The official name for the Empire Strikes back spoof is Something Something Something Dark Side, and it'll be on DVD & Blu-ray 12/22.

Disney shared this image with a handful of lucky fans who registered via Tron's Facebook page, and presumably it'll be zooming over freeway overpasses at some point in the next few months. Bigger version at the link. [StitchKingdom]

Uh oh, Pepper looks pissed. And Tony looks alone. What happened to all his friends?

Garry Shandling makes his big debut as Senator Stern, so Tony mocks him, naturally.

See Tony is alone again, naturally.

But wait, it's Rhodey, he's back...and he looks pissed. And who's that to Rhodey's left? It's Sam Rockwell, as Justin Hammer. Did they walk in together? And where did Pepper go? Where's Happy?

Same sexual chemistry between Pepper and Tony, check. But then again I think RDJ is so charming he could have chemistry with a lamp post... lucky lamp post.

Iron Man is America, and a rock star. And look in the background — it's the Iron Man dancers, thus proving the slutty Halloween rule to be true: any outfit can be made whorish.

These gloves could very well be the best little party favors ever. Please hand these out at Comic Con!

Whiplash is obsessed. See? See? He has newspaper clippings. And newspaper clipping are to stalkers what glasses are to shy mousy girls with a hot girl dying to get out inside: stereotypical. But let's assume that since he's spent so much time cataloguing the family story, that this grudge may go way, way back. Since he's had time to make a scrap book.

Who hit Tony?

The garage is all cleaned up and stocked with new rich guy toys. Bruce Wayne who?

What is happening to Tony's neck?

Yikes it's spreading. Tony is literally turning into an Iron Man. Also, he could be turning into a human computer, which has happened in the Iron Man comics before.

More Justin Hammer, and in perfect timing with Whiplash's "shark" comment.

Nick Fury just wants to get motherfucking Tony onto the motherfucking team.

More Iron Man-ettes. I suspect this may be a banner year for the cosplay fans.

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff in her Black Widow "business casual" attire.

War Machine prototype!

Is the Black Widow working for Rhodey? Is that her in the background?

Black Widow in her ass kicking attire.

Whiplash finally shows us what his lightsaber whips can do — which is break Tony's car.

Which he does.

I'm still not sold on the Whiplash outfit, but it does look pretty bad ass from behind.

Uh oh — will Tony be Whiplashed in half, or will the bad guy just show off some more? Answer: Show off.

Whiplash has nasty metal mouth.

What is this flying contraption? It looks like it's shooting at Iron Man?

A first look at War Machine, and Tony's new suit, with a triangle chest plate. Is this due to the metal veins?

War Machine and Tony fight other mechas and you get a faceful of War Machines shoulder gun, and Tony's fully reconstructed suit, Mark VI. Very nice. So who thinks they are filming the Armor Wars story?

In 1970, the KGB was worried that Hitler's burial place would become a place of worship for Fascist sympathisers. KGB chief Yuri Andropov — with the support of the party leadership — ordered the remains of Hitler, Braun, Goebbels, and Goebbels' family exhumed.

They had obtained the bodies in May of 1945, and the remains were eventually buried at a Soviet garrison in Magdeburg. In 1970, they handed the garrison over to the East Germans, and had to make a decision about what to do with the remains.

Taken to the outskirts of Shoenebeck, the corpses were burned on a bonfire, ground into ashes, and then thrown into the Biederitz River to destroy them completely. But the Soviets retained chunks of Hitler's skull and jaw, we assume for zombie clone related purposes.

[Via CNN, Image via Daerhos on DeviantArt]

The experiments were undertaken on patients who already had electrodes in their brain to monitor epilepsy. Readings were taken via electrocorticography (ECoG), as the subjects were shown a grid of letters and numbers. As each symbol was illuminated, the patient was told to focus on the letter or number, and data was recorded. Once this calibration data was taken, the patients would think of a letter or number, and their brain waves would be appropriately translated to the screen. The theory is that this technique will allow people to communicate and type far more easily when they suffer from Lou Gehrig's disease, MS, or paralysis.

The lead scientist on the project, Dr. Jerry Shih, says the program is able to perform near or at 100% accuracy for the patients. While this isn't far from the results from studies using non-invasive EEG, Shih believes that ECoG has advantages, as the scalp and skull distort the information coming from the brain, which means that ECoG has potential to be faster and more accurate. Shih also said that with EEG, "the accuracy isn't terribly great, and it takes a long time for the computer system to learn an individual's brain signals and to correctly interpret."

It is early days yet, and there are still numerous hurdles for the research. The initial study was only with two patients, but they're now on to the sixth, with plans for a wider study, to ensure that this technique is universally applicable. Shih's system does require a craniotomy, which is not a surgery to be taken on a whim; and an interpreter device is required, which must be tuned to an individual user. There is also the fact that EEG based interfaces don't require the invasive surgery, and are similarly accurate, even if they are slower and not quite as precise. So in terms of market adoption, the implant is at a disadvantage. Most people would be willing to deal with the speed loss to avoid dangerous procedures.

Shih is currently working on ensuring the method's effectiveness. He believes it could be used for controlling prosthetics as well as typing. It could also possibly be trained with images instead of letters. Imagine an item, and an image or word for it would appear on your screen.

The device could be available in as little as 5-10 years.

It's just a matter of time before this technology filters down from medical to elective, and we can all live out our cyberpunk dreams of plugging our brains directly into a computer.

Via American Epilepsy Society and Mayo Clinic

We interviewed creature designers Wayne Barlowe and Neville Page, plus concept artists James Clyne, Ryan Church and Daphne Yap, about creating a whole new universe from scratch. Plus we've got some stunning concept art, from the new book The Art Of Avatar. In a year that's seen some amazing books of movie concept art, The Art Of Avatar features 106 pages of lush full-color paintings, interspersed with the industry's greatest design minds geeking out about every little aspect of Avatar's creation.

So here are a few things you didn't know about the design of James Cameron's Avatar:

Avatar Started As A Four-Month, Late-Night Jam Session At James Cameron's House

"[We'd be] working late at Jim's house, and having him come back after a three week spell of being down at the freaking Titanic, and having him tell us a story [about being on the ocean floor]." Read the rest of the story.

Pandora's creatures were partly based on cars

Early on in the process, James Cameron "mentioned the core idea" of having Pandora's creatures be "superslick and aerodynamic, and be like a race car with racing stripes," says creature designer Neville Page. Read the rest of the story.

Those crazy color schemes are from the ocean floor — and Art Nouveau

"In the real world, we didn't invent these colors. They exist on animals today. We didn't invent a whole new palette. I think the problem is — the challenge is — you don't often see large creatures with this much color on them." Read the rest of the story.

The human hardware, including those crazy battlesuits, is all based on real stuff

"One thing I worked on big interior for the mech suits, and the whole interior had to have a reason and function for why the suits were lined up the way they were, and how they could work on them like a pit-stop at an F1 race. It had to have that functionality." Read the rest of the story.

Avatar concept art from The Art Of Avatar (Abrams 2009)

The comic is called Paranormal Activity: The Search For Katie, A Case Study by Dr. Johann Averys DMN. And if you remember the end of the film, Katie has vanished and Micah is... well, gone as well, sadly. Apple paired up with IDW to continue the story. The comic app picks up right after that, with the demon expert Dr. Averys finally showing up to their home, and searching for Katie, and some answers. It was written by Scott Lobdell and drawn by Mark Badger. Here are the first set of exclusive stills from the beginning.

We emailed Lobdell asking why he thought the story must go on, since the ending seemed so definite, we didn't think there could be a sequel even in a comic book series. To which he responded:

I have to disagree! Even before I left the movie theater my mind was racing though a hundred different questions! Where did Katie go? How long had she been in thrall to the demon? Why did he do what he did to Micah... or have Katie do it? What about the mysterious Dr. Johann Averys — often mentioned but never seen? Could the case he was working on in Europe have anything to do with the case in San Diego? What would the investigation into the murder be like? One part cop forensics, one part study in demonology? The demon seemed like it had much larger fish to fry to scaring young women... could it have followers? A lot of this is set up in the first installment of the online comic book, and I can't wait for the opportunity to further explore the world of Paranormal Activity.

The application is available now at itunes, For 99 cents.

According to Plastic Pals:

The Korea Institute of Science & Technology (KIST) held an open house Technology Exhibit, where some of their latest research and development projects were showcased . . . Mahru III, a humanoid robot co-developed by KIST and Samsung, copies the movements of a human wearing a special suit which senses muscle movements.

via Plastic Pals

We've selected ten types of science fiction fans, offering you great gift ideas for fans of the big franchises, this summer's biggest movies, and even something for the steampunks and zombie lovers. You can also check out our fan gift guide from last year, which also includes gift ideas for fans of Battlestar Galactica, Harry Potter, and Batman.

Gifts for the Star Wars Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Star Trek Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Transformers Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the GI Joe Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Doctor Who Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Joss Whedon Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Terminator Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Vampire Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Steampunk Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Zombie Fan (Gallery-free view)

Additional gift ideas by Meredith Woerner.

Whether you're buying for loved ones, loathed ones, ones you barely know but feel an obligation to get something something for or yourself, it's hard to go wrong with a well-chosen toy as a gift. But it's hard to know just what toys you should be looking at, which is where we come in; we've split our choices into three categories: Play, Display and Making Your Life Better, which is to say things that are useful (or, in one case, useless but kind of essential nonetheless). Click through to see our selections.

For Play
LEGO, action figures and things for you to hit other people with safely. After all, isn't that what "play" really means?

For Display
For some people, toys are things to keep on shelves, on their walls or in boxes. Here're a few ideas for the serious collector.

For Making Your (Or Someone Else's) Life Better
In which we suggest gifts offering education, amusement and/or something to hold onto at night. Yes, even that last one.

Additional research by Alex Eichler.

Every year, the Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Contest invites imaging experts and amateurs to submit their best examples of microscopy - in still and video form. The results, as you can see, are incredible.

The top prize is $5,000 worth of Olympus imaging equipment. In addition, twenty-two of the 2009 winning and Honorable Mention images will also be displayed in a winners' tour that will travel to San Diego, California, New York City; suburban Washington DC; Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities. Additional exhibits of BioScapes images will simultaneously be touring cities across the U.S. and Canada throughout 2009-10.

You can see more winners and honorable mentions on the BioScapes page.

Sexual Attraction in Spyrogyra. This classic microscopic subject illustrates sex in lower organisms and shows the power of sexual attraction even in simple algae. One cell becomes quite amoeboid as it squeezes through the narrow fertilization tube that the partner cells have just built between them. The movie was shot in time-lapse over 2 hours. By Jeremy Pickett-Heaps, University of Melbourne, Australia. Third Prize.
Water flea Daphnia atkinsoni. This specimen has a "crown of thorns," a defensive trait induced in offspring only when the parents sense chemical cues released by one of their main predators, the tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis. The water flea's exoskeleton (exterior structure, green) and subcellular details within the organism (nuclei - tiny blue dots) are both visible. By Dr. Jan Michels, Department of Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Institute of Zoology, Christian Albrecht
University of Kiel, Germany. First Prize.
Nucleus of a plant cell showing synaptonemal complex, a ladder-like protein structure that forms between pairing chromosomes during meiosis (the cell division required for reproduction). This may be the first-ever high-resolution 3D image of this complex ever captured with light microscopy. The two parallel axes of this complex, which run the length of each chromosome, are seen as two threads spaced 100-200 nm apart and twisting around each other in a helix. By Chung-Ju Rachel Wang, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, USA. 2nd Prize.
Fresh water algae Haematococcus pluvialis, 100x. Phase contrast microscopy. By Charles Krebs, Issaquah, WA, USA. Fourth Prize.
Unicellular alga Penium, treated with the microtubule poison oryzalin. By David Domozych, Department of Biology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA. Fifth Prize.
Single-cell smackdown! Amoeba trying to engulf a yeast cell by Margaret Clarke, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma City, OK, USA. Honorable Mention.
CAR fish fibroblast. By Maria Nemethova, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria. Honorable Mention.
Adipose tissue in living animals. Cellular dynamics and structures including erythorycytes, platelets, leukocytes, and endothelial cells are visualized through in vivo imaging. Satoshi Nishimura, Tokyo, Japan. Honorable Mention.
Desmid (green alga) dividing. Desmids are symmetrical cells composed of two identical halves or "semi-cells" that have a complex, highly ornamented and species-specific shape. Every time the cell divides, it is bisected between the two semi-cells. The two daughter cells now have to generate a new, complementary semi-cell to restore the cell's normal symmetry. This morphogenesis takes about 2 hrs. By Jeremy Pickett-Heaps, University of Melbourne, Australia. Honorable Mention.
Mouse cortical neurons (nerve cells in the brain). Each second in the movie replays one hour in real time; total time is 5 days. Scientists are looking at the trajectories of the elongating axons. Despite the disorganized culture environment, note the straight trajectory of axon growth cones. This type of experiment is extremely difficult; researchers spent two years optimizing the biology and imaging conditions to make this long-term imaging possible. By Neville Sanjana, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA. Honorable Mention.
Epidermal layer cells of Lotus japonicus dry seed. By Mayumi Wakazaki and Kiminori Toyooka, RIKEN Plant Science Center, Yokohama, Japan. Honorable Mention.
Drosophila (fruitfly) ovarioles. Fluorescence imaging. By Maria Paula Zappia, IIB-INTECH UNSAM-CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Honorable Mention.
Apicoplast. Confocal imaging. By Bernd Zobiak, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany. Honorable Mention.
Genetically-identified retinal ganglion cells. This study shows that it is possible to target genetically-identified neurons, a non- random approach to studying cell types. By Tim Viney, Friedrich Miescher Institute, Basel, Switzerland. Honorable Mention.
Fungia feeding. Fungia are large individual corals that don't form colonies or reefs. Their large and very expandable mouths allow them to eat large pieces of food compared to most corals. The movie was captured with epifluorescence, using the Fungia's own natural auto-fluorescence stimulated by UV, blue and green excitation light. James Nicholson, Coral Culture & Collaborative Research Facility, NOAA NOS NCCOS Center for Coastal Environmental Health & Biomolecular Research, Fort Johnson Marine Lab, Charleston, SC, USA. Honorable Mention.

1960s and before:

1970s:

1980s:

1990s:

2000s:

The 1986 case of a woman addicted to stimulating herself with a brain implant is chronicled in a scientific article from Pain journal called Compulsive thalamic self-stimulation: a case with metabolic, electrophysiologic and behavioral correlates. The unnamed woman had been suffering from chronic pain (the result of an injury) for over a decade, and had tried a number of drugs to deal with it. Though she was an alcoholic, doctors prescribed opium-based painkillers to her and she had been known to take more than her recommended dose. With her history of drug addiction, it's easy to see why doctors would have imagined that a brain implant would be the best course of action for the treatment of her chronic pain. Little did they know that the woman would become addicted to that, too.

Doctors implanted an electrode deep in her thalamus (see image below).

The article explains:

Soon after insertion of the nVPL electrode, the patient noted that stimulation also produced erotic sensations. This pleasurable response was heightened by continuous stimulation at 75% maximal amplitude, frequently augmented by short bursts at maximal amplitude. Though sexual arousal was prominent, no orgasm occurred with these brief increases in stimulation intensity. Despite several episodes of paroxysmal atrial tachycardia [heart disturbance] and development of adverse behavioural and neurological symptoms during maximal stimulation, compulsive use of the stimulator developed.

At its most frequent, the patient self-stimulated throughout the day, neglecting personal hygiene and family commitments. A chronic ulceration developed at the tip of the finger used to adjust the amplitude dial and she frequently tampered with the device in an effort to increase the stimulation amplitude. At times, she implored her to limit her access to the stimulator, each time demanding its return after a short hiatus. During the past two years, compulsive use has become associated with frequent attacks of anxiety, depersonalization, periods of psychogenic polydipsia and virtually complete inactivity.

What's interesting is that this case seems to have been largely forgotten, despite occasional mentions in the popular media over the years. Meanwhile, dozens of scientific articles have been published in medical journals about thalamic stimulators as a treatment for patients suffering from tremors caused by Parkinson's disease and Tourette's syndrome. There is likely some relationship between what our unnamed addict experienced (increased loss of motor control) and these new therapies (which help minimize loss of motor control).

Some evidence has turned up that thalamic stimulators are still delivering erotic feelings. A recent article in the International Journal of Impotence Research revealed that a patient who had received a thalamic stimulator to control his Tourette's was also getting erections when he self-stimulated with the implant. And a study of thalamic implants in sea bass showed that the fish underwent a "sex color change," part of their mating process, when stimulated.

Science fiction author Larry Niven once dubbed these addicts "wireheads," but science fiction has now become science fact. As thalamic stimulators and other brain implants become more commonplace, it's likely that our anonymous implant addict will no longer be an outlier. She's just the first documented case of a new kind of addiction.

Make It Impossible

The first rule to come from the director was, make it impossible....

The rules are — what I always say but people forget — the pictures have to be super impossible. I'm only interested in doing the impossible image. That's really hard to explain. But one of the first things I saw in my mind, was the ground opening up. And I realized what that means, when the bottom falls out under your feet.

So far that sounds exactly right as just about every single scientist and critc has said that the general ideas behind these disaster movies are, literally, impossible. But come on — who doesn't want to see people running from frost?

Stick To What You Know: You Can Always Blow Up The White House Again

[If you are going to destroy something] It has to be very original, otherwise you don't do it. I remember at one point [during 2012 production] we were discussing what will happen with the White House [in 2012]. I said, "What should happen? I cannot destroy the White House again." And Harald [Kloser, screenwriter] said, "Well you have to, if you don't destroy it people will have the same question. Just come up with something new." ... I thought I could have this object crashing into the White House, because we knew that in one of the first waves we'd have to put objects in it so you could see how big it was and thought maybe tankers or war ships. Then we came up with image of [the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy crashing into the White House, which is like] JFK returns to the White House. I was reading about the Kennedy family a lot at the time and thought that was sort of ironic and interesting in a way.

You gotta respect a man who made a career of blowing up the White House, so much that if he doesn't do it we wonder why not? But honestly, we're running out of cities for this guy to destroy, and yet he still manages to crush them differently each time. One has to wonder if he'll be able to come up with more after this last disaster.

The More Characters The Better

Multi characters help you a lot because you can constantly keep the story moving. And people from all walks of life. Every audience member has different people they like in the movie and will follow them. These movies are so expensive that they have to work for pretty much everybody. For young people, for men and women. old people probably like Danny Glover, and Harry and Tony, the Jazz musicians. Kids get wrapped up in our two kids. Create characters so everyone in the audience has an identification figure.

I guess that means my character in 2012 is Woody Harrelson the conspiracy blogger, cause I like cartoons and pickles too. Look at me, I'm bonding with the story! Still I'd like to meet the people that relate to beautiful Vivca Fox, the heart-of-gold stripper who loves dolphins and has a Fighter Pilot for a boyfriend.

Superheroes Aren't Half As Cool As Earthquakes, Tornadoes And Waves

Who wants character-driven movies about confused anti-heroes in a near futuristic world fighting Oscar-winning villains? Not me. Give me Will Smith punching aliens and Bill Pullman's president speech any day.

Look at it like this. I'm a person who doesn't like superhero movies, just personally. I like some of them but I cannot really relate to a superhero. I have trouble with fantasy stories. And famous books — I write my own stuff, a famous book is really not an option for me. There's very little left in big movie genres. It's science fiction or it's disaster movies. And what is the most successful movie of all time? Titanic. And the best part of a disaster movie is: No sequel.

Cut Other Would-Be Disaster Porn Directors Off At The Knees

You have to be a tyrant about getting your end of the world movies made. This is why Emmerich is the King of the B grade blow em up movies, because he'll make it before you. Who wants to wait until 2012 to make 2012? Not this guy.

"First when we had the idea, I said, I'm not going to do it. I don't want to repeat myself. Then we heard inklings that other people were working on something like this, also with the title 2012. Then Harald [the screenwriter] said, "Someone else is going to do it. Don't you want to be the person to do it? Look at your movies: you are perfect for this. Make it your crowning achievement."

Be G-Rated Political *Winky Wink, Nudge Nudge*

If you've seen the five-minute clip from 2012, you know there is a Arnold-esque Governor in the film reassuring the people of California that everything is a-okay, after a mess of earthquakes rocked the town, to which John Cusack yells he's "just an actor, he's reading a script." Suddenly fake Arnold gets creamed with a few lights. Subtle, no? We asked the director if this was on purpose as in The Day After Tomorrow, when actor Kenneth Welsh was cast to be a Cheney look-alike. If you remember Welsh was a bit of a dick about the whole, "we're all gonna die," situation. Which Emmerich later confirmed was a dig at the Bush administration's environmental policies. Emmerich shrugged off our political questions:

"We kind of felt that not every politician should be on the ark. I don't know where these ideas come from. We have terrible fun with what we do."

Which I'm translating as: We lob softball politics at the audience, just so everyone feels good about themselves, for being in on the obvious political joke. I wonder what Emmerich would say his reasoning behind casting Glover as the president before we knew the results of this election. Or was it simply just another near-future "Neato, a black president!" moment?

For Every Wrinkled-Shirted Scientist, You Need At Least One Crazy Prophet

Dennis Quaid, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Jeffrey Goldblum may have messy hair, messy clothes, big ideas, and know all the facts. But they pale in comparison to their crazy counterparts: the homeless guy with the dog, spouting words of humanity, Woody Harrelson's crazy tree-hugger and the drunken pilot from Independence Day who knew there were aliens all along.

[Woody] came out of the fact that there are a lot of crazy people on the internet that believe a lot of crazy things about 2012, so we thought that we have to have a character like that. And then on the other hand we have to explain what the theories are like Earth Crust Displacement. How do you describe them in scientific terms. And we thought, we can have Woody tell the audience how this all works, with a little you tube.

But Make The Destruction Glamorously Terrible

Say what you will about the exceedingly cheesy work of Roland — you can't deny, when he slaughters millions of tiny CG specks that are supposed to be people, he does it with panache and style. It may be ridiculous, but it's beautiful. Which is why, no matter how cliche or repetitive these movies get, it will make millions opening week, because people want to see the great big wave number two come careening into New York City yet again, but on a big fat splodey screen. When it comes to disaster porn, we're all addicts.

Bridges is channeling the weirdo genius that made "the Dude" in The Big Lebowski such a terrifically memorable (and quotable) character. Starring George Clooney and Ewan McGregor, The Men Who Stare At Goats is about a longterm Army project to bring psychic powers into combat - especially in the War on Terror.

Here we see Bridges' character trying to teach rough-edged military types about how love and wholeness will allow them to become "warrior monks" who will end all war. I love the way all the men are clutching at bouquets of flowers as they consider the possibility of walking through walls and predicting the future in order to rid the world of Al-Qa'ida.

The Men Who Stare At Goats hits theaters November 6.

Oh, and this post includes minor spoilers for Astro Boy, but doesn't give away any major plot twists. Mostly, it's about the world-building, which is unveiled at the start of the film.

We expected Astro Boy to be a fun ride, but we ended up liking it way more than we'd expected (full review coming Friday.) And a huge part of that was its fascinating world-building: we weren't prepared for how strange and vivid this world seemed. Astro Boy takes place in Metro City, which has been levitated a few miles above the ground — and they levitated the mountain it was built next to as well. The result is really cool-looking, and the city's buildings also don't look like your standard "city of the future" buildings, at all.

The movie's robot population also looked much weirder than we're used to. From the various types of slave robots to the thundering war-bots, they paid homage to their Japanese roots but also drew on influences as diverse as Wallace And Gromit and classic monster movies. Metro City also levitates over a ginormous trash heap, where the city has been depositing all of its used up robots, and we get to meet a few obsolete robots, including the ginormous Zog, who reminds me of a Hiyao Miyazaki character:

So we were eager to talk to writer/director David Bowers, plus art director Jake Rowell and character designer Luis Grane. They told us about all the thought processes behind crafting this weird future city, the various types of robots, and the rocking warships. Bowers says the production aimed to keep the fun of the original Osamu Tezuka cartoons, including the larger-than-life battles and crazy boot-jet adventures, while creating a fun new world.

The Robots

It's really different to make an original robot right now," says character designer Grane. "There are so many movies and comics and books about robots, and I think it's really difficult to make one that's unique or different than the rest." Obviously Astro Boy is the only robot in the movie who looks human, because he's designed to replace Dr. Tenma's dead son — every other robot looks utilitarian and yet weird.

Bowers adds that he went for "very unique looks" to the movie's robots, many of whom are supposed to be grunt workers — the audience immediately knows they're the underdogs, doing the jobs that we don't want to do. The movie features a Laurel-And-Hardy double act of a squirt bottle and squeegee who fly around the city cleaning windows... and complaining endlessly.

Like everything else in Astro Boy, the robots are frequently assymetrical and odd-looking, rather than the sleek bots you might have been expecting. Everyone we talked to cited the work of Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi as a huge influence on the movie's basic shapes. Noguchi was famous for his odd, organic-looking sculptures. Here are a few, courtesy of Getty Images:

"I brought a book about [Noguchi] to the production designer, and he said it would be cool to base our visual language on him," says Grane.

Grane says he tried to merge that Japanese sculpture with the work of pre-Columbian sculptors in Mexico — but not the Aztec or Mayan sculpture, but more Western Mexico, where "the figures are more like caricatures, and I love that."


Getting to mash up Japanese sculpture and pre-Columbian Mexican art made this a "dream project" for Grane. A lot of the robots moving around the city sort of blend in with the architecture, because they have friendly shapes with rounded edges. And Grane says you'll have to free-frame the DVD a fair bit to catch all of the weird little robots that pop up in the film, including one tiny cleaning robot that's dancing under the feet of the bystanders during the movie's climactic battle scene.

When we meet some of the older robots on the surface, they look clunkier and more mechanical, and more rusted and distressed. For example, we meet the hapless Robot Revolution Front, a trio of former servant bots who are fighting for robot freedom — but are completely useless, because they must abide by Asimov's Three Laws Of Robotics. It's in these characters, who include a robot refrigerator, that Bowers shows his roots — he worked at Aardman Animation, which put out the Wallace And Gromit films. The leader of the robot revolution, Sparks, is also based on Peter Sellers' union organizer character in I'm All Right Jack, plus other classic Sellers comedies.

And then there are fighting robots, including the cutting-edge, terrifying Peacekeeper. Rowell says some of the sequences of the Peacekeeper in Metro City were designed to look like old-school Japanese monster movies, with Peacekeeper peering around buildings and looking huge and fierce.

The movie starts off with a hilarious, old-school-looking instructional video that explains that robots are our friends, and narrates their helpful role in our future society. Grane crafted this segment towards the very end of the production process, with just a few other people involved. The "instructional video" has a very hand-drawn feeling, unlike the CG of the rest of the film, and that's because the drawings were animated, sort of by hand, in After Effects.

Grane says that despite the tight deadline and scant resources, this opening sequence gave him a chance to experiment — like in one bit, where you see nanobots crawling inside someone's heart to repair it. Instead of using the standard image of a heart, Grane reached for an image from abstract art, which looks like arteries and heart muscles in context, and the result is a lot splashier and more stylized.

The Wall-E Factor:

So obviously, this movie features weird, servant robots who do all the unpleasant chores for people. And there's a giant trash heap that stretches for miles — so I asked Bowers if he worried about comparisons to last year's Wall-E. Pre-production on Astro Boy was already quite a ways along when Wall-E came out, but Bowers and his crew did make some changes to try and avoid looking too similar.

Bowers says Astro Boy's trash-can robot dog was originally planned to be a trash-compacter who crushes scrap metal into "little bricks of trash" — but it was "just too similar" to Wall-E and had to be changed. And Astro Boy was still doing production design on its trash heaps, so Bowers worked with his designers, and "we went to great lengths to make sure the trash looked different than the trash-heaps in Wall-E." The trash in Astro Boy, he says, has more of an "organic" feel to it, plus it's all robot parts.

The City

Metro City floats high above the ground, and the city builders chose to levitate a mountain as well. The buildings look airy and spacious, and more organic than the sort of buildings you see in the standard Futurama future city. Bowers says he wanted Metro City to look like a great place to live, and he wanted the audience to be wondering just how much an apartment in one of those soaring towers would cost.

"I wanted to make sure the two worlds — the people who live on the surface, which first appears to be a trash heap... and Metro City, where Astro Boy is created, which is this gleaming futuristic beautiful utopian society," had as strong a contrast as possible. "It's very interesting to do worldbuilding. I love the original [Osamu] Tezuka look," adds Bowers. The city was designed to be retro-futuristic, but without any irony to it. And there was a huge Asian influence to the city's design.

Here's more exclusive concept art, showing the streets of Metro City:

Says Grane, "The buildings are weird shpes, they are not like typical buildings, sometimes they are very organic, but sometimes they are very unexpected."

The mountain sitting on one side of the floating city definitely helps it stand out — Bowers says he was influenced by Hokusai's famous woodcut prints of Mount Fuji, which are "iconically Japanese."

Rowell says when he and the production designer first heard that the floating city included a mountain, they were perplexed and not sure what to do with that. Finally, Bowers explained that the city's founders decided to raise up their oasis that had been on land, including excavating their nearby mountain and raising it up as well, and that gave the designers "something to build around."

In early design sketches, the mountain was in the center of the city, which was built around it on all sides, but Rowell decided to stick to the movie's visual theme of assymetry and avoid a circular shape. Instead, the mountain is over to one side, and the city is on the other, meaning the floating city has an odd toothy shape.

The principle of assymetry, borrowed from Noguchi, also applied when it came to the buildings in the city — they tend to be fat on one side and skinny on the other, with a slope on one side, says Rowell. "So looking at it from different angles, you get different design language," and the city looks like a much bigger world as a result. He was also influenced by some of the sloping, cool-looking buildings that China created for its recent Olympic Games.

The designers' first instinct was to go with the Jetsons/Futurama "city of the future" imagery, but instead they chose to make the buildings look more like what we have today, except two or three versions past our current iterations. The buildings also look very light and airy, and Rowell said he conceived of them as being made of lightweight carbon-fiber, which people are already using to create stuff — but this would be several generations along, and thus people would be able to use it for structural supports.

And Rowell says he and the production designer sketched out the layout of the entire city, so they knew where everything was in relation to each other. There were a few major landmarks — the penthouse apartment of Dr. Tenma, Astro Boy's creator, the Ministry of Science, where Astro Boy is created, and the mountain — and you always know where you stand in relation to them. Dr. Tenma's penthouse is at the very front of the city.

In that key scene where Astro Boy is realizing he's a robot, and then the soldiers in power suits come to grab him, he's sitting on top of Dr. Tenma's building, looking backwards at the Ministry of Science (thus, looking back at the place where he came into being) when those floodlights switch on:

This juxtaposition between his father's penthouse and the Ministry of Science lets you know that Astro Boy is torn between his identity as a boy, who seems to be human, and his origins as a robot.

The slanty, curvy "shape language" of the movie, borrowed heavily from Noguchi, shows up in Astro Boy's boots, in the "stinger" attack vehicles which chase him in that clip above, and in all the buildings and robots, says Rowell. And then when you go down to the surface and it looks more like our present-day world, it's a bit of a shock.

Astro Boy comes out this Friday.

On November 17, Paramount is releasing the highest-grossing Star Trek movie of all time on DVD and BluRay. The DVD version has considerably less than the BluRay — the latter version has "branching pods" embedded in the special features. Think of it like a non-hidden Easter Egg, a special featurette within the features.

Disc One of the two-disc DVD version contains the film, along with commentary from J.J. Abrams, Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, executive producer Bryan Burk and producer Damon Lindelof. There's also a special called "A New Vision," featuring Abrams' style and drive to make the film real and relatable, as well as a gag reel.

In addition, the second disc is of course more fun stuff, including four features, DVD-ROM accessible content (free trials of Star Trek D-A-C for XBOX 360, PC and PlayStation network), and deleted scenes.

The deleted scenes include optional commentary and are:

o Spock Birth
o Klingons Take Over Narada
o Young Kirk, Johnny and Uncle Frank
o Amanda and Sarek Argue After Spock Fights
o Prison Interrogation and Breakout
o Sarek Gets Amanda
o Dorm Room and Kobayashi Maru (original version)
o Kirk Apologizes to the Green Girl
o Sarek Sees Spock

Abrams said that he was always thinking about the DVD, saying he was constantly making sure things were being filmed and recorded specifically for the DVD, getting video crews in the mix as early as possible.

And that prevalence of cameras is wildly apparent on the Blu-Ray edition.

The first disc of the Blu-Ray edition has the film and the same commentary as the DVD, as well as a BD Live feature giving viewers access to the latest NASA news about space. It has an RSS feed of the news as well as a space pic of the day. The second disc has the same specials as the DVD's disc two above, plus six (!) others and those crazy "branching pods."

Disc two of the Blu-Ray adds on these special features.

• Starships - An in-depth look at the creation of the film's starships and vessels.
• Planets - How the art department created the look for planets such as Delta Vega.
• Props and Costumes - Paying homage to the original series was very important with this update, and here's how they did it.
• Ben Burtt and the Sounds of Star Trek - Sound designer Ben Burtt shares the music he created for the newest Trek.
• Gene Roddenberry's Vision - The vision of Gene Roddenberry as told by J.J. Abrams, Leonard Nimoy, previous Star Trek writers and producers, and scientific consultant Carolyn Porco.
• Starfleet Vessel Simulator -Here you can see a 360˚ model of the Enterprise and the Narada including some looks inside as well some fun firing their weapons onscreen.

Most of the features contain extra content within. "To Boldly Go" contains some of these mini-specials, including "The Shatner Conundrum," accessible while watching the overarching main special or by the menu, as seen above.

There is also a digital copy of the movie included with both releases.

In any case, suffice it to say any Trekkie worth his or her weight who doesn't own a Blu-Ray player (especially this poor college girl) is definitely pining for one right now.

Part of what's really cool about looking at concept art from remakes, revamps and rethinks of classic space sagas is seeing how designers reinvent the classic shapes and original images. But another huge part is seeing how designers add new ships and create new concepts to graft onto the existing lore, and try to make it all fit together. So you have Spock's Jellyfish ship and the Narada in Star Trek, and a host of new ship designs in Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek. And sometimes, like in Lost In Space, you just have to start from scratch if you want to create something really cool looking.

Here are the revamped spaceship concept art pics (plus a few other goodies) that prove remakes may be drek on the whole, but they do give us some amazing art to drool over:

Star Trek: Reinventing the Enterprise and creating other new classic ships.

Superman Rebooted: spaceships and a Kryptonian space battlesuit.

Stargate Universe concept art: inside the Destiny

Doctor Who: redesigning the TARDIS interior, circa 2005.

Lost In Space: a weirdly awesome space fighter.

Planet Of The Apes: Awful movie, but amazing spaceship design.

Battlestar Galactica: bringing her back out of mothballs.

Star Wars prequels: the concept art is better than the movies. Really.

In Surrogates, people stay at home all the time, and jack their brains into glamorous, super-strong robot bodies, so you don't have to risk getting hurt or let people see your bad skin. Mostow explains to us how it all works.

So explain to me how this stem chair works, how does it save people from bed sores if they sit in it all day?

If you literally were in a chair all day long, you would have to worry about things like bed sores. But in the movie, they have these fantastic chairs that are constantly stimulating your body parts so you never have to suffer from those problems.

But how do they eat and go to the bathroom?

Well you have to get up occasionally, things like that technology can't do for you. There are a couple moments in the movie where the surrogate is completely immobilized and you find out that their operator was in the bathroom or getting a snack or something. Basically your Surrogate freezes in the action of whatever it's doing, and you can go into action and go and do whatever it is you need to do — then go back online. It's no different [than] if you were in a chat room, and you got up and and had a salad in the refrigerator and then come back. Everybody who was talking to you would just see a blinking cursor for a moment.

I've seen in the trailers that you can customize your Surrogates and I believe I saw one Surrogate with eyes on the side of its head. What else can you do?

Actually that's one of the few scenes that's not in the movie anymore. We have a scene in a bar where the bartender had put eyes in the side of his head so he can be helping out one customer, yet seeing what the patrons at the other end of the bar wanted. That's actually no longer in the movie, but there are other customized Surrogates in the movie. Most people chose to have an idealized version of themselves, but some people chose to completely change their identity. Some people chose to change their gender.

You see a girl who has literally put spikes coming out of her skull — metal spikes. She's gone a bit punk with their Surrogate. And there are Surrogates who have completely changed their skin color. We don't spend a whole lot of time on that because it's not germane to the central plot of the movie. But it was an idea that we wanted to pay some lip service to.

My personal favorite things about movies in the "not so distant future" are the little things that the crew and writers come up with, the things that set it apart as the future.

We have a lot of blink-and-you-may-miss-it details like that. I made the decision, early in preproduction, to do what the graphic novel did: even though it's set in the future, he made the world look like it does today, just with Surrogates in it. I didn't want this to be a movie where the question was, "hey do you think cars are really going to look like that in the future, will they be flying around?" These are the question marks that can distract you, when you watch a movie that is set in the future. So I said, let's just make this movie in the near future, and this technology will have come a long way very quickly. So it looks like the world we live in but it's just populated with all these robots.

What was that thing in the trailer that the Surrogates were stabbing themselves with, it looked like a drug or electricity or something like that?

There's a scene in the movie with something called "the jacker," and it's at a party. There's this glass tube that's sending this blue energy. There's a party scene where Bruce's wife is home with some friends and she's a Surrogate and they are all Surrogates too. And they are engaged in this sort of communal thing... that is, sort of... it's unclear if it's a drug-like thing, is it sort of a sexual thing, is it a combination of the two? And it basically is giving these people back in their stem chairs at home a rush by applying this energy field to their Surrogates.

Well how well policed is this Surrogates program? It seems to be owned by a private company, and yet the police use them as well?

Think of it like Microsoft, where Microsoft is a private company but everyone from law enforcement to criminals use their software. This company is the leading manufacturer of Surrogate robots and it spread like wildfire...There's no formal relationship between the government and the Surrogates.

What did Bruce Willis think about the idealized version of himself?

Bruce was an active participant in all that. We explored a lot of different looks and settled on this look as the best choice. The best thing about Bruce is he's in such good shape and a good looking guy we were able to make him look younger with a variety of old fashioned techniques and some CGI. And for his real self, we were able to make him look like he had more milage on him, with a series of old fashioned film techniques, and with his own performance. As opposed to getting a guy who's 25-years-old and [trying to] make him look 50, Bruce was the perfect guy for this film.

Was it his decision to make his ideal robot self blond? That's some beautiful robot hair there.

We wanted something where you look at it and say I've never seen Bruce Willis look like that before. We wanted something to catch your attention. And that's the whole point, people don't look like themselves. And in Bruce's character's mind he'd like to look as if he was 20 years younger.