At the 2010 Syfy Upfront, we talked to the casts of Warehouse 13, Stargate Universe, and Caprica. The other news of the evening was Tracy Morgan's return to Scare Tactics, and a new bloc of Thursday reality TV, starting July 15, 2010. Syfy will see the debut of two new shows anchoring the evening:

• Mary Knows Best, about the career and family life of psychic and radio host Mary Occhino.
• and Paranormal Investigators, a supernatural debunking show in the same vein as Ghost Hunters.

In addition, Syfy announced the production of two reality shows that seem at loggerheads with their drama slate. There's Quantum Kitchen, featuring "molecular gastronomist" Marcel Vigneron and Force of Nature with Feng Shui master Ariel Towne. The former's about party-planning, the latter's about furniture. Better Homes and Stargates, anyone?

Upcoming movies and miniseries include Riverworld, The Phantom, and 24 other re-imaginings of fantasy yarns, like good ol' Sharktopus. And of course, Syfy still has an American version of the British cult classic Being Human, weird superhero show Three Inches, and an adaptation of Steven King's Haven in the pipeline.

The other big news was 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan's return to host - and now executive produce - the hidden camera fright-fiesta Scare Tactics. It's a curious career move for Morgan, but more inappropriate belly shots and monotone yelling on prime time are probably good for our culture as a whole.

Here's a promo from the comedians' previously stint with the show. If more reality TV isn't your taste, then perhaps Tracy yelling non sequiturs at the camera will make it more palatable.

After watching that clip, I really hope the new season of Scare Tactics is 30 minutes of Tracy simply sauntering up to victims, yelling "Scare Tactics!", ripping off his shirt, and then just sashaying away like nothing ever happened.

Part of me feels dirty for giving this guy the attention he so desperately deserves what with his flashy haircut, fancy mic and spiffy YouTube page. But I just found his "message" so awesomely hilarious, I had to share it with you all.

I don't know what is more ridiculous — his shoehorned message or the Avatar LARPers who have gone berzerk on chatroulette. I bet if Pastor Mark Driscoll spent some quality Tsaheylu time on chatroulette with the Wisconsin Hometree clan, he'd think differently about this film.

Click the image to see it in full, burning glory. Over at Tor, Manchess explained how he chose which part of the battle to illustrate:

I had to pick the moment carefully. Depict a moment too far in advance of the mayhem and it weakens the excitement. Too far after the initial firestorm and I'd be depicting heaps of charred meat. I chose the moment just before the detonations went rending through the ranks completely. The wave is just starting to sweep over the Aiel, but as timing isn't quite so precise, I depicted the flames cresting quickly from right to left, allowing the viewer "time" to see what was about to come. Utter flaming chaos.

Utter flaming chaos is what we like to see first thing in the morning, thank you very much.

via Tor and The Art Department

Predators:

The new sequel is a "dope movie," says Topher Grace. Adds Walton Goggins:

It's very similar to Schwarzenegger's "Predator,' but it's different. You have to see how that unfolds, the realization that we're somewhere other than our planet. At the end of the day, it's a human tale. There are a lot of dysfunctional people coming together in 'Predators' that would never work together, but they are forced to work together in order to survive.

And Grace says that somebody delivers Jesse Ventura's iconic line, "I ain't got time to bleed." And Goggins explains his character:

I play Walter Stans in 'Predators' - he's a famous serial killer and fancies himself the only celebrity of the eight persons on the alien planet, and is perturbed when they don't know who he is or ask for his autograph. Stans has a lot of one-liners that hopefully people will be quoting when they leave the movie.

There are about twenty of these one-liners, and one of them is, "Your ass is awesome." [MTV]

The Thing:

We're still not sure what this prequel to John Carpenter's film will be called? First Things? Another Thing? Thing #1? But at least it's announced its cast list according to an anonymous tipster — which (not surprisingly) includes a ton of Norwegians staffing that Norwegian base. The film stars Death Proof's Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton. Also joining the film are Dennis Storhøi (The 13th Warrior), Trond Espen Seim (The Frost), Jørgen Langhelle (Svik), Stig Henrik Hoff, Jan Gunnar Røise, Kristofer Hivju (Manhunt) and Jo Adrian Haavind. Filming has already started in Toronto and British Columbia. (Since this tip comes from an anonymous source, the usual grain of salt is indicated.) [ShockTillYouDrop]

Repo Men:

In our world, Jake might be a psychopath, says actor Forest Whitaker, but in his world, he's just very good at his job. And he explains the relationship between Jake and Jude Law's Remy:

We've been friends since we were children, then we went off to war together. We've killed together, we've shared something that's private in that respect. So our bond is really strong.

[L.A. Times]

It sounds like a lot of flashbacks to Jake and Remy's history together wound up getting cut, judging from this interview with Whitaker and Law. Also cut: A Christmas scene where the two laugh in the street after their first repossession. [CinemaBlend]

Director Miguel Sapochnik says the film, which was filmed in Toronto, actually takes place there too, although it's never stated outright. The business of Law and Whitaker ripping people's organs out in broad daylight and nobody protesting fits in well with Canadian culture. And Sapochnik says he did tons of research on what artificial organs might look like in the future, and what might power them. [Fangoria]

Fringe:

There's a trailer on set for "Charlie" right now, and by coincidence Kirk Acevedo is in town. Hmm. [Twitter via SpoilerTV]

Supernatural:

You might remember talk of a big death in the 100th episode, airing April 15 — apparently it's not "major," so probably not Cas or Bobby. [EW]

Eureka:

Something huge happens in the season opener, says Colin Ferguson:

Something happens at the beginning of the season where everything shifts. It's one of those things where you assume at the end of the episode, ‘Oh, it's going to reverse itself' – and it doesn't.

It's neither a good nor bad change, but it's a huge, "ballsy" sea change. And it has to do with new castmember James "Baltar" Callis. Says Salli Richardson-Whitfield, "He comes in with his own secrets. Is he a good guy, a bad guy? You don't know." Also, Jamie Ray Newman will be back for a couple episodes as Dr. Tess Fontana. [Fancast]

Stargate Universe:

Brian Smith says that the second half of the first season features the crew going up against some pretty powerful natural forces. "This last half is about taking what we've established and then really messing with it... We're going to leave you with the last episode that … when I read it, I got upset," he said. "There is something that happens in that last episode that is so upsetting, so cruel, and so wrong that just thinking about it gives me goosebumps." [Sci Fi Wire via Gateworld]

Riverworld:

Here's the official description for this miniseries, airing in April: Matt Ellman (Tahmoh Penikett, Battlestar Galactica, Dollhouse) is an American war zone reporter, killed along with his fiancée Jessie (Laura Vandervoort, Smallville) by a suicide bomber. They awaken separated in a mysterious world where everyone who has ever lived on Earth seems to have been "reborn" along the banks of a seemingly endless river. Determined to locate Jessie, Matt joins forces with a 13th century female samurai warrior Tomoe (Jeananne Goossen) and American novelist Sam "Mark Twain" Clemens (Mark Deklin). [CinemaBlend]

Caprica:

Here are some promo stills from this Friday's episode, "Ghosts In The Machine," which is the penultimate one of the current block. [CapricaTV]

True Blood:

Mariana Klaveno is coming back as Bill's "maker," for at least six episodes. But we will never see beloved book character Bubba, because Alan Ball couldn't figure out a way to do it without being cheesy. [EW]

FlashForward:

Demetri has some "very interesting" stuff coming up with Janis, says John Cho. And every single character on this show has a major twist coming up. We'll learn about Simon's family life. Janis is still dead set on having a baby. And Mark and Olivia go to a "dark place" in their marriage. Says Jack Davenport, "In the second half of the season, the excitement builds exponentially week after week with reveals, explanations, complications. If you want answers, come back. If you don't, go somewhere else!" [E! Online]

Chuck:

There'll be a significant death in the season finale. [EW]

Here are some promo pics for episode 3x11, "Chuck Vs. The Final Exam." [ChuckTV]

Smallville:

Zod is going to sleep with someone whose name has four letters — Lois? — in an upcoming episode. [EW]

Lost:

Episode 6x15, the big Jacob-and-MIB episode, isn't completely free of regular characters — it's just very light on them. And it's a big mythology episode. [EW]

Here are some promo pics for next Tuesday's eagerly anticipated Richard Alpert episode. [SpoilersLost]

This clip, which we mistakenly said was a clip from this most recent episode, is actually from this coming Tuesday's:

And here's another clip from this Tuesday's Alpert-mania episode. (Alpert-o-rama?) [SpoilersLost]

Someone we have not yet met will have an important message for Hurley next week. Flocke will tell Jin how he plans to get off the island, and it's "pretty juicy." There's a "package" that might be the most shocking, nerve-wracking reveal of the season so far. (I'm wondering if that's the rumored bomb that Jack carries onto the sub?) And episode 11, airing in a few weeks, might make you cry. [E! Online]

Additional reporting by Kelly Faircloth.

thethirdchimpanzee

Roklimber

Roklimber

PostMarque

Tomb: R.O.A.C.H.

io9: First off, you directed an animation sequence for the Kick-Ass movie. What's it about?

It's an origin sequence halfway through the film. Nicolas Cage's character, Big Daddy, documents his conquests as a vigilante in a shrine by drawing his victims and putting them up on a wall– The Wall of Villains – that he has in his secret room.

His ex-police partner, Marcus, discovers Big Daddy's secret room and sees what he's done to document his frustrating history; it's basically a comic book. He's a cartoonist and he draws his origin. His origin pretty much explains the whole film, in that Nicolas Cage's character has been set up and he's been driven out of his mind by what happened. Marcus comes in and picks up this little brief history in the comic book, and it morphs from the page in the comic book into a one-minute-or-so animated sequence. It then morphs back into the comic book when Big Daddy walks in on Marcus.

How was directing an animated sequence different than straight-up comic book illustration?

That's the interesting thing. Director Matthew Vaughn wanted it to be a comic book sequence. He was specific in saying, "Stick to what you do. We'll have it as a homage to the comic book." So I basically drew a comic book sequence and the computer-generating people at Double Negative Visual Effects turned it into a 3-D animated sequence.

In Kick-Ass, real people act as vigilantes. Given that you were illustrating real people and not say, Thor, did you find that your style changed?

When I was working with Mark Millar, we both handled it as a graphic novel. We handled it differently than a normal comic in that it was an illustrated novel and we knew that it was a special story, but I wasn't intending to make it look more realistic than normal. We stuck to what we were good at.

Speaking of Mark, I know that you've worked with him on a number of projects, such as Wolverine: Enemy of the State. You are one of the few the artists who can make Logan's flamboyant yellow jumpsuit look dangerous.

(laughs) Thank you very much!

What's it like working with Mark Millar? Any antics?

He's one of the funniest guys you'll ever meet, and the two of us get along because we're both wise-asses, just from different countries. No, he just sends me the script, and I do what I do. Working with him is an absolute pleasure. He absolutely cracks me up when I can understand his heavy Scottish dialect, I crack him up when he can understand my heavy Brooklyn dialect. We get along famously.

Kick-Ass is a unique title in that it's about real people taking up a superhero mantle. Are you worried that there will be any sort of reverberation in the real world with folks assuming superhero identities?

Right after Kick-Ass began, we were privy to a couple of sites and emails that people were dressing in costume. The longer the series went along and the closer the film came to coming out, we found out that there were neighborhood patrols in which people would pick up outfits and dress up. The timeline, we're not sure about, some of them were claiming they were dressing up long before the series came out.

Interestingly enough, just a couple days ago at the New York screening of Kick-Ass, there was a martial arts expert who does those kinds of neighborhood patrols in the Midwest. He was the nicest guy in the world, but just into neighborhood patrols. I've seen the internet chatter about this, and I love it frankly. I remember neighborhood patrols when I was a kid. If they start to wear costumes, so be it. Maybe they'll scare a couple of boneheads away. The more this happens and the more tension it gets, who knows? Maybe we'll find costumed heroes, but of course, military, cops, and firefighters – those are the superheroes.

Any sort of tidbits you can offer us on the Kick-Ass 2 comic?

I can only give you the name of the arc, "Balls to the Wall." And Mark gave the villain's name away at the screening – it's The Motherfucker. Mark's sworn me to secrecy.

Your illustrations inspired the Black Panther series that's slated to air on BET. I know that it recently aired in Australia. Will we see it stateside?

It aired in Australia?

Yeah, you can see the opening sequence online – folks are claiming it aired on Australia's ABC3, but there's not a lot of info on the show's US air date.

There was some contention as to whether or not it would released in the US – something about BET and Marvel or BET and Reginald Hudlin. I'm not sure where it was the last time I spoke to Reggie. But hey, Australia! That's outstanding.

You and Brian Michael Bendis are helming the new post-Dark Reign Avengers series. Any spoilers you can pass on?

I'm just about to finish the first issue as we speak. I'm afraid to give away anything here because the plot's connected to so many different things – there's such a strange amount of subplots – including the villain, as it might affect other stories.

Finally, any other projects besides Avengers in the pipeline?

I have a creator-owned project with Howard Chaykin that's the product of my own twisted mind. I'll be working on that soon – it's called Shmuggy and Bimbo. Howard's writing and it's about two hitmen from the 1940s who grew up with my parents in real life in Brooklyn. They've long since passed but we've placed them into 1970s New York City. It's a convoluted political intrigue plot with a little bit of fantasy involved. Yes, there were two legitimate human beings in this world named Shmuggy and Bimbo, and they looked like their names.

Kick-Ass is published by Marvel in the US and Titan Books in the United Kingdom.

What you're seeing here, and in the movie below, is a camera looking up from inside a hole deep in the ice. The camera is mounted on a pole, which you can also see. The dark, scalloped ridges you see in ice are caused by the special drill the scientists used, which is essentially a jet of warm water that slowly melts the ice away. Once the camera had gone deep enough, they were startled to see this prawn frolicking around the camera - no one had expected any crustaceans beneath the ice in the dark, frozen waters of the antarctic.

Though the crustacean is cool, I love at the end of the video when the camera plunges even more deeply into the water, and you see the hole in the ice getting smaller and smaller as you descend into darkness.

via Science News

Shrimpy surprise from Science News on Vimeo.

In a small group with a few other select sites, we quizzed M. Night on all things Airbender:

First up: who's in and who's out? This is such a long, and enjoyable, series that surely not every single character can make the final cut. What happened to the cabbage guy, the bounty hunter, King Bumi? M. Night tried his best to keep in every essential character to the series, but of course some of them would never make it out of the Nickelodeon cartoon. And sorry, commenter Daumier, King Bumi didn't make the list — sad, we know — but we think you'll be surprised with who and what did stay in this movie. And who is being saved for the next film.

While running through the list of major characters, we spent quite a bit of time talking about the furrier friends of the Airbender universe — specifically, that lovable flying Bison Appa. M. Night discussed the struggles of trying to make a realistic-looking film, while simultaneously creating a giant, six-legged flying Bison. And while that seemed difficult, it was reassuring to hear the director talk more about the relationship between Aang and Appa, and their future trials and separations, thankfully, he thoroughly understood the character dynamic between these two.

And yes, M. Night is fiercely dedicated to the making multiple Airbender films. Calling the later seasons "Shakespearean," he described to us in great detail what he wants from each film, and why he wants to be the one making them, unless he gets canned. But when he signed on to recreate this series, he had a dedication to see it through to the end. Shyamalan understands the weighty material that's addressed in later episodes, but he did also talk a lot about a major concern many of you had. How do you balance the humor and the action in the first film? From what we could tell, many of the younger jokes had to go, or at least be elevated in delivery, but there's still a balance. Although we're still not sure how the balancing act will turn out.

And of course, we didn't skirt around the number one issue to many of our commenters and readers — the racial issues around this film's casting. M. Night addressed the issues head-on, and explained the reasoning behind his decisions, as you'll see in the video. And while we're sure many of you won't be happy with any answer, we left with a better understanding for M. Night's vision for the Airbender world, and the many races and nations that you would see in this film and future works. First and foremost he claimed that he picked the best actor first, and the rest follows.

Finally, the last little secret we'll spill is that no, M. Night will not be appearing in this particular Airbender film, but if all goes well, he'll be popping up later, in a stinky cameo his family picked out for him.

Stay tuned for the full video interview coming soon.

The science of neuroimaging (the fancy name for brain scans) is relatively new. We've been able to x-ray the brain and see the blood vessels running through it since the early 20th century, but modern brain scanning technology wasn't developed until the 1970s. Today's researchers and doctors have better tools, and more of them, when it comes to looking inside the brain.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) – This is one of the earliest brain scanning technologies, with research on humans dating back to the 1920s and 30s. The EEG scan relies on the fact that nerve impulses within the brain take the form of (or generate) tiny electric currents, which indirectly cause changes in electric current at the scalp. Electrodes placed on the scalp can detect these changes and create a readout that can be interpreted to discern brain activity.
EEGs have very fine time resolution, but essentially no spatial resolution. They don't indicate much about what's going on inside the brain other than a general awareness of shifting brain states. This scan still has important medical uses, however. Since we know what a "normal" brain's EEG readout looks like, a scan can help determine if a mental problem such as dementia or a coma is due to a physiological problem within the brain or some other issue. EEGs are also used in sleep studies, since they can show how a sleeping subject's brain patterns are being disrupted. They're crucial in diagnosing epilepsy, since different forms of epilepsy show very different EEG readings during seizures.

Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT) – The 1970s and 80s saw several major breakthroughs in brain scanning technology. CAT scans (usually called CT scans in modern usage) are based on x-ray imaging technology. Tomography – the ability to focus an x-ray on a single "slice" of the subject – was used to get better contrast on specific areas. The use of computers allowed multiple tomography scans to be combined into a representation of the entire body part.

A modern CT scan is like a spiral x-ray. As the patient slowly moves through the machine, x-ray guns and detectors turn around the patient's head (or other body part). Computers assemble the information into a detailed scan of the entire brain, providing an incredible view of the structures within the brain. CT scans are medically invaluable, since they let doctors see brain injuries, skull fractures, tumors, blood clots and brain bleeding. They are crucial in detecting strokes, and are even used when a brain biopsy is performed – the scan gives doctors a real-time look at where the needle is.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) – PET scans pick up where CAT scans leave off, showing brain activity instead of brain structure. In fact, they are often performed together by the same machine, creating a composite view of the brain's internal condition. Instead of x-rays, PET scans detect radioactive glucose injected into the subject. Organs (including the brain) absorb glucose when they are active, and the radioactive glucose emits gamma rays during absorption. Detecting these rays allows doctors to see what parts of the brain are active. While a PET scan doesn't show brain structure, it does reveal localized brain activity, which in turn lets researchers see which parts of the brain are active during certain activities, or lets doctors see if certain parts of the brain are acting abnormally.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) – An MRI scan doesn't use radioactive injections or x-rays. Instead, it uses a powerful magnetic field to line up all the hydrogen atoms in a person's body (which works because the atoms' nuclei are protons). Strong pulses of radio waves briefly change the protons' alignment before they fall back in line with magnetic field. As the protons shift alignment, they release small amounts of energy, which the scanner detects. The protons in different tissues realign at different speeds and emit different amounts of energy, which is the "resonance" part of MRI. During the course of the scan, a variety of signals trigger proton alignment changes, and a computer then builds the data into an image of the body part being scanned.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) – fMRI does what regular MRI cannot do: it measures activity within the brain instead of structures. This is based on the principle that active brain areas have increased blood flow and use more oxygen than inactive areas. It turns out that blood has different magnetic properties depending on whether it's packed with oxygen or most of the oxygen in it has been used up. Thus, the fMRI scan can see which parts of the brain are sucking up all the oxygen, and are presumably the most active.

fMRI is seldom used in medical treatments – it's mostly restricted to research. This scan is primarily responsible for the recent boom in "when you think about sex, your lateral parietal cortex is active, therefore that's the sex part of the brain" type studies (note: I made that up, I have no idea what the lateral parietal cortex does). There are many critics of these studies, who suggest that they oversimplify a complex and interconnected system by making the brain seem like a modular toolbox of separate parts that suddenly spring into action when a particular function is required.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) – This type of scan has the coolest sci-fi terminology, and it might be the brain scan of the future. It relies on the same basic principle as EEG: the brain generates tiny electrical signals when it's active. A MEG scan, however, doesn't read those potentials. Instead, it reads the slight magnetic fields caused by them. The problem is, those magnetic field changes are so small that they're completely overwhelmed by things like your computer monitor, the power lines running down your street or anyone nearby using a cell phone.

The solution is two-fold. First, shield the testing room from magnetic interference as much as possible. Second, create an incredibly sensitive magnetic field detector. That detector is known as a SQUID, which stands for superconducting quantum interference device. They have to be bathed in liquid helium to stay cool enough for superconductivity to occur, which makes them damn expensive. SQUIDs also show up in some MRI scanners, and in any number of science-fiction novels. During a MEG scan, the subject's head sits within a "helmet" of SQUIDs, which detects brain activity while the subject performs tasks or look at images. While the scan is better at seeing areas near the surface of the brain, and doesn't have the as much spatial resolution as an fMRI, it has incredible time resolution, allowing researchers to see brain activity almost in real-time.

In the next ten to twenty years, brain scanning technology will undoubtedly get better and cheaper. In 50 years, will we have the equivalent of true mind-reading machines? Of course it's hard to say, but consider this: in 1935, the computational power required for an MRI or CAT scan to operate successfully was completely unimaginable.

Top image by: National High Magnetic Field Laboratory

omnibus_spiritus

Oh, and there are major spoilers here...

In Earthling, a weird spiky object from space strikes the International Space Station, and one astronaut murders the two others and ejects himself into space, miraculously surviving.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, a teacher named Jude has an epileptic seizure and crashes her car — and this is just the beginning of Jude's realization that she may not be human. Soon, Jude is being stalked by one of her students, the creepy lesbian Abby, and encountering more and more weirdness.

The film is very slow and moody, with lots of arty shots of what could be a lake's surface or could be stars. Jude sits in the bathtub and stares at her own feet, and people have slow, halting conversations with artsy dialogue. It works pretty well, at times, because we feel the alienation (so to speak) and dissociation of Jude's growing awareness that she's not really a human being — she's actually one of a group of aliens who came down to Earth and grew human bodies around their slug selves. (They can build human bodies by impregnating humans, or each other's human-bred bodies.)

Where the film really shines is when it transforms, from a Sundance-esque drama about someone who's not sure who/what she really, into a horror movie about alien slugs coming out of people's mouths and stunning Jude with their telepathic shrieks:

The film also has a clever ending, which pulls together a lot of the narrative strands and goes a long way towards redeeming the whole thing.

The thing that's really unsettling about Earthling, though, is the weird overtones of pedophilia and intergenerational love that permeate it. You've got the stalkery relationship between the teacher, Jude, and her student, Abby, which eventually turns mutually stalkery and then evolves into the two of them kissing naked in the bathtub. And also, at one point, Jude hides in the reeds and watches Abby seduce another female student (whom she's hoping to impregnate with an alien slug baby):

But that's not all — there's also a pregnant ten-year-old, whose father drugged her and imprisoned her in the basement. At one point, the pregnant ten-year-old spoons in bed with Jude and says, "I was born after you, but we're really the same age." (Because they're both really the alien slugs in human form.)

Also, Jude goes out drinking, several times, with a group of other female teachers, and literally their only topic of conversation is how much they want to have sex with their underage students, and all their fantasies about how they would seduce their students, and so on. It's sort of hilarious at first, but after a bunch of these conversations, you start to wonder if that's really all these teachers ever talk about. Occasionally, they have a sober moment and agree that it's not worth ruining your life just for one fun night with a hot underage boy. (Or, as the principal tells Jude in another scene, these days it just takes one mistake to destroy your career.)

It seemed a bit odd, honestly, that there's so much about sex between adults and children in this movie — it makes the central relationship between Jude and Abby — which could have been a sort of Let The Right One In-esque relationship involving someone who appears to be a teenage girl but is actually something older and stranger — seem like part of a whole world of intergenerational sex.

So we had to ask writer/director Clay Liford exactly what he was thinking putting so much pedophilia/hebephilia into one movie. He explained that it was a way to dramatize the fact that these people are not what they appear to be. Jude persists in seeing the pregnant ten-year-old as a little girl, but in fact she's an ageless alien slug, just like she is. And so it helps lead us to Jude's central choice: Whether she should embrace her alien nature, or try to keep living on Earth as a human. Liford added:

The idea was, they all came out of the same spaceship [at the same time]. Of course, we don't know the life cycle of the alien slug. Those things could live for two years, or two thousand hears... we have no idea how many lifetimes they have lived, how many different paths they've taken... theoretically, whatever lives inside of the girl could be even older than what lives inside of the main character.

So when Jude sees "a little girl who is pregnant, and dies or has horrible things happen to her," Jude projects her own issues about wanting to have children onto this girl. Jude persists in seeing the human aspect of the little girl, but she's actually reaching for something that's not there, says Liford. "She can't see that little girl as anything more than a little girl."

The film's central lesbian relationship was originally heterosexual, adds Liford. The character of Abby was meant to be a boy named Harry, but "we just never found a guy we liked, and we even went out of the city to do some casting." Finally, after tons of auditions, they met Amelia Turner, who was perfect for "Harry" except for her gender. So they called up the star, Rebecca Spence, and asked if she was game for a lesbian affair instead of a straight one. "I'm in if you're in," she responded.

Liford was very keen to show that "yyou can have a main character who can make possibly unsympathetic choices and make mistakes," but still be a sympathetic character in the end. Jude's relationship with Abby is just one of her questionable choices in the film, including ruining her marriage to a man who's shown to be quite decent and supportive. "I wanted to show that she had a sympathetic husband, who was not a jerk," says Liford. Usually, "when someone cheats on her husband in a movie, he's a patsy or a shlub." But "she's clearly the jerk in this situation."

Liford says it feels like there's a resurgence of low-budget science fiction movies, because the technology just keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. He watched the season premiere of Lost, and noticed the big under-the-ocean shot "was kind of crummy. Our stuff is as good as that, and I guarantee theirs cost way more than ours." Even just in terms of storage space, "What you can put on a hard drive is insane." But he hates it when people compare Earthling to Moon — a film whose $6 million budget was astronomical compared to Earthling's.

Liford says he "nerded out," coming up with tons of details about the alien life form in the movie, many of which didn't make it into the final two-hour cut. He wanted a believable life form that could traverse the cosmos and survive the voyage — even if it took 30 million years to get from Point A to Point B, or Earth. He came up with the idea of a space seed, a "freeze-dried" version of the alien life form, which needs other life to survive, and which has "psychic flanges" that are drawn to other psychic energy, as if by gravity.

Earthling's aliens were so overwhelmed by our capacity for love, which they'd never experienced before, that they wanted it for themselves. "There was a much longer version of the script that overexplained these things," says Liford. "The human body is basically grown around the slug. The slug represents the lowest brain, the instinctual part of the human brain." Thus, the slug replaces our lizard brains, and has no capacity for memory or ego. "The neocortex doesn't exist in the slug, so every time the human form of it dies, they basically die again, they get back to a lake and then get inside another human" to gestate a new body.

fubarrista