The concept is pretty much the same — there's a mysterious murder and a left-over tape. You know the drill. The best part is, they're actually going through with the "It's not fake, but you know, we know, you know" hooey. Check out the "description" from the site.

There's been some comment on the internet about our release called PARANORMAL ENTITY and why is hasn't been posted on our website until now.

This has been a sensitive issue for all of us:

A few weeks ago we were approached by surviving members of the Finley family who asked us to release never-before-seen home video footage shot by Thomas Finley, who was accused of murdering his sister, Samantha (pictured) in 2008, and who later took his own life in prison.

The family has always maintained that Thom was innocent of the crime and that Samantha's tragic death was not caused by anything human.

Released onto DVD Dec. 22nd.
[via Asylum]

Click on the pic to see the full get-up over at UGO. The more we see from Mark Millar's live-adaptation comic book movie, the more we like. In theaters April 16, 2010.

The plot of The Dream Machine has yet to be revealed (at least in English), but Kon gave his overview on the film last year in an interview with Anime News Network:

The title will be Yume Miru Kikai. In English, it will be The Dream Machine. On the surface, it's going to be a fantasy-adventure targeted at younger audiences. However, it will also be a film that people who have seen our films up to this point will be able to enjoy. So it will be an adventure that even older audiences can appreciate. There will be no human characters in the film; only robots. It'll be like a "road movie" for robots.

The official site for the movie has launched, bringing with it the first images of Kon's enigmatic robots, Robin and Rurico.

[via Twitch]

Horrible Turn is a charming bit of fan fiction with impressive production values. We revisit several of the characters from the original — even Johnny Snow makes a few appearances — and learn the real reason why everyone loves Captain Hammer. Plus, the prequel has its own, all-female version of the Bad Horse Chorus, and reveals the first dastardly deeds of the Evil League of Evil.

Horrible Turn [via Whedonesque]

In an interview with ShockTillYouDrop, Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick explained that when they first began work on the idea, before Swayze's diagnosis, they had hoped to cast in him for a surprise bit in the film:

It was [going to be] a Patrick Swayze zombie. They got attacked by him zombified and we had these wonderful moments where they found a potter's wheel and there's Columbus on the wheel and these other hands come up behind him and it's Patrick Swayze the zombie. Ultimately, they fight and Patrick bull rushes Tallahassee who grabs him and lifts him into the air, a la Jennifer Grey, and smashes him into a pillar.

After Swayze bowed out, the pair decided to stick with the celebrity cameo idea, and nabbed a different star for a non-Swayze-themed scene.

Patrick Swayze Was To Cameo In Zombieland [ShockTillYouDrop]

Heder plays Oliver Vale, whom the trades describe as:

An average geek whose uneventful life changes when Buddy Holly turns up on every TV channel and declares that Vale is the only one who understands why this is happening — which causes Vale to be pursued by a mob of disguised aliens.

The film will be directed by Robert Rugan, who's responsible for Alice's Misadventures in Wonderland. What's the verdict?
[Via Variety]

The Surrogates movie is released September 25th. The Surrogates: Flesh And Bone, the second graphic novel in the series, is available now.

The Science-Fact Behind 'Surrogates' [Wired]

Considering the sheer volume of animation Bruce Timm and company have put out featuring the DC characters over the past seventeen years, it's frankly astonishing how little of it has involved Hal Jordan, with only Justice League: New Frontier and the briefest of cameos in Justice League Unlimited to his credit. Much like Wonder Woman, whose heretofore neglected origin provided the basis for the last DC animated movie, there's a lot of unexplored territory when it comes to Hal Jordan.

Thankfully, screenwriters Alan Burnett and Michael Allen make the most of this, and does not rely on the familiar beats of the Green Lantern origin story. Within the first ten minutes, Hal Jordan has received his ring from his dying predecessor Abin Sur, accepted his role as the Green Lantern, and decided to head out into space to better understand his new duties. What happens next is a story that, while far from perfect, is hugely refreshing in both its originality and its frequent craziness.

Brought before the immortal Guardians of the Universe so that they might assess his worthiness to serve in the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan faces more than his fair share of anti-human prejudices. On the verge of losing his ring before he even really gets to use it, Jordan is saved by the legendary Green Lantern Sinestro, who says he could be of use in hunting down the murderers of Abin Sur.

After a sequence on an alien planet that feels vaguely like a cross between the Denzel Washington corrupt cop movie Training Day and the Mos Eisley cantina scene from Star Wars, Sinestro and Jordan trace Abin Sur's death back to Kanjar Ro, once a fairly unremarkable warlord who recently acquired the fabled yellow element, a power source that could potentially overthrow the Guardians and the green element that powers their corps. But, as is inevitable in both superhero and cop movies, there's a crooked officer in the force, and it's only a matter of time before Hal Jordan finds himself on the wrong side of a conspiracy.

Although Green Lantern: First Flight does end with the customary massive fight between the superhero and the supervillain, a surprising amount of the film really does play more like a cop drama than a superhero movie. The Green Lanterns eat lousy food in a precinct substation, Sinestro is reprimanded by his superiors for his overly violent interrogation techniques, and so on. This makes a welcome change from the familiar story beats of the average superhero movie, and it's this narrative freshness that goes a long way towards making up for the film's flaws.

Chief among those flaws is the often tedious exposition (Hal Jordan at one point even asks whether he should be taking notes). DC Comics in particular has a number of heroes whose backstories revolve around complicated power hierarchies and fantastic elements, which can make it difficult to elegantly explain the setup to those unfamiliar with the characters. Wonder Woman got around the problem of clunky exposition with a lot of knowing humor, as Nathan Fillion's Steve Trevor's one-liners acknowledged the more ridiculous parts of the Wonder Woman mythos. Hal Jordan is too much the straightforward hero to play that role in Green Lantern: First Flight, and the weirdly catty Guardians are more strange than amusing. The first section of the movie, which features the most sustained deliberations between the Guardians, is easily the weakest part.

Still, once Sinestro takes over, Green Lantern: First Flight shifts into high gear and only rarely falters. Much of that is due to Victor Garber's performance, which ably captures the character's slide from potential ally to fascist antihero to all-out villain. Equal parts calculating, menacing, and charming, Garber is the standout of Green Lantern: First Flight.

Beyond Garber's Sinestro, voice director Andrea Romano has once again assembled a cast that is solid throughout, from Christopher Meloni's Hal Jordan to Tricia Helfer's Boodika to Kurtwood Smith's Kanjar Ro. Admittedly, it's a bit odd to hear Michael Madsen as Kilowog after Dennis Haysbert so perfected the character on Justice League. Alan Burnett and Michael Allen's script wisely makes the most of the recasting by tweaking Kilowog's character, making him a gruffer interpretation of the characters whose respect Jordan must really work to earn.

Director Lauren Montgomery follows up strongly on her impressive work in Wonder Woman. Green Lantern constructs are perhaps the most memorable visual element of the film, and Montgomery does not disappoint with Hal Jordan's giant green fly swatter, gold club, and so forth. Featuring a menagerie of aliens in the cast, the film's character design is a huge asset, with the four-legged Weaponers of Qward proving particularly memorable.

Still, much like the rest of Green Lantern: First Flight, the direction has its flaws. There are a couple reaction shots that drag on far, far too long for no apparent reason, and much as these are minor faults it's hard to figure why they weren't edited down. The bigger problem is the film's CGI. Although the CGI has come a long way from the notoriously bad inserts seen on Justice League, they still remain jarringly different from the rest of the animation, and it's hard to see such elements (particularly when they play a fairly major role in the film's climax) as anything but a liability.

Green Lantern: First Flight might be a slight step down from Wonder Woman, but it's still a hugely entertaining film that dares to do something different with the superhero genre. Throw in the DC animated movie's giddy use of PG-13 language (the films have gotten better about this since Superman: Doomsday, but there's something still delightfully wrong about Sinestro telling Hal Jordan that, "I own your ass") and gleefully grotesque ways in which the film kills off characters, and Green Lantern: First Flight is definitely some good fun, even if it's decidedly not old-fashioned.

It's been a year since we first announced that DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, was hunting down scripts for a Twilight Zone film. And it appears that they have finally chosen their scribe, writer and television producer Rand Ravich. Ravich is probably best known for creating the NBC police drama Life, but he also scripted the B-movie-inspired thriller The Astronaut's Wife (which he also directed) and the horror sequel Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh.

And, in fact, Ravich has also written for a series modeled on TV anthologies like The Twilight Zone — but instead of science fiction or horror, the stories featured in Playboy's Inside Out anthology are, naturally, based around sex. Still, the description from IMDB of his entry "Put Asunder" suggests that Ravich would have rather been writing for Rod Serling than Hugh Hefner:

A battling divorced couple cannot keep their hands off of each other, so they hire a hitman to kill one of them, based on chance.

Still no word from Appian on whether the film, like its ill-fated 1983 predecessor, will feature remakes of old Twilight Zone episodes or an original (and potentially pornographic) tale from Ravich.

[Variety]

Horror site Shock has posted the first pages from of the Jennifer's Body comic, illustrated by Jim Mahfood. The book introduces you to all the other characters in Jennifer's world, and the pages released seem to focus on a steroid injecting dim-witted jock. Let's hope he gets it first. The comic book will be released in August.

To read the entire section check out Shock Til You Drop.

Rumors have been circulating that Duncan Jones' next picture would be the underwater adventure film Escape From the Deep. But fret not scifi fans, his next picture will actually be Mute, the mysterious picture about a future world that Jones has compared to Blade Runner's noir Los Angeles.

According to ScreenDaily, Jones will team up with Moon producer Stuart Fenegan, who revealed some of the plot. Apparently, it's about

a woman whose disappearance causes a mystery for her partner, a mute bartender. When she disappears, he has to go up against the city's gangsters.

The director will be getting $25 million in for his futuristic gangster film. Which makes us all froth at the mouth a little with the idea of giving Jones actual money to bring his beautiful scenes to life (Moon's landscapes, use of light, and sets were jaw-dropping, drool-inducing beautiful). That's almost five times his previous indie budget.

Jones describes Mute as more of an ensemble piece, but revealed more details to us when we pushed him a bit on the movie's big bad villains. The project is set to start filming by the end of this year.

We're going to go ahead and call it: Daybreakers looks fantastic. Pay no heed to Dafoe's cheese-ball lines and look at the intricate futuristic world-building here. There are blood stations, blood banks, and oh my yes — that's Dr. Grant as a vampire. It's been so long since we've had a solid vampire epic, and we dearly want this to be Fifth Element good, which is the feel I'm getting from it.

Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig both wrote and directed this film, which will be out on January 8th 2010.

The G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra movie novelization, by Max Allan Collins, is coming out, and one fan at General's Joes was lucky enough to snag an early copy (at Target no less). We rounded up the most important spoilers and reveals, which we can generally assume will be in the movie, as these books are usually a translation of the script itself.

First up everything is shiny and new. We live in an international world after all. No more dirty Vietnam War-esque Joes: these Joes are from around the world, which explains why Heavy Duty is British, Cover Girl is Czech, Breaker is Moroccan and the Pit is in Egypt. And since it's set in a hype modern "We Are The World" future, that means more room for gadgetry, says the fan reviewer:

It has a bunch of sci-fi gadgets in it like holograms, accelerator suits, jetpacks, invisibility suits, pulse rifles, nano-mites, brain downloading, robotic "spy fish", mind control, and lasers.

That's a lot of tech stuff, but more on the nano-mites later...

So what was good about GI Joe? Not surprisingly, the fan loved Destro, who is being played by Christopher Eccleston, so let's go ahead and assume that this part is in the bag. Destro and MARS are the big villains, and COBRA only shows up at the end, to make it seem more menacing and awesome. And instead of the Cobra Commander, we get a new character, Rex aka the Doctor, who is described in the novel as "Lord Byron as mad scientist." (???). He eventually becomes the Commander, and at the end of the book, the Commander sticks it to McCullen aka Destro, turning him into the villain we all know and love.

The reviewer goes on to describe General Hawk as "pretty awesome," which is how I would picture him, I guess. But just how awesome is he? Star Wars Prequels "awesome"? Because that's how nervous I am right now about this film.

Other good things? In the book (and probably in the script), the Joes poke fun at their accelerator suits calling them, "hi-tech football pads or Japanese robots," and this was probably written BEFORE they saw the CG horror that are these suits on screen. So the film-makers set out to make them look like hell? This kind of self-awareness is not a good thing.

The book is supposedly rife with a few sad puns and bad jokes. Like Marlon Wayans talking about "kung-fu grip." The Joes regularly shout "Yo Joe!" and in one scene, "Go Joe!" But this is an action movie after all, and those moments are actually important, so I don't see that as a negative. They insist that the shape shifting Zartan is to be taken seriously — and he actually takes the place of a big character in the end, thus setting up an even bigger role for him in the sequel. We're guessing it has something to do with the next big reveal... which is the death of a "code name" Joe during the big action sequence at The Pit. (Apparently it's someone who will only get one action figure.)

There are four big action sequences: a convoy attack at the start of the movie, an attack on The Pit, the Paris sequence with the nano-mites attacking the Eiffel Tower, and the final battle at the underwater MARS facility.)

Now for the really bad, according to the review. The Nano-mites, which you've seen eating up the Eiffel Tower in past trailers can do anything, "mind control, eating metal, shapchanging, Destro's mask, super soldiers, you name it…they can do it!" Which sounds like the world's laziest writing tool ever.

Also my beloved foot-soldier Neo-Vipers are all a bunch of mindless drones that can apparently DISSOLVE? No, that's just not okay. I can understand just making them robot-y nothings, but giving them the ability to dissolve? Yechh, no.

This really sounds like a jumble of bad with light helpings of good on the side. Let's hope Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Eccleston can pull it off, because it sounds like there is a lot going on.

GI Joe The Rise of Cobra will be in theaters August 7th.

According to Focus Features:

About 8:

Armed with a giant kitchen cleaver and half a scissor blade, the none-too-bright muscle and enforcer of the group, 8, is created to help the others physically survive the dangerous, post-apocalyptic world.

Insider Trivia:

8 is voiced by Fred Tatasciore, who studied animation at UCLA with director Shane Acker, where he became known for his voiceover talents on other students' films. Fred was enlisted to voice 8, the "brawn to 1''s brain if you will," says Acker.

Here's the high res. version of the poster:

9 will be released in theaters on 9/9/09.

So you mentioned that you got involved with Virtuality to do something to for the genre similar to what BSG did. What will Virtuality change, what does it have to offer to the world that BSG did?

For Virtuality, I think our focus is more technological. It's more about the technology we are already dealing with and how that will change our lives. I would say that, that reality is the internet. The technology which enables us to communicate with other people. We conduct a lot of our lives though websites dating sites, facebook, email, phone links that allow us to get in contact with people on the other side of the world. But there's no physical contact. In other words we're already living our lives in a kind of virtual reality. This is what the show Virtuality looks to explore. How that kind of technology will change us... In that sense, it's a very different kind of show than Battlestar, a very new show. But with a cultural reference that is just as profound... It's looking ahead.

We read a lot of rumors about the show getting changed from the original pilot script? Did a lot of things change?

The show that will air on June 26 is not really changed at all from what we shot. On the other hand, the show did start out as a one hour pilot. NBC Universal and Fox the airing network [asked us] to turn it into a two hour movie. In a way, that had to change the nature of the script that had been widely circulated on the internet (for the original one hour show). It deepens the draw in some ways, it complicates it in others. I think when Fox saw the end result, they thought, "wow this is a very heady mix." Or as one Fox executive said, it's "Very cool but kind of dense."

Clearly they were afraid that it was not the kind of network material they were used to. Initially Peter Berg, our marvelous director, said, "I think I can boil this down to an hour, and maybe that will make it an easier sell for you guys. Let me try." So they gave him the legway to do that, and he did it in a one-hour cut. It turned out very interesting, but very different — and it would have to be. To make a two hour movie from a one hour, you have to make a lot of changes and focus on different things.

In the end, I don't think Fox found that [one-hour cut] more compelling than the two hours. There were compromises made along the route. There are things Ron and I would love to change, or Pete would love to change if we had the opportunity or the budget. The chance to reshoot some stuff, to work even better as a two hour. But what you will see is essentially what we set out to make, for better, hopefully, and for worse too. It's a show that we're all really proud of and we think is really cool. But I should say that it looks more like an indie move than Mission Impossible 3.

We read that the gay couple might have been edited out or removed?

None of that is true. I think that was at the point where the network said, "Gosh this is very cool but I don't know if this is for us." They basically took their hands off. They didn't give us any budget to do some of the things we wanted to do, but they said, "Do what you want."

Fox's involvement at this point is giving us great help in terms of promotion on the web. And the rest is pretty hands off. It's been put out on a night that I've heard is sort of the graveyard/boneyard of television. You won't see a billboard or a bus shelter sign. There is no overt promotion in that sense, but we have a wonderful publicity department at Fox, who really love the show and is helping us push it on the internet as much as we can. We cannot squawk that anyone messed with it, we can always [see] the things we didn't get to do [and] the things we wanted to make it even better, but it's still very much the show we set off to make and that we made. We hope people dig it.

How much time do your characters spend in the virtual world and is it different for each character?

Every astronaut on the show has their own personal reality module. A chance to create a space that is unique for them, and they occupy it on their own. They can share it or leave it if they want to. But by and large, they are considered private spaces. In the course of the show, I would say we spend about 10 - 20% in these environments.

Because we're meeting the group for the first time, we're setting a lot of balls in motion as far as the plot and what the story and the situation is. So it requires us to spend a lot of time in the reality of the spaceship. Also it's expensive to produce these virtual realities. They were all created digitally — there are no real back drops to these virtual environments. Everything was created in the computer. We are creating a true virtuality. And that's expensive. We get windows into our characters' experiences, which are kind of mind blowing in some places. But the meat of the show takes place in the reality of the spaceship. But by the end of the show, you may start to wonder what is real and what is not. Which is one of the themes of the series as a whole.

Could you describe one character's virtual world?

One of our characters, he name is Billie Kashmiri (Kerry Bishe) she's a young computer scientist on the ship. And she's kind of shy, she's still finding her confidence she's in with a lot of seasoned astronauts. What is her virtual reality? She's created a alternate ego for herself. She's very much a Buckaroo Banzai, a character who is a rock n' roll superspy. It's very funny and tongue in cheek. It's whimsical, and kind of James Bondy. We get to see a bit of it. So in a way, her environment is an expression of who she is, or who she wants to be. It tells a lot about her, but is also a lot of fun for the audience to see. The other characters' environments are more serious, exploring issues that they are grappling with perhaps, situations in their lives. Secrets, even. But it can be a restful retreat, from environments where you can work through issues to pure wish fulfillment and entertainment.

We heard that the movie will no longer become a series. Is that true?

I can't confirm that. Fox has not given us the official word. I have to be honest, I think the scheduling of this the way it is... it does not look good. The chances are very slender. Slim to none — who knows? It would take pretty much a miracle for that to happen. It would take millions of people watching, on this night when people normally aren't watching television in general. I can say if a lot of people watch it and like it, and make their feelings known whether it's writing a letter to Peter Rice, or even better, to someone like Mark Stern at the Syfy Network, who really does love the show. It's part of the NBC Universal family, and I think they'd love to put it on if they could afford to put it on. If they could find backing, that would be amazing a miracle. Neither Ron nor I are holding our breath for a miracle. We're just happy people have a chance to watch what we made.

First up is the film Deader Country, which has nothing to do with the end of days rave whatsoever, but still sounds entertaining and I quite like the mutated zombie alien face. Here is the official synopsis for this strange half zombie half alien flick:

Whilst wagging school, two teenagers stumble across a strange hybrid creature, a beast that is half man, half alien and ALL zombie, which has managed to make its way unseen across desolate countryside to the town of Pleasance. Upon nursing the mutated zombie back to health, the teens unwittingly unleash a deadly new plague of the undead on the town's populace. Now with a conscience and accompanied by a small group of eccentric locals, Orion is back to help battle the second legion of zombies. However, he is soon to discover a startling revelation that will alter the very fabric of his existence…

UPDATE: I was confused there are actually TWO zombie movies out the one with the huge end of the world party is I Spit On Your Rave, which has a poster right here:

This film is currently casting zombie extras for an all night Day of the Dead Raver which started when a virus was leaked out at the 2012 Olympics.

Slashfilm guesses that this could be the largest zombie gathering of all time, if you don't include all the Thriller zombies from the NYC Halloween parade (but I feel like even those numbers are sadly dropping).

[HorrorMovies.Ca via Slashfilm]

Weirdly enough, the meme of the fans hating the movie for being too accessible to the mainstream started with this funny Onion clip last week:

As a joke, it was pretty great — especially the idea that real Trek-lovers prefer stiff acting and preachy storylines. Then a few days later, NPR picked up the meme, but with total seriousness. (Listen to the stodgy NPR piece about how "older fans" may skip the new movie here, or read a brief summary here.)

And with that, the meme took off, gaining a new life of its own. There was this particularly lovely cartoon in the New York Daily News, for example (at left). And now it's gotten to the point where TrekMovie.com claims that it's turning away media requests from mainstream media outlets looking to present this stereotype of Trekkers bashing the new movie for making sense:

However just this morning alone I have been contacted by ABC Good Morning America and NBC News, and both of them wanted to me to help provide a fan to put on camera to talk about how Trek fans as a whole are against this film. When I talked to producers for both, neither wanted to hear that those fans were only a small part, and in fact one producer (from NBC) hung up on me when I told him I thought it would be disingenuous for them to report that Trek fans as a whole were against this movie. I suggested to both that they could have two fans on with opposing views or at least represent the ‘negative' fan as being part of just a segment of Trek fandom, but those suggestions fell on deaf ears. Our friend and star/producer of Star Trek Phase II James Cawley tells me that he has also turned down multiple mainstream media requests to attack the new movie.

What's going on here? We talked to a spokesperson for ABC news, and he said that Good Morning America had indeed reached out to TrekMovie for a piece they're planning on running for their weekend edition. GMA is doing a story about how old and new Star Trek fans feel about the new movie, and they're not just looking for fans who hate it.

According to the spokesperson, the GMA producers want to find a range of viewpoints — including people who love the original show and have different feelings about the new movie, but also people who feel the opposite. The point, says the spokesperson, is definitely not to present just one viewpoint. And the GMA producers haven't even decided what the story will be about until they talk to people. However, they're starting out with the idea that there's a divide between old and new fans, and they want to explore that. But he stressed that the GMA producers aren't drawing any conclusions yet.

And I'm sure the GMA producers will be able to find some old-school Trek fans who are uncomfortable with some of the changes the movie makes. But at the same time, I feel as though I know where this meme originates: with the studio. J.J. Abrams has been quoted in articles in recent days, telling old-school Trek fans to "stay away" from his film if they can't handle the fact that it's not the Shatner model. When you actually watch the film, you see that it's actually a love letter to original Trek fans, with literally tons of references to the original show and the movies. Abrams and Paramount know that the die-hard Trek fans will see it five times — so they're probably happy to see mainstream media outlets spreading the meme that this film actually alienates nerds because of its extreme newbie-friendliness.

In other words, the "straw nerd" this meme sets up is not aimed at bashing fans, but at luring in Trek-phobes.

SV Bell's Crawler is simply about a bulldozer that wants to kill all humans, and that's way scarier than any crappy hybrid killing machine. I applaud the attempt to bring back anything Maximum Overdrive-ish. For more information about the campy goodness, check out the site Crawler Movie, and thanks Bloody Disgusting for pointing out this bad boy.