Publisher's Weekly noticed this little gem on Amazon. Both complete series will be available soon, along with The Best of Rocko's Modern Life but when, we're not sure. There is no date as of right now, but we'll keep checking. Maybe this is the holiday miracle we've been dreaming about. Now all we need is the complete DVD set of Liquid Television, and we're set.

You can watch the first episode of the The Maxx, which was adapted from Sam Kieth's comic book below, along with the first episode of The Head.

20th Century Fox and MTV are teaming up for a live 30-minute webcast to promote the upcoming, much-hyped movie this Thursday, which'll include Cameron, Worthington and Saldana (as well as producer Jon Landau) answering fan questions alongside showing unseen footage from the movie. The webcast will be streamed by MTV and also on the official Avatar Facebook page - yes, we know - which is where questions are to be submitted. This webcast promotes MTV's Behind The Screen documentary on Avatar, screening December 16th, which in turn promotes the movie itself, opening December 18th.

MTV sets 'Avatar' webcast [Variety]

Mulcahy is still around and still directing movies — he directed Resident Evil: Extinction, which was a much, much better film than it had any right to be. But his heyday was the 1980s, when he directed Razorback, the tale of a giant mutant pig attacking people in the Australian Outback. And of course, Highlander and the ill-fated Highlander II. (Cue legions of fans insisting that no such movie exists.)

Highlander contains so many beautiful images of the craggy landscape, and the roiling blue sky overhead, that it elevates the material and makes the swordplay and lightning-flashes seem that much more epic. It's Turner-esque. By the time he made his defining film, Mulcahy had already worked on tons of the most famous music videos of all time, and had crafted the art of the four minute image bomb, detonating with visuals and then disappearing.

Mulcahy deserves a place in the hall of fame just for his work on Highlander, but his music videos probably had more influence on cinema in the long term. I honestly was gobsmacked when I found out, from Wikipedia, that the same person had directed so many of the videos that saved MTV from being a wasteland. Those videos pioneered a whole new visual language. His seven-minute-plus version of Duran Duran's "Wild Boys" is one of the greatest dystopian (take a drink!) movies of all time:

Here's the music video he directed for Queen's "Princes Of The Universe," featuring scenes from Highlander. Look how easily some of these action sequences (in the second half of the video) lend themselves to the music-video format. I love it when Christopher Lambert steps out of the movie and onto the stage with Queen:

Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" video (directed by Mulcahy) has so many bizarre images, they had to create a "literal video version":

Berlin: Sex (I'm A...)

Duran Duran: Rio

Elton John: Fascist Faces

I could go on and on. Just check out the list over at Wikipedia. It's really amazing how many of his music videos are indelibly painted on my brain. And Resident Evil: Extinction was actually surprisingly great:

Highlander screencaps from Hundland.org.

Now that MTV has decided to move forward with this serious were drama calamity, it seem only right that we try and find the perfect young actor to be your next Teen Wolf.

Ed Westwick

Why He's Got Bite: I get this feeling there a little hairy monster just dying to get out of this kid and terrorize the town, and no — that was not intended to be intentionally dirty, but now I'm leaving it that way.

Why They Should Be Shaven And Cast Out Of Our Supernatural Realm: Casting Gossip Girl left-overs would really kill any hope for anything less than a soppy teen drama.

The Jonas Brothers
Why They've Got Bite: Three times the howls... because there are three of them.

Why They Should Be Shaven And Cast Out Of Our Supernatural Realm: It would be an insult to all werewolves everywhere — even the waxed-chest Jacob from Twilight would hang his head in shame, plus we already know they are Highlanders.

Jesse Eisenberg
Why He's Got Bite: He could bring us the awkward going-through-wolf-puberty we're looking for.

Why They Should Be Shaven And Cast Out Of Our Supernatural Realm: The whole "poor man's Michael Cera" thing.

Freddie Highmore

Why He's Got Bite: Probably the most realistic out of the bunch. It could be nice to have a wide-eyed optimist as a werewolf, but only if he eats his sister after a full-moon fight.

Why They Should Be Shaven And Cast Out Of Our Supernatural Realm: Even his doe eyes get old.

Thomas Dekker

Why He's Got Bite: He can pull off troubled, this we know, and a little bit of light werehumor, like shotgunning a beer with his fangs, could do this kid a world of good.
Why They Should Be Shaven And Cast Out Of Our Supernatural Realm: He may be a bit too over-dramatic.

But I'll light my house on fire if Zac Efron gets cast in the role.

MTV is looking into adapting the 1980s camp classic Teen Wolf into a television series, instead of (or as well as) the much-mooted film. Normally, this would be met with a loud and resounding "please no," but the writers being name-checked to work on the series have piqued our interest.

Attached to Executive Produce is Rene Echevarria from Castle who has been a writer and producer for The 4400, a few Star Treks and Dark Angel. We're excited about this one, but not so much the other two. Marty Adelstein, who did credible work on Prison Break, should not be let off the hook for his work on Made of Honor. And the series writer, Jeff Davis, has only worked thus far on Criminal Minds. But Davis did pen the Volton movie, so there's hope for some nerd cred within this new crew.

Next up on MTV's original series to-do list is an animated series produced by Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers and Mike Shoemaker. The show is titled The Awesomes, and features a gang of moronic superheroes. Lorne Michaels will be produce it. I know Meyers is a huge comic book geek, but it's hard to get excited for bumbling superhero shows when The Tick aced that genre already. Plus didn't the ABC's attempt at this type of series, No Heroics, go down in flames? Still, MTV might actually be the right place for this type of show.

[Variety]

The controversial video for most people looking at MTV's seven-video series seems to be this one, showing a bunch of young guys goofing around while playing card game Yu-Gi-Oh. Or this one, showing a cosplayer describing his Legend of Zelda costume, then playing his character's flute-like instrument.

I get why people think these clips could be construed as embarrassing, partly because their subjects are so unabashedly enjoying themselves. But to me these films seem pretty respectful. Unlike many vids I've seen on MTV, there are no sarcastic hipsters commenting on how ridiculous or repulsive geeks are - and there are no little popups zooming onto the screen that say "NERD!" We're seeing these gamers and anime lovers the way they are among each other, goofing around and geeking out over costumes.

In fact, if you watch the video I embedded above, from the same series, I think you get a flavor of what the videomakers were trying to convey. They show us an appealingly frenetic scene of people from all backgrounds getting together, dressing up, and having fun.

Sure the videos could have brought in an even more diverse group of otaku - sophisticated collectors, people who write about anime and manga professionally, academics, creators - but instead they capture only the regular fans. These are the people who make up the bulk of most conventions, and I like seeing them here, looking into the cameras, unashamed.

The movie remakes and respawns itself week after week as new generations of teenagers discover it at local rep houses and learn that freaks are everywhere (and they can be freaks too). How can you remake something that has already been remade thousands of times over by its audiences? And by theater troupes who reenact it? Plus, there's simply no way that the 1970s sexytime tale of a "sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania" could ever be told or retold in an era of safe sex and gay marriage. These days, Frank N Furter would just get married to Rocky, settle down, and move to the suburbs. The characters we love in Rocky Horror, and that audiences talk back to in cities across the world, cannot be "updated." And they cannot ever be remade in a way more pleasing than we can remake them ourselves, in our local theaters, wearing silly makeup and carrying umbrellas.

MTV Readies Rocky Horror Redux [Variety]

MTV's executive vice president of new media, David Gale, is ready to make the new animated venture sound like a breakthrough:

I like to think of it as cinematic comics — digital cinematic comics... I think it’s important that in this age you really give the freedom to the consumer. If all you do is put it on a Web site and ask for them to find it, it’s very challenging. I also think the evolution of download-to-own is becoming such an expected format for people to get content.

But just what is this cross-platform cartoon? The New York Times explains:

The process starts with digital scans of the actual comic book pages. They are turned into an audio-visual experience through a process called Bomb-xx developed by Gain. In the end, the formerly two-dimensional comic book suddenly pulses with music, while word balloons pop up and fill in as actors recite the dialogue and panels zoom in and out and pivot in all directions.

Yes, that's right; it's someone reading a Flash-animated comic to you. With music.

The worst thing is, this is pretty much exactly the same thing that Marvel Comics were doing in the late '60s with their Marvel Superheroes cartoons, except they had the common sense to get rid of the word balloons:

(They're still using the same technique now, for freebie trailers for books like World War Hulk.)
So, apparently MTV's new evolution of content is to rip off an idea that was already underwhelming forty years ago, but now you can watch on your cell phone. Go technology.

A Comic Book Superhero Is Headed to Small Screens [New York Times]

In a move similar to Battlestar Galactica hijacking your internets this Friday, Warner Bros will be speeding up show promos and website clips for various Viacom channels, including MTV, VH1, Spike, TV Land and Comedy Central from April 10th through 18th, promoting not only the Speed Racer movie, but also a tie-in contest giving fans a chance to win their very own Mach 5 through the RaceForSpeedRacer.com website.

The promotion is intended to detourn viewer's commercial-skipping DVR habits, according to MTV's creative director of digital fusion, Mark Fortner:

Consumers are utilizing their TiVos and DVRs to speed up programming... So instead of playing against that, we can sort of tie in with the way people are actually consuming media and behaving.