Blindness is based on a novel by Jose Saramago, who also wrote The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Baltasar and Blimunda. Like Triffids, it deals with a mysterious plague of blindness that leaves almost everyone in a city unable to see. And like Triffids, it shows society breaking down and people descending into barbaric squalor in fairly short order. Unlike Triffids, however, the blind people still keep a lot of their humanity.

In the novel, all of the blind people are quarantined in an asylum where they live in squalor, until the soldiers guarding them go blind as well. But it looks like the movie will take a leaf from Doomsday's book and actually quarantine the entire city, walling it off to keep the infection from spreading.

Besides Moore, the film stars Mark Ruffalo as Moore's blind husband, a doctor, Danny Glover as the man with the black eyepatch, and Sandra Oh as the Minister of Health who seals off the city. (Yay, Sandra Oh!) It's directed by the Oscar-nominated Fernando Meirelles, who directed City Of God and The Constant Gardener.

Let's hope that this film does well enough that Meirelles, or someone, gets to film the sequel, which is even weirder. In Seeing, it's a few years later, and everyone's almost forgotten that nasty plague of blindness. Until the city holds an election, and almost all of the ballots turn up blank. Everybody decides to blame Julianne Moore's character, because she kept her sight during the plague. The literal blindness finally makes its transition into being figurative political blindness.

• 
  
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Okay, it's not false advertising to call it a motion picture, is it? There were indeed pictures in motion in this movie. But, this was part of the trend of calling things "The Movie" or "The Motion Picture." Did marketing people think they needed a title like this so as not to confuse people? Just ask the folks behind Superman: The Movie.The problem with this poster, other than featuring a triumvirate of Kirk, Spock, and the bald chick from the movie is the tagling "The Human Adventure Is Just Beginning." How is that true? Did we think it had come to an end?
• 
  
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - No problems with the title, Khan did have a lot of wrath. No, our problem is with the whole "At the end of the universe lies the beginning of vengeance" line. How were they at the end of the universe? Plus, the poster shows the Enterprise firing on the Regula I space station, what the hell is up with that? "To hell with science, Spock! Blow that research station to pieces!"
• 
  
• Star Trek III: The Search For Spock - The tagline for this poster is "Join The Search." Uh, how do we do that? By buying a movie ticket? Actually, our main problem with this movie is the title. When did they go searching for Spock? They put the guy's dead body into a torpedo tube and shot it onto the newly formed Genesis planet, for the love of god. They kind of knew where he was. Granted, they later find the tube empty, but it's not like there was a massive galaxy-wide search for him.
• 
  
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Just look at this artwork... is that supposed to be Captain Kirk or Chekov right next to Spock? Plus, did Spock decide to go extra-heavy on the eyeliner that day? Plus, check out the text on the seldom seen Australian version of the poster: "They traveled back where 23rd century man had never gone before, to a more crazy, outrageous time: 1986." Yeah, you know, the Dark Ages had nothing on 1986.
• 
  
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - Check this out "On June 9, Adventure And Imagination Will Meet At The Final Frontier." Really? How did that end up happening? Unless by "imagination" they meant horrible directing, acting, and writing. Ouch. Now, just when you thought things couldn't get worse for this movie... have you seen the teaser poster? It says "Why Are They Putting Seatbelts In Theaters This Summer?" Yes, because of Star Trek V. It's almost been 20 years, but we still want our money back. Maybe even more so, now.
• 
  
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country - "The Battle For Peace Has Begun," was it really a battle for peace? You could probably argue that it was. However, we only remember the Bird of Prey firing shots at the Enterprise, not the Battlecruiser. Maybe they needed something to spice it up a bit. We think General Chang's ominous eyepatch was probably enough. Why overdo it?
• 
  
• Star Trek Generations - Granted, it's hard to find a problem with this poster. "Boldly Go" ain't a bad tagline, so what are we supposed to say? "Um... the Enterprise never flew through a giant Starfleet symbol!" Although on the alternate poster the "Two Captains. One Destiny" line is a bit odd. What was that shared destiny, exactly?
• 
  
• Star Trek: First Contact - It's hard to figure out why the artists on these posters always make it seem like the faces are beaming in. Ever since Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it's like they have to be depicted as teleporting onto the poster itself. Bizarre. Anyhow, this poster features the Enterprise racing away from an army of Borg... and into the teleporting faces. Plus, is the Borg Queen winking at us? We're just not sure what's going on here, although resistance was definitely not futile.
• 
  
• Star Trek: Insurrection - The problem with the tagline on this poster ("The Battle For Paradise Has Begun") is that it's a direct ripoff of the one for The Undiscovered Country ("The Battle For Peace Has Begun"), which was only two movies prior. Did they just phone it in that day? Other than that, we actually kind of like Adhar's craggy face staring down at the Enterprise. It's just too bad the movie was a bit of a letdown.
• 
  
• Star Trek: Nemesis - Someone please explain to us how "A Generation's Final Journey Begins" works out here. Do they mean the Remans? The crew of the Enterprise who is beginning to go their separate ways? Picard, since he never had a son? Maybe all of the above... or maybe they meant people who would pay to go see more of these, yikes. The marketing people sure loved to have these posters signifying the beginning of something.
• 
  
• Star Trek - J.J. Abrams' film has had several teaser posters put out so far, with some of them even claiming "Stardate 12.25.08" at the bottom. However, now that it's been bumped to the Summer of 2009, those have all become a paper trail of false advertisements. It's gotten to the point that we've stopped trusting the posters altogether. What's next? Trailers that lie to us as well? Oh... wait.
• 
  

• 
  
• Originally titled The Wiz Kid, this 1982 movie was meant to be a parody of Carrie. They both end at a dance, although Carrie's ending was quite a bit darker.
• 
  
• The plot of Zapped! is pretty simple: Science student Barney is working on a experiment, and through a series of events that he isn't aware of, other things (like whiskey) get added to his formula, and eventually this leads to a lab explosion. However, as a result both Barney and his lab rat (who we never see again) have developed telekinesis. Barney uses his powers to make Heather Thomas' shirt pop open, helps buddy Peyton (Willie Aames) woo Heather, makes his baseball team win, and finally lands a girlfriend. However, his girlfriend doesn't think he should use his powers for "evil", and this leads to a rift between Peyton and Barney. All is patched up in the end, however, and there's a huge naked scene to top it all off, as seen above.
• 
  
• Scott Baio played the lead character Barney Springboro, although the role of the rich boy best friend Peyton was supposed to be played by Greg Bradford. The producers decided to cast Willie Aames instead, hoping for a little more star power (Aames had just come off of Eight is Enough, and was also cast in Paradise with Phoebe Cates... a sort of Blue Lagoon ripoff with more T&A and Willie's willy). Bradford apparently held a grudge against the producers for this.
• 
  
• Baio and Aames would go on to star together in Charles in Charge, and Aames would also go on to appear as... Bibleman.
• 
  
• Heather Thomas was cast as snooty cheerleader Jane Mitchell, but she was never into the nudity in the film. In fact, she had the producers put a line in the credits stating that they used a body double for her topless scenes. That wasn't enough, however, and she later sued them, stating that no one reads the credits anyway, and people would assume those were her breasts on screen. Um, duh?
• 
  
• To that end, Thomas wears a body stocking in the famous scene at the end where Baio makes her dress fly off. Thanks the the wonders of DVD (which this film just appeared on for the first time in February), you can see this pretty clearly.
• 
  
• Even more bizarre was the fact that when an advertisement came out in the Los Angeles Times, readers complained that the characters in the poster could see up the girl's skirt. Now mind you, the advertisement didn't show that, and the complaints were based on the point of view of the painted versions of Scott Baio and Willie Aames. As a result, the artist had to go back and extend the skirt, so even Baio and Aames can't quite see up it. Stupid, but true. See the main image up above for the modified artwork, then weep for humanity.
• 
  
• The film has a couple of scifi cameos, including Merrick Buttrick who went on to play Captain Kirk's son David in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Eddie Deezen who would later be ubernerd (the only role he played) Malvin in WarGames.
• 
  
• There's also an entire Star Trek parody scene in the movie when Barney comes home after the lab explosion and his parents think he's on drugs. He gets grounded in his room, and uses his new powers to make a model spaceship fly, apparently through an aquarium, and into his dog's mouth.
• 
  
• The most bizarre role in the film probably belongs to Scatman Crothers, who had worked on The Shining just a year or two before. Imagine going from working with Stanley Kubrick to playing a pot-smoking baseball coach. There's a truly bizarre scene where he gets high and imagines he's with Albert Einstein and fleeing from his wife, who is chasing after them with a salami-firing bazooka. Strange, but true.
• 
  
• There's a whole fan club devoted to Zapped! at MSN Groups, and they feature things like in-depth analysis photos of all the different versions of the movie. Particularly whenever Jane's clothes pop open.
• 
  
• Oddly enough, Zapped! spawned a sequel in 1990, Zapped Again!. In this update, a student finds Barney's old formula hidden in a wall, and uses it to more naked abandon. Linda Blair stars as a fairly hot teacher, and the only cast member to return was was Sue Ane Langdon, who played randy teacher Rose Burnhart.
• 
  
• The Onion covered it best when they published this image from their Alternate History newspaper:

• Robert Townsend (Hollywood Shuffle) both wrote and directed this movie, although he faded from the limelight once it tanked. He went on to direct a Disney Channel movie called Up, Up and Away, which was also about superheroes.
• The plot follows a fairly straightforward comic book route, having mild mannered Jefferson Reed Jefferson Reed gain powers after he gets hit by a meteor. However, they went a bit overboard with his powers.
• The meteor gave Jefferson the following powers: super strength, super speed, the ability to fly, telekinesis, laser vision, x-ray vision, freezing breath, the ability to heal quickly, the power to talk to animals, and the power to make plants grow quickly. Oh, and he can also absorb everything in a book by touching it, but only for 30 seconds, which is probably one of the lamest powers ever created.
• There's actually a scene where Meteor Man clears out a vacant lot, plants grass seeds, using his meteor powers to make it rain, and grows a field of giant vegetables and tomatoes. All to the tunes of cool, light jazz. Ouch.
• There's also a scene where the lead villain and the Meteor Man both absorb a book about "ladies modeling" and they have a vogue-off. Yes, you can't make this stuff up.
• This was Don Cheadle's fifth movie, and isn't usually listed in his filmographies or bios. He sports a blond hairdo throughout the film, and chews up a fair amount of scenery.
• James Earl Jones stars as Earnest Moses, and is dressed in an oversized baseball jersey for the whole movie, and check out his high fade haircut. It's pretty embarrassing to watch the voice of Darth Vader try and imitate Radio Raheem from Do The Right Thing.
• Not that Bill Cosby was the greatest actor to grace the silver screen, but in this film he stars as a mostly mute homeless man (he barks at dogs near the end) who gets the same powers as Meteor Man, and comes to the triumphant rescue at the end of the flick.
• Robert Guillaume of Benson fame also stars as Jefferson's dad Ted, and Marla Gibbs, better known as Florence from The Jeffersons stars as his mom. In Up, Up, and Away, Marla stars again as his mom, and Sherman Helmsley (Mr. Jefferson) stars as his dad.
• Even LaWanda Page, better known as Aunt Esther from Sanford & Son makes an appearance as a sassy nurse. Townsend really enjoyed mining older TV shows to fill the roles in his projects.
• Eddie Griffin plays Jefferson's best friend Michael, although he actually chews up less scenery than usual. Since it was only his fifth film, he hadn't hit his wisecracking stride yet.
• Frank Gorshin, who played The Riddler on the old Batman tv show and Bele on Star Trek: The Original Series, portrays big baddie Byers, in probably one of the worst roles of his life. Sometimes, there is shame in taking a job for the paycheck.
• Sinbad and Luther Vandross both have small roles in the film, and you can imagine what the combined box office power of a comedian and a classic singer would have done, if only it had been marketed properly.
• Marvel Comics produced a six-issue limited series based on the movie, where Meteor Man encounter Spider-Man. Seriously, Meteor Man meets Spidey.
• Meteor Man could see through walls with his X-Ray vision, but for some reason when he looked at people, he could see through their clothes, but not their underwear. Behold the power of a PG rating! In the scene below, you can watch as Meteor Man battles a crackhouse full of underwear clad workers, unites the Crips and the Bloods, and grows the magic field. Endure it if you can.

These images give us hope that G.I. Joe won't be a complete mess, or at least it'll look pretty while continuing to strip-mine all our childhood memories. We haven't heard if Snake-Eyes will have his wolf Timber in the movie or not, although we don't really think they need to give him a slobbering animal to make him look more intimidating. It's also not clear if he'll talk or if we'll just see his face in the flick. (Thanks ProjectThanatos!)

We know you can whip up a bit of footage that looks way more realistic than the one that fooled us at 2 AM after we'd been drinking Romulan ale for 12 hours straight. We want a snippet of something that looks ripped from from J.J. Abrams' secret vault — something that would fool the guys at Trek Movie and Ain't It Cool News. Or maybe just something that's plain goofy and will make us laugh away the pain of having no actual footage to slake our thirst for more Enterprise.

UPDATE: We've persuaded the excellent Anthony Pascale, editor of Trek Movie, to be a judge in the contest. And he persuaded us to give you more time. Contest now ends Saturday, April 5, at midnight PST. To enter, you must mail your footage to faketrek@io9.com. You can also post it on YouTube and then paste the YouTube clip into the comments below so everybody has a chance to judge its greatness. (Just pasting the YouTube URL into comments will make the video appear.) But remember, to be considered a real entry, you must also mail the footage to faketrek@io9.com.

We will announce the winner, with great fanfare, Monday, April 7. The prize? An awesome swag box full of Star Trek goodies (thanks, Anthony!). Plus, everlasting internet fame and the satisfaction of having designed awesome fake footage.

Alright, humans and aliens, engage!

Only four Rex Havoc stories ever appeared in the pages of Warren Presents and three of those were collected in issue #14 from November 1981. Their team emblem consisted of a boot-print superimposed on a pair of buttocks, and Rex had his own fight song he would sing as the team marched into battle:

"We are the ass-kickers of the fantastic,
Let monsters all beware.
Three guys and a lass...
We kick ass...
In French we kick...derriére!"

Rainn Wilson - the evil alien Gallaxhar
Hugh Laurie - Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D.
Seth Rogen - the jellylike B.O.B.
Will Arnett - the half-ape, half-fish Missing Link
Kiefer Sutherland - General W.R. Monger
Stephen Colbert - The President
Reese Witherspoon - Ginormica

[Slashfilm]

Ant-Man has a sort of troubled history, even by superhero standards. The original Ant-Man was Hank Pym, a mentally ill inventor who served in the Avengers and also created the Avengers' worst enemy, the robot Ultron. Then a reformed thief, Scott Lang, took over as Ant-Man in the early 1980s. More recently, a total asswipe named Eric O'Grady stole an Ant-Man suit and dicked his way around through a dozen issues of The Irredeemable Ant-Man.

So which Ant-Man will we see in the movie? Earlier, Wright had hinted that Ant-Man would be both the Hank Pym and the Scott Lang versions, but now he says:

It could be Scott Lang, it could be Hank Pym, it could be both - okay it is both, now there's an exclusive for you.

Would it have killed them to comic-book this thing up a bit? It's just a big creepy having all those heads lined up in a row like a strange Three Stooges remake, plus it's eerily reminiscent of this godawful Return of the Jedi poster. Too many heads just make a poster look odd.
New IRON MAN poster! Man in Suit! Man in Suit! Wait, wrong franchise... [Ain't It Cool]

If we had the time, we might torture you again with another caption contest... but more than one a week might be a bit too taxing on the funnybone. So, if you want to win, please just let us know in the comments below. Please note that you need to live in or extremely close to New York City to take advantage of these, so enter only if you really plan on using these tickets.

We'll be providing a list of the winners to the organizers of the event, and they'll have your name on a list and you'll be good to go. Please note that we'll select the first five comments from folks in the NYC area who want to see the movie. For the rest of you, set your Netflix for Tuesday, March 11th, and enjoy.

When Blade Runner came out in 1982, Cinefex devoted an entire issue to the movie, complete with scads of Syd Mead's concept art. They later became collector's editions, and were hard to track down. If you were lucky enough to find one, it would usually set you back a hundred bucks. However, Titan Books put out a special edition hardcover edition a few years ago, and you can pick one up for about sixteen bucks. It may not come with an accompanying floppy record full of jazz riffs or even Vangelis tunes, but it does featuring some truly amazing concept design from one of the masters.

• The 1975 movie was based on the 1968 book of the same name by Alexander Key. Sadly, most of his novels, including Sprocket: A Little Robot and Bolts: A Robot Dog, are out of print. You can read and download some of these here.
• Don't let the name fool you, Escape To Witch Mountain isn't about witches at all, but about super-powered alien kids who don't know they're aliens.
• Remember the creepy and slightly spooky overture music? If not, you can hear it right here.
• In fact, want to watch the opening credit sequence? Well, here you go.
• Tony and Tia, the original Wonder Twins, both possess telekinesis, although Tony can only use it when he plays his harmonica. Tia can also telepathically speak to mammals, and to Tony. Looks like she got the lion's share of the cool stuff.
• Unlike Zan and Jayna, Tony and Tia have difficulty controlling their powers, which leads to several mishaps. Like Tia having to free every captive animal who can talk to her.
• Tony was played by Ike Eisenmann, who Trek fans will immediately recognize as Midshipman Peter Preston, who Scotty brings to the bridge of the Enterprise in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Perhaps if he'd taken the mortally wounded kid to sick bay, he might have survived.
• Kim Richards, who plays Tia, is the aunt of both Nicky and Paris Hilton, which isn't really that interesting, but more mind-boggling.
• Both Ike and Kim would be reunited as brother and sister in the extremely forgettable Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell TV movie in 1978.
• The Twins' Uncle Bene is played by Denver Pyle, better known as Uncle Jesse from The Dukes of Hazzard, which Kim Richards later appeared on as Cooter's daughter. Now that's just weird.
• They encounter Jason O'Day (Eddie Albert) who lives in a Winnebago and travels around the country. He ends up helping them out, and probably made kids everywhere think Winnebago's were cool. (I know it did for me, in fact my parents bought me a little scale model Winnie after I saw this movie).
• The bad guy in the movie, Aristotle Bolt, seems like a genial rich man who just want to save kids from the orphanage. Of course, he really wants the twins for their abilities. However, he does have a pretty cool name and lived in a replica of a Byzantine castle that was built by Templeton Crocker between 1926 and 1934 from lava rock from Mt. Vesuvius and materials gathered all over Europe.
• The twins eventually discover (via their little leather "star case") that they are actually aliens from a binary star system who fled to Earth because their own world was dying. They're reunited with others from their planet, and they fly off in their spaceship for the sanctuary of Witch Mountain, never to return.
• That is until Disney made a sequel, Return From Witch Mountain, in 1978. In this movie, Tony and Tia have been training hard to use their powers and to learn about their own kind. In fact, they've been working so hard that the elders let them have a vacation in Los Angeles. What, two superkids on a vacation in L.A.? Nothing could possibly go wrong, right?
• If you want to see a movie trailer that says 1970s as loud of possible, then you're in for a treat. This trailer for Return features Christopher Lee, Bette Davis, andthe words "far out," "molecular mobilization," and "intergalactic energization." Is it me, or does that announcer sound like the guy from the old Batman TV show?
• In the sequel, Christopher Lee plays evil mad scientist Dr. Victor Gannon, and he uses a mind-control device he's invented on Tony, eventually pitting twin against twin in a battle of telekinesis. Bette Davis plays Letha Wedge (what a name), who has been financing the bad doctor's experiments.
• Sadly, there's no Eddie Albert in the sequel. It was also Jack Soo's final film, having been best known for playing Det. Sgt. Nick Yemana on Barney Miller. It was probably the coffee.
• In 1982 Disney made a television pilot called Beyond Witch Mountain, which featured a return of Eddie Albert as Jason and his Winnebago, but they recast everyone else, from the kids all the way to down to Aristotle Bolt. This was meant to become an ongoing series with the kids and Jason finding other alien kids and helping them get back home, but it never got that far and never went to series.
• Disney remade the original film back in 1995, with some major changes to the script. The twins are now named Danny and Anna, and they are separated as infants (who have full-fledged telekinesis), but are later reunited accidentally when they're older. Land developer Edward Bolt (the always evil Robert Vaughn) finds out about their powers, and plans to use them to blow up the entrance to Witch Mountain... without explosives. Way to use that power, Edward.
• It wasn't as charming as the original movie, and wasn't nearly as well received. You can find out why by watching the first 10 minutes right here.

The heartening news we should probably take away from this is that the director wants to turn it into a trilogy after centering the first movie on the first 12 issues of the series:

I see it as a trilogy because there is so much to put in. Where the first movie ends doesn't even relate to the last issue because it's so far down the road. It hasn't succeeded so far in the screenplay format because everyone keeps trying to throw everything in there. We're only taking this [first] story so far.

I just watched Disturbia for the first time this weekend, and I will grudgingly admit that Shia isn't bad in it. However, the ending of that movie was so sickeningly cotton-candy sweet after featuring actors swimming in sewage pools full of rotting corpses, that our main worry is that D.J. Caruso will completely miss the mark on Y. What do you think?

D.J. Caruso Says Shia's Still His 'Last Man' For 'Y' [MTV Movies Blog]

This is Michael Sormann's Barracuda steam-powered train, created for his Theme Planet world, and it just looks, well... badass. In fact, if the country had rails instead of freeways, this is what a tricked-out custome personal locomotive would look like. It'd set you back a ton of credits, but you'd own the railways.

Theme Planet is Sormann's project about a theme park that covers an entire planet, sort of like Coruscant in the Star Wars-verse, except a hell of a lot more fun. You can see the Barracuda in action in his short film (below) from the project, which he produced for SIGgraph, and check out some of the other pieces of concept art on his website. If one guy can produce something that looks this good, Pixar might have a whole crop of competitors in the next few years. In the meantime, we want to get our hands on one of these trains and take it for a spin.

According to Butler, "It's this descent into madness but explained in such a sane way that you totally feel it yourself." Which doesn't make much sense now, but we'll go along with it. If all future comic book related DVDs received this much attention to detail, it might create a new market and medium for comic books. Just imagine X-Men: Days of Future Past, The DVD. Unfortunatelty, it also means you'll have to double dip at the theater and later on DVD if you want the full experience. [Empire Online]

At only a $79 million dollar budget, a major studio could just buy this project out and turn it into a shot at box office gold. In the Hollywood version, the spacecraft would wake up a dormant alien being, long buried underneath the lunar surface, or they'd start a chain reaction that would cause the moon to break up into a billion pieces, which would begin raining down on the Earth. Then NASA would have to hire a maverick space jockey — Eric Bana? — to either deal with the alien menace, or the falling debris.

Or what if the moon turned out to be a deep space probe that's been orbiting the planet for eons? Silently biding its time. Then, a rude awakening comes in the form of us crashing things into it and the bot pilots running the probe try to send down big guns to mete out some stellar justice. It feels like the start of a bad Dimension Films plot, we know. But, there's probably a good idea buried in there somewhere. Just as long as it doesn't dislodge the moon from orbit and force us to watch the only good scene in The Time Machine again.

NASA Takes Aim at Moon with Double Sledgehammer [Yahoo News]

Image from the 1902 George Méliès film A Trip To The Moon.

• 
  
• The plot is pretty basic: tourists visit a theme park and interact with realistic, lifelike androids. Of course, something goes wrong and they start murdering everyone, which makes it hard to run a business.
• 
  
• In the sequel, FutureWorld, the park is reopened after they've spent $1 billion dollars in safety improvements. They invite reporters (played by Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner) to come check the place out and vouch for the place. Whoops, something goes wrong. Again. Only this time, the demented theme park owner is trying to duplicate world leaders in cloned android form. There is nothing like an evil Walt Disney.
• 
  
• Yul Brynner's final film west FutureWorld, where he appeared again as the Gunslinger in a semi-dream sequence.
• 
  
• In the final sequence of FutureWorld, one of the dying clones tells the head scientist "They're the wrong ones!" as Fonda and Danner leave the facility. They were supposed to be replaced by evil clones who would give Delos a rave review, but they were outsmarted by the real thing. Fonda turns around and flips the scientist the bird.
• 
  
• The television show, Beyond WestWorld, was about the security chief in Delos trying to stop the head scientist from using the robots to take over the world. That probably wasn't in the job description. The show featured plots like this, "Quaid (the scientist) gets his hands on some uranium, and John (the security chief) and Pamela (Connie Sellecca!) must find another android who is hiding in a rock band." Why this was canceled after only five episodes, we'll never know.
• 
  
• Michael Crichton was inspired to make this film after visiting Disneyland and seeing the animatronic figures on Pirates of the Caribbean, so you can now blame that attraction for at least five movies: WestWorld, FutureWorld, and all the the Johnny Depp Pirates movies.
• 
  
• This was the first movie to use digitized 2D computer graphics in a film, and the sequel FutureWorld was the first movie to use 3D graphics. In fact, in FutureWorld, the 3D hand you see on screen belongs to Edwin Catmull, the co-founder and president of Pixar and of Walt Disney Animation Studios.
• 
  
• The theme park in the film is actually called Delos, and was meant to be the ultimate vacation destination. Visitors could visit WestWorld, MedievalWorld or RomanWorld and actually have sex with the androids, who were programmed to be receptive to all sexual advances. All this pleasure only cost $1000 a day.
• 
  
• Yul Brynner's Gunslinger character is an homage to the character Chris he played in The Magnificent Seven, and he even wears the same outfit.
• 
  
• John Carpenter has said that the Gunslinger was an inspiration for the Michael Myers character in Halloween, and it sure seems like The Terminator owes a lot to this relentless killing machine as well..
• 
  
• The Brynner-Bot has his face burned off by acid at one point, which also destroys his visual circuits. However, he has infrared backups, and spends the rest of the film chasing the main character while faceless. Trust us, it's cool.
• 
  
• Not really trivial... but doesn't James Brolin look a lot like Christian Bale in this flick?

[Empire Online via Ain't It Cool and Slashfilm]

The Fall unites an unlikely band of steampunk-era heroes — The Indian, The Ex-Slave, The Explosives Expert, The Masked Bandit, and Charles Darwin — to fight a common enemy, Governor Odious. Director Tarsem is best known for his movie The Cell, which was gorgeous eye-candy with a story that dragged. He's also been attached to the remake of Westworld and Nautica, but was either replaced or left those projects. The Fall was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006, and has taken its sweet time to make its way around the world.

It looks to be equal parts Big Fish and Pan's Labyrinth as well as The League. That's a good start. Plus, Charles Darwin as a fictional science hero? We're there.

The story starts out in the 1950s, and heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman are fighting in Korea and Indochina, but she takes a mucher harsher stand than he does, letting victimized women deal out there own brand of murderous justice. He warns her that's the reason Batman is now a fugitive and the Justice Society is disbanded.

We're also introduced to both The Martian Manhunter and Hal "Green Lantern" Jordan in short order, long before they become the heroes we've come to know. We find out how the Manhunter comes to Earth, and how Hal loses his nerve during the Korean war and spends time in a psych hospital. While the Manhunter is trapped on Earth and spends his time watching television (there's an amusing scene where he emulates Groucho Marx and Bugs Bunny), Jordan tries to get into the space program, and eventually gets hired by the Ferris company, run by the boss' wife Carol Ferris.

Over the course of the film, while Jordan develops into a stand-up test pilot and gets drafted into a mission to Mars (sans ring), and the Manhunter fights crime as detective John Jones, different heroes begin unraveling a plot by something called The Center. At first it's not clear if it's a cult, some form of mind-control, or an alien invasion. Additionally, certain heroes like The Flash are being sought by the government, who want to unmask them and expose them and have them register, just like in the recent Civil War series from Marvel. The trouble is, it feels tacked on and cheesy, even though it's the most interesting idea in the film.

In the climactic ending, a whole slew of heroes including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Martian Manhunter, Adam Strange, the Blackhawks, and a ton of others do battle with the Cthulhu-like Center. When things are at their bleakest, Hal Jordan finally accepts the role of Green Lantern, and the ring he was given by the dying alien Abin Sur comes to his aid and gives him a little instruction manual brain-video lesson. They triumph over the dinosaur-spewing baddie, and thus the Justice League is formed. Montages of many more heroes (including the Teen Titans) and villains scroll by as portions of John F. Kennedy's 1960 Democratic National Convention speech play in the background.

Darwyn's art-style is retro-vintage hipster cool, and the heroes are extremely well voice acted (by a pretty impressive list of stars including everyone from Kyle MacLachlan to Lucy Lawless to Neil Patrick Harris... who aren't distracting), but the plot feels mish-mashed together, and needed to be either a miniseries, or a two-part movie. The Flash's "the government is oppressing us!" speech on television could have been the start of a terrific storyline about the persecution of heroes, but it ends up feeling like it was excised far too early.

Also, there are a lot of heroes tossed into the mix who aren't given any lines at all, like Green Arrow and Ted "Wildcat" Grant, and fleeting scenes of folks like Adam Strange. There's a lot of DC comics history being presented in only an hour and a half, and as a result it feels lacking. Some of the animated scenes feel a bit like afternoon cartoons, but other sequences (especially those in space or with planes in flight) are extremely well-done, which add to the feeling that the whole project is uneven.

It'll be interesting to see this when it comes out on DVD, seeing as how they excised certain scenes and changed the story from the graphic novel. There are a slew of extra materials and interviews on the disc, which will hopefully fill some holes. While it's not perfect, it's much preferable to the nothing, which is all we've had in the form of original animated films based on DC Comics properties. If they could spend some more time hammering out the stories and improving the animation, this could be a series that lasts for years. Just give us some Kingdom Come pretty darn soon.

• 
  
• There's a lot of improv between Tony and the fire-safety robot who keeps dousing him with foam. He has a somewhat more stable flight around his garage (although he nearly cooks his cars). Then with a little fast forward action we see him in the full-fledged Mark II suit, testing the systems. Jarvis (now an A.I. robot instead of a proper English butler, although he retains the prim English accent). Tony decides to take an early flight around the city with his first test flight, and we want one of those suits. Flaps extend, thrusters fire, and it's pretty swanky.
• 
  
• Someone asked him what his inspiration to make the movie was, and he said "I was inspired by the box office returns on Zathura." Hey, dammit. I liked that movie!
• 
  
• When asked about the rumors on the internet about a scene with Nick Fury as Samuel L. Jackson appearing in both this movie and The Incredible Hulk, Jon said "Yes, it's true. There are rumors on the internet." He said the rumors are partially true, but not which part.
• 
  
• Stan Winston Studios designed the physical Iron Man suit, but ILM provided a CGI version of the suit. Sometimes the two are married together, but they use the physical suit whenever possible.
• 
  
• He talked about the flying scenes in-depth, and used Stealth as an example of how bad flying scenes can be. They tried to emulate the look of the flying scenes in both Top Gun and Battlestar Galactica that have more of a documentary feel.
• 
  
• If Iron Man does well, Favreau may be directing the Avengers movie.
• 
  
• There will be a new 90-second trailer shown during Lost this week. He showed us a 2 1/2 minute version of the trailer that will be in front of 10,000 B.C., and it has a lot of new stuff in it. New shots of Obadiah Stane, a brief glimpse of the Iron Monger, Tony's first test flight, Pepper catching him changing into his Iron Man suit, to which his says "Let's face it, this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing."
• 
  
• He hadn't wanted to reveal that Iron Monger would be in the movie, but Hasbro released images of the toy, so they included some very brief shots of him in the new trailer.
• 
  
• They haven't yet figured out how Iron Man will sound when he's wearing the suit. Jon was literally leaving WonderCon to spend a few weeks at Skywalker Ranch to work on the sound mix, and to try and work out what Tony's broadcast voice will be.
• 
  
• There was a concerted effort to have a teenaged Tony Stark play Iron Man, much like Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man. Thank god that didn't happen.
• 
  
• He's stayed in touch with Doug Liman, who directed Favreau's Swingers script in 1996, although he hasn't gotten any action film directing tips from him.
• 
  
• We asked Jon about the sexy shot of Tony Stark with two scantily clad women that recently surfaced, and how hard would they be pushing the envelope of sexiness: "Well, this is rated PG-13, so not too hard, as a matter of fact that shot is not in the movie right now. It was mostly for time, but we'll include that scene on the DVD. I've made a movie that I would feel comfortable bringing my kids to. It's not a hard PG-13, but it's intense. I wouldn't say that there were any compromises made, but it definitely was informed by what the personality of the film should be."
• 
  

Iron Man armors image courtesy of ScreenRant.

• Clip #1: Wall-E at work. Our little herobot works away in his role as the last working robot on the planet. It's 700 years after the human race was supposed to leave the planet so the disposal bots could clean the place up over the next five years. However, something has gone wrong, and we never returned. Over the intervening centuries, Wall-E keeps at his job, and he's developed a personality. While compacting trash, he keeps the more interesting finds in his lunchbox: a bra, a squeaky toy, an old boot, and so on. Plus, he has his little cockraoch buddy to keep him company.
• Clip #2: Eventually a spaceship lands on the planet and drops off a probe droid named EVE. Wall•E courts her for awhile, and eventually brings her back to his pimped out truck where he keeps all of his Earth junk. She nearly laser-zaps his singing Bigmouth Billy Bass on the wall, enjoys his bubble-wrap, breaks his egg-beater, and nearly brings down the house when she tries to emulate the dancing she sees in an old video Wall•E presents to her on VHS.
• Clip #3: The ship returns and EVE is tucked away onboard, ready to return to wherever she came from. Wall•E is terrified at the thought of losing his new friend, and tries to stow away on her ship but only makes it halfway up the ladder. He hangs on for dear life while they rocket into outer space, and he tags along for the ride all the way back to the megaship they dock in. Along the way, it's a touching tribute to our own space program (although the moon has been turned into an outlet mall), and previous space films like 2001.
• Clip #4: Wall-E creates some work-related problems for EVE, and she tries sending him home in an escape pod. However, she soon regrets her decision and goes off after him, although things are a bit more complicated since his pod is set to auto-destruct. Wall-E narrowly escapes, and with the use of a fire extinguisher as a thruster, he navigates his way back to her. Although Stanton promises that their relationship will become a lot more complicated.
• In response to being told that all the Pixar movies keep looking better and better, Andrew Stanton ask a fan, "Are you saying Toy Story is the ugliest film we've made? Well... it is!" Hey, we love a director with humility.

• Brendan hadn't read the original Journey book and went out to find a copy at his local Borders. He found the last copy in a Jules Verne anthology.
• He found out that during World War I, soldiers on all sides of the conflict it was being read by soldiers in the trenches in multiple translations.
• He compared the first version of the script he saw to a three-day old smorgasborg, "It would give you indigestion because so many people had already been going through it." So he pitched a new version to director Eric Brevig, and they made extensive changes to the script, returning it closer to Verne's original version.
• Fraser remembered being wowed by the computer-generated knight coming out of the stained glass window in Young Sherlock Holmes, and we now take amazing effects for granted.
• They were able to view "morninglies" and "nightlies" since they were shooting with digital cameras, instead of viewing them once at the end of the day, or the next day, which is traditionally how it happens.
• 60% of the film has digital enhancements and CGI elements of some kind.
• Brendan's favorite films from his own career are: Gods and Monsters, The Quiet American, The Mummy, and George of the Jungle.
• He went on to say "I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize for Monkeybone," and he called it an "$80 million dollar arthouse film."
• When a fan asked Brendan what advice he'd give to an up and coming actress, he said "I'll give you the same three words I was given when I was in training in Seattle, 'Have courage.'" When asked what the third word was, he said "I'm not very good at math."
• Brendan wants all of us to "take a leap of faith" with this "beta" version of where we're heading with 3D filmmaking, and he says the movie is as important as when sound first came to the movies in The Jazz Singer. Based on the trailer we've seen, we're not sure if we'll be leaping into that hole. However, the 3D footage they showed late sure looked tactile and tasy.

In the script for the Buck Rogers reboot, it's a Ukrainian strategic defense initiative satellite that's failing, although it's also carving huge swaths across the planet with its mega-laser weapon. Sort of like the Borg did in Enterprise when they chopped up Florida. Buck Rogers, superhero to millions and ace of the space skies is sent off to shoot the thing down, although it's partially sentient and dodges his superbomb. Buck, ever the hero, decides to go after the satellite with the only weapon he has left... himself.

He crashes into it, but is apparently obliterated in the process. But little known to those left behind, he's blasted into deep space as debris. On Earth, he's celebrated as a hero with statues and meals named after him, but the resulting nuclear explosion is seen in space and alien species start visiting the planet. This leads to problems later, the kind that only Buck can solve when he thaws out 100 years later. Although we'll never really know, because the script died in development, but we're patiently waiting his return, perhaps in 2108.

• David (Davy throughout most of the book) is 17 when he starts teleporting, and 19 when the book ends. In the movie, he goes from age 15 at first teleport, to 25 in the blink of an eye. So much for those formative years.
• There's a lot of clumsy dialogue in the book. It was Gould's first novel, which could account for some of it, but when Davy gets asked he doesn't want to dance with a hoochie mama at a college party, his response makes us cringe: "I feel foolish. You know what you're doing out there. I feel like a clumsy jerk. The contrast is painful. I'm shallow, I guess, but I don't want everybody to know just how shallow."
• Davy may be young in the novel, but he starts dating Millie who attends college in Oklahoma pretty easily, despite their age difference. In the movie, she's a childhood friend who dates the Flash Thompson jock-type asshole. Shades of Mary Jane and Spidey.
• When he needs to kill time in the book, Davy jumps to Disney World and hops on the attractions. Star Tours is his favorite. In the movie, Davy kills time by boning bar floozies, surfing, and having lunch on the head of the Sphinx.
• In the movie, David robs a series of banks and other locations to finance his free-wheeling lifestyle, but in the book he only robs one bank, which nets him close to a million dollars. He lives fairly frugally off of it, since he has close to 800k left near the end of the book.
• David lives in a sleek highrise in the movie, but in the book he has a fairly modest apartment tucked away in a ghetto. He's put in a secret closet to hide his money, and Gould perpetually mentions his "25 inch television." We're assuming that in 1992 that was considered "big."
• In the novel, David jumps to the Stanville Library during his first couple of teleports, but Davy continually returns here throughout the novel where it serves as his "safe" place that he'll revert back to when in danger.
• There are no jumpscars or miniature sonic booms when Davy teleports in the book, unlike the movie. In fact, he doesn't make a sound at all when he leaves. Millie videotapes him doing it, and they have to slow the tape down to frame by frame to even see anything happening. At that point, you can vaguely see through him and into wherever he's going to or coming from, but only for a single frame. Having said that, the visual effects of jumping in the movie were pretty damned awesome.
• He also doesn't carry his momentum with him when he teleports in the novel. In the movie, he'd stay fairly within the laws of physics and stay in motion, but the book nullifies that. In fact, he steps off of many ledges, plummets down, and will jump away just before hitting bottom without any ill effects.
• Davy is the only jumper in the novel, whereas in the movie we're shown at least three of them. Including one with much more skill than David has.
• In the movie a group of mysterious agents called Paladins are tracking the jumpers, but in the book it's just the NSA.
• In the movie the Paladins use devices called "tethers" that utilize electrical shocks and pulses to keep a jumper pinned down. In the novel, they try tranquilizer darts and homing harpoons.
• David's swank apartment is nice in the movie, but in the book once Davy is found out, he builds a remote hideaway in a rocky fortress of solitude in Texas. It's completely walled off and looks like a part of a rock formation.
• In the book, Millie trains Davy to jump to the emergency room whenever she says "Bang," in an effort to keep him from getting seriously hurt. He has to jump whenever she says it, even if he's naked or going to the bathroom. Talk about cruel tricks being played on you by your girlriend.
• In both the novel and the movie, Davy and David record "jumpsites" by physically visiting places. They can't just look at a photo and teleport until they've actually been to the place. David in the movie prefers acres of photos, but Davy uses racks of videotapes. Novel Davy can also spot a place using binoculars, and then immediately jump there.
• Davy's mom leaves in the book, just like in the movie, but it's only to get away from Davy's abusive father. Shortly after Davy reunites with her, she's blown up by a terrorist on a hijacked flight. Davy soon devotes all of his efforts to avenging her death.
• Novel Davy is much less of a pussy then Movie David, breaking terrorist's bones and dropping them off of ledges into a pit filled with water. However, he cries at the drop of a hat. Hayden-bot probably has no tear glands.
• I cannot fucking stand the covers of mass-market movie tie in paperback books. I know the marketing department wants people to go "Oooooh! Bruce Willis is on this cover! Bruce Willis must be in this book!" and buy it, but I can't stand movie covers on my books. I bought this in the lame-o Christensen on the Sphinx cover, but then found the older copy and traded it in later. Phew. How's that for trivia?
• If you enjoyed (or think you might enjoy) the novel Jumper, then check out Fade by Robert Cormier. It's about a boy who discovers he can turn himself invisible. Sweet!

Vigalondo says:

You can be sure my next one hundred movies won't have time travel in it. Well, actually you never can tell. I'm thinking now porn and time travel would be an incredible combination: People fucking themselves!

Timecrimes will be released later this year, unless time travel actually gets invented, in which case you will have already seen it.

Nacho Vigalondo interview [Bloody Disgusting]

Henry Pym has had what can only be described as a "checkered" past in Marvel's history. After discovering a group of subatomic particles that he calls "Pym Particles," he uses them to shrink himself down to ant size and almost gets eaten by a nest of angry six-leggers. Later, he invents a cybernetic helmet that lets him control the ants (and other insects), and goes public as Ant-Man, leading swarms of insects into battle. It probably didn't help matters that his lab assistant Janet becomes The Wasp, and they later get married.

Henry later discovers that he can grow as well as shrink, and later becomes Giant-Man, then Goliath, then he went a bit mental and become Yellowjacket. He also created the robot Ultron who turned into a major baddie, and Ultron in turn created the android Vision to destroy Henry and the Avengers, but Vision ends up turning good. Oh, and the Vision's brain patterns were based on the then-deceased Wonder Man's, who was in love with Wanda, the Scarlet Witch. However, he returns (as all comic characters do) only to find out that Wanda and the Vision are romantically involved. Awwwwkward!

Pym laments the creation of Ultron constantly, has to deal with his wife leaving him, and in The Ultimates he's a prozac-taking crybaby who beats his wife. Boy, the Marvel writers sure love to beat up on this guy.

Anyhow, what's interesting about Wright's script is that it'll involve two Ant-Men, both Henry Pym and Scott Lang. Lang was a former thief hired by Stark Enterprises (nice work Tony) to help install a security system in the Avengers mansion (again, nice work Tony). When he daughter fell seriously ill, he stole Henry Pym's ant man costume and gear and busted out the only doctor (who was being held captive) who could help his daughter. Pym saw what he'd done, and let him keep the Ant-Man stuff. What a guy. Maybe he'd remembered his antidepressants that day.

Anyhow, Scott serves as Ant-Man for awhile, then later gets killed by Jack of Hearts. His daughter Cassie takes up the cause as Stature, although she can grow and shrink on her own, without the helmet. Apparently she'd absorbed enough Pym particles from being around her dad. Hope they aren't habit-forming. That left Marvel without an Ant-Man though, but rest assured that there's another one.

Enter Eric O'Grady, a low-level S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who decides to steal Pym's Ant-Man gear when he finds it at his company's headquarters. You think that after it's been stolen once, they might keep things locked up a bit tighter. He parades around as The Irredeemable Ant-Man, although his title was canceled after 12 issues. But either he or someone in the suit will be back, because Marvel really loves to hate this character. Wright's film will probably feature some Ant-Man vs. Ant-Man showdowns, which we wouldn't mind seeing, especially with his irreverent sense of humor. Time to start inhaling those Pym particles.

[ComicBookMovie]

We're still on the fence about this flick, but it looks marginally like Signs 2. Only this time the aliens are the plants that we've been sharing the planet with all these years. Looks like they finally got pissed off about all the pollution and the vegetarians. Watching this reminds us that Shyamalan's Unbreakable was a great movie that got slammed for being too slow and unexciting, but in retrospect is well worth a second (and third) viewing. However, Signs never stops us from asking why aliens would come to a world coated in something that is severely lethal to them. We hope The Happening doesn't have similar plotholes in it.

The 1970s were obsessed with large-scale disaster movies, offering audiences everything from Earthquake to Airport were all about massive mayhem and destruction with massive casts featuring top stars of the day, and Meteor stands as the bookend to that obsession. What's really impressive about the movie (besides the cast, which also included Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Henry Fonda) was that it was based on an M.I.T. student science project called Project Icarus. If you've ever wondered how to stop a four-billion ton rock from hitting the Earth, then you might want to rent the movie, and pick up the book of the science project. Oh, and keep Sean Connery on your speed dial.

It'll leave your retinas in a bit of pain, but it's the only time we've ever seen anything come close to approximating the view from inside one of those Hot Wheels loop-de-loop courses we used to play with back in the day. Some of the lines in the trailer made us cringe a bit, and we'll be missing the ultraquick dialogue and the speed lines... but we're marginally starting to look forward to what these races look like both in the movie, and in the game. We just hope you can use all of the gadgets that the Mach 5 has to offer while you batter your opponents.

Take a first look at Speed Racer [Palgn]