Iron Man 2

Entertainment Tonight premiered a few moments from the film, including a scene where Pepper kisses Iron Man (well, his helmet, anyway). [via Cinema Blend]

Forbidden Planet

As if he doesn't have enough on his plate, James Cameron has confirmed that he's "actively involved" in J. Michael Straczynski's project. But apparently he hasn't made any decisions about what his role will be. [MTV]

Inception

We get our first one-sheet for Chris Nolan's mysterious thriller. Apparently, the crime scene inside Leonardo DiCaprio's mind has a plumbing issue. [/Film]

Toy Story 3

A new pic shows the toys heading off to their new home. Check out the full-sized image at Empire Magazine.

Sherlock Holmes

If you've always wondered what goes on the set of a Guy Ritchie movie, Cinema Blend has a bunch of behind-the-scenes clips. [Cinema Blend]

Rec 2

Here's the Italian trailer for the sequel to the Spanish plague film. [via ShockTillYouDrop]

Doctor Who

The Angels will have the phone box once again. Steven Moffat has revealed that the creepy Weeping Angels from "Blink" will return in the next season. [Blogtor Who]

Also, the Tenth Doctor wishes you a Merry Christmas in a pair of station identifications. [Planet Gallifrey]

True Blood

The casting directors have been very busy lately. Joe Manganiello, who has had recurring roles on One Tree Hill and How I Met Your Mother, landed one of the season's key parts — that of the heroic werewolf Alcide. [E!]

Eric's dancing lover has also been cast. Natasha Alam will play the Fangtasia employee who takes up with the blond viking. And Gregg Daniel has been cast as Reverend Daniels, spiritual adviser to Tara's mom (and object of her affections). [EW]

But that's not all! Sam and Lafayette are both getting new parental units. Cooper Huckabee will be introduced in the season's second episode as Joe Lee Mickens, Sam's father, and multiple Emmy Award-winner Alfre Woodard is signing on as Lafayette's mom. [ShockTillYouDrop, ShockTillYouDrop]

Lost

As promised, there's no new footage in the pre-premiere promos, but relive the previous seasons' tragedies to "Amazing Grace." [via /Film]

More news from the sets. At the Diamond Head Stage, Desmond, Mikhail, and Sayid are going to be getting wet. At an airport, Sun and Jin were seen going through customs. [DarkUFO]

And here are few more of the casual wear promo pictures. [Lyly Ford]

Chuck

Zachary Levi promises that Chuck's cool new powers (including fluency in Thai) won't change the klutzy heart of the show. Armand Asante will be playing the leader of the Costa Gravas, a sort of Castro-like figure. Chuck gets stuck on an airplane with Stone Cold Steve Austin's bad guy character. According to the creators, Brandon Routh and Kristin Kreuk's characters will be more than romantic obstacles for Chuck and Sarah, and that they will be connected to the larger mythology of the show. Kreuk's character Hannah will set multiple hearts aflutter at the Buy More, and that's just one issue the store has to deal with. Buy More will contend with cutbacks and management overthrows, and will get a new assistant manager. [Cinema Blend]

Chuck goes kung fu in Converse sneakers in a new Season Three poster.

Meanwhile, the set photos show Chuck giving Brandon Routh a lift. [Socialite Life]

And NBC has more promos to get you ready for the new season. [via Spoiler TV]

Still want more Chuck? In a new special preview feature, the cast talks about the new season.

And Zachary Levi is excited to get back to superspying.

Smallville

More details have emerged on the two-hour Justice Society movie. Apparently, the first episode starts with a death, which sets Clark's encounter with the JSA in motion. But one member has a special interest in clark. Says Britt Irvin of her character Stargirl:

"She has a special connection with Clark because he reminds her a lot of her mentor," says the actress. What's more, when the JSA gets wind (via Dr. Fate) of Clark's destiny, Stargirl realizes "he's very important for mankind."

Irvin also says that her mysterious mentor will make an appearance (as a corpse?), and that Stargirl and Hawkman will have some friction with Green Arrow in the beginning. [Fancast]

FlashForward

Here's a casting call for the 15th episode:

[WOMAN] 30s-40s.. Any Ethnicity. Office worker leaving at the end of the work day. She encounters an incident outside her building and is forced to wait to go home...CO-STAR

[FBI AGENT #1] 30s-40s, Male, Any Ethnicity. No-nonsense FBI Agent. Tasked with handling a sensitive issue, he must maintain order while tempers flare...CO-STAR

[FBI AGENT #2] 30s-40s, Male, Any Ethnicity. No-nonsense FBI Agent. Tasked with handling a sensitive issue, he must maintain order while tempers flare...CO-STAR

[DINA] 30s. Female, Any Ethnicity. An amusement park employee with a talking parrot that are both very helpful in giving directions.sptv050769..CO-STAR

[Spoiler TV]

And another for the 16th episode:

[KENT NELSON] 40s... Any Ethnicity. Homeless, a loner. He experiences a violent encounter with someone from his past...Co-Star/Possible Recurring

[GREG] 30s, Male, Any Ethnicity. A Secret Service Agent assigned to protective detail. He is by-the-book and official in his interaction with a visitor whom he escorts to meet with his boss...Co-Star

[DAVID] 30s-40s, Any Ethnicity. An Episcopal minister. Welcoming, relatable. He shows his church to some visitors who are interested in using it for a ceremony...Co-Star

[CHUCKIE] 50's, Any Ethnicity. A sandwich maker at Bay Cities. Frustrated with amount of orders from demanding customers.sptv050769..Co-Star

[Spoiler TV]

Additional reporting by Josh Snyder and Charlie Jane Anders.

Babylon 5 creator Straczynski is still at work on the screenplay for Forbidden Planet. He elaborated a bit on his earlier comment that his remake is "not exactly a prequel." He explained that, while we will witness the fate of the Bellerophon, the ship whose crew vanished on Altair IV 20 years before the events of the original movie, it will be as a counterpoint to the story of the crew of the C-57D and their encounter with Dr. Morbius and Altaira. While this new concept calls for more action than we saw in the original, Straczynski says the script's basis on The Tempest is first and foremost in his mind.

But the big news that, if Straczynski's movie takes off, we may be seeing more Forbidden Planet. Says Straczynski:

"Warners is very excited about it, thinks it's a big franchise for them and a huge budget, so they're very much oriented toward getting it done."

Babylon 5 creator reboots a sci-fi classic ... and a sequel? [SCI FI Wire]

Bernard Herrmann

Herrmann is one of the most celebrated composers in Hollywood history, having scored classics from Citizen Kane to Psycho to Taxi Driver. He makes our list for his groundbreaking score for 1951's The Day The Earth Stood Still (pictured above), with its prominent use of the theremin. After this movie, use of the eerie, otherworldly, electromagnetic instrument became the signature sound of sci-fi scores.

Louis and Bebe Barron

The Barrons took Herrmann's innovation a quantum leap further with their score for 1956's Forbidden Planet, which featured not a single traditional acoustic instrument. The husband-and-wife team's collection of all-analog burbles and bleeps sounds delightfully retro today, but the movie's all-electronic score was, at the time, controversial. Still, the sounds ideally complemented the tale of an isolated planet beset by an invisible monster.

Jerry Goldsmith

Goldsmith's 1968 score for Planet of the Apes swung the pendulum back toward traditional orchestration for sci-fi movies. Well, sort of; his tense, percussive score (echoing Charlton Heston's attempt to hold onto his sanity) included a Brazilian instrument called a culka that sounds like hooting monkeys. Goldsmith would go on to write many other memorable sci-fi scores, notably, Alien (1979) and the majestic theme for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), which would be reworked for TV as the theme for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

John Williams

With the original Star Wars (1977), John Williams became the gold standard of sci-fi composers. His Wagnerian use of leitmotifs created instantly memorable themes for the major characters, and his grand opening fanfare is so thoroughly evocative of the movie that it instantly transports viewers back to the sense of awe and wonder they felt when they first saw that imperial cruiser fill the screen. Williams has scored just about every film Steven Spielberg has made; his five-note theme for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) became a character in itself.

Vangelis

The Greek new age composer is best remembered for his electronic score for Chariots of Fire, but his work on Blade Runner (1982) was similarly stellar, a mix of electronica, noirish brass, and traditional orchestral sounds that matched the movie's polyglot futurism.

James Horner

Yes, now he's known for syrupy goo like Titanic, but he got his start as a scrappy Roger Corman factory worker (Battle Beyond the Stars, 1980). He soon graduated to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), where he expanded on Jerry Goldsmith's score for the first movie to include nautical themes (fit for all those Moby-Dick references in the script). His elegaic music surrounding Spock's death and funeral was an early sign of Horner's ability to create music tearjerking enough to make a Vulcan cry. (Genre fans will also recall Horner's memorable scores for 1983's Krull and Brainstorm.)

Alan Silvestri

Silvestri, who's scored nearly every Robert Zemeckis film, is a disciple of John Williams who has a knack for creating a grandiose sound that makes his patron's movies seem bigger and zippier than they are. Case in point: his first big job, the Back to the Future trilogy (1985/89/90). Heard now, it instantly evokes Marty McFly zipping along on his skateboard, or Doc Brown firing up the time-traveling DeLorean. Silvestri's other genre works include Predator, The Abyss, and both Lara Croft movies.

Danny Elfman

Elfman, whose work is so closely associated with Tim Burton that he seems to be the musical portion of the director's brain, combines a reverence for traditional movie orchestration with an irreverence toward classical melody, bred perhaps of his days as the frontman for Oingo Boingo. The result is a frenetic, jumpy, off-kilter sound that's nonetheless grand and majestic, a sound that makes Elfman's music instantly recognizable, not to mention well-suited to such Burton genre pastiches as Ed Wood (1994) and Mars Attacks (1996).

Basil Poledouris

Poledouris created stately, mournful scores for movies with rugged, damaged heroes (the Conan the Barbarian films) and lent a gravity to Paul Verhoeven's science fiction films (notably, 1987's RoboCop and 1997's Starship Troopers) that helped ground their deadpan satire in real human emotions.

Bear McCreary

The ubiquitous 30-year-old composer (who'll be performing the score from Battlestar Galactica this Saturday at a free concert at Los Angeles' California Plaza, as well as next month at Comic-Con) is the sci-fi scorer of the moment, thanks to his television work on BSG and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. His tension-filled scores, mixing traditional orchestration with less orthodox instruments (accordion, bagpipe, duduk, erhu), is completely integral to his shows; particularly BSG, where his Middle Eastern/metal rearrangement of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" (familar and strange at once) was key to understanding the plot and characters.

IESB.net claim to have found out the plot of the new movie, and it's sounding very prequel-y to us. According to the site, the new movie - apparently a potential James Cameron project once he's finished with Avatar - will center around the ill-fated voyage of the Bellerophon, the disappeared ship that the original movie's C-57D crew traveled to Altair IV to find.

IESB calls this idea "genius, pure genius," but I'm unconvinced. I mean, we know what happens to the crew of the Bellerophon in broad strokes, unless this is a reboot of the whole concept and doesn't lead into the original movie, in which case, what's the point? And more importantly, how is this not a prequel? It's telling the story that leads up to the story that we already know - isn't that the very definition of a prequel? Just because it tells another story as well - and that story, about a journey to discovery the source of a transmission that changed human evolution and in part explained in IESB's recap, seems much more interesting than the Altair IV story - doesn't stop it from being a prequel, otherwise Star Trek wouldn't have needed a complete reboot to wash itself clean of the stink of Enterprise.

Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against prequels - well, aside from Enterprise, obviously - but I'm wondering what the point of saying that it's "not exactly a prequel" was, when it quite clearly is. Are prequels bad news and nobody told me?

IESB Exclusive: Story Details Part 1 - FORBIDDEN PLANET [IESB]

Warner Brothers has the script, penned by Straczynski (Changeling, World War Z), and according to IESB's sources James Cameron has been interested in getting this project off the ground for a decade and is ready to finally ready to pounce now.

No doubt the rush of scifi movies coming out has pushed Warner Brothers' to full steam to get this project up and running. (Even the critically panned Day The Earth Stood Still remake did respectable box office its opening weekend.) And Cameron is clearly a big enough name to launch a big scifi epic endeavor such as bringing Forbidden Planet to life again. The original 1956 movie, with the infamous damsel draped across the robot's arms, was directed by Fred M. Wilcox.

If this is true, it would really pile the Cameron project list high — besides the eagerly awaited alien Avatar film, he's supposed to be directing Battle Angel and The Dive. But who doesn't want to see Robby in stop motion high end 3D? It could be brilliant.

[IESB]

While it may not be a prequel or remake, it sounds like Straczynski's flick will tell us more about the Krell aliens who made the ultra-powerful psychic tech of the original film. He told MTV News:

[When coming] up with the Krell backstory and who they are, I sat down with some of the nation’s best minds in astrophysics and planetary geology and A.I. and asked them — based on what we know now — what will a million years from now look like? The goal is to put things in there you’ve never seen before.

Also good to know he's got some science consultants on board. I would love to see a movie about the Krell civilization and what happened to them.

Thankfully, the remake will also remain true to the spirit of the original by trying to look as cutting-edge as possible. No retro stylings, says Straczynski:

At the time it was made it was cutting edge. They weren’t trying to be ‘retro’ — they thought they were right on the cutting edge. People that went to see that film saw things they had never seen before. What we have to do now is have this one be as innovative now as the original was then.

Forbidden Planet is one of those great, generic adventure stories that could get remade a million times and still be fun. You've got robots, an alien world, seriously scary alien tech, a vanished civilization, plus a mad scientist and his nubile daughter. What could go wrong?

J. Michael Straczynski Promises Something No One Has Thought Of [via MTV News]

The rumor had said JMS' new script was a "continuation" of the 1956 original, in which Altair 6 somehow doesn't blow up after all. Writes Babylon 5 creator JMS:

That report is totally incorrect. It's not going to be retro, and it's not going to be a continuation. When Altair 4 blows up, it blows up. I have, however, found a way to honro (sic) the original movie without in any way besmirching it in order to do this iteration. Once folks find out what we're actually going to do, I think they'll be most pleased. Forbidden Planet remains one of my favorite films of all time, and I wouldn't even think about doing this project if I didn't think there was a way to do it that would not in any way diminish the original...which is why this is the the first development in years to actually get to the script stage. Everybody involved is very excited by the approach.

Sounds as though it's more a remake than a continuation, although all this talk of a new approach also makes me wonder if JMS is playing into the new fad for remakes that are also quasi-sequels, sort of the way the recent Hulk movie half-acknowledged, half-supplanted the original. Or the way the Tin Man miniseries hinted that its Dorothy had had a great-grandmother who also visited Oz. The big question, though, is will we have a retro Robby the Robot? It's probably not up to JMS, since it's a design decision, and it probably depends how well Earth Stood Still, with its retro-looking Gort, does. Of course, if Earth Stood Still does really badly, this may be the last we hear of a new Forbidden Planet anyway. [JMS News]

Ain't It Cool News is reporting that the new movie, to be written by Babylon 5's Straczynski and produced by Joel Silver, will be a "companion piece" to, and "more of a continuation" of, the 1956 movie, including an appearance by Lost In Space star Robby himself, and complete with that authentic mid-20th Century futurist look:

As for the look of the film, it will apparently be an "enormous, giant, retro sci-fi movie"; in other words, they're going to implement the design of the original rather than attempt something modern. As Harry said, nothing "sleek or chromy" like Fox would do.

Between this, Star Trek's flashback to the '60s and the announcement of a new Buck Rogers movie, it's beginning to look as if the future is all about nostalgia for the Hollywood studios. Whoever is sitting on those Barbarella rights, it's time to get that movie into production as quickly as possible to cash in.

We've Got New Details On That Joel Silver/J. Michael Straczynski "Remake" Of FORBIDDEN PLANET! [Ain't It Cool]

The Hollywood Reporter says that Straczynski - currently hot again in Hollywood thanks to his script for Clint Eastwood's The Changeling, after semi-retreating into comic book work like Amazing Spider-Man and Thor -is scripting the project for Joel Silver's Silver Pictures. This isn't the first attempt to remake the 1956 classic, however; Forbidden Planet has been passed around from studio to studio and director to director for years, having been a potential project for The Chronicles of Riddick's director David Twohy and James Cameron, amongst others. No word, yet, on who would direct this version.

'Changeling' scribe on 'Forbidden Planet' [Hollywood Reporter]

Barron's soundtrack for Forbidden Planet, co-written with her husband and musical partner Louis, was just one stop on a career that also included being the first artists to put electronic music onto tape (the 1950 piece Heavenly Menagerie, constructed pre-sampler by physically cutting and pasting together pieces of tape), collaborating with artists like John Cage, and having their music described by no less a music critic than Anais Nin as sounding like "a molecule that has stubbed its toes." Following Louis' death in 1989 (the couple divorced in 1970, but continued to work together), Barron continued to create music and was the first Secretary of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music for the US. She was survived by her son, Adam.

Alexander Courage's career started as a composer for radio shows, before moving onto the role of arranger and orchestrator for MGM Studios in the 1950s, working on movies like Showboat and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. As well as his classic theme for Star Trek, Courage also contributed music for Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and co-wrote the theme to The Waltons. So, yes, he's one of the ones to blame when you get that stuck in your head for weeks.

Star Trek Composer Alexander Courage Dies [Digital Spy]
Scorekeeper Says Goodbye to Forbidden Planet Co-Composer Bebe Barron [Aint It Cool]

Yes, it's a foot fetishy publicity still from Forbidden Planet.

Robby the Robot, star of 1955 special effects blockbuster Forbidden Planet and later a main "charater" on the TV show Lost in Space, was the creation of legendary production designer Robert Kinoshita. Apparently one of his biggest inspirations for the globular humanoid bot was washing machine tubs. Kinoshita had worked on those before his career in the movies. The comparison sounds strange to us today, until you look back and see what washing machines looked like in the 1940s, when Kinoshita worked on them. This picture shows the odd similarities, with the bulbous roundness and strange silver knobs sticking out.

The HAL 9000 computer which famously refused to open the pod bay door in the 1969 movie 2001 was inspired by surveillance cameras which filmmaker Stanley Kubrick saw around London as CCTVs were being put in place. Author Arthur C. Clarke, who worked with Kubrick adapting his novel for the screen, confirms that HAL was inspired by "television cameras in cities" in an interview.

Here is a rather odd reverse-inspiration. The exoskeleton that Ripley used to fight big mama alien in Aliens is frequently mentioned by the designers for exoskeletons that might be used by soldiers or disabled people. Here you can see Ripley's cool device, and the exoskeleton for soldiers it inspired.

Since the special effects designers for Machine City in Matrix: Revolutions were located in San Francisco, it's probably no surprise that they based it in part on the San Francisco skyline. Effects designer Craig Hayes said in an interview that one of the first things he and his crew did was go out on the San Francisco Bay, about 8 miles from San Francisco, to see how the city would look from a distance. That gave them a sense of how to build Machine City from Neo's point of view as he zoomed into it.

Here you can see the hot fudge sundae that became the T-1000. Director and effects maven James Cameron said that when he was first conceiving of the liquid metal Terminator, he thought a lot in terms of texture. How should it ooze? How should the reflections look? In an interview, he admitted:

I wanted the effect of the T-1000 to look like a spoon going into hot fudge; it dimples down, then flows up over and closes. That's the look I wanted. You have to work with the viscosity in order to get that look just right.

When Steven Spielberg set out to make futuristic computers for Minority Report, he didn't mess around. He went straight to a research group at MIT, called the Tangible Media Group, which thinks up next-generation interfaces. The group told him that gesture-commands would be the wave of the future, and even showed him a bunch of prototypes — some of which are now in use, several years later. You can see an early gesture-controlled prototype here, on the left. And there's Tom Cruise doing his Minority Report gesture thing on the right.

And finally, there are the eXistenZ "metaflesh game pods," created by David Cronenberg for his dizzying movie about virtual reality games that plug right into your spinal column via a creepily biological bio-port installed (oh so Cronenberg style) right above your butt. Cronenberg has said a lot about how current technology is heading towards a merging with biology. So it's no surprise that his game pods look exactly like biological rehashings of late-1990s Playstation controllers that he would have seen every day while making this movie.

Picture of Port of Oakland by John L. Polos. Picture of fudge by Ms. Info. Picture of San Francisco skyline by Mike. Image spiffing by Stephanie Fox. Additional reporting by Nivair H. Gabriel.

• 
  
• Disney balanced out the scary as hell Maximillian and the human zombie robo-droids in The Black Hole with V.I.N.C.E.N.T. and his retarded robo-brother Old B.O.B., voiced by Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens, respectively. They could hover off the ground and fire laser blasts, but were mostly played for comic effect, especially the Southern drawling B.O.B., who goes down with his ship in a teary farewell.
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• Johnny Five from Short Circuit was goofy as hell, turning from a hunk of rolling military metal into a sentient robo-dork that falls in love with Ally Sheedy after being struck by lightning. According to the movie, he cost $11,000,000 to build, making him fairly cheap by military standards, but his association with Steve Guttenberg in the movie has to drag that value way down. The movie spawned a forgettable sequel, and Johnny Five hasn't been seen since.
• 
  
• The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy gave us Marvin the Paranoid Android, who we've seen in both the film and television versions of the project. For my money, I prefer the TV version's look, although you can't beat Alan Rickman's voiceover in the movie. A brain the size of a planet, and he's asked to be a servant for humans. It's no wonder he's depressed all the time.
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• Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet was the first robot to come along who actually had a personality, and managed to shed years of cold robot fortitude and emotionless monotonal voices. He even had a sense of humor and could even cook. He's made countless film and tv appearances since 1956, and is probably the one robot we'd really want to take home with us out of all of them on this list.
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• Lost in Space provided "The Robot" or "Robot" as he was always called, although his packing crate said "ONE General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental ROBOT," which some people surmise means his name may have been "Gunter." Personally, "Robot" sounds a lot better. He often traded witticisms with the fey Dr. Smith, and although his most famous quote is "Danger, Will Robinson!" he only said it once on the show. The movie version of Robot looked a hell of a lot cooler, but suffered from being in a sucky movie.
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• V.I.C.I. from Small Wonder was a robot that the dad built at his job, who basically stole her to bring home and use as a household chore slave. However, thanks to the ratty redhaired brat living next door who constantly spied on them, they had to make up incredible lies and pretend that they'd adopted her. Of course, wacky robot hijinx ensued, and V.I.C.I. was often seen lifting couches and moving at super-speed, much to that red-headed bitch's astonishment. Sadly, she's faded into television obscurity.
• 
  
• The entire cast of Robots. This movie featured Ewan McGregor, Robin Williams, Drew Carey and others as the voices of a cadre of robots that farted, whizzed, made tons of bathroom jokes, and basically made me avoid this movie like the plague. If you've really wanted to see a robot make a joke about the size of another robot's ass, then this movie is for you. Plus, it helps if you're a fan of the aforementioned fart jokes. In spades.
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Famous Names: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen (Cast).

Crunchy Goodness: 4

Elevator Pitch: "You know what Shakespeare needs? Robots and space aliens!"

Design Breakthrough: Forbidden Planet didn't just give the world Robby the Robot; it also featured some stunning animation courtesy of the Walt Disney animating staff — and the first-ever all-electronic film score.

Life Lessons: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Robby the Robot Fan Page

Famous names: Bill Mumy, Angela Cartwright, Jonathan Harris, Mark Goddard, Marta Kristen, Irwin Allen

Crunchy goodness: 1

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: A 1998 movie, which substituted wacky breastplates for the original's campy charm.

Most painfully dated moment: The cheesy-ass robot running around shouting "Danger! Danger!", and Dr. Smith's overblown alliterative putdowns of the robot, such as "Bulbous bumpkin" and "Silly sausage." (Really. For a complete list, go to http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art3316.asp.)

Bang for your buck: The show spent $600,000 on its pilot film and $400,000 per episode, making it the most expensive science fiction show until Space:1999 (and much more expensive than Star Trek.) Costly effects included a two-foot spaceship model flying over a model landscape, and an alien costume made of palm bark. At least the robot, reused from Forbidden Planet, came cheap.

Lost In Space - The Classic Series