Thor:

Will Hawkeye have a cameo in Thor, in preparation for his possible appearance in Avengers? Marvel was at least talking about it. At least, actor Jeremy Renner said this when addressing rumors he'd be playing Clint:

That was just one of those things that got blown way out of proportion. It was an idea. Those Marvel guys, I'm a big fan of them. They're so smart about how they want to do these things - they have Captain America, and Thor coming around, Iron Man 2, and then I happen to know Zak Penn, who's writing The Avengers. So they thought Hawkeye is an interesting role, and asked me if I knew anything about him. I said no, so they gave me their sort of spiel on what he was, and I thought that it was kind of interesting. The only reason it came out this early, because Avengers is two years away, is that they're thinking okay, we may throw him in Thor, we may not, as a cameo. You know what I mean? So there's truth that we talked about it, but there's no truth to me doing it.

So Marvel was at least considering having Hawkeye pop up in Thor, and they did have some vague discussions with Renner. But sounds like either the cameo's not happening, or it's not Renner. Or both. [Movieline via ComicBookMovie]

Also, Tim Roth says he's eager to return as the Abomination, and he's signed for two more Marvel movies. And he hints that with characters from the different series turning up in each others' films (like Tony Stark in Incredible Hulk), the Abomination could potentially turn up in any movie, not just a Hulk sequel. (Like, say, as a minor villain in The Avengers? Just a thought, especially if Edward Norton is a hold-out.) [MTV]

The Book Of Eli:

Denzel Washington talks a bit more about just what's going on in this movie. His character is walking across the country to deliver a very special book, and he picks up a barmaid (Mila Kunis) and gets into a spat with a small-town dicator (Gary Oldman). The apocalypse happened when Eli was a teenager. Says Washington:

As the story goes, everybody had to stay inside the first year after the war, and he got out and wandered and survived. In fact we just shot the scene. I won't give you the whole scenario but he basically survived and heard a voice that led him to the book and told him where to go and why and he'll be protected. And as he says, for 30 winters he's been walking.

Frances de la Tour and Michael Gambon play Martha and George, an older couple, and "these two old folks that eat people and have tea [also] have this small army," says Washington. At one point, Kunis asks "what are we going to do?" And Martha replies, "I know what I'm going to do," and starts shooting an AK-47 at everyone. And since it's the future and this 70-something couple was young in the 1970s, they'll be playing a song from their youth, like "I Will Survive," all during the crucial fight scene.

So with Eli walking cross country for 30 years after the apocalypse, you're probably wondering about his underwear. Allow Denzel Washington to elucidate:

I never wore underwear. He didn't have any because he wore them out. So it wasn't as difficult, but we did some little cute things like the sneakers. He starts off in sneakers that are all taped-up and beat-up that are actually the latest Lebron James sneakers, but he's a survivalist and he had to travel light. I don't think he had a second set of clothes. I can only squeeze so much in that backpack.

Way more at the link. [Collider]

And I've been seeing billboards and bus ads all over for the film, like this one. [Full image at NEOGaf Forum]

James Bond:

The 23rd official James Bond movie's storyline is "a shocking story," says writer Peter Morgan (The Queen), who wrote the script earlier this year. The film's on hold because of MGM's financial difficulties, but both Daniel Craig and Judi Dench have predicted filming will start in late 2010, with an eye to a late 2011 release. Maybe 11/11/11, one site suggests. And no, there's no more info about what's so "shocking" in the next Bond. [Kurier.AT via IGN]

Doctor Who:

We already knew the Doctor's brown suit was going to take quite a beating in this weekend's episode. See for yourself. It's like watching an old friend fall to pieces. [BlogtorWho]

Lost:

A dead character will "return" without the actor who plays him/her needing to be present. Miles will hear this dead person's spirit talking, and will carry a message from him/her — and it's something important. I'm guessing it's someone who's not available — so maybe Mr. Eko or Libby? Almost everyone else is returning (more or less) in the flesh. [E! Online]

Here are a couple extended promos, with absolutely no new footage. [Lyly Ford and Lyly Ford]

Dollhouse:

Here's what happens in the Jan. 15 episode, "The Hollow Men":

Sacrifices are made when Echo leads her crew to Arizona to dismantle the Rossum Corporation's mainframe.

[SpoilerTV]

Daybreakers:

We brought you a massive gallery of high-res stills from this movie the other day, but now here are some wallpapers. [SpoilerTV-Movies]

Fringe:

Here's what happens in episode 2x11, "Edina City Limits," airing Jan. 14:

THE FRINGE TEAM PURSUES LEADS TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF A SMALL TOWN COVER-UP ON AN ALL-NEW "FRINGE" THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, ON FOX

Following an unexplained attack involving hideously deformed humans, the Fringe team visits the small town in upstate New York to uncover leads surrounding the bizarre case. When it's determined that these deformed people have managed to hide themselves for a while and they'll do just about anything to keep it that way, the investigation takes an unexpected turn.

[TV Overmind]

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

The Fiction: The Motorway

In Martha's second trip on the TARDIS in the new Doctor Who, the Doctor takes her to New New York. Much like its present-day namesake, this city is trapped by traffic.

In fact, the only living residents of the city have been stuck in a quagmire called "the Motorway" for decades, all trying to get to a better place. Some even resort to kidnapping so that they can drive in the HOV lanes, which they've heard can cut years off their travel time. Once Martha is kidnapped she finds out they'll make it the ten miles to their destination in a short six years.

The Reality: Traffic and congestion.

It's been said that Americans spend an average of over 100 hours a year commuting, so it's no wonder that scientists are constantly trying to find ways to improve the driving experience. Writers are always imagining new ways for their heroes to get from point A to point B. But how many of those writer's dreams are coming true? Read on.

The fiction: Computer driven cars

Seen in: I, Robot
Pros: You can read, nap, or solve crimes while you're traveling. Accident cleanup is a snap.
Cons: Should the computer system decide to become murderous, you're in a lot of trouble.

The Reality: The Darpa Challenge

(image courtesy of the Team VictorTango website)

DARPA presents prizes to teams creating cars that drive on their own using "various sensors and positioning systems." Their 2007 challenge asked the vehicles to navigate an urban environment and "executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles." Three and a half million dollars in prizes were awarded and six teams finished the course.

The Fiction: Mag-Lev Cars

Seen In: Minority Report
Pros: You can pave everything and make it a road, giving D.C. residents as many lanes than they could ever want. Pull right up to your 200th floor apartment.
Cons: Imagine an accident at those speeds, on the side of a skyscraper. Makes car chase a lot more dangerous.

The Reality: Mag-Lev trains.

While we haven't started putting mag-lev systems in cars yet, we have put them into trains. Japan has the most famous trains using the technology, where magnets are used to both levitate and propel the train. Using magnetic levitation for travel has a lot of advantages, including speed. Not to mention the potential benefits to the environment, and the noise reduction. As we pointed out earlier, the future of rail transport in the U.S. might very well lie with mag-lev technology.

The Fiction: Flying Cars

Seen In: The Fifth Element, many many others
Pros: No need for roads anymore, the sky is open to everybody.
Cons: The sky is open to everybody. The view becomes nothing but cars, and traffic is a nightmare still.

The Reality: Hovercraft

Vehicles that float on a cushion of air are actually more popular and widely used than most people think. They're good for going over any terrain, and they're used by militaries around the world. It also is the technology on this list that you are most likely to make in your own garage, if all the YouTube videos are any indication. It is unlikely that the flying cars in science fiction are powered by jets of air, but so far it's the closest thing we've got.

The Fiction: Vehicle A.I. that talks to you

Seen in: Knight Rider
Pros: Can let you know when it needs maintenance, keep you entertained on long drives, drive for you if you need to beat up some bad guys.
Cons: Can get a little snippy. Might lock you out.

The Reality: turn by turn GPS, cars that talk to each other

While we're not quite to the point where our vehicles are having conversations, we do have plenty of robotic female voices telling us to "turn left" and after we make a wrong turn, they scold us with a "recalculating." But GPS systems have become commonplace. What's the next frontier of the technology? Cars that converse with each other.

In this video from cNet, we see that systems are being designed where two vehicles will send signals back and forth in order to keep track of their distance from each other, their speeds, and other relevant information. The same system can also get information from stop lights to relay to the driver, letting you know if you really should try to gun through that yellow light, or maybe you should try to stop.

Does it seem like these innovations are too far outside our grasp? Well there are two famous fictional cars that science has managed to replicate, at least to some degree:

The Fiction: The Batmobile

The Reality: Voice recognition software, OnStar, and "the Tumbler."

The Batmobile's features change from model to model, in fact there is even a website devoted solely to tracking the changes in the vehicle. There have been numerous defensive innovations, as well as offensive weaponry installed over the years. While most cars aren't driving around with side-mounted spherical bombs, the Batmobile has long had voice recognition software. Now the Ford Sync system comes standard in many of their models, one of the many ways our cars are starting to obey our vocal commands.

In a set of ads using the Batman/Batman Returns style Batmobile, audiences discovered one feature that they could have installed in their own cars: OnStar. Of course, Batman has had hands free calling to his support network (namely Alfred) for years.

The most important thing to note is that when Christopher Nolan brought his own spin to the Batmobile in Batman Begins, the "Tumbler" was actually a functional vehicle. According to The History of the Batmobile:

"Their primary focus was to make this Batmobile as real as possible: at 9 feet wide and 15 feet long, the car weighed in at 2.5 tons but was still capable of 0-60MPH in under six seconds with a top speed of 110MPH. Thanks to its unique design, it is also capable of making unassisted jumps up to 30 feet."

One of the best car shows in the world, Top Gear, was able to actually have the car in the studio for a segment where they talk about its actual working features. There's a rumor that The Stig even took it on a lap around the track:

The Fiction: James Bond's Scuba Car from "The Spy Who Loved Me."

The Reality: The sQuba Submarine Car

James Bond was able to tool around underwater in a modified Lotus Espirit without getting his impeccable suit damp. The sQuba Submarine Car is not quite so watertight, but it still is a car that handily swims around underwater, just like the vehicle in the film. As Jalopnik reports:

"Though you're not going to stay dry if you want to go diving, because theres no airtight canopy to enclose you. To breathe, you'll have to wear a scuba mask connected to the car's integrated compressed-air tank. But who cares?! This is a car that goes underwater!"

You can read a complete write up of the car here.

See the car in action and learn about all its other features:

Since the sQuba is just a concept car at the moment, if you want a car that will travel land and water, you might have to settle for an amphibious car. In one of their most infamous segments, the gentlemen at Top Gear were challenged to make their own amphibious cars, and then cross the English Channel. You might be surprised at the results:

What's next in the future of transportation? The best place to find out is probably the science-fiction section of Netflix.

Many moons ago, we showed you Coleran's film reel, which showcases his work on such films as Alien vs. Predator, Blade II, and The Island. More recently, Coleran has updated his website with tons of the user interfaces he has developed for a host of science fiction and spy movies.

These are just a small sample; his site contains dozens of images from each of the films he has worked on.

Playback Graphics [Mark Coleran via Metafilter]

Children of Men
Children of Men
The Island
The Island
Blade II
Blade II
The World is Not Enough
Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Monday

If you'd rather not think about Turkey Day, you may want to skip both House (Fox, 8pm) and Heroes (NBC, 8pm) this week; both shows are having holiday-themed episodes.

House and his team treat "an exceptionally brilliant physicist" more successfully than they handle their own relationships, and the Petrellis have a "surprise guest" for their special turkey dinner. Maybe we'll see Sylar eat some turkey brains or something.

Tuesday

V wraps up its four-episode mini-run on ABC at 8pm with the lying title of "It's Only The Beginning" Here's the official network blurb:

Erica works with newly-formed allies to uncover a biological threat they suspect the Visitors have been plotting. Aboard the Mothership, Anna meets with a special guest while managing the investigation into the murder of a V. Chad does a segment on the V Healing Centers, demonstrating their amazing medical abilities, but then finds himself conflicted by some of his findings.

Findings like them eating mice, Chad? We can but hope.

Meanwhile, BBC America provides a non-fiction alternative with Apollo Wives (8pm), a documentary where the wives of the Apollo mission astronauts talk about what it was like for them to watch their husbands risk their lives flying to the moon and then return as some of the most famous people on the planet.

Wednesday

If you're not interested in Mythbusters taking on dumpster myths on the Discovery Channel at 9pm (Kari fans, it's her last episode before maternity leave), and the idea of another episode of ABC's Eastwick at 10pm leaves you cold (Roxie gets seduced by Darryl's art world connections, Joanna learns about the magical version of Einstein's theories and Kat stays away from the dating world, if you care), then all is not lost.

Cartoon Network's latest live action Ben 10 movie, Ben 10: Alien Swarm debuts at 7pm and, to be honest, you could watch worse this week.

Thursday

It's Thanksgiving, which means all of the usual Thursday night confusion takes a break to go eat with its family, and we're left with the choice of two marathons. The Discovery Channel lets rip with a Mythbusters marathon from 9am through to 3am, while Syfy, surreally, goes with a James Bond movie marathon, starting at 8am. Because... someone had to?

Even stranger is the order of the movies they're showing: Dr. No at 8am, License To Kill at 10:30am, Live And Let Die at 1:30pm, The Spy Who Loved Me at 4pm, Tomorrow Never Dies at 6:30pm, Casino Royale at 9pm, For Your Eyes Only at midnight, and The Man With The Golden Gun at 2:30am. Um... Okay?

Friday

Thanksgiving takes out all of today's regular programming as well, leaving us with the second day of Syfy's Bond In No Obvious Order Whatsoever Marathon, again starting at 8am. Today's movies are Thunderball at 8am, From Russia With Love at 10:30am, You Only Live Twice at 1pm, Diamonds Are Forever at 3:30pm, Casino Royale again at 6pm, GoldenEye at 9pm, Goldfinger at midnight and, finally, Never Say Never Again at 2:30am.

Seriously, are these being shown in order of someone's particular preference or something?

Saturday

Things begin to get back to normal with the appearance of a crazy gimmicked Syfy Original Movie: Beyond Sherwood Forest takes Robin Hood and his Merry Men and then puts them head to head with magic and monsters. It's kind of genius in its simplicity, really. Plus, look! Lois Lane!

Sunday

Of course, as usual, the week ends with a new episode of The Venture Bros on Cartoon Network at midnight. You're all watching this by now, right? It's probably the best season to date, even if we haven't approached anything as compelling as The Nozzle yet...

Here's a list of all the movies with production budgets of $170 million and over, for the past ten years. (We chose the threshold of $170 million because there were a ton of movies clustered around the $150 million-$160 million mark.) Movies that failed to make back their budget at the U.S. box office are underlined.

2009:

Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince: $250 million

Avatar: $237 million (according to AP)

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: $225 million (according to NY Post)

Terminator Salvation: $200 million

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of COBRA: $175 million

Up: $175 million

2008:

Quantum Of Solace: $230.6 million

Prince Caspian: $225.6 million

Iron Man: 186.5 million

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull: $185.5 million

The Dark Knight: $185.5 million

Wall-E: $180.5 million

2007:

Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End: $317.4 million

Spider-Man 3: $272.9 million

The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials: $213.4 million

Rush Hour 3: $187.4 million

2006:

Superman Returns: $295.3 million

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: $223.1 million

X-Men: The Last Stand: $209.3 million

Poseidon: $171.3 million

2005:

King Kong: $232.5 million

Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe: $197.6 million

Sahara: $176.8 million

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire: $150 million (2005 dollars)

2004:

Spider-Man 2: $232.2 million

Troy: $199.9 million

Van Helsing: $182.8 million

The Polar Express: $186.6 million

Alexander: $175.4 million

2003:

Terminator 3: $238.4 million

The Matrix: Reloaded: $176.7 million

Master And Commander: $175.6 million

The Matrix: Revolutions: $175.6 million

2000:

The Perfect Storm: $175.6 million

1999:

Wild Wild West: $221 million

The World Is Not Enough: $173.3 million

The 13th Warrior: $206.8 million

Notes: All figures are in 2009 dollars, adjusted for inflation. These figures are just production budgets, and are based on the most accurate figures we could find. They don't include marketing budgets. And of course, many of the films which failed to break even at the U.S. box office did make a profit when you factor in international box office.

Conclusions:

There hasn't been a movie as expensive as Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End since 2007, so you could argue that, over all, movies are not getting more expensive. However, after a few years where there were four mega-budgeted movies per year, the last two years have each seen six movies with budgets over $170 million (in inflation-adjusted dollars.) And as we mentioned above, this year had the most movies costing $200 million or more of any year, with next year likely to see even more films over $200 million.

And the listing above doesn't reflect this fact, but we also found a steep rise in the number of movies costing around $150 million every year — this seems to be the safe point for a film that is expected to do well, but may not be a blockbuster. Films like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins, Star Trek and many others all have production budgets in the magic $150 million zone.

At the same time, Hollywood seems slightly better at picking winners lately. We haven't had a year where most of the hugely expensive movies failed to make back their budget at the U.S. box office since 2004, when two historical epics, The Polar Expressand Van Helsing all bombed. Or 2003, when one of two Matrix sequels underperformed, along with Terminator 3 and Master And Commander.

One thing jumps out at me: There were apparently no budget busting movies in 2000, 2001 or 2002. Apparently the first X-Men movie, which came out in 2000, had a budget of only about $75 million. And the Star Wars prequels, hideous though they were, were apparently on the cheap side, costing around $120 million each (in non-adjusted dollars.)

Why would this be? Well, look at the three big-budget movies from 1999. Notice anything the three of them have in common? Hmmm... Other mega-expensive bombs in the late 1990s include Speed 2: Cruise Control, Lethal Weapon 4 and, of course, Waterworld. The only mega-budget movies to make money in the latter half of the 1990s were Armageddon and Titanic.

Sources: Know Your Money, Forbes.com, Listphobia, The Numbers, IMDB, Box Office Mojo, Wikipedia, and other sources as cited.

Although the Tron role won't be Sheen's first nerdbait - He's playing the villain in Twilight sequel New Moon, and has also appeared in Underworld: Evolution and Timeline - it's certainly going to be an unusually high profile role for the man currently known more for his portrayal of Blair in The Queen and The Deal, and for his David Frost in last year's Frost/Nixon. The confirmation of the long-standing rumor came, oddly enough, from Disney's Twitter feed.

Fans should get used to seeing Sheen in big budget movies; in addition to New Moon and Tron, he's also rumored to be playing Ernst Blofeld in the next James Bond movie.

[Via]

Confession time: I'm currently bridesmaiding my way through a dear friend's wedding. I'm utterly hopeless with making plans and offering suggestions but, with the madness of this wedding season surrounding us all these days, I thought it only prudent to share my ideas with you all. If an undead couple atop a tower of icing doesn't say class, I don't know what what does. To love!

Additional reporting by Caitlin Petrakovitz.

MGM has just announced that screenwriter Peter Morgan, who penned The Queen, The Last King of Scotland and Frost/Nixon, is joining up with past Bond writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade for the 23rd film in this franchise.

Producer's Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli commented via release:

"Peter, Neal and Robert are extraordinarily talented and we're looking forward to working with the three of them."

Morgan is a great writer, and we have full confidence that he can take Bond's quips to an elegant and biting word-play high. He's also known for his serious dramas, so let's hope he can help out balancing the action with interesting character development. Also, we're hoping for a little style to be injected back into our mystery man and — fingers crossed — Morgan can elevate the dialog from the last film (He's Bond for goodness sakes! He doesn't just steer women into the bedroom with a nod like cattle). This is a good score for the movie... It all hinges on the choice of director now.

Daniel Craig is confirmed for the picture, but they have yet to set a production date.

British tabloid The Sun is reporting Boyle's lined up to direct Bond's next outing. So let's take this all with a grain of salt as they were once touting Eddie Murphy as the Riddler.

And Bond chief Barbara Broccoli, who now heads the huge 007 franchise at EON Productions, is leading the chase for his [Boyle's] services.

It's no surprise that Hollywood would be banging down Boyle's door after the Slumdog Millionaire Oscar sweep, but we hope he actually considers making the next Bond. First off, Boyle knows how to film an edge-of-your-seat chase scene, so he could come up with a sequence to rival Casino Royale's construction scaling action shot (optimistically speaking). But besides being masterful at the art of action, the man knows that the weight of a good story is always in the characters, which was the part that the most recent Bond, Quantum, bungled and abused with its shaky cam tactics and disjointed plot lines.

And before all of you start hollering at me for disliking Quantum of Solace, I would just like to say I'm in good company. It was a miserable film, and I, for one, want Danny Boyle to save me from a repeat experience.

Campbell - whose Casino Royale relaunched the Bond franchise in fine style - recently finished directing the Mel Gibson-starring big screen remake of British TV drama Edge of Darkness, easing him from the action thriller world of Bond into the more fantastic science-fiction necessary to make Green Lantern work on-screen. If he accepts the position, Campbell will be replacing Greg Berlanti, who co-wrote the script with Marc Guggenheim and Heroes' Michael Green, with the movie being talked about for a summer 2011 release.

Campbell in talks for 'Green Lantern' [Variety]

Assassinated in the Act

The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross: Some people have a monkey on their back; Ramona Random has a succubus. If Ramona doesn’t have sex, the demon gnaws at her mind. If she does have sex, it devours her partner. It makes her questionable girlfriend material, but a highly effective assassin.

Goldeneye: Bond henchwomen often use their seductive powers to get what they want, and what Xenia Onatopp wants is a good orgasm. Unfortunately for her partners, she nothing brings Xenia to ecstasy quite like squeezing a man to death between her powerful gams.

Worshipping the Queen of Sheba (American Gods by Neil Gaiman): Bilquis, an incarnation of the Queen of Sheba, doesn’t get loving any more from the worshippers who once prayed to her and held sexy fertility rites in her temples. So she maintains her power the best way she knows how: by posing as a prostitute, having sex with her johns, and promptly devouring them with her vagina. Judging by the screams of ecstasy, it’s not an entirely unpleasant way to go.

Getting it on with Alien-Possessed Women

Torchwood “Day One”: Cardiff is ground zero for alien mischief, so when a beautiful woman leads you into the bathroom for some anonymous love, stay on your toes. She might have a fetish for sexy time in the stalls, but she might also be possessed by an alien gas that wants to suck the sperm – and all the energy – from your body.

The Outer Limits “Caught in the Act”: Chaste Hannah wants to wait until marriage before going all the way with her boyfriend Jay. When an alien lifeform takes control of Hannah’s body, premarital abstinence flies quickly out the window as she starts seducing every man on campus. But this isn’t sexual liberation; it’s a hunger for man-meat that goes way beyond genitalia. When Jay starts tailing his suddenly unfaithful love, he discovers that she’s absorbing men into her body during the act.

Death by Snoo Snoo (Futurama “Amazon Women in the Mood”): After all the men died out on Amazonia, the Amazon women devised a method of punishing male trespassers that fulfills the needs of the hetero sex-starved population: Snoo Snoo. Evidently, dying of a crushed pelvis only sounds like fun.

Alien Sex Vampires

Liquid Sky: The aliens who land on the roof of artist Margaret’s loft find human endorphins especially tasty. Initially, they’re content to nibble on the endorphins released during heroin use, but they quickly learn that the orgasmic variety is far more satisfying. So they start murdering Margaret’s partners at the height of their sexual pleasure, leaving Margaret behind to deliver avant-garde monologues in her neon makeup.

Lifeforce: When a beautiful naked woman found imprisoned in the tale of Hailey’s Comet crawls on top of you and starts kissing you wildly, it’s probably not because she thinks you’re neat. It’s much more likely that she’s searching for a convenient orifice through which to suck out your soul, leaving you a desiccated, undead ghoul.

Angel “Lonely Hearts”: Angel & Co. hunt down a demon that kills its host when close to another naked body. But it’s not looking to snag its host’s energy; it’s just leaping from body to body during sex, looking for the perfect body to inhabit forever.

Having Sex with Your Proxy Self (Kaiba): In a future where memories can be stored, traded, and implanted in someone else, having sex with someone who shares your memories can be a form of near-masturbation. But the experience is so intense that it can make your head (and the rest of your body) explode.

Death by Rapid Pregnancy

Fringe “The Same Old Story”: When you’re a human specially designed for rapid aging, and your sperm is similarly designed, it’s best to use protection when sleeping with a fertile female partner. But even condoms fail from time to time, and those rapidly gestating pregnancies tend to kill the mother.

Species II: The same rules apply to men infected with alien DNA. Female alien hybrids can handle nine months’ worth of pregnancy occurring in the span of a few minutes. Female humans just don’t have the wombs for it.

Magically Boinked to Death

Dresden Files: Storm Front by Jim Butcher: When Harry Dresden is sent to investigate a pair of lovers whose hearts exploded in the act, he comes across a wizard who draws his energy from sex and lust. The wizard sent his target a coital heart attack, and her unfortunate partner got his own dose of cardiac overload.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Where the Wild Things Are”: Buffy and Riley’s repeated and enthusiastic lovemaking literally wakes the dead, freeing a crew of sexually repressed poltergeists. Once freed, the poltergeists try to ensure that they’ll have a steady supply of sexual energy by getting Buffy and Riley to continue their round-the-clock shtupping until they die of exhaustion. Fortunately, the rest of the Scoobies come to the rescue with a spell to pry the lovers apart, at least temporarily.

Kryptonite Condom (Wanted by Mark Millar): Perhaps taking a cue from Mallrats’ speculation on how Clark Kent and Lois Lane might copulate, supervillain Professor Seltzer once devised a kryptonite condom to take down his own Superman-like nemesis. Apparently, the hero’s girlfriend never quite got the radioactive rubber on him, leaving us to wonder whether a kryptonite diaphragm would have been more effective.

The Classic Coital Coronary

Star Trek: New Frontier: Vulcans are known for their remarkable stoicism, which breaks down spectacularly every seven years during an individual’s pon farr, during which a maddened Vulcan must mate or perish. But not every Vulcan has the constitution for the intense consummation. The Vulcan Voltak had a heart attack while between the sheets with his new wife, Enterprise Dr. Selar, leaving Selar widowed and throwing off her pon farr cycle.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “Let He Who Is Without Sin…”: Curzon was a great diplomat and a notorious womanizer. So it’s apt that he irreparably strained himself with attempting the sexual ritual of jamaharon on the pleasure planet of Risa, although he didn’t give up the ghost (or, in this case, the symbiont) until several days later.

The X-Files “Gender Bender”: The alien Kindred lead a life of quiet isolation in a rural Massachusetts community. But when one of the Kindred ventures into the outside world, their intense alien pheromones both attract a constant stream of willing partners and give them coronaries in the throes of passion.

The Tick “The Funeral”: Many superheroes hope to go out in a blaze of glory, felled by some worthy opponent. Famed superhero the Immortal meets his fate on a mattress in Captain Liberty’s apartment, felled by her vagina. Although judging from the pending paternity suits, he died pretty much how he lived.

Powers “Little Deaths”: Philandering superhero Olympia has a similar exit, albeit accompanied by a literal blaze of glory. His alter ego's wife commits suicide over the ensuing tabloid coverage, but the woman who was on top of him at the time gets half a million dollars for the TV movie rights.

When asked by Collider if the next Bond flick will be a follow up to Quantum, in line with director Marc Forester's wishes, Daniel Craig clearly stated:

No fucking way. I'm done with that story. I want to lie on a beach for the first half an hour of the next movie drinking a cocktail.

Craig knows what keeps the Bond franchise ticking: it's designer suits and sexy girls, without all the dramatic baggage. But wait, there's more. Craig's excited about the next movie because:

"We've finished this story as far as I'm concerned. We've got a great set of bad guys. There is an organization that we can use whenever we want to. The relationship between Bond and M is secure and Felix is secure. Let's try and find where Moneypenny came from and where Q comes from. Let's do all that and have some fun with it."

Yes, fun — I remember fun. Let's hope Craig gets his way and brings sexy back to the 007 franchise.

[Collider]

So it's really hard to talk about Quantum Of Solace as having any kind of a story, because it's so choppily edited that stuff just sort of happens most of the time. Someone obviously told director Mark Forster that a good action movie should be so choppy that adrenaline trumps logic or even being able to tell what's happening. But you can sort of glean that there's a story buried in all the jump cuts.

The giant irony in Quantum Of Solace is that all of the governments, and their spooks, are still thinking of oil as the world's most valuable resource. They're still in their 1990s mindset, going to war over oil and trying to control countries that have untapped petroleum deposits. There are a bunch of conversations about who controls Russia's oil, what's happening in the Middle East, etc. So when James Bond overhears our new villain Dominic Greene (who's sort of a smarmy Al Gore-type environmentalist) talking about pipelines and controlling the most precious resource in Bolivia, he assumes Greene means oil. So do his bosses.

This is what Greene and his shadowy organization Quantum are counting on. He makes a deal with the CIA: Greene will organize a coup in Bolivia, and the U.S. gets all of the country's oil deposits. But the natural resource that Greene really means to control is water, which is going to be much more valuable than oil soon. He's been damming all of the underground water flows and creating a massive underground reservoir underneath an apparently barren patch of land that he'll own after the coup.

The giant reveal of Greene's underground damming system could not be less dramatic. Bond and his sidekick Camille crash in the desert and stumble underground, then they find some kind of underground lake and mumble about damming. Meanwhile, we see shots of poor Bolivian people lining up to get water from a well or cistern and finding no water there. The poor Bolivian babies must go thirsty because of Greene, that shady pseudo-environmentalist.

This is our new new world order, apparently. Instead of fighting brutal wars over oil, we'll fight them over water. And instead of blowing the poor up, we'll parch them.

The movie makes a stab at driving this home in various ways, by having Greene give a speech about the world's aerable land that's being irreversibly destroyed every year, and by having the CIA agents debate over whether it's safe to drink the bottled water in Bolivia. But it's way too abstract an idea for an action movie.

Actually, here's how old-school Bond would have done it. You would have had a bombastic villain in a crazy tunic, and he would have built a massive facility stocked with tons of armed guards and maybe some robots. And a big guy with weird teeth. The facility would have been some kind of huge pumping station that siphons off the world's water and stores it in massive tanks, so Bomberg can blackmail the world. And Bond would have discovered this base and then led a crack assault team there, blowing shit up good in a giant fight scene.

Instead, the movie ends with Greene's pet dictator becoming the new leader of Bolivia, and Greene then demands to become the new water utility for the country, at an exorbitant rate. Then Bond shows up and blows up the hotel where they're meeting, which is conveniently built on top of a huge stash of super-flammable fuel cells.

That's the thing about Quantum — it's not afraid to be cartoony. It includes one CIA guy who's literally a cartoon of the callous American imperialist, with our old pal Felix Leiter playing the role of the good CIA guy by contrast. The Latin American general dictator guy is a total cartoon character. The scenes of everybody saying Bond has gone rogue for no particular reason are super cheesy.

But when it comes to having a larger than life main villain, the movie just sort of craps out. At the end, when Bond is having his final battle with Greene, it felt like it should be the end of the second act, before Bond goes on to fight the real bad guy. (Which actually is probably the third movie in the Daniel Craig Bond trilogy.)

Bottom line: At some point during the screenwriting and editing process, Quantum Of Solace had something to say about geopolitics and the mad science of the new environmental dystopia. But you're hard-pressed to get that out of the actual movie as it stands. Meanwhile, this is nowhere near as ground-breaking a film as Casino Royale, which really felt like a massive reinvention of the Bond franchise. Quantum is more like a standard-issue action movie — with a few really great set pieces — which you'll forget the details of five minutes after you leave the theater.

The movie is based on Max Brooks' novel which is a fictional collection of accounts from survivors after the zombies infested the world and mass panic took over.

Forster told Variety:

"The genre always fascinated me, and when they pitched it to me, it reminded me of the paranoid conspiracy films of the '70s like All the President's Men."

The action packed underwater walking zombie extravaganza is being produced by Brad Pitt's Plan B production company. J. Michael Straczynski (Changeling) is penning the screenplay, which is still not finished.

The art is from John Petersen and you can check a lot more of his amazing work at his site.

[Variety]

Lesbians just haven't met the right man

Good news, Lesbians! There is a cure for your condition, and his name is Bond, James Bond. Your sister in sapphism, the infamous criminal Pussy Galore, was recruited for the other team in Goldfinger (1955) — oh and by the way, it's Lesbian with a capital L, because Fleming seemed to think Lesbian was both a nationality and something that could be fixed. "I was told you only like women," Bond mentions tactfully while in flagrante with Pussy. Ah, but that's only because she'd been raped by her uncle as a child, so her preference for the fairer sex is really only because she's "never met a man before." Take a number, ladies — Dr. Bond is ready to cure you.

What? You mean you don't want to be cured of your gayness? Well, that's okay — Pussy's paramour Tilly Masterson also chooses the Lesbian lifestyle over the Bond cure. Of course, she dies as a direct consequence — she's killed by the hat-throwing manservant Oddjob after choosing to seek out Pussy rather than accept Bond's rescue — but don't let that deter you.

Voting makes you gay

While we're on the topic of those pesky gay people, did you know that the suffrage movement can be blamed for the invention of homosexuality? It's true! Bond rationalizes Tilly's rejection of his irresistible manly man-ness by blaming her mixed-up hormones — "a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality'." Feminine qualities, you see, were unable to survive emancipation, and were transferred to the males, resulting in "pansies of both sexes… a herd of unhappy, sexual misfits — barren and full of frustrations."

If the political explanation doesn't float your boat, you can always blame rape. Many of the Bond girls' sexual frigidity gets chalked up to gang rape (Tiffany Case), date rape (Honeychile Rider), and that old standby, semi-rape (Vivienne Michel, Kissy Suzuki, Solitaire) — all fixed, naturally, by James Bond. But in Fleming's world, sometimes rape just makes you objectify women yourself — take Pussy Galore, who had women "in bunches – like grapes," all because she "couldn’t run as fast as" her uncle.

Women shouldn't sleep around — except in the workplace

Modern girls think they can have it all — a career and a love life. Bond sets us straight in Moonraker (1955):

And it was true that an appointment in the Secret Service was a form of peonage. If you were a woman there wasn't much of you left for other relationships… An affair outside the Service automatically made you a 'security risk' and in the last analysis you had a choice of resignation from the Service and a normal life, or of perpetual concubinage to your King and Country.

Male agents, of course, have no such concerns, and are free to have "fragmentary affairs" with double agents and syndicate criminals, with hardly a thought to state secrets.

So next time your boss gets wandering hands, ladies, just remember — it's safer to keep it within the company anyway. Suddenly, Mad Men makes perfect sense.

Proper women have pun names

The best part of being a Bond girl isn't the glamorous adventures or the obligatory roll in the hay — it's the excuse to have a crazy double-entendre for your name. The very first Bond girl, in 1953's Casino Royale, is the double agent Vesper Lynd — a pun on West Berlin to signify her divided loyalties. She's followed by Solitaire of Live and Let Die (1954), so named for her avoidance of men; Gala Brand (Moonraker), named after her father's boat; and Tiffany Case (Diamonds are Forever, 1956), named for the fancy compact her father gave her mother when he walked out, angered because Tiffany was not a boy. Side note: Octopussy, in the original 1966 story, was, in fact, an octopus.

Other pun-names are less literal and more suggestive, like Kissy Suzuki in 1964's You Only Live Twice, and Honeychile Rider in 1958's Dr. No. But the most famous Bond girl name is Pussy Galore. Her surname is a modifying adjective, for pete's sake! For this leader of a band of lesbian thieves, Pussy Galore is the perfect name — it describes both what she is and what she gets.

"No" means "Hell yes"

Since we always see the Bond girls through the eyes of our secret agent, wouldn't it be enlightening to reverse the gaze and see 007 from the point of view of the women? Think again. The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) is told in the first person by Vivienne Michel, but don't go to her looking for feminist insights. "All women love semi-rape," Vivienne notes, after a grueling day of being held hostage by a pair of thugs, repeatedly beaten, physically humiliated, and sexually assaulted, until Britain's favorite spy happens to stop by and rescue her. (That's the entire plot of the book, mind). And then, dear reader, she beds him. Because what's the best way to deal with the aftermath of sexual assault? That's right — bondage. "They love to be taken," Vivienne adds, further instructing Fleming's readership in proper bedroom behavior. "It was Bond's sweet brutality against my bruised body that had made his act of love so piercingly wonderful."

If you're wondering why you don't remember this from the 1977 film of The Spy Who Loved Me, that's because the filmmakers (with Fleming's blessing) decided to scrap everything but the title. See what you missed by only watching the movies?

Blofeld, played by Telly Savalas, wants to blackmail the world by hypnotizing a woman to love chickens. It totally would have worked, too. Bond films are known for their ridiculous Rube Goldberg villain schemes - here's our list of the most brain-dead, including a few Quantum spoilers.

What makes that clip even more awesome is that the woman has just had sex with James Bond, and now she's being hypnotized to adore chickens. That's got to be someone's exact fetish, somewhere on the internet.

So here are the most insane Bond villain schemes, starting with the one above and ending with Quantum Of Solace:

Blofeld's chicken allegy/virus scheme. Actually, Blofeld's scheme in OHMSS is a little more complicated than I let on above. He's pretending to be an allergy doctor, and he's gathered a whole bunch of beautiful allergic women in bikinis and harem pants. They're allergic to various things, mostly food items, and Blofeld is curing their allergies with the hypnotic power of his smooth silky Kojak voice. But he's not just curing their allergies - he's also brainwashing them to deliver the deadly Omega virus to plants or animals, on his command. The Omega virus causes instant sterility and spreads like wildfire. So, for example, if chicken lady (from the clip) infects her chickens with the Omega virus, we'll never hatch another chicken again, anywhere in the world. It'll be like 28 Chickens Later. How does Bond foil this dastardly scheme? I just re-watched this movie, and I'm still not sure. But it involves lugeing. And dancing bears. Best. Bond. Movie. Ever.

Goldfinger's nerve-gas-nuclear-gold scheme. The early Bold films often seem to revolve around nukes. For example, Dr. No plans to use a nuclear reactor to deflect American missile launches off course, eventually including the moon rocket, with the help of an evil geologist. (Mwa ha ha ha.) But Goldfinger's scheme is sheer elegance in its bug-brainedness. He wants to nerve gas all the soldiers guarding the gold depository at Fort Knox, and then set off a nuclear bomb inside the gold reserve, irradiating all the gold and making his own stash more valuable. Mostly, though, he just likes to laser people in the crotch.

Blofeld's spaceship kidnappings. In You Only Live Twice, Blofeld is at it again. This time, the white-cat-loving maniac is launching his own spaceship to space-nap U.S. and Russian spaceships. He also continues the food theme by disguising his liquid oxygen rocket fuel under the label LOX, thus making everyone think it's smoked salmon. Sheer genius!

Blofeld's shine-on-you-crazy-diamond satellite. You can't keep Ernst Stavro Blofeld down. He decides to build a deadly satellite and use it to attack Washington, D.C. Just launching a satellite and building a space-based weapons system would be fancy enough for most supervillains, but not the now-Vegas-based Blofeld. He makes the whole thing out of diamonds. Except for the coolant system, which is platinum. Liberace is his launch technician. Oh, and the satellite is controlled by cassette tape, which is the same way Blofeld controls his chicken-loving women slaves. He loves his Dolby noise reduction.

Scaramanga uses solar power for EVIL. Count Dooku has three nipples. (I just love saying that.) And he's building a deadly SOLAR GUN which harnesses the power of solar energy. He has a solar reactor, which is like a nuclear reactor, but SOLAR. Too bad Miss Goodnight accidentally makes the solar reactor go critical, which is like a solar flare, only on Earth.

Stromberg's Atlantis. Some guy who doesn't have a white cat or extra nipples wants to build his own undersea kingdom, in a seabase named Atlantis, in the Spy Who Loved Me. There's also nuclear submarines and stuff.

Hugo Drax's space-flower-power attack. Now this is more like it. In Moonraker, zillionaire Nazi Hugo Drax has crazy disco facial hair, and he wants to create a new master race of perfect blonde people in Speedos. So he builds a ton of space shuttles and finds some rare South American orchid that can be distilled into a poison that he can spray from the air, to commit flowery genocide. That's the kind of crazy supervillain lateral thinking we like around here.

Christopher Walken wants to smash Google. You'd expect Christopher Walken to have a totally derango plan, but his scheme in A View To A Kill is surprisingly dull. He just wants to set off some bombs and cause some earthquakes, destroying Silicon Valley and giving himself a monopoly on the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oh sorry. He doesn't even hypnotize Larry Ellison into deploying an exploding goat at the right moment or anything. Very disappointing.

Rupert Murdoch's crazy war agenda. In Tomorrow Never Dies, Jonathan Pryce plays Eliot Carver, a media baron who wants to start a war between the world's two great superpowers: China and Britain. To this end, he sinks a British ship in Chinese waters and steals its deadly payload to start an attack against the Chinese government that will eliminate politicians who are opposed to giving his media company broadcast rights. Plus he thinks World War III will be good for ratings.

Colonel Moon's solar-power minefield detonator. In the recent Bond films, satellite weapons have figured prominently, including GoldenEye's EMP weapon. But we don't get a truly bugfuck satellite scheme until 2002's Die Another Day, the last Pierce Brosnan film. Colonel Moon, an evil North Korean, disguises himself as a Brit named Gustav Graves, and builds a satellite called Icarus that can harness solar energy and then focus it to help grow crops. (Notice a running theme here: Solar power? Always EBIL.) In reality, Graves wants to use the satellite to blow up a ton of mines in the minefield between North and South Korea, allowing the North Koreans to take over. Because, of course, the minefield is the only thing preventing a North Korean takeover. Genius!

The faux-Gore eco-resort water grab. You know what else is evil, besides solar energy? Water management. In Quantum Of Solace, apparently the villain, Greene (Matthieu Amalric), is a fake environmentalist. He builds a fancy Eco-Hotel as a front for his vicious schemes. And he plans to help overthrow the government of a small South American country, in return for an apparently barren piece of land. But then it turns out that land secretly allows him to control most of South America's water supply. How does that work? I'm dying to see the movie and find out.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

More spoilers from an anonymous source. Apparently, Arcee, the female Transformer, doesn't die in the movie — instead, she doesn't show up until later on, and she spends most of her time in robot form instead of her three-motorcycles version. Only one character combines with an Autobot to make a bigger robot. The Constructicon is nine vehicles put together, but it'll only put in a brief appearance. Scorponok is back, and he uses his internal "spark" to restore life to one of the Decepticons. (Gosh, which one could it be?) [Seibertron]

Meanwhile, a guy who knows a guy has a buttload of spoilers. Apparently Soundwave is black, and does not have an Earth mode. (So not only is he not a pick-up truck, he's nothing at all, in Earth terms.) And the Decepticons mention Soundwave during their discussions.

The Constructicons join together to form Devastator more than once. Jetfire starts off as a Destructicon and then changes sides. Also, John Turturro's character dies at last. Optimus Prime "has a scene with a trailer." And Ravage is actually a biological weapon, and there's no Laserbeak. The ice cream truck, the Chevy Volt, and the Hummer HX are not Transformers. And Megatron doesn't return (possibly as a tank) until the end of the movie — when Soundwave resurrects him.

And finally, "the Fallen" is an old Cybertronian legend — it's not one robot but a whole army of robots who are supposed to protect the Cube. When Sam goes bonkers and starts talking gibberish, he's actually reciting Cybertronian hieroglyphics prophesying the return of the Fallen. [TFW2005]

And meanwhile, Transformers Live is casting a bit of doubt on the rumors we reported the other day, including the idea that Jetfire creates wormholes and Soundwave turns into a satellite. [Transformers Live]

Quantum Of Solace:

Still not sure if this movie is science fictional, but here's a tidbit: director Marc Foster said he originally filmed a cliffhanger ending where Bond sees Mr. White, the villain from Casino Royale. That scene will appear on the DVD, but the theatrical version has a tidier ending where James Bond finds his "quantum of solace." [Commander Bond]

Splinter:

I'm way more excited about this indie parasite movie after reading Sci Fi Wire's interview with director Toby Wilkins. The film takes its time to establish the characters so we identify with them and invest in how they deal with the crisis. The fungal parasite isn't from space, it's just always been here. And it "pilots" the human skeleton without any regard for how your joints are supposed to bend, or speed, or gravity, or other concerns. It has two states: dormant (which is like the spines of a sea urchin) and active, where it grows and multiplies and creates new tendons around your skeletal structure. It's basically a dumb animal. [Sci Fi Wire]

Dollhouse:

In the sixth episode of Joss Whedon's programmable amnesiac show, "True Believer," we'll meet Jonas Sparrow, a "charismatic leader of a quasi-Christian religious cult." [SpoilerTV]

Battlestar Galactica:

Edward James Olmos, the master of vague sweeping statements, says the ending of BSG "is like a great book. You love reading it and you want to find out what happens in the story, but you also are so sad it is ending. That's how I feel about Battlestar. It has been a great experience for me. I don't want it to end, but I think the ending is so strong that I am happy to have fans see it. People are going to get their minds blown." Okay.

He also said he's editing the TV movie, and: "You will actually see it come to a conclusion. That's amazing in my eyes because it is such a large story." [EW]

Lost:

Fionnula Flanagan's "creepy ring-seller" is related to a major character, who is not Desmond. Also, Abaddon actor Lance Reddick has been spotted in Hawaii filming the sixth episode of the season. Also, the show is casting a new character named Hal, a 70-something white dude who can "still fight the system and win." Finally, the show is also casting a Czech scientist named Mike, who's on the brink of something big. [EW]

It sounds like Hal and Mike both debut in episode seven. And we'll also meet a barfly named Vicki, who knows how to read a guy "better than he knows himself" and get what she wants. Also in that episode: Rupa, a sweet young Indian professional woman who can be tougher than she appears. She handles difficult customers with "charm and ease." And Nandi, another young Indian, a man who's used to working with difficult people. [SpoilersLost]

Heroes:

According to the new TV Guide, Daphne will go back to the farm in Kansas where she grew up. Matt follows her out to the farm, but he has to convince her dad to let him talk to her. Daphne is hiding a big secret in her bedroom somewhere. And as we've mentioned, an "eclipse" in an upcoming episode makes the heroes lose all their powers. Meanwhile, the title of the first episode of the "Fugitives" storyline is rumored to be called "Clear And Present Danger." [The ODI]

Fringe:

The next new Fringe episode won't air until Nov. 11, and it's called "In Which We Meet Mr. Jones." [SpoilerTV]

That episode is "really intense," says Astrid actor Jasika Nicole. She explains: "Astrid has to commandeer this weird line that they're crossing. It involves one of the members of the team directly, and then someone outside of the team, and they're trying to bridge a gap. It's similar to when Olivia was in the tank and she [communicated with John]." Also, we'll find out at some point why Astrid came back to the lab after Walter attacked and sedated her. One possible theory is that she is Dr. William Bell. [TV Guide]

Also, we'll soon learn whether Peter really has an illness, or whether references to his "medical condition" are part of Walter's paranoia. The answer is "very very interesting," says John Noble. And Peter's devotion to finding the Pattern may not be totally altruistic — he's staying close to something that could be beneficial down the road.

Olivia and Peter aren't going to be getting together any time soon. But meanwhile, Olivia kisses another boy (one we haven't met yet) and she may be open to other romances. She just doesn't have any room in her life for someone like Peter. But Olivia does connect emotionally with Walter, who manages to seem more like a normal middle-aged man and less like a crazy science freak. [E! Online]

My Own Worst Enemy:

OMG, what happens in this split-personality brain-chip show's fourth episode, "That Is Not My Son"? Here's the synopsis:

During Edward’s (Christian Slater) rescue mission to get Raymond (Mike O’Malley) out of captivity, Henry (Slater) wakes up to find himself in the midst of gunfire. Paula (Michelle Krusiec, “What Happens in Vegas”), a fellow operative overhears a panicked Henry put in a call to Mavis (Alfre Woodard), revealing his identity. Henry/Edward’s fate now lies in her hands. Meanwhile, Mary Grady (Missy Yager) finds out that her suspicions about Tom (O’Malley) are true; and a relationship between Dr. Skinner (Saffron Burrows) and Edward is exposed.

And the following episode will be called "The Night Train To Moscow." [SpoilerTV]

Chuck:

Here are some pics from episode six, "Chuck Vs. The Ex." And the following episode will be called "Chuck Vs. The Fat Lady." [ChuckTV]

Watchmen:

We already covered most of the details from the secret Watchmen screening that happened on Tuesday, but a few more trickled out. Rorschach is referred to as the smartest man in the world, in addition to having the best fighting skills. Dr. Manhattan takes apart complex engines and reassembles them. He teleports people and "can change the tint of his blue." In the trailer, when you see Nite Owl screaming in the snow, he's screaming about the death of Rorschach at Dr. Manhattan's hands. After Rorschach dies, there is a "stupid moment" between Silk Spectre and Nite Owl, and then the camera pans around a bit more and the movie ends. Oh, and the scene at the end with Rorschach's journal at the New Frontiersman is in there too. [Movies-Spoilers]

And Kevin Smith, who has seen the film twice, more or less confirms the ending is changed from the book. The new ending makes it more about the characters. (Which fits in with the "framing Dr. Manhattan" idea) and works just as well as the original, he insists. [Collider]

Star Trek:

Smith also mentioned some tidbits about Star Trek. Most notably, the movie introduces the familiar characters one by one, sort of the way Blues Brothers brings the band back together — except this time they're coming together for the first time. And the last castmember we meet is Simon Pegg's Scotty. But Scotty is still "front and center" in the movie. [Collider again]

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

Writer Roberto Orci went on the TFW2005 boards to throw some cold water on the rumor-mongers. He denies that Soundwave, the robot that turned into a tapedeck in the cartoons, is now a pick-up truck. But he admitted that Soundwave may be a truck of some sort — just not a pick-up. Also, he said the "Fallen" in the movie's title could be the name of a robot, or it could just refer to the defeated side in a battle. The fight scenes will be even longer in the second movie than in the first. And we'll probably meet a Decepticon who is ridiculously loyal to Megatron and the Decepticon cause. But it won't be Tidal Wave, because he's not in the movie. [TFW2005]

As fast as Orci shoots down the rumors, more rumors crop up. An inside source tells Seibertron that Optimus Prime will combine with Jetfire. And Soundwave's alternate form is actually a satellite, but he may turn into a truck as well. Ravage uses biological warfare against the humans. And Jetfire can create wormholes. Also, Scorpinok will return. Also, there's speculation that the female Transformer Arcee dies early in the movie, because those motorbikes haven't been seen on set since the "steel mill" sequences which happen early in the film. [Seibertron]

Meanwhile, sources confirm that three motorcycles combine to create Arcee, and you can see those bikes in the first set video that Wal-Mart released. [TFW2005 again]

Quantum Of Solace:

The new Bond film showed the other day in London, and a bunch of details spilled out. The movie picks up after the last one, with Bond capturing the injured Mr. White, who taunts him that his secret organization Quantum had been so paranoid about the British listening in to its conversations, when all along the spies had no clue that Quantum existed.

James Bond is a "cauldron of burning rage" in QOS, and M puts him on MI6's capture-or-kill list while the CIA threaten to take him out. (For ribs? Ribs are nice.) Matthieu Amalric's villain is a fake environmentalist who schemes to overthrow the government of Bolivia and control the country's natural resources. At one point, Bond and his sidekick Camille are in an ancient plane, being chased by a superjet through the mountains.

[The Mirror and Empire and TheShiznit and London Times via Slashfilm

And here's an interview with Daniel Craig, plus some footage. [SpoilerTV-Movies]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Looks like the bad Terminator played by Garret Dillahunt is getting way closer to tracking down John Connor, judging from this sneak peek and interview with the actor. I think the clips are from next week's episode. [TSCCHypnoWeb]

The studio sent us some pics of Kendra Shaw getting all snuggly in tonight's episode.

And it sounds like Kendra Shaw will be sticking around for a while, judging from the synopsis for the Nov. 3 episode, "Brothers Of Nablus":

The Connors find themselves on high alert and in odd company after their house is robbed. Elsewhere, one Terminator terrorizes Ellison, while another gets dangerously close to John Connor. Meanwhile, Derek and Jesse continue to get reacquainted.

[SpoilerTV]

Fringe:

Here's a promo for House and Fringe that I think includes some new footage:

Life On Mars:

In the fifth episode, "Things to Do in New York When You Think You're Dead," a racial confrontation brews between African Americans and Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood, when a young African American girl's body is discovered, flung from a rooftop. Working the case with Sam and the precinct, is the young Fletcher Bellow, who will be Sam's mentor in 2008. The Black Liberation Army is intent on hunting down the Puerto Rican suspect, Angel Ramirez, and exacting their own rough justice. Meanwhile, Sam has to battle the racial attitudes in his own precinct, and in the end there's a tense rooftop confrontation which leads to shots being fired. And here are some promo pics. Check out the special guest star in one of those crowd scenes. [SpoilerTV]

Heroes:

The second half of Heroes season four, "Fugitives," will be huge and epic, promises star Greg Grunberg. All of the heroes are "working together and on the run because there's this looming power that wants us gone." [IESB]

And who could that looming power be? Well, there's one clue. Producer Jesse Alexander posted in his Flickr stream pictures of a cargo plane, labeled "Villain Transport." Who is this villain, and why does he/ she need such a big plane? (Perhaps, through the miracle of filming, the plane will appear to be complete. Or maybe it's just a piece of a plane for a reason.) Also, it sounds as though Arthur Petrelli will be in the show through at least episode 9. [The ODI]

Chuck:

Are you excited about Simple Life star Nicole Richie showing her acting chops on tonight's Chuck? Here she is talking about the role, with a few short clips thrown in. [Multipleverses]

Eleventh Hour:

Marley Shelton talks about her character, tough-as-nails bodyguard Rachel. (U.S. only, I'm afraid.) [SpoilerTV]

Knight Rider:

In the show's 13th episode (time flies!) called "I Love The Knightlife," there's a superserum called HXP serum, which enhances soldier's speed, strength and endurance, developed by Dr. Lawrence Gogol. But a freelance assassin named Victor Galt and his sexy nightclub-owning partner Alexandra Pachinko (really) steal the serum, and Mike has to go undercover to find out what happened. Dr. Gogol's right-hand women on the HXP project is a sexy, sassy PhD named Megan, who is impressed with Billy's scientific knowledge. (Rowrrr.) Colonel Partain is in charge of finding out what happened to the HXP serum, and doesn't trust Mike.

But who cares about some super-serum being stolen? What you want to know is, will there be a hot chick in a bikini, who's raising money by washing cars? And will some hapless thug get "taken for a ride" by KITT and get confused? Yes, and yes. [SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

In the Nov. 6 episode, "Bloodline," Clark's cousin Kara returns, and Lois discovers she suddenly has superpowers. And in the Nov. 13 episode, "Abyss," Chloe's memories get replaced with Kryptonian code by Brainiac, and Clark takes her to the Fortress so Jor-El can fix her up. Davis tells Chloe she's marrying the wrong man. [OSCK]

Sanctuary:

Want to see the new title sequence that this Amanda Tapping show will be sporting soon? Check it out the link. [Sci Fi Wire]

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.