd been stood up at the altar, which drove her insane (Hey, some people take rejection really badly). There was light at the end of the tunnel, however, when Allen discovered that Iris hadn't been completely killed after all 00 Sensing a theme here? — but instead just spirited away to the 30th century, where technology had given her a new body. Only problem was, when Allen travelled to the future to be with her, he ended up being captured and tortured by a villain out to destroy all of existence. Trying to save the day one more time somewhat backfired, and Allen died in the attempt, leaving Iris to travel back to the 20th century and write a tell-all book about Allen before failing to prevent the death of another Flash, Bart Allen, years later. She was kind of a jinx, really.

The moral of these stories? You really don't want to be the partner of a superhero, because you'll probably be killed or have the devil rewrite your history at some point or another. But, on the plus side, if you do die? Chances are you'll come back to life before too long. So it's not all bad news, I suppose.

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• Geordi LaForge's visor: When Star Trek launched The Next Generation in XXX, one of the most striking visuals was Levar Burton wearing what looked like a car air filter over his eyes. The visor allowed his character, who was born blind, to see in the infrared spectrum, at the microscopic level, and to detect energy levels. He could even detect vital signs and tell if someone was lying, making him handy to have around. However, he must have been happy when the First Contact film came around, because he didn't have to wear that wacky visor anymore.
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• Predator-Vision: In the Predator films, the titular aliens have evolved to the point where they have developed their own infrared vision. However, they've invented helmets with enhancements that take the vision even further, letting them see with X-Ray vision, to detect radioactive sources, auto-target, and even (in the Aliens Vs. Predator films) to see with sort kind of electro-magnetic vision that allows them to track Aliens, who don't show up on infrared scanners. While those helmets looked sleek and cool with awesome functions, they still resembled fugly crab-aliens underneath.
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• Luke Skywalker's binoculars: When Luke was trapped on Tatooine as a teenager, he had loads of time to daydream and imagine what life was like on other worlds. So he'd frequently scan the sky and the horizon with his binoculars, hoping to find some sort of excitement. Plus, they came in handy when R2D2 and C3P0 went missing. No idea what all the different numbers and gauges mean, besides distance (maybe Luke had ganked his Uncle's golf binocs) but the view through them was 1977 gee-whiz tech.
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• Cyclop's visor from The X-Men: This special visor which was outfitted with ruby quartz lenses that have the ability to block his optic blasts. So, it might not allow him to see things closer or at the molecular level, but it does keep him from blowing the hell out of everyone and everything he looks at. If you ask us, that's not a bad enhancement. Later he was able to sport some ruby quartz sunglasses, although that sort of makes his "Cyclops" name a bit useless.
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• The glasses in William Gibson's Virtual Light: In this novel, the characters are trying to track down a pair of glasses that you can't see through. Instead, they use EMP drivers to send signals directly to your optic nerve. As a result, they allow you to see without having photos hit your retinas, and they can also pump more information into the signal. For instance, one of the characters describes that the glasses cost about the same as a "small Japanese car", and that when you look at things through them, "Put 'em on, you go out walking, everything looks normal, but every plant you see, every tree, there's this little label hanging there, what its name is, Latin under that." One pair to go, please.
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• Nanotech eyes in Deus Ex: In Warren Spector's dystopian future video game, you play a "nanotech operative" who has the ability to upgrade and enhance his body in the field, which you'll have to do in order to complete the game. One of the coolest modifications was upgrading your eyes so you could see in the dark and through walls. This usually comes in handy when people are trying to kill you, as you can imagine.
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• The HUD in Down and Out in the Magic Kindom: In Cory Doctorow's future, people live with onboard computers in their brains that allow them to make phone calls, record their daily lives through sight and sound, and provide heads-up displays in their eyes where they can check the time, read files, surf the web, and check other people's "whuffie" scores. Whuffie basically tells you "how cool is this person?" and becomes the currency of the day. As interesting as that is, we're most exciting by surfing the net on our eyeballs.
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• The sunglasses in They Live: In John Carpenter's "I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum" humans vs. aliens film, former pro wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper finds a pair of very special sunglasses. They let him see the world as it actually is with fugly aliens controlling the human race, subliminal messages they keep them sedate and to "Obey." Of course, Roddy isn't too happy with this, and goes on a killing spree.
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• The Bionic Eye: In both the Six Million Dollar Man and the newly rebooted The Bionic Woman (sorry old Bionic woman, you got stuck with a Bionic ear), the main characters are both outfitted with bionic eyes that give them the ability to zoom in on subjects and see into the infrared. Not one was this one of the coolest Bionic upgrades in my opinion, but it also made for the best action figure I ever lost. Colonel Steve Austin's action figure had a big hole in his head that you could look through to "simulate" bionic vision. My parents probably thought I'd glued that thing to my head. Bionic eyes or bionic contact lenses, let's hope you get here soon.
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