The Dark Knight:

Here's some behind-the-scenes footage from The Dark Knight, including some minor spoilers. It's the "B-roll," which people run in the background while talking about the film in TV coverage or whatnot. You can hear Bruce and Alfred cross-referencing criminal records to track down a suspect at one point. Jim Gordon orders a search of the building, but Commissioner Loeb tells him, "You're unlikely to discover this for yourself. The Police Commissioner gets a lot of threats. I discovered the correct response to them long ago." (I'm assuming this is shortly before Loeb bites the dust.) [Trailer Addict via Slashfilm]

X-Files: I Want To Believe:

Some serious X-Files 2 spoilers are making the rounds online. We'll know in a couple of weeks if these are real or not, but meanwhile here they are: Mulder and Scully haven't actually been separated for the past six years after all. The movie's first shipper-y scene has them spooning together in bed. We see them having lots of light conversations, including one scene in Mulder's office when he still has his beard. They talk about William.

Mulder and Scully break up because of a disagreement about their future, and this leads to lots of angst. And at the end of the movie, they start having a "goodbye" conversation, but it leads to them kissing and making up. The real "happy ending" only happens after the credits, and it's truly bizarre. Meanwhile, the movie's actual plot is flimsy, incomprehensible and not very scary. [Celebridiot]

Meanwhile, Chris Carter says we'll see "someone or someones" from the TV series in the movie. [KREN]

Love Story 2050:

But who cares about the X-Files, when the Bollywood time-travel movie Love Story 2050 is out now in India? I know which movie I'm more excited about. Love Story 2050 starts out with Karan, its male hero, being a rich guy whose mom is dead and whose dad has no time for him. So he goes to Australia and takes up extreme adventure sports. Until he spots butterfly chaser Sana, and "Plonk!" he falls in love with her. (The review actually says "Plonk!") Then he chases her over buses, bridges and cars, leaping across the rooftops.

They finally meet up, fall in love, and get engaged. And they just happen to be in the same town as Karan's uncle Yatinder, a mad scientist who's invented a time machine. Karan and Sana get in the time machine and she sets the controls for Mumbai 2050. It's a wonderland of flying cars and robots. But soon the couple get separated, and the evil masked Dr. Hoshi is trying to destroy Dr. Yatinder and Karan. Somehow, Sana gets "reborn" as Ziesha, a pop star with red hair. After they reach the future, the movie's pace sort of grinds to a halt. [Screen India and India Info

Dragonball:

Piccolo will look "old, decrepit and ugly," in spite of the producers' attempts to make him look beautiful, says actor James Marsters, who insisted the make-up department add extra ugly sauce to his appearance. After all, Piccolo has spent 2,000 years in prison. And the movie has some changes but will be "true to the spirit of Dragonball." [DWScifi]

Doctor Who:

There are rumors floating around that former star Tom Baker will appear in the fifth season of time-travel action-soap Doctor Who (in 2010, so huge grain of salt here.) Also, Winston Churchill and Jenny, the Doctor's Daughter, are both rumored to show up at some point in the one-hour specials that will air during 2009. [Doctor Who Forum and The Sun]

The Prisoner:

AMC's Prisoner remake, starring Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen, will still have a big role for "Rover," the big white ball that keeps Number 6 prisoner. And there will still be futuristic gadgetry in the Village. [Sci Fi Wire]

Heroes:

Some lucky Brits got to see some intriguing clips from Heroes season three. Nathan Petrelli gets rushed to hospital after being shot, but is apparently DOA. "There was nothing we could do," a doctor tells the Petrelli clan. Elle spends a fair bit of time sparring with Sylar this season.

Angela Petrelli introduces us to the notorious Level 5, where the Company keeps its serial killers, rapists, and assorted baddies. And in Level 5, there's a giant bald man, shouting "I'm not who you think I am. I'm Peter Petrelli!" And we see Sylar come up behind Angela and put his hands on her shoulders in a friendly way.

Meanwhile, poor Matt Parkman is alone in a desert, screaming for help. And when Daphne the Speedster steals something from Hiro, she quips, "Gotta run." Finally, we see Linderman, quoting that Yeats poem about "The second coming is at hand." (You know, the gyre, the falconer, mere anarchy, blah blah blah, beast, etc. Nobody ever stands up and intones about going to Innisfree in an ominous voice. I wonder why?) [Digital Spy]

And here's a new promo video, featuring Claire with a knife and an ear-rending scream. [Heroes The Series]

Next Avengers:

Here are a few new stills from the animated direct-to-DVD Next Avengers: Heroes Of Tomorrow, about the children of the Avengers, umm, avenging their dead parents. I have to admit, I really like the way Ultron looks here. Although, don't they know Ultron's a hot naked robo-chick now? [Marvel Animation Age]

Marienbad, My Love is the story of a film-maker who believes he's God, or that Jesus is talking to him, and he decides to make a science fiction movie that pays tribute to one of the world's worst films, Last Year At Marienbad, in order to end the world. The novel is peppered with David Lynch references as well as sections from a faux novel in the style of later Kurt Vonnegut. And "thrill-crazed space-bugs," the Cicadians (pictured above) show up, probably to assist in the metafictional destruction of the universe. Plus there's a giant UFO hanging over Earth, Nazi/alien collaborators, mind control, alien abductions, and a mad scientist who's adding a substance called Fluoride9 to the water to create the world's first privately owned deity.

Here's a quote from Leach's press release:

“If you’re going to destroy the world, you really ought to do it big,” Leach said. “When I released the first edition of "Marienbad My Love" in March, the original length of 2.5 million words seemed plenty long for a 21st century Apocalypse. But the ideas kept coming, and the story kept growing. Now I feel like I'm just getting warmed up.”

Besides being crammed with weird ideas, Leach says Marienbad, My Love includes:

• the world's longest word. Also called "the holy Jah," the 4.4-million-letter noun is a coinage of words from the world's faiths. It means "god within."
• the world's longest sentence (3 million words).
• the world's longest book title (6,700 words).

The other four awesome special effects sequences, according to Bajewa, include:

The giant airborne fight sequence between Karan (played by Bajewa's son Harman) and Zayesha (Priyanka Chopra), with the actors doing all their own stunts. I'm guessing there's a lot of wirework involved (similar to Hancock, which also substitutes real wirework for CGI flying.) And it looks like it's some kind of video game brought to life.

Boo, the robot teddy bear and Zayesha's best friend. He looks like he's fully animatronic, rather than just CGI. Oscar winner John Cox, who also worked on Babe and The Host, created Boo.

Karan's friend QT, the female robot. Come on, it's a female robot named QT. That's just insane. Boo and QT team up to bring Karan and Zayesha together. And she shares a crazy dance number with Karan:

The huge fight scene between Karan and Dr. Hoshi, the bad guy. Which looks like it's full of CGI, what with the energy balls blasting back and forth and the crazy face-distortions. I would never say no to a huge energy-ball battle in a futuristic metropolis. Especially if it's followed by a big robot dance number. [Star Box Office]

The creator creator allows you to design a unique look for your critter, and to pack it with attributes that will aid it in its quest for survival. A social animal will have to make friends and influence creatures. A herbivore can only eat fruit it can reach, and a predator can only feed on prey it can outrun or outfox and outfight. You can guess which path my Chlororaptor is designed to take.

Your critter's biology - the choices that you made while creating and upgrading your creature - will influence the culture that develops as your creature moves into the civilization phase of the game. Twitchy many-eyed herbivores built by nature to constantly search for and flee from trouble do not easily develop into Klingons. The game is likely to be more forgiving than evolution, but one can imagine a player sighing, "The appendix...what was I thinking?" You can also add my creatures to your games. Spore is kind enough to keep track of the statistics, giving me a chance to see how successful my voracious sack of algae tends to be.

Environment, change, and consequence aren't the whole story, but they are a pretty good introduction. As a teacher I've always been interested in entertainment that manages to educate without being obnoxious. If science is done entirely without a sense of play it ends up being wearisome and fruitless. And Spore isn't the only game to figure that out.

Programs like Folding@home use your home computer or Playstation 3 to process the dynamics of protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that are wadded together in specific ways. Fold them into the wrong shape, and at best you'll have a nonfunctional protein. At worst, you could be looking at the beginning of Alzheimer's. The math to describe protein folding is typically too much for a single computer to handle, but thousands of idle PS3s between games of Call of Duty 4 can do a lot of sums.

With apologies to the King of All Cosmos, this is how I imagine Folding@home on a PS3.

Foldit takes this approach a step further. Instead of taking advantage of computers, Foldit takes advantage of users. Teams of folders compete to produce the best 3D shape for a given protein. Human beings are good at manipulating 3D shapes and solving puzzles - computers aren't, or, at least, aren't yet. Given the rules of how different pieces of a protein will interact with one another, what likely shapes will it assume? Give a computer this problem and it will laboriously and ponderously churn its way to an answer that might be obvious to you or I (for a simple protein). Give the same computer the wrong algorithm or starting conditions, and you'll get nowhere fast.

Dr. Leeroy Jenkins prematurely rearranges a protein, much to the chagrin of his Foldit guild.

Games like this take advantage of what NYU digital studies professor Clay Shirky has called the cognitive surplus - the spare time to ponder and participate that technology and culture have been steadily generating ever since the human race moved past subsistence. Though some of the surplus ends up devoted to projects like Wikipedia, much of it is naturally expended creating and consuming art and entertainment. The amount of work required to appreciate entertainment varies, but many would argue that the complexity of popular television narratives has increased significantly. A good narrative is a puzzle with people in it, and requires a bit of that cognitive surplus to enjoy.

The alternate reality game I Love Bees tapped into that surplus with a vengeance. A beekeeper's website begins to display disjointed and enigmatic fragments of text. What follows is a complex narrative involving the Halo universe and an damaged artificial intelligence. Players were rewarded for solving puzzles given to them by the game team with a new clue or an advancement of the plot towards. In Why I Love Bees: A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming, Dr. Jane McGonigal discusses how players - without prompting from the game team - naturally developed strategies for distributing workload and solving puzzles efficiently. Given a list of numbers that could be GPS coordinates, the mathematically inclined began working out alternate theories while the more physically adventurous (and geographically fortunate) began visiting locations and looking for commonalities. A relay puzzle required the communication of facts given to the players via payphone increasingly quickly to the next player at a distant payphone - one break in the chain, and that part of the narrative ends. Despite a scant 15-second pause from one call to the next during the most challenging part of the puzzle, the players never wavered. Another part of the game involved an artificial computer language, which the players were so successful at deciphering that, by the end of the game, the game team was using the player documentation to write hints.

Expert analysis of data, peer review, and the effective coordination of large groups in an emergency emerged in-game. These are talents that are useful for more than finding out what happened to a fictional bee fancier's web page. The energy, brilliance, and sheer bloody-mindedness of your gamers is a largely untapped resource. I imagine Final Fantasy minigames where players fold magical widgets into protein shapes for bonuses, or an alternate reality game where FEMA takes notes. Hybridize real problems with compelling narratives, and you may find that you and your guild inadvertently cured cancer.

[Slashfilm]

The new stills and wallpapers, mostly come from the movie's new website, which director Harry Bajewa (Harman's dad) says is the most futuristic website they could make. (It has Java!) And here's that awesome dancing clip. I'm still beyond excited for this movie.

[123 Masala and Bollywood Hungama]

Even though the movie's plot sounds slightly silly — and reminiscent of that Bruce Willis movie where everybody only interacts through cyber-avatars — I like Robert Rini's concept art a lot. The movie only has a budget of $96,000 and stars Bethany Clear and Brian Saltzman. Plus "an anonymous voice over narration that I'm sure everyone will love," says the movie's blurb. And here's a synopsis:

Set in an alternate history America of the year 2000, it tells the story of love in the most unusual and possibly grim circumstance. Lucky, the protagonist, is a "relationship representative," who saves prospective couples the time and drudgery of courtship by professionally standing in for one of the parties in a first-date situation, and evaluating the level of likely interest in the other party on behalf of her client. Of course, in the year 2000, the use of relationship representatives has become so widespread, it is a near-certainty both parties are representatives standing in for their respective clients, going through the motions, making mental notes to prepare reports the next morning. And so it is, shortly after the film begins, that Lucky finds herself in an unusual predicament (and a role for which she never rehearsed), when she is assigned to meet with Lena Nigari, a young woman doing something unheard of — going on a date herself.

[Dark Roasted Blend]

Avatar:

Sigourney Weaver dropped a few more hints about Avatar, the 2009 James Cameron movie she's starring in. Her character, Dr. Grace Augustine, isn't too much like Ripley, her character from the Alien movies. Grace would have wanted a normal life, but chose to devote herself to science. She "has an avatar," and is "very involved" in the movie's plot, including action sequences. In fact, says Weaver, "I would say her real life is as an avatar." (It's not clear what Weaver means, but in an earlier treatments of the movie that's been circulating for years and is believed to be genuine, humans use "avatars," alien-human hybrid bodies, to move around on the surface of the planet Pandora.) Weaver also says Grace is a leader. "Someone who gets the job done. Someone very very driven and smart and yet funny." She modeled the character after Cameron himself. [MTV Movies]

Greatest American Hero:

An informed source spilled details on the Greatest American Hero remake now in development. This version of Ralph Hinkley is the most popular teacher at his school, who connects really well with his students. And he doesn't just fly, he also bursts into flames like the Human Torch — which first happens at the worst possible moment, during a school Open Night in the first half of the film. Also, one of Hinkley's students is Josh, the son of his love-interest Pam. And during one scene, Ralph is talking to Pam, and suddenly has uncontrollable itching on the back of his neck, and has to make a mad dash for the boys' room, where he freaks out about the changes he's going through. The movie also includes a bumbling-but-pompous teacher, Harve Lundy, who has his desk on a pedestal overlooking all his students. [Moviehole]

Star Trek:

At a Star Trek convention this past weekend, Zachary "Spock" Quinto hinted that he does have some scenes with the older Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and with Spock's parents (Winona Ryder and Ben Cross), as we'd pretty much expected. [Trek Movie]

Faran Tahir (who plays the terrorist Raza in Iron Man) also plays Captain Rabu in the new Star Trek movie. He's a new character to Trek, and all Tahir can tell us is his character is the captain of a ship that we've never seen before, and is "one of the good guys." [The Deadbolt]

Iron Man:

That cameo by Samuel L. Jackson as one-eyed, cigar-chomping superspy Nick Fury? Definitely not in the movie. We think. [Starpulse]

Dragonball:

Dragonball producer Tim Van Rellim says our hero Goku dies at the end of the first movie, or the beginning of the second. And Goku's death sets up the storyline of the second film, which they're hoping to start shooting by early next year. [Dragon Ball Movie Blog]

Battlestar Galactica:

Here are some higher res versions of those promo photos we already showed you, from next week's episode. It certainly looks as though some of these pictures take place at Cally's funeral. And President Roslin has a wig: Someone claims to have seen the next four Battlestar Galactica episodes, and offers a ton of spoilers. Grain of salt required, as always. Tyrol "doesn't suspect" Tory of involvement in Cally's death. (Does that mean Tory is involved, and it's not just suicide?) Tyrol feels guilty, but also decides he never really loved Cally because she was too whiny. It also sounds as though Cally, before she dies, admits to Doc Cottle that it's weird that she "basically proposed" to Tyrol after he beat her up.

Baltar's one-god cult grows, and he has a "Jesus overthrowing the money lenders" moment. Tigh gets Six and his dead wife Ellen mixed up. In a mutiny, Sam shoots Felix Gaeta in the leg, and it may have to be amputated. Also, a Six and an Eight die. And so does Seelix. (Noooo!)

Also, Kara keeps getting lost on the way back to Earth, which annoys her crew more and more. And then she picks up a "hitchhiker" — Leoben, who's in a tough scrape after a battle with the other faction of Cylons. Leoben's ship's hybrid tells Starbuck that Three will lead the humans to the Five, who came from the Thirteen (i.e. the thirteenth colony, Earth?). And the Hybrid says Starbuck will lead everyone to their death. [Television Without Pity]

Love Story 2050:

Love Story 2050, the Bollywood time-travel romance that we're all dying to see, takes place in the present for the first half. It's only in the second half that we visit the future, says director Harry Bajewa. [DNA India]

Lost:

The twelfth episode of the current Lost season, "There's No Place Like Home," is rumored to revolve around Claire. And the show is currently filming a funeral which takes place in the future, probably from that episode. At the funeral, Hurley, Sayid and (probably) Jack are there. The funeral appears to be for a "staid older gentleman" — probably Christian Shephard, Jack's dad/boss. Hurley is with a young woman (maybe his old crush Starla) and she's carrying a baby (Aaron?). It looks as though Sayid is with his old flame Nadia, who's not dead yet in this timeframe. (Sayid attends Nadia's funeral in episode nine.) Here are a couple of photos. [Spoilers Lost]
The next episode, April 24, features an "amazing death sequence," which may be related to the return of the smoke monster. Also, the upcoming Claire storyline may be related to actress Emilie de Ravin's new contract. [Ausiello Report]

Stargate: Atlantis:

In the eighth episode of Stargate: Atlantis season five, "Tracker," Ronon, McKay and Keller visit a world where the Wraith have recently arrived. The Wraith turn out to be pursuing a "Runner," a warrior tagged with a homing device so the Wraith can hunt him/her for sport. The Runner, named Kiryk, takes Keller prisoner and leads her to a 10-year-old girl who needs medical attention. Kiryk is surprised to hear that Ronon used to be a Runner, but isn't one any more. Meanwhile, Ronon and McKay have to evacuate a village into nearby caves, with the help of a man named Erran. [Gateworld]

Smallville:

In the 150th episode of Smallville, airing May 1, Kara sends Clark a message from Krypton in the past, warning that Brainiac wants to kill Clark as a baby, so the grown-up (sort of) Clark won't foil his plans in the present. Clark is torn, because he thinks maybe the world would be a better place if he hadn't been there. So his dad, Jor-El, arranges for him to see what life would be like without him: Lex is President of the U.S., Kara was raised by the Luthors, Jonathan Kent is alive, Lana is happily married, and Chloe and Lois are reporters. [KryptonSite]

Doctor Who:

Next year's Doctor Who specials may include a story featuring Winston Churchill and the Daleks. [Doctor Who Forum]

The following quotes appear in this Saturday's Doctor Who episode "Planet of the Ood," except that instead of annoying asterisks, they have actual words:
"Do you like milk and sugar?"
"The ****** must be broken, so that we can ****."
"Very observant, ginger."
"I think your **** must *** soon. Every **** must ***."
"We don't just ***** the Ood, we make them ******."
"That thing about the bees is odd." [Planet Gallifrey]

• Luke and Leia: When you first saw Star Wars, weren't you rooting for the young, rebellious teenager from Tatooine to actually score with the girl? You had the feeling that Han had been around the block a few times and didn't need another notch on his blaster-belt, royalty or not. Luke was the entire wish-fulfillment part of the movie: who wouldn't want to get whisked off their world and into an interstellar struggle along with magic and laser swords? You not only wanted him to destroy the Death Star, but to get the girl as well. Well, at least he got to make out with his sister first few minutes of Empire, hinting that there might have been some other episodes of that going on.
• Han Solo and Chewbacca: They say dogs are a man's best friend, and there's probably an even closer relationship when your dog is over seven feet tall, walks uprights, talks you to in his own language that only you understand, and can fly your ship for you. Plus you know exactly where to scratch him when he needs a bit of a reward for doign something good. The flea baths and upkeep on that glossy fur must be fairly expensive, and who knows what you have to feed the guy. Although there's a slight undertone of jealousy when Chewie chuckles at Han when he gets dissed by Leia, he just calls him a fuzzball and everything is right again.
• Darth Vader and Boba Fett: Think about it, they both spend most of their lives encased in armor, had their parent (singular, in both cases) taken away from them at an early age, and they both enjoy killing things for fun. It's just natural that they'd be attracted to each other, and who's the first person Darth calls when he needs to have someone hunted down? Also, Darth has his own little private torture chamber, and Boba's ship is called the Slave I, so they must have some sort of bondage fetish going on.
• R2D2 and C3P0: Nothing says "I can't quit you" like two droids who stick with each other through thick and thin. Plus the sheer amount of concern that Threepio shows for R2 whenever anything happens to him betrays his feelings, and the Emperor would say. If that golden whiner could have burst into tears when Luke says "I've lost R2!" over the radio in Star Wars, he sure would have. Traipsing around the galaxy together might have been hard on their droid bodies, what with R2 not being able to fly anymore, and Threepio getting blasted to bits in Empire, but just think about the stories they'll be able to tell their grandtoasters.
• Jabba the Hutt and Leia: Running an evil organization that operates on the underbelly of the law can be taxing. Just check out Jabba's body: he's fat, smells, eats live reptiles, and he has to chain women to himself just to keep them around. Once he spotted Leia trying to make off with Han's frozen body, he quickly forced her into a tiny metal bikini and turned her into his newest slave girl, much to the delight of horny basement-dwellers around the world. She wouldn't even reciprocate his proffered tongue kisses, but repays him with some erotic asphyxiation. We swear he enjoyed being choked out.
• Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar: If you thought a smuggler and a walking carpet were an odd couple, consider a woman and her giant fish. It's probably hard to serve as the leader of the Rebellion and to coordinate efforts to overthrow the Empire when you have to worry that your partner is getting enough water, and do you have a good supply of krill on hand. Still, she manages to pull it off with grace and spotless flowing white robes, while Ackbar looks paunchy and happy, like someone who has just downed a few beers before the big game. We just hope he doesn't slap her around when those Rebels aren't around.
• Lando Calrissian and Nien Nunb: Once Lando accepts his guilt for the freezing of Han, he starts flying the Millennium Falcon around, dresses like Han, and even takes on Chewie as his co-pilot. However, that all changes when the Battle of Endor erupts. Lando ditches Chewie and makes room for Nien Nunb, who likes to gasp and nod. Plus, he speaks his own secret language with Lando, and they spend a lot of time in that cockpit together. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
• Tusken Raiders and their Banthas: Tusken Raiders spend their lives wrapped head to toe in mummy bandages, and the only thing they have to keep them company are other Tusken Raiders, and Banthas. According to Star Wars lore, when a Tusken receives a Bantha, they form a life-long bond; when one of the two dies, the other is exiled to the desert to die. Which would really suck if Banthas are known to have a short lifespan. Still, nothing says love like a bond that requires an exile after the breakup.
• Han Solo and Leia: Darth Vader's daughter sure gets around. During the course of three different films, she makes out with her brother, gets flirted with by scoundrels, wriggles around almost nude for fat gangsters, tickles a furry Ewok silly, and then ends up with Han. However, didn't it feel like she chose him because she found out she was related to Luke? Decisions of the heart are a lot easier when you find out you might have offspring with giant foreheads and genetic problems.

Art via the excellent Joel Watson.

What Women Want. Mel Gibson is an immature ad exec who doesn't understand female consumers and is mean to rising exec Helen Hunt. Until one day, he learns to understand the women's point of view.
Scifi element: Gibson gets struck by lightning while wearing pantyhose, and gains selective telepathy: he can "hear" women's thoughts, but not men's. It's not ever really explained what happened.
Creepy subtext: Gibson steals Hunt's ideas, undermines her, and uses his new awareness of women's feelings to become the ultimate slick marketing weenie.
How bad is it? It's hideously painful and awful. The part where Mel Gibson narrates a Nike ad and everyone swoons made me queasy. Here's the trailer:

Shallow Hal. Jack Black is an immature lout who only values women based on their appearance, until a self-help guru puts a whammy on him to make him see women's inner beauty.
Scifi element: It's really not clear. "Life coach" Tony Robbins has some kind of telepathic abilities in this movie, and he's able to restructure Jack Black's brain significantly. It could just be hypnosis, but seems to go a lot further, since afterwards Hal can see people's "inner beauty." It's almost as if Tony Robbins is a telepath who imbues Jack Black with a mild form of telepathy of his own.
Creepy subtext: Well, Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit is sort of hard to take. But also she just "happens" to be the boss' daughter, which makes Hal's attraction to her awfully convenient.
How bad is it? It's pretty terrible, what with the fatsuitage and the whole "Tony Robbins has mental powers" stuff. It's the only unbearable Jack Black movie.

I.Q. Tim Robbins is an immature garage mechanic who falls for Meg Ryan... who's the niece of Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau). Even though Meg is engaged to Stephen Fry from Wooster & Jeeves, Einstein decides to get Tim Robbins together with his niece. This involves lots of Einstein riding on Robbins' motorcycle and screaming "wahooo!"
Scifi element: Well, Einstein's plan to help Robbins and Ryan get together involves inventing a fusion-powered nuclear spaceship and giving Robbins the credit for it. That way, Ryan will realize Robbins really has a good heart. Which makes total sense!
Creepy subtext: It's yet another movie about Meg Ryan being engaged to a smart guy, when you know she should really be with the dumb guy instead. That's, like, Meg Ryan's whole career.
How bad is it? I saw it in the theater (why?!) and had managed to repress it totally until just now. One whole side of my body is now having shooting pains reliving the trauma of watching this movie.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Luke Wilson is an immature guy who starts dating Uma Thurman, not realizing she's a superhero and a psycho. He really likes Anna Faris, and when he hooks up with her, Uma goes nutso on him.
Scifi element: Uma Thurman is a superhero, who gets her powers from a chunk of meteorite. And a supervillain played by Eddie Izzard somehow knows that the same meteorite can take away her powers as well.
Creepy subtext: Luke helps Izzard to remove Uma's superpowers, even though this will allow Izzard to take over the world and stuff. Because there's nothing more important than getting your ex off your back.
How bad is it? It has a Rotten Tomatoes score of like -1,000.

My Stepmother Is An Alien. Dan Akroyd is an immature scientist who falls in love with a woman and marries her in like two hours, not realizing Kim Basinger is really from another planet! But she may have to leave him and go back to her planet. Can true love triumph? And what about Alyson Hannigan and Seth Green? Will those kids ever get together?
Scifi element: Akroyd somehow zaps another galaxy with his super space telescope. Don't ask me how. And Basinger's mission is to get him to zap her galaxy again, before some ill-explained disaster happens.
Creepy subtext: In her quest to be the perfect wife, Basinger learns about sex from her purse, and then cooks a few dozen dinners at once for Akroyd and his daughter, Hannigan.
How bad is it? It's definitely one of the lower rungs on Akroyd's climbdown into the scary dark place of his career. Not quite Blues Brothers 2000, but close. Here's a clip:

Earth Girls Are Easy. A spaceship crashes in Geena Davis' swimming pool, and out come Jim Carrey, Jeff Goldblum and Damon Wayans. An entire movie based on a comedy song by Julie Brown.
Scifi element: Carrey, Goldblum and Wayans are furry aliens, who turn out to be shockingly handsome once you shave off all their fur.
Creepy subtext: Davis' character is sort of a loser until Jeff Goldblum swoops into her life.
How bad is it? It's pretty cheesy, but it's pretty much just an MTV-esque musical.

Virtual Sexuality. Justine is tired of being a virgin, so she goes to a virtual-reality salon... only to bring her ideal man into existence in the real world.
Scifi element: Justine enters the "Narcissus machine" at the VR salon, which is supposed to reshape your face and body into your ideal appearance, but she decides to create her ideal man instead. But there's a gas explosion while she's in there, and her fantasy of the ideal man comes to life. (As a hologram?) The inventors of the Narcissus machine want to capture this embodiment of women's fantasies, but he's too busy being a studmuffin.
Creepy subtext: Because the "ideal man" is created from Justine's fantasies, when he comes to life he's freaky and effeminate.
How bad is it? It has an average critic score of D. But it's sort of charming, judging from this fan music video:

Mork And Mindy Famous TV show about Robin Williams' alien who comes to Earth and falls in love with Pam Dawber, along with everyone at home. How long before this becomes a hideous movie starring Will Ferrell?
Scifi element: Mork is an alien. He can drink with his finger. After Mork and Mindy get married, they have a kid... who's born as an old guy, Andrew Sean Greer-style, and then ages backwards.
Creepy subtext: Well, Robin Williams' whole cute innocent man-boy schtick gets a little weird.
How bad is it? Parts of it are great, but it went downhill fast.

Groundhog Day. Bill Murray is an immature wretch of a weatherman who finds himself living through the same day over and over. I wouldn't have considered this a romcom, but it appears on several lists of the genre. He does fall in love and end up with Andie MacDowell.
Scifi element: Time travel, although it's never explained and may actually involve magic or karma or whatever.
Creepy subtext: Well, Murray tries to kill himself several times, and acts like a total asswipe to people once he realizes everything will be undone at the end of the day.
How bad is it? It's actually pretty great. Either this is the exception, or it's just not a romcom.

SRK's movie will start shooting towards the end of the year, and in the meantime he'll be asking the world's greatest special effects technicians to help make it the greatest effects movie of all time. He tells Variety, "It will madcap, over the top. I want it to be as beautiful as Spider-Man in terms of effects." The movie will be about kids who wish for bad things, but "get a reality check when they come true." SRK reportedly jumped ship from Robot because he felt its storyline, about a companion robot that turns deadly, wasn't realistic enough.

Hollywood hasn't courted SRK yet, and he says he's waiting for the right opportunity for his quirky persona:

I'm waiting for someone like Steven Spielberg or James Cameron or some other great person like Ang Lee to make a film a film about a brown, thin, scrawny Indian guy who doesn't speak English too well. If they ever have a character like that and Google it, I'm sure they'll find me... Seriously, it would have to be character-specific. I'd love to do an action-comic film like Chris Rock and Jackie Chan.

[Variety]

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Mr. India (1987). A cheesy sci-fi comedy with song-and-dance numbers. Arun discovers his scientist dad created a special wristband that turns the wearer invisible. He uses this to stop the mad genius Mogambo, who wants to take over India. (Mogambo's evil schemes weirdly include cutting off Arun's line of credit at the grocery store, but also launching nuclear missiles at India.) Here's a clip that shows Mogambo's evil lair and his giant gold epaulets:

Kol... Mil Gaya (2003). Maybe the most famous Bollywood science fiction film ever. An ET-esque alien named Jadoo befriends a mentally challenged boy and cures him. But then it turns out the alien's spaceship crash actually killed the kid's father. Here's one of the song-and-dance sequences involving Jadoo (wearing an orange hoodie and bling around his neck.) The little Kraftwerk sample gets bonus points:
Krrish (2006) is a quasi-sequel to Kol... Mil Gaya, about a small-town kid who gets superpowers and fights evil. It uses many of the superhero conventions, including the secret identity and the nosy girl reporter.

We're anxiously awaiting 2008's Love Story 2050, which takes place partly in a dark future Mumbai and partly in the present day. The future Mumbai will be mostly CGI, but the film will also feature an animatronic character, a robot named Boo. And lead actor Harman Bajewa learned Parkour, the art of jumping from rooftop to rooftop, for the movie.

Also fervently awaited: S. Shankar's Robot, starring South India's darling Rajnikanth. It'll have a billion-rupee budget and tons of special effects. It's the story of a scientist who creates a robot companion for his disabled child. But the robot goes berserk and starts killing people. Like robots always do.

India hasn't produced much original science fiction in the past, but there are two reasons why India will rule the genre in the future. First, India is ground zero for computer animation and special effects. There were only 27,000 professionals working in computer animation in India in 2001, but there will be 300,000 people in the industry in 2008. Also, Bollywood films have always had extensive "fantasy sequences" where realism suddenly goes out the window and bizarre stunts happen. Just imagine if some of that same cinematic language gets applied to science fiction.

• "Space Oddity" by David Bowie: Mercury Records considered this song about a stranded astronaut to be a gimmick track, and didn't pay much attention to it during production. However, they decided to rush it out to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing taking up much of the public attention, and it shot up the UK charts as a result.

  Best lyric: "And I think my spaceship knows which way to go"

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• "Rocket Man" by Elton John: Elton John's single about an astronaut's mixed feelings about leaving his family behind on a journey to Mars echoed a bit of Bowie's previous "Space Oddity," but has surpassed it in popularity and become one of his most popular.

  Best lyric: "Rocket Man, burning out his fuse up here alone."

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• "She Blinded Me With Science" by Thomas Dolby: Dolby's over the top homage to mad scientists actually featured a real British scientist with a cool name, Magnus Pyke, yelling out "Science!" during the song. On a side note, this also served as the opening song to the short-lived mutant teenagers tv show, The Misfits of Science.

  Best lyric: "Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!"

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• "Fly Me To The Moon" by Frank Sintatra: Originally titled "In Other Words," this song became one of Sinatra's staples, recorded with Count Basie with an arrangement by Quincy Jones. The song was also played by the Apollo 10 astronauts while on their lunar mission, meaning it did literally fly to the moon.

  Best lyric: Let me see what spring is like, on Jupiter and Mars.

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• "Red Barchetta" by Rush: This song was inspired by the futuristic short story "A Nice Morning Drive" in Road and Track magazine about vehicles of a dystopian era which have become huge, safe, and boring. In the song, the narrator drives an old and illicit car kept by his uncle, and the new futuristic cars can't keep up when he zooms across a narrow bridge. Very early 80s. Very awesome.

  Best lyric: "I strip away the old debris, that hides a shining car."

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• "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt. 1" by The Flaming Lips: This song from the Lips' concept album of the same name is about a young Japanese girl who works for the city, battling the giant robots that keep invading. She's a black belt in karate, she takes a lot of vitamins, and the robots don't stand a chance.

  Best lyric: "Those evil-natured robots, they're programmed to destroy us."

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• "Mr. Roboto" by Styx: Styx performed this song on their rock opera album Kilroy Was Here. In it, the hero Kilroy is placed in a futuristic rock and roll prison, and escapes by hiding himself inside a menial custodial robot, The Roboto. He escapes the prison inside the metal shell, and offers up his thanks in the form of this song.

  Best lyric: "With parts made in Japan, I am the modern man."

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• "Space Age Love Song" by Flock of Seagulls: Granted, nothing is particularly science fiction about this song other than the title, but it's so firmly rooted in the 1980s that we had to include it for the sheer amount of nostalgia-power it resonates with. If you catch the retro-arcade wonders documentary Chasing Ghosts, this song runs over a brilliant montage of the videogames of yesteryear.

  Best lyric: "I saw your eyes, and you touched my mind."

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• "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath: This song about a time-traveling man of steel seeking revenge has not only become a mainstay of anthem rock and Black Sabbath, but it's had a resurgence in popularity thanks to both Guitar Hero and the filmmakers of the upcoming Marvel superhero flick of the same name using it prominently in the trailer. Probably one of the most identifiable guitar riffs in all the world.

  Best lyric: "He was turned to steel, in the great magnetic field."

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• "Love Missile F1-11" by Sigue Sigue Sputnik: This song, filled with simple repeated lyrics and sound effects, has been brought back to life by being featured in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Bowie even covered it in 2003. We're still not sure why it continues to endure, but hey, it's a love missile, and it closes out our outer space playlist.

  Best lyric: "There goes my love rocket red."

Apollo's Song was originally serialized in a weekly comic magazine back in 1970. This was during the transition phase of Tezuka's career—his production company had just tanked, and he was skeptical of the anime industry, which insisted on censoring his work. It was the same year that he wrote Alabaster, a story about a homicidal, partly invisible ex-athlete intent on destroying all the beauty in the world.

For Tezuka, science fiction was never a goal; it was the medium through which he chose to explore complex, often taboo issues of his time, like love and hate and promiscuous sex. By addressing these issues via animated fictional characters living in a surreal future, he avoided controversy and criticism in the real world.

Apollo's Song is a coming-of-age story that starts in the present and warps back and forth into the past and future. The ambiguous protagonist is a boy named Shogo, who learned to despise the idea of love during a childhood mired in his mom's promiscuous affairs with his many papas. He hates it so much that he obsessively murders any living thing showing even the slightest hint of passion. These killing sprees land him in a mental hospital, where a mysterious doctor puts him through electroshock therapy and transports him into different roles, each in extreme imagined environments—an island where dozens of zoo animals procreate, an isolated house in the mountains, and Nazi Germany. Through his adventures, Shogo finally learns to love. Hypnosis takes him to his final destination—Tokyo in the year 2030, where super-humanoid clones called Synthians rule a cold, heartless world. There, Shogo is caught between two tasks he's been ordered to perform—to kill the Synthian queen, but also to teach her how to love.

The inner lives of animals, reproduction, twisted sexuality, reincarnation, and the inevitable war between humans and their creations—clones and robots—are themes that arise repeatedly in Tezuka's manga. Even today, a lot of Japanese people don't talk that openly about love and sex. Manga is often a prime medium for understanding these issues—sex ed is often taught in comic strips, and almost every male magazine has pornographic graphic novels tacked into its end pages.

Nearly 20 years after his death and over half a century past his heyday, only twelve of Tezuka's titles have been published in English. But with the Asian Art Museum's recent exhibit on Tezuka and other titles being worked on by publishers like Vertical and Viz, we should be seeing a greater rollout in the years to come. If you're going to start somewhere with Tezuka's science fiction works, Apollo is the place to go.

One of the things that irks about movies like Children of Men is that it's a story all about childbirth and reproduction entirely from the male point of view. In that movie, the big bad at the heart of dystopia is that women are barren and there will be no more "children of men." But what about a dystopia where women are fertile in a way that challenges everything we know about families and parenting? Women could enslave men and turn them into second-class citizens good for nothing but manual labor and soldiering. Or the reverse might happen. Once women could impregnate each other, men might disdain the idea of actually making babies — that's women's work! So you'd get a world where men and women are even more separated than ever before. They don't even have to come together to create new life. AP Photo/Seoul National University.

You can't take a 1950s-era technology like 3D and hope it will compete with World of Warcraft. Sure, 3D really was the awesome when you could see that scary arm reaching out of the screen in Creature from the Black Lagoon in the mid-50s. Today, however, audiences are used to 3D that they can interact with. They're not going to come out to the theaters in droves just for a gimmick they can download for free with SecondLife.

Don't get me wrong — I think audiences will absolutely turn out for Avatar, and maybe even for Beowulf. (I'll be there tonight, with my 3D glasses on over my other glasses.) But that won't be for the 3D — it will be for the stories, and in the case of Avatar because they trust the James "Titanic" Cameron brand. If anything, though, the 3D crap will come across as cheese that's trying too hard and will make people less inclined to love these movies on its own terms.

Yeah, theater-going is dying out. People aren't buying movie tickets because they can stay home and watch Netflix or play Xbox. And the studios think that if they can just make theater-going special again, maybe with 3D, people will return to the old ways and go out to the movies on Friday nights like they used to back when 3D was cool. They won't. It doesn't mean we don't love movies, and it doesn't mean we won't still get excited about going out to see them opening night with a big crowd. It just means we love doing other things too. And all the 3D in the world won't change that.

Famous names: Peter Lorre, Karl Freund

Crunchy goodness: 5

Stunt casting: Peter Lorre, whose expressively anguished face and raspy voice made him the king of 1930s horror flicks, plays the mad doctor with a skill that puts the rest of the cast to shame.

Sight you'll never unsee: The pianist practicing knife throwing in his parlor between concertos.

Copycats: The plot of this movie, based on the novel The Hands of Orlac, has become a kind of mini-genre that includes movies like The Hand, as well as other flicks where people receive transplants that take over their lives. What sets this first entry in the genre apart is that it's also the story of a mad doctor's freakish, stalkery love for an actress, whom he hopes to impress with his limb-swapping experiments.

Cult Clip over at Cindelica