Even though it's getting a solid F for effort on title, the TV movie Alien Western actually looks pretty interesting. Marsters is stars as Sam Danville, a prisoner who's about to be executed, but his day of reckoning is interrupted by an alien attack. While I'm not a fan of the noises the aliens are making, I'll tune in for Marsters any day. Check out the clips below. Western premieres on the Syfy Channel on June 1st.

When is someone just going to give Marsters his own genre show? I don't understand it.

How dumb is Dragonball? It's the kind of movie where the good guy and the bad guy are fighting, and the good guy pauses to look serious and say slowly, "I must believe... in... who.. I am." And the bad guy doesn't kick the good guy in the face while he's monologuing. It's the kind of movie where the good guy makes constipated faces over and over again, while he's trying to summon his ki energy. It's the kind of movie that makes absolutely no sense, if you pause to think about it for two seconds.

And yet, I enjoyed it a lot. Maybe I just succeeded in lowering expectations to a nadir this movie could soar over. Or maybe I just have a soft spot for a dumb action comedy. Either way, I found myself giggling a lot at this film, both during the funny parts and the serious parts.

In Dragonball Evolution, Goku (Justin Chatwin) is your pretty standard movie youngster, who doesn't fit in at school and gets bullied by the rich jocks. His grandpa has forbidden him to fight them - even though he could beat them with one hand tied behind his back, thanks to his super-awesome martial arts training. (I kept being reminded of the classic Motown martial-arts epic The Last Dragon, and hoping someone would say "Kiss my Converse.") But Goku is special, and meant for a greater destiny than high-school bullying. He soon falls afoul of the evil Piccolo (James Marsters), a nasty from outer space who's been imprisoned for 2,000 years after he nearly destroyed the world. Now Goku is racing to find the Dragonballs before Piccolo does, or Piccolo will destroy the world for sure this time.

The movie pretty much announces what sort of film it's going to be in the first few minutes. We see an obscene closeup of the sweat on Goku's face, and then an even tighter closeup of his nose as the sweat rolls off, and then Goku is play-fighting with his grandpa Gohan, on top of a pair of tightropes. Goku almost wins by knocking a fly into Gohan's mouth, so he swallows it, distracting him. But then Gohan wins with his ki power. The whole thing is seriously slapsticky and ridiculous and demented.

And it pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Chow Yun-Fat plays Master Roshi, the teacher who takes Goku under his wing, and apparently decides that there's no piece of dialogue he can't improve with eye-rolling and crazy cackling. Chow knows what kind of movie he's in, and his enjoyment is actually sort of contagious. He almost single-handedly turns the whole thing into a zany pantomime, punctuated with whizzy acrobatic fight scenes.

At times, it reminded me of a somewhat more coherent version of Dragon-Wars - another terrible movie that I loved - maybe just because of the attempt to cram tons of overly dense backstory and random characters into a short movie. And because of the way everybody just runs with all the nonsense. The main difference is, this is a martial-arts epic, so there are regular kick-boxing sequences.

So Goku has to learn to believe in himself and trust his feelings and so on, and meanwhile every time he touches the Dragonballs he gets apocalyptic visions of everything being destroyed. Just in case those visions aren't clear enough, the movie includes about a dozen scenes in which Gohan, Roshi and various other people repeat the same pieces of information over and over again, which isn't a bad thing if you're bringing small children to this film.

The other thing I really liked about this film was the two female heroes, Chi Chi and Bulma. They're just as one-dimensional as everyone else in the film, but they're at least vaguely empowered. Chi Chi is another martial-arts expert, and she actually gets to be one of the people who teaches important lessons to Goku once or twice. Meanwhile, Bulma may look like a club kid, but she's actually a PhD in awesome pseudoscience, who invents cool gadgets and totes a laser gun. (And she has the motorcycle that somehow collapses itself down to the size of a pebble, in a sequence cribbed from Transformers.)

The biggest problem with the film is the villain, Piccolo. I've read a hundred interviews lately where James Marsters explains all of the rich depth he put into playing this character... and none of it shows up on screen. Marsters, covered with makeup that would have been laughed off Star Trek: The Next Generation, struts around reciting ludicrous villain dialogue while Not Getting The Job Done. We don't even see that much of him, and he seems to be a bit of a pushover in the end.

The last twenty minutes or so of the film dissolves into mediocre CGI, but there's still enough slapsticky fighting and Chow Yun-Fat clowning to keep you awake. And by this point in the film, Justin Chatwin's dough-faced earnestness had started to win me over.

If you're going to see one mindless Joseph Campbell wank-chalice of a film about the Hero's Journey this month, you could do a lot worse than Dragonball. For one thing, the movie doesn't feel the need to put down its female characters to make the male hero look good. For another, it's pretty fun in parts, and you can tell Chow Yun-Fat was enjoying goofing off. And you'll enjoy making fun of its many flaws afterwards.

Talking to Digital Spy during promotion for Dragonball: Evolution, Marsters talked about the last time someone had tried to bring Buffy back:

A couple of years ago Joss [Whedon] came to me because they were thinking of doing a television movie...but ultimately it didn't come through. I think basically Buffy has always been an uphill battle. From the very beginning it was swimming against the stream. It's hard to get the suits to commit to another Buffy project, especially one that doesn't have Buffy in it as the lead.

That doesn't mean that he's not available, however:

Yeah [I would return], I mean, any time you can get that kind of writing in your mouth... [The struggle with producers] makes me just want to write my own and produce it.

I have to admit, I have no idea what a James Marsters-written Buffy would be like, but I'd be more than willing to find out, if only to keep him from having to make another Dragonball movie.

Marsters doubtful about 'Buffy' return [Digital Spy]

Does it not look like the two enemies are skating a top a large mountain, hand in hand? Especially when the finishing moves for each Kamehameha end in a dance-like "You've been served" kind of pose. Dragonball Evolution, starring Justin Chatwin as Goku and James Marsters as Lord Piccolo, will be out April 9th. [DB The Movie]

Cute-as-a-button co-star Sanny van Heteren posted a few pics from the set showing a dirty Marsters ready to kill some alien-bug scum. The plot of Alien Western is centered around a little town that gets attacked by giant alien bugs. Marsters plays Sam Danville, an outlaw who's supposed to be executed when the aliens land.

Anyone else thinks Marsters just picks parts off of a role playing fantasy to-do list? Vampire, check. Space and time traveler, check. Savvy thief, check. Green alien, check. Cowboy, check. I can't wait until he plays the firefighter with the troubled past followed by the Mexican apple thief. (Ten points if you catch that reference.) Either way, I'll clear my schedule to watch him slay aliens, get dirty and say yee-haw. Especially since it looks like he is going gorgeously gray around the edges. Plus giant bugs, people. This may actually be one Sci Fi original that's made of win.

[Facebook via Whedonesque]

According to Muse Entertainment the movie is described as as:

Alien Western, a sci-fi television film about giant, vicious, alien bugs that come to earth to gorge themselves on the uranium deposits found in the ground of an Old West town, began principal photography this week in Romania starring James Marsters as Sam Danville, an outlaw who is about to be hanged when the aliens land.

Sounds like a Tremors rip, which is fine by me. You can't have enough scifi Westerns, especially when you get old cult character actors involved (yes sorry he will always be Spike to me).

[Muse Entertainment via Whedonesque]

IGN (which is owned by Fox parent company News Corp.) insists that Piccolo does turn a bit greener later on in the movie, and both he and his silly outfit evolve. Meanwhile, apparently the ongoing reshoots are helping to tweak the film, and the visual effects are still being perfected as well.

The latest change of release date is only by two days: the film will come out on Wednesday, April 8 instead of Friday, April 10. Supposedly the movie is aimed at avoiding competition from April 10 releases Hannah Montana, a thriller called Case 39, and a Seth Rogen comedy called Observe And Report. But more likely, it's geared towards inflating the opening-weekend gross and getting as many people to see the film as possible before too much bad word-of-mouth gets out.

[DBTheMovie and IGN]

First and foremost, WTF? He's not green. James Marsters told TV Guide that his character most certainly would be green, but that's not green. Piccolo needs to be green like a shamrock — he's an alien demon, for Namek's sakes. Maybe that's bad lighting, so I'm not going to judge just yet, but we need to turn the technicolor on this character asap.

Second, the leather suit is OK, but I wish he was rocking the turban, tunic and cape look. (But who's to say he won't just yet?)

The actual face looks pretty good, scary and alien veiny the way it should be. Overall I'm slightly pleased with the big bulbous head, but only time will tell if this pasty hue truly is the is the final coloring of Lord Piccolo.

For more movie stills check out Nerdorama. Dragonball will be released April 10, 2009.

[Nerdorama via DB the Movie]

Film Junk first reported the rumor last week:

According to our tipster, the higher-ups at Fox are not too impressed the footage that has been shot thus far, and are seriously debating shutting the whole thing down. Now I have no idea if this is a real possibility or if the studio is just putting pressure on director James Wong to deliver, but the movie supposedly has a budget of over $100 million and I can understand them wanting to cut some losses while they still can.

Superhero Flix, however, doesn't buy that for a second:

We have a source that is very close to the film. And he/she says that the first edit is done, and that it has been shown to those "higher ups" at Fox. And that they love the finished film. Our studio contact, who we aren't allowed to name at the moment, worked on the production, and has seen the completed movie. Everyone involved seems to think they have a hit on their hands, and he even went on to say that it was "pretty darn awesome. There is certainly talk about a sequel. I have no doubt that it will happen. I'm sure that it will be a trilogy."

A trilogy? Of James Marsters movies? As anyone who's seen Marsters in anything should know by now, that can't be a good thing.

Fox Will Not Scrap Live-Action Dragonball [Cinematical]

Talking about the much rumored Spike movie spinning out of the character's appearances in Angel, Marsters said that while he still wants to do it, he doesn't think that Whedon is that into the idea:

I never really felt that Spike was a character that held Joss's imagination, frankly. He was not designed to be part of that show. In the original concept of the show, vampires were to be killed, they were not to be felt for or liked. When I came around suddenly he had two vampires everyone liked - first he had Angel to contend with, which was not his idea, and then he had Spike. In a way I was in peril with the theme of the show in his eyes. In the back of my mind when the shows [ended], I kind of wondered if he would ever come back to the character. I thought it would be better for him if he didn't deal with that character any more. I never thought he'd get [the movie] off the ground actually, even when he was telling me he was going to get it off the ground.

That show is the best. I love that show! That show's pissing all the right people off, I love it... I'm sure in the UK it is accepted for what it is more, but in Mexico and in the United States, there's a good streak of homophobia. A lot of characters are unabashedly bisexual in Torchwood; in fact my character's way beyond bisexual, my character will do anything that has a hole! I used to do lots of plays that could piss people off for the right reason and Torchwood's found a way to do that.

James Marsters [Digital Spy]

• The new 3-D Tron movie, due in 2011, will definitely be a sequel, not a reboot or revamp, sources tell io9.
• Next week's Lost, featuring Jin and Sun, will redefine the flash-forward/flash-back device once again, and you won't be able to figure it out until the end. And here are two advance clips from the episode. [SpoilersLost]
• Another huge batch of Doctor Who spoilers, this time from Doctor Who Magazine, confirm a lot of our spoilers from yesterday. As you may have gathered, that old newspaper seller from the Christmas special will be back as Donna's friend (uncle?), and we also meet Donna's mom. In the second episode, set in ancient Pompeii, there are rock monsters. In the Sontaran episode, their leader is General Staal. [Angel Fire East]
• The March 27 episode of Smallville will borrow from Lost and feature flashbacks, this time to the era when Lionel Luthor, the Teagues, the Queens and Swann were all working together, in the 1980s. We'll see Robert Queen, Young Oliver Queen and Young Patricia Swann. Genevieve Teague will appear, but Jane Seymour won't play her. The headline we saw back in Smallville's first episode, about the CEO of Queen Industries going missing, will factor into this. Chloe will confront Lionel about his true motivations, and so will Lex and Lois. Also, Brainiac is back, and he's got Kara. The episode, which was designed as a possible season finale (thanks to the writers' strike) but actually isn't one, will explore the Smallville mythos in detail. After this episode, nothing will be the same again! Except for all the things that will be the same. Here are some promo pics from the episode. [Operation Save Clark Kent]
• The ninth episode of Stargate: Atlantis season five is called "The Queen." [Spoiler TV]
• Next week's Jericho follows straight on from this week's shock ending. Mimi is in the hospital, and Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show is frantically operating to save her life. But Jake and his men have to protect her from Goetz, who wants to silence her any way he can. So Jake and his Rangers wind up barricaded in the hospital. And then the following week, Major Beck finally decides to prove he's not a total push-over, taking extreme measures to regain control over Jericho. And Chavez contacts Hawkins to let him know it's finally time to move the bomb. And here are some promo pics. [Remote Access]

We can't help but feel somewhat sad for poor Marc McClure. The guy has to play the hapless dork Jimmy Olsen in several Superman movies, and then Smallville rolls around. Season after season of the show goes by, and he sees Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, and even the freaking voice of Terence Stamp appear in the show. More than that, they've got Superman III (shudder) star Annette O'Toole playing Martha Kent. But does poor Marc get a call? No. Finally, Season Seven. His big shot in the spotlight. Hooray! We imagine the call went something like this:

Marc? It's your agent, Morty. You'll never guess, but the Smallville folks called up today, and they want you on the show. Yes, I know! It sounds great, doesn't it? What'll you be playing? Oh, you're Dax-Ur, a sort of dorky Kryptonian who created Brainiac, a good-looking robot dude who destroys worlds! Hmm? Yes, yes, you're Kryptonian. What's that? Do you fly around and punch the crap out of people? Um, no. You've given up all of your powers and you wear a blue kryptonite bracelet... hello? Marc? Hello?

Sadly, it doesn't look like Marc will be returning to the ranks of Smallville, based on the clip below. But if you're going go, why not go in style? Having Brainiac shove his massive Terminator 2 liquid metal-style finger deep down into your neck isn't the worst. Plus he can download your brain with that same finger, which is pretty useful, and probably a fun party trick. Bizarro with his crystallizing face in one corner, and Brainiac with his phallic finger in the other. Set up a keg, and you're good for at least six hours.

SpoilersLost has posted more incredibly detailed Lost spoilers, for tonight's episode and next week's episode.

In tonight's Lost, Hurley decides to go with Locke instead of Jack when everybody splits up. But future Hurley, in his mental institution, says going with Locke was a mistake and led to all his future crazitude. Future Hurley is seeing the ghost of Charlie and wants to go back to the island, but future Jack (who doesn't have his beard yet) says they're never going back.

And then next week, we meet one of the freighter people, Myles, who can talk to the dead and ask them where their drug stashes are hidden (really.) And someone has gone to elaborate lengths to fake the recovery of Oceanic Flight 815 — but the news reports mess up and show a picture of the pilot who was supposed to be on the plane, not the pilot who actually replaced him at the last minute.

Locke and his crew have custody of Ben, who's trying his usual mind games. And one of the freighter people, a blonde woman named Charlotte, parachutes in front of Locke's crew. Meanwhile, Jack's crew ends up with Myles and another freighter person, Daniel, who are suspicious about Naomi's death. A fourth freighter person, Frank, gets hurt when his chopper crashes and lights a flare. We see a flashback to Naomi talking to her boss about how unsuited Myles, Daniel, Frank and Charlotte are for this mission.

It turns out the freighter crew's mission on the island is to capture or kill Ben, who has a spy on the freighter. [SpoilersLost]

More spoilers:

• In the live-action Dragonball movie, James Marsters plays Lord Piccolo. Here's how he describes the character: "He's thousands of years old and a very long time ago he used to be a force of good but got into a bad argument and was put into prison for 2,000 years. It got him very angry, and he finds a way to escape and then tries to destroy the world. The cool thing is, anybody who has seen Dragonball knows that Lord Piccolo transforms into a character named Piccolo, and that is a whole other ball of wax. That is one of the most popular characters in the whole series. I've been told I'm working for people who will just flay me alive if I give too much information, but what I can tell you is the character is green, bald and has pointed ears. Heroic wouldn't be the wrong term by the end, but it's a long journey." [TVGuide]
• The Watchmen movie includes the rape scene from the comic, Sally Jupiter actress Carla Gugino says. It'll also have fancy opening credits that show off the whole history of the Watchmen. [MTV Movies]
• And here are a bunch of new pics from Stephen Chow's CJ7. The coolest of these are ones we've already seen before, but they're better quality. And apparently there's a tranny with a heart of gold. [IGN]

We'll be judging the new Torchwood episodes based on important criteria such as raunchiness and drama.

The naughtiness: James "Spike" Marsters turns up, doing the same Fonzie trick he pulled off in Buffy. Actually, Spike is pretty great in his Adam Ant jacket, with his paralyzing lip gloss and his zany sexual innuendo. He copies Captain Jack's thing of lusting after everything that moves, including a poodle at one point. Oh, and there's a coked-up fish-man who steals a sports car.

How gay was it? Spike gets pretty raunchy with Captain Jack. The former boyfriends do a whole kissy-fighty dance when they first meet up, and then they argue in front of the Torchwood team about which one was "the wife" in their relationship. Answer: Spike was the wife. But he was "a good wife." Oh, and Jack finally asks Ianto the office boy out, and Ianto acts all gruff about it before saying yes. Of course.

Who gets laid? Nobody. In fact, boring old Toby complains for about twenty minutes about his lack of a sex life, while Tosh makes goo-goo eyes at him.

The pointless drama: Where to start? The gang is pouty that Jack was off traveling with David Tennant. In the middle of a conversation, Gwen grabs Jack and pushes him against the wall and shouts, "You left us!" and it feels like she's following a stage direction. Jack acts all put out that Gwen got engaged to her longtime boyfriend, and she hints that she only accepted Rhys' proposal because Jack was out of the picture. Spike is all possessive about Jack (as in the clip above) and wants the two of them to go off and run their old hustle again. I could go on and on.

Was there a plot? Umm. Not sure. There were some bombs, but they weren't really bombs,they were a diamond. But they weren't really a diamond, they were a bomb. And then they weren't. Sorry, not much help there.

Will the kid-friendly edited version make sense to anybody? It'll make as much sense as the regular version.

Marsters' character, Captain John, is a dark foil to John Barrowman's Captain Jack. "He is what Jack used to be," Marsters explains. "Though I have a feeling that Jack was even meaner and nastier, if that's possible. I think it's my job to make that old life seem as seductive as I can, so it's a question of which path Jack will choose. He's just come back [from traveling on Doctor Who], and his team are mad at him. So is he going to be a responsible leader, or is he going to screw it up?"

• 
  
• Episode One: Captain Jack returns, as the Torchwood team reunites to fight a rogue Time Agent. The mysterious Captain John Hart is determined to wreak havoc, and needs to find something hidden on Earth. But with Gwen's life in danger, and cluster bombs scattered across the city, whose side is Jack on?
• 
  
• Episode Two: When a burglary turns into a slaughter, Torchwood suspects alien involvement. Who is Beth, and can she be as innocent as she seems? But when the investigation escalates into a city-wide assault, Jack realizes that the whole planet is in danger.
• 
  
• Episode Three: Toshiko falls for a handsome soldier, trapped out of his time, who unwittingly holds the key to saving the world. When an old hospital is haunted by ghosts from 1918, a crisis foreseen by Torchwood 90 years ago is about to reach its climax. Time zones are colliding and with life and death decisions to be made, will Torchwood be able to stop an explosive end for Cardiff?
• 
  
• Episode Four: Rhys discovers the truth about Torchwood and becomes part of the team as they investigate a mysterious alien meat supply. With Rhys in increasing danger Gwen is under pressure like never before. Will Rhys go too far? Will Jack ask too much of him? And can Torchwood save the alien from being used as cheap meat?
• 
  
• Episode Five: An alien with the power to change people's memories infiltrates Torchwood - can the team save themselves before it's too late? With Captain Jack caught up in memories of his lost family, and Gwen struggling to remember Rhys, it takes Jack's love of Ianto to reveal the truth. But there's always a price to pay.
• 
  

• Michael Gondry's next film after Be Kind, Rewind will be about kids who invent a kind of water that makes you hear music when you drink it. At one point, the kids visit the end of time. Return Of The Ice Kings will be "a scientific story, but totally unrealistic," he not-explains. [MTV Movies]
• There will be not just two, but three Spocks in the Star Trek movie, Leonard Nimoy revealed: Nimoy, Zachary Quinto and one other. We're guessing it's Baby Spock, because of the reports that J.J. Abrams was filming birth scenes set on Vulcan a while back. [TrekWeb]
• But the other Trek spoilers, about Kirk being a bad student at the Academy and the Enterprise being built in Area 51? Are wrong, says screenwriter Roberto Orci. [TrekWeb]
• Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man/Tony Stark will have a quick cameo in The Incredible Hulk where he meets with General "Thunderbolt" Ross — the first step in linking the franchises together for the inevitable Avengers movie. [MovieHole]
• John Connor will be a reluctant savior in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, says producer Josh Friedman. And you should think of the show as "an alternate timeline" from Terminator 3. The show's third episode has Sarah investigating a cell-phone salesman who may play a role in the birth of Skynet, while John tries to settle in at his new school. [SpoilerTV]
• Jamie Hector will play Knox, the crime lord who comes back to New Orleans to make Micah's life difficult, in Heroes Vol. 3. [HeroesTV]
• Not only will Kyle XY's parents protect him from Madacorp, they also take him to the company picnic to confront the corporate overlords. [IESB]
• Here's an early glimpse of time travelers Captain Jack and Captain John (James Marsters) smooching in an upcoming Torchwood, from the Sun newspaper. [Whedonesque]

• Another phone-death movie on the heels of One Missed Call: In the direct-to-DVD Nightmare Detective, people die after dialing "0" on their cell phones. Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo) directs. [Bloody Disgusting]
• The Mysterians, a forthcoming graphic novel about a group of kids who foil an alien invasion, is in development as a film from co-creator Michael Uslan, producer of the Batman films. [Production Charts]
• The Guillermo Del Toro TV miniseries of Frankenstein may combine that story with Bride of Frankenstein. [ShockTillYouDrop]
• Now that Mephisto has erased his marriage, Peter Parker will be "the amazing Spider-Slut," making out with "girls gone wild" at clubs. [Bob Mitchell]
• That Lost flash-forward showing that Jack makes it off the island doesn't mean the character can't ever die, because we will see him return to the island after that point, says actor Matthew Fox. We'll also keep seeing some flash-backs in season four. [Give Me My Remote]
• Dean Winters (Rescue Me) will play Sarah Connor's ex-fiance in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, replacing another actor from the pilot. He's chasing Sarah, and in the second episode John Connor seeks him out for some stepdad-son time. [BuddyTV]
• Torchwood season two features a much bigger role for Rhys, Gwen's boyfriend. He finds out the truth about Gwen's job and joins her Scooby Gang, getting into car chases and fistfights. And then aliens crash Rhys and Gwen's wedding. [icWales]
• More Torchwood spoilers: Captain John, played by James "Spike" Marsters, is Captain Jack's ex, and his lipgloss has a devastating on anyone who kisses him. [LovelyLadyLooks]
• Adam/Kensei in Heroes is either Nikki's great-grandfather, or he married one of her alternate personalities, or something. [SuperHiro]

This move is bad news for Torchwood for two reasons. First, any raunchy material in the new episodes will have to be extraneous to the plot, or else the kid-friendly versions will be like Bjork videos. So we'll have innocuous eps, with a little pointless sauciness sprinkled in. Contrast with season one, where the plots were all about aliens who screw people to death, and doomed trans-temporal affairs.

Secondly, if the kid-friendly episodes do well, then eventually it'll make more economic sense to make only the child-safe iterations. It wouldn't matter so much, except that the crazy sexiness is the only thing that makes Torchwood worth watching. Without the randy behavior, Torchwood is just a third-rate Doctor Who.

The BBC also revealed details of James (Smallville, Buffy) Marsters' role in Torchwood season two. Marsters plays a character named Captain John who has "history" with Captain Jack. When Captain John comes through the time rift looking for the other Captain, the entire world is placed in danger by their homoerotic chemistry.

Torchwood Series 2 Press Release [Outpost Gallifrey]