Iron Man 2:

Talking to Empire Magazine, director Jon Favreau gives some hints about where Tony Stark's storyline may be going this time around:

Tony's expected to be a role model and I don't think he's ready to be one. He's under a great deal of pressure and when you're under pressure, I think you find outlets for that. That's one of the tensions of the film: it's one thing to say you're Iron Man, and another thing to actually become Iron Man.

And his sidekick Jim Rhodes (Don Cheadle) will be stepping up, and may actually suit up as War Machine. Says Favreau, "Tony's not the only one with technology in the film."

Meanwhile, Mickey Rourke describes the armor he plays as the villain, Whiplash: it weighs 23 pounds and is "a sort of half suit" with Rourke's skin showing through the other half — and that skin is covered with tattoos, because Whiplash has just gotten out of a Russian-zone prison. [Empire]

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

Here are a few pics from this Baygasmic movie that we may not have shown you yet, I'm not sure. [SpoilerTV-Movies]

And here's a new TV spot, which I think we showed you in much blurrier format a while back. [Transformers Movie Chronicles]

Paul:

Zachary Levi says he tried to get a role in Simon Pegg's alien movie. He would have been playing one of the idiot agents who are trying to track down Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. As it is, Jason Bateman plays the head agent who has to tell these dumb agents what to do, and one of the field agents is played by Bill Hader. [Collider]

Land Of The Lost:

Here are a bunch more TV spots and a clip for this Will Ferrell vehicle, which comes out next Friday. I can't decide if it looks cute or ultra-annoying.

Looper:

As you may have heard, this film from Rian Johnson (Brick) is set in the present day, where a group of hitmen are sent their victims from the future. Says Johnson, the movie has time travel in it, but it's not about time travel. It just uses time travel to set up the situation. The movie is very violent and has plenty of action, but isn't action oriented. It's more character-based, and especially in the second half, it goes someplace you wouldn't expect it to go. [Sci Fi Wire]

Moon:

The robot who keeps Sam Rockwell's character company is named GERTY. Towards the end of Rockwell's tour of duty on the Moon, he starts to feel strange and out of place — and then one of the extraction machines malfunctions, which starts him down his strange lunar trip. [Coventry Telegraph]

Hot-Tub Time Machine:

Chevy Chase has joined the cast of this time-traveling comedy, in which a group of washed-up party dudes (Rob Corddry, John Cusack and Craig Robinson) discover their old hot tub is actually a time machine, which takes them back to their glory days in 1987. Chase plays a mysterious hot-tub repairman, who "dispenses pearls of wisdom and may or may not be behind their metaphysical road trip." Sounds sort of like Pleasantville, except wetter and less monochrome. [Hollywood Reporter via Slashfilm]

Doctor Who:

Here are a bunch of set pics from David Tennant's final episodes. Nothing shockingly new, but they do give a fresh look at the return of Rose, Jackie and Donna, plus the Doctor's apparent collapse against that brick wall. Donna seems to be yelling at someone, and the Doctor and Wilf are having an argument. [SkyTV]

Lost:

According to the latest recap at ABC.Com, the mysterious statue is definitely Taweret, the Egyptian goddess who at various times is described as the wife of the god of evil, or a fertility goddess. There's a long post at the link which speculates as to what the statue's identity means for Jacob and his adversary (whom they're calling "Esau.") [DocArzt]

Fringe:

So now that Leonard Nimoy is playing the mysterious William Bell, is he a good guy or a bad guy or what? According to Roberto Orci, he's "a potential ambiguous evil figure." What does that mean? Only the Pattern can reveal. [Star Wars.com via SciFiScoop]

Warehouse 13:

Now that we've already learned which Eureka and BSG stars will be showing up on this new Syfy channel series, what's left? Oh yeah, Stargate. Stargate Atlantis' Joe Flanagan will play Jeff Weaver, a rich guy "whose charm captures Myka's interest, but he finds himself under Pete and Myka's scrutiny when a sculpture on which he bid, vanishes in an impossible heist." [Pop Culture Zoo via Gateworld]

Virtuality:

Remember this Ron Moore pilot about the crew of people on a deep-space exploration mission, who distract themselves by having fun in virtual reality — until the V.R. starts going badly wrong? As we mentioned, the pilot is getting aired on July 4, and veteran Star Trek/BSG model maker Doug Drexler blogs that the crew is racing to finish a few additional shots for the series. More spaceship action? Possibly a different ending? We'll see. [Drex Files, thanks Sun Scramble]

Chuck:

Zachary Levi hints that Chuck's new superpowers won't last long when he accesses them, and maybe after he uses an ability once, it's gone. (Forever? He won't say.) Also, Scott Bakula may not be back, because he's on another show. [Collider]

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

A new trailer appeared in front of Terminator Salvation, and here it is:

And here's a new TV spot. Hoping for better quality soon:

And here's a new IMAX poster, plus some new stills that reveal the movie will feature (wait for it) explosions and cars. I'm actually kind of excited. [SpoilerTV-Movies]

Ghostbusters 3:

Talking to the Guardian, Dan Aykroyd spilled a few new details about the "new generation" of busters, including the fact that the leader will be a woman:

There'll be a whole new generation that has to be trained and a leader that you'll all love when you meet her. There'll be lots of cadets, boys and girls who'll be learning how to use the neuron splitter and the inter-planet interceptor - new tools to enable them to slip from dimension to dimension.

Also, Aykroyd said that Bill Murray refused to come back unless Ernie Hudson had as big a role as the other original guys. [via Slashfilm]

Land Of The Lost:

Here's a new clip from this June 5 movie, featuring Chaka trying to warn our heroes against a Sleestak ambush. (Sorry, non-U.S. people!) [MTV]

Looper:

Rian "Brick" Johnson describes his science fiction movie again:

It's sci-fi, but it's not huge sci-fi. It's more — just in terms of the scale — it's closer to Children of Men. It's set in the near future and the main sci-fi element of it is time travel. So that presents all sorts of interesting narrative challenges. It presents a lot of headaches in terms of the writing. It's fun, though.

[LAist]

Gamer:

Mimi Michaels describes her role in this film from the Crank guys:

That promises to be one exciting thriller. Lots of action and interest throughout. The story is set in a high tech futuristic world. The video games you get to play are with real lives. My character is a quirky fan of one of the best players.

[Shockya]

New Moon:

Three new pictures from the Twilight sequel. [Horror Year Book]

Sarah Jane Adventures:

So as we suspected, David Tennant's Doctor is showing up on this spinoff show, for a two-parter to be written by Gareth Roberts. (It's part of the third season, airing this fall.) Russell T. Davies tells Doctor Who Magazine that Tennant's appearance isn't a cameo, it's a proper part of the story. And K-9 (the real one, not the weird new version) will appear as well. RTD says the two-parter is "extraordinary, wild and powerfully moving," and the "wedding of Sarah Jane will be a day for everyone to remember." [Den Of Geek]

Lost:

Producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof reiterate that they've known for a long time what the show's final scene will be, and they have a pretty good idea of the final episode. But they're leaving enough wriggle room to account for character development and discoveries along the way. [TV Guide]

V:

A new review adds some more details to the ones we already knew. The UFOs appear over a dozen Earth cities, and the first five minutes deal with their arrival, culminating in the face of the leader, Anna, appearing everywhere. The only human character who gets fleshed out in the pilot is FBI agent Erica (Elizabeth Mitchell) who's more proactive and confident than Juliet on Lost. Her son Tyler is a huge supporter of the alien V's, and goes around spray-painting the letter "V" on trash cans. Also compelling are Chad the conflicted news anchor who sells out to the V's but feels bad about it, and Ryan, the V who betrays his own people. And it sounds like the show actually goes for the Independence Day jokes. [AICN]

True Blood:

The new season picks up the same night as the end of the previous season, says Anna Paquin. And you'll find out who was dead in the back of that car. [TV Guide]

Heroes:

In the fourth season opener, we'll meet a sweet little Japanese girl who tries to save her kitten. [The ODI]

Reaper:

Here's a sneak peek from the season finale.

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

Terminator Salvation:

New TV spots show a bit more of Marcus' quest to find whoever did this to him. Particularly the third one:

Looper:

Rian Johnson (Brick) teases his science-fiction movie. It's a "Jacobean revenge tragedy," totally different from his first two movies. It's "completely dark and violent. It's set in the near future, but it's more like 30 years from now." And it takes place in an industrial town on the edge of farmland, in Kansas. The film's production designer, Jim Clair, worked on Children of Men, and the film will have a very grimy, lived-in look, like the first Star Wars' glimpse of farming life on Tattooine. (I am so there.) [ComingSoon]

Flash Forward:

Someone saw an early screening of this show's pilot and posted it on Ain't It Cool News. We start out with scenes of destruction in L.A., with crashed cars and people running around on fire. Good times! Then we flash back (not forward) to show our two FBI-agent heroes: Joseph Fiennes is a recovering alcoholic who has a surgeon wife and a daughter. And his partner, John Cho. We meet another surgeon, who's contemplating suicide at a pier, and Fiennes' AA sponsor, who's mourning the death of a daughter in Afghanistan.

We follow these characters through their day until everyone blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds, and has a vision of life six months into the future. People die in crashes and stuff, and then the rest of the episode is spent exploring the "flash forward," (and people call it that in dialogue) and we meet more supporting characters. Eventually, our characters come together and realize they were all seeing visions of six months into the future. This sets up the mystery of what caused the flash forward, and why people's lives were different in the future. One character saw nothing, which may mean he/she is dead in the future. And at the end of the episode, we see one person who did not black out when the rest of the human race did. [AICN]

ABC Vice President of Development Suzanne Patmore-Gibbs describes the series:

Our FBI agent, played by Joseph Fiennes, appears to be in an FBI chase. You think he has a car crash. He has a flash of all sorts of things and he wakes up on the freeway and subsequently discovers that everybody else in the world has had a blackout that lasted the same amount of time. This resulted in a lot of devastation across the world.

Everybody talks about their flash and they realize they were all dreaming of the same day - which is a day in the future. You can identify with the different people and have that sense of global import - we're all in it together - like Lost.

I have a feeling that "like Lost" will be the main selling point for this series. [CBC]

Lost:

In the season finale, stuff blows up, Jacob walks among us, and we cry a lot. And in the long term, "Everything will be OK" for Sawyer/Kate shippers. (Drat.) [E! Online]

Here's another U.S. promo, and a British promo, for the finale:

Even though the present-day storyline seems to be about Locke and Ben jostling for leadership of the island, you should expect Sun to play a much larger role in events, says Damon Lindelof. Also, in the debate between Jack's idea that everything is random and Locke's idea that everything happens for a reason, Lindelof leans to Locke's side of things. And "it would be a big cheat" if Jack succeeded in erasing the past five years of the show, Lindelof adds. And he talks about the final season:

Season six will feel a lot like season one. The focus comes back to the characters with whom we began. We've been winnowing away everyone else who came along. The Tailies are gone, only Miles [Ken Leung] is left of the Freighter Folk and only Juliet [Elizabeth Mitchell] is left of The Others. We're getting down to the end now.

So does that mean Juliet will be around in season six?[NY Post]

Fringe:

We're unlikely to see a still-breathing John Scott in the newly discovered alternate universe, since actor Mark Valley's series got picked up. But there will be some "interesting things" happening, says J.J. Abrams. These will be things that feel "uniquely Fringe." [Fringe Television]

Smallville:

Here are three more promo pics from the season finale. If I were Clark, looking at these costumes, I wouldn't want to wear a costume either. [KryptonSite]

Heroes:

Hiro's story arc in season four involves a lot of time travel. But the payoff is "said to be worth it." [E! Online]

If you're not already excited for next season, then how about this? The show is hunting for a Knife Thrower, a sexy twentysomething Tattoo Girl, and a Carnival Barker. That last character should be a middle-aged Eddie Izzard type, who's a "smooth operator with a wicked wit." And the character will start small and then become more significant. [EW]

Meanwhile, the deaf woman whom we'll meet in episode 4x03 will be a love interest for one of our lead characters. Matt Parkman will get a new partner who's sort of a mentor. And Claire will have a roommate. [SpoilerTV]

David Chen over at Slashfilm cornered Johnson and got him to finally spill some scifi goodies on exactly what Looper is all about.

First off, the film takes place about 30 years into the future where everything has gone to hell, either literally of figuratively we're not sure, but it's not good. There will be "disruptive" time travel that actually takes the viewers even further into the future (fingers crossed for a eunuch society). A part from the time travel all we know for certain is that is will be dark, "very dark."

Listen to the entire interview over at Slashfilm.

Looper:

Asked about Looper, Johnson said he's still writing the script. "I've mentioned it like in a couple of interviews, and it's very weird for me to read on the Internet about something I'm right in the middle of writing. It's like, 'Oh crap. I guess I actually have to finish this.' But I'm really excited about it."

He described it as "a darker science fiction story that has time travel in it, but it uses time travel sparingly. It uses it very much the way the first Terminator used it: as a basis for the plot, as opposed to an active element in the plot. And yeah, it's completely different than The Brothers Bloom. It's almost a complete 180 tonally from The Brothers Bloom." He really likes the idea of switching tone and genre completely between movies, sort of like sitting in a hot tub for a while and then jumping into a cool pool. I have genre A.D.D.," he said.

He sees Children Of Men as an example of the sort of adult, reality-based science fiction story he'd like to do.

The state of science fiction:

"Science fiction is such a broad thing," Johnson added. "Saying you're a fan of science fiction is sort of like saying you're a fan of comedy." But for his generation, a lot of the things that got people interested in movies were science fiction films.

But Johnson probably won't ever do a superhero film. "The most overworked genre right now is the superhero genre, which I love. Which I've plugged my brain away a little bit to find out if there's something I would want to do with it. It's so difficult to find a personal way into it." The superhero genre is already being done well, and subverted, a lot in film right now. It's more interesting, for Johnson, to focus on genres that are more off the beaten track — like noir, or the con-man story, for example.

What is genre?

Even though Johnson's new movie, and his first movie, aren't science fiction, they're both very much about nature of genre, which makes it interesting to talk about them here. His first film, Brick, used the language and ideas of noir to talk about high-school alienation and the pain of losing someone you love.

Brothers Bloom is even more explicit about genre: the brothers are con men, and their schemes involve telling a story with their "mark" as a main character. The perfect con, like the perfect story, should be so emotionally satisfying that the mark doesn't even care that they've been ripped off. The older brother, Stephen (Mark Ruffalo), is a sort of Prospero figure who concocts cons that are almost like fables, with his younger brother Bloom (Adrien Brody) as the lead actor. But Bloom wants to escape from always playing a role. He wants "an unwritten life," in which he's not acting out anyone's scenario.

With both Brick and Bloom, Johnson picked a genre he wanted to do, and then he tried to find a personal connection with it. In Bloom, Brody's character wants to escape from being in a con-man movie, and meanwhile he's falling in love with their latest mark, played by Rachel Weisz. The most that Brody's character can ever achieve is to escape from a con-man movie into a romantic comedy.

Bloom's tragedy is that he's trapped in a series of roles he didn't create for himself, which is something we've all experienced, Johnson said. Like, for example, if you've been trapped in a job you hate, or stuck in a relationship that isn't working.

But just as you've probably experienced the feeling of being trapped in a genre in real life, you've probably also used genre to describe something you were experiencing.

That's maybe part of the reason that genres exist: we recognize them from our lives. You're walking home late at night down a dark street, and all of a sudden your mind turns it into a thriller. You get nervous about who's walking behind you. Or you meet someone and you're falling in love, and all of a sudden, all the cliches, like "it feels like a movie," all of the cliches come [true]. Or you're camping and it feels like a nature movie. You could analyze that quite a bit in terms of chicken and the egg, whether our minds are imitating genre or whether genre imitates these modes that we find ourselves in. I'd like to believe that film imitates life... and the things that ring true enough to be established as genres have seeds in human experience.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

Some new set pics show Josh Duhamel on set. [Movies-Spoilers]

Moon:

Here's how Sam Rockwell describes the plot of the movie he stars in, directed by David Bowie's son:

It's about a guy stranded on the moon for three years, like a Robinson Crusoe kind of guy. He's mining a product called helium 3 on the surface of the moon for fuel for the Earth, an energy source. Then he meets his clone, and they have to deal with each other. So it's sort of an homage to Silent Running and a little Blade Runner, as far as the replicants and stuff. It's like that, but it's a very simple kind of Robinson Crusoe story.

[Sci Fi Wire]

Looper:

The plot description that's been going around for Ryan "Brick" Johnson's third film (it's set in the present day, where hitmen receive their victims from the future) doesn't really convey the whole scope of the movie's plot, and it leaves out the film's biggest hook, says Johnson. [Slashfilm]

Life On Mars:

Here are those new set pics. Looks like Sam still uses Annie as a visual aid in talking about our serial killer's psychology. [SpoilerTV]

Lost:

The show is seeking someone to play a thirtysomething or fortysomething doctor named Evelyn Ariza for the fourth episode of the new season. She's "chief of staff at a hospital. She's attractive with a great bed-side manner but tough and carries her authority well. Not afraid to make difficult decisions..." [SpoilersLost]

Battlestar Galactica:

We haven't run any baseless speculation about the final cylon in ages, so here goes. One fan claims to be absolutely certain the last cylon is Louanne "Kat" Katraine, who died back in season three. She's not in the "Last Supper" picture, she wasn't in the fleet at the end of season four, and she was a lost soul seeking redemption. Case closed! [Battlestar Blog]

And here are the titles of the last batch of episodes, according to producer Mark Verheiden: "Sometimes a Great Notion," "A Disquiet Follows My Soul," "The Oath," "Blood on the Scales," "No Exit," "Deadlock," "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Islanded In A Stream Of Stars," "Daybreak 1," "Daybreak 2," "Daybreak 3". He adds that he's assuming the finale is still a three-parter. [Famous Verheidens Of Filmland via Galactica Sitrep]

Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Here's a creepy clip from Monday's new Terminator episode, with an interview with bad Terminator Garret Dillahunt. [Sarah Connor Society]

Heroes:

So we already showed you some pictures of the new villains from Heroes season three, but now there are descriptions of their superpowers. Jesse Murphy has a super-loud concussive voice with nearly unlimited destructive capabilities, depending on how loud he screams. (Like Postie from the webisodes.) Benjamin Knox gains strength from the fear of the people around him, and can sense fear easily. "The German" can control metal, and Eric Doyle is a "puppetmaster" who can make people do what he wants. Finally, Flint can shoot "blue flames." [Heroes Spoilers]

Also, someone managed to get some snaps of filming for an episode airing in early December. Peter and Nathan are in Haiti, with The Haitian, plus some other Haitians who don't get to be "the" Haitian. They filmed "a jungle scene." More pics at the first link. Meanwhile, producer Jesse Alexander posted a photo of a Haitian wall that shows mysterious new villain Samedi. [Heroes News And Spoilers and Watching Heroes]

Director Greg Beeman ran some photos on his blog, including Hiro impaled with his own sword, Matt Parkman with his throat slit, Micah and Monica looking dead, and a few others. I think we've already shown these pics, or similar ones before. But I could be wrong. In any case, they're here. [Greg Beeman]

How close are Sylar and Elle to making a baby together? Check out this set pic. Or maybe Sylar is just trying out for a Grease revival, and Elle is lending him moral support. More pics at the link. [PurePeople via Mars Investigations]

And here are a couple more promos, showing the new villains in action and Sylar and HRG being partners. [Heroes Spoilers]

Smallville:

The New York Post interviewed Lois Lane actor Erica Durance, who expanded on some spoilers we've already reported. Like in the upcoming episode where Jimmy Olsen gets a photo of Clark in the act of saving someone, Clark outwits Jimmy. But afterwards Lois throws down the gauntlet and announces that she's going to track down that red-and-blue-wearing mystery man, if it's the last thing she does.

And in the third episode of the season, when Oliver gets poisoned, Lois has to confront the fact that he might die — even though she's realized he's not right for her, it still churns up her feelings again. And in another episode, Lois and Clark go undercover as an engaged couple, and she gets to make him squirm. But then later, she's forced to confess feelings for Clark that she didn't even know she had until that moment, under duress — and then it's her turn to squirm. [NY Post]

Durance also talked to Zap2It and said Lois starts out thinking Clark is dim-witted and she needs to help him out, but then something changes. (She realizes how dim-witted he really is?) And after Lois deals with her feelings for the maybe-dying Oliver, she has a talk with Clark and he tells her about his experience with Lana. Also, she hints that Lois may actually get a superpower — she'll be able to channel all her "anger and angst" and use them to throw people around. [Zap2It]

Not enough Erica Durance interviews for you? Then try this. [CWSource]

And here's Tess Mercer actor Cassidy Freeman, revealing that she doesn't have any scenes with Doomsday so far. [BuddyTV]

Kyle XY:

Yay! Here are a couple of new teasers for Kyle XY season three: