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True Blood Recap
How Baby Vampires Pick Up Guys On True Blood
This week, we watched with big watery eyes as the baby vampire Jessica met a boy and batted her long eyelashes alluringly, at his pulsating jugular. True Blood recap, with spoilers, below. More » -
battlestar galactica
The Final Five Spill Their Secrets, If You Can Get Over Your Preconceptions
Ignore the covers that made it look more like a T&A book than anything appropriately Battlestar Galactica-esque; the four-issue Battlestar Galactica: The Final Five offers up a complex backstory for the robots that put everything in motion. More » -
review
"Virtuality" Promises Cynical Media Melodrama - In Space
Virtuality is a reality-TV space opera and the newest television idea from Ron Moore, co-creator of the recent Battlestar Galactica reboot. But the show may never make it past the pilot that airs tonight. Is that really a loss? More » -
review
"Moon" Is the Best Scifi Movie of Summer
Alone with his robot on a remote lunar station, Sam is about to head home after a three year contract. That's when things get weird in Moon, which is lucky for you if you like smart, original science fiction stories. More » -
True Blood Recap
New Haircuts, Old Whores And Good Old Fashioned Religious Sexual Tension Save True Blood
Last night True Blood brought back some past favorites and reminded us all of last season's unspeakable vampire dirt sex. Jason turned on an entire camp, and Eric's new haircut debuted. More » -
book review
Final Crisis Is Frustrating, Flawed And Arguably Worth It All
It's a bold book about the end of the world, full of big ideas, epic events and beautiful art, and starring some of pop culture's biggest icons. So why does the hardcover collection of DC's Final Crisis disappoint? More » -
brave & bold review
Batman's Cartoon Love Letter A Mite Perfect
Friday's Batman: The Brave And The Bold abandoned the familiar formula of the series for something much more unexpected: A love letter to animation full of in-jokes, easter eggs, and even jabs at fanboys who don't dig the show's upbeat style. We kind of think we loved it.
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review
Get Awesomely Wrecked With "Drag Me To Hell"
With slapstick horror flick Drag Me To Hell, Sam "Spider-Man" Raimi returns to the genre that first inspired our love for him. Full of goofy gore, genuine chills, and a plot that plays nicely on our recessionary fears, this is the best summer movie yet. More » -
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review
Terminator Salvation's Terrible Shortfall
In Terminator Salvation, John Connor's voice carries over the radio waves, telling stories about the human spirit and how it'll triumph over our robot oppressors. As if the power of storytelling will save our future. So why is the movie itself so inept at storytelling? Massive, bone-crushing spoilers below. More » -
the road
First Official Review Of The Road Calls It The Most Important Movie Of The Year
The first official review of Cormac McCarthy's big screen adaptation of The Road has been released, full of praise for the soul-crushing work of John Hillcoat and Viggo Mortensen. More » -
red dwarf recap
Red Dwarf Smegs Up Its Comeback
The return of British comedy Red Dwarf was a chance to prove that the show had a future and wasn't an exercise in nostalgia... until they spent most of it recreating Blade Runner. Spoilers.
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review
Countdown Offers Much More Than A Prelude To Trek Movie
The final issue of Star Trek: Countdown was released this week, completing the prologue to this summer's Star Trek movie. If you skipped the series, then you missed a lot... including some old friends. Spoilers!
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family guy
Patrick Stewart Takes Family Guy To The End Of The Universe
Last night, Stewie kidnapped the entire cast from Star Trek The Next Generation to answer his fannish questions, only to wind up broken down by Captain Jean-Luc Picard's indomitability. There are four lights! Spoilers ahead... More » -
Better Off Ted recap
Better Off Ted's Nerds Are Still Funnier Than The Pretty Kids
Better Off Ted has certainly hit its stride with geeky characters Lem and Phil. While Portia de Rossi's wit is slowly catching up, it's the scientists who carry this endearing little sitcom. More » -
Better Off Ted
Nerdy Scientists Are TV Champions, On Better Off Ted
Last night ABC debuted its quirky new sitcom, Better Off Ted. It takes place at Veridian Dynamics, where awkward brainiacs are coaxed into getting frozen by their pretty superiors. Thankfully, the geeks steal the show. More » -
Kings Review
Ian McShane Has A Promising Reign In Kings
Last night, NBC debuted it's modern-day monarchy series, with a dash of David and Goliath, Kings. And despite a few pilot pitfalls, we're intrigued and invested in King Silas' politics. Spoilers below. More » -
Witch Mountain review
The Rock Can't Save Us With These 2 Aliens On His Back
What happens when you take a beloved Disney classic about the love between alien siblings, Witch Mountain, and replace it with video game antics and The Rock? Race to spoilers, below.
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book review
A Gorgeous Look At The Making Of Watchmen
Your friends don't have time to read Watchmen before seeing the movie? Give them a crash course. The Watchmen Film Companion explains everything, with concept art and making-of photos. A few more cool images, below. More » -
Watchmen review
Watchmen Proves The Cold War Is An Alien World
Watchmen, opening Friday, is a masterpiece of alienation. For a beautiful two hours and forty minutes, people freak out about nuclear holocaust - and you're hard-pressed to care. I suspect that's the point. Spoiler alert! More » -
Street Fighter Review
Street Fighter Displays Chris Klein's Crazy Nostril Acting
Street Fighter is a strange mix of lesbian dance-offs, pole-fighting, a dash of Kristin Kreuk cuteness, and a steaming heap of Chris Klein's strung-out lunatic acting. It's so bad, it's almost good.
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liveblog
Battlestar Galactica Is Back - And We're Liveblogging It
Tonight's Battlestar Galactica episode, called "Sometimes a Great Notion," has already started for people on EST. I'll be liveblogging on PST, so watch this space for livebloggage - and feel free to start commenting! More » -
battlestar galactica
Will Battlestar Disappoint? We've Got the Answer
I've been going back and forth on the "will the new season of Battlestar suck?" question, but today that question was answered. I watched a screener of tomorrow's episode and have a spoiler-lite report.
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the unborn review
"The Unborn" Mixes Underwear, Demons, and Holocaust Survivors
You know how the Jewish kids always get that one crappy Hannukkah song in the school Christmas pageant? Well, with The Unborn hitting theaters tonight, we've got our one crappy Jewish exorcism movie too. More » -
lost
Spoiler-Free Review Of Lost Season 5's First 2 Episodes
Many shows mess with the space-time continuum to varying degrees, but few do it with as much head-scratching/mind-blowing aplomb as Lost. So when ABC let us peek at two new episodes, we expected greatness.
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book review
"Shadow of the Scorpion" Is a War Novel with Sting
Neal Asher's latest novel, Shadow of the Scorpion, is an insane, sexy war story full of giant explosions on alien worlds. It's also a well-plotted exploration of the way violence destroys everything, even memory. -
The Spirit Review
When Is Too Much Crazy A Bad Thing?
Watching The Spirit get tangled up in his black and red suit wasn't only as confusing as Samuel L. Jackson's eyeliner, it was disturbing. A full review (with spoilers) explains why. -
review
Three Ways to Make the Most of "Day the Earth Stood Still"
Forget about whether the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is true to the original. It isn't. But it does give us a compelling picture of futuristic alien civilizations. -
Bender's Game review
Bender Fixes The Gas Crisis With His 20-Sided Die
The third Futurama straight-to-DVD movie is out, and it's throwing viewers right back into their parents' basements. Loaded with more references to Dungeons and Dragons than a Weezer song, Bender's Game follows the Planet Express crew as they deal with rising dark matter prices and old reliable villain Mom. After Bender goes mad from an overdose of D&D he sucks the rest of the cast into his fantasy world where Leela is a centaur, Bender is a Knight and Fry is Frydo. It's definitely the weakest of the movies so far, but there's still a lot to drink to. Spoilers ahead, gamers! More » -
monsterpocalypse
Monsterpocalypse is a Rampaging Good Time
Anyone who ever spent a Saturday afternoon as a kid gleefully watching Godzilla or Gamera battle weird space dragons or giant robots while destroying the vital infrastructure of Japan has got to love the idea of Monsterpocalypse. We've played a bunch of games to see if the game lives up to the hype - and by "hype," we mean, "our fervent kaiju-loving desire for an awesome giant monster fighting game." More » -
review
Fear And Outdated Loathing In New Marshal Law Novel
While the world awaits the Watchmen movie, another 1980s classic comic series from two British creators that took a new look at superheroes is trying to make a comeback. Twenty-one years after his first appearance, how does Marshal Law measure up to today's superhero-saturated culture? More » -
heroes recap
Heroes Is Saved by Homoeroticism and Daddy Love
Once again this week Heroes picked up steam by focusing in on one central conflict that has tugged all our characters back into each others' orbits. It's clear now that this season will be about family drama, featuring the dueling children of the Petrelli clan and the dueling corporations of its elders. More importantly, this week's episode, "Eros Quod Sum," got back to the comic book themes that inspired this show in the first place. You know, time-tested themes like hero homoeroticism and weird daddy issues. Spoilers ahead! More » -
heroes recap
Heroes Has Lost Its Spirit Guide and Is Growing Slime Fingers
Last night's Heroes returned to a problem the show had in its first season — too many characters doing too many random things — without returning to that season's strengths. What was rewarding about that season was that we watched our main characters coming together and pulling the narrative threads of the show into an intricate but neat pattern. But with each new episode of season 3 (and last night's "I Am Become Death" was no exception) we are seeing the characters drift into aimless, unconnected scenarios tied to a future of even more pointless confusion. Why are we still watching this show? I've got a few reasons, with spoilers, so be warned. More » -
the night sessions review
Do Protestant Terrorist Robots Have Souls?
Ken MacLeod's latest novel, The Night Sessions, is about a near-future Earth that's ruled by atheists who have driven Christians into the closet. The "Faith Wars" have purged governments in the East and West of their religious leaders, and left in their wake a fairly peaceful world order. Still, the population is filled with people and sentient robots haunted by memories of the violent "God Squads" who led the anti-religious purges. In this novel, released last month in the UK, MacLeod has stuck to the near-present time frame of his last novel The Execution Channel, while also bringing in the kinds of far-future concerns about posthuman selfhood that made his Engines of Light trilogy so brilliant. An intricate murder mystery about Protestant terrorist factions of the future, The Night Sessions is also a strangely moving tale of the emotional bonds between humans and robots. MacLeod has given us a crisp novel of speculation made achingly realistic by his characters' believable, messy lives.
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fringe recap
Fringe: The U.S. Government is Using Psychics to Tap the Ghost Network
I know there are going to be Fringe haters out there the whole season, but I have to admit the show sort of won my heart last night. Maybe it was the moment mad scientist Walter Bishop started singing the words "when I was in a mental institution," or maybe it was the pro-homebrew drug agenda, or maybe it was the scene where an office drone freaks out and does cheesy comic book art in his cubicle. The weirdo dark comedy tone in the show really came together in last night's episode, "The Ghost Network," which was all about wiretapping the spirit world. OMG DEA FBI! Spoilers ahead! More » -
heroes recap
Heroes: Why Don't We Do It In the Lab?
You can tell that Tim Kring, creator of mega-mutant soap Heroes, was overcompensating in a big way last night. In the exciting two-hour premiere, he proved to the world that he can make his scenes smaller, shorter, and faster than anybody else's scenes. No more of those long, dreary trips to Feudal Japan like last season. This season began with scenes so bursty and brief they made YouTube vids look leisurely. The time-travel freakout plot that causes mutant virus mania was practically incomprehensible (a perennial danger with time travel plots), but still fun in a whacked-out, 1980s DC Comics way. Plus, everybody's getting laid. Spoilers ahead! More » -
igor review
Igor Explains the US Economy to Five-Year-Olds
In the kingdom of Malaria, where new CGI kids' flick Igor takes place, the weather has changed. The once-sunny farmlands are now shrouded in a permanent, toxic rainstorm and everyone has become poor. At least, until King Malbert comes along and reinvents the economy by instructing everyone to build evil machines they'll unleash on the rest of the world — unless the world pays them off. The world quakes in fear and showers Malaria with money. It's a wee liberal parable about the U.S. economy, whose industries pump toxins into the atmosphere and menace the world with high-tech weapons. And what will save the world from the nasty, bad U.S.? Hollywood show business! Spoilers and political allegory ahead . . . More » -
fringe
Last Night's Fringe Was More Torturous Than the Leaked Version
Despite protestations to the contrary, I persist in believing that the Fringe PR team deliberately leaked the spooky science show's 90 minute pilot a couple of months ago. Just so they could say things like, "The transmitted version of the pilot is totally different — you'll have to see how great it is now." No one knows how many of us saw the leaked pilot, but the ratings for last night's premiere are in and they are pretty meh. 9 million tuned in to learn all about the "pattern" and what it looks like to watch people melt (which was pretty cool actually). So how did the transmitted version stack up to the leaked version? We watched them side-by-side, and have the differences for you below. Spoilers ahead. More » -
anathem
Neal Stephenson's Tale of Two Planets
Neal Stephenson's new novel Anathem comes out next week, and there's something very timely about his tale of aliens on a parallel Earth whose inhabitants are locked into an occasionally-catastrophic conflict between scientific and religious institutions. The planet Arbre, which is very much like Earth in some ways, differs from our world one major respect. Its religious and scientific institutions are essentially reversed. Monks called the avout live ascetic lives studying science in gracious, ancient "maths," while the so called "saecular" world is populated with Deolators (god-worshipers) who are obsessed with religion and technology. Stephenson's world-building skills, honed by the exacting work he did on his recent Baroque Cycle trilogy, are at their best here. Anathem is that rarest of things: A stately novel of ideas packed with cool tech, terrific fight scenes, aliens, and even a little ESP. More » -
review
Babylon AD: Yet Another Scifi Flick About the Virgin Mary
So we already know that Babylon AD director Mathieu Kassovitz has said that his own movie is horrible, but that didn't stop us from getting up at the crack of ass this morning and going to see a 10:20 AM show so we could bring you the scoop on this near-future actioner with Vin Diesel. There were no press screenings of this film — usually a bad sign. Though many reviewers blame the film's confusion-plus-explosions plot on the shit edit that Fox did of Kassovitz' film about future refugees, I think the problem with this movie is more than that. The problem is the fact that it's about the Virgin Mary. Spoilers ahead! More » -
review
How Mad Can a Scientist Get?
You probably already knew that Nikola Tesla, who developed alternating current electricity, was so OCD that he couldn't eat food until he'd determined its exact mass. But did you know that Jack Whiteside Parsons, founder of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, was a Pagan who loved orgies? Or that Marie Curie, who discovered radium and coined the term "radioactive," suffered bouts of depression because as a woman she wasn't allowed to work as a professor even after she'd won two Nobel Prizes? This week you can delve into the lives (and madness) of well-known scientists with a new book from Daniel "How to Survive a Robot Uprising" Wilson and Anna C. Long, The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame. More »



















































